My Lady Midnight

Lord Alain indicated a trencher next to his. “As we have no important guests this even, you may sit next to me,” he said. “Now come and be seated, and the meal will begin.” As the children moved toward the end of the dais to reach their places, Lord Alain clapped his hands, and a young lad moved forward with a towel over one arm, carrying a laver of water.

Automatically, Claire began to follow them, until she heard the first titters of laughter. Then a tall, angular man she would later learn was Sir Gautier, the seneschal, stepped forward to intercept her.

“Nursemaids do not sit at the high table, girl,” he said in thickly accented English. His gaunt face was scornful. “Your place is below the salt.” He pointed a bony finger behind her, to where two trestle tables stretched out at right angles to the dais.

He was right, of course. Her chagrin was so great she wanted to run from the great hall. She was miserably aware of the low hum of amusement as she reversed her direction and headed away from the dais. She knew very well a humble nursemaid did not presume to sit above the salt with the lord and his family, but for that one vital moment she had forgotten her role, and the habit of a lifetime had directed her footsteps toward the high table. As the daughter of the lord of Coverly, she had sat at the high table as soon as she was old enough not to disgrace the Coverly name—except when her father had been entertaining many important guests.

But how could she have made such a stupid mistake when it was vital that she convince everyone at Hawkswell Castle that she was what she appeared to be? She must never allow her concentration to slip again, not even for an instant!

Claire found the last vacant seat at the far end of one of the lower tables. She would be sharing a trencher with a man she recognized as one of the soldiers who had been riding with Lord Alain when she had first encountered him this morning.

“Thought ye were to sit at table with the lord, did ye?” he asked in passable English, grinning, as it became clear she would have to sit there.

“I didn’t know no better—I’ve never served in a castle afore,” she snapped. “There’s no need t’ make sport o’ me!”

He raised a brow. “Rather haughty for a nursemaid, aren’t you, my fair one?”

Quickly reproving herself for answering the grinning fool as he deserved, rather than as a runaway English serf woman would, she ducked her head in apparent humility. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m just ‘shamed of my mistake, ’tis all. Ye don’t mind if I share yer trencher, do ye, sir?”

Her fawning apology apparently convinced the soldier to forgive her, for his grin reappeared and he patted the place next to him.

“Sit down, and welcome, my fair one,” he said magnanimously. “I’m no sir, not being knighted and all. Just plain Hugh le Gros, they call me—that means Hugh the Large,” he explained, winking at her. “’Tis to distinguish me from Hugh la Jaune-Tête, Hugh the Yellowhead,” he added, pointing to another soldier seated halfway down the table, who had a thick thatch of tow-colored hair. “He’s the captain-at-arms. Here, let me give you some coney stew,” he said, grabbing a serving ladle nearby and dipping it into a large bowl within reach of his massive, hairy arms. “’Tis not as fine as the venison they’ll be having at the lord’s table, where ye wanted to go, but I reckon ’tis well enough.”

Claire thought about upending her wooden bowl, now full of the stew, on this grinning lout’s head for reminding her of her humiliating mistake, but controlled herself. She was going to have to grow a thicker skin, she decided. She said, “Thank ye, Hugh. And I am Haesel.”

“Where did ye come from, Haesel?” he asked. As she hesitated, wondering what was safe to tell him, he winked at her. “Confess, my fair one—I hear the lilt of the marches in your speech. Did you live near Shrewsbury?”

If he didn’t stop calling her his fair one, she would pour her bowl of stew on his head, and damn the consequences. Did he fancy himself an authority on accents, as well as irresistible to women? His guess on her origins couldn’t be farther wrong! But it little mattered where this Norman idiot thought she was from, so she let him think he was right.

Pretending to be absorbed in the food, which was humble but hunger-satisfying fare, she avoided further conversation for a while. Every so often she glanced up at the high table to check on the children, but apparently Ivy had taught them well, for they ate quietly and with good manners, wiping their faces on folded squares of linen and sharing their goblet fairly.

Then her eyes strayed to their father, but he seemed determined to remain in deep conversation with the the chaplain on his right. Never once did he look in her direction.

Saints, he was a handsome man, especially now that he had apparently bathed. His hair, that shade of brown so dark it usually looked black, gleamed in the candlelight, which also highlighted the stark, well-chiseled planes of his face. It was a warrior’s face, strong and proud, with nothing coarse about it. How could Julia have dismissed this man as merely swarthy?

“A handsome man, the lord, you’re thinking?” said the buxom, florid-faced woman on her left, giving her a playful jab in the ribs. “I’m Annis, the laundress, by the by,” she added with a friendly grin.

Startled at the familiarity, Claire smiled weakly. “I’m Haesel.” Claire supposed she should be grateful that someone at this table full of servants was speaking to her, besides the obnoxious Hugh, but she found herself blushing at the thought that the woman had caught her staring at Lord Alain. “Yes, I guess ye could say the lord be handsome enough,” Claire said, shrugging as if she couldn’t be less interested, “but I wasn’t staring at the lord. I was looking at the priest,” she lied. “I…I thought he looked like someone I knew, ’tis all…”

“Ye don’t say! Father Gregory hasn’t been the castle’s priest but a fortnight or so, after Father Peter’s sudden dying, so perhaps ye did.”

Father Gregory was a comfortable, rotund man of middle height and age, with a ready, benign smile that he had trained right now at the lord.

“It’s just as well ye didn’t have any ideas about the lord, though. He’s a cold fish, is Lord Alain,” said Annis consideringly, chewing on a crust of coarse dark bread. “Has been ever since that flighty wife of his died of lung fever, God rest her useless soul.” Annis crossed herself but rolled her eyes at the same time.

Claire was still struggling not to give the laundress a sharp retort for her disparagement of poor dead Julia when the woman went on. “He’s not completely unnatural, though. When his lust moves him, he visits my sister, Gylda, in the village, so you see what I mean that it’s no use hopin’ that ye’ll warm his bed.”

“Your sister be his leman?” Claire said, conscious of a sinking feeling within her, and wondering why. It mattered not to her whose bed he warmed!

“That makes it sound more regular than ’tis, but I suppose if any woman is, ’tis Gylda,” Annis said consideringly. “He doesn’t visit near often enough to suit Gylda, though,” she added with an earthy chuckle. “She’s a hotblooded one, but then she’s younger than me, o’ course. Nay, he don’t go there but once a fortnight at most, she says, but when he does get randy, Gylda says he is a good lover…” She winked.

“Well, I wish yer sister joy of ‘im,” Claire said, injecting as much vehemence into her tone as she could. “I got no use for fine lords, myself. Pining for such as him’d be like pining for the moon. I know my place, I do. I’ll just take care of his children and eat his bread, and that’s enough for me!”

“That’s a wise girl,” Annis approved, “but ye’re young, ye know. Don’t be too quick to give all men the cold shoulder. It gets cold when the winter winds whip around these stone walls—ye might be glad of a lusty man whose bed ye can steal away to when yer charges be asleep,” Annis counseled.

Hugh had apparently become tired of being neglected while Claire was talking to the laundress, for as soon as their conversation lagged he touched her hand. “Would ye like some of that cheese?” Not waiting for her answer, he cut off a hunk with the same grease-smeared knife he had used to bring chunks of coney to his thick lips.

Trying not to gag, Claire managed to thank him, and pretended to chew it appreciatively.

“Ah, a hungry little pigeon ye be,” he commented as she took the cheese he’d cut for her with his knife. “Mayhap ye have other hungers too, my fair one? Hungers we could satisfy later, say, with a stroll into the barn? I promise you, I am not called Hugh the Large for nothing,” he whispered, then nuzzled her neck with lips wet with wine while simultaneously placing his hand on her knee.

She recoiled and pushed his hand away. “I’ll not go anywhere with the likes of ye,” she said coldly. “I’ll be busy with the children. And I’ll thank ye not to treat me like a slut, Hugh le Gros.”

Hugh was all loud indignation. “Don’t she put on airs, and her naught but a runaway serf? There’s plenty o’ women who’d be glad of my favors, I’ll have ye know!”

Claire shrank down, aware that everyone at their table was watching the little byplay.

“That’s telling him, Haesel,” Annis said approvingly. “Hugh fancies himself quite the lover, but ye can just ignore him. Stop bothering the girl, Hugh! Can’t ye see she don’t like ye? Now you’ve done it, ye Norman bag o’ wind! The lord be starin’!”

Claire was helpless to prevent herself from looking up at the dais. Sure enough, Lord Alain, who had not spared a glance for the servants’ tables throughout the entire meal, was now looking directly at her. Their gazes locked.

His face was an unreadable mask. What was he thinking? Had he seen his man-at-arms pawing her? More important, had he seen her push Hugh away, or had his attention only been attracted when Hugh raised his voice? Would he think she was a boisterous, troublemaking trollop, unfit to care for his children?

Impaled by those inscrutable dark eyes, she was unable to look away as the sweet wafers were brought in, signaling the last course of the meal. Thanks be to Jésu, she’d soon be able to escape the hall with her charges.

All at once Lord Alain arose, ignoring the wafers that his squire was proffering first to him, and stepped down off the dais. He was heading straight for her!

Hugh became suddenly intent on the wine goblet they had shared.

Holy Mary, was he coming to rebuke her personally? Worse, was she about to be snatched up by the neck of her coarse kirtle and thrown bodily out of Hawkswell Castle? Claire prayed to become suddenly invisible—anything to escape his wrath! But he strode closer and closer, his eyes still upon her. Her heart had begun to thump like a drum.

Claire closed her eyes and waited for the cold lash of his voice. Would he believe her when she protested that she had only been trying to avoid the lecherous Hugh’s advances?

A slight breeze caressed her flaming face, and, opening her eyes, she saw that Lord Alain had swept right on past her without so much as a word.

She was sick with relief.

“Did ye see my lord’s face, Haesel? Like a storm cloud, it was! Hugh, ye fool, I thought he were going t’ snatch ye up and throw ye into the moat—didn’t ye, Haesel?” Annis said with a hearty chuckle, jabbing Claire in the ribs again.

“I—I didn’t know,” Claire managed. “I don’t know the man yet. I thought ’twas me he was angry at.”

“Le Gros, I think it’s time you left the hall—alone.”

None of them had noticed the other man’s approach, but now Haesel looked up to see Lord Alain’s squire, Verel, standing behind Hugh.

“What do I care what ye think, ye young pup? Go dry yerself off behind the ears,” Le Gros said with a rude guffaw, but his eyes narrowed dangerously and his hand balled up in a fist.

“Come now, Le Gros, you don’t want to get yourself banned from the hall by swinging at me, do you?” Verel asked reasonably. “Just take yourself off, and bother this woman no more. I’m sure there’s at least one other female within these walls that likes your sort of man.”

Le Gros continued to glare at the young squire for an endless moment, but when the seneschal drew nearer, Le Gros looked away and lurched unsteadily to his feet.

“Meddling young pup!” grumbled Hugh, the wine he’d consumed nearly causing him to fall against Claire as he got up from the bench. “Ye’re makin’ a pother about naught.”

“Ye’ll think it’s naught if my lord turns ye out of the castle for your roistering ways!” Annis hurled the words at him. “I know very well ye’ve been warned about yer manners at table—aye, and yer lechery too—before. Now ye’ll just leave Haesel alone, Hugh le Gros, or ye’ll answer to me as well as Verel. Do ye hear me, ye fat Norman popinjay?”

His mumbled answer, as he staggered off, was a series of Norman-French obscenities that Claire remembered just in time she wasn’t supposed to understand.

“He’ll leave ye alone now, I trow. I fancy he be afraid o’ me,” Annis boasted with a smirk.

Claire saw the squire’s mouth turn up in amusement.

“Thank ye,” Claire said, “thank ye both. I—I’m grateful.”

“You’re very welcome,” Verel said, bowing, then smiling at her. “Actually you’ve done me a service. ’Tis not good for a squire to go a day without a chivalrous deed.”

“And this was yer chivalrous deed?” Claire asked, smiling back. She liked the young squire. He was as sunny and amiable as Lord Alain was suspicious.

Just then she saw the children jump down from the dais and run to her, sweet wafers in hand.

“We’ve done eating, Haesel, have you?” Peronelle asked. “It’s not quite dark yet—please, let’s go into the bailey garden and play hoodman blind for a little while!” she begged. Guerin seconded his sister’s pleas. Nothing in their eager faces gave any indication they had even been aware of the moments of tension that had just passed.

“Will yer lord father mind?”

“Oh, no, Haesel!” Guerin said. “Ivy always lets us—let us—” he corrected himself soberly, “play outside after supper in summer if the weather was fine.”

Lord Alain strode out of the northwest bartizan, one of two turrets that projected out over the inner curtain wall on either side of the main gatehouse, and onto the catwalk, leaving behind a sullen Hugh le Gros. He narrowed his eyes against the setting sun as he leaned on a merlon to gaze out at the deepening shadows spreading over the wood beyond the south wall, conscious of an irritability that would rob him of sleep if he did not rid himself of it.

He had already been angry at himself for the number of stolen glances he’d taken in the direction of the table to which Haesel had gone. By the rood, the woman was naught but a serf, and yet he could not avoid looking at her, as if he were some moon-mazed peasant! He was careful to look, of course, only when he could be sure she would not notice his eyes upon her. It would not do to give the girl jumped-up ideas about herself.

He had become furious with himself, however, for noticing that the burly Norman man-at-arms had been attempting to woo the new nursemaid throughout supper, let alone for caring enough to come to the guard tower to deliver a stern warning to Hugh that he was to leave Haesel strictly alone. Saints, what was it to him?

It was not as if he wanted the girl to warm his bed! Gylda took care of his needs very skillfully when it suited him. And since he more often went to her modest but comfortable wattle-and-daub cottage at the base of the castle’s outer curtain, rather than summoning her to his own bed, he had the added advantage of being able to leave when he wanted to. He suspected the auburn-haired Gylda was just as content with the arrangement; it left her more free to take other lovers when her lord was occupied elsewhere, a possibility that had never bothered him in the least.

Peste! He had no need to covet the girl’s body, so why was he feeling so prickly after watching Hugh flirting with, then trying to fondle Haesel?

It was useless to tell himself that he cared only that a female within his walls be safe from any male attentions she did not want, or that his children be cared for by a woman who was not being distracted by a lecher’s flattery, for even he had recognized the spark of rage that had threatened to grow to a flame as he watched the soldier drooling on her neck. He had wanted to jump over the high table and drag Hugh out of the great hall by the collar of his jerkin, and beat him to a senseless mass of bruises in the bailey!

Just then he heard the sound of children’s laughter in the bailey behind him, and, turning away from the orange ball of the sun sinking below the tree line, he peered out into the open area that surrounded the keep from behind the concealing battlement.

Below, Peronelle and Guerin were turning a blindfolded Haesel round and round. As he watched, they released her, shrieking with laughter as the English girl reeled about like a drunken alewife, her slender arms outstretched in an effort to catch them as they circled her. He could hear her calling out dire threats of what she would do if she caught them, which only made them giggle all the more.

At last, however, his daughter ventured too close to the seeking hands and she was seized by the sleeve of her kirtle and reeled in, screeching protests, into Haesel’s arms, where Peronelle was very thoroughly tickled.

He felt a grin replacing the tightness of his face. Perry certainly appeared to be enjoying herself. In a moment, before the tickles could become bothersome, they turned into a hug. Then Haesel bent and kissed his daughter’s dark head.

He felt his heart warm at the affectionate gesture, which seemed to come as naturally to Haesel as breathing. As Alain continued to watch, he became aware of Guerin standing on the periphery of the hug, looking wistful, envying his sibling the embrace but not wanting to act less than manly by asking for it. Just then it seemed as if Haesel became aware of Guerin too, for she raised her head from Peronelle’s and beckoned with her hand.

Lord Alain watched, enchanted, as both children were enveloped in the English girl’s embrace.

Chapter Five

Unused to sleeping on a lumpy, straw-filled pallet, Claire lay awake long after the children’s soft, regular breathing told her they slept. She lay between Guerin’s bed and the truckle bed on which Peronelle slumbered.

Ah, well, a humble English nursemaid couldn’t very well expect a soft feather bed on a rope frame, fine linen and a coverlet of soft furs, could she? If she were really Haesel, bedding like this would have been her lifelong lot, not just during the short interval she would be residing in Hawkswell Castle! Since Ivy had used this pallet before she died, Claire hoped she had been a clean woman and had not left it infested with lice.

After dismissing that thought with a shudder, however, she was just about to fall asleep when all at once she remembered Ivo and Jean. She had been so immersed in settling in that she had forgotten all about the two men who had been taken prisoner! She sat bolt upright in the darkness. Had they been tortured to discover why they had been near the castle? Lord Alain had said they were to put in “that locked room below the cellar.” Were they lying right this moment in some cold, dank cell beneath the ground, their bodies broken and racked with agony? It was common to torture prisoners to extract information.

Were they thirsty and hungry? The images that filled Claire’s mind made her feel guilty for the relative comfort she enjoyed. Although the pallet she lay upon was lumpy and far from what she was used to, she was safe and warm and her belly was full. Ivo and Jean, like the rest of the rough men who had escorted her here, had treated her with little more than a grudging, sullen respect, but on the morrow she would have to find the two and see how they fared.

Then in the darkness a worse thought came to her—if they had been tortured, had they told the lord of Hawkswell about her, and her true purpose in the castle, in an effort to stop the torture? Her heart pounded at the thought, then she forced herself to be calm and reflect. Lord Alain did not seem the type of man who would allow a traitor to remain in his midst for five minutes, let alone dine in his hall, play with his children and go to bed between them. Either Ivo and Jean had not revealed her true purpose—or he had not tortured them yet. She could not imagine men such as Ivo and Jean—two sullen louts Hardouin had recruited from Normandy—being chivalrously silent about their female coconspirator in the face of deliberately inflicted pain.

It was imperative she find them on the morrow and see how they fared! Perhaps if she promised them an extra reward from Hardouin when their mission was done, they would pledge to remain silent about her.

When Claire and the children came into the hall that morning, however, she soon realized she would have to put her plan to find Ivo and Jean temporarily aside.

Many of Hawkswell Castle’s inhabitants were already eating, but as they descended the stone steps from the upper floor, Claire saw that Lord Alain was pacing behind his chair at the high table. As soon as he saw them he strode forward.

“Children, make haste to break your fast,” he said, ignoring Claire. “Ivy’s funeral is to take place as soon as the servants have cleared the hall, so we must go to the chapel to pay our respects before the funeral begins.”

The children stopped stock-still next to Claire. He gestured at the loaf and goblet between their places on the dais, a motion that looked full of impatience. “You had best begin. There is not much time.”

She felt indignant. Not, “Good morning, Guerin and Peronelle, come and break your fast next to me,” before such a serious subject was raised? The unfeeling monster! The children were not even fully awake before he spoke so carelessly! She went and found her own seat, and glared at Lord Alain as he hacked off a piece of bread from the manchet loaf before him with his dagger and began to chew. Did he not even notice that his children were making a mere pretense at breaking their fast, and that their eyes remained downcast in their white faces?

She would have to attend the funeral to lend them support, since it was clear their father would not. Was he such a clod that he did not realize that his children were grieving, that no matter how carefully she had soothed Peronelle’s horror, the little girl was still having difficulty with the idea of putting her beloved nurse’s body in the ground and covering it over with earth?

The children were still only playing with their hunks of bread when Lord Alain arose and beckoned to them. “Come. It is time.”

Guerin stood and manfully followed his father as he stalked out of the hall, but Peronelle’s eyes flew to Claire. She appeared relieved as she saw that her new nurse was getting up too, and she waited until Claire had reached her at the step to the dais. The hand she reached up to Claire was cold as ice.

“Come, poppet, it will be all right,” Claire murmured, standing still a moment while she chafed the small, cold hand. “All will be well, you’ll see.” Impulsively she picked the child up and cradled her against her chest before walking rapidly in Lord Alain’s wake. The little girl buried her face against Claire’s neck.

The sun was just beginning to illuminate the bailey as they crossed its length. It was deserted except for some sleepy-looking chickens scratching in the dirt outside the barn on the far side. They went to the southeast tower, to the right of the inner gatehouse, and climbed a flight of steps.

The chapel of Hawkswell Castle was two stories high. The apse was built into the large window recess; behind the carved wooden rood on the altar was a stained-glass window depicting a sorrowing Virgin Mary praying before her Son on the cross. At the base of the cross a lamb rested, while above the cross a silver-gray dove flew.