Chapter 2
Leah ran hastily down the dark turret stairs. At the foot she met a maidservant whom she ordered to bring a bath to the east tower room and to ask her mother for the keys of the storeroom. "I will be here on the battlements," she said breathlessly. "Give me your cloak."
Away from Lord Radnor's presence, her excitement threatened again to overwhelm her and she felt that she had to breathe. She needed, too, peace to consider her fate, and the noisy, bustling hall where she might come upon her father or mother and be told to do something was not the place for thinking. Actually she knew more about her future husband than her mother suspected.
As closely as she was watched, because highborn girls were guarded well to ensure their marriage value and Pembroke's household was rough and ill-regulated outside of the women's quarters, she listened often to the maidservants' talk. Many of these girls had lovers among the men-at-arms, for Pembroke laughed at such matters and in the face of his indulgence Edwina's prohibitions had little force. They told tales of the warriors who held back the Welsh, who fought in civil war, and who were embroiled in the current upheavals. The Earl of Gaunt and his son were high on the list of heroes.
Tales of their prowess were many and varied and, even the simple Leah suspected, sometimes exaggerated, but one thing was sure. Father and son were a strange pair and were held together by a strange and reputedly unholy bond. The father was well known to hate the son who obeyed him much as a dancing bear obeys his keeper; sometimes docile, sometimes snarling on the border of rebellion, Lord Radnor, like a bear, was always dangerous. Still, Gaunt was said to repose absolute confidence in his son and sent him alone to the councils of state, and the confidence, so stated rumour, had never been misplaced.
Some said too that Lord Radnor—reported invincible in war—was not Gaunt's son but the child of the devil whom Gaunt had received because he could father no heir. Certainly twenty years of marriage to a second wife had produced no other child. Leah shuddered briefly because she knew that such things were possible. He said he was crippled, but was he? Or was the foot he limped on the horn hoof that marked Satan in his human form? Leah pulled the borrowed cloak closer about her, chilled by fear more than by the April wind.
It was useless to dwell upon such fears. This man, whatever he was, would be her husband. Her father had so commanded, and so it must be. Only what would she do if … Whatever else was uncertain, there could be no doubt that Lord Radnor was a great knight, and that she would be a great lady, the equal of any in the land save the queen alone. He would not have wanted to marry her if he planned to do her harm. If she were very obedient, Leah thought, she might be able to please him. With her father obedience did not always serve, but Lord Radnor was much younger than her father. Perhaps he would be kind to her—he had said he wished to use her kindly—or at least not unkind. If that were true, how proud she would be in the ranks of ladies with such a lord.
After Leah had left, Lord Radnor drew a shaken breath and swallowed hard several times. "Madness," he said to the fire. "It comes from reading those accursed romantic tales."
Then the sound of his own voice embarrassed him, and he scowled at the blameless flames. For twelve years Lord Radnor had spent few days without a sword in his hand and few nights in a safe bed. He had fought up and down the borders of his father's huge holdings keeping out robber barons and forcing the Welsh, who always desired to throw off the yoke of the Norman conquerors, to continue to serve them and pay taxes. Before that time, however, he had been taught by the priests his father supported, for Gaunt had not only peculiar ideas about serfs but equally peculiar ones about the value of education. The earl felt that if a man could read and write he could never be at the mercy of the clerical scribes; if he could speak and understand all the languages used by the people around him, including Welsh and Latin, he could understand things it might be dangerous to miss and would never need a translator.
In the mass of tutors needed for such an education, one man, Father Thomas, had recognized the qualities of the irritable, high-strung lad who was such a good student and such a difficult pupil. Father Thomas was not, perhaps, a very good priest, but he was a perceptive, gentle man. For a little while he had tried to foster the streak of gentleness he recognized in Cain with talk of the love of God and the beauty of faith. To this there had been no response; the fear that he was born damned as well as crippled was already too strongly implanted in the child.
When Father Thomas understood that fear, he promptly abandoned all attempts to save his pupil's soul and saved his reason instead. He had introduced Lord Radnor to the Latin classics available, particularly Virgil's Aeneid, and to the "romance." In these popular tales, knights lived by their honor; they were gentle to all women and loved only one throughout life; they fought for the oppressed and for the right without thought of self. Lord Radnor knew this was not life as it was, but it was a dream to cling to and an escape for his tormented mind. Through all the years of war and brutality and blood and death, he had clung to his dream, yearning for something beyond sordid reality and for a proof, in his endeavor to imitate the heroes of those tales, that he was a good man.
The Earl of Gaunt, a hard and brutal person, but shrewd and long-sighted beyond most men of his times, had added reality, all unwitting, to his son's dream. He had seen that serfs who had sufficient to eat and who were not totally prostrated with fear of their masters somehow produced better crops. Still harder work and better results could be obtained, Gaunt found, by allowing these virtual slaves to keep a slightly larger proportion of the crop than strictly belonged to them when the yield was particularly good.
Confidence that they would be protected from the wars that ravaged and ruined the crops they labored so hard to produce and from rapacious minor barons also improved the willingness of the serf to labor for his master. All these things, then, the earl had provided, and the fact that he had become richer and richer and that his lands lay quiet when others endured rebellion proved the maxim that he had drilled into his son—that the way to a fat land was through fat serfs. Fat serfs came through peace that permitted them to till the soil. Lord Radnor's duty, then, was to keep the peace for his serfs by making war on those who threatened them, and the righteousness of the accomplishment of that duty, the protection of the weak, lent a glow of reality to his dream.
Not that Lord Radnor hated war. His nature was dual; it contained much cruelty as well as softer dreams. He loved his own prowess with sword and lance and his power on his own land and in the councils of the nobles of the realm. It was only that under that satisfaction was a desire for—for what? Cain had not formulated his thoughts, although he was a man given to introspection, and he was not sure what it was he lacked. He did know that the romances of Chretien and Beroul satisfied and stimulated that longing.
If life could be like that! He stirred in his chair and passed his hand across his face feeling the puckered skin of his scars. He fed his desire with reading and reading, buying and borrowing manuscripts wherever he could lay hands upon them, and the more he read the hungrier he was. For the courtesy, he had brutality; for the shining armor, he had rusty mail, hacked to pieces and mended to be hacked to pieces again; for the lovely ladies, he hardly saw a woman except the ragged, dirty women of the fields and the sluts of the court.
Lord Radnor rubbed his forehead impatiently. Love, he shied away from the word, but that was the be-all and end-all of the romances. All the battles, all the trials and tribulations of the shining heroes were motivated by the love of fair ladies. He grunted and turned more towards the fire as the maidservants brought in the bath and the leathers of hot water. Clumsy lumps with thick red hands. He stirred again, restlessly, and made an indistinct sound of discomfort as his shirt tore loose the scab of a half-healed cut on his shoulder.
The girl—Leah, that was her name—her hands were smooth and thin and white. Love! Suddenly he had a clear picture of himself; his torn face, his skin nearly black and leather-textured with exposure. Orientated by his reading about blond and handsome heroes, Radnor did not understand the male attractiveness of his dark, harsh-featured face with its redeeming softness of beautiful eyes and sensitive mouth. He could only think of the horror at the end of his left leg with which he had been born instead of a foot. He did not see the grace of movement in spite of the limp or the appeal in the promised virility of his great body. All he knew was that he was no golden-haired, perfect knight of the romances, and no woman had ever loved him.
There were women, of course, the women of the fields that he used like an animal in rut, and the women of the court where he attended Stephen every so often. Some of these had offered love, and, years earlier, filled with the tales he had read, he had disregarded the fact that they were betraying husbands to "love" him. Was not Tristan's love illicit but true and faithful? Lancelot's? But he had learned that, outside of the leather-bound parchments of the romances, a woman who betrays her husband betrays her lover too—or charges a high price for her favors.
Lord Radnor's mouth grew bitter with memory. The women who had betrayed him and laughed, who had sold him their bodies to steal secrets or gain political ends, had scarred his emotions badly. He had accepted the bond of matrimony as necessary to the continuation of his line, but he had accepted it reluctantly. What was more, he had objected particularly to marrying Pembroke's daughter because Pembroke hated and feared the Gaunts. His father, however, had been adamant, insisting that the dower lands Pembroke offered were not only great but particularly well placed with respect to Radnor's own property and that a blood bond between Gaunt and Pembroke was the best assurance possible of peace among the Norman barons of Wales. Finally Radnor had accepted marriage even with Pembroke's daughter, driven by the fierce desire to have a son to succeed him.
Leah had been a shock to Lord Radnor. He had not expected so pretty, but above all, so gentle and timid a girl. His experience of women had not included pure, highbred young girls. He felt, therefore, that Leah was different, something exceptional. He was worried now that this delicate bird would die of his rough handling as a lark caught in his youth had died of fright when he tried to caress it. Cain shivered again just as Leah came back into the room.
"My lord, you are chilled. It is all my fault. What a poor thing I am compared with my mother." She needed some excuse for she had wasted much time standing on the battlements and thinking. "Your father is already bathed and dressed. I pray you pardon me, but I will be quick now." She gave orders to the maids and soon the scent of the herbs she had thrown into the water filled Cain's nostrils. "Will you have me bathe you?"
As she spoke, Leah blushed. She had never bathed a man before, although her mother had taught her how it was done and although many girls like herself did perform that task. Edwina took the burden of that duty on herself for all visitors of sufficiently high rank, but Lord Radnor was Leah's betrothed and she assumed that he was hers to care for. She put her hands on his shoulders to pull off the cover, since she had received no reply, and Cain made a strangled sound that caused her to step back.
"At least let me help you undress," she urged.
Her lord cleared his throat and finally turned away from the fire to look at her. Her hands, exactly as he remembered them, graceful, pearly white, were held a little towards him. He stared at them and at her delicate, fine-boned face for so long and so intently that Leah blushed again.
"No, I thank you. I will bathe myself. I always do so. It is too old a habit to be broken."
His voice was so soft that Leah started forward. "You are well, my lord?"
"Yes. Perfectly well."
"I will leave you then, before the water cools. I pray you call me before you dress. There was blood on your shirt and I will anoint your wounds so that you may be comfortable."
"Very well."
Cain undressed slowly, the physical action masking his thoughts, and stepped into the tub. He grimaced as the hot water stung a dozen sores, but he was so inured to physical discomfort that the movement was wholly unconscious. He washed, lifting the water in cupped hands to rub over his face, shoulders and upper arms, before he noticed a small irregular cake of yellow soap. For a moment he stared at it, unrecognizing, for he had not used soap more than four or five times in his life.
Soap was a very new thing, an indulgence for the rich and the pampered. After he had taken it up, however, he bathed more briskly, lathering himself luxuriously, even washing his thick black hair. Finally he stepped out of the bath, standing on his right foot alone and holding the other up off the floor. He stood steadily, through long practice, to dry himself roughly, reached for the shirt, remembered that Leah wanted someone to attend to his wounds, and instead took up his chausses, a garment that combined stockings and underpants. When these and the special boot that masked and supported his crippled foot had been drawn on, he raised his head and bellowed for attention.
Leah herself came in bearing pots of ointment, responding so quickly to his call that she must have been waiting outside the door. Lord Radnor looked faintly surprised, he thought she would send a servant to attend him, but when she asked if she might dress his wounds he agreed willingly enough. He returned to his chair by the fire and returned, too, to his contemplation of the flames.
"Oh," Leah commented after anointing various hurts with a salve from one of the pots, "there is proud flesh here."
"Yes, an old wound that does not heal. It is of no consequence."
"But it is, indeed of consequence. It must be attended to. Let me get a knife and I will make all clean. I assure you that it will heal properly if cared for."
Lord Radnor made an impatient gesture. "I must be away two days hence. Who will care for it? Let be, I say. I have borne it so long, a little longer, or forever, can make no difference."
Leah had never in her life questioned or contradicted a statement made by a man, and she did not think of doing so now. For a while longer she worked over the rest of his body. She rolled down the loose top of the chausses and knelt to salve an angry-looking weal very near his groin. Suddenly, she felt Cain's body stiffen,
"I will not hurt you, my lord."
"Hurt me?"
"I know that I am young, but I have been well taught. If you do not trust me, let me call my mother. She—"
"How could you hurt me?"
He did not even know what he said. Innocent as she was, Leah could not know the rage of desire that had suddenly flooded him. He had been hurried in the last few weeks and there had been no woman immediately to hand that he had wanted to take to his bed. Being alone in the dim room with Leah had made Cain achingly conscious that she was to be his bride and that she was very desirable. Worst of all, the sustained caress of her hands as she dressed his wounds had aroused him, and the thought of her hand between his thighs nearly made him lose his control.
"Nay," he said at last, seeing the trouble in her face, "if you are in such earnest, fetch your knife and do as you will. I only did not think it worth your trouble."
If she would go and not touch him for a while, he could master his desire, but it was no easy thing to do. She is no lady greensleeves, he told himself, nor yet a serf on my lands. When I have her, it must be with honor. With honor, he repeated, as Leah returned. He winced slightly as she cut his flesh, and she put a cool hand on the back of his neck to steady him. Unfortunately, the coolness did not communicate itself to him. Where she touched him, he burned, hotter than the blood which he could feel running down his back.
"This will sting a little, my lord." Leah spread an unguent on the raw flesh and Cain drew breath and released it in a long sigh. Leah misunderstood the trouble he was having with his breathing. "I am sorry," she murmured. "It is finished now. Only the one bruise below and I will let you be."
Lord Radnor braced himself to quietness and knew even as he did so that he could not bear it. "Give it here, I will spread it myself." She handed him the pot, but her lips trembled. "Fool. It is not because you hurt me or because I mistrust your skill. It is—" What was he going to say? Cain burst into laughter. "Oh, Lord, girl, I cannot explain to you."
"You are trembling. You are cold. Here, put on your shirt."
Cain laughed even louder. "No indeed, I am not cold. By God's eyes, I am far, far too hot. Perhaps, though, the shirt will do as well to cool this heat as it would to warm the cold you fear."
He pulled the garment over his head and added tunic and gown quickly, feeling vaguely that the more clothing there was between them the safer Leah would be. When she came up close to offer a soft leather belt to close the gown, however, Radnor's mixture of desire and curiosity conquered him. It could do no harm, after all, to take one kiss from her lips.
He caught her wrist and pulled her still closer. The hand that held the belt dropped it when he pushed her face up to his, but she made no effort to withdraw. Slowly, watching for a sign of fear or revulsion, he put his mouth to hers. His lips were hard and rough and forced her soft mouth open; Leah's breath would not come evenly. For an instant her hand moved aimlessly, then pressed him away, and then, as she felt his lips begin to withdraw, went around his neck to pull his face closer.
"A pox take me!" Radnor exclaimed and roughly pushed Leah away. "That was ill done, my lady. A little more and you are a maid no longer. Think you I am made of the snows of the mountain?"
She could not speak. Scarlet to the roots of her hair, she stood with head dropped before him. So this was the sin of lust. How quickly it had overtaken her. She could not rid her mouth of the feel of his lips. Worse yet, she did not wish to do so.
"D-do n-not th-think ill of me, my lord. I could n-not help …"
"The fault is mine. I am sorry now, though, that I did not agree to be married today as your father and mine wished. I felt that you would like to have time to prepare yourself. Your obedience is such, however, that I see this to have been unnecessary. Are you sure, Lady Leah, that you do not know overmuch of kissing?"
Now Leah's tears flowed in earnest. How quick was retribution on the head of evil doers. "Oh, no," she sobbed, "you may ask my mother. None but she has ever kissed me before, and she not often. My lord, my lord, if I have done ill, it is only in listening to the tales of the maids and the singing of the jongleurs."
He knew it had to be so. She was watched too close, no doubt, to come to harm in her own castle, and she had never been away from it. His fierce jealousy leapt to life in fear of no particular man, but if she kissed him with such warmth—ugly and deformed as he was—what would happen when the bright young men of the court were made available to her?
"Stop that crying! Do you want to have the whole castlefolk in here? Dry your eyes." He bent and picked up the discarded belt, fastened the gown together, and came towards her. "The fault was mine." Lord Radnor spoke more gently. "There is no wrong in a willingness to kiss your betrothed. I should be glad you do not shrink from me as I half expected. Alas, for someone who wishes to please you, I have made you greatly unhappy this day."
Leah shook her head. Cain watched her. If her response had been planned, it would not occur again; if it was involuntary …
"Come here," he said austerely, "and kiss me once more, quite properly."
She came to him obediently and raised her face, still wet with tears. This time, it was true, she made no effort to embrace him, but, when he kissed her, she trembled and leaned against his body. Lord Radnor checked himself with an effort, calling himself ten times a fool, as the taste of desire rose again in his throat.
"Go now. Go before I shame myself and do you some hurt."
Through the meal which was served in the evening because Cain and his father had missed their dinner, Leah sat mute as a stone. She was so exhausted by the emotional upheaval she had suffered that day that she could make no further effort, although she knew that she should make some conversation with the Earl of Gaunt who sat beside her.
The old man did not trouble her with a word, but his keen glance moved from the drooping girl to his son's slightly pale face. The great ox has frightened her, he thought, and the chit is Pembroke's daughter. She will have to be watched close.
As soon as she dared, Leah crept away to seek solace in quiet. She shut the door of the tiny wall chamber which was called hers, struck flint into tinder to light the stub of a candle which she was allowed, and began to ply her needle. The familiar activity did little to calm her, but one clear idea took possession of her. Her betrothed's clothing must be put into fit condition for him to wear.
The garments had been left in Edwina's chamber, and Leah easily picked out Lord Radnor's clothes. The stillroom supplied remedies for rust and bloodstains, and Leah set to work. While the shirt soaked, she damped and brushed the brown velvet surcoat lovingly. She would not soak that precious fabric, but blotted and brushed patiently at the stains. When she was through, the surcoat was in far better condition than it had been before, but it was clear that the garment was too worn and badly neglected to be reclaimed.
Leah noted too that though the cloth was of the finest, better than any she had seen in her entire life, the making-up was coarse and ill done. As she stared at it, the idea came to her of making Lord Radnor a lavish robe for a wedding gift. She did not know whether it would be possible, for her father would have to supply the cloth and jewels and might not be willing, but there was a chance since he would be eager to please his powerful son-in-law.
After cutting rag strips to indicate length and width and carefully putting these away in the chest with her own clothing, Leah took the shirt out of the soaking tub. The stains were nearly gone, but the shirt was badly torn in several places, as were the chausses. These too were of good material but poor make. Leah set the shirt to dry before the fire in her mother's room—there was none in hers—while she mended the dark blue chausses, frowning over the awful combination of colors. She knelt close to the flames for light, scorching her face but taking tiny, careful stitches. She would not light candles without her mother's permission; candles were expensive and Pembroke was not generous.
Edwina found her thus employed. "What are you doing, Leah?"
The girl, immersed in her own thoughts, started and blushed. "Mending his clothes," she replied, as if there was only one man in the world. "They are in sad condition. Oh, Mother, I have some linen laid by for a shift. May I use it to make a new shirt for him? I think there is enough cloth, and if I sew tonight I can have it ready in time. I can be quick."
Edwina regarded her daughter for a long puzzled moment. "Certainly, if you wish to give up your new shift." Edwina would have given up anything for her daughter, she thought, or for her own parents while they were alive, but to make a sacrifice, even so small, for a strange man who would use you as he pleased was beyond her understanding.
"Oh yes. I have two that are still good." Leah's face was pink in the ruddy firelight, and her mother could not tell whether she was blushing or merely overheated.
"Light some working candles, child, you will bum your hair." Leah obeyed at once, and Edwina watched her as she brought the candles to a table near the hearth. She caught her daughter's arm, as Leah was about to touch Lord Radnor's shirt to see if it was dry. "Are you content, Leah?" Now it was plain that the girl was blushing rosily, and Edwina was surprised.
"Yes."
"Of course, you could not be otherwise when your father has so decided. But— You had much talk with Lord Radnor. Is he content, think you?"
Leah stood submissively before her mother, but she did not raise her eyes. "I do not know. He was … very kind." She spoke with an effort that her mother interpreted wrongly in the light of her own feelings.
"Leah, you must be happy with what God sends. He has offered you much to be happy with. If Lord Radnor is not so young or so handsome as you may have desired—if he is not just like the knights in the tales which you hear—he has many things to offer you. Lord Radnor is rich beyond avarice, the lord of many manors; he is a great warrior; he will be one of the greatest and most powerful men in the kingdom when his father dies. You must be grateful that he has chosen you."
"I am grateful, mother. I am content."
Edwina was baffled by Leah's reticence. Her confiding child had withdrawn into her own thoughts. She released Leah's arm. "There, the shirt is dry now. Mend it, and I will help you cut the linen for another."