Eleanor reached for her goblet and sipped the excellent red wine. I had best cleanse my own heart of sin, she decided, before I start accusing anyone else of lust. It may be that the Devil has so filled my soul with unchaste thoughts that I see the fault in all others.
Another burst of laughter exploded in the hushed room.
Eleanor looked up in time to see Lady Margaret rest her hand on Hugh’s arm. The baron’s wife put her other hand on her breast and let it slip down her body with a caressing gesture.
Hugh sat back, his face flaming red.
That might answer the question of which is seducing the other, Eleanor thought with some relief. Hugh is a frail mortal like us all, she thought, but I am grateful that my brother seems to be resisting the temptation to swyve the baron’s wife.
Then Eleanor’s anger flashed. How dare Lady Margaret try to deceive her with fine declarations of unyielding virtue? Hadn’t this woman proclaimed just yesterday that she had maintained her chastity under the most trying conditions during the baron’s absence? Now that her husband was home, she seemed eager to wallow in another man’s bed and right after her son had died. This was sin beyond imagination.
Or had grief and the rejection of her husband so weakened her resolve that temptation found her an easy prey? Eleanor shook her head in confusion. There might be more to this strange behavior than wickedness, unless, as she feared, her own sins were coloring her observations.
The prioress searched out Brother Thomas at the table to see if he had also witnessed what was happening between her brother and Lady Margaret. Were he as perplexed as she about the interaction between the pair, she would feel more confidence in her conclusions.
But the monk was lost in thought. The food on his trencher remained untouched. His brow creased, he slowly rocked a wine cup back and forth.
Everyone seems bewitched, Eleanor decided. Mortals might be the usual perpetrators of evil in her experience, but she was uncomfortably aware that this occasion could be the exception. Each of them acted as if enchanted by some strange charm: she with lust for Sir Leonel, the lady for Sir Hugh, and perhaps Master Gamel and Sister Anne for each other. Brother Thomas, whose virtue had always been strong enough to withstand the lure of women, appeared to be in a trance.
Eleanor squeezed her eyes shut, but not before the pressure of a throbbing headache begin to build over her left eye. She pressed her fingers against her brow. Not since she was a child and learned of her mother’s death had she felt so vulnerable.
Chapter Fourteen
Lady Margaret stood at the window and cursed herself with more vehemence than God ever could.
No woman had acted more the fool. Cats in heat offered themselves with more dignity than she had done tonight with Sir Hugh. Resting her forehead against the unyielding stone, she wept. The transgression she might have committed was a sin she had not even truly desired. “My most beloved husband, why have you forsaken me?” she murmured. “How did I offend?”
Lifting her head, she looked out on the black night and let the darkness slide into her empty heart. She grasped her breasts. “When these were still sweet to suck and my flesh bore the blush of roses, men begged to lie with me. I rejected their pleas, not even allowing a single kiss. Why? When you rode through the gate, you turned your back on me, refusing to grant even one kind glance. Shall I pay for cleaving to my vows as God required? Was my constancy so great a sin that I must writhe alone in my bed like the Devil’s whore?”
A squall of hard rain hit the open window, stinging her face.
She laughed.
A servant, passing through the corridor, abruptly halted in alarm. The tray in her hands tilted. Struggling, she righted it before the vessels tumbled to the floor. “My lady, are you ill?”
Spinning around, Margaret pressed her back to the wall and screamed maledictions at the woman.
The maid gripped the tray and ran down the corridor, not stopping until she had reached the safety of a door. Only then did she dare look back, her eyes wide with terror.
Margaret slid to the floor and bent forward, fists pressed into her womb. “I can bear this no longer,” she whispered. “My sons are dying. My husband refuses to lend me the comfort of his arms. My loneliness eats into my soul where it rots like a rat’s corpse. What grave transgression have I committed to deserve these curses?”
The wind howled in reply.
“When I was young,” she whispered to whatever spirit might care to listen, “our union was blessed. I was as fruitful as my lord was virile. Then he left to take the cross. Should I have abandoned my children and taken holy vows myself? Is that my sin?”
She waited for a response but could feel no warmth of God’s love in the icy air.
“Am I to be condemned for lust because my womb begins to wither?” She looked up at the unrelenting darkness outside the window, then screamed: “Is it just, my lord, that I must suffer because we grew old apart?”
***
At the end of the corridor, two servants peeked around the corner. The wizened maid drew the sign of the cross; the young one shook her head in dismay.
“I see the Devil himself hovering over there. See? Just behind the mistress,” the former whispered and pointed toward Lady Margaret. “He’ll be riding the mistress tonight in her bed for cert, leaving our master to walk the ramparts alone again.”
The young one shuddered.
Hastily, they both scurried away.
Chapter Fifteen
Hugh nodded to the soldier on watch.
The man was eager to talk, but Hugh’s spirit begged for silence. With a terse reply, he passed the man by, then grieved that he had not been kinder. Sentry duty on windswept nights was a lonely task, one he understood well. How many nights had he stared into the blackness, fearing a muffled sound was the enemy and wishing it so in equal measure?
Turning around, he shouted encouragement and a jest to the motionless shadow behind him.
The soldier raised his hand and resumed his slow walk along the wall.
The coming storm confirmed Hugh’s troubled mood. The wind was wild, the air so cold it nipped painfully at his face. He knew he should not be here on these exposed ramparts; neither could he bear any longer the softer company he had escaped. As the untamed elements lashed him, he doubted that any effort to retain his reason would last. He surrendered to failure. His warm, fur-lined cloak might protect his body from those elements, but his maimed spirit trembled.
He had been foolish to leave Lucas behind, the only person who could pull him out of the whirlpool that often threatened to drown him in memories of blood. But the baron hated the very sight of the man, and, when Hugh received Herbert’s message and discerned the man’s evident suffering, he had chosen to honor the baron’s prejudice over his own need. Tonight, he feared the consequences of that decision and begged God to hold back the madness clawing at his soul.
The brutish wind’s high shriek against the stone wall echoed a dying soldier’s scream. The waves crashed on the shore below like a trebuchet-flung rock smashing a fortress wall. The world was at war again. He could never quite escape it, even in sleep when the memories of battle rushed back in dreams.
Herbert was right. No one could comprehend this mix of terror, excitement, madness, and triumph except a man who had sliced another in half, then seen the expression as the dying man realized what had been done to him. No one else could understand how it felt, at the end of the battle, to be the one who remained alive, surrounded by the mutilated bodies of other sons of Adam. He was not the only one who had raised his sword and roared, the orgasm of feeling never quite matched by the bedding of any woman.