Lindsay Townsend (7 page)

Isabella was sleeping after the early
service. Beside her, Matthew played with her hair and the silver and gold
flower that Stephen had retrieved from the dust and handed again to his mother.
Now, dropping a kiss onto the boy’s head, trailing a hand over Isabella’s
shoulder, Stephen eased himself off the great bed and slipped out of the
chamber into the dawn.

He stood in the yard, looking at the great
monastery church, and  listened to the birds and the silences between their
calls. He drew in a large breath, inhaling the smells of his childhood—the sea,
the blossom, the green earth.
How have I forgotten this?
He had a
small-holding in Kent, close to the coast. It was time, and perhaps safer, to
take his family down there, take Joanna and his sister
and Isabella and
Matthew, if Isabella will come
.

A whiff of spices told him that Amice had
entered the yard. She wasted no words in greeting. “What next?”

Stephen half-turned, glad to speak to
Isabella’s closest friend. The matter had kept him awake all last night. “If I
ask her, will she take me?”

“Ginger and pepper! Have you not noticed
how she looks at you, man?”

“But after her first marriage, is it too
soon?”

Amice clicked her tongue, as if impatient. “Do
you love her?”

Stephen smiled.

“Then ask!”

“It will be safer for her and Matthew,” he
added, trying to be practical and sensible. Sensing a change in the air behind
him, Stephen looked round. Isabella was standing on the threshold, Matthew
riding on her hip.

Amice moved first. “I will take Matt,” she
said, holding out her arms to the chuckling little boy. “Go, walk in the cloister
or something. You two have things you need to say to each other. Go on.”

Seeing nothing but Isabella, Stephen held out
his hand to her. Please accept me, his heart thundered.
Please
.   

Her warm little fingers wrapped round his. “I
know the way,” she said. “Follow me.”

****

The cloister was quiet, the rising sun
beating down on a single gardener and some drowsy bumblebees. Isabella sat
beside a narrow pillar and looked out over the herbs and flowers. She felt
Stephen crouch beside her, still clutching her hand.

She glanced at him and the world stopped.
The ardor in his lean, tanned face, the feeling in his green-gray eyes made her
forget everything.

He squeezed her fingers and spoke. “You
know I love you. I did not say it earlier to Amice because I wanted to say it
to you first. I loved
Cecilia
and I will never forget her.”

She felt him tremble after that confession
and said quickly, “That is a good thing, Stephen.”
Please say more. Say
about us
.

Perhaps he understood her thought for he
swallowed. “Is it not too soon? You have your son now. I do not want you to
feel in any way compelled.” His voice deepened. “Especially by gratitude.”

She shook her head. “I will be forever
grateful to you, Stephen, for helping me win back Matthew, but—” She stopped.
How could she say this? It had been the growing wish of her heart but until
Matthew was with her again all the rest of her life had stuttered and failed. “I
would like more.”

The instant she spoke she felt a flood of
despair.
Now I have lost him. Men do not like to be ordered.
Feeling the
tell-tale flush in her face she dropped her head.

 “Isabella.”

She dared not look at him, even when she
felt his fingers, feather-light, on her cheek and chin.

“Sweet Mistress Angel, how unsure you still
are! But that will pass, believe me. You have a man’s love now, not a monster’s
lust.”

She peeped at him and saw him smiling.

“I never thought I would love again, until
I saw you.” His knees cracked as he shifted slightly. “Till I saw you in your
golden cage, Mistress Angel, glittering above me. I think I loved you then.”

He kissed her hand and a shimmer of
lightning passed over her skin.

“You caught me,” she said softly.

“I did indeed.” Stephen knelt and leaned in
to her. “To catch and to hold?” he asked, half-teasing, half-solemn. “You and
Matthew? He is a sweet boy and a brave little lad, unfussy.”

She basked in his praise, then yelped as
her amazing suitor gently tugged her hair.

“Your answer, lady?”

 “To marry?”

“Of course.”

She felt she must burst with happiness. “For
my safety?”

His eyes narrowed briefly, then he grinned,
looking like a boy again. “I wondered if you had overheard! And yes, you and
your boy will be safer with me. I want you to be safe, Isabella.”

His concern both touched and reminded her. “Your
family, will they be safe at your friend’s?”

“For now.” Frowning, Stephen looked north
and said, “Still I confess I will feel easier in my mind when I have got them
out of London and sooner rather than later. What of your friend?”

“Amice told me that she let her apprentice
know she was on pilgrimage to Canterbury, should anyone come asking.” She
watched his face clear and felt relieved herself, although the question still
slipped from her lips, “Are you sure, Stephen?”

“That I love you? How could I not? That I
am wild to marry you? How could I not be?”

He kissed her. He had kissed her before but
this was a kiss of peace, passion and love all at once. He wrapped his sinewy
armorer’s arms about her, captured her mouth with his and embraced her in a
slow, full way that made her feel naked and back in bed with him.

We are in a monastery
, Isabella tried to protest, while
somewhere in her floating mind a small thought complained,
I wish he had
done it earlier.

“I watched you sleep all night and having
been waiting to do this,” Stephen said, when they finally paused in their kiss.
“Again and again.”

He demonstrated in a way that delighted
her, that filled her with a sparkling light and giddiness throughout her body,
as if she had drunk down a rainbow.
With Stephen I will gladly submit to the
act of love. Perhaps I may even like it. Look how we are with kisses, already
intoxicated with each other. Surely more still will be even better?

She could only hope.

Stephen plighted his troth to Isabella with
Amice and the Abbot of the monastery as witnesses. Matthew chuckled through the
brief ceremony and afterwards ran to Stephen to be plucked off his feet and
flung into the air. Stephen obliged the little lad and then turned to his
betrothed.

“We should leave.”

They set out soon after, making for the
house of Stephen’s friend Thomas Smith.

****

“Daddy!”

Joanna flung herself at Stephen. She was
red-faced, but not, he realized quickly, because she was whooping or finding
breathing difficult. She pressed her hot little arms around his neck, all but
choking him.

“Daddy!”

Careless of tools, ashes or anything else
in Tom’s workshop he sat down with her on the anvil and hugged her tight. Tears
threatened to storm into his eyes and he fought them back.

“My thanks.” He held out an arm to Thomas
and the two men shook hands, then Stephen returned his attention to Joanna,
blowing a noisy raspberry on her throat, which delighted his girl.

“Will you introduce us, brother?” Bedelia’s
crisp question bit into his reunion.

Blinking at the reminder, Stephen saw
Amice, looking Thomas up and down in an appreciative manner and Isabella
hovering on the threshold, clasping Matthew by the hand. Sympathy swept through
him in a warm tide as he spotted the crease of worry on his newly-betrothed’s
forehead. T
o Isabella, families are a threat
.

He blew a second raspberry on Joanna’s neck
and pointed. “Here is a lady I have been hoping you and your aunt would meet.”

Joanna looked across the workshop and leaned
against her father to say, in a loud whisper, “She is all golden, like an angel.”

“I think so, too.”

“Will she help my breathing?”

“I believe she will,” answered Stephen
steadily, though his heart bled for his child. “Has that troubled you?”

“Not so much.” Joanna shrugged and stared
at Isabella again. “Will she give me a lock of her golden hair as a breath
charm?”

Across the room Isabella gave a small,
decisive nod.

“I am sure of it. Her name is Isabella and
there is Matthew, her boy, and Amice, her friend.”

Alerted to the others, Joanna grinned at
Matthew and studied Amice closely before sliding from her father’s knee. She
walked across to the spice seller, her wide brown eyes never leaving the tall,
dark-skinned, beautiful woman. “Will you be my friend, too?”

Amice crouched and ruffled the child’s
hair. “Yours and Matthew’s.”  Producing a small bag of marbles from her gown,
she knelt on the beaten earth floor. In moments, Matthew and Joanna had joined
her. She looked over their intent heads and winked at Stephen. “Now you can
talk.”

****

She had been welcomed. Braced for questions
and censure, Isabella  busied herself pouring wine and passed the cups around
the others seated at the trestle table in the corner of the workshop. She
started as Stephen brushed her hand.

“You do not need to work to justify your
place,” he said softly.

She nodded, convinced yet not entirely
comfortable. Still she felt the good humor of Thomas, big and bluff, and even Bedelia,
busy and shrewd. It was lovely to be accepted, yet unfamiliar.

“My turn!”

Off in another corner, Matthew flicked a
marble and Joanna cheered it on. The two youngsters tussled with Amice as if
they had been playmates for years, warring like puppies.
They even have a
look of each other, around the nose and chin, and could be brother and sister.

She glanced at Stephen and he smiled at
her, his eyes crinkling in the corners in the way that she loved. He raised his
cup to her and she almost jumped up to fetch the wine jug again, but then
recalled what he had said.

He leaned right across the trestle and
kissed her. “Easy, angel,” he murmured, closing his eyes to a ribald comment from
one of the apprentices polishing helmets and shields at the back of the
workshop.

“If my brother will sit down again, perhaps
we can return to business?” Bedelia instantly undermined her crisp comment by
exchanging a conspiratorial glance with Isabella. “You see how he is, Isabella?
I think all armorers are the same. They never do today what they can put off
until tomorrow.”

“Your sister slanders us.” The bearded,
balding Thomas crossed his fingers over his big belly, “but we are large enough
to take it.”

This is how a family can be, Isabella
thought.
I never realized
.

“I—No, I cannot wait any more.” Stephen
slapped his palm on the table. “I must say this now. Joanna, Matthew, are you
listening? My mistress Isabella has agreed to become my wife. We are betrothed.”

“Excellent,” said Bedelia, after a small,
satisfied silence, tapping her fingers against her cup. “I look forward to
seeing a splendid ring for her, Stevie.”

Isabella breathed again.

“Now you will be my mother, too.”  Joanna
put her thumb in her mouth and sucked contentedly. “You here and Mama Cecilia
in heaven.”

“Stevie,” Matthew repeated, as he flicked
another marble.

“I have spices to scent your bridal gown,”
said Amice, waggling her dark eyebrows in a way that made Isabella blush.

She felt herself blushing harder when
Stephen strode round the trestle and planted a full kiss on her mouth. “See, my
sweet?” he said, kissing her again as the whole workshop burst into wild applause.
“You are already beloved.”

****

After that, Isabella expected that no one would
want to be serious or sit to discuss how to defeat the Martinton clan once and
for all. Again this family and their friends surprised her. Once everyone had
kissed and hugged each other, Stephen strolled to the open doorway, looked out
into the alley and then closed the door.

When he turned back, he looked older,
grimmer. “I have a place in Kent, an old holding of my family’s. Tomorrow, we
shall go there. It will be safer and out of reach of spies.”

“Agreed,” said Thomas, reaching down from
his bench seat to fondle a gray cat that had slipped in through the closing
door.

“Leave the city?” Isabella had not
anticipated that. “Flee London?”

Stephen chuckled at her expression and shook
his head. “The country may not have the streets and wharfs and people, my
sweet, but it does not have the stink or trouble, either.” He nodded to the
children, their heads bent over their play as Amice helped Joanna and Matthew
create the form of a mermaid on the floor from scraps of metal, straw and rags.
“A healthy place for little ones.”

“But Isabella is right.” Amice looked up
from her outline of the mermaid and fixed Stephen with a dark, compelling
glance. “What is the point of burying yourself in the country when the
goldsmiths will be always after you? For make no mistake, Stephen, the guild
may not like the Martintons but they will support them. Sir William will argue
that a certain person— “ Amice nodded to Matthew—”is Richard Martinton’s heir.”

  Rage burst through Isabella. “They would
and yet look how they treated him! Underfed, ignored, neglected.” She wanted to
storm across the workshop and sweep her child up, but Stephen stepped across
her path. “I am all right,” she snapped, as his arms enfolded her.

“I know you are,” he replied, controlled as
only a smith used to working with molten metals could be, adding, for her ears
only, “You do not smother those you love.”

Though she knew it was unworthy his very
ease made her want to fight, the more so when Stephen said, “Amice is right. We
need to be free of them for good.” He glanced at Matthew, doodling contentedly
on the floor.  “Inheritance?”

She shuddered at the idea. Yes, her boy
should have his rights, but she could not stand the thought of dealing with Sir
William. “Not if it puts me or mine in their power again.”

“That makes it easier,” Stephen went on
calmly. Releasing her, he escorted her back to the bench and waited until she
had sat down again before he settled beside her. “It will be far less
troublesome if I do not have to be too concerned with his rights there.”

“But, brother, will the child not resent it
when he is older?” Bedelia dropped in.

Stephen leaned down and stroked the gray
cat himself. “He will do very well as my boy,” he asserted, dismissing the
whole inheritance matter in a splendid, almost regal manner.
Yes, he
understands that this giving up of rights is almost unheard of, but appreciates
that I cannot stand to have any more dealings with the Martintons. I want
Matthew free of them and safe.
Isabella clenched her fists under the table.
What Stephen said made perfect sense and yet, contrary-wise, part of her was suddenly
angry again.  
I wish it was not so unfair. My boy does not deserve such
losses. We have both suffered for nothing.
Did Stephen understand that,
too, or was he too logical?

Stephen twisted about on the bench to face
her. “These goldsmiths are powerful men but even though they may consider me a
blacksmith I have influence. Do you know of anything that we can use against
them?”

There was a warrior under that coolness,
Isabella realized, as she glared up into his stone face. Strangely, his anger
and indignation comforted her. Even as she replied, “Nothing! They told me
nothing!” she began to remember.

“Yes?” prompted Stephen and Bedelia
together. Amice and Thomas grinned at their joint question.

“A seal or seals?” Trying to recall exactly
what had been said, or rather not said, Isabella pressed her fingers against
her forehead. Seals were commonplace things, used by people on their letters
and documents. A wax seal attached to a letter was an added proof of the
sender’s identity. “No, I am sorry. That is all I have. My mother-in-law spoke
of them once and Sir William instantly stopped her. I remembered that as
strange but it probably means nothing.”

Next instant she gasped as Stephen snatched
her even closer and tickled her, exactly as she tickled Matthew. “All you have?
All you have? With this we can defeat them!”

“Sto…p!” Isabella giggled, but he kept on
tickling and then Joanna and Matthew piled in with crooked fingers and noisy
calls. All thoughts of revenge and even what Stephen meant was lost amidst
laughter and horse-play.

****

After supper, Stephen was determined to
have Isabella to himself for a time, whatever their final sleeping
arrangements. He suggested she join him at the stables, “to look over a pony
for Matthew.”

Isabella agreed with such haste that he
felt ashamed, the more so when she sped to the barn as if expecting to see a
docile little beast already saddled for her son. Stepping after her into the
high-roofed building, Stephen saw her shaking her head.

“I did not think there would be any ponies.”

“No, I am sorry, but—” Spotting the teasing
sparkle in her eye, he stopped and laughed. “You knew!”

“But I still came.” She wagged a finger,
smiling when he caught it. “You do realize it will be Matt who asks you from
now until Christmas time about his horse? Children have prodigious memories
when it comes to expected presents.”

Feeling very amiable he enfolded her again in
his arms. “He can have one for Christmas and Kentish country to ride in.”

“And Joanna, too. Have you a knife about
you for me to cut a lock of hair for her?”

Pleased she was thinking of his daughter,
he said, “Joanna already has a pony, and I shall trim your hair.”
I must
give her a good knife. And take a lock of that wondrous hair for myself, too.
Who knows? Maybe Joanna is right and it will be a luck charm.

“That is well.” She walked her fingers up
his chest. “As far as a horse is concerned, perhaps you could give Matthew
Ulysses.”

He laughed aloud at the idea of the tiny boy
on his old gray, delighted to find her so playful. Isabella had endured much,
but she was young and now she had her son.

“Stevie…”

Hearing his sister’s nickname hesitantly on
Isabella’s lips he pointed to the hay-loft. “Shall we go up?”

She went ahead of him up the wooden ladder,
nimble and quick. Following after he was not altogether surprised when she
pushed him into a mound of sweet-smelling hay and sprawled on top of him.

“Now you have me, madam, what next?” he
teased.

She stared back at him, desire and uncertainty
both bright in her face.

“You do not have to do anything,” he said
softly.

She rolled away, fell to biting her
fingernails. “I want to, but this is not my way of saying thanks, I can never
thank you enough,” she confessed rapidly.

“We love each other. In love there are no
games of gratitude or debts.”

“I feel the same.” She gnawed at her lower
lip, then burst out, “Why am I suddenly so angry at times?”