Isabel was worried about little Malkin. She might be old enough already to be widowed, but she seemed a child to Isabel still. Since Ailward’s death, she spent too long just sitting and staring into the distance without speaking for long periods, her expression bereft.
‘Mary? Mary?’ Isabel sighed. ‘Malkin, please …’
Mary seemed to come to with reluctance. ‘Mother?’
It was what, eighteen months since this young woman had become her daughter-in-law? And until Ailward’s death Isabel had only ever seen her as happy, excited and enthusiastic. To see her green eyes grown so cold and empty was torture. Nothing could rouse her. Since she had lost her husband, she had lost all her love for life.
Isabel held her arms wide, and Malkin stood and crossed the floor, walking into her embrace.
It was impossible for Isabel to find the words to explain her own devastation in the face of such tragic despair. For Isabel this was merely the latest in a series of losses. Her life for the last ten years seemed to have been one of continual mourning. Well, she would not sit and wail again, no matter how much she missed her son. She was the daughter of a squire, the wife of another, and mother of a sergeant. She was proud.
Malkin had lost no one before, though, and she wept freely on Isabel’s shoulder. The girl felt so frail and soft to the older woman, it surprised her that she had been able to conceive her child. There was no strength to her, not like the women of Isabel’s age who were so used to death and trying to survive in the worst of conditions.
‘I must seem pathetic!’ Malkin murmured. ‘I am so sorry, Mother. But I miss him so — and I don’t know how I can live without him …’
‘Child, you know nothing of the world, do you? You are young. Yes, it is right to grieve for your man, but when you are as old as me you will realise that there are always fresh losses. All you can do is weather each storm that comes, and try to protect those who still matter.’
She looked down at Malkin’s head approvingly. The chit was soft, but she had adored Isabel’s son, and that was enough to endear her to Isabel.
Malkin nodded and sat up, her head averted as though she was ashamed of her outburst. She stood and returned to her stool, picking up her wool and taking a deep, shuddering breath before counting each stitch on her knitting needle.
She was beautiful — there could be no doubt of that. Her blue-black hair was iridescent as a raven’s wing, and her face was delightfully shaped: a broad, white brow that curved down to a pointed little chin. With green eyes slanted down at the sides, and full lips, even now in the depths of her misery she was a delight to the eye. It was no surprise that she’d stolen Ailward’s heart. More surprising was that she’d been prepared to accept his advances.
Isabel was no fool; nor was she prepared to attribute characteristics even to her own son that were better than he possessed. Ailward was a bullying, covetous fool, who could, maybe, have made a good sergeant given time, but had died first. Not that his foolishness affected Malkin’s opinion of him, apparently. She seemed to have genuinely adored him. There had never been any tears about the place while he lived, and she had always been doting. Perhaps it was true, the old idea that love blinded a young wench to her man’s true character. If blindness were ever needed, it was in the lover of Isabel’s son.
She sighed. Already an old woman at four and fifty, she was lonely, and unlike the widow in front of her had little chance of ever winning another man.
‘Sad, Mother?’ Malkin asked softly.
It would have been easy to snap at her. What did she have to be sad about? No father, no husband, no son … not many even in the last decade had been forced to contend with so much despair. Isabel felt her eyes sting, but she blinked the tears away before they could form. ‘No, child. I was just remembering. There’s no need for sadness, not when the good Lord is protecting us at all times. My son is gone to a better place.’
‘Of course.’
The arrival of the steward prevented further discussion. Isabel held out her mazer for a refill of wine, and she watched as Pagan filled it to the brim.
He was a good old servant, Pagan. It was one of the old Devonshire names. Nowadays all the young men of quality seemed to have the same ones, even in the same family. Isabel knew one in which the oldest boy was called Guy, the following four sons were all called John, and the last two were both William. She knew why it happened — any parent wanted a godparent to be as committed to his offspring as possible, and so named the children after favoured friends. But if a favoured friend became godparent to more than one of the children, it could lead to embarrassing and confusing multiple naming in the family. Isabel was glad that she had only ever had to worry about the one boy. Much easier that way!
Pagan filled Malkin’s cup and then set the jug between the two women before leaving the room. He stood at the door, as usual, eyeing both of them, his eyes going about the room: checking the fire was warm enough, that the shutters were pulled shut against the cold evening air, that the dogs were settled out of the way so that they couldn’t upset the women. Only when he was satisfied that they were as comfortable as they could be did he quietly draw the heavy curtain over the doorway and retreat to his pantry to clear away the rubbish.
He was one man who could always be relied upon, Isabel thought. There were so many who were unreliable. Men who would steal the rings from a widow’s fingers, who would demand money before performing their services, who would eye her with a lascivious tenderness, hoping to receive a better payment in kind for their efforts, or simply pocket a portion of the manor’s wealth and fly the place, never to return.
Pagan was not like them. A little younger than Isabel, his family had served Isabel’s dead husband’s for many years going back into the dim and distant past. The fact that Pagan was still here was a measure of his commitment to them, and a proof of his honour, although he was only a common peasant in truth. At the same time, knights who called themselves honourable were stealing manors from defenceless widows like her.
She gazed into the flames, lost in thought.
‘Mother? Are you well?’
Malkin’s soft voice drew her back to the present. ‘Yes! Of course I am,’ she snapped without thinking, and then regretted her harshness. ‘I am sorry, Malkin. It’s just …’ She waved her hands feebly. ‘I don’t know how to say it.’
‘I know,’ Malkin said. Tears appeared in her eyes again. ‘I can’t think how to face life without my man.’
‘That is easy,’ Isabel said sternly. ‘You survive. I have lost three men now. My father, like my husband’s, killed by the Scots in Ireland, Robert himself in that treacherous attack at Bridgnorth, and now my son. My beloved son …’
‘I loved him so much,’ Malkin said.
‘I know you did, little sweeting.’
‘It seems so hard to imagine that he’s gone.’
‘The thing to concentrate on for now is my grandson. You have to look after him, child. It is he who matters, who has to be protected. No one else.’
Chapter Six
Sir Baldwin de Furnshill stood in the cool morning air wearing only a thin linen shirt and a fine tunic of flaming crimson, and drew his sword as he faced the rising sun on the grassy slope, tossing the scabbard aside on to the grass and standing still a moment.
He was a tall man, broad and thickset about the shoulders and neck as befitted a warrior used to wearing armour, and his right arm was more heavily muscled than his left from working with heavy weapons. Yet for all his warlike appearance, his face showed a different quality. He lacked the brute arrogance and cruelty of so many modern knights. Instead, he had kindliness in his dark brown eyes — kindliness and a sort of wariness, a man always slightly on guard. A thin beard followed the line of his lower jaw. Once it had been dark, but now, like his hair, it was showing more and more grey. There was more salt than pepper, his wife had said recently, and he could not deny it.