Lady Fortune (3 page)

“Eat, my child,” Brother Barth said. “I’ve been instructed to bring the dishes back to the refectory when you finish, and the good abbot doesn’t like his orders disobeyed. If you prefer, I’ll wait in the hall…”

“Please keep me company. Can I offer you any of this… ?”

“I’ve already eaten, my lady. And the abbot tells me I eat too much as it is.”

While Brother Barth’s impressive bulk couldn’t provide much argument, Julianna developed an instant dislike of anyone who would criticize the gentle old monk. “The abbot,” she said, reaching for the loaf of bread. “He’ll be coming with us to
Fortham
Castle
, you said.”

“Aye, my lady. And I’ll be there as well, to assist him.” There wasn’t even a hint of anything in the friar’s voice, and yet Julianna couldn’t rid herself of the notion that the abbot was not a well-beloved soul.

“He’s a good man, is he not?” she inquired, breaking off a hunk of bread.

“It is not my place to judge. The abbot is a man of highest principles. Helping him is an honor I never dared hope for.”

And would gladly do without, she thought. Things were going from bad to worse. “What abbey is this, Brother Barth?” she asked, changing the subject. “I thought I knew every holy order within a few days’ ride from Moncrieff.”

“We’re a very small, very poor order, my lady, though the abbot has great plans for us. This is the Abbey of the Martyred Saint Hugelina the Dragon.”

“Saint Hugelina? I don’t remember her,” she admitted. “Was she truly a dragon?”

“Only after she was devoured by one. It was a blessed miracle.”

“Indeed,” she said piously, ignoring her own doubts as to the existence of dragons.

“But nowadays no one pays homage to the old saints. Hugelina dates back almost to Roman times, and people prefer to forget the old ones. They like their saints modern and up to date. We do our poor best to cherish her sacred memory. The abbot has pledged his life to the task of making Saint Hugelina’s Abbey a showplace of modern piety.”

“God grant him success,” Julianna murmured, wondering how a priest’s ambitions allowed time for an extended stay at
Fortham
Castle
. Indeed, it was none of her business, and she should learn to control her curiosity.

“The abbot’s easy enough to get along with, my lady,” Brother Barth said. “Just be dutiful and silent, and he’s unlikely even to notice you.”

“And that would be for the best?”

Brother Barth’s sad eyes met hers. “Yes, my lady.”

He would say no more, and she was wise enough not to push. She had been warned, most clearly, and by the time Brother Barth left her, exhaustion and anxiety were taking hold of her.

It was dark in the cell, with only the one tallow candle to light it, and Julianna lay back in the narrow bed and stared at the stone walls around her, at the wavering candlelight as it cast eerie shadows on the walls. If the abbot were even near as difficult as he sounded, the time spent at
Fortham
Castle
loomed even more unpleasantly. It was bad enough that she was being taken back to bear her mother’s company. Far worse that she came to a household that included a difficult priest and a maddening fool.

She wondered if the abbot had run afoul of Nicholas yet. And which one of them had triumphed.

With any luck, she would travel the last day of the journey out of reach of Master Nicholas’s prattling. With any luck, lightning would strike her before she even reached
Fortham
Castle
, and she would no longer have to worry about facing the mother she had once loved more than anyone else in the world.

She hadn’t thought she would sleep, but she did, soundly and well, until a horrifying sound ripped her into terrified wakefulness sometime in the pitch dark of night. She heard it again—a great, gasping scream, like a soul in eternal torment—and without thinking she tore out of bed, slammed open the thick wooden door, and started out into the dimly lit stone corridor in search of the poor tortured creature.

The stone floor was icy beneath her bare feet, and her thick linen chemise flapped about her body as she raced down the corridor. It sounded as if some poor creature was being slaughtered, and she raced toward the sounds with no concern for her own safety or her less-than-decorous apparel.

The screams were coming from the small chapel at the end of the corridor, but as she reached the closed, heavy oaken doors, the sound was cut off abruptly, the resulting silence both deadly and deafening.

She didn’t hesitate. The heavy iron ring was cold in her hand, but the massive doors were well hung, and they swung open with little more than a touch, illuminating a strange tableau.

The screaming woman was no woman at all, but a very pretty, effeminate monk who was still making soft, high-pitched, squealing sobs. The sight of Julianna in her chemise was clearly the final straw, for he threw his hands over his face and ran sobbing from the room, skirting her as if she carried the plague.

Brother Barth was there as well, his normally placid face creased with worry, and it was no wonder. Standing in the middle of the chapel stood Nicholas Strangefellow, stark naked.

At least, she presumed he was naked. Brother Barth had wrapped some sort of cloth around Nicholas’s lean hips, just barely preserving his modesty. Nicholas didn’t seem to appreciate the assistance.

He gave the hapless monk a stern glare. “I told you, I don’t want anything to come between me and God, little man,” he said. “Not even clothes.”

“Blasphemer! Spawn of Satan!”

She hadn’t seen the other man in the darkness of the small, candlelit chapel. She turned, but the shadows revealed only another shadow, darker and more ominous. “What is that strumpet doing here?” the voice from the shadows continued. “Remove her, and have that madman flogged!”

“But my lord abbot,” Brother Barth protested, following Nicholas as he stalked toward the shadows, the material still draped discreetly around his torso. “I’m certain this can all be handled sensibly if you would just—”

“He mocks us, and he mocks Christ,” the infamous abbot intoned, emerging from the shadows. “And that Jezebel’s in league with him!”

Julianna looked around the chapel for Nicholas’s slatternly accomplice, but there was no one else present, and she realized with shock that the abbot was accusing her of strumpetry. It was so absurd that she should have laughed, but now didn’t seem the time for merriment.

Nicholas turned to look at her, cocking his head to one side like an inquisitive bird. A sparrow… no, a falcon, she thought, mesmerized. And she was a juicy little rabbit.

“Not my doxy,” he said softly, “though I’m hopeful for the future.”

She should have turned and run the moment she opened the chapel door. She had no cause to be here, and the presence of a nearly naked man was enough to fill her with an uneasy horror. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen one before—as lady of the manor she’d tended the ills of her people, and in the countryside modesty was of little value. And she’d seen her husband, more than she’d ever wanted to.

She lifted her chin and met Nicholas’s mocking gaze. He wanted to make her run, to blush, to hide. She remained where she was, too stubborn to retreat.

“I heard screams,” she said. “I thought someone was being hurt…”

“Very noble and tender-hearted of you, my lady,” Nicholas murmured. “I’m afraid I shocked the young brother.”

“You’re a monster,” the abbot said‘ in a hissing voice. “When we arrive at
Fortham
Castle
, I’ll see you hanged!”

“I doubt it,” Nicholas said sweetly. “King Henry has a fondness for me. He would be much displeased if anything were to happen to me.”

The abbot moved closer, into the light, turning his back on Nicholas as he came within inches of Julianna. He was the same height, their eyes met, the dislike and displeasure in their colorless depths making her shiver in the cool night air.

“You tremble, my lady,” he said. “I don’t doubt that you tremble, from shame and from sinfulness. Go back to your cell and repent what your eyes have seen and your wicked mind has dreamed.”

Her wicked mind had dreamed absolutely nothing, but she had enough sense not to inform the abbot of that fact. He was wraith-thin with a round, protruding belly. The skin stretched over his knobby bones like parchment, but his eyes blazed. If her future was to contain this fiery zealot as well as the madman standing naked, then the sooner she found her way into a convent the better.

“You’d best go,” Brother Barth said urgently, still holding the cloth around Nicholas’s hips. “I assure you, everything will be fine.”

“Why don’t you strip off your clothes, my lady, and we can commune with God together?” Nicholas murmured in saintly tones. “The straw is a bit scratchy, but you can lie on top of me—”

“Fiend! Lecher! Defiler of purity! You should be flayed alive!” Father Paulus was shaking with emotion.

Nicholas glanced at her measuringly. “I don’t believe she’s pure, Father, since she is, in fact, a widow…”

But the priest had already stormed from the chapel, obviously in search of someone to help him punish the wayward madman.

“Thank God,” Brother Barth murmured with a sigh. “Father Paulus does tend to take things too much to heart. Lady Julianna, let me escort you back to your room.” He took a step toward her. Without his helpful assistance the cloth began to slip, and he immediately jumped back, pulling the loose folds back up around the fool.

“I can find my way by myself, Brother Barth,” she said in a deceptively calm voice. “As long as I’m not needed here…”

“I need you, my lady,” Nicholas said in a plaintive voice, a thread of laughter just barely discernible beneath his warm tone.

She forced herself to look at him, a long, slow, measuring look, from his long, bare feet up his strong, hairy legs to the folds of material that she belatedly realized was an altar cloth. Past his stomach and chest, past vast expanses of golden, firmly muscled skin, until she met his mocking gaze.

He wanted to shock her, she realized. He wanted to shock them all. The least she could do was refuse to rise to his challenge. “Commune with your God, Master Nicholas, and do it quickly, before you catch your death of cold,” she said calmly.

“And before the abbot returns with the reinforcements,” Brother Barth added hastily. “He’s not a man you should underestimate.”

“I seldom underestimate my enemies,” Nicholas said. He caught the altar cloth in one large hand, and for a moment Julianna was afraid he was going to pull it off. She refused to flinch, but instead he simply held it, leaving Brother Barth free. “Escort Lady Julianna back to her room, brother,” he said sweetly. “I’ve interfered with her sleep enough for one night.”

Barth looked at him warily, but Nicholas seemed to have tired of his game, and he stood still and grave, watching them.

She went willingly enough, her back straight, trying to ignore the fact that she was improperly dressed. The heavy linen shift was made of many ells of material, and there was no way anyone could have an inappropriate glimpse of her body, but she still felt vulnerable. She and Brother Barth moved through the corridors in a troubled silence.

By the time they reached her door she could stand it no longer. “Brother Barth…” she said, pausing in the entrance.

“Yes, my lady?”

She didn’t know how to ask him, but fortunately Brother Barth was a wise, discerning man. “You needn’t fear the abbot, my lady. Master Nicholas will be kept safe. God protects the simple-minded.”

If there was one thing Master Nicholas was not, it was simple-minded. She had little doubt that everything he did had layers of reasoning behind it, including the recent scene in the chapel.

Not that she should care, she reminded herself. Her main effort, once they reached
Fortham
Castle
, would be to keep out of the way of both the priest and the fool as much as possible.

“And if you’re concerned about dealing with Father Paulus in the future, let me give you a bit of advice. Listen chastely, never talk back, and then follow your heart. You have a good heart, my lady—anyone can tell that at a glance. I sense that the fool does as well, no matter what game he’s playing. Just keep clear of the abbot and you’ll be fine. If I know the good abbot, he’ll be concentrating on the earl and his new lady. He’s an ambitious man— he’s never had much time for those without power.”

“And I’m definitely without power,” Julianna murmured. “Good night, Brother Barth.”

“More likely good morning, my lady,” he said gently.

She could see the first light of dawn tingeing the sky beyond the arched stone windows as she looked past him, and in the distance she could hear the faint sound of plainsong. The monastery was awakening, a new day was dawning, and her new life was about to begin.

“Morning, indeed,” she said. And she would make the best of it.

The courtyard was a mass of organized activity when Julianna emerged a few short hours later. The grim abbot was already astride a sturdy donkey, with a serene-looking Brother Barth beside him. Sir Richard was pacing back and forth, and Nicholas was nowhere to be seen. There was no horse waiting for her, and she accepted her future gloomily, moving toward the litter.

“There you are, my lady,” Sir Richard said grumpily. “We had almost given up hope of you. Father Paulus, may I present her ladyship, Julianna of Moncrieff, daughter to the Countess of Fortham? This is Father Paulus, the abbot of Saint Hugelina.”

In the cool light of dawn the abbot failed to look any more welcoming. He stared down at Julianna from his perch on the donkey, his bright, colorless eyes blazing down. “I rejoice in the knowledge that I can help lead this stray lamb back into the fold,” he intoned.

Even Sir Richard looked startled. “Lady Julianna hasn’t strayed anywhere, my lord abbot,” he muttered.

“We all have strayed in our hearts, Sir Richard,” the priest replied. “I will show Lady Julianna the way to forgiveness.”

Oh, Christ
, Julianna thought miserably. It only needed this. She caught Brother Barth’s warning look and belatedly remembered his advice. She ducked her head dutifully, keeping her gaze downcast. “I look forward to your wise counsel, Father Paulus,” she murmured.

She stole a glance at him as she was helped into the litter, but Father Paulus had already dismissed her from his attention, concentrating instead on Sir Richard.