My Lady Midnight

A shaft of sunlight sent streams of red, blue and gold color flooding over the still white face of the old nurse on her bier before the altar.

“Look at Ivy, Haesel!” piped Peronelle, whom Claire had just set on her feet at the door to the chapel. “’Tis like a rainbow! Will she look like that in heaven?” The child’s voice echoed in the dim stillness, and Claire sensed rather than saw Lord Alain’s start of surprise as he turned around and realized she had come with the children. He said nothing, just regarded her silently before turning to his daughter. Uncertain as to her welcome, Claire remained in the entranceway.

“’Tis but the morning sun coming through the window,” Lord Alain said, a trifle gruffly, Claire thought. “Come, we will say a prayer for her soul, children,” he added, gesturing to the railing in front of the altar.

“I’ll pray, but she does not need my prayers,” Guerin announced. “Ivy was so good she is already in heaven—I just know she is.”

Claire saw Lord Alain look steadily at his son for a moment. “No doubt you are right, Guerin. But perhaps you should pray that you will be as good as she was, that you may be likewise rewarded,” he said, then he knelt and bowed his head.

Claire tried to pray herself, but she found herself oddly touched by the sight of the mighty lord of Hawkswell kneeling in prayer, and entranced by a ray of sunlight that had found his dark hair and transformed it into a halo of gold. How little he deserved a halo, the hypocrite, she thought darkly, but it became him all the same.

“Father,” Guerin said when Lord Alain lifted his head at last, “did Ivy used to tuck you in bed at night and tell you stories of the saints and Jesus when He was a little boy?”

Claire was startled. She had not realized that Ivy had been the lord’s nurse as well as that of his children. She saw him blink once, twice, and then look down at his stillfolded hands before answering his son. Suddenly Claire realized that Lord Alain had suffered a loss, too, just as his children had. Had his own grief been the reason for his curtness in the hall?

“Yes, though ’twas more often tales of Beowulf she told me,” he said. “I fear I was a bloodthirsty little boy, full of mischief. I must have given poor Ivy much worry.” His eyes had a faraway focus. He arose and went to Ivy’s body, kissing the alabaster cheek, and after a moment’s hesitation, both children did the same.

A short time later, the sound of many footsteps coming up the stone stairs warned them that the funeral was about to begin. Lord Alain said nothing as Peronelle motioned Claire to come up front with her, and she stood there with the children and Lord Alain while Father Gregory conducted the funeral mass.

After the service a number of stout male servants came forward and placed the nurse’s body in a hastily made coffin and carried it out of the chapel. Lord Alain, his children and Claire followed, and the castle folk fell in behind them. They went back out into the bailey and out the gatehouse into the outer ward between the inner and outer curtain walls.

To get to Hawkswell’s cemetery, the procession had to pass through the cluster of a dozen or so wattle-and-daub dwellings that constituted the village of Hawkswell, clustered against the side of the south wall. As they approached them, a woman, whose thick brown hair was barely confined by a crimson riband at her nape, suddenly emerged from one of the dwellings and stood watching the line of people coming toward her. She had a bold, unblinking gaze.

Even before Sir Gautier’s hissed intake of breath, Claire knew instinctively that the woman was Gylda, Lord Alain’s mistress. She saw Lord Alain catch sight of her and give a nod of acknowledgment, and then, out of the corner of her eye, saw the woman fall in toward the rear of the procession.

Claire was annoyed to feel herself bristle at what she saw as the woman’s effrontery. It was of no interest to her if Lord Alain’s whore came to watch the old nurse being buried! Claire, you are here on a mission that will gain you your freedom—nothing else that happens here need matter.

The burial was over, and the children had behaved well, Claire thought proudly. She had worried about how it would affect Peronelle, especially, to see the clods of earth being thrown onto the coffin, but when it was time to do so, Annis came forward and handed each of the children a rose. She bent to whisper in their ears, and then Peronelle and Guerin went forward and tossed the roses into the grave. Their action helped them accept what must come next, Claire thought, for when the earth began to be shoveled in afterward, both of them tensed but did not break down.

It was over. Everyone was walking away from the naked new grave. Claire hoped she and the children could go and find something enjoyable to do, for she longed to banish the shadows of grief from their faces now that the somber ceremony was done. She did not want the children to dwell on their sadness. Later, perhaps, they could go to the flower garden she had glimpsed on the other side of the gatehouse and cut some flowers to decorate the grave, but for now she just wanted them to forget.

But it was not to be.

“There will be some time now while the kitchen folk prepare the midday meal,” Lord Alain informed her in his accented English. “The children are to have their lessons with the priest as usual.”

“But my lord—” she began. Didn’t he realize that his son and daughter needed some happy distraction now, not dull, dry lessons from Father Gregory? Was he blind that be could not see Guerin and Peronelle were bursting with pent-up grief that needed to be released in some enjoyable physical exertion?

“I think it best that they follow their usual routine,” he said, as if he read her thoughts. “You will be free until dinner.”

’Tis not a “usual” day, my lord, she longed to retort, but she dared not argue. Instead she watched as the children walked numbly away with the priest.

Well, now she had the opportunity she had been seeking.

“Be it all right if I look around the castle, my lord?” she asked, taking care to keep her eyes down and her tone subservient. “By Saint Swithin’s knucklebone, I never been in such a vast place, I haven’t. Why, the cot I come from wasn’t nothin’ but one room, and the cow and the pig shared that of a winter, they did.”

A faint look of disgust—or was it boredom?—crossed his lean, high-cheekboned face. “It’s of no concern to me what you do until dinner,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders. “Just don’t distract the men on guard duty in the gatehouses, and don’t pester Guy, the smith. He’ll be shoeing my war-horse in a little while, and it’s bound to make Guy testy.” He turned away and began to follow the others back into the inner ward.

The seneschal came up to him. “My lord, there are matters that require your attention this day,” Sir Gautier said. “The reeve would have a word with you, followed by the bailiff, and there is correspondence from the empress…”

Claire had been about to let Lord Alain get some distance from her, for she had been tacitly dismissed, when the last remark came to her ears, and she quickened her steps to stay just behind him. Correspondence from the empress? She wondered about the contents of such a missive—would it be something of interest to Hardouin? She wished she could see the letter—perhaps the information would be so valuable that Hardouin would be willing to forgo his plot to have her kidnap the children!

“As always, she demands a prompt answer, and that you burn it immediately upon reading its contents,” Sir Gautier went on. Both men seemed totally oblivious to her presence, but of course they spoke in French, and doubtless felt free to converse in front of her.

Claire was disappointed. It didn’t sound as if she would have a chance to read the missive.

“Yes, yes,” Lord Alain muttered with a trace of impatience. “What else?”

“Oh, and the kennel master begs me to inform you that your favorite alaunt bitch has delivered a new litter…”

Lord Alain gave a rueful shrug. “New puppies will have to wait, unfortunately. I’ll see the bailiff and the reeve first, and then attend me in my chambers, and we’ll see what Matilda has to say this time.”

They were in front of the outside staircase that led up to the great hall by them. Claire lingered no more. It was clear that the lord of Hawkswell would have more than enough to occupy him. He would not know that she had gone to check on his prisoners.

Claire waited until Lord Alain and the seneschal had gone into the great hall before entering the doorway right in front of her, praying the locked room would be under the main cellar, and hoping if any saw her, she would appear to be innocently exploring, just as she had asked to do.

Fortunately, when she reached the cellar, by taking the steps down instead of up to the great hall, no one else was there. As her eyes adjusted to the large, shadowy room just below the great hall, Claire made out piles of filled sacks, upright barrels and casks lying on their sides. Her nose was filled with the mingled odors of grain, apples, wine and old leather. There were cobwebs in the high, angled window that let in faint light from outside. There was no door or stairs leading to a room below this one. Was there some other room known as a cellar, perhaps in one of the other towers? But surely not—he had said the cellar.

A preternatural silence made the hair on the back of Claire’s neck stand on end. She moved tentatively across the straw-covered floor, watching where she put her feet, lest she encounter a spider, a creature she had detested ever since childhood. She peered into the dark corners, too, half-expecting a crouching soldier—or some subterranean monster—to leap out and grab her. Apparently the locked room was not in this building, she decided. She would have to look elsewhere. But as she began to retreat from the room, the dust from the straw tickled her nose, and before she could catch herself, she sneezed.

Immediately she heard a faint, muffled exclamation. Had it come from below?

Claire waited, but no further sound came. She would have to risk calling out. “Hello? Is anyone there?” she asked in English.

Then she heard it again, clearer this time, a man’s voice, shouting from below in thickly accented English. “Who’s there?”

“I—” She began, then stopped. Should she call herself Claire, or Haesel? How did she know who was calling to her?

“Who are ye?” She stood absolutely still so she could hear where the sound came from.

“Ivo of Caen! Who’re ye?” came the muffled voice. It seemed to be coming from directly beneath her.

“Ivo! Is anyone with ye?” She dared not reveal herself until she knew if there was a guard within earshot.

“Just Jean.” The voice switched to French. “Is that ye, Lady Claire?”

“Y-yes,” she said, switching to French. “Where are ye?”

“Are ye in the cellar? We’re in a cell right below ye!” came the voice. “Are ye alone? Come down here!”

“But how?” she called back. “I see no door—”

“There’s a trapdoor in the floor. Poke around until ye find it!”

“I will…” Wishing she could have brought a lantern, or even just a candle, she poked her crude leather shoe among the prickly dry straw, until at last her foot collided with something hard that protruded ever so slightly from the floor. She crouched and pushed the straw away with her hands, uncovering a metal ring about four inches in diameter.

“I’ve found it, I think,” she called. “A metal ring?”

“That’s it! Pull up on it, and come down here!” commanded Ivo.

Claire felt an instant flare of irritation at the mercenary’s peremptory tone, but she put his impatience down to the effects of confinement. At first the trapdoor didn’t budge when she pulled on it, but after she braced herself and gave it a mighty yank, it yielded with a creak.

Claire peered down into the gaping hole. She could see a stone stairway, but no Ivo or Jean waiting at its foot. There seemed to be a flickering light below, but still she hesitated. Would she be going right into the very cell in which Ivo and Jean were imprisoned? Despite the fact that they were supposedly on the same side, she didn’t trust the rough men, for she’d seen the secret, hungry looks the soldiers had leveled at her during the journey from Coverly—as if they were wolves and she were a helpless lamb traveling in the midst of the pack.

“Does this stairway lead right into your cell?” she called down.

She heard a snort of laughter. “Do ye think Hawkswell would make it so easy to overwhelm the man who brings us our meals and empties our slop bucket? Nay, lady, we’re in a cell at the base of the stairway. Come on down and you’ll see.”

Was it a trick? She’d just have to trust that they were telling the truth, she decided, and lowered her foot onto the first step below.

The walls were cool and damp, but not slimy, she noted, and once she got halfway down she saw that the light was coming from a pitch-soaked torch set in the stone wall right next to a door in which a small, square hole, covered with close-set iron bars, was cut. The hole was just big enough to reveal Ivo’s and Jean’s faces pressed against the bars, watching her descent.

“It’s about time, my lady,” Jean greeted her in his coarse peasant French. “Do ye bring the key to let us out?”

“The key?” She paused on the last step, astonished at his question, but determined not to show her surprise. It was a relief to speak in French again, even to these rough men. “Nay, of course not. I don’t know where the key is kept. I merely came to see if you were both all right. Have you been questioned? Tortured?”

“See, I told you she wouldn’t think to bring no key,” she heard Ivo mutter to Jean. “Yes, we’ve been questioned—by none other than the lord o’ Hawkswell himself. But we didn’t tell him nothing,” the man-at-arms boasted.

“You’ve not been harmed?” Claire persisted, ignoring their surly reception. “You’re all right?”

“Nay, we’re not ‘all right’! We’ve not been tortured, just questioned, but we’re cold and hungry and the food the lord sent down is more like pig swill!” snapped Jean.

“Has he threatened to torture you?” she asked, feeling some lessening of her anxiety as she peered beyond the men and found that while their cell was small, it was furnished with blankets and clean straw.

“Nay, but what of that? Find the key and get us out of here!”

Claire felt a rising exasperation at the men’s truculence. They had not been tortured, at least not yet, and while their surroundings were not luxurious, they were not inhumane. “I’m sorry that you were captured, but I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” said Claire, injecting into her voice enough hauteur for a queen. “Even if I had the means to let you out of this dungeon, you might well be captured trying to escape the castle. And then the whole mission is jeopardized, for Lord Alain would have to discover how you escaped, would he not? You would be forced to reveal who released you, and then we would all be thrown into this cell and our mission for King Stephen would not be accomplished.”

Ivo swore and told Claire in graphic terms what the king could do to himself.

She was determined not to let the man bait her, and pretended she had not heard the obscene remark. “I pray you will be patient. Perhaps once he is satisfied that you know nothing, Lord Alain will release you.”

“Yes, and the pope will turn Muslim,” retorted Jean with an ugly laugh.

“If he does not, you will at least have to be patient while I learn my way about the castle,” Claire said. She was sorry she had found them. “I would remind you I have been here less than a day. If it is possible to effect your release without endangering myself, you may trust I will do so. In the meantime, perhaps I can steal a bit of food, so that you can at least have a little something better to eat,” she offered, trying to smile encouragingly at them.

“Well, ain’t that good of ye, my fine lady, dispensing charity to the poor captives?” snarled Ivo. “It’s all yer fault we’re here anyway. We could have found a way to kidnap Lord Alain’s whelps, easy. But no, Hardouin had to use ye!”

How dared they blame her! She hadn’t asked for this task! She opened her mouth to deliver a tart reprimand. “If you hadn’t lingered at an alehouse instead of finding a concealed place to wait for me, you and the rest of them—”

She froze, for suddenly she heard the creak of the flooring above, and the sound of voices.

A torch was thrust down the opening. “Who’s down there?” a familiar voice demanded in French.

Lord Alain! But wasn’t he supposed to be consulting with the reeve and the bailiff, and reading a message from the empress?

“I said, who’s there?” Lord Alain demanded again, this time in English, and she saw his booted feet coming down the stone steps.

There was no help for it. “I—it’s me, Haesel, my lord,” she said, before his head had come below the upper level.

He descended the final steps before speaking to her, and raised the torch.

“What are you doing down here, Haesel?” he demanded, his voice as cold as the stone wall she shrank back against. “Why are you talking to these men?”

Taking refuge in her role as Haesel, the simple Englishwoman, she said, “I—ye said I might explore, my lord, and I was doin’ that…I came into the cellar, and these men called out t’ me, and I just came to talk t’ them, ’tis all, my lord. I—I felt sorry for them, I did, for they said they’re cold and hungry…I’m sorry, my lord, I did not mean to anger ye. I merely wished t’ comfort them in their captivity, like a good Christian.”

His eyes bored a hole through her. His face was a mask of suspicion. “And would your piety allow you to go inside their cell if you could, and warm them with your body, Haesel? I’m sure they’d find that comfort enough! Would you like me to let you in? I regret I would have to lock the door behind you, of course.”

Claire felt her mouth fall open during his tirade, and she didn’t have to feign the tears that sprang into her eyes. “Nay, of course I wouldn’t, my lord! I was just talkin’ to them, my lord! They was lonely!” She allowed herself to sniffle as the tears spilled over her cheek, hoping she could move whatever trace of a heart he had left.

His eyes appraised her for an endless moment. “Very well, I’ll accept what you’re telling me this time,” he said, his eyes still full of distrust. “But don’t let me find you down here again, Haesel. These are low, murdering knaves, and they’d rape you as fast as look at you, then slit your throat, do you understand? They are not fit to be the recipients of your charity,” he concluded sternly, then gestured to the stairs. “Go on, get out of here. I would speak further with these baseborn scoundrels.”

She fled, silently thanking God and all the saints that he had apparently not heard her speaking French.

Alain turned back to his involuntary guests behind the barred window. “Well, have you considered your position during the night? Have you decided to tell me what you were doing in Hawkswell Wood?”

“We told you, we were going to join King Stephen’s forces,” sneered the one called Jean.

“And I told you yesterday I didn’t believe you,” Alain said with a pleasantness that he was far from feeling, especially after finding Haesel down here visiting with them. He wanted to smash the big ugly Norman’s nose into his skull. “None of Stephen’s forces are encamped near here, for I control the valley. Now why were you really here, fellow? Did you hope to infiltrate the castle? Did you think I was so stupid I’d hire any lordless soldier wandering around?”

“Nay, it’s as he said,” asserted the other one, known as Ivo, a rough-looking knave if there ever was one.

“It’s a pity you’re holding to that story,” murmured Alain with a careless shrug of his shoulders.

“Are ye goin’ t’ torture us, then, my lord? We ain’t afraid,” Jean boasted, though he couldn’t quite hide the uneasy look in his squinty eyes.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps we’ll just forget you’re down here,” Alain said with an elaborate show of unconcern. “Imagine it, my fine fellows—no food, no water, no one coming to visit you…the days would turn into weeks. How long would you last, I wonder?”

“Long enough, I’d vow, to see this castle in Stephen’s hands,” came Ivo’s snarling retort.

Was it all just bravado, or was the lout truly less afraid of possible starvation than torture? Perhaps he just felt torture was a more immediate prospect, whereas starvation might take longer—or did he have reason to think Stephen’s forces would somehow be able to take the castle soon, and liberate them?

It was just a rhetorical question in any case, for Alain had never yet stooped to torture, though he was not foolish enough to let these rogues know that fact. Continued incarceration ought to make them willing to talk, given time.

What had Haesel been doing down here? True, she had asked if she might explore, but he had pictured her poking her nose into all the aboveground nooks and crannies within the vast castle and strolling along the wall walk. Taking the trouble to lift the trapdoor was a little more than exploring, he thought.

He could not have explained the urge that had caused him to interrupt the reeve in midspate as that worthy fellow was trying to explain why Lucan the miller should not be expected to do his boon work, in order to check on his prisoners. Alain wished the urge had not caused him to find Haesel here.

Always eager to get rid of the feeling of suffocation that attended his trips down the dark, narrow steps that led to his one-cell dungeon, he turned around. He had started up the stone steps, in fact, when he stopped and turned back to the men in the cell.

“Do you speak English?” he asked suddenly, hoping to catch them off guard. If they denied speaking English, then how had they been able to speak to Haesel?

“Me? Speak that gibberish? N—”

Alain heard a grunt as if Jean had just elbowed Ivo in the ribs.

“That is, yes, just enough to flirt with the serf women, and make a bargain with them what sell their wares, if you catch my meanin’, my lord,” Jean said with a wink.

“Yes, that little blond woman is a hot little piece, my lord,” put in Ivo. “Is she your new leman? I’d watch her—she has a wandering eye, ye know.”

Alain stomped up the stairs before he could give in to the urge to throttle both of them.

Chapter Six

Shaken by the near-disaster, her eyes stinging with held-back tears, Claire dropped the trapdoor with a clatter. The arrogant caitiff! How dared he speak so cruelly to her, as if she were so witless that she fully merited the full measure of his contempt! How dared he stare at her with those icy, suspicious eyes? She deeply resented the flash of fear that had gone zinging through her after encountering those eyes. Had he made Julia feel that way?

Why, for just one of those silver pennies she figured were stored in some of those barrels, she’d move a couple of the barrels over the trapdoor—then let him try to get out! She grinned, imagining his rage at being penned down there with the likes of Ivo and Jean for company, until someone missed him! ‘Twould serve him right, though he’d probably bellow so loud he’d make himself heard through the ground before he became hoarse, and they’d find him all too soon. Saints, but he’d be mad as a rabid dog when he was finally freed!

She stopped at the threshold, struck with the realization that if she did just that, he would be powerless to stop her from taking the children. He would not even know. The priest probably taught them their lessons in the chapel or in his own quarters. She must find them, quickly!

But no, it couldn’t possibly succeed, Claire had to admit after a moment’s consideration. She had not been here long enough to have a position of trust. On her first full day at Hawkswell Castle, she could not simply take the children from the priest under some pretext, then walk over the drawbridge and beyond the curtain walls with them! Why, even supposing Father Gregory would allow it, the lowliest soldier would know better than to let her pass unchallenged with them.