A Place Beyond Courage Read Online Free PDF Page A

standard salutation at the beginning of the letter, he had promised to care for herself and her interests with all diligence and duty, but the words had been set out in formal language and the beads were the only personal part of his communication. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem: sed libera nos a malo.
    She had known John FitzGilbert from a distance since she had been a tiny girl at her mother’s knee and he had been an adolescent, accompanying his father to their family on a matter pertaining to the exchequer. She had been struck dumb with shyness before the strangers. The youth’s smile and his coltish good looks had tied her being into knots of wonder and embarrassment. She had seen him intermittently since then and he still had that effect on her. The most recent occasion had been here this summer when he was home from court dealing with his affairs following his father’s death. He had been talking to Sheriff Walter after the mass. No longer a youth, but a grown man, tall, long-limbed and graceful. His hair was warm brown at the nape and sides, but the summer sun had flashed it with white-gold through crown and fringe and the striking looks of his adolescence had held their promise and matured into virile masculine beauty. As if sensing her scrutiny, he had glanced in her direction. Their eyes had met and she had gasped and looked away in flustered discomfiture. She had not dared raise her head lest he was still gazing at her in that stomach-dissolving way. When he turned to leave, she had risked a peek at his retreating back, both relieved and bereft at his going.
    Now came the news that he had bought the right to her lands and her marriage. He had sent her these prayer beads and flooded her timid heart with emotions she had no experience to map. Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum; sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea. As she prepared to go forward and take communion, she grasped the paternoster like a talisman and was beset by both longing and fear. Should she pray for him to come and make her his wife, or should she pray that he remained with the King and beguiled her imagination from afar? Deo gratias.
     
    Outside the cathedral, the snow had dwindled to tiny white flakes, not much larger than scurf, but cheek-stingingly cold. Aline and her mother bent their heads into the wind and, servants in tow, hurried towards the nearby castle where the sheriff had offered them hospitality and a bed for the night before they returned to Clyffe. Lord Walter had also been in church for the mass, accompanied by his wife and several of their offspring, ranging from his two eldest sons who were almost grown men, to his youngest daughter, a bright little girl of six years old. Aline avoided them. The Salisburys were as boisterous as dogs. However, aware that God was watching, she put a smile on her face as the child skipped past, her plait of brunette-bronze hair bobbing from side to side. The notion of bearing John FitzGilbert children such as this made Aline’s stomach leap and churn and she fiddled nervously with her beads. He had touched them; he had chosen them.
    A sudden cry followed by shouts of alarm made her spin round, her heart in her mouth. An elderly man making his way from the cathedral had fallen over a chunk of dressed stone left by one of the masons working on improvements to the castle. Aline stared at the jagged twig of bone thrusting through the punctured skin and the blood welling round the wound. The queasy feeling in her stomach intensified. She looked away but it was too late; the image was branded upon her vision. She faltered, saliva filling her mouth.
    ‘Oh Aline, not now!’
    Her mother’s dismayed cry seemed to come from a tunnelled distance. She felt a tightening grip on her arm as her legs buckled. She was dimly aware of being half carried into one of the dwellings of the castle complex. Someone sat her on a bench and pushed her head down between her knees. The stink of