A Lady Under Siege (4 page)

The wedding itself was another extravagance, and Gerald had gone into debt to pay for it, borrowing heavily from the Earl of Apthwaite to throw a party for the hundreds of guests invited from far and wide. It was a three-day festival of wine, music, and every kind of cooked meat, wild and tame. Sylvanne had been overwhelmed, and although everyone was gracious to her, and praised her beauty and deportment to the heavens, still she wondered what they really thought of this simple country girl marrying into an old and noble family, especially after overhearing a notoriously opinionated Baroness describe Gerald as “a young fool without proper counsel.” The grand old woman had been pontificating to a gaggle of other ladies in the coolness of the garden between dances, not realising Sylvanne had slipped out for a breath of air herself, and was listening from the shadows. “The aim of any marriage should be to solidify alliances with families of equal or greater power,” the esteemed Lady had asserted. “Poor Gerald has let love’s poison-tipped arrow lower his good name and water down his bloodline, mating with a mere milkmaid, however prettily clothed for the occasion.” A murmur of agreement had arisen from the ladies, and not a single voice had risen in her defence.

The dutiful daughter had agreed to marry Gerald under intense pressure from her father, and after marriage she transposed that sense of obligation to her husband. She became the dutiful wife. Did she love him? She told herself she would, with time. There were reasons to love him, for he was tender with her, and kind-hearted, though he had an impetuous streak and was terribly unwise with money. She scolded him for it, but he laughed it off as none of her concern. As a year of marriage turned to two, then three and four, and they remained childless, cracks began to show in his kindness toward her, for he expected from her the son that was essential to keeping his bloodline intact. Sylvanne’s mother, with her expertise as a midwife, gave her all manner of herbal concoctions to help her conceive, but to no avail. In all corners of Christendom a barren womb could only be spoken of in public as a woman’s shame, but in private, in a rueful whisper so soft God might overlook it, her mother put the blame on a caprice in Gerald’s bloodline. Such a failing called for discreet cures, and the remedies she concocted to make the husband more virile had to be slipped by Sylvanne into his food and drink surreptitiously. Each remedy in turn raised her hopes and expectations, only to disappoint. She remained childless.

Her marriage, forged in great expectations for happiness, had slowly begun to metamorphose into one wherein happiness grew ever more elusive, as the essential contract at its heart was neither fulfilled nor satisfied. She lived in a kind of stasis, awaiting resolution. Then one day, out of the blue, came a messenger, an envoy from Thomas of Gastoncoe, a powerful Lord with abundant lands two days ride to the east. Lord Thomas wished a private meeting with her, an unheard of thing for any man to ask of a properly married woman. The request had aroused in Gerald a horrible suspicion, and for the first time he had struck her in anger. Lord Thomas was denied, yet persisted in his demands for a meeting, and Gerald in his jealousy could not be placated. She took this as a sign that he truly loved her, and loved him a little more in return. She worked hard to regain his trust, for she had done nothing wrong, and fully supported her husband when he rudely dismissed each new entreaty from Lord Thomas.

The strange desire of this Thomas to meet with another man’s wife then took on the appearance of single-minded insanity—he raised among his subjects a sizable company of soldiers, and sent them to lay siege to Gerald and Sylvanne in their little castle, with its granary still not properly replenished since the wedding, its larder nearly bare. Thomas’s soldiers encamped outside the gates, and poor Gerald, “the young fool with no proper counsel,” had no powerful ally to call upon. He and Sylvanne and their loyal retinue became prisoners of the worst sort, prisoners without provisions. Rationing was required almost immediately, food was scarce and poor. A few weeks later Sylvanne missed her monthly cycle, and she had rejoiced at first, and rushed to tell her husband, who was greatly pleased that she had finally conceived him a child. Shortly thereafter she came to realise that every female besieged alongside her was suffering a similar symptom, for severe hunger makes a woman cease to menstruate. When she told Gerald, it was the most painful admission of her life, and it seemed to break something inside him. An unnamed illness began to sap his will to live, his resolve to endure and prevail over his besiegers. From that day forward she never heard him express confidence, or optimism, never saw him smile, or even look a little healthy, for his every word and gesture spoke of fatigue and resignation. Then his very body began to waste away, much more obviously than the rest of them, who also suffered hunger and deprivation. And now he lay upon the bed, unspeaking, looking as much like a corpse as a living being. “Live for me,” she whispered to him. “Please live for me.” She told herself now that she loved him, but more than that she could not imagine life without his protection. And she could not imagine what strange obsession could have compelled Lord Thomas to perpetrate this siege that was killing her husband.

Y
OUNG
E
THELWYNNE POURED A
pitcher of lukewarm water over Sylvanne’s shoulders. She shivered as the water ran down her naked body. Mabel, sleeves rolled up, scrubbed her skin so harshly it hurt.

“You murder me,” Sylvanne muttered.

“I’m sorry Madame, I’ve never seen dirt so well-entrenched.”

“Concentrate on the parts of me that will show when I’m clothed,” Sylvanne said. “All that matters is my hands, forearms, my face and neck, and as much of my bosom as the dress displays.”

“You’ve lost weight, ma’am,” Mabel remarked. “The display won’t be so ample as it once was. Luckily, I’m an expert in the artifice such an occasion calls for.”

“Just get me clean, Mabel. Stop scraping at my thigh with that course soap, and attend to the principle places.”

There was a loud knocking upon the door. Ethelwynne went to investigate and came back wide eyed.

“Ma’am?”

“What is it?”

“He moves.”

There was no time to get properly dressed. She ordered Mabel to wrap her body in one of the white linens used for drying, then to drape her in two finer sheets from the bed, one over each shoulder like sashes. To hold it all together they took the first belt that came to hand, meant for a lavender dress, and tied it snug under her breasts. Thus arrayed she hurried toward her husband’s room, little caring that one of the sheets had slipped from her shoulder, and that her long hair hung loose instead of coiled and hidden beneath the barbette expected of a married woman. At the doorway it seemed that virtually the entire remaining populace of the castle had assembled. They parted like cattle, deferentially, but without hurry.

The room smelled of meat cooked on the flame. The ratcatcher was busy by the fireplace. At the bedside, the priest rose to give her his place. Sylvanne knelt, grasped her husband’s hand, and held it to her breast. His eyes were open. He studied her with an immense weariness. He was trying to speak, she could tell, but no words came.

“Has he said anything to anyone?” she asked.

“No,” said the priest. “Yet his eyes move about. He sees.”

Sylvanne leaned close and kissed him on the mouth. He seemed to draw strength from it, and ever so weakly, he whispered her name.

“I hear, my love. Speak to me.”

He looked up at the ceiling as though it were the sky.

“So he’ll have you after all,” he said finally.

“I’ll die first.”

His eyes met hers.

“It is I who am dying,” he whispered.

“They’re cooking you a rat—a mouse.”

He laughed a feeble, soft cough. A faint twinkle shone in his eye.

“Likely it’s as skeletal as I,” he mused.

“I should have told you it’s rabbit,” Sylvanne attempted in a light, jaunty tone. “Apparently that’s been the protocol around here for some time.” But she was fighting tears.

“I’ve no appetite,” Gerald murmured.

“Taste it first.”

He shook his head. His body shuddered, and when he spoke again it was with great effort.

“Do you know your Bible?”

Sylvanne began to cry. She wiped her tears on the white linen and pretended a laugh.

“You know I never troubled with it. Many’s the time you scolded me for that.”

“Ask the priest how Judith slew Holofernes.”

“You tell me,” she said.

His eyes grew wide for a moment, as if he’d seen something beyond this earth. A faint wheeze, the soft rattle of death, issued from his mouth.

“Tell me,” Sylvanne pleaded. “Tell me. Tell me!”

She took his hand, pulled it to her breast, and began to weep. The crowd in the doorway pushed closer for a better look. Mabel lifted a corner of linen and wiped her Mistress’s eyes, then her own. The ratcatcher, oblivious to all but the fireplace and the skinned carcass cooking there, now turned and announced excitedly, “It’s ready, Madame, it’s ready!”

5

M
eghan awoke and felt her face wet with tears. She stumbled downstairs to the kitchen in a trance, opened the refrigerator and squatted there, grabbing anything that came to hand—pita bread, grapes, a block of cheddar— stuffing bits from all of them into her mouth. Ravenous, she yanked the lid from a half litre of yogurt and tipped it up to her lips to suck at its runny thickness. Yogurt dribbled down her chin.

“What are you doing?”

Her daughter Betsy, in pyjamas, stood barefoot on the cold kitchen floor, taking in the sight of her mother tearing at food like a stray dog. Meghan instantly became self-conscious, thinking how strange she must look at this moment. She wiped her face and mouth with her sleeve, and put the yogurt back in the fridge without its lid.

“I—I woke up starving,” she said.

Betsy picked the yogurt lid off the floor and set it on the counter. “Dreaming your dream again?”

Meghan nodded.

“What happened this time?”

Meghan tried to say it calmly: “Her husband died.” She felt weak. She closed the fridge door and slumped with her back against the cabinets below the counter. “He died. Oh God. He died,” she whimpered. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried—and failed—to hide them from her daughter.

“You’re scaring me,” Betsy said.

“Don’t be scared. It’s just a silly dream,” she lied. It was more vivid and intensely felt than any dream she’d ever known, and the strange, painful emotions of grief and loss that gripped her now were a token of its power. But for her daughter’s sake, she attempted a light tone. “As if I don’t have enough going on in my life, I’ve got to cry over someone else’s.”

Betsy got herself a bowl and some cereal from the cupboard. “If the husband is dead, then the siege should be finished, right? And that’s good, right?”

Drying her face with the back of her hand, Meghan said, “It would be good if I stopped dreaming.”

Betsy stepped over her to get to the fridge. “I need milk.” Pushing at Meghan’s leg with her foot to make room for herself, she looked down at her mother, all puffy-eyed and distracted.

“Are you going crazy?” she asked.

“What? No—why? Don’t think that.”

“Daddy said he left because you were driving him crazy. But maybe it was ’cause I drove him crazy. And now I’m driving you crazy.”

“No, no, no,” Meghan protested. She pulled herself together, stood up, rinsed yogurt and tears from her hands at the sink, then came to Betsy. She straightened a loose strand of her daughter’s hair.

“Your father is full of it, which is one of many reasons he doesn’t live with us anymore. I’ll have to talk to him about how he’s explaining things to you. And you’d better eat up quick or it’ll end up being the usual sprint to school.”

“Pro D day,” she said.

“Shit.”

“I told you.”

“I forgot. I’ll have to juggle.” She thought for a moment. “I can get away with working here most of the day,” she said. These days she actually preferred it. Working from home gave her a break from the toxicity of office gossip. She was an illustrator and graphic designer with a well-known book imprint, part of a publishing conglomerate that was by all accounts teetering on the verge of financial ruin. “I’ve got one meeting this morning first thing I can’t cancel,” she remembered. “Hopefully I’ll be gone a couple of hours, max. That’s the one positive thing I can say about this house—I’m so much closer to work here. But we’ll still have to get someone to come be with you. Your dad, maybe.”

Betsy made a face. “No fun.”

“How about a play date at Brittany’s?”

“Her mom is psycho.”

“Good. You can help her cope.”

“I’d rather stay here—I’ll keep the doors locked and won’t answer any phone numbers I don’t know.”

Meghan hesitated. “You’re giving me one more thing to stress about.”

“I can handle it.”

“I don’t know if I can. You’re ten. Have you ever been alone in your life?”

“No. But I feel like I’m alone, lots of times.”