Chapter Twenty
He slept in her bed every night now. Their bed, she thought of it, though he never called it that. But he never went back to his own, and she did not want him to.
The guests stayed on for many days, and she often found refuge from them in the chapel. Instead of admonishing her for neglecting her duties as hostess, now he barely hid his amusement as she slipped away from the insufferable courtiers. At night, he laughed, "No heretic has ever turned a penance to their advantage so well. By Mary, if Sir Laurens complains of his gout once more, I may commit heresy and close myself up with you."
It made her laugh. She laughed rather often now, she found, though she had never been aware of a lack of it before. It troubled her sometimes that her heart had become so light, so quickly. Surely it should not be so easy. Surely there must be some horrible consequence just out of sight. But whenever guilt or worry visited her, she thought of what Constance had said when she learned that he had discovered their ruse.
She had received the news so well that Margaret had feared her halting whispers had not made the situation entirely clear.
"Always have we known the deception was like to be found one day," Constance reasoned. Her hand came over Margaret's, and she spoke as plain and confident as ever she did. "I have seen him look on you with fondness these many weeks, Meg, and have grown accustomed to the thought that you will have a true husband now, and not an enemy. His heart has been made soft. Certes this is the work of the Lord who wants not strife, but harmony between you."
That was all. Not a word about the reasons he had been an enemy, nor any questions about what she hid from him in the name of harmony. Still, if it was so simple and easy for Constance to accept, then surely it could be just as simple for Margaret.
What she could not say to her friend – what she had no words to describe – was the feeling that something had come loose inside of her, like a stone removed from a wall that now was crumbling. She seemed to be losing some vital mastery that had never faltered until now.
It was not just the mask. It seemed to be everything. Every day, every moment, every kind of control slipped further from her. When Henry rather pointedly proposed a visit to an abbey to view a copy of Saint Augustine's writing on penitence, she failed utterly to conceal her exasperated amusement. She had even rolled her eyes a little, before she remembered herself. When the steward had the wrong ale served to the guests for a third time, she scolded him for his perpetual mismanagement of the buttery and then disregarded his profuse apologies as she strode away, irritated beyond anything.
It was not how any lady should act, but certainly not one who was in disgrace, nor one who was known for her meek and obedient manner. Yet she could not seem to stop herself from showing and saying what she truly felt.
She discovered how far she had fallen from discipline when she joined their guests on the hunt. It was hardly worthy of being called a hunt, as it was merely an excuse for courtiers to flirt and gossip and boast in the park instead of in the gardens or hall.
Beneath an oak tree so vast and ancient that it made her feel unbearably mortal, Margaret heard one of the younger lords say that William's many rivals rejoiced in his absence from court, that it was madness he did not return to the king's side at once.
It was Sir Percival who answered this with mockery. He jested, "Perhaps it is madness indeed. After all, he is son to Lord Walter. Madness is his inheritance."
This was met with surreptitious laughter and gleeful whispering. She felt her blood rise at the sound of it.
"As treachery is yours, Sir Percival," she heard herself say, stepping closer to the circle of guests who clearly had not seen her near. "By such reasoning we must believe you plot against the king, as your uncle did, must we not?"
She should not have said it. She should have pretended not to hear their gossip, of course, but she could not manage to hide her disgust. They ate his food, slept under his roof, made free with his hospitality – and spoke thus when he could not hear. She looked at the courtier steadily, daring him to say more, pleased to watch him stammer.
Then she remembered herself, and silently panicked when she could not think of the proper way to behave in such a moment. Finally she murmured a suggestion that they pray for a successful hunt, and hoped her boldness would be forgotten.
An hour later, she let the others run ahead after the baying hounds, and felt a tug at her skirt. It was William, with a mischievous look in his eye and a silencing finger at his lips. He took her hand and pulled her into the gloom of the trees, like a boy with a secret he would share.
"Come, stay a moment," he said in her ear. "It is a good hostess who allows her guests privacy, that the men may woo and the ladies may grant a kiss in secret."
"Think you they are so mindful of my virtue?" she asked, amused, delighted that he sought her out and hid with her. He must have brushed against the mist-laden leaves to reach her. There was dampness in his hair, moisture beading along the line of his jaw.
"They are not, and so I must mind your virtue amid these knaves." His eyes took in every detail of her face, as though nothing else in the world could be more interesting. It was a look she was coming to know well. "Why came you today? Never have I known you to care for the hunt."
She watched droplets collect and slide down his throat, tracing the path of muscle and breath and pulse. No falsehoods between them. She had sworn it.
"To be near you," she said, and put her mouth to his skin to follow the slick trail with her tongue. Her lips moved from his chin to his collarbone, her heart spiraling beyond all hope of control when he covered her mouth with his own.
Oh this is what it was, the mysterious thing that had lain in wait for her, that had been gripped so tightly for so long in fists that had unfolded at last. This giddiness, the recklessness, the unbridled fascination. Little wonder that something in her was crumbling away.
"Will you stay hid here with me?" he murmured some minutes later, when their kisses had not slowed. "Certes they will talk of little else but how I have corrupted the most devout lady in England."
She did not remind him that they would think her the corruptor, that she was the heretical stain on his name. "Let them say what they will," she answered with a smile. "I am content to be corrupted."
But too soon they heard the hounds come close again and knew the courtiers would follow. So they wandered through the trees together, until they found their guests and gave over the rest of the day to courtesy. She did not mind too much, knowing the night would be theirs alone.
As she observed him with the guests, she began to understand that most had come only in hopes of discovering why William lingered here instead of returning to court. Like her, they knew he did nothing without reason, and she watched as he played off that expectation. It was so clever, how he used their assumptions for his own purposes while never revealing anything he did not wish them to know. It was a skill she had long admired, but now she saw the illusion he wove with new eyes. It was made up of bits of truth stitched together, yet it was every bit as false as her own mask had been. These people saw only his intentions, and only those that he wished them to see. They imagined they knew him. But the William who came to her chamber – eager or weary, angry or laughing, what she had come to think of as the true man – that William was a stranger to them. He always would be.
On the visitors' last night at Ruardean, in a moment when the music paused and the dancers gulped down ale, she heard Sir Hugh ask William outright when he would return to the king's side.
"Soon, I think," he answered without enthusiasm. "Though I will not stay long."
Sir Hugh shook his head, bemused. "Never did I think you would grow weary of court, or of your place in it."
"Nor did I," answered William. "But there is naught there that can compare with the contentment I have found here."
She looked up at these words, and found his eyes were on her. He glanced away immediately, fixing his gaze on the table for a long and breathless moment before he looked up again and met her eyes directly. A faint, fond smile touched his lips.
It was only an instant. A single lost heartbeat, and then the music started again, and he turned to another guest while she was left to wonder if she was a fool to believe he might truly care for her.
Because she did believe. He was not made of cold steel. There was a beating heart in him, as there was in every man; not all that he did and said was carefully crafted. Increasingly she seemed to doubt everything she had ever believed – yet she did not doubt this. She knew the taste of deception so well that it sickened her, and there was none of it on his lips.
"It is a mystery to them that you have not returned to court," she said the next morning in their bed, softly enough that it would not wake him if he still slept. The new light was filtering in. He was curled around her back. "It is a mystery to me, too."
He was awake. His palm came up to lay flat between her shoulder blades. She could feel him trying to divine her true thoughts, all the things she did not have the courage to ask in the fragile peace of their bed.
"Molay arrives there," he said eventually, "and you wonder that I do not hasten to join him, to plead aid for the Templars."
Yes. Oh yes. So many things left unsaid, so much that stood between them, that had been abandoned in their passion. This was the consequence, the dread that had lurked in her heart. It could be avoided no longer, it seemed. She closed her eyes tight for a moment – just a moment of denial before she must reckon with this. Just a moment to think of what was best in him before facing the worst.
Then she opened her eyes to the relentless dawn, and said it before she lost courage.
"Aye, I do wonder at it. To take the Holy Land is your dearest ambition."
She braced herself for denial and justification, for gentle derision. For resistance. But it did not come.
"And your greatest ambition is to thwart me in it." He paused, his fingertips moving lightly across her back, a gentle brush along her spine. "In this you have confounded me. Beneath all your deception, I have found a true devotion to Christ. I think it is true. Yet you would stop any effort to reclaim the Holy Land." A light puff of air touched her nape, his silent sigh of frustration. "Will you tell me why?"
It stopped her breath for a moment. Never had she imagined he would ask such a thing. And with such sincerity, such a plain desire to know her. She wanted, with a small and quiet misery, to lie. To hide. To pull the mask over her naked self and be safe.
But the wall was crumbling. She could not stop it. He asked why, and she had promised no falsehoods between them.
She turned onto her back and let him see her profile as she spoke to the canopy above. She had no hope of knowing where to begin, so she caught the first thought that floated by and fit it into words.
"Because my father never spoke of Montségur. Not one word of the death there, or what he thought of it. He only spoke to me of duty and obedience and…" Her eyes fixed on a tiny cluster of leaves embroidered on the fabric far above, desperate to disregard the sadness that came on her when she thought of her father. "Yet though he never spoke of it, I felt his fear. I was still a child when I understood it was a terror of the Church – the same Church he told me was holy and righteous, whose goodness I must never question."
A tangle of feelings settled at the base of her throat, stopping her speech. What choice had her father had? The faith into which he had been born was declared a heresy, its adherents crushed. Conversion was a matter of survival, not belief. He had never had the luxury of doubt.
"Yet you did question it?" William prompted.
She could feel the restraint in him, the many things he might ask if he were less clever, less patient. But he watched and waited, because he was skilled in this art.
For a moment she considered telling him about the merchant who used to visit her father every week, and the daughter that he brought along. Hannah. She had curls like Margaret's, and little wooden puppets that they would play with while their fathers talked of boring business matters. But it was too much to say, and Margaret knew she would either weep or shout if she tried to explain that Hannah and her father had stopped coming one day. That the laws against them had made life impossible for them, and friendship too perilous for her father. That they had left England because they were Jewish and when all their fellows were forced to leave years later, the Church did not stop it. The Church rejoiced.
And before that – long before – her mother had sighed and said a woman's life is pretending. And thus had Margaret learned her place. Hypocrisies were to be endured in silence. Everything was to be endured in silence.
"Aye, I questioned it," she answered at last. "But never aloud. I studied the Church's teachings. I watched, and listened, and did not betray my true thoughts." Like you , she wanted to say. So many ways they were alike that she had never admitted to herself. "For all my life, I have trained my sight on the empty space between what men of God have taught, and what they have done." She shook her head. "Nay, not a space, but a chasm. A great, bottomless chasm. And I cannot look away from it. Full well do I know it has sickened my spirit, but I… I cannot look away."
His breath was at her shoulder, a gentle stirring of the air. Even to Constance, she had never spoken so frankly. She waited to hear his cold assessment, the world-weary dismissal of her youthful indignation. Where she saw naught but vile iniquity, he would see opportunity and advantage. That was his way.
Yet that was not his answer.
"It would verily sicken any soul devoted to Christ in truth. But few consider that God and the Church do not speak with one voice. Fewer still can see it at so tender an age."
He spoke this blasphemy free and easy. It was some comfort – it had always been some comfort, to know that he did not revere the Church, that he did not seek to mount a crusade for blind faith and obedience. Not for the first time, she wondered how much of his ambition was only a desire to succeed where his own father had failed.
But she wondered how much, too, was simple greed. Any crusade was and always would be the same as the one against her father's people: little more than an excuse to steal land, wealth, and power. All wrapped up in the name of God and washed clean with holy water.
"My father's family were followers of Christ," she said simply. "As were all who lived at Montségur. And at Béziers where the pope's army slaughtered every last Christian soul, and those who were more lately burned in Verona and Lombardy." She drew a breath, feeling all his attention on her, and dared to speak the words that had lived in her so long. "Yet even were they heathen, never did Christ command men to murder in His name, or to gain any land. I can imagine no greater sin. It is an abomination."
He grew still – the familiar stillness that caused her skin to prickle. She could feel his eyes on her. Always on her, always seeing so much, nowhere to hide now.
"Say what is in your mind." It was neither a demand nor a plea. It was a gentle prod, a reminder that she had a voice, and he would hear it. Even now, when it might shatter their tenuous truce. "Say me what you want."
She turned her head to meet his gaze. "I want you will abandon this notion of crusade."
Her teeth pressed tight to hold in the many pleas and arguments that climbed up her throat. She made herself hold his gaze, calm and steady, without apology. Let it stand, no matter how bold, or laughable. He had asked. It was what she wanted.
"Then I will abandon it," he said.
For a long moment, they only looked at each other. In the clear grey of his eyes she saw no amusement, nor any trace of deception. Not a careful absence of lies or a light twisting of the truth. Just him.
"So easily?" she asked, trying and failing utterly to lighten her tone.
He nodded.
"Why?"
His mouth curved just barely. "Because you ask it."
No more than that. He meant it, that was plain. It was all she could think, the reason her breath grew short: he meant it. He would do it. Because she asked.
She looked at him – at the half-moon shadow his lashes cast upon his cheek, at the curve of broad shoulder that rose out of the bed linens, this terrain of their intimacy. He would do it. He would. And for some reason it was causing something like panic to grow slowly in her breast.
"Release me now," he said with a smile so dazzling that it hurt. "Hugh leaves this morn to carry my message to the king, and to Molay. I must amend my words."
His hand circled her wrist, and she became aware that she was gripping his arm tightly, as though he might save her from her mood. Her fingers sprang open, and he leaned forward to give her forehead a quick kiss before rolling away.
She watched as it happened. He called for a servant to delay the departing Hugh, and then for a cleric who was instructed to write a letter explaining to Molay that he could no longer expect the support of Ruardean. None of these actions were reluctant or begrudging, nor did he look to her for approval or praise, or even thanks. He merely did it, as though it were any other of the day's tasks. Because she had asked.
Somehow she dressed herself, quickly and simply, her hair in disarray beneath a veil she pulled on with numb fingers. In a pause, while a servant left to fetch his shoes and they were briefly alone, she said, "I must go to the chapel."
He smiled. "Aye, the bishop's guard dog will return today, and it is better he sees you at your prayer." His brows drew together as he looked up at her. "Are you unwell?"
"Well enough," she lied. Oh how easily she lied, when it suited her. "I must pray."
But when she stood inside the chapel she could not pray. She seemed to have forgotten how. Perhaps she could only pretend it, ever again, after the many years of empty recitations.
She did not retreat to the quiet bench where she had spent so many hours of her life. She stood before the chancel where the rood cross hung suspended, looking down on her. The compulsion to wail and beat one's breast had always seemed like exaggerated performance to her, having little to do with true feeling. But now she understood it. Now her hands pressed hard against her heart, as though they could staunch a flowing wound.
Some time later, Father Benedict found her there. The shadows had shifted and the afternoon light half-blinded her, but she still stood in the same place before the chancel. The kind old priest invited her to sit, but she barely heard him.
"Will you hear my confession?" She asked it without looking at him, heedless of how her hoarse voice echoed and reached into all the corners of the chapel.
"To be sure," he replied, a soothing tone. "We will sit, that you may be at your ease when you speak heavy words."
She did not sit. She could not be at her ease. She must say it, and now, before she made excuses for herself. She was always doing that, she saw now.
"I learned the words of Christ before my own name." There was a throbbing ache in her throat, but she forced the words through. "Love thy neighbor. Love thy enemy." Her hands pushed against her breastbone, against the unbearable pain of it. She had always believed those words. She had built a life to serve them. She thought she had. "He bids us turn to love in all our endeavors, in all our dealings with one another. Is that not so, Father Benedict?"
"Aye, certes, it is so." His voice was full of concern, his hand reaching out to give an ineffectual pat to her elbow. He was so kind.
"It is a message made plain and clear, that the wicked may not twist it and the foolish are not confused." Her hands came up to wipe the tears, to cover her face. "But I have been both. Wicked and foolish."
If she could control her senseless weeping, she would tell him all. She would explain how, even before she had met William, she was determined to treat him with disdain. She had called him enemy from the first, and made him enemy every day since. She had not even tried to soften her heart or open her arms.
And when at last she did, he looked at her with affection and said, Because you ask it .
Six years of scheming and lies. Six years of searching for a way, any way at all, to stop a great evil. And for all those years the answer was – of course it was, how stupid she had been – the one thing that was supposed to be written on her heart.
When at last she went to her knees it was not for piety, but for simple weakness. For shame. Because she missed the anger, the righteousness. God help her, she missed the certainty and the ease of it.
What a terrible thing it was, to know that there had always been goodness in a man she thought so wicked. To know that it had only been waiting for her to expect any goodness from him. But she had not wanted his goodness, had she? She had wanted him to be wicked, so that she could be blameless. She saw that now too.
The patient priest knelt beside her. He was murmuring something, some absolution she had not asked for, when she had not even confessed all her many sins. She could not. She could only turn her face into his shoulder.
"I am wretched," she wept against him. "I am such a wretched thing."
His hand patted her back gently, his voice full of patient compassion.
"You are a child of God," he said.
A forlorn laugh burst through her sobs. A child of God. A wretched thing. One and the same, and she was meant to find comfort in that.