But, oh, how warm Margaret had been, how sweet she had tasted, how good she had felt beneath him, her body subject to his flesh and to his needs, their child between them.
That had been something Thomas had never experienced before. Odile had been pregnant, but Margaret… Margaret’s comely body had been swollen with his child.
Guilt suddenly surged through Thomas, and he literally groaned, and leaned against the wall for support lest his knees give way. Is this what Alice’s body would have felt like? Is this how sweet it would have been with Alice, making love with a woman who was pregnant with his child?
And had Raby enjoyed Margaret thus? Had he made love to her, and delighted in the feel of what he believed was his child growing within her?
“Ah!” Thomas said, and struck at the wall with his fist, beating at it once, twice, and a third time in an effort to distract his mind away from imagining his uncle atop Margaret, caressing her as Thomas had only just caressed her.
What had been more important to Margaret in this encounter? That she test Thomas’ resolve, or that she discover Raby was safe?
“Damn her!” Thomas said. “Damn her to hell!”
WHEN SHE left Thomas’ chamber, Margaret paused by the shadowy niche, and John Wycliffe stepped forward so she could see his face and know him for what he was.
Then he bowed deeply. “Beloved Mistress,” he said. “Did he …”
“Yes, John. I shall ache for many days to come.”
But he did not smile at her poor attempt at a jest. Instead Wycliffe’s face assumed the most infinite of sadnesses, and he dared reach forward and caress her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Lady, do not love him.”
She smiled, her expression now as sorrowful as Wycliffe’s. “He is not a man who can be loved, John. He will not allow it.”
And then she was gone.
LADY, DO not love him. The words echoed through Margaret’s mind as she made her way back to the chamber and bed she shared with two other of Lady Katherine’s women.
Lady, do not love him.
Ah, it was too late, wasn’t it? Far too late. Far too late for her, and far too late for the child within her belly. Far too late for all her kind.
By the time she reached her chamber, Margaret was crying, and she had to pause outside the door and dash away the tears with the back of her hand. She entered once she had her emotions under tight control, and went to the bed, laying the cloak
over a chest before she climbed in beside the other two women.
“Margaret,” said one of them. “Where have you been?”
Margaret did not answer, but lay down on her side away from the women, resting her cheek on a hand.
“And you smell of a man,” said the woman. “Margaret,” she said with considerable more determination, “with whom have you been?”
Sweet Tom forgive me for what I do.
“With Brother Thomas,” Margaret said, and listened as both the women gasped (had they been waiting awake for her, waiting to ask this question, never dreaming she might answer as she did?). Forgive me for the trap, Tom. Forgive me. . .forgive me. ..
“A priest!” said the woman, and then the other interrupted.
“Was he good? I’ve always heard priests were best…”
To that Margaret said nothing, and feigned sleep as the other two whispered furiously among themselves.
Was he good?
Oh, aye, Margaret thought, reliving every moment she’d spent with Thomas. Oh, aye, he was good. She said to him that she thought him now less the friar than the man, and she thought that, once Thomas had so devastatingly denied her— I would send you into hell before ever I loved you—then it was the man who had emerged.
And that man could so easily be loved.
She’d flinched when he’d spoken those cold, hard words, not merely before they were so cold and so hard, but because Margaret knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that once Thomas found de Worde’s casket he would have the means to send her into hell anytime he so chose.
She’d flinched, and she knew he’d seen that instinctive, fearful reaction, because from that moment his touch had become very gentle, and very soft.
And not just his hands. He’d spoken occasionally as they’d made love, asking her if something he did was uncomfortable, or difficult because of her pregnancy. He had not forced her to anything, and taken her nowhere she hadn’t wanted, desperately, to go herself. He had taken care of her and of the baby she carried, and whatever else Margaret had expected, she had never expected that.
Then, when he had done, and relaxed against her body, he moved his mouth to her ear, and whispered, Sweet Meg.
That was the true Thomas, she realized, not the hard shell he so assiduously cultivated. Not the hateful man of God he presented to the world.
She remembered also the expression that had filled his eyes when first she’d put his hands on her belly. It had affected him deeply, that moment he’d felt the movement and shape of his child, and she wondered at it. Did he have children elsewhere? A careless bastard or two from his youth?
He had cared when he laid his hands on their growing child, although Margaret was aware he would never admit it to her, and although she was herself aware that care had somehow frightened him.
What had happened to him, that now the feel of his child growing in a woman
recalled such fearsome cold memories?
What had the angels done to him?
Sweet Jesu, aid me, she prayed silently.
Then, after a moment, Sweet Jesu, save me from loving him too deeply, for then I shall be a cursed woman.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Monday within the Octave of the Circumcision
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(3rd January 1379)
RALPH, BARON OF RABY, stood in the chilled interior of Westminster Abbey, staring at the two coffins set before the high altar. Both were draped in black, and both were guarded by knights standing in armor dulled by a dusting of ashes.
Raby could hardly comprehend what he saw. Even now, even after he’d spent so many days escorting the Black Prince’s body home through France and then across the seas to England, he found it hard to accept that the man was dead.
And the prince’s father.
And in such similar, demonic circumstances.
Raby crossed himself, and murmured a prayer, wishing that it could comfort him, but he wondered if anything would ever comfort him again in this suddenly bleak and dismal world.
On the morrow both the king and his heir would be laid to rest, and somehow England would move on. It had a new king, an untried lad who should have had another ten years at least before he had assumed the throne.
Ten years where he could have learned, matured … and been tested for the strength and integrity of his mettle.
Now it was all too late. Far too late.
TWO OTHER people stood in the abbey in one of the private chapels, conversing in low tones. They were just out of sight of Raby standing before the high altar.
“You cannot ask me to do this,” Margaret said. Her face, naturally pale, was made even more colorless by her distress and by the drapery of soft white linen over her hair that she wore as a mark of respect for the dead.
“Dear Meg, I must. I am sorry.”
“I will look the fool. Worse, I will look the whining whore.”
Hal Bolingbroke made no answer, but kissed her gently on the forehead, on the cheek, and then once, very briefly, on the mouth.
“I have too much respect for Raby,” Margaret went on, turning aside her face so that Hal could not kiss her again. “And too much for Thomas. Dear sweet Jesus! I have too much respect for myself to do what you ask!”
“They must be pushed. All of them. Lancaster, Raby … Thomas.”
“When Thomas finds out how I have manipulated him—” she shot a dark look at Bolingbroke “—how we all have manipulated him, then we shall have lost him forever. And ourselves.”
“We shall have lost ourselves if you do not act now. Meg, you must push Raby.
Just a little. Just enough that he and Lancaster will be grateful enough for any solution to your—” he laid a hand on her belly “—dilemma.” Then Bolingbroke’s voice changed, losing some of its sweetness and becoming harder. “You did not object when I asked you to go to Thomas’ chamber last night. I hear by all accounts it was—” he hesitated, giving his next words added emphasis “—a rousing success.
Finish what you started last night, Meg. If you want Thomas … then finish what you started last night.”