Rexanne Becnel
Authors: Dove at Midnight
Rexanne Becnel
For Dot and Al,
who have so lovingly
made me a part of their family
The Sparrow dismayed, the Raven undone
upon the Sunne’s demise;
The Blackbird flown, the Falcon fled
when late the Moone doth rise.
Full measure of the Night shall fall,
too still and without Light.
Yet in that darkest Hour comes
to me a Dove at Midnight.
—Anonymous
Oxwich Castle, England
A.D.
1201
T
HERE WOULD BE TROUBLE
tonight at Oxwich. Joanna sensed it instinctively. It was there in her mother’s strained features. It was there in the subdued mutterings and grim expressions of the maids who tended the chambers in the female wing of the castle.
Normally life at Oxwich Castle proceeded peacefully enough. But every few weeks an odd tension would grip her mother and extend itself throughout the castle, and Joanna, young as she was, knew what was to come. In the evening her mother, the Lady Harriet, would dismiss everyone from the great hall and greet her husband alone. Joanna never knew what was said, but afterward her mother always fled to her chamber in tears, while her father would drink himself into a rage before storming off to places unknown. He would be surly for days while her mother would take to her bed. Everyone else would step very lightly during those dismal days, careful not to anger the master, Sir Aslin. As for Joanna, she would stay far out of her father’s way, for he seemed to despise the very sight of her at those times.
Though she was only nine years old, Joanna knew she must not hate her father for his harsh behavior. The priest had scolded her severely the one time she had confessed her childish feelings toward her parent. Yet as much as she tried to love and respect her father, she was hard-pressed to muster any warm feelings for him, especially now when it was all beginning once again.
A worried frown darkened Joanna’s innocent face as she arose from her play, clutching her new kitten. “Mama,” she called hesitantly as her mother glided past. “Mama,” she repeated with a quiver of fear in her voice.
But Lady Harriet was preoccupied and did not hear her only child. She just drifted about the hall, sending the servants to tasks elsewhere, fluttering her hands nervously, but never raising her soft voice. Like some beautiful swan she was, the little girl thought wistfully. Beautiful and dignified, yet somehow withdrawn.
But swans didn’t weep, and tonight her mother would most assuredly weep. It was that knowledge which spurred Joanna on. “Mama,” she persisted, tugging on her mother’s pearl-gray linen gown. “Please, won’t you wait a moment and talk to me?”
When she finally turned to her child, Lady Harriet’s face was pale, and the fine lines around her mouth were more pronounced than usual. “Perhaps later, dear,” she said with an absent pat on her daughter’s head. “Perhaps later. Presently I must prepare for your father.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Go along now.” Then she moved away, and an icy finger of fear stabbed at Joanna’s heart. The kitten in her arms squirmed as the child’s grip unconsciously tightened. But Joanna was oblivious to her beloved pet. All she could think of was her beautiful, sad mother. Why must it be like this? Why? Yet even her childish anger could not overcome her thickening fear.
In rising panic she whirled and ran up the narrow stone stairs that led to the women’s chambers. She would go to her mother’s room and wait for her there. Eventually her mother must come. Once her parents were finished with their mysterious conversation her mother would come, and this time perhaps everything would be all right.
Joanna’s wavy locks flowed behind her in tangled excess as she hastened up the twisting stairs. Her green eyes were dark with worry and fear and then, when she reached her mother’s chamber, doubt. She should not be there, she told herself, trying to be brave. She should go to her own wall chamber as she always did. But before she could make up her mind, the kitten finally wriggled free. Mewing her complaint, the disgruntled kitten slipped under Lady Harriet’s high bed.
“Come back here, Lady Minnou,” Joanna cried in frustration. She dropped to her knees to peer under the bed. “Come back here,” she pleaded in a voice that wavered with her suppressed emotions. When the kitten only licked her paw, however, and stared resentfully at her, Joanna inched her way under the bed. She was completely under the wood-and-rope frame before she reached her pet, but once she had it in hand, she did not back out at once. Instead, she curled around the kitten, creating a warm dark nest where they both could hide, at least for a little while.
“It’s all right now, my baby. You just go to sleep,” the little girl whispered in a broken voice as she rested her head on one of her arms and curled the other protectively about her charge. Then in a sweet shaky voice, she began to sing.
“Be not ‘A’ too amorous, ‘B’ too bold, ‘C’ too cruel, nor ‘D’ too dull. Be not ‘E’ too errant, ‘F’ too fierce, ‘G’ too gamboling, nor ‘H’ too hasty. Be not …”
Her voice trailed off once, then rose back to the reassuring cadence of her nursery song. But it was not overlong before she faded off again, retreating from her unhappiness into the blessed comfort of sleep. Then there was nothing to be heard but the faint purring of the kitten and the shallow breathing of the sleeping child.
The light was much dimmed in the chamber when a creaking movement above her awakened Joanna. The kitten still rested in her arms, but there was another sound, as if someone wept. In one unhappy moment her mind cleared and she remembered her mother. She started to squirm out from her warm hideaway, but the pounding of rapid footsteps and the abrupt slam of the chamber door caused her to shrink back in fear. Above her the bed groaned as if her mother arose.
“So you hide here from your failure.”
Joanna cringed at the cruel yet familiar tone in her father’s voice, and any thought of revealing her presence vanished at once.
“How fitting that you run to your bed, when ’tis
there
your failure lies! Christ’s blood! Why am I so cursed as to have a barren wife—useless thing that you are!”
“I beg you, husband,” her mother’s voice came, soft and faltering. “There will be another month, and another. When my courses are run—”
“And how many months have you said the self-same thing?” he shouted furiously. “How many
years
have passed since your girl-child was born, with no others to follow? Soon you will be too old—perhaps you already are. Shall I be left with no son to pass my name and holdings to? By God, I will not have it!”
“Joanna is your child too,” Lady Harriet whispered. “Would it be so awful if—”
“Is she?” the caustic reply came. “Yes, you would have me believe that. You make a cuckold of me, then think to foist off Roget’s spawn as mine. Even now you hope to see him when we go to London. Only he will not be there this time.” He laughed, but it was a cold, dark sound with no trace of mirth in it. “He met his match at Gaillard. Some Frenchman’s blade sent him to the devil! Now, my sweet
whoring
wife, you must play your
whore’s role only for me!”
Joanna heard her mother’s cry of anguish, and then the ropes and mattress creaked as her father threw her mother and himself upon the bed. In terror the child curled into a tight ball, crushing the kitten to her. Alarmed, the startled kitten struggled to be released, but Joanna would not let it go despite the scratches she suffered. Though the pet cried out plaintively, the unhappy sounds so close above them drowned it out.
“Aslin! Do not! I beg you!”
“Be still and do as you’re told, woman!”
“But I am not clean … I am not clean now,” Lady Harriet whimpered as the bed began to shudder rhythmically.
“Then I’ll get a devil from you. But one way or another, I
will
have my son!”
There was no talking after that—only the ominous thudding of the bed—but that terrified Joanna even more. She clasped the kitten in a near stranglehold as she clenched her eyes shut and tried to blot out the ugly thudding—the endless thudding. Tears leaked from between her lashes, and her small body trembled in childish anguish. Her mother … Her mother …
Then the movement of the bed ceased and she could hear only her father’s harsh breathing and her mother’s heartbroken weeping.
“Every night, Harriet. Every day and every night if that is what it takes to have my heir.”
Then he left with a violent slam of the door.
For a long time there was no sound. Her mother lay still on the bed above her; even her weeping had quieted. Yet Joanna could not move from her dark hiding place. How she hated her father in that moment—he who was so cold to her and cruel to her mother. Why must he always make her cry?
Then her mother rose from the bed and on silent feet moved across the room. Joanna wiped at her tearstained face, and as she did, the kitten finally escaped her too-tight embrace. It scampered out from under the bed, mewing plaintively and rubbing itself against Lady Harriet’s skirts.
“Oh, my love … ’Tis too hard for me,” the woman whispered softly, as if explaining to the disgruntled kitten. “I cannot bear it if you are gone …” She trailed off, but the despondent flatness of her tone frightened Joanna even more than the words did. In a panic she began to back out from her narrow confines.
“Mama,” she cried as she struggled out from under the bed. “Mama!” She sobbed, choking on the word. But when she stood up her mother was not there.
Lady Minnou sat on the window seat, staring out an opened window, sitting so still she appeared almost a statue. Joanna tried to wipe the last blurry tears away, yet they rose again in freshening fear.
“Mama, where are you?” A tremor of foreboding washed over her as her eyes darted about. “Where are you?”
She rushed to the window, startling the kitten away in her alarm. Outside the narrow opening, the sky was a pale mauve blue, laced with high floating clouds. A flock of grebes flew into the wind, wheeling and turning as they made their way toward the fens. Yet the peaceful afternoon scene was in that moment morbid and threatening.
Joanna looked down and something inside her died.
There in the dry moat she saw her mother sprawled in obscene repose. She lay still, as a bird at rest might, her dress ruffling like plumes in the gentle wind. And yet there was no peace in her stillness.
Joanna lurched back from the window. “Mama!” Her despairing sob pierced the air. “Mama!”
But there was no answer to her cry. Despite her bitter tears, she knew there would never be.
Castle Manning, England
Summer,
A.D.
1209
S
IR RYLAN KEMPE, LORD
of Blaecston, strode unannounced into the great hall of Castle Manning, but his entrance was noticed at once. Sir Evan Thorndyke, Lord of Manning, was mildly surprised. Rylan took every opportunity provided publicly to oppose King John and his careless treatment of his subjects, particularly his strangling taxes and his obsessive need to control his barons’ every move. As a result, Rylan had become more cautious about visiting his friends, especially those who managed to keep up a friendly relationship with the king.
Several of the lords who gambled at dice now that the meal was done raised their brows at Kempe’s entrance. His politics were well known, and although most of them might affect to deplore him when at the royal court, privately they lauded his courage and sense of honor.