Simon's Lady (21 page)

Beresford’s gaze followed Gwyneth’s around the hall. “I see a number of women whose sympathies might be suspect.”

“I would not know that, sire,” she said demurely, “given that I am so new to the Tower.”

He grunted that this was so, and she found that she liked teasing him. She liked that he underestimated her. She liked that he thought himself so superior. It was like the kiss this morning, when he had wanted her to bow to his superior skill, but she had ended by bringing him to his knees instead.

“While we are on the subject,” he said, “I spoke to Adela about my decision to allow you to remove to my house while I am absent from London.”

Gwyneth turned her full attention to him. She admirably suppressed her desire to contest his phrasing, that it had been his decision to
allow
her to do as she wished. “And she saw the wisdom of such a move?” she asked.

“Not at first.”

“Oh?”

“She did not want you out of her jurisdiction, with all the uncertainties of the moment,” he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders, “and with all the rumors.”

Gwyneth absorbed the implications of this statement, and when it dawned on her that
she
was, in fact, the object of the castle rumors, she was stunned. Aghast, she decided that her wits must have been wrapped in a misty gauze—spun during the night of lovemaking with Beresford?—for her to miscalculate the simplest of all political sums. She nearly gasped at her own stupidity at being caught in her own trap set with a sultry kiss.

“However, since I had already given you my permission to move in,” he was saying, “I persuaded Adela to have several Tower guards accompany you.”

Still stunned, she asked, as bluntly as he would, “I am under house arrest?”

“The guards will be there to help you,” he replied mildly, as if he had not understood what she meant, “and guide you.” He paused, his gray eyes warm upon her, and said, “I thought, my lady, that you would be thanking me for having secured your wishes, as a good husband should.”

Gwyneth felt wild and strong emotions surge through her. She was angry at herself for having been outmaneuvered. She was angry at him for so plainly enjoying himself at her expense—for she did not for a moment believe him to be merely playing the role of kind husband. In a fit of pique, she reversed her intention to tell him anything of Valmey’s potential for treachery. Hard on the heels of that decision came the realization that it was scarcely the moment to accuse someone else of treasonous plotting, when she herself was a suspect. Then, too, she knew that one Norman knight would hardly be disposed to believe ill of another, simply on the basis of a word from her.

“Thank you,” she said sweetly, mastering her voice but not the fire that rushed to her cheeks.

He rose, looking very satisfied. He took her unresisting hand in his and bowed over it. “Now that I must be off, you may wish me Godspeed.”

“I wish you Godspeed,” she said through her teeth.

He pressed his lips to the back of her hand. He added quietly, provocatively, “And good success against Duke Henry.”

She felt the tingle of his touch all the way up her arm and nearly snatched her hand away. She would
not
give him the satisfaction of wishing him good success on that score, and he could interpret her silence and her political interests any way he liked! As if she even cared!

He released her hand, bowed once perfunctorily and, without another word, turned on his heels to stride across the room.

She sat immobile, watching him depart. Her emotions, previously stirred, now spurted up inside her like a fountain. He had looked entirely too smug before he had turned away from her, as if he had her exactly where he wanted her. Well, he did not! Nor did she feel a thing except anger for the blunt, plain-speaking, graceless man who was her husband. Not a thing! She did not feel pain piercing her heart, causing her to catch her breath. Oh no, she could breathe easily, and her heart was beating just fine. She was healthy and alive and mistress of her destiny.

But what was that annoying image hovering just at the limit of her vision? It was small and seemed to have wings and was carrying a bow and arrow. What
was
it, by Odin!

She blinked and tried to shake her head clear of the hazy gauze befuddling her reason. Addled and with her anger flowing, she decided that the little winged creature must be the wily god Loki, transformed into a fly, which was the shape he often assumed to cause his trouble. Yes, that was it. The handsome, agile, cunning Loki was a fly buzzing around her head, distracting her, annoying her—although she knew of no tale in which Loki had ever carried a bow and arrow.

Satisfied by the explanation, even a little relieved by it, she decided that Loki, god of mischief, had come to play a joke on her. But why did Loki’s fly look like a plump baby boy? And why did she feel a golden arrow pierce her heart?

Not too many hours later, Gwyneth stood in the middle of the courtyard of her new home, surveying the extent of the disaster that surrounded her. She had found an old smock and a kerchief for her hair. She had found several crippled brooms in the room on the upper story that had previously yielded the one Ermina had used to sweep out the mistress’s chamber. She had found a couple of badly damaged scrub brushes as well, along with some dilapidated pails and the miracle of a block of uncut soap. She even found some slovenly serving women in the back courtyard. Into their hands she thrust the implements that would put the household next to godliness, and after the proper motivational speeches, which threatened the immediate loss of their employment, she set the women to work.

It took more skillful maneuvering to prompt the able -bodied men of the household into action. Beresford’s master of the armory, for instance, had never held anything as innocent or innocuous as brush and pail, and he felt it frankly beneath him to do so. Gwyneth solved the problem by providing him with a weighty item of construction, rather than destruction. The master of the armory waved the hammer experimentally, getting the feel and balance of it. Gwyneth smiled and informed him, with a straight face, that the true test of the tool was to use it without thumping one’s thumb.

She derived perverse pleasure from making similar use of the five castle guards who had come to watch over her. She discovered soon enough that they were strong and stupid and responded well to authority. They were perfect for fetching water from the well, holding ladders and moving furniture. She imagined that they would report back to the castle next week, glumly, that Gwyneth of Beresford had cleaning on her mind more than treason. She would even be sure to thank Adela some day for having provided her with such brave and brainless assistance.

Dinner was tasteless but edible, and supper not much better. She slept badly on a stale mattress and the next morning did what she had intended to do all along, which was to burn the bed curtains. On impulse, she decided to add to the fiery pile the ratty curtain that separated her chamber from Beresford’s. A number of household items seemed worthy of burning along with the rotten shutters. While she was at it, she rounded up Beresford’s sons, Benedict and Gilbert, stripped them naked and burned their verminous clothes as well. The two boys were dipped wriggling and protesting into warm, soapy water.

Thus went the elemental cleaning process all morning long—fire and water, water and fire. And soap.

That afternoon, in the escort of Swanilda, the least sullen of the serving women, Gwyneth left the house to familiarize herself with the neighborhood, informally known as Cornhill. She had never lived in such a large metropolis and so was not, at first, prepared for the hard bargaining that was carried out at the various stalls, all under the guise of trivial pleasantries. She wished to hire many of the local craftsmen, and since Beresford had given her no purse, she had to rely on her name for credit and her English for good bargains. Unfortunately, her ear had not accustomed itself to the peculiar cadences of the English spoken in London, and so at one booth she misheard a twenty for a two and concluded a very bad bargain that Beresford would be sure to question upon his return. Thereafter, she exercised greater caution.

In addition to the deals she argued and sealed, her ears echoed with the busy hum and mingled sounds of work: the melodious anvil, the cry of the apprentices, the songs of the retailers, as well as those of the bakers who took around the loaves and the women who sold fish. Geese tied to the poulterers’ stalls honked and gabbled.

First on her list of craftsmen to engage was the glazier, and next was the carpenter. When the services of the most reputable among these were secured, she established relations with the tiler and the plasterer. Then came the vintner, the alewife, the baker, the grocer, the miller, the cheese monger, the spicer, the knife smith, the draper, the chandler, the chaucer (although she did not immediately need shoes), the caplet monger and the buckle smith. On the whole, she made an excellent impression, and despite her obvious northern ancestry, was better received as a Northumbrian than as a Norman. Her beauty did not work to her disadvantage, either. The traders and goodwives generally concluded that Beresford’s marriage was a boon for local business.

Gwyneth spent a strenuous few hours jostling for position and price in the warren of streets around Cornhill. At the end of the afternoon, she acknowledged that her feet had grown tired and her nose had had its fill of the tallow melting and the soap making, and the frank stink of the blood and offal that poured down the narrow lanes into the river from the nearby shambles. She and her woman returned home by way of the street that boasted The Swan.

Gwyneth had noted this tavern on her initial journey to Beresford’s home the week before. It was a typical shop in that its pair of horizontal shutters opened upward and downward, top and bottom. The upper shutter was supported by two posts that converted it into an awning. The lower was dropped to rest on two short legs, and acted as a display counter. At the counter at this particular hour lounged two men that Gwyneth recognized at a glance to be neighborhood scoundrels. They gave her cheeky grins and introduced themselves as Daw the Diker and Wat the Tinker. The news of her identity had quickly spread throughout the neighborhood, and so they were able to congratulate her on her fine marriage and offer their labor for any odd task she might have. Gwyneth walked on without more than checking her step. They called out cheerfully, “Remember us!” She assured them that she would.

That evening, the fare at supper after vespers was improved merely by the fact that it was fresh. Gwyneth realized, of course, that it would take many days, perhaps even weeks, before the kitchens would be in any sort of reasonable condition and a cook properly trained. She was pleased by the fact that she had so quickly made what was once the boys’ sleeping chamber into the solar again, and it was the first room in which fresh rushes had been laid. That meant that the room was available for dining, and she was determined that correct manners would be observed there. A wide cloth was spread over the trestle table already in the center of the room, and the places set along one side only. On that side the cloth fell to the floor, doubling as a communal napkin that Gwyneth insisted Beresford’s sons, Benedict and Gilbert, use. Because the wine cup was shared, she explained, one must wipe one’s lips free of grease before putting them to the cup.

With the boys clean and well dressed and sitting on either side of her, Gwyneth made aggressive strides in publicly instructing them in table manners. It was her idea that the adults in the household who also needed such lessons could receive them indirectly. The boys were apparently well schooled in how to properly hold a sword and shield, but they were completely surprised to learn from Gwyneth that: “Food is not dipped into the saltcellar. Bread is broken, not bitten. Blowing on food to cool it is commonly practiced but frowned upon.” They were similarly surprised, and thoroughly dismayed, to learn further that: “Gentlefolk eat slowly, take small bites, do not talk while eating, do not drink with their mouths full.” They promptly wished to excuse themselves from the class of folk designated “gentle.” Gwyneth merely smiled upon them pityingly and continued: “Knives are never put in the mouth. Soup must be eaten silently, and the spoon not left in the dish.” They were finally horrified by their wicked new stepmother’s strictures that: “One does not belch, lean on the table, hang over his dish or pick his nose, teeth or nails.”

Benedict and Gilbert were inclined to think much better of their new mother when she put them to bed that night in cozy cots with clean linens. They slept for the first time in their lives without fleas and bedbugs, for Gwyneth had put in their new room trenchers of bread spread with birdlime and with a lighted candle in the middle. She tucked the boys in and kissed their cheeks in a way that brought them the sweetest of dreams.

The next day began early after prime with the arrival of various craftsmen whom Gwyneth had hired the day before. Soon the main courtyard was alive not with training exercises, but with carpenters and plasterers and sawhorses and wood shavings and tubs of water and rudimentary scaffolding. Various trades people came and went with their deliveries. Other misguided souls turned up at Gwyneth’s door as well, along with the usual gawkers who came simply to see what all the fuss was about.

Toward mid-afternoon, Gwyneth received a very welcome visitor. She was in the back courtyard, standing at the door to the kitchens, wrestling with the problem of how best to attack a decade’s filth within, when she happened to turn toward the person who had come up next to her.

Her face broke into a smile. “Give you good day, Johanna,” she greeted Beresford’s cousin happily. “What brings you to this neighborhood?”

“Why, you, of course,” Johanna replied with a smile. She looked about, surveying the bustle around her. “Although now that I am here, I am wondering why I thought it necessary to come see how you are getting along. I thought that you might need cheering up, but instead I find you productively engaged!”