Tyrant of the Mind (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Eleanor sat in silence, unable to form thoughts. The memory of the writhing, screaming widow flooded all words from her mind. Perhaps it had taken only a short while to restrain Isabelle so Sister Anne could force a drink of sleep-inducing poppy juice down her throat, but it had seemed to take forever.

“I pity her, my lady. Few among us have been faced as often as she with the choice between two equally evil paths and no other.”

Eleanor looked at Juliana, but she was still seeing the whimpering Isabelle with her exposed flesh and raw soul bleeding from more wounds than she could count. She had felt inadequate to deal with such pain and knew how thoroughly she had failed in comforting the woman. Perhaps Isabelle had been right about her. Perhaps she had fled from the world because she was unable to face its harshest realities. “Aye,” she said wearily. “She has suffered much.”

“I knew of the rape.” Juliana’s eyes were moist with unwept tears.

“As did I, but only after your brother’s murder.”

“She told me that she was pregnant by Henry.”

“And that she told me as well.”

Despite the chill air, drops of sweat began to glisten on Juliana’s forehead. “It was then she told me she would marry my father, not my brother.”

“A sin to have intercourse with both son and father, however unwilling her sexual act with the former. Even if God were to forgive that, man’s law would still find any marriage with your father invalid as a consequence of the rape.” Eleanor inwardly cringed at the sound of her own voice. Her words were so cold, so pale, against the bloody backdrop of Isabelle’s searing agony. “How did you reply to what she told you?”

“I told her she must marry Henry, that there was no other choice. If she did marry him there would be no shame in a birth soon after the vows for we had all long expected them to marry. To bed my father, however, would not only make him an unwitting sinner and she a witting one, but it would be a cruelty to so use and deceive a man who had been as kind to her as if she had been his own daughter.”

“To be abused by Henry and then marry him, knowing that she now owed him the marriage debt for the rest of their lives together? Could you have so willingly shared a bed with the man who had raped you, then borne his children and supported him as a wife must do?”

Juliana sharply turned her face away. “What choice had she? Common wisdom tells us that she could not have been raped because she quickened with child and thus she must have taken pleasure in the act.” Returning her gaze to meet Eleanor’s, her brown eyes turned as dark as a moonless night. “I may not concur with common wisdom, my lady, but I repeat: What choice had she in fact? A man may make as many bastards as he wishes and take them all to his wife to rear, but a woman is a whore who has but one, unless she marries the father.”

“From the anger I hear in your voice, Juliana, I wonder that you advised her to do something you found as abhorrent as she.”

Juliana walked over to the pitcher and poured some wine into her cup but stared at the contents without drinking. The sweat on her forehead was now running down her cheeks like tears. “You are most observant to detect the serpent wrapped around my heart. In truth, I did tell Isabelle that she had no choice, but did not do so until after I told her that there were ways of getting rid of the child and that I would help her find a safe remedy.”

Eleanor hesitated, then replied in a quiet voice. “A sin for cert.”

The weak smile on Juliana’s lips was at odds with the terror Eleanor could see in her eyes.

“And her response to your suggestion?”

“She refused.”

Eleanor nodded and sipped at her own wine, more to gain time to think than from any wish for it. “Then you are innocent of a graver act,” she said at last. Juliana’s head was bowed and she could learn nothing from her look. “Did she say why she refused?”

Juliana’s laugh sounded brittle, but the terror had receded from her eyes. “She hated the father but love quickened for the babe.”

This matched what Isabelle had told her before. “Did she tell Henry about the child?”

“No, but when Sir Geoffrey claimed he was the father of Isabelle’s baby, Henry suspected the truth. My brother may have suffered from many faults, but simple he was not. He was quite able to count both days and months.”

Faults he had indeed, but Juliana’s words reminded Eleanor that there was another issue that troubled. “I must say I was surprised,” she said softly, “that Henry took her with such force. He had every reason to believe they would wed in good time, although no formal betrothal had taken place. Did she tell you why Henry had attacked her?”

Some men might rape a whore they had bought or some other man’s woman as an act of humiliation, but she did not believe they would ever ravish the one they cherished. Although Henry had been thoughtless, a willful and often selfish man, Eleanor did not remember him as a brutal youth. She could certainly imagine him beseeching Isabelle, like the whining puppy of her father’s description, but Eleanor had always thought that Henry wanted Isabelle as his companion in life as well as a playfellow in bed.

“I asked. She replied with a laugh.” Juliana rubbed her cup as if to polish it, then took a deep drink of the wine. “In the summer we all spent together, did you ever see her behave as she did the night my father mocked my brother?”

The change in direction with that question surprised Eleanor, but she had been quite taken aback at Isabelle’s wantonness during that dinner. Running a hand so shamelessly up Robert’s thigh was not the gesture of a faithful or happy wife, nor was it something Isabelle would have done that innocent summer so many years ago. She shook her head.

“After she lost the babe, her manner with other men became quite immodest, and I warned her that her actions promised more than she might be willing to give to the men who watched her. She told me what she told my father, that she meant nothing by it. I fear I doubted that sometimes, although not as much as did my father.”

Eleanor did not like the thought that just came to mind. Could Isabelle have used Henry? Was such a thing possible? Yet if it were, why? Why would any woman encourage a sexual attack? “Did she perhaps explain the choice of your father as her husband?”

“Out of gratitude, she said. She owed her lands to our family for the comfort we had given her. She had only entered her fourth winter when her parents died. The day she came to us, my mother told me that I must treat her with the gentleness and affection any sister owes another for she was a most solemn child. Indeed, my task was a happy one because I quickly learned to love her, and she soon gained a merrier manner. Our family became her own. She had little choice if she wished to stay with us. If she would not marry Henry, she must marry my father.”

“What of George? Surely she could have married him.”

“He was already betrothed to a woman who died after Isabelle married my father.”

Were all the Lavenhams so cursed with such ill fortune, Eleanor wondered. “Yet this marriage dishonored your father and caused him to sin most deeply, however unwittingly. You were grieved, yet you did not tell him that his own son was the father of the babe Isabelle carried?”

Juliana fell to her knees and began to weep, her sobs so sharp and gasping that Eleanor ran to her friend. Juliana pushed her back with one hand.

“Stay back, my lady! There is a snake that lies in my breast, its fangs dripping with a venom that will send you to Hell should it bite you.”

Eleanor stepped back, making the sign of the cross as she did. “Shall I bring Brother Thomas to you, my child?”

“Nay, my lady. Nay.” Then the sobbing slowed and Juliana rose, wiping the tears from her swollen face. Turning her back on the prioress, she walked over to the window and looked down into the open ward. The sun was shining with winter pallor. In the background, there was the sound of the slow dripping of melting ice. It punctuated the long silence between them.

Eleanor waited.

“Do you love your father, my lady?”

“Aye.”

“If you had a sister, would you not love her as well?”

“Such love is precious in God’s sight.”

Juliana turned, and her eyes narrowed with pain as she looked at the prioress. “Is it?”

“Teach me your meaning.”

“I have not yet confessed this, but you must hear it from me first for it is at Tyndal where I long to entomb myself.” She took a deep breath. “When I offered to help Isabelle destroy the child within her, I first heard the hiss of Eden’s snake. When I failed to tell my father that he was committing a sin by marrying the woman I called
sister
, I saw the snake approach.”

“God is merciful to the penitent, and both these sins He will forgive. Isabelle did not take your advice about the child, and your father would probably have refused to believe you just as he did when Henry tried to tell him enough of the truth. But you asked about love? What do you mean?”

“When Adam and Eve were in Eden, they were at peace with God in their innocence. Satan rejoiced with the closing of those garden gates, for man became corruptible, sinful, and cruel. That I understood, yet in my willful ignorance, I believed I could remain pure because I wished no man ill but felt only love for those around me. Even when I wrestled Henry to the ground and cuffed his ears, I injured only his pride. Indeed, I loved my brother, although I despised his petty meanness.”

“In childhood fights, there is little sin. Again, God has surely forgiven…”

“God has shown me that no mortal love is without its corruption. When I told Isabelle that she could rid herself of the child, I did so out of love because I did not want her to suffer further for a violent act she had already endured. Do you not see? Out of the love I bore her, I urged her to sin.” Juliana stopped, her eyes growing wide.

“Yet she did not do so. Thus you sinned only in making the suggestion. Once she told you that she cherished the child, you did not urge her further.”

“Out of love, I failed to tell my father about the sin he would commit. Oh, I gave him reasons he should not marry her, but they were weak and he mocked them readily enough.” Juliana’s voice began to rise, her tone pleading. “He had suffered so after the death of my mother, my lady. How could I take that little joy from his eyes by telling him the real reason he could not marry Isabelle?”

“Juliana, these are not faults that a loving God would not forgive…”

“Will He forgive me for murdering my brother?”

Eleanor blinked in horror. Had she been wrong after all? Had she been so misguided by a proud and frail logic that she had forced an innocent man to wrongly confess, even die, to protect a daughter he loved? “Your father admitted…”

“My lord father did kill my brother, my lady, but it was I that sent Henry to his death.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

As Eleanor held the weeping woman, she raised her eyes, looked out the window encased by dark stone at the lighter gray of God’s heaven, and prayed for the wisdom she lacked. “Tell me the tale. In doing so, we will both wrest the serpent from your heart.”

For just an instant, Juliana pulled the prioress closer, then released her and moved away from the comfort of a friend’s arms. “It will take more than the telling to kill Satan’s beast, my lady.”

“It is a beginning.”

Juliana’s smile resembled the look of one in extreme pain who had just realized she would soon die. “As you heard, my father and Isabelle did not share a bed when she had her monthly courses. He found such womanly things distasteful, but he began to fear that his wife would use such absence to invite other men into their barren bed.”

“Did he have reason or were his fears born only of jealousy?”

“I have much to tell, my lady.”

Eleanor nodded and fell silent.

“While we were out on that tragic morning ride, Isabelle told me that although her courses had come early, they had been quite light, ceasing much before their time. Indeed, she suggested that her womb might have quickened. When I asked if she had told my lord father the happy news, she laughed and said she would in good time. She wished to wait until certain, but made me promise to say nothing until she gave permission. In the meantime, she said, she would enjoy a night or two quite alone since he believed her to be bleeding still.”

“Then your father was not as impotent as she claimed?”

“I found her quickening quite miraculous.”

“Such has happened.”

Juliana shook her head with a deep sadness. “Indeed I knew that my father sometimes did spend sleepless nights watching in the shadows to see if other men came to their marital chamber. Isabelle had seen him once or twice and told me so. Thus I tried to assure him of her innocence, claiming that I often came early and stayed with her on such nights to keep her company. Nonetheless, I began to share my father’s fear. She displayed her charms more, and much more than was seemly.”

“Did she truly do so often?” Eleanor asked, thinking of the young woman who had ordered suitors to sing of their passions in the tradition of courtly love and the girl who, with the innocence of youth, had chosen only to dance with her sister, Juliana.

“In the early days of their marriage, she had done no more than play at it, my lady. Indeed, she spent much time weeping in my arms over her lost babe. Oft we prayed together to bring her husband virility just once so she could have a child. I do believe she longed less for pleasure in the marital bed than for a baby girl with her mother’s eyes. Yet as her prayers continued to go unanswered, I began to suspect that she would lure some man into her bed so she might conceive once again. Her humors were growing quite unbalanced with her sorrow.”

Eleanor shuddered with a sudden chill of suspicion. “The night Henry died…”

Juliana struck her fist on the bench. “I was enraged! He had treated Isabelle cruelly that day, and I longed to see him punished. I suspected my father believed she had lied about her courses, as did I, and would be waiting in the corridor outside their chambers. It was then I decided how Henry should suffer for his actions.” She stared at her clenched fist with horror, then peeled it open with her other hand as if it had frozen in place. “I asked him to meet me in the chapel, and I told him that Isabelle had succumbed to his pleas and would be waiting for him. He thought my father was sleeping in the barracks.”

Eleanor felt almost dizzy from her racing thoughts. Once again, she felt utterly inadequate to the task. If only her Aunt Beatrice were here to advise her, but she was not. “And thus you believe you sent him to his death?”

The groan that came from Juliana’s lips was as hopeless as that of a soul facing the fires of Hell. “I meant only for my father to give him the beating he deserved, my lady! I did not mean him to die!”

Eleanor reached out and took her friend’s arm. “Again I will say it! You did not kill your brother. Your father did and with him lies the ultimate guilt. Juliana, you need only confess…”

“Confess I shall, but I will no longer live in this world!”

“Give yourself to God and enter a convent then. Your soul will find peace.”

“I must say more, my lady.”

How could there be, Eleanor asked herself, but the chill that had run through her body now settled in her heart.

“Isabelle did seem to have hope that she might conceive, and my father could not have been the one to give her that joy.”

The chill now froze Eleanor. “A man? She had seduced…”

“After what I saw at dinner that night, I did wonder if she expected your brother to share her bed that night, my lady.”

***

Eleanor stood at the window and watched as a solitary bird flew past. In such a moment, she felt alone, so utterly alone. “And he did come, did he not?”

Juliana said nothing. Then she rose and walked over to the prioress, standing so close that Eleanor could smell the sweet scent of her body. “Your brother is a man like all other men, my lady, but I believe he meant no ill.”

“The man who was to be your husband came to your stepmother’s bed and you say he meant no ill?”

“And so she may have hoped, but I do not know with certainty that your brother was complicit in her sinful desire that night.” She touched Eleanor gently on the arm. “Since Isabelle suspected when my father usually began his vigils, she would certainly have told Robert when to come and leave to avoid discovery. For this reason, I think his presence in the hall must have been by chance.”

Or not, Eleanor thought sadly. She had tried so hard to believe her brother innocent of adultery, but she could no longer ignore the evidence suggesting otherwise. “But it was Henry who came first.”

“When I heard the commotion in the hall, I waited, then left my room expecting to see my father with Henry. Instead, I saw the outline of another man and recognized the shape and size to be that of your brother. Coward that I am, I retreated to my room and prayed that my wicked plot would not bring my father’s blows upon Robert.”

“If he was coming to cuckold your father, he would have deserved such. How could you have borne such a thing, Juliana? He was to be your husband!”

Juliana shrugged. “In my heart, I believe him to be innocent for Robert is an honorable man, my lady.” The light was stronger now and, with eyes shut, she stood in the middle of the sunbeam that poured into the room with a warmth they had all forgotten in the snow-filled days. She turned to the prioress, her eyes as sad as those of Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre. “Do you know how jealous Henry was of the sisterly closeness I had with Isabelle? That jealousy was the only reason he sided with me over my wish to leave the world and take holy vows. Then he tried to taint the love with slander. When our families decided your brother and I should marry, he told Robert that he would have no joy of me in the marital bed unless his tastes ran more to boys. Your brother was chivalrous and defended me.”

“As he should, Juliana,” Eleanor said. She might never know if her brother had lied about the reason he had been in that hall at such an inauspicious time. Indeed, the love she bore him demanded that she honor his private frailties; thus she would never ask him, although there was one person she might…

“For Robert’s courtesy, he and Henry quarreled. For that decency, I honor your brother, and because of that integrity, I also realized I could not marry him. A good man deserves a wife who will take delight in his body and long to bear his children. In His grace, God cut from my heart any wish for a husband or children.”

“Many share that feeling, but would it not be a kindness to stay in the world and give comfort to Isabelle?”

Juliana sadly shook her head. “It would be as much a lie as if I were to marry Robert. I cannot be a comfort to Isabelle who tried to sell her soul and that of my father. What love we might have borne for each other is now as sour as milk left in hot sun for me. There can be no joy for us together any longer.”

“You might bring her to a greater peace with God.”

“Could you bring serenity to one for whom you bore a flawed love?” Once again, Juliana’s eyes turned black.

Eleanor realized that the groan she heard was her own. How often had she wished to brighten Brother Thomas’ dark moods to no avail? “A hard question, but I confess it is a fair one,” she replied.

There was silence between them.

“Why did you confess to Henry’s murder?” Eleanor asked.

“I had led him to it, and I thought it would have been better for me to hang than my father.”

Eleanor was outraged. “So you would not take your own life but would make use of the hangman to do the deed for you?”

“Nay! I confess to the desire for self-murder, but it was your priest that stopped me, my lady. As I stood on the parapet of your father’s castle, I thought to throw myself from the stone walkway.” Juliana’s eyes grew glazed. “Do you understand? For an instant of pain, I might have destroyed a lifetime of anguish.”

“For an instant of pain, you’d have gained an eternity of anguish.”

Juliana leaned against the prioress as if all her strength had vanished. “Take me, my lady, for I am so very weary of the world. Sometimes I fear I am the greatest sinner on this earth. Sometimes I know I am not. I beg you to allow me the peace of a hut in the forest where God can give me the understanding and solace I need.”

Eleanor hugged her. “If you seek to understand love, He will teach you,” she said with a hopeful tone, for indeed she sought such understanding herself. “But why ask to be an anchoress? Why not come to Tyndal and join the community of nuns?”

“I long for a life so silent that even I will be able to hear whatever wisdom God may grant me. The voices of other nuns, no matter how sweet their prayers and songs, would be like a roar in my ears, preventing me from hearing His precious words.” For a moment, she fell silent. “Do you fear that my calling is only for the moment, that my wish to leave the world is based only on sins God would forgive, as you rightly noted?”

“Not to question would be an injustice to you and to God.”

“Never have I desired marriage, my lady. Once I was consumed with lust, then had it quenched.”

“You might feel the same again, then wish for marriage.”

Juliana smiled. “It was a youthful folly, my lady, a burning in the loins, quickly slaked and never to be repeated. Indeed, I have long wondered if God meant me for the chaste life, but I felt no calling. It was after Isabelle married my father that He began to send me signs pointing in that direction. Of course He would forgive those sins I have confessed to you, but He meant me to see how deeply corrupted my soul was. I thought my love for Isabelle and for my father was innocent. Innocent? It was befouled with sinful ignorance, and I began to realize I knew nothing of what love meant.”

“But to turn away from all human comfort and support?”

“I spent more time in prayer, but the sound of other voices dragged my thoughts back down to earth. Isabelle called out to me, clinging, and needing my comfort. My father found solace in whatever silly distractions I provided for him.”

“All this is good in God’s eyes.”

“I found no peace. Where was the silence I needed to hear God’s wisdom? I longed to understand so much, but the wailing of the world kept me from my desire. Slowly God began to reveal to me that I must escape from all human kind. By the time we came to Wynethorpe Castle, I knew I should. When I led my brother to his death, I knew it without doubt. I must not remain in the world. It is God’s will that I be entombed at Tyndal, my lady, and I must obey.”

“Why Tyndal?”

Juliana looked up, her eyes darkly luminous. “Because God has directed me there. I had a dream. A light brighter than the sun at noon awakened me, and, from that light, a voice rang forth with the sweetness of church bells on a summer morning. It told me that I should find my abode where lived a young priest with red-gold hair. That very next day, I looked down into the inner ward of Wynethorpe and saw Brother Thomas. As I watched him walking from the chapel, his cowl slipped and I saw his hair. Then I knew the dream had been a sign. Tyndal was to be my home.”

Eleanor flinched. For just a moment, she found herself wondering with unaccustomed spite if the dream might have come after seeing Brother Thomas rather than before. She shook the malice from her heart. Such jealousy was reprehensible. Hadn’t her priest taken vows to reject worldly lust, as she had herself, and wasn’t Juliana asking to do the same? Juliana could not be a rival for the monk’s affections. Indeed, she was begging to separate herself from all men. Eleanor shut her eyes tightly. Ignoble thoughts, she said to herself.

“You have visions then?” Eleanor asked in a steady tone. The changing color of her friend’s eyes from brown to coal black made her feel uneasy.

“Visions or dreams, my lady. Do they not both come from the soul and hopefully from God?”

“You know you must still ask your brother’s permission. I cannot accept you without George’s blessing.”

“He will give it.”

“If so and the bishop gives his approval, then shall I. You will have your sanctuary at Tyndal, Juliana. I pray it brings you peace.”