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“Le Gros, I think it’s time you left the hall—alone.”
None of them had noticed the other man’s approach, but now Haesel looked up to see Lord Alain’s squire, Verel, standing behind Hugh.
“What do I care what ye think, ye young pup? Go dry yerself off behind the ears,” Le Gros said with a rude guffaw, but his eyes narrowed dangerously and his hand balled up in a fist.
“Come now, Le Gros, you don’t want to get yourself banned from the hall by swinging at me, do you?” Verel asked reasonably. “Just take yourself off, and bother this woman no more. I’m sure there’s at least one other female within these walls that likes your sort of man.”
Le Gros continued to glare at the young squire for an endless moment, but when the seneschal drew nearer, Le Gros looked away and lurched unsteadily to his feet.
“Meddling young pup!” grumbled Hugh, the wine he’d consumed nearly causing him to fall against Claire as he got up from the bench. “Ye’re makin’ a pother about naught.”
“Ye’ll think it’s naught if my lord turns ye out of the castle for your roistering ways!” Annis hurled the words at him. “I know very well ye’ve been warned about yer manners at table—aye, and yer lechery too—before. Now ye’ll just leave Haesel alone, Hugh le Gros, or ye’ll answer to me as well as Verel. Do ye hear me, ye fat Norman popinjay?”
His mumbled answer, as he staggered off, was a series of Norman-French obscenities that Claire remembered just in time she wasn’t supposed to understand.
“He’ll leave ye alone now, I trow. I fancy he be afraid o’ me,” Annis boasted with a smirk.
Claire saw the squire’s mouth turn up in amusement.
“Thank ye,” Claire said, “thank ye both. I—I’m grateful.”
“You’re very welcome,” Verel said, bowing, then smiling at her. “Actually you’ve done me a service. ’Tis not good for a squire to go a day without a chivalrous deed.”
“And this was yer chivalrous deed?” Claire asked, smiling back. She liked the young squire. He was as sunny and amiable as Lord Alain was suspicious.
Just then she saw the children jump down from the dais and run to her, sweet wafers in hand.
“We’ve done eating, Haesel, have you?” Peronelle asked. “It’s not quite dark yet—please, let’s go into the bailey garden and play hoodman blind for a little while!” she begged. Guerin seconded his sister’s pleas. Nothing in their eager faces gave any indication they had even been aware of the moments of tension that had just passed.
“Will yer lord father mind?”
“Oh, no, Haesel!” Guerin said. “Ivy always lets us—let us—” he corrected himself soberly, “play outside after supper in summer if the weather was fine.”
Lord Alain strode out of the northwest bartizan, one of two turrets that projected out over the inner curtain wall on either side of the main gatehouse, and onto the catwalk, leaving behind a sullen Hugh le Gros. He narrowed his eyes against the setting sun as he leaned on a merlon to gaze out at the deepening shadows spreading over the wood beyond the south wall, conscious of an irritability that would rob him of sleep if he did not rid himself of it.
He had already been angry at himself for the number of stolen glances he’d taken in the direction of the table to which Haesel had gone. By the rood, the woman was naught but a serf, and yet he could not avoid looking at her, as if he were some moon-mazed peasant! He was careful to look, of course, only when he could be sure she would not notice his eyes upon her. It would not do to give the girl jumped-up ideas about herself.
He had become furious with himself, however, for noticing that the burly Norman man-at-arms had been attempting to woo the new nursemaid throughout supper, let alone for caring enough to come to the guard tower to deliver a stern warning to Hugh that he was to leave Haesel strictly alone. Saints, what was it to him?
It was not as if he wanted the girl to warm his bed! Gylda took care of his needs very skillfully when it suited him. And since he more often went to her modest but comfortable wattle-and-daub cottage at the base of the castle’s outer curtain, rather than summoning her to his own bed, he had the added advantage of being able to leave when he wanted to. He suspected the auburn-haired Gylda was just as content with the arrangement; it left her more free to take other lovers when her lord was occupied elsewhere, a possibility that had never bothered him in the least.
Peste! He had no need to covet the girl’s body, so why was he feeling so prickly after watching Hugh flirting with, then trying to fondle Haesel?
It was useless to tell himself that he cared only that a female within his walls be safe from any male attentions she did not want, or that his children be cared for by a woman who was not being distracted by a lecher’s flattery, for even he had recognized the spark of rage that had threatened to grow to a flame as he watched the soldier drooling on her neck. He had wanted to jump over the high table and drag Hugh out of the great hall by the collar of his jerkin, and beat him to a senseless mass of bruises in the bailey!
Just then he heard the sound of children’s laughter in the bailey behind him, and, turning away from the orange ball of the sun sinking below the tree line, he peered out into the open area that surrounded the keep from behind the concealing battlement.
Below, Peronelle and Guerin were turning a blindfolded Haesel round and round. As he watched, they released her, shrieking with laughter as the English girl reeled about like a drunken alewife, her slender arms outstretched in an effort to catch them as they circled her. He could hear her calling out dire threats of what she would do if she caught them, which only made them giggle all the more.
At last, however, his daughter ventured too close to the seeking hands and she was seized by the sleeve of her kirtle and reeled in, screeching protests, into Haesel’s arms, where Peronelle was very thoroughly tickled.
He felt a grin replacing the tightness of his face. Perry certainly appeared to be enjoying herself. In a moment, before the tickles could become bothersome, they turned into a hug. Then Haesel bent and kissed his daughter’s dark head.
He felt his heart warm at the affectionate gesture, which seemed to come as naturally to Haesel as breathing. As Alain continued to watch, he became aware of Guerin standing on the periphery of the hug, looking wistful, envying his sibling the embrace but not wanting to act less than manly by asking for it. Just then it seemed as if Haesel became aware of Guerin too, for she raised her head from Peronelle’s and beckoned with her hand.
Lord Alain watched, enchanted, as both children were enveloped in the English girl’s embrace.
Chapter Five (#ulink_b492e431-9e55-594b-97c4-6842b616c811)
Unused to sleeping on a lumpy, straw-filled pallet, Claire lay awake long after the children’s soft, regular breathing told her they slept. She lay between Guerin’s bed and the truckle bed on which Peronelle slumbered.
Ah, well, a humble English nursemaid couldn’t very well expect a soft feather bed on a rope frame, fine linen and a coverlet of soft furs, could she? If she were really Haesel, bedding like this would have been her lifelong lot, not just during the short interval she would be residing in Hawkswell Castle! Since Ivy had used this pallet before she died, Claire hoped she had been a clean woman and had not left it infested with lice.
After dismissing that thought with a shudder, however, she was just about to fall asleep when all at once she remembered Ivo and Jean. She had been so immersed in settling in that she had forgotten all about the two men who had been taken prisoner! She sat bolt upright in the darkness. Had they been tortured to discover why they had been near the castle? Lord Alain had said they were to put in “that locked room below the cellar.” Were they lying right this moment in some cold, dank cell beneath the ground, their bodies broken and racked with agony? It was common to torture prisoners to extract information.
Were they thirsty and hungry? The images that filled Claire’s mind made her feel guilty for the relative comfort she enjoyed. Although the pallet she lay upon was lumpy and far from what she was used to, she was safe and warm and her belly was full. Ivo and Jean, like the rest of the rough men who had escorted her here, had treated her with little more than a grudging, sullen respect, but on the morrow she would have to find the two and see how they fared.
Then in the darkness a worse thought came to her—if they had been tortured, had they told the lord of Hawkswell about her, and her true purpose in the castle, in an effort to stop the torture? Her heart pounded at the thought, then she forced herself to be calm and reflect. Lord Alain did not seem the type of man who would allow a traitor to remain in his midst for five minutes, let alone dine in his hall, play with his children and go to bed between them. Either Ivo and Jean had not revealed her true purpose—or he had not tortured them yet. She could not imagine men such as Ivo and Jean—two sullen louts Hardouin had recruited from Normandy—being chivalrously silent about their female coconspirator in the face of deliberately inflicted pain.
It was imperative she find them on the morrow and see how they fared! Perhaps if she promised them an extra reward from Hardouin when their mission was done, they would pledge to remain silent about her.
When Claire and the children came into the hall that morning, however, she soon realized she would have to put her plan to find Ivo and Jean temporarily aside.
Many of Hawkswell Castle’s inhabitants were already eating, but as they descended the stone steps from the upper floor, Claire saw that Lord Alain was pacing behind his chair at the high table. As soon as he saw them he strode forward.
“Children, make haste to break your fast,” he said, ignoring Claire. “Ivy’s funeral is to take place as soon as the servants have cleared the hall, so we must go to the chapel to pay our respects before the funeral begins.”
The children stopped stock-still next to Claire. He gestured at the loaf and goblet between their places on the dais, a motion that looked full of impatience. “You had best begin. There is not much time.”
She felt indignant. Not, “Good morning, Guerin and Peronelle, come and break your fast next to me,” before such a serious subject was raised? The unfeeling monster! The children were not even fully awake before he spoke so carelessly! She went and found her own seat, and glared at Lord Alain as he hacked off a piece of bread from the manchet loaf before him with his dagger and began to chew. Did he not even notice that his children were making a mere pretense at breaking their fast, and that their eyes remained downcast in their white faces?
She would have to attend the funeral to lend them support, since it was clear their father would not. Was he such a clod that he did not realize that his children were grieving, that no matter how carefully she had soothed Peronelle’s horror, the little girl was still having difficulty with the idea of putting her beloved nurse’s body in the ground and covering it over with earth?
The children were still only playing with their hunks of bread when Lord Alain arose and beckoned to them. “Come. It is time.”
Guerin stood and manfully followed his father as he stalked out of the hall, but Peronelle’s eyes flew to Claire. She appeared relieved as she saw that her new nurse was getting up too, and she waited until Claire had reached her at the step to the dais. The hand she reached up to Claire was cold as ice.
“Come, poppet, it will be all right,” Claire murmured, standing still a moment while she chafed the small, cold hand. “All will be well, you’ll see.” Impulsively she picked the child up and cradled her against her chest before walking rapidly in Lord Alain’s wake. The little girl buried her face against Claire’s neck.
The sun was just beginning to illuminate the bailey as they crossed its length. It was deserted except for some sleepy-looking chickens scratching in the dirt outside the barn on the far side. They went to the southeast tower, to the right of the inner gatehouse, and climbed a flight of steps.
The chapel of Hawkswell Castle was two stories high. The apse was built into the large window recess; behind the carved wooden rood on the altar was a stained-glass window depicting a sorrowing Virgin Mary praying before her Son on the cross. At the base of the cross a lamb rested, while above the cross a silver-gray dove flew.
A shaft of sunlight sent streams of red, blue and gold color flooding over the still white face of the old nurse on her bier before the altar.
“Look at Ivy, Haesel!” piped Peronelle, whom Claire had just set on her feet at the door to the chapel. “’Tis like a rainbow! Will she look like that in heaven?” The child’s voice echoed in the dim stillness, and Claire sensed rather than saw Lord Alain’s start of surprise as he turned around and realized she had come with the children. He said nothing, just regarded her silently before turning to his daughter. Uncertain as to her welcome, Claire remained in the entranceway.
“’Tis but the morning sun coming through the window,” Lord Alain said, a trifle gruffly, Claire thought. “Come, we will say a prayer for her soul, children,” he added, gesturing to the railing in front of the altar.
“I’ll pray, but she does not need my prayers,” Guerin announced. “Ivy was so good she is already in heaven—I just know she is.”
Claire saw Lord Alain look steadily at his son for a moment. “No doubt you are right, Guerin. But perhaps you should pray that you will be as good as she was, that you may be likewise rewarded,” he said, then he knelt and bowed his head.
Claire tried to pray herself, but she found herself oddly touched by the sight of the mighty lord of Hawkswell kneeling in prayer, and entranced by a ray of sunlight that had found his dark hair and transformed it into a halo of gold. How little he deserved a halo, the hypocrite, she thought darkly, but it became him all the same.
“Father,” Guerin said when Lord Alain lifted his head at last, “did Ivy used to tuck you in bed at night and tell you stories of the saints and Jesus when He was a little boy?”
Claire was startled. She had not realized that Ivy had been the lord’s nurse as well as that of his children. She saw him blink once, twice, and then look down at his stillfolded hands before answering his son. Suddenly Claire realized that Lord Alain had suffered a loss, too, just as his children had. Had his own grief been the reason for his curtness in the hall?
“Yes, though ’twas more often tales of Beowulf she told me,” he said. “I fear I was a bloodthirsty little boy, full of mischief. I must have given poor Ivy much worry.” His eyes had a faraway focus. He arose and went to Ivy’s body, kissing the alabaster cheek, and after a moment’s hesitation, both children did the same.
A short time later, the sound of many footsteps coming up the stone stairs warned them that the funeral was about to begin. Lord Alain said nothing as Peronelle motioned Claire to come up front with her, and she stood there with the children and Lord Alain while Father Gregory conducted the funeral mass.
After the service a number of stout male servants came forward and placed the nurse’s body in a hastily made coffin and carried it out of the chapel. Lord Alain, his children and Claire followed, and the castle folk fell in behind them. They went back out into the bailey and out the gatehouse into the outer ward between the inner and outer curtain walls.
To get to Hawkswell’s cemetery, the procession had to pass through the cluster of a dozen or so wattle-and-daub dwellings that constituted the village of Hawkswell, clustered against the side of the south wall. As they approached them, a woman, whose thick brown hair was barely confined by a crimson riband at her nape, suddenly emerged from one of the dwellings and stood watching the line of people coming toward her. She had a bold, unblinking gaze.
Even before Sir Gautier’s hissed intake of breath, Claire knew instinctively that the woman was Gylda, Lord Alain’s mistress. She saw Lord Alain catch sight of her and give a nod of acknowledgment, and then, out of the corner of her eye, saw the woman fall in toward the rear of the procession.
Claire was annoyed to feel herself bristle at what she saw as the woman’s effrontery. It was of no interest to her if Lord Alain’s whore came to watch the old nurse being buried! Claire, you are here on a mission that will gain you your freedom—nothing else that happens here need matter.
The burial was over, and the children had behaved well, Claire thought proudly. She had worried about how it would affect Peronelle, especially, to see the clods of earth being thrown onto the coffin, but when it was time to do so, Annis came forward and handed each of the children a rose. She bent to whisper in their ears, and then Peronelle and Guerin went forward and tossed the roses into the grave. Their action helped them accept what must come next, Claire thought, for when the earth began to be shoveled in afterward, both of them tensed but did not break down.
It was over. Everyone was walking away from the naked new grave. Claire hoped she and the children could go and find something enjoyable to do, for she longed to banish the shadows of grief from their faces now that the somber ceremony was done. She did not want the children to dwell on their sadness. Later, perhaps, they could go to the flower garden she had glimpsed on the other side of the gatehouse and cut some flowers to decorate the grave, but for now she just wanted them to forget.
But it was not to be.
“There will be some time now while the kitchen folk prepare the midday meal,” Lord Alain informed her in his accented English. “The children are to have their lessons with the priest as usual.”
“But my lord—” she began. Didn’t he realize that his son and daughter needed some happy distraction now, not dull, dry lessons from Father Gregory? Was he blind that be could not see Guerin and Peronelle were bursting with pent-up grief that needed to be released in some enjoyable physical exertion?
“I think it best that they follow their usual routine,” he said, as if he read her thoughts. “You will be free until dinner.”
’Tis not a “usual” day, my lord, she longed to retort, but she dared not argue. Instead she watched as the children walked numbly away with the priest.
Well, now she had the opportunity she had been seeking.
“Be it all right if I look around the castle, my lord?” she asked, taking care to keep her eyes down and her tone subservient. “By Saint Swithin’s knucklebone, I never been in such a vast place, I haven’t. Why, the cot I come from wasn’t nothin’ but one room, and the cow and the pig shared that of a winter, they did.”
A faint look of disgust—or was it boredom?—crossed his lean, high-cheekboned face. “It’s of no concern to me what you do until dinner,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders. “Just don’t distract the men on guard duty in the gatehouses, and don’t pester Guy, the smith. He’ll be shoeing my war-horse in a little while, and it’s bound to make Guy testy.” He turned away and began to follow the others back into the inner ward.
The seneschal came up to him. “My lord, there are matters that require your attention this day,” Sir Gautier said. “The reeve would have a word with you, followed by the bailiff, and there is correspondence from the empress…”
Claire had been about to let Lord Alain get some distance from her, for she had been tacitly dismissed, when the last remark came to her ears, and she quickened her steps to stay just behind him. Correspondence from the empress? She wondered about the contents of such a missive—would it be something of interest to Hardouin? She wished she could see the letter—perhaps the information would be so valuable that Hardouin would be willing to forgo his plot to have her kidnap the children!
“As always, she demands a prompt answer, and that you burn it immediately upon reading its contents,” Sir Gautier went on. Both men seemed totally oblivious to her presence, but of course they spoke in French, and doubtless felt free to converse in front of her.
Claire was disappointed. It didn’t sound as if she would have a chance to read the missive.
“Yes, yes,” Lord Alain muttered with a trace of impatience. “What else?”
“Oh, and the kennel master begs me to inform you that your favorite alaunt bitch has delivered a new litter…”
Lord Alain gave a rueful shrug. “New puppies will have to wait, unfortunately. I’ll see the bailiff and the reeve first, and then attend me in my chambers, and we’ll see what Matilda has to say this time.”
They were in front of the outside staircase that led up to the great hall by them. Claire lingered no more. It was clear that the lord of Hawkswell would have more than enough to occupy him. He would not know that she had gone to check on his prisoners.
Claire waited until Lord Alain and the seneschal had gone into the great hall before entering the doorway right in front of her, praying the locked room would be under the main cellar, and hoping if any saw her, she would appear to be innocently exploring, just as she had asked to do.
Fortunately, when she reached the cellar, by taking the steps down instead of up to the great hall, no one else was there. As her eyes adjusted to the large, shadowy room just below the great hall, Claire made out piles of filled sacks, upright barrels and casks lying on their sides. Her nose was filled with the mingled odors of grain, apples, wine and old leather. There were cobwebs in the high, angled window that let in faint light from outside. There was no door or stairs leading to a room below this one. Was there some other room known as a cellar, perhaps in one of the other towers? But surely not—he had said the cellar.
A preternatural silence made the hair on the back of Claire’s neck stand on end. She moved tentatively across the straw-covered floor, watching where she put her feet, lest she encounter a spider, a creature she had detested ever since childhood. She peered into the dark corners, too, half-expecting a crouching soldier—or some subterranean monster—to leap out and grab her. Apparently the locked room was not in this building, she decided. She would have to look elsewhere. But as she began to retreat from the room, the dust from the straw tickled her nose, and before she could catch herself, she sneezed.
Immediately she heard a faint, muffled exclamation. Had it come from below?
Claire waited, but no further sound came. She would have to risk calling out. “Hello? Is anyone there?” she asked in English.
Then she heard it again, clearer this time, a man’s voice, shouting from below in thickly accented English. “Who’s there?”
“I—” She began, then stopped. Should she call herself Claire, or Haesel? How did she know who was calling to her?
“Who are ye?” She stood absolutely still so she could hear where the sound came from.
“Ivo of Caen! Who’re ye?” came the muffled voice. It seemed to be coming from directly beneath her.
“Ivo! Is anyone with ye?” She dared not reveal herself until she knew if there was a guard within earshot.
“Just Jean.” The voice switched to French. “Is that ye, Lady Claire?”
“Y-yes,” she said, switching to French. “Where are ye?”
“Are ye in the cellar? We’re in a cell right below ye!” came the voice. “Are ye alone? Come down here!”
“But how?” she called back. “I see no door—”
“There’s a trapdoor in the floor. Poke around until ye find it!”
“I will…” Wishing she could have brought a lantern, or even just a candle, she poked her crude leather shoe among the prickly dry straw, until at last her foot collided with something hard that protruded ever so slightly from the floor. She crouched and pushed the straw away with her hands, uncovering a metal ring about four inches in diameter.
“I’ve found it, I think,” she called. “A metal ring?”
“That’s it! Pull up on it, and come down here!” commanded Ivo.
Claire felt an instant flare of irritation at the mercenary’s peremptory tone, but she put his impatience down to the effects of confinement. At first the trapdoor didn’t budge when she pulled on it, but after she braced herself and gave it a mighty yank, it yielded with a creak.
Claire peered down into the gaping hole. She could see a stone stairway, but no Ivo or Jean waiting at its foot. There seemed to be a flickering light below, but still she hesitated. Would she be going right into the very cell in which Ivo and Jean were imprisoned? Despite the fact that they were supposedly on the same side, she didn’t trust the rough men, for she’d seen the secret, hungry looks the soldiers had leveled at her during the journey from Coverly—as if they were wolves and she were a helpless lamb traveling in the midst of the pack.
“Does this stairway lead right into your cell?” she called down.
