The Marsh King's Daughter (39 page)

'I see.' Robert studied the building work with a thoughtful eye. The other matter nudged at him but he refused to acknowledge its existence. 'Profitable?'

'Yes, but more trouble than sheep,' the steward said drily. 'We've got four lodgers at the moment, housed in those buildings by the wall.' He pointed to a row of neat dwellings far to the right. 'Sometimes the women choose to retire of their own will, but often the choice is made for them by their families who want a safe haven for them.'

'Interesting,' Robert said, knowing full well that 'wanting a safe haven' was a polite term for 'wanting rid'. Doubtless St Catherine's would make a rich profit. His respect for the Abbess increased tenfold.

When he returned from inspecting the flocks on the marshland, dry now in the basking summer heat, she was waiting for him like a little black bird of ill-omen.

'That young man,' she said. 'He was called Nicholas de Caen.'

On the tenth day of September, the heaviness was more oppressive than ever. Miriel was wearing her lightest cotton chemise and silk gown, her thinnest wimple, and still she felt as if she were wilting. The hue of the sky had progressed through the day from high dawn blue, through shades of flax and hyssop, and was now turning the colour of the best woad-dyed cloth, a suggestion of purple at its edges. There was absolute, utter stillness, not the single flutter of a wilting leaf or waft of cloth from linen sheets hung on a line to dry in the yard.

'Going to be a frightener of a storm,' said Hildith, one of the spinners, her eye cocked on the darkening heavens as her fingers teased the wool from distaff to spindle with a dexterity too swift to follow. 'If the harvest's not in, it won't be after this.'

'But it must burst,' Miriel said, her own actions much slower. 'The sky cannot hold any more.' She looked at Will where he lay at her feet, his pink tongue lolling and his little sides heaving like bellows. There had been a storm at sea on that last voyage with Nicholas. She could remember the pattern of the lightning against her eyelids, the slam of the rain as their bodies met and parted, the growl of the thunder covering the sounds they made as they tried not to cry out. Glorious self-destruction. At the time it had been worth the price, but hindsight showed that she had been paying for dross.

Hildith tucked her distaff in her belt and went to retrieve the sheets from the line. Miriel rose and wandered restlessly back to the weaving house. The looms clacked as the weavers changed sheds and wove their shuttles through. Young Walter struggled, his tongue protruding between his teeth in concentration and beads of perspiration clinging to the downy moustache on his upper lip.

Outside she heard the sound of hoof on baked earth and, going to the door, saw Robert ride into the yard and dismount. His garments were travel dusty and his fair complexion the same colour as a length of her best cloth. Sweat was trickling in rivulets down his face. As a pillar of the community it would have been unseemly for him to ride through town clad only in shirt and braies and so he was wearing his tunic and heavy chausses.

Miriel's heart sank. The last thing she wanted to do was kiss him, but she forced herself to go forward and offer him a dutiful welcome on his wet cheek and parched lips. Close up the smell of him leaped through the disguise of spikenard and ambergris and almost made her retch. Through her garments she felt the pressure of his hot, damp hands at her waist.

'You must be dying of thirst,' she said, breaking away. 'Go and sit in the orchard and I'll bring you fresh pressed apple juice. Walter, leave that and attend the horse.'

The youth laid down his shuttle with a look of relief and went to do her bidding. Pulling off his tunic, Robert entered the garth and sat down heavily on the bench beneath the apple tree.

Miriel had promised herself that she would be the perfect wife to Robert, attentive to his every whim in atonement for what she had done behind his back. But the promise in her head was not as easy to fulfil in practice. If their partnership had been one of business, steady, practical and cold, she could have borne the burden easily. It was his physical demands on her that she found hard to bear. She did not melt at the sight of him and she was coming to hate his pawing assaults on her body.

With a heavy heart she carried two goblets of cloudy pressed apple juice into the orchard.

Robert was staring at the darkening sky, emperor purple now over the outline of the cathedral, but as she approached, he turned his eyes on her with a look that was sharp and thoughtful.

'Has your business gone well?' Miriel seated herself beside him, careful to keep a small distance. Even had she enjoyed the physical contact it was too hot for skin to press on skin.

'As to that, I do not know. I have more knowledge, but whether it be for good or ill, I cannot say.'

Miriel arched her brows in question, but he shook his head and gulped down the apple juice. 'Perhaps later,' he said. 'For now I just want to sit here and rest my eyes on you.'

'That's very flattering.' Since Robert was never one to sit still, Miriel was surprised at his admission. Perhaps his years were catching up with him, or the heat of the day had become too oppressive even for his restlessness.

'But the truth. You're a sight to refresh even the most jaded traveller.'

Miriel looked down. Her hands were folded around the base of the goblet in a grip that showed the whiteness of bone through her skin. Accepting compliments had never come easily to her, and when Robert gave them, she wanted to scream with guilt and anger and unworthiness.

He asked after her health. Miriel sipped the apple juice, which at least she could tolerate better than wine. 'Middling,' she said. 'I am still sick to the stomach, especially in the mornings, and if there were more hours in the day, I would sleep through all of them. Perchance I will feel better when this storm has broken.'

The sharp look had returned to Robert's eyes as she spoke and his lips tightened. 'If you do not,' he said, 'then I will dismiss that physician and send for someone with a better knowledge of such maladies.'

The storm shattered over the land an hour later, creating a premature dusk from the dark intensity of the sky. Unclosed shutters jerked at their fastenings or slammed against house walls. Roads became brown torrents and wooden roof shingles streamed like the scales on a sea-serpent. People ran for cover, drawing cloaks over bowed heads, and those animals not penned in shelters turned their rumps to the rain and huddled together for comfort and protection.

Within the house, bathed and refreshed, Robert sat casting his accounts by the light of a candelabrum, the light flickering as the wind hurled against the shutters and found gaps through which to squeeze. The wall hangings fluttered and the smoke from the hearth fire sporadically blew back upon itself instead of making its orderly way up the chimney.

Miriel sat in her favourite curule chair, Will in her lap. She had some sewing to hand, but had scarcely touched it, preferring to gaze trance-like at one of the embroideries on the wall, a biblical scene of Noah preparing to set sail in an ark that very much resembled a large cog. Robert paused from counting the notches on the tally stick in his hand and studied her with a tension almost akin to the heaviness of the storm. She had scarcely eaten a mouthful of supper this evening. There were deep circles beneath her eyes and gaunt hollows in her cheeks. Always slender, she was now close to naught but skin and bone. Pining for de Caen? Mayhap, but if so, there had been several years when she had not pined. Or perhaps they had been lovers throughout that time, but now he had a new woman. That would explain much. All he had to do was ask her. Simple. Except that he knew he would be unable to bear her reply if it was the wrong one.

The tally stick snapped between his fingers. He gazed at the broken ends and very gently set them down on the trestle. He would not lose control - of himself or others. Like the clients whose wool provided his livelihood, Miriel was his property and he would brook no trespass. He had liked and trusted Nicholas de Caen, and was not going to find better vessels to take his wool to Flanders. But the young man had committed treason. Again he looked at Miriel. So had she. A vast pain of love and grief welled up inside him, but, unlike the storm, he did not permit it to burst. Instead he gathered it within himself, holding it close to his breast like an infant, and let it take sustenance from the blood of his heart.

The physician gave the flask of urine an ostentatious swirl and held it up to the light glittering through the shutters.

Miriel watched him from the bed, her hand pressed to her aching stomach. She had been sick three times that morning and at the slightest provocation knew that she would have to dive for the slop pot again. She felt weakly, wretchedly ill. Perhaps she was dying. If she was, then she hoped it would be soon, today if possible.

'Well?' demanded Robert. 'Can you tell me what ails my wife, Master Andrew, or shall I dismiss you from my service?'

Master Andrew looked down the Roman curve of his nose at Robert. The size of the feature was emphasised by the stark linen physician's bonnet covering his hair and tied with strings beneath his chin. 'These things have to be studied,' he said in a supercilious tone. 'I cannot make a diagnosis until I have all the facts.' He swirled the urine again and then sniffed it. Miriel closed her eyes and turned her head to the wall.

'I would say that you have all the facts that you need,' Robert said irritably.

The Roman nose flared impressively. 'Allow me to be the judge of that.'

'Then allow me to show you the door and keep the coin in my pouch!'

Master Andrew drew himself to his full height and towered over Robert by almost a twelve-inch, the effect somewhat marred by the fact that he was as thin as a rake and Robert had the build of an ox. 'As far as I can tell without a more intimate examination, your wife is suffering from the natural condition of pregnancy, the symptoms exaggerated by the imbalance of her humours.' His tone suggested that he had been deeply insulted.

Miriel's eyes flew open. 'What?' She sat up and was overcome by another heaving surge of nausea. 'Do not be so foolish!' The last word disappeared in a bout of retching as she hung over the slop bowl.

The physician's head darted like a heron's. 'It is the common condition of breeding women to vomit and purge in the early months,' he said icily. 'You say that you cannot remember the time of your last flux except that it was more than two months ago, and that too is a sign of your condition.'

Miriel shook her head. 'No!' she gasped between heaves. 'It cannot be. I am barren, I know I am!'

'In seven months we shall see who is right. You have all the signs. Indeed, I would suggest that you engage the services of a good midwife to see you through the coming months and the ordeal of the birth.'

'I am not with child!' A note of hysteria entered Miriel's voice. The notion of becoming a mother terrified her. The word ordeal stuck in her mind, filling her with terror. She knew that she was bound to suffer terribly because she had sinned.

She heard him offering stilted congratulations, and Robert's gruff response as he paid the fee and saw him out. Exhausted, Miriel lay back on the bed and pressed the palms of her hands to her flat belly. It was impossible that a child was growing inside her. And yet she was aware of her ignorance on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth. With her grandfather as her mentor and her mother's reticence on the subject, she had grown up with scant knowledge of the matter. She understood that mating led to conception because she had often seen animals in the wool yard and her grandfather was forever at war with the local dogs when his mastiff bitch was in season. But there had never been enough contact with other women to learn the lore and lexicon of human symptoms. No friends when she was growing up to share their experiences as they became wives and mothers themselves, only her grandfather's business clients, and then nuns. She had never felt so frightened or alone.

Robert returned and sat on the bed. He put his hand on her brow in a tender, sympathetic gesture, and then he sighed. There was an expression of deep sadness in his eyes and a downward curve to his lips. It occurred to Miriel that while most couples would be hugging themselves with joy at the prospect of an heir to their endeavours, she and Robert were acting as if they were at a wake.

'I thought I was barren,' she whispered again and clutched at him for support as she had done in the days following Gerbert's death. 'Do you think the physician could be wrong?'

Robert shook his head. 'Mayhap, but I doubt it. And, sweetheart, I am sorely afraid that you are mistaken.' He drew a deep breath, and held her away so that their eyes could meet with clarity. 'It is not you who is barren; it is I.'

A silence fell and stretched for eternity. Miriel swallowed. A great numbness flowed through her body. 'You?' Her lips formed the word soundlessly.

'Three wives and none of them has quickened by my seed,' he said, watching her intently. 'And nor have the women with whom I have lain for casual comfort between states of wedlock. I am not a man to doubt miracles, but neither am I one to believe in them without due cause. If you are with child, sweetheart, then I suspect the intervention of Nicholas de Caen, not God.'

The numbness spread, blinding her eyes and ears, stopping her breath. She had the sensation of falling down a long, dark tunnel into nothing, but before she could claim welcome oblivion, it was snatched from her as the numbness was shattered by a cold deluge that brought her gasping back into the light.