“I know more than you could ever imagine,” Esme said. “What do you think I have been doing these past ten years? I have learned the ways of handling an estate, everything from planning meals to ordering supplies, directing weavers, planting farmlands, working with the village cotters.” She threw her hands out in an all-encompassing manner. “Everything.”
Her father snorted his opinion. “What a wooly-witted half-brain! How will you protect those lands? Where is your bird of soldiers to patrol the borders and keep enemies from invading? Ah, let me guess. You will hire a troop of nun-warriors to shield you from invasion. Ha ha ha.” He looked to one son, then the other, so they could join in the jest. Soon the three were laughing uproariously at her and the image of nun-warriors.
Esme felt heat infuse her face. Her father was right. This was her one weakness, one which she would have to address after she inherited. There were still some of her maternal grandparents retainers at Evergreen, but they were few and mostly old. She needed hard fighting men, but she could only hire troops after she gained money, and she could only gain money after she regained her mother’s lands. Her father certainly hadn’t been saving all the revenues for her these ten years.
“Go pack your bags, girl. You are coming home today.”
“I am not!” St. Jude made me say it. Or was it the devil? Either way, my father is not going to like my obstinacy.
Her father stood and advanced toward her. Once he towered over her, he said, “You will… even if I have to carry you out over my shoulder. Your charade of being a novice is over. You will obey me.”
“Why would you take me home… as if I have any home, other than this nunnery? Will you murder me on the way, or after we arrive at Blackthorne?”
“Murder will not be necessary, wench,” he drawled. “Your wedding will take place as soon as the banns can be read. Two sennights at most.”
The fine hairs stood out on the back of Esme’s neck. “Oh? And who is the lucky bridegroom?” I can just imagine.
“Oswald of Lincolnshire.”
I cannot imagine what you are thinking. Oswald? Esme tilted her head in confusion. “He is already wed, with several children.”
“Not that Oswald,” her father said, lifting his chin defiantly.
“I don’t under… oh, nay, you cannot mean the grand-sire. Oswald the Elder?” Finally my father has pushed the limits of cruelty.
“The very same. You are fortunate, girl. He is a lord in his own right.”
“He is older than you,” she said, disbelief ringing in her voice. “And last I heard, he had a disease in his manparts.” Inside, Esme felt like weeping. If she had ever hoped her father might entertain affection for her, that hope was gone now. “You are a beast.”
Her father shrugged.
“How could you, John?” Mother Wilfreda said. “Tsk tsk tsk! Even for you, that is low.”
“Mind your own business, hag,” he told the nun without even glancing her way.
“Either pack a bag or come as you are,” her father said to Esme, grabbing her forearm in a pinching grip.
She shrugged out of his grasp and yelled, “Unhand me, you demon! I would rather be dead than wed to that sick old man.”
Her father swung his hand and slapped her hard across the face, clutching on to her forearm again. ” ‘Tis time you learned to obey your betters.”
The blow was so hard, Esme saw stars. She staggered backward and almost fell to the floor. Her father’s grasp on her arm held her up.
“You wretch!” Mother Wilfreda said and rose abruptly to her feet, knocking over her stool and scattering seeds and powders all over the table.
Cedric stepped in front of the nun and blocked her passage so that she could not come to Esme’s assistance.
Edward, meanwhile, came toward her and grabbed her other forearm. Together, her father and Edward began to drag her across the room and out the doorway. As they headed down the corridor, she noticed a confused Father Alaric walking across the great hall carrying a tray with three wooden goblets of mead. Along the wide corridor that led to the massive double front doors, two dozen nuns and novices peered out of doorways, all of them wide-eyed with fear, some of them weeping. The overly tall Sister Mary Rose held a small skull in her shaking hands, probably St. John the Baptist; she had several of those. She must have been working on her supply of relics when the “visitors” arrived. But wait. Sister Mary Rose had been sent to warn Toste and Bolthor to stay away. Had she returned already, or never gone out?