Which meant that she could be with whomever she pleased, provided she was discreet. “As you can tell, the event will have an impact on the food we eat,” she remarked, indicating the meat at which he had already pulled a face. “Doris was the best cook in the castle.”
They settled on splitting a capon wing and sharing the wine. “ ’Twill take her a week or so to recover,” she said, accepting the wineskin he handed her. “I could speak to the others about the quality of the fare.”
“You had best leave that to Dame Maeve,” he warned. “She is jealous of her duties, that one.”
Clarise agreed with him and steered the conversation back to the day’s events. “Is there only one midwife in these parts?” she asked.
“Aye,” he said. “Why?”
“Then the woman I saw this morning must have been the one who oversaw Simon’s birth?” She knew she was prying, but she could not imagine the Slayer putting up with the shriveled woman’s malpractice.
Saintonge cast her a glowering, sidelong look. “Aye, she was the same,” he answered bitterly. “Lady Genrose was fine until that shrew took over,” he added.
Clarise took note of his disapproval. “I do not agree with her methods,” she felt safe in adding. “Heating the chamber is a heathenish practice. She was insensitive to Doris’s pain and seemed not at all dismayed to deliver a stillborn.”
“As I said, there are no other midwives.” Taking a bite of the bread, he added that the men would grow discontent if they were made to eat such fare.
The time had come to lay her proposition before him. Clarise reached into the basket. “Would you like a sugared almond?” she offered. “ ’Tis the last one in the kitchens.” She held out the confection she had squirreled away for bribery.
His gray eyes narrowed, and his familiar smile took hold of one edge of his mouth. “What do you want?” he asked. “I know you ventured into this heat for something. Out with it.”
“ ’Tis a simple request, really,” she assured him.
“Speak it then,” he said kindly.
She experienced an inward twinge. Would the knight be so congenial when he learned how very much she had kept from him? “First I need the key to the chapel.”
“What!”
“Doris asked that her babe be given a mass,” she quickly explained. “She wants him buried in the castle graveyard with the rest of her family. The servants hunger for a spiritual life, Sir Roger. I know that the interdict prohibits services of any kind,” she added, cutting off the protest that was certain to come, “but they will be happier with a chapel where they may venture in and pray.”
Sir Roger itched a spot inside his collar.
Clarise saw that Simon’s eyes had begun to cross as he examined the pattern on the blanket. She put him in a new location.
“Who would bury the babe and say the proper words over his grave?” Saintonge finally asked. His question betrayed at least some consideration.
“Perhaps the Abbot of Revesby would come? The servants think highly of him.” She also had personal reasons for wanting to meet the good abbot. If she didn’t soon get a hold of Alec, she was doomed to confessing her guilt to Lord Christian.
The knight shook his head. “I doubt he will defy his colleague again.”
“Defy? What do you mean?”
He looked displeased with himself for having said so much, then grimaced with resolve to share what he knew. “It was Ethelred who wed Lord Christian and his lady in the very chapel you speak of,” he grimly explained. “The Abbot of Rievaulx had refused to marry them, offering no other reason than his differences with the baron. Ethelred petitioned the archbishop and received permission to perform the sacrament in Gilbert’s stead.”
“Gilbert is the Abbot of Rievaulx?” she asked.
“Aye.” He gave her an odd look. “You must not have lingered long at the abbey to have escaped that knowledge.”
“I was housed separately from the men,” she answered, wincing. Coward! You should have seized the opportunity to confess to him.
“Ah. Well, on the day of the wedding, Gilbert discovered Ethelred’s betrayal. He tried to stop the ceremony but arrived too late. In a choleric fit, he cried out a warning that has caused a rift between the serfs and their seneschal ever since, just as he meant it to.”
“What was it?” Clarise asked, feeling a chill on the top of her head. At last she would know why the folk at Helmesly persisted in fearing their master.
The knight began dumping leftovers in the basket.
“Please tell me,” she softly begged him.
He stilled, struggling with himself. “My lord is an honorable man,” he told her. The scars stood out starkly on his face.
Clarise felt her eyes sting in response to such loyalty. “I have seen the better side of him,” she admitted. And she would doubtless see the worst unless she could soften the blow when it came. “What did Gilbert say?”
Sir Roger looked down at his own callused hand. “He said Lady Genrose would be slain by her husband.”
Clarise barely smothered her gasp. A vision of a body desecrated rose up in her mind’s eye, and she shook it free.
Sir Roger’s eyes flashed with unaccustomed fierceness. “The lady labored long and died in childbirth. Lord Christian saved Simon from dying, also. He never wanted such a fate for his wife!”
She put her own hand over his roughened one. “I believe you,” she said convincingly. “I do. And God will reward such loyalty as yours.” As she squeezed his fingers, she mourned that their bond of friendship would soon be put to the test. “Gilbert is mad,” she added, saying out loud what she had thought the moment she saw the unreal glitter in the abbot’s eyes. “When I spoke with him, he left me feeling quite uneasy.”
“You may be right,” Saintonge agreed. “They say he works night and day pouring over his herbs. Likely he has tried one too many of his concoctions, and it has turned his brain to mush.”
Clarise smiled at the knight’s imagination. “I don’t know why the servants put any credence in the things he has to say,” she commented lightly.
His eyes began to crinkle at the corners. His smile took up its post once more. “Helmesly is a happier place for your presence, lady,” he told her with feeling. “You have cast your light into my lord’s dark heart, and I thank you for it.”
So that he wouldn’t see the guilt in her face, she lifted her gaze toward the main keep where it stood between its graceful buttresses. To her amazement, contentment flooded her heart when she looked upon its clean lines. How could she feel so connected to a place when the foundation of her existence here was built on sand?
Heathersgill had ceased to be a home after Ferguson usurped her father. For months she’d felt abandoned by Alec, overwhelmed by her family’s plight. Now all those feelings were removed from her, by time and distance. It was wrong of her to forget her family.
“Do you know if Alec has made reply to Lord Christian’s offer?” she dared to ask. If there were any way to escape her final judgment, she would take it. Alec’s chances of defeating Ferguson were not as high as Christian’s. But at least she knew him for an honorable man, a kind man.
The knight studied her from beneath his lashes. “There’s been no word,” he said neutrally.
Sir Roger had praised her for bringing happiness to Helmesly, but he didn’t yet trust her with issues of power and politics. She could not forget that underneath his friendly veneer there remained a bond of loyalty, firm and enduring. “Tell me how you came to serve Lord Christian,” she heard herself inquire.
Saintonge leaned in with an air of confidence. “I served the Wolf before him.”
“His father?” she asked in amazement.
“I didn’t know he was his father. Nor did Lord Christian, until later. He came to Wendesby to train as a squire. He was but twelve years old—a slim lad with a vocabulary that had me scratching my head to remember my grammar. He spoke eloquently of angels and apostles and a vision of the future.”