Tags:
Fiction,
General,
Historical,
Mystery & Detective,
Mystery,
Monks,
Large Type Books,
Traditional British,
Great Britain,
Cadfael; Brother (Fictitious character),
Herbalists,
Shrewsbury (England)
along the Foregate, two tall, strong young men, Simon the elder by three years, and the shorter by the width of a hand. The sullen, tow-headed lad beside him gnawed a considering lip, and scowled at the ground.
“My future! What can he do to my future, more than toss me back to my father in disgrace, and what the devil need I care about that? There are two good manors will be mine, that he can’t take from me, and there are other lords I could serve. I’m a man of my hands, I can hold my own with most…”
Simon laughed, shaking him rallyingly in the arm that circled his shoulders. “You can indeed! I’ve suffered from it, I know!”
“There are lords enough wanting good men of their hands, now the empress is back in England, and the fight’s on in earnest for the crown. I could fend! You could as well be thinking of your own case, lad, you’ve as much to lose as I have. You may be his sister’s son, and his heir now, but how if—“ He set his teeth; it was hard to utter it, but he was perversely determined to drive the knife deep into his own flesh, and twist it to double the pain. “—how if things change? A young wife… How if he gets a son of this marriage? Your nose will be out of joint.”
Simon leaned his curly brown head back against the stones of the wall, and laughed aloud. “What, after thirty years of marriage to my Aunt Isabel, and God knows how many passages with how many ladies outside the pale, and never a brat to show for it all? Lad, if he has a seed in him, for all his appetites, I’ll eat the fruit myself! My inheritance is safe enough, I’m in no danger. I’m twenty-five, and he’s nearing sixty. I can wait!” He straightened alertly. “Look, they’re coming!”
But Joscelin had already caught the first glimmer of color and movement along the road, and stiffened to gaze. They came on briskly, Godfrid Picard and his party, in haste to gain the hospitable shelter of the abbey. Simon loosed his clasp, feeling Joscelin draw away.
“For God’s sake, boy, what’s the use? She’s not for you!” But he said it in a despairing sigh, and Joscelin did not even hear it.
They came, and they passed. The ogres on either side of her loomed lean and subtle and greedy, heads arrogantly high, but brows knotted and faces pinched, as though there had already been some happening that had displeased them. And there between them was she, a pale desperation in a golden shell of display, her small face all eyes, but blind eyes, gazing at nothing, seeing nothing. Until she drew close, and something—he wanted to believe his nearness and need—disquieted her, caused her to shiver, and turn her great eyes where she hardly dared turn her whole head, towards the place where he stood. He was not certain that she saw him, but he was certain that she knew he was there, that she had felt, scented, breathed him as she passed between her guards. She did not make the mistake of looking round, or in any way changing the fixed, submissive stillness of her face; but as she passed she lifted her right hand to her cheek, held it so a moment, and again let it fall.
“I do believe,” sighed Simon Aguilon, bringing his friend back in his arm to the courtyard, “that you haven’t given up, even now. For God’s sake, what have you to hope for? Two days more, and she’s my lady Domville.”
Joscelin held his peace, and thought of the uplifted hand, and knew in his heart that her fingers had touched her lips; and that was more than had been agreed.
The entire guest-hall of the abbey, apart from the common quarters, had been given over to Sir Godfrid Picard and his wedding party. In the privacy of their own chamber, within, Agnes Picard turned to her husband with an anxious face. “I still do not like this quietness of hers. I do not trust her.”
He shrugged it off disdainfully. “Ah, you fret too much. She has given over the battle. She is altogether submissive. What can she do? Daniel has his orders not