The Breath of Peace (7 page)

He lifted his face to look at her, raised himself up on his elbow, brought his hand to her cheek, let his fingertips stray to trace her hairline, her eyebrows, her lips. Serious and tender, his gaze took in every feature, adoring her.

‘I
am
proud of you. I… um, I'm not sure it's morally improving to your character to admit this, but I just worship the ground you walk on.'

Softly, he kissed her cheek. ‘Madeleine… look… I haven't washed, or rinsed my teeth, and I'm all frowsty from a night's sleep. But if you don't mind it, I believe there's a God-given way to bring back some of the tenderness we let ourselves lose so casually. Will you have me, my lady? Do you want me?'

In the slow grey rising of dawn, the mystery of her dark eyes met his questioning gaze. She saw something teasing, something trusting, but also a shaky thread of uncertainty. He would never be quite sure, she thought; never know without a doubt that life would receive him or that love would be unconditional. Even now, the uncertainty was increasing and his confidence that she would welcome him diminishing. She looked up at him, and as his eyes searched hers he saw a sly shaft of utter mischief come slanting there. A tiny smile brought the familiar dimple to the side of her mouth. Unsure what was happening, or what she might be thinking, he was taken by surprise and was easy to topple when with a sudden, vigorous movement she twisted up and round and pushed him onto his back on the bed, straddling him and glaring down in pretended stern severity in the semi-darkness. Startled and laughing, he looked up at the forbidding dominatrix who had overpowered him. Leaning forward, her river of greying hair surrounding his face, she grabbed his wrists and pinned them back to the pillow.

‘Tha'rt a bad lad, William de Bulmer!' She frowned ferociously down at him, the old broad country speech adding coarse sand to the scolding. ‘Tha's been a bad lad all thy life! Tha came through thirty years in a monastery unscathed, and nothing I can do or say has taught thee better manners either! Tha'rt a reprobate! A villain! A rascal! Just wait and see what I'm about to do to thee for thy sins!' Her eyes flashed and sparked as she contemplated him trapped on the bed beneath her.

‘Oh, heaven, pity!' he whimpered in mock terror. ‘Oh Jesu, help!'

For a moment those words gripped Madeleine's heart as she wondered fleetingly how often he had said them in earnest, even as a little child. But she gave no room in her heart to that knife of sadness: she set herself to lifting all the shadows that still haunted him from the bad dreams of his sleep and the nightmares he had lived through waking.

‘Nay!' With a savage growl she shook him. ‘No help for thee! Tha'rt bad through and through! I'll give thee “witch” and “bitch”! I'll give thee “tu-whit tu-whoo”!'

Genuine bewilderment passed through his mind for an instant.
Tu-whit tu-whoo? What?
And then he remembered how he had scared her in the darkness of the lane as she walked home. He hadn't realized that was still festering away under the surface as well.

He cringed melodramatically. ‘Never contradict the enemy when she's got things wrong,' he whined. ‘O, I confess I am a bad lad! I am! I always have been! My mouth is bad. My heart is bad.'

She bent and kissed his mouth, his breast – loud, smacking kisses. ‘There!' she pronounced. ‘Cured! Any other part of you bad?'

‘Well…'

She fixed him with a stern look, and then he closed his eyes as the soft, rough cloud of her hair drifted sensuous, human, warm, down his face, his throat, his breast; and he caught his breath in sudden sharp intake.

Madeleine had spent her life collecting arts of healing. It gave her a profound sense of satisfaction to have discovered that whatever else making love may be, it is also good medicine. She chased the terrors that stalk by night clean out of his head.

The sun mounted the horizon in a heady glory of gold and lavender and rose unappreciated and unnoticed by either of them.

‘My sweet, my lady love,' he murmured into the tumble of her hair against his cheek, ‘'tis well daylight. Those hens will be trying to kick their way out, and Marigold will be restless too, for all she's nearly dry. 'Tis long past time we arose.'

They lay one moment longer, reluctant to leave the snug warmth of their bed for the raw chill of the February morning, no matter how bright the sun. William ventured out first, and scrambled into his clothes. He thought he'd wash at some point but, having briefly contemplated the prospect of walking naked down the stairs to draw some icy water from the well, he dismissed it with no protracted inner debate.

So he stood, one foot on the stool as he tied his boots, and glanced across to Madeleine as she stood lacing her kirtle, for she said, ruefully: ‘I'm getting fat, William. I eat more in the cold, and you do most of our fetching and carrying. I've cut none of the firewood this winter, you've done it all. You look something less like a skeleton, which is a blessing I'm sure – but I shall be straining the seams of my clothing. I know I'm no little lass any more, but I like to keep trim. Else your fancy might stray elsewhere.'

‘Not a bit of it,' he responded firmly. ‘Even when you get as fat as Lily the pig you'll be the only woman for me. I love all of you – every yard of you, every ton of you!'

He caught the pillow she threw at him, fortuitously, for it would have knocked the candlestick and mug of water clear off the bedside table, and landed all in the chamber pot.

‘Impudent rascal!' she scolded in feigned indignation.

‘Aye, right,' he said, tossing the pillow back onto the bed. ‘I thought we established that.'

He came round the bed to where she stood now brushing her hair.

‘This was my dream,' he whispered, taking her into his arms again. ‘This was the thing I imagined, and clung to, all last summer. That somehow, one day, I would be there with you, to watch your hair hang down as you brushed it in the morning. Oh, you play havoc with all of me. “Bitch” I take back. “Witch”, I'm not so sure. You've bewitched me!'

She took him by surprise then, pushing him away from her and suddenly stamping her foot.

‘Stop it! Just stop it, William! I'm not a witch! I am
not
!'

It was only then that it properly sank in: she really did hate it, it really upset her. She could not bear the idea of being dubbed a witch; and it frightened her too. Absorbing the exasperation and distress with which she beheld him, he recognized that he had held too lightly what it must have felt like to find herself the focus of the mob looking for something to hunt, something to burn, something to tear apart. It had all gone too deep to be chased away by laughing at it.

He nodded. ‘No. I'm sorry. You are not. Of course you're not.'

She broke the gaze that linked them and went back to brushing her hair. He paused one awkward moment, then thought it better just to leave things as they lay. He turned from her, and trod light down the stairs to rekindle the embers on the hearth for making their porridge.

As he went from place to place, glad of the spring sunshine and the gradual drying up of the ground, methodically carrying out the chores that shaped the morning, William wondered if in anybody's life peace and understanding could be simply taken for granted. If there were families without touchy people, where no one took offence at an inferred tone of voice or an ill-judged, hasty remark. He supposed not. Presumably in such families there would never be hasty and ill-judged remarks to give offence in the first place; but then – surely – doesn't everyone make mistakes?

He fed Marigold and milked the small amount still to be taken, left her in her stall pulling at fresh hay until the sun should have had a chance to warm the world a little – it was cold, early, to be staking her out with no browsing worth having now, just the fresh air. He took the hens their mash of old bread and hot water and scraps, fed Lily, scratching behind her ears with a stick in the places she couldn't reach, then turned her out as usual. He tended to the needs of his horse; and in the intimacy of the stable, breathing the warm, living scents of straw and good hay and fresh dung, he put his arms around the neck of his palfrey, who stood stolidly munching, moving her ears in interested response as she felt the drawing on her inner resources of human need. ‘Nightmare,' he whispered, ‘I'm a travesty of a man. I don't do life well.'

She shifted her weight, blowing, and shook her head. The mouthful of hay had all gone and she wanted another. He released his hold on her, bending down to lift the water bucket from its metal frame. He took it to the well.

Walking back to the house carrying empty feed buckets and the can with its precious cupful of milk, William reflected on the immediacy and simplicity of animals, and acknowledged that he found their company less confusing and dangerous than that of humankind.

He left the buckets to be swilled out, set the can with the milk on the scullery table, and came through to take his seat opposite his wife, who had ladled out their porridge in steaming bowlfuls. The morning was cold, and he ate the food gratefully. Madeleine had started hers already, and finished ahead of him. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on her husband.

‘You have fine, slender hands,' she observed. He took in this remark, and nothing in the words but something indefinably subtly there in her tone tensed him against attack. He persevered with his breakfast, taking refuge in the last mouthful and wondering what was coming next.

She reached across the scrubbed boards of their table, between breadcrumbs from last night and the empty porridge bowls, and took his hand, tracing his fingers, turning it over. He let her do it, but wariness crept into every corner of him. He sat still, waiting. He thought they should take care to leave no crumbs on the table when they went to bed at night, because it encouraged the mice, but stowed that away for a diplomatic moment to mention it, when he might raise it tactfully, lest Madeleine feel he implied unintended criticism of her housekeeping. For the moment she seemed to have her mind on something, but he couldn't imagine what it might be. She traced with her forefinger the raised blue veins on the back of his right hand.

‘Brother Thomas's hands were not like yours,' she mused. ‘He had broad, red hands – farmer's hands I suppose… telling a story of working with wood and stone… digging the garden… ploughing the field… mending the barn… What did these hands do – your hands? I think you told me you were no great scholar, so they were not occupied with books of philosophy and theology… and I think you said you had no true vocation as a monk… so I can't see these hands folded quiet in prayer… and I don't remember you saying you had a gift for illumination… I think you might have thought the work of a scribe beneath you… What occupied these clever, slender hands? Money, I suppose… they must have filled their days counting in rents from tenants, paying out when they must for work done… writing in the ledgers… money hands…'

‘Money is not such a bad thing,' said William quietly.

‘Nay, indeed! Did I say it was?' She withdrew her hand from his.

‘You did not.' He raised his eyes to look at her, and the coolness of their disquieting gaze was lowering in temperature every second. ‘But I have been listening to contempt my whole life long, and by this time I know it when I hear it.'

She waited a moment, but he lowered his eyes and said no more, and with an air of impatience she reached across and began to collect together their bowls and spoons and mugs, saying nothing.

‘Have you done punishing me, then? Or should I be braced for more?'

‘Punishing you? What are you talking about?' She stared at him in astonishment.

The long, fine fingers of the money hands played absently with the scattering of crumbs on the table as their owner chose his words with care. Though he did not fear it, neither did he wish to provoke his wife's quick temper.

‘I think you are still angry at me for my ill-judged teasing you, calling you “witch”. I had not comprehended how deep it went.'

She put the bowls down with a thump, and glared at him across the table, her eyes sparking and flashing. ‘How can you say so? How could you fail to see? What kind of idiot are you? They burned my house, they killed my mother, they violated me – all because they said I was a witch! And, William –' her face flushed crimson then – ‘
I AM NO WITCH!!!'

He nodded. He lifted his eyes to meet hers. The odd flicker she saw there and took for hostility was no more than reluctance to meet the fury of her stare.

‘I know it,' he said softly. ‘I never thought you were. I'd hoped to draw the sting of what they did by mocking it.'

‘No!' she cried sharp and angry. ‘That isn't true! When you said, “I don't know about witch but bitch seems to fit,” you were
not
mocking it! You were using it to hurt me!'

He drew a deep breath. ‘Yes. Yes, I was. And I am sorry for it, and I've asked your forgiveness for it. And then this morning what I said just before we came down for breakfast… well, I judged it wrong. I didn't mean to hurt you then. I hadn't properly got on board that even when it isn't meant to sting, it does. And on my honour, Madeleine, I will not say it again.'

‘Your honour?' She laughed, shortly. ‘Oh, well I can rest easy if your honour is the guarantee!'

He looked at her. She could feel him weighing the situation, whether this was worth a full-on slanging match or whether he would let it go, or whatever to reply to the scorn with which she dismissed him.

‘Why do you say that?' he asked softly.

During the months she had lived within the abbey close at Peartree Cottage, chatting with Brother Martin the porter, piecing together Brother Tom's cheerful jests with other scraps of passing gossip and remarks that William himself let fall, Madeleine had formed a clear enough picture of his history and the regard in which he had been held. He had told her in sketchy outline about the fire from which he had fled at St Dunstan's Priory where he had been prior; and told her something of the slamming of every door in his face as he sought refuge, until he had begged sanctuary at St Alcuin's. He was never very forthcoming in sharing his memories, but she had been able to make out an accurate working outline of his life.