The Marsh King's Daughter (12 page)

Miriel heartily wished that she had never asked about his dispute with John. It was as if she had opened Pandora's box herself and she was appalled at what he had told her. Her own difficulties were as nothing compared to the life that he had endured. 'I'm so sorry,' she whispered, hating the inadequacy of the words, but unable to think of better.

'Don't be. I have never sought anyone's sorrow or pity.' He raised his head and flashed her a fierce look from tear-glittered eyes.

'Neither have I.' She met his gaze. 'I too am not of that nature. I wanted to offer comfort, but I did not know what to say.'

'Nothing would be wise.' Turning from her, he rolled himself in his cloak, hunching the fabric around his ears, thereby ending their discussion.

Her mood pensive and uneasy, Miriel lay down too, but sleep did not come for a long time, and when finally she drifted off, it was to dream of being chased across quicksand by a faceless man with hands reaching out to throttle her. He never quite caught her, but by the same token, she never quite escaped because she was weighed down by manacles fashioned of jewel-studded gold.

In the morning, both Nicholas and Miriel were subdued and scarcely spoke to each other as they loaded the mule and continued along the banks of the Welland. In mid-afternoon, they arrived at the town of Stamford.

It was smaller than Nottingham or Lincoln, but it had thriving cloth and leather trades, several churches, a castle, and a Benedictine nunnery. Miriel felt as if all eyes were upon her as she and Nicholas walked up Highgate and approached the bridge into the town. She could not even hide her habit beneath her improvised cloak because it was being used to cover the chest on the mule's back. The wind sliced through her garments, but not as keenly as her fear of being discovered and incarcerated in St Michael's Priory until Mother Hillary arrived to take her back to St Catherine's.

'I need ordinary clothes,' she hissed to Nicholas, certain that a priest they had just passed had given her a strange look. Nuns were seldom seen outside their religious houses and, when they were, they were usually high-ranking women on important business, not novices. They were certainly never accompanied by single male civilians. 'Something quiet and respectable that no one will notice or remark upon.'

They approached the defensive gate in the town walls where a guard was collecting tolls from people entering. He had propped his spear against the stonework and his helmet lay on the ground beside it. He wasn't expecting trouble.

'Keep your eyes down, your hands clasped in front of you, and say nothing,' Nicholas replied. 'Then all folk will see is a pious nun. If you look round with wild eyes and fidget all the time, they will see a runaway for sure.'

'Easier to say than do,' Miriel said with a hint of panic as they drew closer to the guard.

'Just follow my lead,' Nicholas muttered impatiently. 'There are bound to be shops and stalls aplenty in the town where we can garb you more fittingly.'

Almost choking on the lump of fear in her throat, Miriel folded her hands and bowed her head to watch the flare of her skirts as she walked. Her heart thundered against her ribs as they drew abreast of the guard.

'Fine day for the end of the year,' Nicholas said pleasantly as he handed over the penny toll.

'Aye, 'tis that.' The guard looked him and Miriel over with cursory interest. 'You come from roundabouts?'

'Over Newark way,' Nicholas answered in the same, easy tone, and led the mule forwards. 'We are travelling to Sempringham Abbey.' He glanced briefly at Miriel.

It was enough to put the suggestion in the guard's head that Nicholas was an abbey servant and his business legitimate. The soldier nodded, his attention already on the next person in the queue.

'See,' said Nicholas as he and Miriel continued up St Mary's Hill and into the town, 'you can get away with anything if you show the right face to the world.'

Miriel's palms were damp with sweat. 'Mayhap,' she said shakily, 'but I will not feel safe until I am rid of these weeds. What if he had been suspicious? Supposing he had wanted to search us?'

'But he wasn't suspicious because we did not give him cause,' Nicholas said with exasperation. Then he looked at her and his expression softened. He drew her to the side of the road. 'There's a churchyard yonder. Go and pray by one of the graves and I'll find you some clothes in the market.'

Miriel was none too sanguine about entering any kind of religious precinct, but knew she had small choice. Her legs were still trembling from their encounter with the guard, and it would be unwise to wander around the booths and stalls with Nicholas. A nun showing interest in secular women's clothing was bound to be cause for speculation.

'I'll take care of the mule.' She grasped the scuffed, salt-stained bridle that had once belonged to the royal pack pony.

'No.' He clamped his hand over hers. They looked at each other. Miriel wished that she were half a foot taller so that she could meet him eye to eye.

'I will return, I promise,' he said.

Miriel clung stubbornly to the bridle. 'How do I know you'll keep your word?'

'You don't. You'll just have to take me on trust.'

Miriel stared at him, as if she could pierce his intentions just by concentrating on his face. But his sea-dark eyes gave nothing away.

'As I took you on trust when I told you about my family and King John,' he added.

Biting her lip, suddenly feeling small and mean, Miriel released the rein. 'Do not be too long,' she entreated.

Without reply, he turned the mule around and clicked his tongue. Miriel felt a surge of panic as she watched him leave the graveyard. Small and mean or not, her doubts persisted. This might indeed be the last view she ever had of him and the wealth that could change her life. She ought to run after him, grab his arm, and brave the crowds, but for the nonce she was just too tired and cold and frightened. The last two days had taken their toll on her courage and she had none left.

She knelt by one of the graves and clasped her hands, and then, because it seemed disrespectful not to do so, said a prayer for whomever was buried beneath the mound of turf. The cold seeped through her habit and linen undertunic, two damp, dark stains spreading at her knees. She was reminded of the bleak February day when they had buried her grandfather, and with him, sewn up in the shroud, all her hope and security.

Two women crossed the graveyard, taking a short cut from the market place to their homes. They paid her scant attention, a solitary nun, her hands steepled in prayer. Miriel darted a look at the women from beneath her lids and frantically murmured the words of an Ave until they had passed from sight. She wondered what to do if a priest emerged from the church and challenged her, then decided not to think about it. Fixing her gaze on the churchyard entrance, she concentrated with all her might on willing Nicholas to return.

The church bell struck the hour of noon, the heavy bronze clang resounding in her head. At St Catherine's the nuns would be resting over quiet tasks following the midday meal. Sister Euphemia would be standing guard in the cloisters with her switch, her eye cocked for unseemly behaviour among the novices. In the infirmary, Sister Margaret would be napping, her chin on her chest, while Godefe tiptoed around seeing to the patients.

Doubtless Mother Hillary had led them in prayers that their wayward sister would come swiftly to repentance. All that Miriel repented was letting the Abbess down again, but otherwise felt no remorse. Any guilt that might have existed had been cut away with her beautiful hair.

The gateway remained empty. With a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, Miriel began to wonder if her trust had been misplaced. What if he had abandoned her?

A sound from behind made her leap round with a stifled scream, expecting arrest by the incumbent priest. Instead she came face to face with a stocky brown cob. She looked beyond its liquid brown gaze to Nicholas who was holding a second horse too, and the mule. While she had been intent on the gateway, he had come round by the side path.

'Where have you been!' Miriel cried with the fury of relief. 'You said you wouldn't be long. I've been worried out of my wits!'

'I was only as long as it took.' His reasonable tone was in direct contrast to her agitation. 'The horse coper wanted a criminal sum for these two nags. It would have looked strange if I had not bartered him down. And then I had to find some suitable clothes at the rag stall, and that took some doing as well.' He tilted his head and studied her. 'You didn't truly think I would leave you?'

Miriel's eyes began to sting. 'No, of course not,' she snapped, 'but kneeling in the mud at some stranger's graveside is scarcely a pleasant way to mark time.' She knew from the sardonic curve of his lips that he could read her thoughts and it did nothing to improve her humour.

'No, I suppose it isn't,' he agreed and, in almost direct repetition of her act to him at St Catherine's, handed her a bundle of clothing. 'Not the best I could find, but I did not think you would want a laced dress of yellow silk in this weather, and besides, it might have attracted unwanted attention.'

Miriel nodded, thinking that a laced dress of yellow silk would be unfortunate in any weather since she could not wear the colour without looking as if she had a terminal disease.

She unfolded the clothes that Nicholas had brought and shook them out, determinedly putting to the back of her mind the thought that in all likelihood these were the garments of a dead person. The rag stalls relied on the relatives of the deceased to keep them supplied. She had frequently heard them touting for custom in Lincoln's streets: 'Highest prices paid!'

The dress was a shapeless affair cut from two rectangles of coarse woollen fabric with two more rectangles for sleeves. The colour was a dingy brownish-grey that the previous owner had sought to enliven by embroidering the throat, cuffs and hem with overlapping circles of bright green thread. Nicholas had added a plain leather belt, another rectangle of green fabric that Miriel assumed was a wimple, a hood with a sheepskin lining, and a mantle that, while not outworn, had obviously weathered a long career. Miriel pulled a face. The outfit was serviceable and nondescript, but it did nothing for her vanity. Although Nicholas had chosen wisely, she felt resentful. He might at least have included an attractive wimple band instead of the narrow strip of leather lying like a dried-up worm amongst the garments. She thought that on balance she would rather have had the yellow silk.

'What do you think?' he had the foolishness to ask. Miriel shuddered. 'Horrible. They stink of smoke and they've not seen a laundry tub in the God knows how many years since they were first stitched.'

He shrugged. 'Beggars cannot be choosers. Besides, it's not as if you have to wear them next to your skin. Your undergown will protect you and whatever else you've got underneath that.'

Miriel's cheeks grew hot. It was an innocent enough comment, but his reference to her undergarments made her feel vulnerable, not least because her linen loin cloth and coarsely woven hose were a close match except in cleanliness for the garments he was expecting her to don.

Tight-lipped and scowling, she reached to the hem of her habit and dragged it off over her head. For a moment her undergown threatened to depart with it and shame her already compromised modesty, but she managed with a contortion to pull it back down.

The bitter wind cut through the white wool undertunic which was all that now clothed her apart from hose and loin cloth. She did not wear a breast band for her body was well toned and her bosom too small to warrant binding. The slight curve of her breasts and the buds of her chilled nipples were plainly obvious beneath the fabric, and Nicholas stared with a gleam of pleasure.

She saw the direction of his gaze and, with a murderous glare, fought her way into the voluminous grey dress. Beneath the smoke was the sweaty smell of another woman and the lingering aroma of grease and soup from the numerous meals she must have cooked in this gown. Even if it was a good disguise, it was thoroughly disgusting. Donning the garment dislodged the already precarious position of her nun's wimple, and as she caught it in her hand, the cold air bit her naked ears and throat.

'Dear, sweet Christ,' Nicholas said huskily.

She looked up. He was still staring at her, his expression no longer of pleasure, but of horrified shock. 'Your hair! What happened to your lovely hair?'

Miriel raised her hand to touch her viciously shorn scalp. 'They cut it off,' she said, not having to specify which 'they' she meant. 'It was a cure for the sin of vanity, they said - a punishment for the harlotry of letting down my hair to tempt a man in God's house.' Her voice was tight and hard. At the back of her mind she heard the slicing crunch of the shears and felt again the bruising pressure on her upper arms as they held her down. 'Now you see why I could not stay.'

He cursed softly. She thought he muttered something about 'dried-up bitches' but the words were indistinct. Taking the new wimple, she wound it expertly round her head, adding a stylish little twist to one corner and securing the whole with the strip of leather. 'It will grow again,' she said like a general on the battlefield admitting that he has lost the skirmish but has every confidence of winning the war.

'I'm sorry.' There was genuine sympathy and regret in his eyes. 'I did not realise they had treated you so harshly.'