Lindsay Townsend (6 page)

She could think of nothing else. Even
Stephen’s reassuring bulk seemed as insubstantial as smoke. She clung to him,
her arms tight about his waist, her cheek pressed firmly against his back, and
wished only to go faster.

“Will Matthew be pleased to see me? I have
no gift for him. Will he have grown? Will he know me? Will he like me? Will he
like my gown? I wish I had something for him.”

She did not realize she was speaking aloud
until she had an answer.

“He will love you,” Stephen called, above
the pounding of the horses’ hooves. “He will brag to all his friends of your
beauty.”

I pray so.
Stephen’s extravagant claims still comforted her and
she inhaled his musky scent, glad she rode behind him and not Amice, feeling
him moving with the snorting horse.

They stopped at a forge on the Roman road
to feed and water the horses. Stephen suggested she take a brief walk with
Amice while he spoke to the farrier. “I took your suggestion, Isabella, and
went with it,” he added with a smile.

While she and Amice wandered, Isabella
staring always at the road ahead of them, at the large skies of scudding
clouds, a carpenter suddenly ran out from a lean-to workshop.

“Black demon and whore! Get away!”

More startled than shocked they faltered,
Isabella keeping a sharp eye on the saw in fellow’s left hand, but Stephen was
the quickest. In a few long strides he stepped between them.

“For God, man, leave off your bullying of
these good womenfolk.” He caught the carpenter’s raised hand, stopping it and
the saw in a grip of steel. “Go back to your shop and drink no more today.”

The carpenter gawped and worked his mouth
until words spewed out. “They y’orn?”

“Under my protection and that of my guild.”
Stephen removed the saw from the smaller man. “Come, I shall walk you back.”

They disappeared into the lean-to and a few
moments Stephen reappeared, to the sound of furious sawing. He went first to
Amice.

“I am sorry for that,” he said, taking her
hand in his, smiling down at her with his eyes. “That a man of Kent should be
so ignorant.”

With a regal gesture, Amice waved it aside.
“I have had worse in London. Are we good to go?”

Stephen nodded, glancing at the larger
thatched building beside the lean-to. Eyes blinked back at them from the smoky
gloom of the ale-house. “Aye, it be best.”

“Amice,” Isabella began, sorry and ashamed
for the trouble she was causing, but her friend shook her head. “This place
smells wrong now.”

They moved out quickly.

****

Stephen felt exposed on the Roman road and
glad to canter off it as soon as they were out of sight of the hamlet. He drew
rein beneath a blossoming apple orchard and stepped down, passing a flask to Amice
as she also drew rein.

“I know the way to Newington blindfolded
from here,” he told them. I will take us by old track ways and green paths so
we may reach the village unnoticed.”

“Good,” said Isabella, glancing at the
cloudy sky to check the position of the sun. “We should hurry.”

“We shall be there long before sunset,”
Stephen reassured her though he wondered at her insistence on speed.
Amice
promises me her apprentice will deliver my message to Bedelia, so my daughter
and sister are now safe at Tom’s and out of harm’s reach of the wretched
Martinton clan. We ourselves are way ahead of any pursuit or news from her
in-laws. What else does she fear?

“That will be a blessing,” Amice murmured
and she hid her face behind the flask. She had been a little subdued since her
rude encounter with the carpenter, which was scarcely surprising.

Isabella slid off his horse and went
straight to her friend. She touched Amice’s stirrup. “I am so sorry for this, for
the trouble I am causing.”

“No,” said Amice at once, more forcefully,
speaking for Stephen, too. “A pig of a carpenter is not your fault, Issa. Your
pigs of in-laws are not your fault.”

“Believe her.” Stephen said quietly.

Isabella turned and stumbled toward the
trees, muttering about needing to make water. Amice lowered the flask. “If you
hurt her, master armorer, I shall have your hide. That is one reason I have
come on this venture. Just so we understand each other.”

Stephen smiled at her vehemence. “She has
loyal friends.”

“Isabella tended me during the pestilence.
Everyone else, including my ‘prentice, fled in fear. Issa kept coming. Hers is
a quiet courage.” Amice gave a quick grin, her eyes very bright. “A little
fever laid me out but we did not know that until later. It could have been the
plague.”

“Pity she did not pass it to her relations,”
Stephen growled, and Amice laughed out loud. “I like you, master armorer! Help
us get Matthew for her and I will love you forever.”

“I will do that gladly,” Stephen said.
And
if I can bring the smiles back to my Mistress Angel’s face I shall do that,
too.

****

As Stephen foretold, they reached the
village of Newington a good hour before sunset. Spotting the church tower, he
suggested that Isabella and Amice stay back in a small wood until he had
scouted about the place. “I shall visit the forge, discover the news,” he said.
“I will say my wife has a little boy and ask if there are any children
hereabouts who might be his playmates.”

“That is fine,” Amice agreed, eyes
gleaming.

Isabella also thought it good but could not
help adding, “You will be quick? And take care?”

“Both, Mistress Angel,” came back his
cheerful reply and then he cantered off.

Isabella fretted in the wood while the
horses browsed the hawthorn bushes and Amice scoured beneath the trees for
orchids. Hope warred with despair in her so that when she heard a lively horse
galloping toward them she rushed from cover, too anxious to be prudent and wait
to see who was coming.

****

“A hearty welcome!” Stephen reined in, leaned
down and lifted her onto his saddle before him. He kissed her for the joy of
seeing her again. He kissed her again so she would keep him in mind when they
had her child safe. He kissed her a third time because he had great news. “I
have learned of and seen the house we want, my dear, and a small boy in a blue
tunic is playing with whip and top outside it even now.”

Isabella paled and tried to scramble off
his mount. Guessing her intent, Stephen coiled an arm about her narrow waist.

“No lass, we shall be quicker on horseback.”
He could feel her trembling, heard her hiccup of surprise and tension. “Come,”
he went on gently, “Let us ride and rescue your son.”

Their ride was over in moments. Isabella
felt as if the crown of her head were exploding and light flooding through her.
She saw the small, brave figure playing in the street ahead of them and feared
for an instant that it was a dream.
So often I have woken from this lovely
hope and found the nightmare goes on.

She started as someone—no, Stephen—lifted
her from the horse and set her gently on the ground. She felt a breeze tug at
her collar and watched it ruffle the soft baby curls of the small, fair-haired
boy who played on the house-step, now only feet away from her. She took a step
nearer, then another step, certain and at the same time wanting to be
absolutely sure…

He was still there, still wonderfully real.
A small, fair-haired boy dressed in a creased blue tunic, sitting with a
forgotten whip and top beside him as he doodled in the dust.
My little boy
.

“Matthew,” she croaked. Intent on his
drawing, he had not seen or heard her yet. She drank him in as a man that is
dying of thirst will fall upon a sparkling fountain: his long, trembling
eyelashes, the sweet infant curve of his forehead, his long, narrow arms and
legs.
He will be tall, like his father, but nothing like Richard in nature.

I wish I had a gift for him.

She did not realize she had spoken aloud
until she felt a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Here,” said Stephen softly. He offered her
the gold and silver flower that he had caught from her hand when she had
floated in the golden cage above
The Street
in London. “I would have
been sorry to lose it, for ‘tis a lovely thing,” he went on, smiling down at
her, his gray-green eyes a sea of feeling, “but will gladly give it to your
son.” He twirled the jewel, the glints of gold shining across his face.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He put the trinket in her palm but she
could not hold anything right now and it slipped through her nerveless fingers.
The flashing bauble fell to the ground, brighter still as the sun broke through
the clouds.

Matthew must have spotted the sparkle for
he looked round. His eyes widened. “Mamma,” he said, and laughed. He rose to
his feet on unsteady,  heron-thin legs and held up his arms to be picked up and
gathered in. “My mamma.”

Isabella flew to him.

****

Sitting on the house-step, Matthew and
Isabella were at last united. The boy was in his mother’s arms and lap, holding
up his fingers to be kissed one by one. Isabella rocked him, crooning a
lullaby. Her face, transfigured by exultation, shone brighter than the sun so she
was as gold and blue as any Madonna, sun, moon and stars in one. She wept and
laughed, at one point swinging Matthew up off her knee to show him to the
world. “My boy, my beautiful boy.”

Stephen knelt to this miracle and was swept
into it, Isabella flinging an arm around his shoulders, weeping and laughing
against his chest. He kissed her and Matthew, delighting with them, wishing his
daughter were here, so she could join in.

“Ami!” Matthew held up his arms again.

Coming up rapidly to join them, Amice swung
the child into her embrace, standing beside Isabella and stroking her friend’s
golden hair. “All done, all safe,” she was saying, over and over. As Isabella
shuddered, Amice crouched to release Matthew, who toddled instantly back to his
mother.

“Hurry,” Amice hissed against Stephen’s
back, and he nodded. He knew they were too visible, that at any instant there
could be a shout, a warning to the Martinton household, but how could he
interrupt this reunion?

Thank God the villagers are at their
suppers so they do not see.
It
was surely part of  a larger neglect that Matthew was not at supper, was even
unattended, but right now that was a blessing. Newington, too, like other
English places since the pestilence, had fewer souls to keep watch.

Besides, there was no need to hurry his
golden girl. With her little boy riding on her hip Isabella pushed herself from
the step and began to walk steadily back toward the wood where she and Amice had
waited for him.

“Look at her!” Amice hissed, with a jab of
an urgent finger. “Sees nothing but Matthew, strolls as if she is in heaven
already, sails straight past the backside of my roan who kicks like a mule. Has
she noticed that I have brought the horses? Have you?”

“I grudge her nothing.” He could hear her
singing another lullaby.

“She is not safe for human company.”

“Not yet.” Stephen smiled. “She will be.”

****

He wanted to hasten back to London, hug
Joanna close and shelter all of them within Thomas’s house, but instinct warned
him that Isabella needed peace and time with her son. A roadside inn was too
risky, with too many people who might remember them if Sir William’s men came
searching—as they surely would.

“A religious house will take us for
tonight,” Isabella said serenely, when Stephen, striding beside his horse with
Isabella and Matthew riding, tried to speak quietly to Amice on the matter. She
was right, of course.

“Alms for the monks will buy us silence,
too,” remarked Amice. She was right as well.

“Agreed.” Stephen knew of a small monastery
that they could reach easily before nightfall. He squeezed Isabella’s foot and
she smiled at him, haloed by the evening sunset.
Already she looks less
thin. I know that to be impossible, but still, there it is. The brightness has
returned in her, because she has her son
. He hoped, too, a little
brightness was for him.

“Tell them you are married,” Amice said,
with a knowing glance at her friend. “They will put you together in a guest
room.”

Isabella blushed. She kissed her son’s
downy hair as Matthew dozed before her in the saddle, but said nothing.

Besieged by images of himself and Isabella in
a bed, Stephen cleared his throat. “We should all stay together. It will be
safer.”

But mark this, Isabella did not object.

He did not object, either.

****

Still he was patient.  He wanted her—how he
wanted her!— but instinct told him to rein in, be still.
She has been months
without her son. Nothing else must come between them.
His desires must
wait.

The monks welcomed them, fed them a supper
of leek porry and fish and put them in a guest chamber with a great four-poster
bed that could sleep all four of them. At once, Amice claimed the bed space closest
to the doorway. “I like to be able to move at night, in bed and out of it,” she
said.

Stephen noted how she did not quite look at
Isabella as she spoke and felt his heart expand with gratitude. He nodded thanks
to her as Amice took her place beside the door, preparing to sleep in her
clothes.

“Then I do not have to dress again when we
rise for the midnight services,” she said, and shrugged. “You may choose to do
differently.”

“I will stay as I am,” said Isabella
quickly.

“Goodnight,” Amice called and instantly
rolled over.

“Goodnight, my friend, and thank you.” Isabella
bedded down beside Amice, her son cradled in her arms. She looked up and Stephen’s
heart raced afresh as he saw her eyes. “Are you for bed, St...Stephen?” she
stammered, shyly patting the mattress in invitation.

“I am.” He settled next to her, with the
monastery stone wall at his back. Isabella in her creased gown and her blond
tresses unruly on the pillow had never looked more delicious, more kissable. He
did not want to roll away from her, but still…. Keeping his eyes fixed on her,
Stephen reversed in the bed and forced his reluctant body right up to the cold
stones, willing their chill into his loins.

Matthew, after demanding and receiving a
night-time story from Isabella, slept quickly. Stephen watched her watching him
and was surprisingly content.

She has her child. Now I must ensure she keeps
him. Whatever happens between us, I must do this. As a mother, as herself,
Isabella deserves no less. Pray God I can do this.

If he failed, she might forgive, but he
would never forgive himself.