Roses in the Tempest (27 page)

MARCH, 1540

Swynnerton

XXX

Nay, tempt me not to love again: There was a time when love was sweet;

Dear Nea! had I known thee then, Our souls had not been slow to meet!

But oh! this weary heart hath run so many a time the rounds of pain,

Not even for thee, thou lovely one! Would I endure such pangs again.

—Thomas More

The bundle lay tight against my chest as I made the long walk to the entrance. A porter ran out to meet me and I belatedly realized that it was the master of the house, William Beche.

“My Lord Giffard. You honor us. Let me help you.” He offered to take the bundle, but I wanted to present it myself to Isabella, for I longed to see her and how she fared in her new life.

“Is the Prioress…I mean, is Isabella at home?”

His brows rose over his ruddy forehead. “She is ever here, my lord. She never leaves the grounds. Not even to go to market. It is most unnatural.”

“She is used to walls.”

“Yes, but she is not locked up here, my lord. Here she has the freedom of the grange to do as she likes. No one hinders her. Yet she will not go beyond the garden and fields.”

“Will you take me to her?”

“Surely I can offer you our hospitality first, my lord. In the parlor. My wife will fetch her for you.”

“No, thank you. You need not fetch her. I will go to her.” As I have ever done, I thought.

Shaking his head, he nevertheless took me through a gate and into the grounds. Agnes, his frowzy wife and Isabella’s sister, accosted us. I remember her in her younger days as a slight creature with a roving eye, but now she was plump and red-cheeked, the folds at her eyes scratched with lines. “My lord,” she said with a curtsey before shooting her husband a warning glare. “I did not know you had arrived.”

“Madam,” I said with a nod.

“You must take refreshment, Lord Giffard. Let me call a servant—”

“There is no need, madam. I do not wish to inconvenience you. I only brought this for your sister.”

I proffered the bundle in its sack. Spindly, claw-like, it was one of the rose bushes salvaged from Blackladies. The gardener dug it up for me and packaged it. I assumed Isabella would know what to do with it. “It is a rose bush,” I said to her.

“Oh, my lord, she does not tend the garden anymore.”

“Oh? I am most distressed to hear that. She took particular fondness in tending the gardens at Blackladies and at home in Beech.”

“Yes. It was her favorite occupation. And yet here she does not even ask to do it, and as you can see, Lord Giffard, it can use her touch.”

Around us were the drooping attempts to coax spring from the fledgling garden. Weeds crept into beds, and a birdbath was muddy and soiled with droppings and feathers. “Perhaps this will bring her comfort and she will start anew.”

“Let us hope so. Oh. There she is.”

I raised my head and saw a stately lady all in black, walking slowly and aimlessly in the field beyond the garden. Her head was down and the headdress’ veil blew out behind her. Not quite as I remembered her. She looked more drawn and more fragile in her commoner’s clothes. Strange how I could not recall her wearing anything other than a habit.

“She does not wear her nun’s clothes,” I remarked more to myself than to them.

“Yes. She would if allowed,” said Agnes. “Faith, my lord, it does not signify. Why she persists in this melancholy display—”

“Custom, madam. She was a nun a long time. She hopes to be so again.”

Agnes drew silent, and her husband beside her seemed uncomfortable in his own quietude. Finally, he asked, “How is our Alice, my lord? We have not heard from her for a month now.”

“Dame Alice is well…”

“Just ‘Alice’, my lord,” Agnes interrupted. “Only a daughter now.”

I smiled ruefully. “She will always be Dame Alice to me. She is happy in her retirement. She enjoys my children as a governess.”

“Certainly you might wish to have Isabella serve in your household as well, Lord Giffard?”

I glared at her. “What is the matter, madam? Is not her pension enough to keep her under your roof?”

“She isn’t happy here, my lord. I meant no offense.”

“She will not come,” I said, tight-lipped. “There is no need to ask again. She will stay here.”

“Then let me call her, my lord, and tell her you are here.”

At that moment, it did not seem wise, this visit. To look into her forlorn eyes and be able to do nothing was a heartache I could not bear. Her solitary figure moved more like a spirit along the greening fields, the mist becoming part of her like some pagan image from an old fable. But missing the opportunity to speak with her would be a greater heartache, and so I nodded to her sister as she went to fetch Isabella’s shade.

She looked up toward me as her sister spoke to her, and I moved slowly across the windswept field to meet her halfway. Agnes departed as I approached.

I planted a smile upon my face, though Isabella did not return the expression.

“Thomas,” she said softly, vaguely. She looked at me almost without recognition, and then turned again to the surrounding vista as if looking for something.

“Isabella, I am glad to see you. It has been many months.”

“Has it? I am uncertain these days of the passage of time.”

“Perhaps you would be more aware if you returned to your garden. I understand you no longer toil there. Why?”

“It is full of such life and living things. I do not feel I belong there anymore.”

“Among the living? But you are alive, my dear. And you have such skill in this. Look. See what I have brought you.”

Slowly, she turned her eyes to the bundle, and she smiled at last. “Is it a rose bush?”

“Yes. From Blackladies.”

The mention of the word made her frown and she turned away from it, pulling her headdress’ veil around her as she was wont to do with her habit’s veil. “Take it away. It does not belong to me.”

I took her arm, grasping harder than I meant to do. “It is yours. I am giving it to you. And I want you to cultivate it and care for it as you have done for so many years. Do you care nothing for my gifts?”

She turned and gazed at it, reaching a hand out to touch its gnarled trunk. “You…salvaged it?”

“For you, lady.”

She raised her eyes and looked at me fondly, shaking her head. “Do you love me still, Thomas? Look how old we are. I am fifty-two, long past that first summer. Surely I am no longer lovable.”

I softened my hold on her arm, caressing with my thumb. At fifty-two she was at last a handsome woman. Still slim and tall, the years filled in the face that was long and boyish. Her eyes, always kind and somewhat mischievous, were still the same as I remembered. “Always lovable,” I said. “No matter how wrinkled and gray we become. I feel as if we are an old married couple. We seem to know each other’s moods so well. We know what the other is thinking, even when many miles separate us.”

She smiled. “An ‘old married couple’ indeed!” She chuckled and hid her yellowed teeth behind her hand. “We are what we are, Thomas, wrinkled and gray.”

I straightened and pulled at my doublet. “Speak for yourself!”

She laughed, and her pain seemed to give way at last. Like a baby chick tearing through the membrane of shell and nest, Isabella’s eyes took in the world as if for the first time. She even deeply inhaled, taking in something new and restorative. Perhaps her old self.

I placed the bundle into her hands. Its soil sprinkled across my jerkin. “Plant this. Do not doubt that I will check on it from time to time to make certain you are properly caring for my gift. I do not give gifts lightly, madam.”

“Nor do I accept them lightly.” She nodded courteously.

“You were always a strong woman, Isabella,” I said looking out past the fields. “Come back like these roses. It tears my heart to see you so sad. Restore that garden. Keep the memory of Blackladies alive, as I shall make it alive.”

She raised her face to me. “I do have a way with roses…and with gardens.” She looked at the spindly bundle tucked in her arm. “Roses are tenacious things.”

With relief I hugged her shoulders and sighed, wondering what the spying eyes of her sister were reading from this encounter. “Tell me, Isabella, is it so very difficult, this new life?”

She rocked her head against mine for a moment—like old friends—and she sighed. “Not difficult. Just…different. And lonely.”

“Lonely? But you are with your own kin.”

She shook her head and pressed her lips together. “I think of Dame Alice and Dame Cristabell and Dame Felicia as my kin now, Thomas. Odd that my own family seem like strangers to me.”

“Yes,” I said, squeezing her shoulders once more before letting her go. “I can see how that can be.”

“How fares Alice?”

“She is well and content in my household. I fear I shared with her many memories of you.” Isabella blushed and I laughed to see it. “Yes. You remember.”

“I recall some stories about you, Lord Giffard, but I am too much of a lady to share them with anyone.”

“And I thank you for that,” I said with a bow.

We gazed silently across the fields just as the mist lifted. Green buds speckled the dark soil as far as our eyes could see.

“How is Blackladies?” she asked suddenly.

“Strange you should ask. Tomorrow I go to see to its…its rebuilding.”

“You need not spare me. You mean they are going to tear it down.”

I flicked my gaze at her and saw her eyes were dry. “Yes, Madam,” I said soberly.

Her hoarse laugh startled me and I looked at her. “I am imagining Thomas Giffard living on the same stones as generations of nuns. I can’t help but laugh at such a thing.”

I chuckled nervously. “Faith, Madam! I never had that thought in my head…until now. Do you think I will be haunted?”

Her eyes—as always—pierced through mine. “Not by them, I think.”

“Only one,” I agreed.

She seemed to wear a satisfied grin and I turned my gaze back to the countryside and its sky clouding up in gray puffs. “Isabella,” I said softly, “I have news for you. I have a new daughter. She…she is christened…Isabel.”

She flattened her expression, but it was one I knew well. It seemed to say to me, “Incautious, Thomas.” Then she turned to me and examined my face as if memorizing each contour, from my proud nose to the wrinkles at my eyes. “I am glad you came. It was as if I was in a dream. Nothing seemed real.”

“I have awakened you.”

“Yes, Thomas.” She did not cease her scrutiny of my face until her eyes took on a devilish glint—a look I have not seen her wear in thirty years. “You are a terribly handsome man, Thomas Giffard.”

My eyes widened at such bold words. For a moment, I was speechless. “Isabella!” I sputtered. “I…I am…flattered.”

“It was not meant to flatter. It was to tell you true what I have always known. And I think…I shall kiss you.”

Before I could speak, she reached up and with her free hand on my cheek, she planted a firm kiss on my lips. It was not a lover’s kiss—not such as I would have liked to have given her—but it was instead the kiss of a longtime friend.

There was a playful jaunt to her mouth when she released me, and it echoed my own. “Why Isabella! What would your sisters say to that?”

Her boldness faded, replaced by a blush. She clutched the rose bush tightly. “I do not know. There would be words, that much is certain.” She glanced back at the house. “I have scandalized Agnes again, no doubt.”

She was merry, and it was a balm to see it. I risked it all by running my hand around her waist. “Then let her be thoroughly scandalized with this.” She did not shy this time. She raised her face boldly to mine. My mouth dipped to caress hers and lingered gently, tenderly. It was both ardent and chaste. We were lovers who were not lovers, and so we kissed like those in a dream.

When I withdrew from her she smiled at me. “Shame, Thomas,” she said, though she had no look of shame in her eyes.

“Perhaps I should go,” I said. I stepped back and bowed formally before straightening. “Will I be welcomed back, Lady Prioress?”

My question, an echo of one asked so many years ago, also made her smile. “If it is your will, Lord Giffard. How can I ever stop you?”

I said nothing more as I swiftly left the grounds. I do not give my gifts lightly.

-----

I left Swynnerton and arrived at Blackladies the next day for the unpleasant task of watching them tear down the roof. No nestlings shall return to the roost, so it was declared. The roof must go before any new construction was to take place. And so, as an Usher of the King’s Chamber, I was obligated to follow the letter of the law, lest His Majesty turn the priory over to a less worthy man.

I watched from the edge of a copse as they pulled the rafters down. A great cloud of dust billowed as wood and stone filled the courtyard. Only when the dust dispersed did I urge my stallion closer. He picked with his heavy hoofs over the new rubble, and I tried to envision the place remade into my new residence.