Epic Historial Collection (206 page)

Richard lay still, looking terrified, blood trickling from his mouth.

Earl Roland's face was white and sweating: the blow had used up all his reserves, and he now looked shaky. Several silent seconds passed. At last he seemed to recover his strength. With a contemptuous glance at the purple-robed figure cowering on the floor, he turned on his heel and walked, slowly but steadily, out of the church.

24

C
aris stood on the green in front of Kingsbridge Cathedral, along with at least half the population of the town, waiting for the bride and groom to emerge from the great west door of the church.

Caris was not sure why she was here. She had been feeling negative about marriage ever since the day Merthin had finished his hoist, and they had had an abrasive conversation about their future. She felt angry with him, even though everything he had said made perfect sense. Of course he wanted to have his own house and live with her in it; of course he wanted to sleep with her every night and have children. That was what everyone wanted—everyone, it seemed, except Caris.

And in fact she wanted all those things, too, in a way. She would have liked to lie down beside him every evening, and put her arms around his slim body anytime she wanted, and feel his clever hands on her skin when she woke up in the morning, and give birth to a miniature version of him that they could both love and care for. But she did not want the things that went with marriage. She wanted a lover, not a master; she wanted to live with him, not dedicate her life to him. And she was angry with Merthin for forcing her to face up to the dilemma. Why could they not go on just as they were?

For three weeks she had hardly spoken to him. She pretended to have a summer cold, and in fact she developed a painful sore on her lip that gave her an excuse not to kiss him. He still took his meals at her house, and talked amiably with her father; but he did not linger after Edmund and Petranilla went to bed.

Now Caris's sore had healed and her anger had cooled. She still did not want to become Merthin's property, but she wished he would start kissing her again. However, he was not with her now. He was in the crowd, some distance away, talking to Bessie Bell, daughter of the landlord of the Bell Inn. She was a small girl with a curvy body and the kind of grin that men called saucy and women called tarty. Merthin was making her laugh. Caris looked away.

The big wooden church door opened. A cheer went up from the crowd, and the bride emerged. Margery was a pretty girl of sixteen, dressed in white, with flowers in her hair. The groom followed her out, a tall, serious-looking man about ten years older than she.

They both looked completely miserable.

They hardly knew each other. Until this week, they had met only once, six months ago, when the two earls had arranged the marriage. There was a rumor that Margery loved someone else, but of course there was no question of her disobeying Earl Roland. And her new husband had a studious air, as if he would prefer to be in a library somewhere, reading a book about geometry. What would their life together be like? It was hard to imagine their developing the kind of passion for one another that Caris and Merthin enjoyed.

She saw Merthin coming toward her through the crowd, and suddenly she was struck by the thought that she was ungrateful. How lucky she was not to be the niece of an earl! No one was going to force her into an arranged marriage. She was free to marry the man she loved—and all she could do was find reasons not to.

She greeted him with a hug and a kiss on the lips. He looked surprised, but made no comment. Some men would have been unnerved by her change of mood, but Merthin had a bedrock equanimity that was hard to shake.

They stood together and watched as Earl Roland came out of the church, followed by the earl and countess of Monmouth, then Bishop Richard and Prior Godwyn. Caris noticed that her cousin Godwyn looked both pleased and apprehensive—almost as if he were the groom. The reason, no doubt, was that he had just been inaugurated as prior.

An escort of knights formed up, the Shiring men in Roland's red-and-black livery, the Monmouth men in yellow and green. The procession moved off, heading for the guildhall. There Earl Roland was giving a banquet for the wedding guests. Edmund was going, but Caris had managed to get out of it, and Petranilla was to accompany him.

As the bridal party left the precincts, a light shower of rain began to fall. Caris and Merthin took shelter in the cathedral porch. “Come with me to the chancel,” Merthin said. “I want to look at Elfric's repairs.”

The wedding guests were still leaving the church. Moving against the flow, Merthin and Caris pushed through the crowd in the nave and went to the south aisle of the chancel. This part of the church was reserved for the clergy, and they would have disapproved of Caris's being there, but the monks and nuns had already left. Caris glanced around, but there was no one to see her except one unfamiliar woman, a well-dressed redhead of about thirty, presumably a wedding guest, apparently waiting for someone.

Merthin craned his neck to look up at the vaulted ceiling over the aisle. The repairs were not quite finished: a small section of the vault was still open, and a sheet of canvas, painted white, was stretched across the gap, so that the ceiling looked complete to a casual glance.

“He's doing a decent job,” Merthin said. “I wonder how long it will last.”

“Why wouldn't it last indefinitely?” Caris asked.

“Because we don't know why the vault crumbled. These things don't happen for no reason—they're not acts of God, regardless of what the priests may say. Whatever caused the stonework to collapse once will, presumably, do so again.”

“Is it possible to discover the cause?”

“It's not easy. Elfric certainly can't do it. I might.”

“But you've been sacked.”

“Exactly.” He stood there for a few moments, head tilted back, then said: “I want to see this from above. I'm going into the loft.”

“I'll come with you.”

They both looked around, but there was no one nearby except for the red-haired wedding guest, who was still loitering in the south transept. Merthin led Caris to a small door that opened on a narrow spiral staircase. She followed him up, wondering what the monks would think if they knew a woman was exploring their secret passageways. The staircase emerged into an attic over the south aisle.

Caris was intrigued to see the vault from the other side. “What you're looking at is called the extrados,” Merthin said. She liked the casual way he gave her architectural information, assuming she would be interested and knowing she would understand. He never made stupid jokes about women not grasping technicalities.

He moved along the narrow walkway then lay down to examine the new stonework closely. Mischievously, she lay beside him and put her arm around him, as if they were in bed. Merthin touched the mortar between the new stones then put his finger on his tongue. “It's drying out quite quickly,” he said.

“I'm sure it's very dangerous if there's moisture in the cleft.”

He looked at her. “I'll give you moisture in the cleft.”

“You already have.”

He kissed her. She closed her eyes to enjoy it more.

After a minute she said: “Let's go to my house. We'll have it to ourselves—my father and my aunt are both at the wedding banquet.”

They were about to get up when they heard voices. A man and a woman had come into the south aisle, immediately below the repair work. What they said was only a little muffled by the canvas sheet covering the hole in the ceiling. “Your son is thirteen now,” the woman said. “He wants to be a knight.”

“All boys do,” came the reply.

Merthin whispered: “Don't move—they'll hear us.”

Caris presumed the female voice to be that of the wedding guest. The male voice was familiar, and she had the feeling the speaker was a monk—but a monk could not have a son.

“And your daughter is twelve. She's going to be beautiful.”

“Like her mother.”

“A little.” There was a pause, then the woman went on: “I can't stay long—the countess may look for me.”

So she was in the entourage of the countess of Monmouth. She might be a lady-in-waiting, Caris guessed. She seemed to be giving news of children to a father who had not seen them for years. Who could it be?

He said: “Why did you want to meet me, Loreen?”

“Just to look at you. I'm sorry you lost your arm.”

Caris gasped, then covered her mouth, hoping she had not been heard. There was only one monk who had lost an arm: Thomas. Now that the name had come into her mind, she knew that the voice was his. Could it be that he had a wife? And two children? Caris looked at Merthin and saw that his face was a mask of incredulity.

“What do you tell the children of me?” Thomas asked.

“That their father is dead,” Loreen replied harshly. Then she began to cry. “Why did you do it?”

“I had no choice. If I had not come here, I would have been killed. Even now, I almost never leave the precincts.”

“Why would anyone want to kill you?”

“To protect a secret.”

“I'd be better off if you'd died. As a widow, I could find a husband, someone to be a father to my children. But this way I have all the burdens of a wife and mother but no one to help me…no one to put his arms around me in the night.”

“I'm sorry I'm still alive.”

“Oh, I didn't mean that. I don't wish you dead. I loved you once.”

“And I loved you as much as a man of my kind can love a woman.”

Caris frowned. What did he mean by “a man of my kind”? Was he one of those men who loved other men? Monks often were.

Whatever he meant, Loreen seemed to understand, for she said gently: “I know you did.”

There was a long silence. Caris knew she and Merthin should not be eavesdropping on such an intimate conversation—but it was now too late to reveal themselves.

Loreen said: “Are you happy?”

“Yes. I was not made to be a husband, or a knight. I pray for my children every day—and for you. I ask God to wash from my hands the blood of all the men I killed. This is the life I always wanted.”

“In that case, I wish you well.”

“You're very generous.”

“You'll probably never see me again.”

“I know.”

“Kiss me, and say good-bye.”

There was a long silence, then light footsteps receded. Caris lay still, hardly daring to breathe. After another pause, she heard Thomas crying. His sobs were muffled, but seemed to come from deep inside. Tears came to her own eyes as she listened.

Eventually Thomas got himself under control. He sniffed, coughed, and muttered something that might have been a prayer; then she heard his steps as he walked away.

At last she and Merthin could move. They stood up and walked back along the loft and down the spiral stairs. Neither spoke as they went down the nave of the great church. Caris felt as if she had been staring at a painting of high tragedy, the figures frozen in their dramatic attitudes of the moment, their past and future only to be guessed at.

Like a painting, the scene aroused different emotions in different people, and Merthin's reaction was not the same as hers. As they emerged into a damp summer afternoon, he said: “What a sad story.”

“It makes me angry,” Caris said. “That woman has been ruined by Thomas.”

“You can hardly blame him. He had to save his life.”

“And now her life is over. She has no husband, but she can't marry again. She's forced to raise two children alone. At least Thomas has the monastery.”

“She has the court of the countess.”

“How can you compare the two?” Caris said irritably. “She's probably a distant relation, kept on as an act of charity, asked to perform menial tasks, helping the countess dress her hair and choose her clothes. She's got no choice—she's trapped.”

“So is he. You heard him say he can't leave the precincts.”

“But Thomas has a role, he's the matricularius, he makes decisions, he does something.”

“Loreen has her children.”

“Exactly! The man takes care of the most important building for miles around, and the woman is stuck with her children.”

“Queen Isabella had four children, and for a while she was one of the most powerful people in Europe.”

“But she had to get rid of her husband first.”

They went on in silence, walking out of the priory grounds into the main street, and stopped in front of Caris's house. She realized that this was another quarrel, and it was on the same subject as last time: marriage.

Merthin said: “I'm going to the Bell for dinner.”

That was Bessie's father's inn. “All right,” Caris said despondently.

As Merthin walked away, she called after him: “Loreen would be better off if she'd never married.”