Constant Heart (44 page)

He caught up with me on the road to London. “Marget!”

I drew my horse up to wait for him. There was no purpose served in running away.

“Why did you not wait for me?”

“Wait for you! I do not know why you would even wish to speak to me. Nor why you would wish to know me.”

“My sweet.”

I pulled the cloak tight around me, trying to cover up the evidence of my folly. “Do not say such things to me. I have ruined you. I have turned your name into a mockery.”

“But how could you not have known?”

I looked into his eyes then. I should not have done it. There was such kindness there, such gentleness, but also a clouded confusion. As if he had discovered something about me that he could not reconcile with what he already knew.

I had discovered that same thing as well. It was a stupidity, a blindness, an unfounded trust. “Do not look on me. I do not know how I could have been so foolish. But Lady de Winter was so . . . persuasive. She said that it would help you. That you would gain influence, and monies, if only I could become a lady-in-waiting to the Queen.”

“A lady-in-waiting? Is that what you hoped to accomplish?”

I could not bear to look at him. “Aye.”

“Then you would have had to have known Her Majesty from birth . . . or be a blood relation.”

Oh, the betrayal. “I did not know.”

The day dawned gray the morning I left London. A thick fog had wrapped away everything from view as if I was not to be permitted even one last look at the city. Lytham was not there. It was necessary for him to be at court. Now more than ever. He promised to come to me in the new year, but I would not hold him to it. He would have to prove his loyalty to the Queen for some time before he could risk a visit to me.

But he did leave me a message. Of one word:
Fortitier
.

Bravely.

In reply, I left him a message.
Fideliter
.

Faithfully.

United under the St. Aubin family motto, I could go on to Holleystone bravely knowing that he would stay in London faithfully. Nothing more needed to be said.

One thing I did not take was my paints. Where I was going I would have no need for them. And further, I had decided that I could only be who I was. I had never had any hope of being the person the Queen had wanted me to be. And now it no longer mattered. I had tried to be a good wife, tried to help my husband succeed. But in the end, at that too, I had failed. And so I left the city being only myself.

51

I
took great comfort in being at Holleystone. In knowing that, though Lytham was at court and I had been banished, I waited at the one place he longed to be. It was quiet in the country. My maids had been called back to their own families, for no one wanted their daughter to be tainted by my scandal. Finally, I was as I had always longed to be: without paints, without artifice. I had even decided to let my hairs revert to their usual color. And I helped them along with one last bath of dye. Only this time it was with the intention of turning them black. The paints had ravaged my skin, as Joan had always warned they would, but I was hopeful that in time all might be righted. I was very nearly the image of the girl who had left King’s Lynn one autumn day so long ago.

But as I installed myself in Holleystone, my thoughts worked at something to busy them. And they fastened upon a puzzle from the past. Like Lytham’s first wife, I had in effect been banished from my marriage. But what exactly had happened to Elinor? And why had she gone mad?

I decided I had to find her.

The decision was easier made than done. Most of the servants of the house were unquestionably loyal to Lytham. There was only one person I could ask without risking another person’s presence, another person’s ears. Only one person on the estate worked alone: Falconer. And so I took myself out to the mews one day.

“Lord Lytham said you were to train up another bird for me.”

“Aye, my lady, I wait for one to be born. Should be in a week’s time. Then I’ll wait another month to start the training.”

“Can you not just trap one?”

“A grown one, my lady?”

“Aye.”

“Nay. They are hard to teach to return because they are used to hunting for themselves. They fly away.”

“Can you not buy one?”

“Aye, I could. But then he’d have to learn his loyalties all over again. Best thing is to wait and raise one for your own, my lady. A falcon you cannot trust isn’t worth the time to train.”

“And how do you teach them to kill? How do they learn it?”

“It’s their speed that kills. Once they spot their prey, they grasp their talons like this”—he clenched his fists—“and dive straight toward the target. Fastest bird there is. It’s not the claws or the beak that kills; it’s the impact. And the falcon’s always careful to hit a bird on the wing so there’s no danger to himself.”

“So cruel.”

“Nay, lady. The birds aren’t cruel. Less cruel than most of us.” He turned his head and looked straight into my eyes. “They mate once. For life.”

I walked around the mews, looking at the birds. And they looked right back at me. Peregrine falcons with their shadings of cream and blue. Their heads sleek with black feathers, angling toward their beaks like helmets. Their black eyes, encircled by yellow, stared at me, unblinking.

“Falconer, you knew Lady Elinor.”

“Aye, my lady.”

“Was she truly mad?”

“ ’Tis what they say. She came here once. Tried to set her bird free.”

“Did she hawk?”

“Loved to hawk. Thought like a bird. And her bird missed her. Flew away rather than stay with me.”

“What makes a bird fly away?”

“When you lose their trust. If they think they can do better on their own, then why should they stay?”

“Do you know, Falconer, where Lady Elinor went?”

He drew a deep breath as he picked up the strap of a jess. Then he let it out as he went to work on the polishing of it. “Went to where she’d be taken care of. She flew home.” He kept his attention so focused on his task that I almost did not hear what he said next. “Home to North Moreton.”

North Moreton? But that was only a few short miles away.

Elinor may have only been two miles away, but she might as well have lived in Ireland for all the good it did me. How would I go about seeing her? How would I introduce myself? As Lady Lytham? If I did, why should anyone allow me entry? But the thought of Elinor being so tantalizingly close worked upon my thoughts until I knew I would have to find some way to meet her.

Knowing she had been one of Her Majesty’s maids, I fastened at last on a plan. I may not have been a maid and I might never have served Her Majesty, but I knew what they did and how they did it. I had a periwig as orange as any court lady’s. I no longer had my paints, but I could make a paste of flour and turn my face nearly as white as any courtier. And I could make myself appear a bit older, as if I were Lady de Winter or another of Elinor’s contemporaries. In fact, I could
be
Lady de Winter. I could declare my intention to remember myself to Lady Elinor. And if I did, how could anyone forbid me access?

And so, with the help of artifice, I did it. Since it was so close, I rode only with Joan and one of the younger grooms from the stables. A groom young enough, I hoped, that he would never have encountered Lady Elinor as Lady Lytham.

I need not have worried overmuch. As soon as I announced myself and my mission to Lady Elinor’s household, the steward was notified and he himself led me up the Great Stairs.

“You may find her . . . much changed . . . if I might be pardoned for saying so, my lady.”

I nodded as if I might have expected such.

“We try to keep the Lady Elinor quiet in her thoughts, my lady.”

“She is troubled?”

“Aye, my lady.” He signaled a page, who pulled a key from his waist and opened a door. “Light disturbs the mind, you understand, my lady.” The steward entered the chamber, clearing his throat as he went. “My Lady Elinor, you have a visitor.” He bowed and signaled me to enter.

I did so and then made of him one request. “You may leave.”

He bowed once more and retreated down the passage, without closing the door behind him, leaving light to mark a trail into the room.

In the gloom of that chamber I could make out only a shape seated on a bench. But then the shape turned and found its feet, threw a hand up to block light from the eyes. “You have come finally? To see me?”

“Aye, Lady Elinor.”

“And do you see?”

“Forgive me, but I can see . . . nothing.”

She stepped forward into the shaft of light leaking in from the hall, cringing and pressing her hands more tightly to her eyes.

She waited some moments before lifting them. Then she stepped forward once more. The light touched her features, throwing them into relief.

Flesh had fallen from her bones and puddled into wrinkles. The absence of teeth had left great hollows in her cheeks. Her hands shook even as they clasped each other. I could hear the slopswoman’s voice in my head:
“Death’s finger paints my lady’s face all white, while
underneath the mask, her skin turns gray.
’
Tis just a matter of time, once
all goes tight, she’ll leave this earth’s delights for Grave’s decay.”

A ripple of dread crawled up my spine.

Our eyes met.

“You have come, Lady de Winter! I have waited all this time and you have finally come. How does it go for him?”

“I have not . . . I mean to say . . .”

She suddenly dropped to the floor and crept toward me on her knees. “I failed him. My heart never learned to listen to my head . . .”

As she advanced, I retreated. But I became tangled in my farthingale, and she caught me by casting herself before my feet. “I tried to do as you asked. I tried to do as you commanded. But my heart was not yours to own. I loved him.”

“Lady Elinor—”

“I could not do it! You asked too much.”

“Lady Elinor, listen to me—”

“I did everything you told me to, but it did not disengage my heart.”

“Lady Elinor—”

“But still, when you told me my love would ruin him . . . I did the only thing I knew to do.”

“What did you do?”

She tried to speak, but her words left off as tears stole her voice. She grasped my feet and pressed her forehead to my boots.

“Lady Elinor!”

“Please . . . please . . . tell me . . . tell me he has succeeded.” She rocked on her knees and pressed her head once more to my feet.

I tried to shake her from a boot but she would not be moved. And if I could not move, I could not call for aid.

She thought me Lady de Winter? Then I would play that role to the hilt. “Lady Elinor! To your feet this instant!”

She stopped her rocking.

“Is this any manner in which to speak to me?”

She pushed herself from me and, with much scrambling, stood.

“Now then, I wish you to tell me the whole of the tale.”

“ ’Tis not a tale. ’Tis truth.”

“Then make it plain, girl!”

“I betrayed you. I lied to you. I never have stopped loving him.”

“And I am willing to overlook it if you will tell me what you have done.”

“My lady?”

“Make haste!” The steward might be lurking in the hall.

“What do you wish to know?”

“I would know what you did to Lytham.”

“I cannot say it.”

“I command you to say it!”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“Out with it!”

The shaking became more violent and I worried she would throw her head from her shoulders. “Then tell me what you did to save him.”

“To save him from my love? I made him divorce me.”

“I thought your marriage annulled.”

“It was. But I began by giving him grounds for divorce.”

“Which were?”

She raised her head then and looked me full in the face, eyes streaming with tears. “Infidelity.”

“And what happened?”

“I broke his heart. And I broke my own along with it.” She collapsed into a heap upon the floor, shuddering with sobs.

“And why did you do this?”

“You told me to.
You
told me to. You said to declaim everything that is good about him. No one could believe that you love a person you do not respect. But it did not work.”

I had heard those words before. The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end. “So you . . .”

“I made him divorce me.”

“So that . . .”

“He could do what he needed to. Obtain what he wanted. What else could I have done?”

I had plenty of time on the ride home, and in the weeks which followed, to ponder Elinor’s words. But more so, Lady de Winter’s involvement in her sad fate. She had told Elinor what she had told me; she had goaded Elinor into action the same way that she had goaded me. And if the result for Elinor was a betrayal of marriage, then that must be what she had intended for me . . . and had intended all this while. But what was it that she hoped to gain? For there was no doubt now that she was acting on anyone’s behalf but her own.

52

W
ith Marget gone, I had nothing to distract my thoughts, no one to coax me to laugh, nowhere to go. Not only had Her Majesty’s attentions cooled toward me, so had the attentions of those who wished to please her. My rents had mysteriously dried up and my waivers from taxes had been revoked. There was no hope of my being given a monopoly now.

I lived within a courtier’s nightmare.

I had fallen from favor.

I picked up my treble viol, played a few chords. Set it down. I threw on my cloak and walked a few turns in the garden, but quickly tired of the effort. I showed myself at court each day, made certain that I was seen, but with no one to talk to, the pretense soon grew old. It was while I was contemplating Her Majesty’s response to Marget that a thought began to implant itself in my head.

The Queen has only ever come out against my wife because she
was jealous.

At first, I nearly laughed at the thought, but soon I knew it to be true. The Queen
was
jealous. It was vanity that had made her react as she had. If vanity were the way to her wrath, might it also be the way to her heart?