Chapter Twenty-Five

The day before she was called before the inquisitors, Brother Matthew sat before her and asked for forgiveness.

This time it was he who had chosen silence for nearly the full hour, until he burst out suddenly with: "For my own salvation, I beg you will forgive me, Lady Margaret, if you find it in your heart."

It perplexed her. She could not fathom what she was meant to forgive, but she took his agitation as another sign that her fate was sealed. There was no other reason to ask her forgiveness with such urgency, unless he thought he might never see her again. Perhaps she would say she forgave him, as a simple courtesy, but only after hearing what troubled him.

"When first I came to Ruardean as your confessor," he explained, "I knew the bishop hoped I would find yet more proof of your corruption. Never did he say it, but full well did I know it was my purpose." He could not quite look her in the face. "And to my shame I gave more thought to my hopes of advancement than to the care of your soul."

It took everything in her not to laugh. He was earnest, as though he truly believed she could never have guessed his loyalty was to himself and the bishop. His distress seemed very real, and it caused a distant part of her to begin calculating, recognizing the possibilities, imagining ways to play the innocent and exploit his guilt if it was sincere – or to play off it, if it was not.

There was no use, though. Too late for such small manipulations, when her problems were roughly as large as England itself. Anything she might do at this late stage was, as her father used to say, like repairing a hole in the sail of a sinking ship.

"You are as you are meant to be, Matthew. As they have made you," she shrugged. She enjoyed the way his head snapped up, the startled and slightly offended look he gave her. It still made her a little giddy to speak her thoughts freely. She should never have deprived herself for so long. She asked, "Have you never marveled that men so devoted to the words of Christ have built a world that rewards not goodness, but their own ambition and greed?"

In response to this, his brow furrowed. His look became yet more pained.

"Your contempt for me is well-founded, lady, for I did look to my own interest when you were sore in need of counsel and comfort. I can do naught but beg forgiveness for that sin. But I despair to know you believe all the world is corrupt."

She imagined his look of horror if she told him the truth: that it was not all the world, but only the many parts that were constructed by greedy men. That they had built the walls of it brick by brick, and now all were closed up within it. That she had always known there was no hope of destroying it and so she had only tried to chip away at the mortar, to weaken whatever she could.

But it would be a mistake to say it. Already the evidence was gathered against her, the inquisitors meeting daily. He belonged to them, no matter how he regretted it. Best not to offer him any insight into her motivations.

She pitied him, though. He looked so despondent.

"Not all within it are corrupt," she allowed. She thought of Father Benedict soothing her as she had wept her shame, and of Quintin's sincerity, his pure desire to learn and teach. "But I can only despair of a world that wants me silent and obedient, and will not suffer me to speak if I dare to voice any doubt."

A vision of William rose up, unavoidable, the look on him when she was bold and unafraid. His smile as he reached for her, kissing her soundly upon learning she had lied about a saint's fingerbones .

It sparked something, a brief blaze inside her skin that burned way the numbness that had held her so long. To think of him, of the way he had seen her – the way he had wanted her – was like coming alive again. The memory overwhelmed her for a moment, a swift flood of feeling that woke her from the fitful slumber which had held her too long.

When it passed, she pressed a thumbnail deep into the pad of her index finger. But now there was no answering pain. The callous was formed. It was hard, and dead, and that steadied her.

Whatever she had been put on this earth for, it was not to meekly accept a grim fate designed by wicked men. Nor was it her purpose to placate cringing priests.

"Leave me." She said it quietly enough, but it was a command. It was her right to command. It always had been.

"But I would pray with you on the eve of –"

"You may pray as well without me," she said, and turned her back.

Let him report to them that she was cold and unrepentant. Even did she weep and pray and lament her fate, it would change nothing. Her guilt was too convenient to be reconsidered now. But she would not go silently, obediently. They would like that too well. And she knew herself now.

In the morning, she dressed in the carefully chosen finery and took herself to the inquisitors. She held her chin high, as Lady Eluned had advised her, and entered a cathedral filled with spectators of every kind. The aisles on both sides of the nave held churchmen and nobles, merchants and townspeople and peasants, all come to see the great lady heretic.

She was to be a spectacle. An example. That much was obvious. Well then, perhaps she would oblige their expectations.

The inquisitors were seated on a dais, the scribes just below them. Stowell sat like a barb, a sharp quill that bristled up from the center of their body, prominent and menacing. It was a rather daunting scene for what proved to be a tedious morning. The questioning seemed preliminary, the careful opening of a planned drama. One by one, they named those who had given them evidence, and asked her if any of these were her enemies. Had they any reason to give false testimony against her?

And though she knew it would work in her favor to denounce them, to call their testimony into doubt, she did not do it. To name them liars would call the wrath of the bishop down upon them. She stayed silent, her fingers idly caressing the jeweled rings she wore, as the names were offered to her. Some she had never heard before – mostly Welsh names – but some she had expected. The beguines, Agnes and her cousin. Quinten of Livonia. Henry.

She held her tongue through all of it.

"If you will say naught, we must conclude you have no quarrel with these witnesses." Stowell announced at the end of the long litany of names. "I ask you to confirm it: do you call none who speak against you your enemy?"

"None but you, my lord bishop."

Murmurs rose up from the audience but she kept her eyes steady on Stowell, which had the effect of turning everyone else's attention to him as well. Perhaps some even caught the malicious glare he gave her in the instant before he composed himself.

"What is this?" he asked with an air of concern. "I feel naught but the most tender pity for one who has strayed so far from her salvation. Yet you name me your enemy? In faith, lady, you stand accused now because you scorned the mercy and grace that was granted when last you stood before me."

"Your pardon, I did think it was the grace and mercy of God and not your personal favor."

This elicited a tittering from the audience, and she worked hard to maintain her calm fa?ade. The spectators were inclined to like her, and it would be ruined if she let her anger show.

A young inquisitor spoke up. "The matter of my lord bishop's proposed animus is immaterial," he declared, with an air of authority that belied his age. "He cannot bear false witness against you, lady, for he gives no testimony."

"And yet he will pass judgment." She took a few steps forward, just enough so that the golden veil fluttered and the sable lining of her mantle flared. "It is he who has gathered evidence against me, his will that has brought me here, and his guard who took me. I would not stand before you did he not hope and strive for my ruin. From that time when my husband's father, Lord Walter, did oppose his appointment to the bishopric, this man has borne a grievance against Ruardean. What good judgment can he have, when spite clouds his vision? I say his hatred is a poisoned thorn that digs into his sole, making crooked his every step."

Stowell's vehement protest stopped her from saying more.

"What hatred I bear in my soul is not for Ruardean, but for the Fiend and the evil he does!"

But his ill will was too evident, the blood creeping up his neck and the malice burning in his gaze as he glared at her. There were more murmurs around her, full of amazement.

"God spare me your sanctimony," she said, unimpressed. "I am taxed well enough this hour."

She had a brief moment to enjoy the way his eyes bulged at this insolence, before the young inquisitor was fairly shouting to be heard above the rising chatter. "Enough! Enough. We will withdraw for the day to consider this assertion, and return in good time to hear this matter further."

At this dismissal, the guards came to her side. She turned and moved quickly, determined to make her own exit as they trailed behind her. The sound of the spectators was growing, rising to a cacophony as she walked toward the great doors.

It was only when she had walked the full length of the nave that she saw him. He was near the doors, almost close enough for her to touch as she passed. The guards kept moving when she stopped, one on each side of her as the rest kept the path to the door clear, urging her forward as the people grew louder and began to crowd closer.

"William." She whispered it as she stared at him, barely daring to believe.

He saw her. His glance paused on her, and his look was so cold, so indifferent that her heart withered in her chest. Then he turned to someone at his side, bending down to speak in their ear, before the crowd swirled and he was lost behind a wall of bodies.

For all the short journey away from the cathedral she tried to convince herself she had imagined him, that he would not come here merely as a spectator to her questioning. Upon her return to the abbey she was immediately taken to the church, where she knelt without thinking but did not even attempt a semblance of prayer. She could only play the moment when his eyes had met hers over and over in her mind, looking for some new insight. Some evidence he did not despise her.

When the hour of prayer was over she went to her chamber, dreading the solitude, welcoming it. But the door had barely closed behind her when it opened again.

Then she knew she had not imagined him. He had been there in the cathedral. He was here now. Every inch of her skin knew it was him, only a few steps behind her.

She closed her eyes tight, hands held flat against her fluttering belly, and said a swift and silent prayer. For strength. For certainty. For the words she needed but could not yet find. For the courage to turn and face him.

When at last she did, she found him leaning against the wall, watching as though he observed her from a great distance. She endured the fresh leaping of her heart to see the towering height, the sweep of lashes, the stark angles of a face that she had committed to memory.

But if she had hoped he would look at her with affection, with any warmth at all, she now knew that was folly. His eyes moved over her, a dispassionate examination from head to toe before his gaze pinned her in that old, familiar, terrifying way. She had forgotten the power of it.

"What think you to gain by provoking Stowell to anger?"

It was clipped, impatient. She felt it almost like a slap. All these months of silence, and now this. He came to her not as husband or lover or friend, but as advisor. A cold and critical one.

She took a moment to recover from the shock, to consider the substance of what he asked and how she should answer. Evidently he thought her performance was a strategy, planned and executed with care. It pleased her in a distant way, vaguely flattered that he so believed in the strength of her wits.

"I gave no forethought to it," she admitted. Her voice was thin, her lips numb. "It was impulse only."

He came away from the wall. "Then you will stop it," he commanded.

Her chin lifted. "I will not."

At this he shimmered with anger, like heat across glowing embers. She had forgotten how big he was, how imposing. So too had she forgotten what it was like to see naked contempt in his eyes.

"You are a fool," he declared. "Think you his wrath will earn you favor?"

"I am not like you, lord husband. I care naught for the favor of powerful men." Her voice had grown stronger. She would not be commanded, or cowed. Never mind that it felt like she had swallowed a hot coal, like the whole world was broken because he looked at her like a stranger, and felt like one. "Nor have I sought to provoke him to anger, but have answered as best I can."

His brows lifted. "And now you seek to provoke me."

"Nay, I do not. And though truth may provoke him, it is all I have."

"You have clever words in plenty when you care to outwit a foe, lady. I am six years witness to it."

There was nothing but anger and bitterness in him. She tried to remember his face inches from hers in bed, the tender skin of his throat gleaming in moonlight as he spoke soft words into the hush. It felt like a dream now, like it had never happened. Like he could never have been that person.

Yet she could not find her old contempt for him. Nor could she think of him as enemy, even did he hate her now. She could only quietly admit this new reality.

"I cannot outwit him, William. There is too much gone wrong, and his advantage is too great. You may trust I know when a scheme is thwarted beyond all hope."

She watched his jaw go tight, the tension gather in his lip before he said, "It may be the way of things, aye. But though you cannot win, you need not stoke his fury."

"His mood is not my concern," she said simply. "Whether it angers him or pleases him, my only purpose now is to speak truth."

"Do not pretend to me that you hold truth so dear!" He shouted it, voice ringing off the walls, a sudden and spectacular crack in his composure. There was a beat, a silent moment in which he took a breath before speaking more quietly – but with no less fury. "We would not stand here had you not played me false."

"And what would the king have seen in your eyes, if I had told you all?" Now her voice was rising too, though she had berated herself for the same thing. But if it was an argument he wanted, she was willing to give it to him. "I am no fool, though it might comfort you to think me one. I thought to confine my heresy so that it would wound only me and aye, I have failed at that! Not all can be as pitiless in their perfection as you are, my lord."

He looked at her for a moment, taut as a bowstring pulled to its limit. Then his arm shot out, a violent move as he turned away, sweeping her book of hours from the tiny table it stood on. It hit the wall with a force that made her jump, even before the table clattered to the floor.

The echoes of it seemed to linger forever. She stared at his hand in numb disbelief where it hung at his side, his fingers curling and straightening over and over again.

"I am not perfect." His voice was so quiet, a soft rustle in the suddenly stifling air. His back was to her, his face in profile as he looked at the fallen book. "Rarely am I trusted with the full truth of a thing. Well do I know it is some…defect of my own character that causes it."

She looked at his motionless profile and could only think of carved marble, cold and fixed, of fallen gods gazing upon lost worlds. Her lips had only just parted to speak – though she had no idea what words would come – when his shoulder lifted in a swift dismissal.

"Yet there is much I may be trusted to understand about these inquisitors." He turned toward her now, not quite meeting her eyes. "Heed me well: it is better you make yourself pleasing to them."

She wished she could answer him with softness, with all the feeling that swelled within her. But she could not assent.

"Is this why you are come to me?" she asked. "To advise me that I should shape myself to accommodate a man's feeling, to flatter his self-regard?" She could not believe he would ask such a thing. He, who had taught her what it meant to have a voice. "I do not want to be pleasing, William. Not anymore. I want to be heard."

He came forward, his composure lost again. Two long strides and he stood over her, his hands gripping her shoulders, his breath harsh on her face.

"Do you understand nothing?" His fingers tightened, pressing his frustration into her. "I have no power here. None! The inquisitors are men of his choosing, and it is they who will advise the king on your punishment. There is naught I can do if both church and crown are united against you."

The urgency in him quickened her breath, until she must swallow down a rising panic. William, powerless. It was almost impossible to believe, and even more terrifying that he would declare it aloud. No one would save her. No one could.

But she had known that.

"Then I will bear the consequence of my conduct."

There was a flicker of softness in his look, so brief that she was sure she imagined it. "Aye, you will." His mouth took on a grim line. "And do you forget that Ruardean too may share in the consequence, if the king believes its lady has plotted against him?"

As if she could forget it. "Think you that if I make myself humble and mild, the bishop will forget his loathing of you, or his contempt for me?" She asked it calmly, knowing he must see the reason in it. "I have no more power than do you."

His hands fell away, the warmth of his body receding as he stepped back. There was an awful finality to it, as though it signaled there was no more to say – no more objections or pleas or arguments. He stepped away from her as though he would never come close again.

This was how it ended, then. All her efforts, all her hopes. All their brief happiness. All of it was fading, to be forgotten like summer sun in the depth of winter.

Her eyes fell to the book on the floor, its valuable pages crumpled in the awkward position against the wall. Such a splendid thing, a meeting of wealth and artistry on the page, an orderly and purposeful gilding of God's word. And yet to look at it made her feel empty, a gaping hole where faith should be.

"I thought to use the power and wealth of Ruardean for my own purpose," she said, because she must admit it to him. Because only he knew that power as she did, for good and for ill. "I was so certain sure that I was good, and clever, and worthy – that I could use it for good. But it is as scripture says: We cannot serve both God and wealth."

He scowled, no doubt impatient at having a Bible verse recited to him. "You think it a great sin, and this your just punishment?"

"Nay. Not that. I only know that if I were plain Margaret, naught that I do would catch a bishop's notice. In using Ruardean, I have risked it, and all within it, and you. And I am…" She bit her lips together. "With all my heart, I am–"

"Never say you are sorry." He glowered at the floor, his jaw tight, and she did not know if it was an admonishment or simple disbelief. "I am sworn to preserve Ruardean. I cannot let it fall, do you understand? It is all my concern."

"I understand," she said. And she did. She always had. "I understand."

She did not know what else to say. She wanted to press close to him, to kiss him and end this horrible distance. But there was no end to it. There never would be, because she was the ruin of all he loved, and she knew no other way to be.

He righted the little table, his hands smoothing the pages of the book before setting it back where it belonged. He would leave now. She could feel it. She watched as he pulled a small something from the wallet at his belt and laid it atop the book.

"Do not put your trust in the man from Livonia," he said. It was a last warning, a small matter of business before his exit. "He is more fearful than are you, of the judgment that awaits him."

She nodded. There was little she trusted to Quinten, except that he believed what he taught, and paid too little heed to the material world.

"What is it?" She gestured at the object he had left. It looked like a very small box, no bigger than the palm of his hand.

"I had it made for you, to replace what was broken." His fingers lightly stroked the surface of the box. "When I thought I knew you. What you are."

His face – she wondered if this would be the last time she saw it, those gray eyes, the brooding curve to his lips. All the joy and uncertainty that no one ever saw. But he had shown it to her. She could not unsee it.

Before she could think of what else to say, he was leaving. His hand on the door, his feet over the threshold.

"William," she said, and stopped. What could she say?

"Margaret," he answered, and though he sounded so very weary, she savored the sound of her name in his mouth. It would be a memory soon. He leaned his forehead against the doorpost, eyes fixed on the scarred wood. "It is your boldness I have loved best, you know. The challenge in you. The defiance. And now it will be your destruction." He closed his eyes briefly as if in prayer. Or as if he could not bear the sight of her. "Just live," he said, so softly she almost did not hear it. "Live."

And before she could promise to try, he was gone.

It was a long time before she stopped thinking of all the things she should have said. It was an even longer time until she mustered the courage to open the box he had left. It was carved wood, beautiful in itself. Inside there was a string of coral beads, coiled fire nestled in a bed of white silk. Her cheeks flushed with awareness – to replace what was broken, he had said, and she could feel him at her back, pushing into her as the string of her rosary snapped.

Lust and beauty. A shout of color, precious and rare. What he had seen all those months ago, when he had finally thought to look at her. What he loved best.

She put it next to the plain boxwood beads he had given her, arranging the strings on her belt so they intertwined, crimson coral and earthy brown. She did not truly know which she was – if she was either or if she was both. But when she touched them, she felt him. And that was all that mattered now.