Winterbourne (26 page)

"If only you had left those splinters," he said, scarcely aware that he had spoken aloud. "At least I could still walk on the leg without sopping in my own blood."

"Your flesh would have mortified," she cried. "You would have perished."

He shook off her hands, repulsing her attempts to balance him. "I am of little use to anyone the way I am. Better to be dead than crippled."

He pulled away from her, limping across the great hall, not even aware she no longer followed him. The hands that had been reaching out to him dropped back to her sides as she stood there, too stunned to even cry. Such cruel words she could have borne from another man, but not Jaufre! She believed she had won his esteem, and now to hear him voice the same scornful thoughts she had heard since the cradle!

Better dead than crippled
. The words pounded through her head as she whirled blindly and fled from the great hall.

Jaufre glanced back in time to obtain a glimpse of the distraught, almost wild look on her face before she disappeared. For the first time, it occurred to him what he had said. But Melyssan could not possibly think he had been speaking of her when he… A fear sharper than any pain from the leg struck through him.

"Melyssan? Lyssa! Come back!" His voice grew hoarse with shouting as he struggled to overtake her. But for once, she was the swifter of the two. Hampered by his awkwardness with the staff and the excruciating agony that now swept over him in waves, he reached the archway at the top of the stairs to find himself alone. Melyssan was nowhere in sight.

"Lyssa!" The cry sounded muffled even to his own ears. He felt hands tugging at him, and Arric's voice drifted to him as if from a great distance.

"Have to stop her… tell her," he mumbled as he felt his legs caving in beneath him. He clutched at the young page, but it was too late. Both he and Arric toppled headlong down the stairs. Something cold and hard struck Jaufre's forehead, and then all was blackness.

Chapter 11

The lady Enid thrust her needle into the linen held taut by the tambour and wondered what sort of punishment would be dealt a woman if she shoved her mother out the tower window. Would she be hanged? Drawn and quartered? Burned at the stake? It might be worth the risk. Dame Alice was so reed-thin, Enid wagered that she would fit, even stuffed through the arrow slits of the ladies' bower.

She tucked back a stray tendril that had escaped from the golden braids twisted around her head and glanced across at the older woman, whose jaws worked as swiftly as her fingers winding flax onto the distaff. Time had left some traces of once acclaimed beauty in Dame Alice's angular face, but her voice had never been melodious. Most of Enid's ladies-in-waiting had found some excuse to absent themselves from hearing range of her mother's sharp tongue.

Would that Enid had been as fortunate. The nasal tones droned in her ear with the same monotonous regularity of the katydids in the trees by Kingsbury Castle's moat.

"Never was any woman so plagued by her children. Now here's Beatrice with child and wed to a landless knight as poor as a mendicant friar. Though I suppose I must thank God anyone would have her after the disgraceful way she ran off from Lord Jaufre. And you!" Dame Alice directed a reproachful glance at Enid. "Your husband not cold in his grave and you marry that—that steward."

"Since my lord Harcourt has been buried a year and more, I trust he is very cold by now," Enid said. "God knows he was frigid enough whilst he lived. And that steward has a name, Mother. Tis Robert." She curved her mouth in a slow, sensuous smile, mostly because she derived great pleasure from thinking of her sweet, handsome Rob, but partly because she knew the expression would irritate her mother.

Dame Alice's bloodless lips compressed in a look of disgust. "And then there is Melyssan. Who would ever have thought she would be clever enough to win Lord Jaufre for a husband?" The stiff white wimple that framed Dame Alice's face shook as she tossed her head to express her amazement. "And what a waste. A waste to have such a daughter for a countess, one who can never take her place at court. For even though the earl was taken in enough to marry her, you can be sure once he had his first good look at that foot, he must have shut her away somewhere.

" 'Tis the only way I can account for the fact she has never once sent any messengers to me with tidings. Why, with the retainers the earl keeps, she might even have dispatched an entourage to escort me to Winterbourne for a visit. Yet it appears never to have occurred to her."

"Well, I always thought Melyssan a very clever girl," Enid murmured. When her mother's lips quivered with anger, she added hastily, "Had Whitney naught to say of my sister when he returned home?"

"Him! He has been so closemouthed one might mistake him for a lack-wit. And Father Andrew is just as bad. When I made a few pleasant inquiries after my own daughter, he behaved as if I sought to pry into the secrets of the confessional. There is something gravely amiss at Winterbourne, you mind my words." The dame's hawk-like eyes glinted with satisfaction. "And whatever the trouble is, you may be sure Melyssan is at the root of it. From the moment of that girl's birth, she has brought nothing but misery. I always said…"

Enid closed her eyes, wishing she could as easily stop up her ears as her mother launched off into another diatribe. The castle was so overrun with guests come to attend the tournament to be held at Kingsbury Plain that this was the first moment Enid had been able to sit down in two days. All the same, she hailed with relief the interruption of the red-haired lady who burst unceremoniously into the chamber.

"Beg pardon, Lady Enid." Dena dropped a quick curtsy and then bent over and whispered in Enid's ear, "There is a passing strange woman in the garden asking for you. A lame beggar woman."

"Why, then tell Cook to give the poor creature some food," Enid replied in low tones.

"Nay, my lady. The woman is amazingly persistent and has such an air about her that… Well, she bade me say that Lyssa begs to be remembered to you."

Lyssa! Enid jabbed the needle into her finger, spattering a few droplets of blood onto the white linen.

"You know who I believe she is?" Dena continued excitedly. "I think 'tis your sis—"

Enid clapped her hand over the girl's mouth while Dame Alice glared at her with suspicion.

"What is that rude wench saying to make you look as if a spirit had crept out of the walls? Pretty behavior you teach your maids, upon my word! Rushing about so boisterously, whispering secrets and suchlike." She stretched out one long, bony arm and poked Dena in the ribs. "If you have aught to say, girl, then out with it."

As Dena pouted and rubbed her side, Enid leapt to her feet, her tambour flying unheeded to the floor. "Ah—'tis only a petty domestic matter, Mother, nothing you should fret yourself about."

Dame Alice started to protest, but for once Enid was able to cut her short. "Nay, pray remain seated, my lady. I will return anon." Lifting the train of her gown, she fled the room with Dena hard after her.

Silencing Dena's stream of breathless questions, Enid raced down the curving stone stair that led to the castle courtyard. In the herb garden near the great stone baking kilns, she caught sight of a small figure whose features were muffled in the folds of a ragged cloak. Drawn by the aroma of fresh wheat bread emanating from the large ovens, many beggars found their way to the castle from the nearby town of Kingsbury Plain. And ever since Lord Harcourt had died, none had been turned aside without something to warm their bellies.

But as to Dena's foolish assertion that this particular pauper could be Enid's youngest sister… Enid halted a few feet away as the figure turned and pulled back her hood. A pale face peered out at her, dark circles rimming sea-shaded eyes. Dear God, 'twas Lyssa.

Melyssan attempted a feeble smile. "Forgive me, Enid," she whispered. "I knew nowhere else to go." Then she collapsed into Enid's outstretched arms.

Swallowed up in the folds of her tall sister's robe, Melyssan leaned against the pillows of Enid's bed. To please Enid, she picked at the contents of the wooden bowl in her lap. The blancmange of chicken and rice boiled in almond milk did little to tempt her appetite. All she desired was to sleep, to sleep and forget…

Enid bustled about the chamber, taking the ointment and towels from the red-haired maid and dismissing the girl. She settled on the edge of the bed near Melyssan's feet.

"I should have cautioned Dena to keep your arrival a secret." Enid frowned. "If our stream ran as fast as that girl's tongue, we would be able to grind enough wheat to feed all of England. Perhaps I shall speak to her as soon as I have attended to your poor feet."

Gently Enid raised the foot that bore most of Melyssan's weight. It was swollen so badly she had to cut away the soft leather pattern whose sole had worn through many miles ago. Both feet were torn and bleeding, and Melyssan winced as her sister began to dab at them with a damp cloth.

"Sweet Jesu, child! How long have you been on the road?"

"I don't know. A fortnight, perhaps as long as a month," Melyssan murmured. "I rode with a merchant and his wife as far as Canterbury."

"At least they must have fed you well, little sister. You were always so thin, but you have rounded out since I saw you last, become quite the woman."

Enid's eyes seemed to linger on Melyssan's midsection, causing her to cross her arms defensively over her stomach. She was fully conscious herself of the changes in her body, the slight swell of her breasts and abdomen. But she could admit her secret dread to no one as yet, not even Enid.

Hastily, she changed the subject and began to speak of her journey. It was so much easier to speak of that than of Jaufre, whose face she tried to block from her mind a hundred times each day. She described how she had hidden in the merchant's wagon and had not been discovered until the caravan was many miles from Winterbourne. The merchant's wife had been so kind, believing Melyssan's tale of wanting to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in hopes of attaining a miracle cure for her foot. The good woman even insisted that her husband go miles out of his way to take her to Canterbury.

"When I slipped away from her at the cathedral," Melyssan said, "I left her the gold-braided chain you gave me the Christmas before you left home. I am sorry, Enid. Besides a few coins in my purse, 'twas all I had of value to repay her for her kindness."

"Never mind, sweeting. I have a dozen gold chains to give you." Enid tucked the fur coverlet more snugly around Melyssan's legs. "And then you walked all the way here from Canterbury!"

" 'Twas not so bad," Melyssan whispered. "I was not alone always. I traveled with some strolling tumblers. People were very kind—most of them."

She refrained from troubling Enid with an account of all she had suffered, the bone-shaking weariness, the strange waves of nausea she experienced upon waking every morning, to be followed later by some of the sharpest hunger pangs she had ever known. The feelings of loneliness and desolation. Once, when she had passed by a pond, she had stopped for long moments staring at the dark water. Jaufre's words had echoed in her mind.
Better dead than crippled
. She could not swim. It would have been so easy to consign herself to the peaceful depths of the dark water. Then she had crossed herself and begged God's forgiveness for such wicked thoughts. Doubly wicked, if her growing fears proved true—that more than her own life might be at stake.

There had been those few moments of pure terror as well, a stray dog tearing her cloak, the time she had begged for food at an inn and been forced to watch while the king's soldiers tortured a Jew. They had knocked out his teeth one by one until he revealed where he had hidden his purse.

'Twas rumored the king would do anything these days to acquire more wealth. 'Twas rumored the king was going mad.

Melyssan shivered.

"Are you cold, sweetheart?" Enid asked. "I will have more logs put on the fire."

"You are very good," Melyssan said, putting aside the half-eaten bowl of food.

"Dear Lyssa! Who could be otherwise to you?" Enid flashed her sister a brief smile. "But you make my blood run cold, sweetheart, thinking of all that might have happened to you, wandering about the countryside this way, sleeping out in the open."

"I found shelter most nights." Melyssan managed a weak chuckle. "You've no idea how warm a few pigs braced up against you can feel."

"Faith, I'd rather have a husband to warm my backside."

A husband. Melyssan dropped her eyes to the coverlet and felt the color flooding into her cheeks. Enid moved closer and gently chafed one of Melyssan's cold hands between hers.

"Lyssa, it pains me to distress you so. But—but the time has come for you to tell me something. 'Tis obvious you have run off from your husband." Enid's pretty face hardened. "It does not surprise me. I have worried about you ever since I first heard that you wed the earl."

She drew in a deep breath before continuing. "I want to help you, truly I do. But 'twill not be easy for you to escape your husband, no matter how cruelly the knave treats you. The law will be against you."

"Do not speak of Jaufre that way!" Melyssan raised her chin, defying her sister's scorn, yet dreading it. "He is not my husband, Enid. But I have lain with him, shamelessly seduced him. What think you of that?" She gave a half-hysterical laugh. "And I would do it again, because… because I love him. I love him so much I think I am like to die of it." Her voice trailed away as hot tears trickled down her cheeks, the tears she had refused to shed ever since the day she had fled from Jaufre.

Enid's shocked expression faded as she drew Melyssan's head against her shoulder, stroking her hair. "There, there, my little Lyssa. Hush, babe. Don't cry. 'Tis ail right. Enid is here now. Enid will take care of you."

Melyssan clung tightly to her sister, attempting to draw comfort from the words she had heard so many times in her childhood. If only Enid could make all better, as she had done so many times in the past, but what was hurting her now was well beyond her sister's capacity to heal.