The Marsh King's Daughter (49 page)

With what seemed like the crawling slowness of a castle gate being unbarred, she heard the bolts shooting back and the solid clump of the draw-bar as it was lifted from its brackets. The door opened and a heavy-eyed maid peered out at her.

'I have to see Master Wudecoc, is he here?' Miriel demanded. 'Tell him it is Mistress Willoughby and it is vitally important.'

The woman widened the door to usher her in, but her expression was doubtful. 'No, mistress, he has gone to fetch the priest.'

'The priest?' Miriel looked at her in surprise.

'Yes, mistress. We have a guest who was recently in childbed, and now she is very sick.' The maid glanced towards the loft stairs and made the sign of the Cross on her breast.

'You mean Magdalene de Caen?' Miriel too glanced at the stairs and her stomach lurched.

The woman nodded and, as she did so, Alyson Wudecoc shouted down from the loft opening, enquiring if the knock at the door had been the priest arriving.

'No, it's Miriel,' Miriel replied, and did not bother to use her married title. She was finished with the name Willoughby for ever. 'I need to speak with your husband when he returns. Is there anything I can do?' She climbed the stairs and joined Alyson Wudecoc in the bedchamber. The smell of candle wax and smouldering herbs on the brazier could not conceal the stink of putrefying flesh and Miriel's throat closed.

'You can pray,' murmured Alyson Wudecoc with the weariness of one who has sat in vigil the night through.

'She is beyond all other help. The birth itself went well, but the afterbirth was long in coming and the midwife had to reach deep inside and pull it out. When that happens, it often goes ill for the mother.'

Miriel thought of her own long struggle after being brought to bed. She had wanted to die, by rights should have done after the brutalities visited on her womb, but against the odds and her will, the strength of her body had resisted the final brink. She had no doubt that the woman on the bed was desperate to live, but was being failed by her own flesh.

Taking a deep breath, Miriel squared her shoulders and approached the bed. Sweetening herbs had been strewn among the sheets and perfumed oil burned in cresset lamps on the coffer at the bedside, but the smell of dying still overpowered them. Magdalene lay propped against the bolsters, her breathing swift and shallow. Sweat glistened on her forehead and her flesh carried the silvery-blue sheen of impending death. Against her skin, her braided copper hair blazed like new fire. Small shudders racked her body and her fingers gripped the top of the sheet, the knuckles showing a pressured gleam of bone. She was obviously in great pain. Death might be close, but it was not being merciful and letting her slip away in peace. Miriel bit her lip, feeling pangs of remorse and pity. Less than a year ago she had hated this woman. Filled with jealous rage, she had wished her to perdition.

Walking around the foot of the bed, intending to sit down on the empty curule chair by Magdalene's head, Miriel came upon the heavy cherry-wood cradle and its sleeping occupant. The candle-light fell across the baby's features and she saw Nicholas clearly in the slant of brow and eye and chin. The baby hair was pale gold and grew from the brow as Magdalene's did, and there was a hint of his mother too in the shape of his nose. Miriel stared. There was a great lump of love and longing in the pit of her belly and she felt her breasts tingle as if they still bulged with milk. Her own baby would have looked like this if he had been allowed to live. If she had not failed him and Robert had not— She closed that particular door in her mind and rammed the bolt across. That way lay grey madness.

'We have employed a wet-nurse,' Alyson murmured, 'and he is thriving well. We keep him by his mother. If she is awake and he is not by, it distresses her.'

'I can understand that,' Miriel said, remembering her own bewildered awakening from a haze of soporifics and wine to discover both womb and cradle empty. She sat on the chair and touched her own cool fingers to the burning ones of Magdalene de Caen. They were ringless, but there were fine, white bands of skin where each met the cushion of palm to show that they had recently been well adorned. 'Nicholas is coming home soon, I promise you,' she said. 'And he will live to see your son grow into fine manhood.'

Magdalene frowned and twitched, but her eyes remained closed. Miriel licked her lips. 'This is difficult for me to say, but perhaps it is the only opportunity I will have.' She bowed her head, seeking words that were deep and difficult. 'In the past I have been deeply jealous of you, have wished you ill in my heart for taking what I believed to be mine. I cannot make amends, but I can say that I am sorry. My loss was your gain, but rightfully so and I truly grieve to see you in such extremity. I know how much your baby means to you, and Nicholas too.'

Slowly, with tremendous effort, Magdalene raised fever-heavy lids and turned her head on the bolster to look at Miriel. 'You never lost him,' she said huskily. 'He took me to patch the wound of not having you, and even if I grew into his flesh and his into mine, the wound was still there beneath. In my turn, I too have been jealous.' A bleak smile crossed her parched lips. 'Never more than now.'

There was no reply to that. What could she say when the vitality of life was flowing through her veins and Magdalene's had almost burned dry. She squeezed the dying woman's hand in her own. 'I came here to speak to Martin about Nicholas's ransom,' she said, 'not to gloat at your bedside. I hope you know that.'

The smile had faded from Magdalene's face. She gave Miriel a long, steady look. 'Would you have the charity not to mind if your husband's former leman came in all her beauty and took your hand on your deathbed?'

Miriel bit her lip. 'No,' she said, 'I do not think I would.' 'Well then.'

Miriel released her grip on Magdalene's hand and rose to her feet. 'I'll leave,' she said quietly. 'I wanted there to be peace between us, but I can see that I am only hurting you.'

As she started to walk away, Magdalene's hoarse whisper called her to stop and turn back. 'I want peace too.'

In a flurry of skirts, Miriel returned to the bedside and once more took the burning, outstretched hand.

'I give him back to you.' Magdalene's voice was barely audible. 'With my blessing. Isn't that what you came for?' Her eyes closed, and tears trickled out from beneath the dark red lashes. Miriel brushed the back of her free hand impatiently across her own lids. It wasn't what she had come for, and yet perhaps it had been there at the back of her mind as she first sat down at the bedside. A dying woman's absolution and consent.

'I came to help and be helped,' she said.

For a short while there was silence between the two women, and into it, the baby woke and cried.

'Let me hold him,' Magdalene said. 'Let my flesh remember the feel of him before all feeling is lost to me.'

Miriel went to the cradle and bent to scoop the swaddled child from beneath his blanket. Although she had seldom held a baby before, her arm curved instinctively to support the tiny skull and her body tingled with poignancy and joy. The baby's eyes were open, following the contours of her face with myopic tenacity. They were a misty, sea-haze blue, as yet untinted with their true shade. Miriel wondered if her own child would have looked and felt like this. Gently she brought him to Magdalene and placed him in her arms.

Magdalene stroked the baby's cheek and kissed his brow. 'I'll be watching over you,' she whispered. 'Always, my heart, always.'

His cries increased, becoming the lusty bawl of thwarted hunger. 'See the life in him,' Magdalene murmured, the smile now back on her face, a smile in which grief and joy were inextricably and powerfully bound. 'Take him now,' she said to Miriel in a voice that shook. 'He's hungry and the wet-nurse will be waiting.'

Tenderly Miriel gathered the baby in her arms. 'I lost my own child a month ago,' she said. 'It was either him or me, and my husband chose to sacrifice the innocent. He said it was out of love for me, but I know he did it for vengeance too.' She compressed her lips. There was no point in saying any of this except to relieve the pressure of her own pain. Magdalene was watching her, but Miriel could tell that all her attention was for the baby, imprinting his image on her mind's eye before the fading of her life-force robbed her of sight.

'He will be cared for and deeply cherished, I promise you,' Miriel said, steadying herself.

'I know.' Magdalene gazed for a further moment, then closed her eyes and turned her head to the wall as she had been lying when Miriel first entered the room.

Cradling the baby in protective arms, Miriel bore him carefully down the stairs into the main room. His warmth, the infant smell of him washed over her in waves that sent gooseflesh shudders through her. It was almost more than she could bear to hand him over to the waiting wet-nurse and yield up the moment when she had imagined him all hers.

The woman cheerfully unfastened her gown and bared one large white breast crowned by a thumb-sized brown nipple. With casual expertise she put the baby to suck, and the hungry howls immediately changed to sounds of gratified gulping while the baby's complexion turned from dusky red to pale pink. Miriel watched with rapt fascination.

'Regular little toper,' said the wet-nurse with proud indulgence. 'Takes both sides too when he gets started. Heaven pity the alehouses roundabouts when he grows up.' She stroked the downy head nuzzled against her flesh. 'Shame about his mam though, poor wight.'

Miriel said nothing, for whatever reply she made would have seemed trite and banal in her own ears - the easing of a difficult situation with platitudes that came nowhere near the core of the tragedy.

The door opened on full, glorious daybreak to admit

Martin and a priest, both of them breathless with haste. Martin's glance flickered sidelong in surprise to Miriel and she made a beckoning gesture. With a nod, he showed the priest to the stairs and turned back to her.

'What's amiss?' If he had looked weary the previous day, the exhausted shadows on his face made him appear positively cadaverous this morning.

'I fear I must lay a yet greater burden on your shoulders than you already carry,' Miriel said. His broad chest was inviting, but she resisted the urge to run and cling to him yet again. Instead she drew herself up and clasped her hands, grip upon grip, to pull strength from within herself. Then she told him why she had come.

His expression remained as impassive as usual and he nodded thoughtfully.

'You knew about Robert, didn't you?' Miriel said, for she had seen not so much as a glimmer of surprise in his eyes.

Martin spread his hands. 'I suppose that I suspected, but a suspicion is far from being fact.'

'And it will never be proven because it is only my word against him,' Miriel said. 'Search as you might, I doubt you'll arrest his accomplice, because his confession to truth would be his undoing on a gibbet. I would have said that Robert's jealousy had unhinged him, and blame myself, had he not already secured the death of two others because they stood in his way.'

Martin brushed his silver-salted hair off his brow and shook his head. 'Yet he always seemed so good-hearted, as if he had not a cloud on his conscience.'

'He doesn't, Martin, and that's what makes him so dangerous. He sees no wrong in any of his actions. They have always been the fault of others - so he claims.' She unclasped her hands and spread them. 'I ran from him and came straight here, but I must to return to Lincoln to arrange the ransom money. I know you can't leave affairs as they are now, but could you spare a couple of men to escort me there and back?'

Martin rubbed his jaw and looked at her. 'I'll do better than that,' he said grimly. 'I'll give you half a dozen, and make sure they're armed with spears.' Beckoning to a manservant, he issued brief orders and sent the man out to summon crew members from Pandora's Daughter.

Miriel thanked him and sat down by the fire to wait.

'Want to hold him a while?' the wet-nurse enquired, and before Miriel could reply, she found the solid weight of a baby once more in her arms as the woman laced her chemise and pinned the neck of her gown.

Replete with milk, he was drowsy and watched her through heavy, half-closed lids lined with long, bronze-dark lashes. She inhaled his innocent, milky smell. His weight was warm in the bowl of her lap, filling the hollow space of her loss.

From the room above there came the sound of an indrawn breath, a stifled sob, and she heard the priest's voice quietly murmuring words of comfort. Moments later, Alyson descended the steep wooden stairs from the loft to the main room.

'Magdalene's dead,' she announced and turned to her husband's arms for solace.

Miriel held the baby close. She felt the rapid thud of his small heart and the soft swish of his sleepy breathing as it fanned her cheek. 'God rest her soul,' she murmured. 'And give me the grace not to feel like a thief in the night.'