Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (24 page)

“No trouble, I hope?” I said.

Bromtoft probed deeper, his knobby fingers kneading at her flesh, slowly moving outward and downward. Margaret opened her mouth as if to cry out, but she kept silent, her back arching with strain as she wrung the older woman’s wrist.

“Not yet, my lord,” Bromtoft said, “but the child has dropped. It could be hours... or days.”

“God’s soul, can’t you tell?”

His single gray, feathered eyebrow fluttered. “If my lord would close the curtain, so that she may keep warm and have her privacy, I will... let you know.”

“Hasten, then. Every moment we dally here is one nearer to death for us all.” I dropped the flap. Impatient, I dismounted and paced along deeply worn ruts, centuries after the Romans had trod over these same tracks. The moors stretched to the horizon around us, nothing but a tiny church and a few cottages in view. Near the road, the river gurgled by sluggishly, its banks crusted with ice.

This time, I would not allow Lancaster or anyone to drive my Brother Perrot from England. Enough of their defiance and intimidation. If it took a battle to claim my rights back, then a battle it would be.

But I hadn’t the men to defend myself just now if they came upon us. I had to get to York, had to know that Piers was there and safe. York’s walls would keep Lancaster out.

If Piers’ child insisted on coming into the world out here, now – in this barren, frozen and forgotten land – let it come. I marched back toward the carriage, lifted my hand to pull back the curtain when it parted and Bromtoft’s face appeared.

“There is time yet,” he announced. “But we have no more than a day, two at most.”

“A day is all we need.”

By the time we arrived in York, Margaret’s pains had pitched to an agony that signaled birth was imminent. I had not even made it to my chamber at the King’s Tower, when the constable chased me down in the stairway and pressed a letter into my hands. I descended several steps to stand nearer to the rushlight there. Tentative, I opened it. Blotches of ink and smears marred the letters thereon. The words were crowded, chaotic strokes, written by a hurried hand, but I knew the hand that had formed them well. Piers was in Knaresborough, waiting for word that it was safe to enter York.

“Shall I send someone for him, my lord?” the constable asked, wringing his hands to warm them. “Or would you prefer to compose a letter? I can call for a clerk, if you wish.”

“No, no need.” I rolled the letter back up and returned it to him. “Saddle fresh horses and assemble my guard. There is yet daylight left. We ride for Knaresborough.”

I left that very day to retrieve him myself. I could not wait one hour more for Margaret to expel the infant from her womb. Piers was waiting...

Oh, that seeing him again, pressing his cheek to mine, could make me feel such joy as it once had. Yet we greeted each other with a shared weariness of spirit – him looking as wide-eyed and frantic as a hare pursued by hounds and me wracked by the haunting fear that they would come, find him, and take him forever from me. I loved him beyond reason, but even that, I knew, might not be enough to save him. To preserve us, as it were.

There was a time when I believed that eternity existed. No longer. But there are moments when time ceases to move forward, when the world beyond our sight does not exist and when all that troubles us, for awhile, dissolves into nothing. So it was for Piers when we returned to York and they brought forth a fat-cheeked, bright-eyed babe. A log in the hearth hissed and crackled. Piers glanced toward the door to the adjacent chamber, where Margaret was. They would not yet let him enter, saying she was recovering from the birth, but well.

The midwife held out the bundled infant and smiled. “A girl. As healthy and content as any I have ever brought into the world.”

Piers stood speechless, his arms dangling useless at his sides as he stared at the squirming lump.

“A daughter, Piers.” I stepped up to his shoulder and nudged him forward. “She favors her mother. Are you quite sure –”

“She
is
mine.” He snatched the babe from the midwife’s arms a little too abruptly, but the child was undisturbed. With surprising care, he cradled her to his chest. Somehow, she had wriggled a hand free of the swaddling. Her tiny fingers flexed, reaching. Piers slid his forefinger into her grasp and her fingers curled tightly around it, her mouth curving into a gummy smile.

In that moment, I envied him his scrap of immortality, that little bundle gurgling in his arms.

They named her Joan, after Margaret’s mother. Margaret recovered splendidly and the child thrived. Isabella arrived in time for Margaret’s churching at the Franciscan friary. She was so busy coddling her new grand-niece that Piers and I were afforded some time alone to meander about the winter-bare gardens of the castle.

 “I tell you, Flanders’ people are as dull as its sky is gray,” Piers reflected. “I could hardly remain there, dear Edward. The boredom alone would have killed me. Their court was so backwardly pious that they didn’t even know the rules for dice, let alone have the interest in laying bets on races or cock fights. Their sense of fashion was abominable, their food bland and their language impossible to learn. After two months there, I had wasted away to a sack of bones. In an empty church in Utrecht – or was it Ghent – I found myself talking to the hideous carved figures hanging from the arches. A bloody sure sign it was time to leave. In Gascony the bastards would not allow me to disembark at any of the ports. Ireland lacks both comfort and civility, so that was out of the question. As for the alleged ‘safe conduct’ through France granted to me by King Philip – what good did that do me without a place to go to? So, I came back. To see my child born – and to be with you.” He smoothed a wrinkle on the front of his blue brocaded garnache and hung his head. “I thought it would be as before – that they would have gone on and forgotten. But the queen says the Ordainers have already assembled in London. No doubt they will come for me soon. I should go then, back to Brabant. I’ll take Margaret and the babe with –”

I grabbed his arm and swung him around to face me. “You will
not
leave England. Never again.”

“But Edward, how can I stay? God knows it will ravage my heart to go from you again, but –”

“I said ‘no’! Now cease with this gloom. They will cow neither you nor me again. The writs have already been written. Soon, it will be proclaimed: You are recalled, your lands returned. It is done.”

He shrugged off my hand, shaking his head slowly. “You would willingly invite their wrath?”

“What I will not willingly do is give you up again. Nor will I allow them to take command of my kingdom while I yet live.”

“Ah, the kingdom, the kingdom. Yes, yes.” Piers stooped and plucked up a long-dead branch. He crumpled its brown leaves in the cup of his palm with his fingertips and scattered the flakes over the muddy ground around him as he began back toward the castle. “Well, how to win your kingdom back, then, eh? Piss on the Lords Ordainers. If you have the people behind you, Edward, you have all the army you need.”

I far from had the people behind me now. As it was, I feared to so much as go out among them, let alone ask for their help. Why could they not love me as they loved Isabella, even with her French blood?

As I caught up with him, he halted momentarily and rubbed at his neck. “What an ache I have in my bones.”

I pulled my hand from my glove and touched his cheek. “You’re burning.”

“Phhh... your fingers are frozen. Let us idle before the fire and have them bring wine by the tun. Call upon that lute player of yours. What is his name?”

“Robin Hobson... or Dobson, maybe. Does it matter? He comes when I call.”

“I fancy his pluck. A far better musician than mine – although I haven’t his service anymore. I haven’t anything.”

I slung an arm about his shoulder. “You have me, Brother Perrot. Is that not enough?” As I leaned upon him, we strolled through the door and into the great hall to escape a blasting wind that threatened a string of rainy days on its tail.

The door creaked on its hinges and I rolled over, expecting to see my page scuttle in to tend to the fire one last time.

Instead, Isabella stood at my door, her pale hair coiled and set in a net woven with pearls. Even wearing her nightclothes, she looked as fresh and vibrant as a field rose in full bloom. She shut the door behind her and moved toward the bed, a nimbus of moonlight illuminating her nymph-like form.

I struggled to pull my head higher onto the pillows. “What brings you at this hour, my queen?”

Her hands adroitly freed her hair of nets and pins, so that a long braided rope of gold tumbled down her back. She pulled her fingers languidly through the plait to separate the strands. “You have heard that the Lords Ordainers met in London?”

“And did they call for my head?”

“Lord Pembroke dissuaded them from outright confrontation, but” – she glanced away, unwilling to meet my eyes – “there are rumors that Lancaster will come after Lord Gaveston.”

“Which is why we are here and not there.” Thunder pounded behind my eyeballs. I swung my feet over the edge of the canopied bed. Too little energy to do more, I propped my elbows upon my knees and cradled my head in my hands. The brush of her footsteps made me look up.

She knelt and laid her head in my lap. “You’ve been so distraught of late. I’ve worried for you.”

“Yes, well, there is much to worry over. Piers has been excommunicated. And if it’s not enough that they’ve condemned him to burn in purgatory eternally, they want to punish him in this life.” Something compelled me to touch her hair. Seldom had I seen it hang loose to fan out over her back and shoulders in a veil of shimmering gold. It flowed like silk beneath my fingertips. As my fingers grazed her cheek, I felt her skin flush with fire. “But they’ll do more than send him away or toss him into a dungeon to rot. No, those punishments would not be permanent enough.”

One of her hands curled around my calf. She turned her head to look up at me, resting her small, oval chin upon my knee. “You forgive him so much, too much sometimes.”

I stood, resting a hand upon the bed until the blood steadied in my head, and went to the table, where Jankin had left a pitcher of water. Ignoring the goblet beside it, I drank until I had emptied half of it, then leaned heavily with both hands upon the table.

“I would do anything for him. Even give my life for him.” I said it not so much to her, but as a truth I could not hide. After the roiling haze had cleared from my thoughts, I looked at her, sitting upon the floor with her feet tucked beneath her.

She rose and took both my hands in hers. “Lancaster and his lords are wrong in what they do. Wrong by the laws of both man and God for rearing up against their liege.”

Soon, if not already, Lancaster would be marching northward. And still I had no army. Only York’s garrison. It would only take one traitor among them to throw open the gates and the enemy would be upon us. My spies had already uncovered some of Lancaster’s sympathizers. Yesterday, three were hung in the market square. Today, two more.

“But without an army to oppose him,” I said, “what could you or I ever do to exact a fitting revenge?”

Her mouth, plump and cherry red, twisted in thought. “Live in harmony. Bliss, even. I can bear you son after son – tall and strong, like you.”

“Not like my father, I pray. I am not like him at all. I trust you’ve figured that out by now?” I drew my hands away. Sitting at the table, I leaned my head upon my fist. “I almost dread awakening every day, for it is one more day I must face the impossible. Tomorrow is just another bottomless pit in which to tumble.”

She came to stand before me, arms crossed over her breasts. Moonlight etched a halo of silver above her. Her fingers slid between her garment and the skin at her shoulders. She peeled her dark blue robe down to her waist to reveal a thin chemise beneath. A firm bosom pressed against the sheer, white cloth. The frightened child that once resembled a reed was now a fully endowed woman. She lowered her linen chemise and stepped free, leaving her clothing in a rumpled heap on the floor to stand naked before me.

She extended her hand. “I will give you a son, Edward. A great son. A king among kings to conquer them all.”

How do infants do battle, good wife? With wooden spoons? Cry until my enemies go mad with deafness? At least when I am old, I can send my sons to fight in Scotland in my stead.

She pulled me up. Her hands, though, they trembled.

“One condition,” I told her, as she leaned back upon the downy bed that swallowed her smallness. “Tell your meddling father to leave Scotland to me and cease his courting of the Bruce. Tell him if he has any favor with the Pope to use it against the Bruce and relent of Piers.

“And tell him,” I added, climbing upon the bed, “that you are content now and too enamored of your husband to write to him as often anymore.”

I knelt between her legs and dropped my hose only as far as would be needed. Sensing a pressure in my loins, I cupped a hand beneath my stones and, to my surprise, discovered the first stirrings of arousal.

Like the effigy on a stone tomb, she stared unblinking up at the beams of the ceiling. I looked down on her ivory face, half shadowed, and lowered my body onto hers. Determined to have this over with, I drove between her legs several times, seeking entry, my organ swelling rapidly. Her breaths became quicker, shallower. But she was as tight as a goatskin drum. Her legs drew together in resistance and with each prod the blood rushed hotter to my loins. If she did not submit soon, I would waste my valuable seed all over the sheets. As I reached down to slip my fingers into her folds and guide myself into her, she dug her elbows into the mattress and scrambled backward. Her head thunked against the headboard, trapping her.
Damn her
.

I hauled her back down toward me. Clamping her jaw in one of my hands, I craned her face toward mine. “Do I so revile you that you will not have me –
me
, your husband?”