While Meg sat in a corner and nursed the children, John announced that Gilbert was to marry John’s ten-year-old daughter and after a moment this news was greeted with great grumbling. Gilbert was not liked by anyone, but because of his connection to the court he was tolerated. But now that most of the people were drunk they had fewer inhibitions in showing their disgust at this man’s lechery of this innocent child.
Gilbert had to control his anger at John’s stupidity for making such an announcement. He would have liked to marry the girl in private and taken her away for his own amusement with no one knowing it.
“Have no fear,” Gilbert said loudly, trying to make a jest. “I will not take her to bed until her womanhood is upon her.”
“And may God rest her soul,” a woman muttered and too many people laughed.
John cared for nothing or no one but the boy who was nursing so eagerly. He would never let the boy out of his sight. Never let anyone or anything harm him. He would give him the best of everything. He would give him all.
16
Only Alida’s maid, Penella, knew the extent of how affected her mistress had been by the last few days. Because of John’s deal with Gilbert she knew there would be no more chances for her to give her husband a son. Her husband would never again visit her bed, and besides, it had taken her months to conceive this child. Her time of childbearing was at an end.
On the day John Hadley claimed that black-haired boy as his son, his wife gave up hope.
For nineteen years Alida had somehow sustained hope. She had believed that if she gave her husband what he wanted, someday he would turn to her in love. She knew now that it would not be. Just as he had given away Peniman Manor, he would not hesitate to take away anything that had meaning to her.
“All I have now are my children,” she whispered as she stood before the arrow slit window of the old stone keep. “My children. Not the child of another man and his…” She could not think how to describe the child-woman who had held her hand during the birth and said such strange things to her.
“My child shall be your child;
Your child shall be mine.
They will be one spirit in two bodies.
They will live together; they will die together.”
That’s what the girl had said. The words were emblazoned on her brain.
“Come to bed, my lady,” Penella said softly, her hands on her mistress’s shoulders, trying to make her rest. She had never seen her like this and she was frightened. Alida had always been a beautiful woman, and age and years of childbearing had only barely dimmed her beauty, but the events of this week had changed her overnight into what Penella saw now.
Alida’s hair straggled about her face, each day showing more gray. It had been two days since the birth of the children and with each passing hour Alida looked worse. She refused to eat. She slept only after she’d paced the floor for many hours, then she fell into a fretful sleep in which she talked nonsense. Penella had shooed everyone else out of the room and was now taking care of her mistress alone. She did not want anyone else to see her like this.
It was on the night of the third day that Alida’s sleeping rambles made sense to Penella. At first she did not believe what she was hearing. There was something about, “They will die together,” then over and over again, “They must die together. They must die together.”
Penella put down her knitting and sat very still. She didn’t want to think that her mistress had lost her reason.
“Fire will cleanse them,” Alida said. “Fire will make them both die together.”
Penella had no idea what she was going to do, but she got up and went to the door. Catching a passing maid, she told her she was to remain outside her ladyship’s door and if she allowed anyone to enter, she would be punished severely. Since all the maids knew of Alida’s punishments, she obeyed.
Raising her skirts, slipping through the night, Penella made her way to the far tower. This is where John had ensconced “his” son along with the daughter he cared nothing about. There was a guard outside the door but he was asleep so Penella had no trouble slipping past him.
Inside the dark room there was only moonlight to show her the big bed where the wet nurse slept, a sleeping baby cuddled on each side of her.
“Wake up,” Penella said softly so the guard wouldn’t hear.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a man’s hand on her shoulder. Turning, she saw a short, stout, pleasant-looking man, his face weathered by years of sun and wind.
“Who are you?” she gasped.
“Will. Meg’s husband. What is amiss?”
She could see that he was a man of great sensibility. “I am afraid,” she said and instantly felt guilty, as though she were betraying her mistress. Thinking that perhaps she was wrong to have come, she turned to leave, but Will kept his hand firmly on her shoulder.
“What is it? You must tell me.”
There was something so sweet natured about this man, something so reliable, that she found herself pouring out everything to him in a voice barely above a whisper. “It has been too much for my mistress. I think she means to harm the boy. I think—” She put her hands over her face.
“How?” Will asked.
“F…fire,” she answered. “She speaks of fire.”
Will had had no formal education but he had handled many emergencies in his life on a farm and he knew how to act quickly. “We must get the children and Meg out of here.”
“There is probably no danger. I’m sure my mistress was only rambling. I’m sure—”
“Yes, of course she was,” Will said soothingly. “Mayhap she was talking in her sleep. She has just had a baby. Sometimes women say odd things at times like that. I’m sure it is nothing, so you must go back to her and see that she is well cared for.”
“Yes, you are right,” Penella said gratefully, so glad for this man’s calm strength.
“Go on now. Go to bed. Everything will look all right in the morning.”
After she left, Will lost no time in waking Meg. He knew he had to get all of them out of there as quickly as possible. Since Meg had told him of the switch of the children, he had expected something like this to happen. Of course Alida would kill this boy who now threatened her own children.
Meg, good, sweet Meg, did not ask questions when her husband woke her and told her she was to sneak the children past the guard and get out of the castle grounds as fast as possible. She sensed that the children were in danger and that was enough for her.
Will went outside and distracted the guard with an exceedingly vulgar story while Meg held the sleeping children close to her and ran down the old stone steps. Once outside she pulled her shawl over her head and kept walking briskly toward the village. She thanked heaven that in these modern times there was no raising and lowering of the drawbridge. The truth of why John Hadley still lived in a castle was that he was too cheap to build a comfortable house. The thick stone walls were no longer needed for protection.
Once Will was sure there had been enough time for Meg to get away, he tried very hard to think. If there were a fire and babies were to have been burned, tiny bodies would be expected to be found. If bodies were not found, a search would be made and, alive, the boy would always be in danger.
It took Will only a moment to decide what he had to do. He did not like it and he thought that perhaps performing such a hideous deed would guarantee that he would not be allowed into heaven. But when it came to Meg and those children she already loved so much, he didn’t mind giving up heaven.
Leaving the castle, he went running toward the churchyard where the bodies of his twin sons had been laid to rest days before. If there were a fire, there would be the bodies of two babies found in the rubble.
Just before dawn a fire broke out in the old castle. The ancient oak floor joists went up like paper, making a blaze so hot the lead roof melted and rained down on the people of the courtyard. There was an attempt to put the fire out, but it
was too hot too soon.
In the middle of it John Hadley stood and screamed, “My son, my son,” over and over again. He would have flung himself into the flames to rescue the child but for half a dozen men holding him back. They could see there was no use, as the first room to go had been the top of the tower where the children were kept.
It was two days before the ashes cooled enough to go through the rubble and in it were found the bodies of two babies. There wasn’t much left of the old castle and everyone whose lives depended on the running of the estate waited in anxiety to see what John was going to do. By now the rumors of what had happened after the birth of the two babies had reached epic proportions. Some said that John’s wife had given birth to a monster. Some said that the boy was the result of Alida selling her soul to the devil in return for a son. Most people agreed that it was better that both children had died in the cleansing flames.
Some guessed at the truth but the ones who knew were wise enough to keep their own counsel.
What everyone feared was what would happen when John came out of the room where he had barred himself.
When he did emerge a week later, he was a changed man. His hair, once solid black, was now the color of steel. There were deep runnels down the sides of his mouth and there was a hard, cold, dead look in his eyes.
He rode into the courtyard on a violent horse, one that John had previously said was good only to feed the dogs, and its mouth dripped blood from the saw-toothed bridle he was using.
“What are you doing lying about?” he bellowed at people in the courtyard, and even his voice seemed to have changed. “There is work to be done,” he yelled. “I am going to build a house. A fine house. A house to honor my queen. Now get off your backsides and work!”
From that day forward there was no mention of the son who had died in the fire and John Hadley was a changed man. Before, he had been a man of simplicity, a man of great passion, of great loves and great hates, but now he seemed to have nothing inside him. He hated no one, loved no one. His only concern was in building a stone house, a beautiful stone house filled with beautiful things. It was as though he’d come to the decision that if he could not leave behind children who suited him, he would leave behind a house of great significance.
As for his wife, she too had changed, but for the better. Now her husband did not curse her or revile her. He no longer visited her bed but for that she was glad. In truth, John came to look at her as he would another man, and when he found out she knew something about gardens, he began asking her opinion.
As the years went by, their marriage was replaced with friendship and little by little, Alida’s hope began to come back to her. Some women would have hated their husbands to look at them with no warmth, but for Alida, the absence of hate in her husband’s eyes was almost love.
Never did she for a minute regret what she had done in setting the fire and killing the boy, and her own daughter as well. She felt that the two of them had died so her many other children could live now and in the future. Now there was no more talk of giving Gilbert Rasher all of her children’s property. In fact the man had shown up after the fire and said that John “owed” him even though the boy was dead. It was not his fault the boy had died. John had spit on the contract and walked away. Gilbert rode away and did not bother the Hadley family again, not even to claim the ten-year-old girl who was to have been his bride.
Nearly fifty miles away, Will and Meg Watkins bought a farm and settled down to raise “their” two children. Will never told his wife that on the night they left, he had stolen a bag containing six exquisite gold cups out from under the very arm of a heavily sleeping Gilbert Rasher. The cups were now hidden under the floor of the farmhouse, quite safe, one missing a ruby he’d used to pay for the farm, but otherwise intact. When the children were older he planned to give the cups to them.
He didn’t tell Meg the truth about the fire, about the burned bodies of the infants found in the rubble. He didn’t want her to think her precious babies were in danger or he feared she might never let them out the door.
He told her John had given him money to buy the farm and had wanted them to move away from the village where they’d both grown up because there had been cases of plague reported there. Will said that John and his wife were building a fine new house and many, many years from now he would want Meg to bring the children to him. Until then she and Will were to give them a safe, country upbringing.
All Meg cared about was that the children were hers. She was glad she wouldn’t have to take them to the castle and turn them over to someone else as soon as they were weaned. But just in case, she nursed them until they were two years old.
And after they were weaned and no one came for them, Meg seemed to forget that the children were not hers.
But Will never forgot and never for an instant did he stop his vigilance in watching any strangers who appeared on the horizon.
17
Eight Years Later
1579
Horses!” Callie said in disgust. “You always want horses. Have you no imagination?”
“As much as you have,” Talis said, defending himself, but he knew it wasn’t true. Callie was the one with the stories in her head.
He was walking in the dusty road behind the slow-moving wagon as they returned from taking their produce to the village market. Will was, as usual, sitting on the wagon seat sound asleep, letting the ancient old horse find its own way home. Callie was sitting on the back of the wagon, swinging her insect-bitten bare legs, her hands tucked under her legs as she leaned forward and watched Talis brandishing his wooden sword.
They were very different-looking children. Talis was as dark as Callie was fair, and he was as big and sturdily built as she was delicately made; he was as handsome as she was plain. He was quite large for his age, being only eight, but he looked at least twelve years old, while Callie had a sweet, innocent expression that made her seem much younger than her years. Talis often demonstrated that he could pick her up and swing her around. But then Callie retaliated by slipping through tiny places that he could not get his big body through. She took delight in reminding him of the time he got stuck in the iron bars across a window in the cellar of an old house.
“Can’t you think of something better than horses?” she asked with great disdain in her voice.
Talis made a fierce jab at an imaginary foe with his sword. “Your job is to think of things.”
“Oh? If I am to think, what good are you?”
“Men are to protect women, to be brave and honest. Men are made for honor and good deeds; men are—”
“Ha, ha!” Callie mocked. “What do you know of brave deeds? Your last fight was getting that big turnip out of the ground. Unless you count the cow stepping on your foot.”
She didn’t bother him at all as he kept on thrusting with his sword. “All right, then, dragons,” he said after a while.
Callie gave a mock groan. “It’s always either dragons or horses.”
He ran a couple of steps, then leaped onto the tail of the wagon to sit beside her. “Someday you might be grateful that I know so much about dragons when I come to rescue you.”
“I can rescue myself.”
“Ha!” he said. “How can you defend yourself from a dragon? By talking him to death?”
Callie considered the question. “Why yes. I will tell him such a wonderful story that he’ll stop and listen.”
Holding out his sword, Talis narrowed his eyes. “Then while he is listening to you—”
“Listening so hard he cannot move,” she added.
“Turned to stone, he will be. While he’s listening, I’ll creep up on him and—”
Callie’s eyes lit up in a way that Talis loved: It meant she was about to tell a story. “You will climb up his back. He won’t feel you because you will have on magic shoes, shoes that were given to you by a witch who wanted you to kill the dragon, and—”
“Why?”
He didn’t ha
ve to explain his “why” because she knew what he meant. “You saved the witch’s baby and—”
“Witches don’t have babies!” he said in disgust.
Annoyed, she said, “All right then, it’s a baby she loves because it’s so beautiful. Everyone loves the baby, even the dragon. He loves it so much he wants to eat it. That way the baby will be with him forever.”
Talis’s eyes rounded at that.
Secure in her audience now, Callie dithered a bit. She was clever enough to have no vanity about her looks, but when it came to her storytelling, she had a great deal of vanity. For the rest of the way home she kept him enthralled with her story of magic shoes that made him weightless so he could climb the dragon’s back and pierce its heart. As it lay dying its only request was to hear the end of Callie’s story.
When she had finished, Talis was unsmiling. “I’m glad I killed him, Callie. Maybe he would have wanted to eat you so he’d have all your stories inside him.”
“Would you be sad if a dragon ate me?”
“Sure,” he said. “If you died, who would tell me stories?” At that remark, he jumped off the wagon and started running the few feet to the house while Will, awake now (the horse knew just when to jerk the reins to wake him), drove into the yard.
“I’ll get you for that,” Callie yelled, jumping off and running after him.
Talis ran toward Meg, standing in the doorway and watching for them, as she always was when they returned. Will said she sensed when they were going to return, but the truth was that she was always so terrified that the three of them would disappear that she spent most of market day standing in the doorway and waiting.
Talis, nearly as tall as Meg, grabbed her thick waist and dodged Callie as she tried to hit him.
“Now, now, what’s this?” Meg asked. “Have you two been quarreling again?” She was trying to be stern, since Will was always telling her that she spoiled the children outrageously, but she didn’t fool them. They knew Meg would give them anything it was in her power to give.