Suzanne Robinson (3 page)

“Jacoba, I’m free,” Honor said. “I’m free!”

“I marvel they didn’t see through your disguisings, I do.” Jacoba crossed her arms and beamed at her mistress. Taller than most men, she was a woman of middle years whose chief concerns were finding a dye mixture that would cover the gray in her hair and trying to keep her mistress out of trouble.

Honor laughed, and soon she was surrounded by her servants—Dagobert the page, Father Theodoric the clerk, and Wilfred the groom.

Theodoric frowned and scratched under his cap. He was a former soldier and even after fifteen years as a cleric and secretary had yet to shed his warlike temperament. He was constantly trying to cultivate a virtuous attitude to make up for his faults.

“If I may embolden myself, my lady. Taking vows and not keeping them …”

“Oh, I’m going to keep them,” Honor said. She stopped capering and grew serious. “Did I not tell
you privily that this was the only way we could avoid being packed off to some lord? Did any of you wish to call another Jennings, or Sir Lionel, master?”

They shook their heads violently.

“No, my lady,” said Theodoric. “I’d have sinned grievously if that happened. I’d have been forced to lop off Sir Lionel’s head, may God forgive me.”

Jacoba poked him with her elbow. “I’d have put nightshade in his porridge.”

“I pray you heartily,” Honor said, “No more such talk. We’re going home.”

As the Stafford escort arrived, she gathered her reins and mounted with Dagobert’s help. After a brief greeting, she guided her mare beside the destrier of her father’s most trusted knight, Sir Renard Fitz Gilbert. The party set out again and rode for almost an hour along the de Marlowe border. It was still morning, but the sun had burned the dew from the grass. The farther they went the more narrow the road grew, until it became little more than a path. Finally, as it wound around the edge of the forest to her right, Honor reined in once more. She glanced at a nearby hill. Much taller than the rest, it was even more shrouded in brush, forest, and vegetation than the others.

“We will break our fast here, Sir Renard.”

The servants busied themselves with meal preparations and the soldiers saw to the horses. Informing Sir Renard that she would stretch her legs while the meal was being prepared, Honor walked
into the forest with Jacoba. Only the groom Wilfred went with them, to stand guard at a distance. He was one of those young men who never seemed to outgrow his youthful awkwardness, which possibly was due to the extreme length of his arms and legs. Jacoba often remarked that it was a miracle he was able to get them all moving in the same direction.

Honor took refuge behind thick bushes to attend to her private needs, and then rejoined her servants.

“Come,” she said, and she plunged deeper into the forest, in the direction of the tall hill. She led them to a clearing from which they had a better view of the hill. “I can’t see it.”

“What’s that, my lady?” asked Jacoba.

“Durance Guarde.”

Wilfred swallowed hard and gaped at the hill. “God save us. Durance Guarde?”

Shading her eyes, Honor didn’t reply. She craned her neck, but failed to locate even a part of the old ruin.

“I must have a look,” she muttered to herself.

“You can’t, my lady,” Wilfred said. “No one goes up there. I’ve never been this close to it, and I’ve lived me whole life on Stafford demesne.”

Jacoba wrung her apron. “We thought you’d given up the idea of building at Durance Guarde, me lady. It’s an evil place, and ruin befalls those that venture near it.”

“Then stay here. I’ll be back in a trice.”

“No!” Wilfred and Jacoba cried.

Honor turned slowly to face them and said, “No? Who is mistress here?”

They stared at her, neither speaking.

“Exactly,” Honor said. “I’ll be back before I’m missed, it isn’t far.”

Lifting her skirts, Honor set off. She left the clearing for the shade of the forest and soon heard footsteps behind her. Jacoba trotted up, with Wilfred close behind.

“Your father would skin me and lop off me head if I let you go alone, my lady,” Wilfred said in a shaky voice.

“That’s what I told him,” Jacoba added.

“Very well, but I’ll hear no whining or complaints. You mustn’t believe silly stories told to frighten children.”

“Told to frighten adults, by my troth,” muttered Jacoba.

“We’ll be carried off by demons,” Wilfred whispered, his eyes protruding from his skull.

“Nonsense,” Honor said. She picked up her skirts once more and hopped over a lichen-encrusted log. The hem of her gown dragged and picked up bits of moss. “You’ll see. There’s naught at Durance Guarde but ruined towers full of spiders and owls.”

Two
 

H
onor walked quickly through the forest, shoving her way through stands of bushes, and vines that hung from tree limbs in great cascades. The closer she got to Durance Guarde, the denser the vegetation grew, and the trees seemed to get larger too. As she tramped on ferns and climbed over rocks and hillocks, she thought of the wonderful plans she had for this place.

She was going to build a manor house.

It wasn’t to be an ordinary manor house, however. She was going fill it with wondrous things. She had ordered one of those marvelous contraptions from Germany—a printer’s press. It came with slender metal rods called type, with a letter of the alphabet on each, and these little types could be arranged to make words. When the press arrived, a
man would come with it who would teach her how to print a whole page, then more pages, and how to bind them into a book.

Theodoric was skeptical, despite having seen the printed books in Honor’s library. He said this printer’s press was a passing amusement that wouldn’t last long. Honor had retorted that Mr. Caxton was printing Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
, and that selling copies of that book and the Bible would make him rich, and able to print even more books.

She would also invite men of learning from Florence, Venice, and Ferrara to her new house. One of her few pleasant memories of Aymer was when she’d accompanied him to Florence for the wedding of Lorenzo de Medici. She’d begged Aymer to take her and eventually he had agreed. Honor was certain it had been because he hadn’t wanted to hear her complaints if he refused. Besides, he could ignore her in Italy as well as he could in England.

Theirs had been a marriage arranged by their parents, and at first it had seemed an ideal alliance. The Jennings were ambitious and clever, but as a relatively new family, they needed the legitimacy a Stafford bride could provide. Honor’s inheritance, while not immense, had been sufficient to tempt them to form an alliance. Rising in the world consumed Aymer Jennings’ entire being. He spent half his time trying to cover his family’s humble beginnings as peasant farmers and the other half weaselling
his way into the favor of magnates who could help him. Honor later learned that this obsession with improving one’s rank and wealth was a family trait, like long noses and feet that pointed inward. It was what compelled Aymer to falsify birth records in his home county to erase the low origins of his great-grandparents.

Barely fourteen, Honor had been like most girls of her station. She learned the skills a noblewoman would need to run her husband’s manors, lands, and castles. But she’d also spent a great deal of her time reading tales of King Arthur, and about chivalrous knights and fair maidens. She had further peopled her imagination with the lovers made famous in minstrels’ songs. When Honor’s and Aymer’s parents first introduced them shortly before the betrothal, Aymer had seemed a perfect, gentle knight worthy of his own song. She hadn’t been married a week before the truth smacked her in the face. It came when she stumbled upon Aymer in a stall in the stables, naked on top of a laundry maid.

Her illusions about Aymer vanished in an instant, and in the months that followed, she came to know him all too well. He didn’t care whether his conduct hurt her. He expected her to carry out her wifely duties and refrain from interfering in his life. But mostly, he didn’t think of her at all. She was just another person around the place, like his manservant or the horses in the stable. He simply didn’t want to be bothered with her.

However, when it came to the trip to Italy, Honor had been determined not to be forgotten. She pestered him in person and in letters to take her along. For once, Aymer bowed to her wishes, and she was allowed to accompany him so long as she understood that he wouldn’t have time to spend with her. So, while Aymer pursued his own business and pleasures in Italy, she met scholars engaged in studies of ancient Greece and Rome, who read Virgil, Plato, and Aristotle, and who were rediscovering the wonders of the ancient world. Once she’d experienced the excitement of this new learning, she didn’t want to give it up when she went home. Just as exciting was her idea of inviting artists to visit and giving them commissions. She would fill her new house with paintings by Botticelli, Gozzoli, and Mantegna, and sculptures by Verrocchio.

Of course, all this would require funds, but she’d learned a few things from Lorenzo de Medici. Since Aymer was preoccupied with an Italian mistress, Honor learned about the new business practices the Italians had thought up—partnership agreements, holding companies, marine insurance, and credit transfers. She kept busy in Italy, because the more occupied she became, the less hurt she felt from being ignored by her husband-in-name-only. Now, as a widow and a vowess, she would be able to join the de Medici family in a partnership that would take wool from her estates to the Netherlands, then to France and Italy. Eventually
fine wool and silk fabrics would return to her, and she would sell them, thus making the profits she needed to support her true interests.

Her occupations had been a delight and a comfort, because when she was engrossed in the study of painting or reading a contract, she wasn’t dwelling on her many faults. For she knew that had she been more charming and comely, Aymer would have loved her. Honor could list her faults, and often did. She had a disfiguring spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She went around with smudges on her face and hands, and she usually had a tear or two in her gown. She was apt to spill things, drop things, or fall over them because she was thinking about her many projects. And she had interests no one else seemed to share.

In truth, most people thought her odd when they learned she was reading Plato or wanted to actually print books herself. No, she could understand why Aymer hadn’t found her pleasing. That was why, when she’d first discovered his indifference, she’d tried so hard to change. She had tried be a lady worthy of courtly love, like the ones about whom the minstrels composed songs. Her attempts had ended in failure.

A sudden rush of wind recalled Honor to the present. She hadn’t been walking long, but she’d left Wilfred and Jacoba behind. She could hear them stumbling through the bushes behind her. She turned to face the wind. Looking up she saw a line of thunderclouds boiling up in the distance and
racing toward Durance Guarde. Through wildly waving tree branches she glimpsed a round tower. Half of it was gone, and it was covered with vines and clinging plants, but it was still recognizable.

“Lady Honor!”

“I’m here, Jacoba. Keep walking in the same direction and you’ll come to the castle walls. I’m going on ahead.”

Disregarding Jacoba’s pleas that she wait, Honor clambered up the side of the hill. She pulled herself along using saplings and ended up beneath the high arch of the barbican of Durance Guarde. Two drum towers flanked the gate, but the wooden door that once sealed it was missing. Behind the barbican stood another gatehouse. Massive walls extended outward in either direction, but large portions of them lacked wall walks due to someone’s deliberate destruction. There were several gaps where the wall had collapsed. Trees had grown up against enormous drum towers and brambles had implanted themselves on top of the crumbling walls.

Out of breath from her climb, Honor rested for a moment beneath the arch of the barbican. The wind was howling now, and several oak trees danced against the towers, their branches scraping against stone. As she watched a black mountain of a cloud soared into view, the sun vanished and the temperature dropped. Honor settled her mantle around her shoulders and hurried through the barbican. She would have to make haste if she was to
reach the keep, inspect it, and return to Sir Renard before the rain began.

On the other side of the barbican there was a deep ditch and remnants of a burned drawbridge. At some time it had been repaired with old planks from the ruins, but it looked undependable. Honor heard a yelp. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Wilfred sprawled on his back in a nest of brambles and vines. Jacoba was fussing at him and trying to untangle his arms and legs from the creepers. If Honor had been superstitious she would have said Durance Guarde was trying to keep them out.

“You may remain here if you wish,” Honor called to them. “I won’t be long.”

Without waiting for an answer she scaled down the ditch, but when she hauled herself up the last yard or so, she stepped on her skirt and fell flat on her face, feeling a seam rip at her waist. Sighing, she got to her feet and dusted her hands on her gown.