Almost Innocent (16 page)

Since the day of the tournament, however, he was generally at some pains to keep a distance between them. Had he been able to behave with her in the old ways, the easy avuncular attitude he had found so natural with the child, it would have been simple enough. But he could not. Magdalen de Bresse was no child, and he was all too vibrantly aware of her womanhood and the disconcerting clarity of her gray-eyed gaze, so often turned upon him with an undaunted purpose.

This early morning, the crispness of the sea air, such a welcome change from the humid airlessness of summer in London, seemed to blow aside the cobwebs of confusion, to sweep through the chambers of his mind where lurked desires that he dared not acknowledge. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she turned her face up to smile at him.

“Is it not wonderful, my lord? To be able to breathe again!”

It was so exactly his own sentiment that he laughed in agreement. “See, there is the Isle of Wight.” He pointed to the long shape, its outline blurred by a sea fret, crouching against the horizon. “We will pass the Needle Rocks by this afternoon. There has been many a wreck upon them.”

“But we need have no such fear,” Magdalen said, unable to disguise the anxiety in her voice. Much as she was enjoying the fresh air and the unusual motion, she held the firm belief that God had not intended people to travel upon the water. “The weather is set fair, is it not?”

Guy looked up at the sky, where a haze smudged the sun so that it showed as a diffused light against the thin
cloud. “Perfectly fair,” he assured her. “But in any case, we will be well past the Needle Rocks before dusk, and there is little to fear on the open water.”

Magdalen accepted this news trustfully and drew him to a sheltered spot on the deck in the lee of the cabin housing, where cushions had been set beneath a striped canopy for the passengers to enjoy the sea air, and a minstrel was strumming his lute in plaintive melody.

There was little to do but enjoy the warmth, the gentle motion, and the enforced idleness. Dinner at mid-morning was a lavish meal with venison pasties, preserved goose, fresh white bread, and a compote of mushrooms, new picked that morning in the fields outside Portsmouth. They should not be at sea for more than three days, so should suffer no more hardship than the staling of the white bread, Magdalen reflected contentedly, sipping hypocras from the pewter tankard, closing her eyes to the sun so that its warmth fingered her lids and created a soft rosy glow beneath. The lute player continued his soft plucking, and she drifted pleasantly into sleep.

When she awoke, there was a chill to the breeze, and Lord de Gervais was no longer beside her. Shivering, she sat up. “Erin, fetch me my mantle; ’tis cold of a sudden.”

Erin went to the cramped cabin where Magdalen and her two women were accommodated. Iron-bound chests containing the clothes, china, glass, and domestic linens that were part of Magdalen’s dowry were stacked against the sides. There were two straw pallets on the floor for the maids, another for Magdalen set on a wooden shelf carved into the bulkhead beneath the tiny porthole.

She found the fur-lined mantle and brought it on deck. Lord de Gervais had reappeared and was standing at the deck rail, a frown between his brows as he felt the more accentuated lift and drop of the hull across
foam-tipped waves. The sky had taken on a salmon tinge.

“Something feels awry.” Magdalen stepped up beside him, huddling into her cloak. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said with an easiness he did not feel. “See, we are passing the Needle Rocks.”

Magdalen looked to her left, seeing the wickedly jagged points rising from a surging sea at the furthest edge of the Isle of Wight. She shivered slightly and without thought sliped her hand into the pocket of her mantle, her fingers closing over the beads of her rosary, her lips moving in silent prayer. There was a boiling to the sea at the base of the rocks that made her think of hell and the damnation that awaited the unshriven.

They passed the rocks and the natural shelter provided by the island. The open sea had a different quality. It was gray, not blue-green, and the swell was more pronounced. Magdalen thought of venison pasty and wished she had not.

“I think perhaps I will go to my cabin.”

Guy merely nodded as if he barely heard her, and indeed he was hardly aware of her departure. Something did feel awry. He went to the forecastle, where the master and the helmsman stood, eyes fixed upon the great square sail that tugged with the wind, stretched taut as a drumskin. The helmsman’s hands on the wheel were white-knuckled with effort as he fought an increasing power.

“What is it?” Guy asked.

The master shook his head. “A squall’s coming, my lord. ’Tis the only explanation. I’ve known it like this before, and it’s always the worst when it creeps up on you. There was no sign of this one an hour ago, and still it’s little more than a stirring in the air.”

“Why do we not turn back?” Guy could feel the sailor’s apprehension and looked over his shoulder to the still reassuringly close bulk of the Isle of Wight.

“Tide and wind’s against us, my lord. We’d never
round the Needle Rocks. We’ve no choice but to sail as far into open water as we can, then reef and sit it out, hoping we’ll not be blown onto rocks.” The master turned abruptly and bellowed over his shoulder to batten down the hatches. “You’d best get below, my lord.”

Guy stood for a while longer at the rail, watching as their sister ships went through the same maneuvers as
Elizabeth.
The wind was increasing and there was a wet, bitter edge to it. The waves slapped against the hull now, the spray no longer a gentle refreshing mist but an icy sheet. The sky had darkened to an almost night-dark, although it was but five in the afternoon.

“My lord, you’d best get below!” The master’s shout was lost in a sudden scream of wind. The sea ahead boiled, rose in a swirling cone, and hurtled toward the tossing craft that seemed to Guy to be now made of matchwood. A gray-green trough opened up before the hull, and
Elizabeth
dived nose first into the flat wall of water.

Water slammed on the deck with a solid, bruising impact that knocked Guy from his feet. He grabbed the deck rail and hung on with every last ounce of strength until the ship lifted her nose out of the trough and the sea ran from her decks. But the next wall of water was racing toward them, and he hurled himself at the companionway hatch, recognizing that he could be of no use on deck and was in imminent danger of being swept away. Through the raging of the wind and the roaring of the water, he could hear the horses on the ships nearby, their hooves thudding against the wooden partitions of their stalls, their shrill neighing snatched away by the tempest.

Below, there was a merciful cessation of the battering tumult of wind and sea. But there was utter darkness, no possibility of candlelight in the ship’s bucking, twisting, heaving fight with the ocean. He could hear cries from all around, cries for mercy as sailors and passengers called upon the saints and prayed for deliverance.
He stumbled into his own cabin and flung himself onto his pallet, aware that only by lying prone would he escape injury. Miraculously, he was not sick, although he could hear, through the thin bulkheads, the acute wretchedness of his fellow travelers. The dreadful moans of his squire and page, stretched retching upon the floor of the cabin, filled his ears like souls in torment. After an hour, when there was no surcease and the cries around had become weaker with exhaustion and more despairing, he crawled off his pallet, stepped over his still vomiting attendants, and made his unsteady way to Magdalen’s cabin.

His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness by now, and he was aware of the bodies twisted upon the floor, their cries for mercy and deliverance mere broken groans. Magdalen was lying upon her pallet, and she made no sound.

He stumbled over to her, fear a vise around his gut. The vessel heaved and he fell to his knees, grasping the edge of the shelf on which Magdalen lay. He saw then that she was clutching a chamber pot as if it were a lifeline, but her eyes were flat and open.

He touched her face. Her skin was clammy, but she responded to his touch. “I am bleeding,” she said in barely a whisper, then with a wrenching moan rolled over the pot in her arms, the slight body convulsing as she retched with no possibility of relief.

For a moment, he did not understand what she had said, then he saw the darkness puddled beneath her before she fell back on the pallet again. The image of Gwendoline rose in dread memory. He turned desperately toward the two women on the floor, but one look was enough to convince him of the hopelessness of expecting help from that direction. They were both prostrate, beyond helping themselves, let alone their lady.

“I am bleeding,” Magdalen said again. “It will not stop.”

He staggered across to the stack of chests, opening
them feverishly, searching for something that would soak up the flow. He found the sheets and towels in the third chest and came back to the pallet. He lifted her gently, feeling the wet stickiness against his hand as he pushed her skirts aside and spread a double sheet beneath her. He wrapped a towel around her body, drawing it up tightly between her legs in the desperate hope that it would staunch the bleeding.

“Is it the child?” she whispered, accepting his attentions with the helplessness of a newborn infant.

“I believe so,” he said softly. “Try to lie as still as you can.” He lifted her head, holding the pot for her when she moaned again in desperation, but she had nothing left inside her and fell back in the torment of unrelief, while the violent pitching and rolling continued unabated.

Her stomach cramped violently, and sweat stood out on her forehead. “I am going to die.”

“You are not going to die!” He spoke fiercely out of his own fear. “I am going to fetch you something that may ease you.”

“Do not leave me!” Her hand sought his, terror in her voice at the thought of being left alone again in the dreadful darkness, with the flooding blood, the cramping of her stomach that was inextricably bound with the dreadful retching, yet had a different cause. “Do not leave me,” she entreated again.

“Only for a minute,” he promised, and resolutely put her hand on the cover and struggled to his feet.

He was gone no more than five minutes, but when he returned she was weeping soundlessly with pain and terror at her body’s betrayal.

“Drink some of this.” He unscrewed the top of a leather flask and put it to her lips. She turned her head from the powerful, stinging aroma, but he was insistent and finally she opened her mouth. The fiery liquid burned her throat and settled in her stomach, making a hole of fire, it seemed.

“More,” he said. She swallowed again, and imperceptibly some ease came to her tortured body. The cramping became less painful the more she swallowed, and a great lassitude swamped her. Even the violent pitching of the ship ceased to matter as her body gave up the struggle.

Throughout the night, he remained beside her, changing the soiled sheets and towels repeatedly, dosing her with the aqua vite whenever her body seemed to be about to wake up to pain and nausea again. He had no idea whether the powerful spirit would have a deleterious effect in the long run, but beside the need to ease her present torment, such considerations were irrelevant. She slept fitfully, and he agonized over the bleeding that seemed not to abate throughout the long hours of darkness.

At dawn, the storm finally blew itself out. The ship, heavily reefed, came head to wind, and they could all draw breath after the night’s beating. Ruthlessly, he roused Erin and Margery from their own exhausted unconsciousness. They staggered up on their pallets, whey-faced, and looked in horror at their lady, who seemed barely conscious, the blood-soaked linen piled around her.

“Water, my lord,” Erin managed to croak. “We shall need hot water.”

“You shall have it.” He left the cabin and went on deck, gulping the clear, cold air with relief after the fetid stench below. The master was distracted, assessing the night’s damage, which seemed amazingly to be confined to two broken spars. He had little time for his passengers’ woes, but agreed to the lighting of a brazier in the cook’s cubby beneath the forecastle. Guy instructed his deathly pale page to see to the heating and supplying of water to Lady Magdalen’s women. Then he went to a sheltered corner of the deck and breathed deeply, trying to still his panic.

An hour later, he was aware of a soft voice at his
shoulder. He turned to see Erin, still white and trembly from her own ordeal. “Well?” The one word came out more harshly than he had intended, but he was afraid.

“My lady has lost the child, my lord,” Erin said.

“I assumed as much. But how is the Lady Magdalen?”

“The bleeding has slowed, my lord, and I believe she will recover. But she is much weakened.”

Relief cast a golden glow over the gray morning, tipped with rose the greasy, lethargic swell of the sea. The loss of the child was a grave setback for Lancaster’s plans, but at that moment Guy de Gervais gave not a damn for those plans.

“I will come below and see how she is.”

In the cabin, he found Magdalen in a linen shift, lying on clean sheets, her face and lips still colorless but her breathing even. She opened her eyes as he stood above her, his body casting a shadow from the faint light at the porthole.

“My lord?”

“Aye.” He took her hand. “You will be well soon enough, pippin. It is no great matter.”

Her fingers tightened feebly around his. Throughout the dreadful reaches of the night, an intimacy had been forged between them that changed their relationship in ways she did not yet understand. “But I think my lord duke will consider it to be a great matter,” she whispered through her aching throat, scraped raw with the violence of her sickness. “The child was to have made firm the Plantagenet claim to the de Bresse lands.”

“You will make firm that claim,” he said. “You are the rightful heir to your husband’s lands, and you are a Plantagenet.”

“Yes, I suppose that is so.” Her eyes closed. She had not had long enough to become accustomed to the idea of the coming child to feel more than minor disappointment at its loss. Such losses, after all, were a commonplace occurrence. “I seem to be very sleepy, my lord.”