The Marsh King's Daughter (32 page)

Miriel turned to the back of the booth and poured wine from a flask into a horn cup. 'Drink,' she said, 'and in the name of God calm yourself.'

Robert's nostrils closed and flared like those of a captured wild horse. He glared at the cup in her hand as if he might dash it to the ground. Then he snatched it from her and gulped deeply. 'He's stealing my customers too - offering them bribes and telling them that I make too much profit.' He drew his fist across the red droplets glistening in his beard.

'How many has he persuaded?' Miriel refilled the cup.

'Two at least. Edwin of Cotmore and Thomas Bowlegs.'

'But they're only recent clients,' Miriel said reasonably. 'And they came to you from someone else. It seems to me that they won't be satisfied anywhere.' She chose her words tactfully. Robert, she knew, was as forceful in his business dealings as in all aspects of his life and certainly not above pilfering weaker men's clients if the opportunity arose. Now that the same was happening to him, his indignation knew no bounds.

Robert took the refilled cup and drank more slowly, his complexion a lighter pink now and his breathing steadier. 'Like as not, but I still won't have that rogue spreading his poison and unsettling the others.'

'So, what will you do?'

He gave her a swift glance in which she saw calculation and the battle light of a man thinking on his feet. 'Talk to my clients, persuade them that I'm still the best man to sell their wool and make them a profit.' He took a last swallow from the cup and tipped the dregs on the ground. 'If I must, then I will offer them a better bargain than de la Pole.'

Miriel could see that the thought hurt him. The other merchant's action not only threatened his profit, it threatened his manhood too. 'You must do what you see fit,' she said by way of sympathy and support. 'De la Pole would not want your clients unless he knew they were the best.'

Robert nodded grimly, but found a smile for her. Briefly he cupped her face in his hands and gave her a hard kiss on the lips. 'I choose the best in everything,' he said.

Miriel sighed and watched him stride off. She was content in her marriage to Robert because the advantages to her business outweighed the disadvantages of living with him. He obtained the best wool for her looms and shipped her cloth with his fleeces, thus lessening the cost for both of them. She was grateful for his unflagging strength and admiring of his drive, but sometimes those very traits became too much. Like a bull-baiting dog, Robert would not relax his jaws for a single moment. Even at home he was planning and plotting how to grab a larger share. That was why he had displayed such affront at de la Pole's attempt to do the same. Competition was to be expected, but competition that came too close was an affront.

The beat of a tabor floated across the fairground from the jongleurs who were ending their act with an acrobatic dance. Among the crowd, a familiar figure applauded and cast his own handful of small coin into the dust for the tumblers to pick up. Miriel's breath caught and her heart skipped against her ribs.

In the six months since their conversation by the barges, she had seen Nicholas only once, and then in passing on a visit to Boston. An inner voice told her that contact was dangerous, that if she had any sense she would run and hide. But the only thing that Miriel had ever run from was a convent, and with this man for company.

As the dance ended, he strolled over to the booth and nodded pleasantly to Walter and his customer. Then he smiled at Miriel, the gesture putting attractive creases in his cheeks. 'Mistress Willoughby, it is good to see you again. I trust I find you in good health?' Courteous and smooth, playing out the role for Walter and the client.

Miriel's stomach plummeted. She had encountered men far more handsome in the perfect physical sense of the word, but none as attractive, nor with such knowledge of her past. 'I am well, thank you,' she responded, forcing a smile of her own. 'And yourself and Mistress Magdalene?'

His eye-corners creased with amusement. 'Mistress Magdalene is in fine fettle, although she has not accompanied me on this occasion. She has more than one fish on her hook.' He smoothed his hand over a bolt of the Florentine damask.

'So you don't want a few ells of this for a gift then?' Miriel held up her measuring stick.

He shook his head and smiled. 'Contrary to what some believe, I am not made of money.'

Miriel pulled a face at the remark, innocent on the surface, but laden with meaning to those who had reason to see beyond. He was never going to let her forget. 'Then how can I help you? If it's Robert you are seeking, he is occupied with business matters, although he may want to talk with you in the course of them.'

Nicholas began to shake his head, but then a gleam entered his eyes and she saw him change his mind. 'Well, yes, I did want to see him on certain matters, and I was hoping to beg an invitation to dine since the food and company of your household were so excellent last time. It would be combining business with pleasure.'

Against her better judgement, Miriel found herself agreeing and then wondered at her own propensity for self-inflicted wounds. The verbal sparring would continue; the game on a knife edge would continue. Did she want to keep him in her sight from distrust for what he might be doing out of it? Or was it just for the painful pleasure of looking at him? She feared that there was too much of the second in her reasoning, but it was too late to withdraw. Like the jongleurs, she would have to take the risk of juggling with fire.

They waited far into the dusk for Robert's return and, finally, Miriel gave instructions for her husband's portion to be set aside and the food served before it spoiled.

'I know Rob had business, but I did not think he would be this late,' she said with nervous irritation.

Nicholas shrugged. 'A springtide market day is always busy for merchants - as you must know yourself.'

Miriel pushed at the broiled trout on her trencher. She had little appetite, her stomach was all clenched up in knots. 'I know, but I'm worried about him.'

Nicholas started to rise. 'Do you want me to go and find him?'

'No.' She waved him to be reseated. 'I'll send Samuel. He knows the places Robert's likely to be.' She summoned the servant and within moments the man had swept on his cloak and hurried out on his errand.

Miriel continued to pick at her food and told Nicholas why she was worried about her husband. 'Supposing there is war between him and Maurice de la Pole. I have seen such things before. When I was a little girl, my grandfather fell out with another weaver over wool supplies and it came to blows in the street. The other man even tried to burn down our warehouse. For a time it was very ugly, and none of us dared venture out unless we had an armed escort. More recently there was trouble with my former stepfather when he lost some of his trade to my weavers.'

Nicholas pursed his lips. 'From what I have seen of your husband, he is strong enough to hold his own.'

'So was my grandfather.' She made an irritated sound. 'I know that Robert is strong, but I don't want any repercussions flying back to my roost.'

'You mean that de la Pole might use you to get at your husband?'

She nodded, and then she gave a bleak laugh. 'Are you not disgusted with me? My husband in possible danger, and all I can think about is the effect on myself?'

'Neither disgusted, nor surprised,' he said wryly, and pointed his eating knife at her trencher. 'Eat something. You'll feel better.'

'I won't; I'll feel sick.' But even so, she went through the motions of flaking off a piece of flesh and putting it in her mouth.

The door opened and Samuel returned on a bustle of rain-laden wind. 'I've found him, mistress,' he announced with the triumph of a task accomplished. 'He's at The Green Bush tavern. Sends his apologies and says that he's still got business to finish that might keep him late. He'll see Master Nicholas on the morrow.'

Miriel thanked Samuel and dismissed him. Then she leaned back, weak with relief but still not hungry. 'I have been worrying needlessly,' she murmured, 'but you see what scars the past leaves on us?'

He raised his brows questioningly.

Miriel shook her head. 'My father seduced my mother, got her with child and went on his way uncaring. When my grandfather died, he left me at the mercy of my stepfather who cast me into St Catherine's. And then there was Gerbert, God rest his soul.' She made the sign of the Cross on her breast.

Nicholas turned the goblet in his hand, swirling the surface of the wine. 'You are saying that you have always been abandoned by those who should have cared for you,' he said thoughtfully.

Miriel pursed her lips in consideration. 'In truth, yes. Either that or they have mistreated me because of my sex.'

'And fending for yourself has forced you to become a she-wolf?'

'Is that how you see me?'

'I have a few scars to prove it,' he said drily. 'I know you will fight tooth and claw to protect every inch and more of what you consider yours.'

He was astute, and it amused Miriel that he did not say 'what is yours' but rather 'what you consider yours'. The matter of Empress Mathilda's crown still loomed between them and, despite the truce, it was obvious he had no intention of letting the matter lie.

So be it. Lifting the candle from the centre of the trestle with sudden decision, she rose to her feet. 'Come,' she said, 'I want to show you something.'

Draining his cup, he rose too. 'Is it what I think?'

Miriel shrugged. 'Since I do not know what you are thinking, I cannot say,' she answered demurely, and swept ahead of him out of the room and into the passage. His shadow clambered with hers in the gilded darkness as she opened the door which Samuel had left unbolted against the return of the master.

'Don't tell me you keep it in a stable?'

'Why not? Our Lord was born in one,' she retorted and led him outside into a clinging, cold drizzle. The candle hissed and sputtered, and she had to shade it with her hand. The heavy smell of smoking wax filled the air. Puddles winked in and out, sparkling with black light, and the shapes of other buildings loomed as deeper areas of darkness. The pack ponies shifted position and snorted in their stalls, but it was not to them that she led him, but to the door of the wool shed. Giving him the candle, she took a large iron key from the hoop at her waist and set it in the door.

'On the eve before I left for St Catherine's they bolted me in here,' she told him. 'I had fought with my stepfather and almost burned the house down around his ears.' She set the key in the iron grate and twisted, bracing her wrist against the heaviness of the lock until it gave with a sudden lurch. 'When you are seized by the hair and beaten, you are not supposed to fight back.'

'But you did.'

She took a sidelong glance at his face, uplit by the candle. His expression was thoughtful, but there was no inkling of what those thoughts might be. 'Wouldn't you?' she said, and set her hip to the sturdy wooden doors, opening them upon the vast cavern of the wool storehouse. As usual the pungency of unwashed fleeces and the mustiness of stone hit like a slap, then softened to a welcoming caress. Beside her, she felt Nicholas draw a sharp breath.

'You become used to the smell,' she said and, taking the candle, went to light a lantern standing on a small wooden shelf.

He nodded and gazed up at the thick roof timbers. 'Like the sea,' he said. 'First it seizes your breath, then it gives it back, and even when you're far away and doing other things it only takes the echo of its scent to fill you to the brim.'

'Yes, that's exactly how it is,' Miriel said with a pang of delight that he understood. Robert had no inclination to discuss matters beyond the practical and although it had been easy to adapt her manner to his, there were times when her thoughts went begging for a kindred spirit to share them.

She watched Nicholas walk around the warehouse, poking and inspecting. There was not much to see that was different from any other apart from the washing pits for the fleeces. She carried the lantern over to him and touched his arm. 'You will not find it,' she said, smiling. 'Even if it was under your nose, you would still be hard pressed.'

'So, are you going to show me, or do I have to guess like a twelfth night mummer?' He glanced down at her fingers on his sleeve and then into her face. They stood as close as lovers and suddenly Miriel's mouth was dry and her legs weak.

'Both,' she said hoarsely and, lifting her hand, led him to another door beyond the wash pits. It swung open on a small counting house with a table and curved box chair, shelves, and crude wooden coffer.

'It's in there?' he pointed to the coffer.

Miriel gestured. 'Look and see.' She leaned against the door, welcoming the cold, solid wood at her back.

He studied her as if trying to decide if she was teasing him, then stooped to the lid of the chest. 'It's locked.'

Miriel searched amongst the collection of keys at her waist, her fingers clumsy and hampered by the almost darkness. She found the one she wanted, but couldn't free it from the ring.

She cursed and struggled, the jingling of the keys magnified by her discomposure into a clamour as loud as church bells. Nicholas returned to help her. He was more dextrous than her, but still it took a few moments, and in that time they stood so close that their clothing clung and touched and, behind it, the pliable heat of their bodies.