The Marsh King's Daughter (31 page)

The speed of his step increased, the force of heel and toe on the footpath thrusting him forward. 'Your fair share, I said.'

'Well, there you have one of your reasons. My notion of fair and yours are not the same.' Miriel lengthened her stride to keep up with him.

'Jesu,' he grimaced, 'I would hate to be one of your customers.'

'What makes you think I'd sell cloth to you in the first place?'

'Your eye for a profit.'

Miriel ground her teeth. 'Now who is wasting the opportunity to talk?'

'Then tell me why you did it,' he said vehemently. 'Why you had to leave in such an underhand manner? Fair or not — and we both see differently on the matter — you knew that it would leave a taint. Surely you must have lived in dread of ever meeting up with me again.'

'I thought the risk worth taking,' Miriel said bleakly. She ducked her head so that all she could see was the kick of her gown as she walked and nothing of his fierce expression. 'I will tell you now for the one and only time that you are right: I have felt guilt about what I did, and I hoped that a moment like this would never come about.'

He made a sound in his throat, whether of contempt or acceptance she could not tell. For a while they walked in taut silence, and then he said, 'You still have not told me why you did it.'

The smells of the river bank came strongly on the breeze as they approached the water: the eye-watering whiff of the tannery pits, and the woad vats at the dyers' establishments, where plants and urine decayed in a blend of evil stench to produce the deep blue dye for the cloth that came from the fulling mills upstream.

Miriel held her breath and put her sleeve to her face until they had passed the area. Beside her, she was aware of Nicholas choking and cursing under his breath.

'Small wonder that they banish these trades to the outside of towns,' he said in a strangled voice.

'But folk want their soft and supple leather, they want their richly coloured cloth,' Miriel replied with a shrug. 'This is the price they pay for luxury.' She tugged at the woad-blue tunic he was wearing to emphasise her point.

Nicholas grimaced. 'Give me the smell of the open sea and a plain linen shirt any day,' he said, then nailed her with a firm stare. 'An explanation,' he prompted.

Miriel gnawed her underlip and flicked him a glance from beneath her lashes. 'I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life, or so powerful. It called out to me, and I could not bear to think that you might tear out the jewels and melt it down.'

'I would not have done that!' he said sharply.

'On the marshland, when you recovered it, you were not so sure. You gave me no firm answer when I asked you, and I feared that it was because you intended to destroy it.'

He shook his head. 'If it crossed my mind, the notion never went further. It would have been sacrilege.'

'I was not to know how you thought,' Miriel said defensively, and when he did not reply, made an exasperated gesture. 'Do not ask what came over me; I cannot explain it even to myself. All I knew then was that I had to have that crown to look upon, to touch.'

He nodded as if in confirmation of a truth he had already suspected. 'So, where is it now?'

'Safe,' she said shortly. 'No one knows of the place except me, and that is the way it shall remain until I decide otherwise.'

He looked at her, his gaze steady and assessing, increasing her discomfort until she was forced to speak again.

'I cannot give you its value in coin, for it is beyond price, but I can return to you the marks of silver that I took.'

'Generous of you,' he said drily. 'And supposing I want more?'

Miriel halted. They had arrived at the quayside and numerous barges and punts bobbed at their moorings. Two men were operating a wooden crane, unloading bales of supplies from a nef with a red sail. 'Are you asking because you do, or just to watch me twist and turn?' she demanded.

He rubbed his jaw. 'A little of both, I think. Perhaps allowing you to pay back the silver is letting you off too lightly for what you did, but then I remind myself that you saved my life, and that too is beyond price.'

'Then throw away the tally; call it quits. Each of us is capable of damning the other, and that must surely be a kind of balance.'

He shook his head and gave a reluctant laugh. 'Aye, the balance of a knife edge.'

'But what is the alternative?'

Three barges were moored in a row like a family of ducks. A new smell clung to their clinker-built strakes, the wooden bones and sinews of the vessels clean and sharp, without fuzzing of weed or barnacle. Nicholas leaped down into one of the boats, and it set up a small shuddering along its length as it absorbed the force of his landing.

'There isn't one.' He held out his hand, inviting her on board, inviting her to trust his grip. Somewhat gingerly, Miriel placed her fingers in his and stepped on to the deck, ducking her head to avoid the hemp stays securing the mast. His touch was warm and dry, his skin tough across the palms in contrast to the fine clothes he wore.

'Then we live with it.' She removed her hand from his for the contact disturbed her. Unbidden, an image of him stroking the whore's long red hair filled her eyes.

'And die.' He gave her a long, measured look. 'I will not quit the tally,' he said, 'but I will agree to a truce. Master Willoughby brings a deal of custom my way, and there will be times when you and I will have to share each other's company - my words last night were more practical truth than threat. I would rather it was in a bond of friendship than enmity -agreed?'

'Agreed,' Miriel nodded stiffly. It was the reason she had come to see him, to take the thunder out of the storm somehow. But she had the suspicion that although she had succeeded, she was only storing up trouble for later.

He stepped over the sail of reefed canvas and walked to the stern. 'She'll be loaded with bales of cloth for an Italian merchant and sailed to Boston. Then her burden will be transferred to the Pandora and taken across the North Sea and up the Rhine with a cargo of alabaster.' He flashed her a smile. 'You should come one day.'

Miriel gazed downriver to the bustle on the bridge. 'Perhaps one day I will,' she murmured.

'I know it is none of my business,' Magdalene said, 'but is it wise to have an affair with the wife of one of your best customers?' At the market booths she had bought herself a ring of twisted gold and silver wire and she was admiring it on her hand as she rode pillion behind Nicholas on the road to Boston.

Nicholas's eyelids tensed with irritation and amusement. How quickly scenes were assimilated, misconstrued, and the wrong conclusions made. 'I'm not having an affair with her.' For a start, Miriel wouldn't lower her guard so much as an inch.

'Then why the secrecy? Why dismiss me with a pat on the head and a bag of coins if you had nothing to hide?' 'You like your ring, don't you?'

'Yes, I do, but that is not what I asked.' She tilted her pert nose in the air. 'I know men and women, it's my trade, so do not tell me that there is not something between you and her.'

Nicholas repressed the urge to turn round and tell her either to mind her own business or walk the rest of the way home. He could not deny the sharpness of Magdalene's perception. She was barking up the right tree, except at the wrong branch. 'I tell you, I am not having an affair with Miriel Willoughby,' he replied with laboured patience and a pang at the mention of her name. 'As you say, it would be unwise given the status of her husband, although, in truth, I do not need his custom to survive. It was business that we had to discuss - a delicate matter concerning a cargo from some years ago.'

Magdalene was silent for a time, chewing this over. 'Her husband doesn't know about it, does he, or she would not have waited until he was out of the way?'

'What she tells her husband is her concern.' Sensing his tension, the horse jibbed and sidled, so that Magdalene had to make a grab for the crupper strap. 'You are making a great ocean out of a little puddle.'

Magdalene shrugged. 'The way she looked at me in your bed at The Angel, I could be forgiven for thinking that something was afoot between the two of you. If looks could kill, I would have been dead. I know jealousy when I see it.'

That was interesting. Perhaps the attraction was another reason why they fought each other with words, keeping at bay what would be more complicated to accept than reject. 'It wasn't the jealousy of a mistress, I promise you,' he said. 'And if I was going to have a liaison with her, I would not have brought you all the way to Lincoln for companionship, would I?'

Magdalene thought about that while she continued to admire the ring on her finger, and then with a sudden change of mood, flung her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek into the soft wool of his cloak. 'No, you are right,' she said. 'If there was any jealousy, it was mine.'

Feeling unworthy, Nicholas made a silent promise that he would make it up to Magdalene and buy her a brooch to match the ring.

It was market day in Lincoln and mild spring weather following on the heels of blustery squalls had brought folk out in their droves.

Miriel stood at her drapery booth and gorged herself on the colour and bustle of her surroundings. She had always loved market days. Missing them had not been the least of her trials at St Catherine's. Here she was in her element. So was Walter the apprentice weaver. He was proving surprisingly adept at selling the cloth, and she was beginning to think that his future might lie in that direction rather than in the weaving itself. He was never going to attain the calibre of her Flemings at the looms, but he surely had the gift of tongues.

They watched a troupe of jongleurs entertaining the crowds with a display of music and acrobatics. Such folk always made Miriel uneasy. Her father had been one of them and she worried that someday she might see a man with honey-brown eyes tumbling for a living or throwing knives, his face gaunt with hunger and raddled by years of living from hand to mouth.

Today, however, she could bear to watch. None of the three was more than thirty years old, and the folk in the crowd were cheerfully disposed to reward them with a bounty of loose change.

'I wouldn't want to live like that.' Walter screwed up his freckled face. 'Give me a roof over my head and a steady wage any day.'

Miriel smiled and ruffled his hair. 'There but for the grace of God go we all,' she murmured. As she spoke, her gaze travelled beyond the three performers, caught by the familiar figure of her husband. He was talking rapidly to another merchant and it was obvious from the abrupt gesticulations and the jut of his golden beard that he was far from happy.

Moments later, he detached himself from the conversation and stalked across the road to Miriel's booth, his cloak flying and his expression grim. Without pause for consideration, he swept straight through the jongleurs' performance, scattering the wooden juggling batons from the hands of the woman performer. Neither by apology nor snarl did he acknowledge that he was even aware of having caused a disruption.

Walter, always clumsy and unsure in the presence of the master, wiped nervous hands down his tunic and busied himself with a customer who was tentatively fingering a bolt of green serge.

Miriel braced herself to face her husband. 'Whatever's the matter?' His complexion was dusky red and his eyes glassy with temper.

'That son of a whore Maurice de la Pole is snatching my business from under my nose - promising higher prices per sarple and taking less commission. This is my territory; he has no right.'