By Possession (30 page)

“The musicians are skilled,” Thomas commented toward the end of the meal.

“Aye, they are,” Mathilda agreed. “It is too bad there is no minstrel. I so love to hear song.”

“Then the next time I will be sure to steal the best from the king's court,” Addis said, smiling.

“Methinks one of the best is right here in this household,” a squire said absently while he poured wine. His
lord glanced sharply at the lapse of etiquette and the youth flushed.

“You've a minstrel but he does not perform?” Mathilda asked. A petulant frown showed her hurt that the man trying to impress her would not offer every pleasure at his disposal.

“I have no minstrel, I assure you.”

Thomas appeared confused and twisted to his squire. On the spot now, the youth flushed more deeply. “Not a minstrel. My apologies, my lord, but I heard the lady singing in the garden and it was very sweet and I …”

“A lady?”

“Not really a lady. The servant woman from the kitchen.”

Mathilda decided to test the sincerity of Addis's interest with this point. He well understood the little pout, the intimations of unhappiness, the signs of a girl checking just how malleable her charm could make a man. An expert had used these ploys on him many times.

It was Thomas who succumbed. He patted her arm. “If it is a singer you want I am sure that this servant will agree to it. Is that not so, Addis?”

He looked at his intended. After they married she was in for some shocking surprises regarding his susceptibility to women's wiles. “She is not a performer.”

“But we are a small group,” Mathilda cajoled, venturing a touch on his hand. “If you require it she must do it.”

Thomas smiled expectantly and Mathilda widened her eyes in a beseeching way. To them it was a small thing. Refusing the child her simple pleasure would seem surly and insulting. He got the sense that the future of Barrowburgh hinged on his giving in to the spoiled girl on this first, small request.

The resentment thundered. If Moira were agreeable to singing she would have planned to do so. It was a private
thing for her now. He hesitated long enough that Thomas's face fell. At the other end of the table Richard rose. “I assume it is the woman Moira whom you want, my lord.”

Addis glared a glance at him and Richard returned one of his own. Will you risk so much for this? the steward's eyes scolded.

Would he?

Richard did not wait for his agreement. He strode to the kitchen. Thomas reassumed his smiling demeanor. Mathilda seemed very pleased with her small victory.

Richard returned alone and Addis wondered if Moira had refused. No doubt Mathilda would expect that he go beat her.

“She wants to wash first,” Richard explained.

The conversation moved to other things and so when Moira finally entered the chamber no one noticed her at first except Addis. She had bound her hair in a thick plait that dangled along her back from beneath her veil. She wore no wimple and the light color of her headdress and linen gown contrasted with the bronze of her skin. Eyes as clear as rippling water pierced him with resentment.

“It is the Lady Mathilda's pleasure to hear you sing,” he said when she approached the table.

“I am honored, my lord.”

“She is devoted to the Virgin Mother. Do you know a song about Our Lady?”

“Of course. At least twenty. Is there a preference, or may I choose on my own?”

“As you prefer.”

She retreated to the musicians and spoke to the lute player.

“I thought she was a peasant,” Mathilda said. “She doesn't look like one. She doesn't look much like a servant either.”

“Do the women who serve you look like peasants and servants?”

“Nay, that is true. But then, they serve a lady and there is no lady here.”

Aye, there is. As noble as you will ever be.
“In her life she has been closer to ladies than your maids are to you.”

Mathilda pondered that while her mind tried to reconcile the dignity and linen gown of the kitchen maid preparing to sing. Addis turned to Thomas Wake and knew that man had drawn certain conclusions that would explain everything. He shot Addis a man-to-man look of forbearance and understanding.

Moira sang beautifully even though she did not put much effort into it. He could tell that she was uncomfortable and resentful at having the attention focused on her. She sang two songs to the Blessed Virgin, the second a very long one that surely should satisfy Mathilda's devotion.

“We must get a woman singer,” Mathilda said to Thomas. “The minstrels are not nearly so lovely of voice.” She looked slyly at Addis. “Does she only know religious ones? Something gayer would be nice. A love song perhaps.”

“I do not think …”

Mathilda rose and gestured. “A love song now, Moira. To raise our spirits.”

“I do not think the woman knows any. See how she hesitates, my dear,” Thomas said quietly.

“Of course she does. Everyone knows them.”

Moira nodded. “If it would please you, my lady.” She said something to the lute player and they began.

Except for overhearing her briefly in the garden that day, Addis had not heard Moira sing the romances in years. She did not look at anyone in the chamber. Rather
she fixed her eyes on a spot near the windows while she let her voice flow.

More emotion and expression colored this song. It displayed her voice's beauty in ways the religious works had not. Addis listened and a very strange sensation suffused him. It had been years, but still he sensed that he had heard her sing thus very recently and very frequently, that he knew every nuance and detail in the way her voice touched the notes and enunciated the words.

Somewhere, tantalizingly out of reach, vague ideas and ghostlike images wanted to attach to this melody. Soothing memories stirred in some hidden corner where they slept. That made no sense at all. Moira had sung at Hawkesford at meals he attended with Claire, and recalling Claire never brought peace. The experience unsettled him with a gnawing, groping sensation that he should be remembering something.

Her voice mouthing those loving phrases undammed a saturating serenity. He felt his face against her breast and the warmth in her arms and the contented solace of care and love. He stared at her profile pointing toward the window, his whole essence stretching for the memories that would explain if her music called up fantasies or facts.

Sing it to
me.
Somewhere in my dreams or my life you once did so. I can feel it. Forget the others and do so again. One glance only, so I know that you feel what I feel, so that I know that you accept it is so.

She finished without turning her face, leaving him with a profound disappointment. He had lost awareness of his guests and so the girlish voice to his right startled him. “Her voice makes one want to cry or swoon.” Mathilda clapped with delight. “Another!”

Moira tensed.

“I am sure the woman has other duties,” Thomas said.

“Oh, surely one more.”

“It is enough, daughter. I tire of song now.”

She tried a halfhearted pout but decided not to bother. “Please, some coin so that I may gift her.”

Thomas thumbed ten pence out of his purse and Mathilda called Moira over. “This is for you, in appreciation for sharing your lovely voice.” She pressed the coins into Moira's hand. “Perhaps I will have many opportunities to listen to you in the future,” she added in a whisper that everyone heard.

Moira looked at the specie and then at the lovely child beaming at her. She smiled kindly. “You are too generous. It was my honor.” She addressed Addis without looking at him. “May I take my leave now, my lord?”

He gave it gladly, wishing that song had left him as self-possessed as it apparently had Moira.

She huddled in the garden, balled up behind the largest tree, listening to the sounds in the courtyard of the Lady Mathilda departing. Uncontrollable sobs racked her body and she buried her face into her knees to smother them.

She had finished her duties before collapsing into this overwhelming grief. Somehow she had held together through the nightmare of singing that love song for the two of them. She had directed the final service and even helped Jane with the washing. She had left the sounds of talk and laughter in the hall while the guests took their leave and had walked beneath the afternoon sun, toward the wall, telling no one where she had gone.

It wouldn't stop. The cries ravaged her to where she gasped for breath. Her chest would surely burst. She grasped her legs so tightly that she hurt herself and tried to will her body back into control.

She had prepared this day for him even though he had resisted it. She had tended to the food and flowers and musicians, but she had sworn that she would not see it. She had arranged things so she need never enter that hall and meet the young maid who could give him back his honor. She would help him as she always had when she could, but she refused to watch with heartache from the shadows again.

She peered over her knees at her hands and slowly opened the one that held the ten pence. The coins marked her palm from being grasped so hard. She stared at them through blurring tears and thought of Mathilda's words to her.

She couldn't do it. Not just the singing. She couldn't do any of it. Serve them. See them. Watch their children born.

He did not intend to release her. She just knew it. Lehman or not, he planned to keep her with him. It made no sense. The girl was beautiful, radiant, cheerful. He had never looked to the shadows beyond Claire's light. Why should he want to now?

The sobs calmed to choking bursts amidst deep breaths. From the courtyard she heard the sounds of horses finally moving. Some boot steps scraped the stones and silence fell.

She trusted that he would not look for her. He had plans to make and a marriage to consider. She prayed that the regretful expression on Richard's face when he came for her would be the only apology she would ever receive for being commanded to sing at this feast. If she faced Addis again today she would fall to pieces once more and he would see it. She could not bear that humiliation.

Calmer now, she rose and peeked around the tree. The garden and courtyard were empty. She skirted the flower
beds and walked to the house, seeking the privacy of her chamber.

Maybe later he would change his mind. Maybe, after he married, after he had Barrowburgh, he would relent. But she could not endure this that long. As a girl she had done so, but she had little choice then. She was a girl no longer, and she had the means to end it.

She sat on her pallet and pulled her sewing basket into her lap. Ripping at the lining, she plucked out the ruby. She had thought to buy an inn and a husband with it, but her mason had talked of marriage without asking her dowry. Rhys would not miss that which he never expected to get.

She stared at the soft brilliance of the jewel. So costly and so small. Valuable because it was rare. Desired because it was beautiful. Like some women.

Enough, then. Too many years had been spent on a childish infatuation. Too many memories imprisoned her. Enough of the past. Let it go.

Addis looked for her in the kitchen and garden and concluded that she had probably gone to the market to replenish the food stores. He left word with Jane to inform him when she returned and then retired to the solar. He hoped that she would not be gone long. He wanted to thank her, and to apologize.

The feast had tired him in indefinable ways. The girl had made him feel old and world-weary. More than years separated them. A lifetime of experiences that she would never learn about lay like a chasm between them. He doubted that passion or time or even children could bridge it, mainly because he had no desire to do so. His body might join with hers to sire sons, but his soul would
never be able to bond with her. Not because she was young and vain and a lot like Claire. Not because of who she was at all. The real problem lay in who she was not.

He paced to the window overlooking the courtyard, hoping for the flutter of light linen that would say she was back. He saw again her gracious acceptance of Mathilda's coin and her stiff composure while she sang that song. She had not looked at him during those love lyrics, even though every fiber of his being had urged her to. Just as well. It would have drawn attention to his reaction. As it was he suspected Thomas had noticed.

He threw himself on the bed. He felt empty, adrift, as if he could not connect his mind to his body and his body to this chamber. The little storm of resentment kept churning and rumbling. In some ways he had been a freer man when a slave. No duty set his course for him there. Yokes set upon your shoulders were easier to bear than responsibilities born in your blood.

He found himself wishing that he had met Moira then, that she had been captured in a raid into Poland and brought to the slaves' compound. Would he have been able to love her during those cautious years? Would the peace have been there then, peeling open the heart hardened for survival as easily as it had done upon his return? If offered his chance for freedom, would he have forgone it if it meant leaving her?

A scratch at the door broke his reverie. Jane poked her head in.

“She is back?” He swung off the bed to go to her.

“Nay.” Jane stayed near the door, twisting her hands in her skirt. “She said to wait until tomorrow before giving it to you, to say she rested in her chamber this evening, but I thought as how you might want to know now.”

“Know what? Give me what?”

She appeared fearful enough that foreboding began dripping through him. She scooted over and dropped something on the table.

“She said to tell you she's buying the freedom. With this. She said to tell you it should cover the price you set. Said she is not forswearing her oath because a free woman does not need to run away.”

He strode quickly to the table. A ruby twice the size of a robin's egg lay atop the parchments.

Jane licked her lips. “She said it'd be more use to you than her now. Said you could use it to hire archers and such.”

“Where is she?”

“Said to tell you she cannot do it, whatever that means. Said even in friendship and love she could not, and that—”