The Marsh King's Daughter (50 page)

It was late afternoon and almost curfew when Miriel arrived in Lincoln. The sunset flamed behind the trees in the orchard, painting their sparse black outlines on a backdrop of hazy gold. White mist swathed around her ankles as she hastened up from the river to the house.

She was greeted by the permanent servants who were surprised but not alarmed by her sudden appearance and set about preparing a meal of bread and pottage for herself and her escort. A swift enquiry revealed that there had been no sign of Robert. If his intention was to return to Lincoln, he had not done so yet and she was ahead of him.

She had no notion of what Robert was going to do next. Pursue her? Let her go? Not the latter, she thought. He had fought too hard and immersed himself too deeply to draw back. It was a question of evading him and securing Nicholas's release. They were her most important goals for the nonce. She would struggle with all else when the time came.

While the men of her escort sat down to eat, she took a lantern and, keys in hand, crossed the cobbled courtyard to the weaving shed and counting house. The evening was cast with blue light from the rising moon. It slanted through the shutters in thin bars of illumination, aiding her lantern as she moved with the silent swiftness of familiarity between the looms, the tablet frames, the baskets filled with skeins of coloured yarn and the long bench where the bolts of cloth were smoothed and folded.

The lock and hinges of the counting-house door had been recently oiled after the damp early spring. The key turned soundlessly and the door opened on a cool gust of air. Miriel stepped over the threshold and stood the lantern in a small aumbry set in the wall. On the trestle table stood a neat pile of counters and tally sticks and a set of scales with brass pans. Behind the trestle was a cushioned bench with a panelled back rest. To either side of that were the iron-bound chests that contained the rewards of Miriel's labours. And one chest in particular.

In her mind's eye she saw the gleam of its hidden secret. A ransom fit for royalty - or to reprieve the love of her' soul. Miriel knelt on the floor at the side of the chest and freed the catch for a last look at the crown of the Empress Mathilda. Drawing the silk wrapping from the gleam of gold and pearls, she remembered the last time she had knelt here in darkness with Nicholas beside her as if in reverence at a shrine. Then the wild and tender fury of their lovemaking which had both sanctified and desecrated. Miriel touched the crown, absorbing the feel of the craftsman's skill into her fingertips. It was indeed an artefact without price and she would never finish paying the cost of the coveting. Her hand moved lightly down one of the gold fringes to the pearl trefoil trembling on its end while she recalled the pleasures and pains of the flesh.

At length, sighing, she restored the crown to its wrappings and its hiding place and rose to her feet, brushing dusty patches from her gown at the knees. A slight musty smell of damp warred with those of charcoal and the pervading aroma of wool. Miriel inhaled deeply, taking steadiness from such familiarity. Turning to the other chests, she set to work.

That night she slept uneasily on the barge, her cloak for a blanket and her pillow one of her gowns rolled up and thrust hard against the wooden chest. Two men from her escort had taken it from the counting-house and borne it down to the riverside. Now the same two men stood watch while their four companions slept like a row of fish in a barrel in the prow of the barge, leaving Miriel the mid-section.

The night deepened into a chill, dark silence broken only by the lapping of the river against the barge's strakes and the snores of the sleeping men. Miriel dreamed that she was alone at sea on a huge, white-painted nef with a mast of solid gold and a sail of billowing tawny silk bordered with outlandish writing. On the horizon a storm was brewing. Dazzles of lightning split the bank of purple cloud, illuminating it from within, and she could see the rain striking the surface of the sea in a wind-driven veil. The water beneath her grew choppy in anticipation of the storm and she knew that she did not have much time. She had to find Nicholas and rescue him before the lightning struck, but she had been searching for hours already without luck and she did not know what to do now except cling to the great golden mast and cry his name.

As the wind lifted her hair and blew it like a ragged banner across her vision, she thought she heard an answering shout. She ran to the side and looked over the wash strake at the deep, wind-ruffled sea. A dark head, sleek as a seal's, bobbed just beyond the distance of a grapnel rope. She screamed his name and although the sound was torn away across the heaving green whitecaps he heard her, for he looked up and shouted a reply, and began swimming towards her. Lightning split the world from firmament to sea and thunder echoed across the sky like an ogre roaring into the sockets of a skull. Miriel's eyes were blinded by a rush of liquid gold as the deck beneath her started to melt. Sobbing with fear and effort, she seized a coil of rope and succeeded in fastening it around her waist just as the ship dissolved completely and she was plunged into deep, green water.

It was cold and vast, salty as human essence, an enormous womb. Miriel was churned and tossed like an embryo in its vastness until suddenly she felt the umbilical cord of rope snag tight. She was pulled in sharp, hand-over-hand surges until the sea-coldness was replaced by the solid heat of another body and she found herself breast to breast, thigh to thigh with Nicholas. She opened her mouth to gasp his name, but he cupped her face and the heat of his lips took hers and his own love words filled her mouth and were absorbed through her body in waves of liquid heat.

The storm burst over them, flashing and roaring like a huge serpent. She clung to Nicholas, gripping him fiercely, determined that nothing should ever sunder them again. He took the rope and bound it about them, but instead of making her feel secure, its constriction began to burn her flesh and she screamed in pain.

Her dream eyes flashed open on a world of reality. Rain was slashing down, cold and unsavoured by salt, and she was indeed bound by a rope, a narrow length of hemp twine wrapped round and round her wrists. Instead of being bound to Nicholas, however, the other end of the cord was gripped by a mail-clad soldier with a sword at his hip. There were other soldiers with him, all armed to the teeth, the rivets of their mail gleaming as if fashioned of raindrops. Miriel's escort stood in a miserable huddle, held at sword-point.

Miriel struggled to sit up. 'What is the meaning of this?' she demanded in fury and fear. 'Who are you?'

'My name is Milo de Vere, mistress,' said her captor coldly, and there was a curl of scorn to his upper lip. 'I'm one of the sheriff's adjutants.'

'I've done nothing wrong!' Miriel spat. 'Release me at once!'

He inclined his head. 'Indeed I will, mistress, but only into the hands of your husband,' he said, and gave the rope he had been holding to the man who had been standing behind him. 'It is for him to decide what happens to you now. I know what I would do if you were my wife.'

'Robert!' Miriel almost choked on the word as she looked upon her husband. His battered face was ravaged by lack of sleep and his usually immaculate clothes were travel-stained and rumpled.

'Surprised to see me, sweetheart?' he asked with a grim smile that creased his eye-corners but did not light the eyes themselves. 'Well, it's less than I am to see you, and fortunate that I arrived when I did. A runaway wife who robs her husband's coffers to take the money to her lover deserves all that she gets.' He wound the cord around his fist and yanked. 'Get up.'

Miriel needed no prompting. All vestige of sleep had vanished and she was on her feet in a trice. 'The coin is mine!' she spat. 'I touched none of yours. Indeed, I would not want it, stained with murder three times over.' She pitched her voice so that Milo de Vere could hear every word. 'How many more before you shore your breaches? Where will you hide my corpse when you're done?'

Robert wearily shook his head. 'I can only put your persistence in these falsehoods down to an imbalance of your humours after losing your child,' he said. 'Indeed, it grieves me to see you like this.'

'Then let me go,' Miriel demanded, 'and you need never see me again.'

'Tempting, but it would be irresponsible of me in your present state, and I haven't moved heaven and earth to bar your path and then just step aside.' He chewed the inside of his mouth and looked her up and down. 'I'm here to save you from yourself, and, I admit, to preserve my dignity.' He looked over his shoulder to the impassive Milo de Vere. 'You can understand that, I hope, sir?'

The soldier nodded. 'Yes, sir,' you can depend on my discretion.'

A look passed between them and, in the brightening dawn, Miriel recognised Milo de Vere. He was a member of the minor nobility, the younger son of a cadet house with but a small parcel of land to his name, land that was intensively grazed by sheep. Robert dealt with his wool clip and, in view of de Vere's connections with the sheriff, had always been disposed to treat him most generously. If Robert could buy death, then loyalty was a cinch.

'Of course he can,' Miriel sneered. 'How much did you pay him? Thirty pieces of silver?'

Robert's hand flashed out and cracked across her face. 'Enough!' he hissed. 'Keep that tongue of yours behind your teeth, or I will do it for you with a wad of your precious cloth!'

Miriel's eyes watered with tears of pain and fury. Her cheek was numb and her neck ached from the whiplash of the blow. The soldiers were watching in silence, but she saw not a single look of censure on any of their faces. Those who were not impassive obviously thought that Robert was totally justified.

He seized her roughly by the elbow and dragged her from the barge on to the towpath. 'We'll talk more about this at home,' he said, the implication being to the other men that once behind closed doors he was going to give her the thrashing of her life, which dignity prevented him from doing in public.

'I don't have a home with you,' Miriel said through her teeth.

His grip tightened on her arm. 'You do for tonight,' he growled and started to drag her along. She cast a glance over her shoulder and saw two of de Vere's men hefting the travelling chest off the barge. The others, on de Vere's instructions, were mustering around Martin Wudecoc's sailors.

'Don't worry,' Robert said with a tight grin. 'Your friends will be released once they've been given a taste of hospitality in gaol. A few good strokes of the lash should quell their eagerness for aiding and abetting theft.'

'You bastard,' Miriel hissed.

'It wasn't me who was born out of wedlock,' Robert answered with a lift of his shoulders, 'nor who bore one.'

Miriel launched herself at him, spitting and kicking, but was brought up short as Robert wound the end of her wrist rope around her neck and drew it tight. 'I hope I do not have to leash you like a dog,' he said with mild distaste.

Miriel choked and clawed, fighting for air. He slackened the pressure a little, enough to let breath tear down her windpipe. 'I'll do it every time you defy me,' he said. 'And yes, it will be for your own good.'

Wheezing, Miriel clutched her burning throat. Solicitous now, he uncoiled the rope from her neck and, wrapping his arm firmly around her elbow, drew her along with him.

'It doesn't matter,' she said, still defiant, if wise enough not to fight him physically. 'Even without my help, Martin will still raise the ransom. He knows that you are responsible for sinking the Empress and trying to arrange Nicholas's death. Your time is borrowed whatever you do.'

'Everyone's time is borrowed from God, sweetheart,' Robert replied with a shrug. 'And Martin Wudecoc and your lover do not appear to have got the better of me yet.'

They arrived at the house. Dismissing the goggling servants, Robert bade the soldiers leave the chest in the main room and paid them each a silver penny from his pouch. Will bounded forwards, yapping as usual, his tail awag.

Elfwen hovered on the threshold, staring with huge, dismayed eyes at the cord binding her mistress's wrists.

'Leave us!' Robert made an abrupt throwing motion. 'And take that mangy excuse of a rat with you!' His booted foot caught Will in the ribs and lifted and hurled the little dog across the room. The yaps became pathetic yelps. Elfwen grasped Will, tucked him beneath her arm, and fled.

'There was no need to do that,' Miriel said furiously.

'Christ, I've been wanting to kick the little shit-bag ever since I bought him,' Robert replied with satisfaction and not the slightest glimmer of remorse. 'It's a pleasure long overdue.' He pushed her up the loft stairs to their private chamber and then locked the door. 'We don't want any interruptions, do we?' he said pleasantly.

Miriel sat on the bed and wondered how easy it would be to draw the meat knife from his belt and ram it beneath his ribs. It would be a question of practicality, not conscience. As matters stood now, she could kill him without a shred of compunction. She pursed her lips. He was on his guard and twitchy with temper. It would be difficult, but she was perfectly prepared to try. Perhaps she could lure him to the bed under the pretence of being remorseful and submissive, and when he was in the throes of pleasure, take her revenge.

'I do not suppose that you want to be disturbed,' she said, her voice chill and remote in her own ears. It was as if she had carefully removed the emotions from her body and placed them on a shelf out of the way until it was safe to bring them down again. 'What is it you want of me? To prove your "manhood" on my body? To beat me into submission?'