In Pursuit of the Green Lion (6 page)

“Stand the little one in front of me, and hand me my riding crop,” he directed the grooms. Margaret gripped her seat until her knuckles turned white. The old lord looked fiercely at Alison. She looked innocently up at him through her long lashes, her eyes large and blue.

“Do you understand what you did?”

“I didn’t do it. Cecily made me.”

“You understand then. For holding the oat pan, one stroke. For trying to shift the blame—cowardice and slyness, one stroke. For lying, one stroke.” They weren’t easy blows, and left deep welts under her heavy wool dress. The grooms had gathered in the hall to watch the administration of justice.

“This is my house. I won’t have lying, slyness, or cowardice in it. Not ever,”he addressed the howling child. “Now the big one.” Cecily looked entirely unrepentant and, if anything, rather pleased at her sister’s treatment. It was no less than what she had thought of her all along.

“It will be at least six years until I can sell your marriage, and they will be very long ones for you unless you learn obedience.” He looked at her; she stared right back. Suddenly he thrust his heavy head forward and glowered at her from beneath his bushy white eyebrows.

“Why?” he asked.

“He was the best. The biggest of all. I didn’t know he’d fall.”

“You’ve crippled the best stud in twenty miles.”

“I’m sorry.” Sorry, sorry. Sorry she couldn’t ride him again. It had been perfect. For a little space of time she had been the ruler of the world. No one could take it back.

“The laws of this house are—first—girls do not ride stallions, not ever. Second—no one rides anything without permission. Third—no one takes or uses anything without permission.” As he spoke he delivered the blows. Cecily never wept, though her eyes filled with tears and she bit her lip so hard it bled.

“God help the fool who marries you,” said the old man. He handed back the whip to one of his grooms to put away, and looked at Margaret where she sat. Her face was white, and tears were running down it. He motioned, and the idling grooms ceased watching and went to set up the trestle tables for dinner.

“You’ll sit on my right at dinner,” he said calmly to Margaret. The place of honor. He’d never offered it to her before, not even on her wedding day.

At supper, he offered her the best part of the dish with his own hand. She stared at the trencher and shook her head slightly.

“Again you don’t eat? You dishonor my house.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not that,” she said, looking worried. “It’s just that I don’t eat
them.”

“Salt herring? It is Lent, madame. I can offer you nothing better.” She turned her pale face to him, frightened and apologetic at the same time.

“I’m truly sorry. I’m not trying to dishonor your table. It’s—just—just that I can’t eat anything with eyes.”

“Is that all? I’ll take them off.”

“No, not that—I mean that ever came with eyes on.”

“And why is that?” Gregory stiffened as he watched the exchange. The old man was capable of anything. With a sudden blow to the head, he could smash a peasant’s skull. He had been eerily controlled for too long—at any moment something might set him off and he’d lash out, God knows how. Margaret was too small, too frail, too crazy for his father’s house. He needed to take her away. If only the inheritance could be freed up, he could keep her someplace safer. A moment gone wrong, and it could turn out very badly for Margaret.

But the old lord looked authentically curious this time. Margaret saw that, and answered simply: “I’d see the eyes in my sleep. They’d all be looking at me, and they’d give me nightmares.” The answer didn’t seem to surprise the old man a bit. When Damien knelt before him to offer him the next dish, the Sieur de Vilers broke the order of service and sent for a cheese. He observed her all the while she ate, stroking his beard with his left hand and thinking. He knew horses very well, and he knew he wasn’t wrong. He had seen what he had seen. A woman who could raise a fallen destrier was no ordinary woman. But a woman who raised a horse with a broken leg, who saw eyes and didn’t eat fish, and who stared at him with a frightened face when she realized he’d seen what the others had missed—that was something else entirely. It might very well be a problem.

Had Gilbert known all along? It certainly would go far to explain the look on the pup’s face when he’d announced that as long as they’d taken the trouble to rescue her they might as well carry her off. He inspected his second son’s face. No, it would be entirely in keeping with his character never to notice what was right under his nose. But then again, it was Gilbert who had burst out and said that he should have asked before he’d made off with her, and the old lord was never going to admit that Gilbert might have been right, even this once.

I
N THE DAYS AFTER
the strange dinner when the Sieur de Vilers gave me the wedding present, things were better, or at least quieter. But Cecily and Alison were in disgrace. After they’d gone and nearly killed his destrier, Sir Hubert had confined them to the solar in the care of a ferocious fellow named Broad Wat, a onetime pikeman who had followed him through all the Scottish wars. This worthy had instructions not to let them out of his sight until a nursemaid of sufficiently dragonlike qualities should be located.

“You should count them lucky,” said Gregory after supper one day, “he used to lock me in the cellar on bread and water for far less. And there’s a veritable legion of spiders down there.”

“He’s very hard. He’s frightened me since the first day I laid eyes on him.”

“Oh, do cheer up, Margaret. At least he’s never heaved a bench at you. But whatever made you wade in after Urgan, feeling the way you do about Father? It’s a miracle you weren’t killed.”

“I just saw him rolling and squealing there, all bloody, and I felt so sorry for him. That’s all. So I had to. I never thought about it. I might not have, otherwise.”

“Sorry? For a horse? You are strange sometimes. You had better save your sympathy in the future—warhorses are trained to maul humans, and I’d really like you to stay away from them. He could have smashed your head like an eggshell, and then where would I be, Margaret? And Urgan’s famous all around the shire for his bad temper. Father got him at a bargain after he killed a man, and he’s lost his head groom to him since, as well. Father’s just too stubborn to get rid of him. He’s convinced he can breed the height into his line, and breed out the bad temper. Oh, well, I suppose you’d have seen Urgan’s eyes too.”

“How did your father know how I learned how to ride? I’ve never even told you that I always sat on the grain sacks when Father led the horse to the mill—that is, when we had a horse.” Gregory winced. I knew it was something I shouldn’t ever mention again, at least while we were in his father’s house.

“Father knows everything, when it comes to horses. He’s never wrong.” He looked at me speculatively. “You’re afraid of them, too, aren’t you? Horses, I mean. Father knew that too. He told me the first time he saw you mounted. How did you ever get to your country place in the summer?”

“You saw the little white mule in the stable? That’s mine. Master Kendall got it for me.”

“And it sits there still, eating its head off, until the country property is settled. Father says it’s a total waste, and ought to be sold.”

“He won’t sell it, will he? He won’t sell my mule or my house? Don’t let him, Gregory. It all comes to you, not him. Remember that we were happy there, and can be happy still.”

“Father’s the head of the family, and I owe him obedience—but if there’s enough for the upkeep, after all these lawyers get through, I will. But you know, in this family, you can’t be seen mounted on a mule. It would irritate Father, and there’s no telling what he’ll do when he’s irritated.”

“But—but—”

“No buts,” he said gently. “You’re on his good side now, and I won’t see you lose it. Don’t look so worried. You’re brave enough, in other ways. You just sit a horse like a coward. I can fix that.” His voice sounded warm and strong. It would have convinced anyone that the thing was easy.

So, much to my mortification, that is how I found myself the very next day atop a dreadful mountain of a beast, mud flying from beneath its hooves as it cantered in circles at the end of a lunge line.

“Sit up straight, Margaret! Quit clutching like that!” Gregory held the line in his left hand, flicking the long whip in his right whenever the horrid creature faltered. And, of course, I couldn’t help noticing how tall and well made he was, and how strong his hands looked as he paid out the line, and this sort of distraction came close to costing me dearly more than once.

“So what are you going to be doing now?” he asked as we walked from the stables.

“Sitting quietly for the next week until I quit aching,” I answered, brushing the mud off my sleeve. The acid in my voice made him laugh.

“You’re a hard case, Margaret. But don’t think I give up all that easily. Whether you like it or not, I’ll have you riding like a de Vilers. After all, I haven’t the least intention of ever giving Hugo the satisfaction of paying him off.”

“What? You have a wager?” I was furious. Gregory didn’t seem bothered at all.

“Father put him up to it, I’m sure. He thinks he’s sly, but I know he did it—it’s got his mark on it, that idea. Hugo’s too dense to have noticed without Father’s prodding.” I was so livid, I couldn’t decide which one of them enraged me the most. Making sport of my misery! I could just see Hugo gloating, with that stupid smile of his.

“We’ll ride again tomorrow,” I snapped.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” he said serenely.

And so I went to nurse my wounded spirit in the solar, where I had in mind to spend the rest of the afternoon teaching my girls their stitches, as a way of keeping their fingers out of trouble. There I found Broad Wat bemoaning his fate. A formidable widow was being acquired from a neighboring hamlet for his relief, but it was not soon enough, in his opinion. He had worn himself out giving rides and telling lies. When threats and bribery no longer had any effect, he had resorted to numbing his senses with a plentiful supply of ale, brought up by a parade of kitchen boys eager to hear his lurid complaints. When I emerged from the narrow stair, he was lying on the straw bed before an audience of kitchen boys, half dead by his own account, while Cecily and Alison ran rampage through the solar.

“It’s punishment for my sins, that I’m trapped with them for another three days,” he was complaining. And while he talked, the kitchen boys laughed behind their hands. For they could see what he could not—that as he spoke the girls were engaged in pouring an unknown liquid out of Wat’s great mug onto the head of some unwary soul beneath the window. Clearly, it was time for female intervention.

The girls left off their activities to crowd around me while I hunted through the ornate little chest where I’d been told the sewing things were.

At the bottom of the chest was what I wanted: a strange looking box, all bound in carved brass that was badly in need of polishing. In it was an embroidery hoop with a bit of unfinished work in it, looking a bit as if it were destined for a priest’s vestments. There was also a distaff, richly set with silver, and under it a pile of neatly folded baby clothes. I lifted up the first. A little girl’s smock, unfinished, too small for Alison. Then a little gown for a newborn, half-sewn, pretty linen but no hem. A tiny cap, with heavy quilting set in rolls about the crown, so a baby learning to walk wouldn’t split his head on the hearthstone. No strings, and the rolls not all stitched down. What kind of woman was this, so rich she could afford to leave good stuff unworked—so many things unfinished?

As I held the dusty, darkened little things, I could feel something very sad about the chest. In my mind I could sense what had happened. It was a rich woman’s box, yes—a woman whose embroidery surpassed mine, for she had learned on silk and velvet, and I had learned on coarse stuff. But it was a poor woman’s too. A woman whose fine stitches and piety and silver hadn’t been able to save her children. I could feel it like a certainty inside me—each little garment was for a child, unfinished at the time of death, and put away because she couldn’t bear to complete the work. And then she put away her embroidery, too, and died. A woman’s life, all shut up in a box, was what I saw there. Maybe it would be my box, too, in the end. I put my hand on my heart, to keep it from hurting me. And while I was still, kneeling in the rushes beside the box, the Cold Thing came back and surrounded me, and made me shudder.

But there was more. Beneath the little box with the needles, all pressed flat, was a tiny pair of baby’s shoes, all made out of some very thin leather, as soft as silk, with holes worn through the little quilted soles. This one lived, I thought, and she loved it best, so she saved the shoes.

“Mama, doll clothes! Can we have them?”

“We need them, Mama, Martha is
naked!”
The girls tried to pull the box out of the chest. Broad Wat retreated to take another drink.

“They’re not yours,” I said, removing their hands and shutting the big chest tight. But the girls hadn’t even time to whine before they were entirely distracted by a dreadful commotion on the stairs.