The Novice Bride

Out of the corner of her eye Cecily glimpsed movement in the chapel and in the cookhouse doorway—the flutter of a veil, heads swiftly ducking out of sight. She was not the only one in the convent to be watching England’s conquerors.

A nervous giggle, quickly stifled, escaped from the cookhouse. It was followed by the unmistakable sound of a sharp slap. The cookhouse door slammed shut. The joker in the troop made another comment, which Cecily could not make out, but, since it elicited guffaws of ribald laughter, doubtless it was made at the nuns’ expense.

A brisk word from Sir Adam and the laughing stopped abruptly.

Inside the yard, the men began to dismount and disarm, and as they did so the sense that Sir Adam’s troop was a bristling monster lost its force. They were soldiers, yes—strange, beardless soldiers, with shorn hair—but with their helms off most were revealed to be little more than boys, not much older than she. They were tired, nervous, hungry, and many miles from home. Cecily frowned. Boys they might be, but she could not forget they were boys who nonetheless had been trained to kill.

Sir Adam’s dark head turned in her direction, and she saw him mouth her name—‘Lady Cecily.’ Her heart missed a beat.

‘Look to Flame’s saddle, will you, Maurice? And bed him down,’ Sir Adam said, addressing one of the men. ‘And persuade the portress to light us a fire in the guest house. We’re not about to sleep in an ice-box.’

‘Aye, sir.’

And then he was striding across the yard towards her, throwing commands over his shoulder. ‘We’ll maintain a watch tonight, as ever, Maurice.’

‘Even in this place, sir?’

‘Even here. Four-hour watches. We all need sleep.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Reaching Cecily, he gave her a little bow. Uncertain whether he was mocking her or not, Cecily stood her ground, lantern at her side. Really, this knight from Brittany had the most unsettling effect on her senses—again she felt oddly breathless, as she had done in the guest-house, again her heart was fluttering. It must be fear. It must be hate. Or could it be that she was unused to the company of men?

He looked past her to the north gate, a crease between his brows.

Quickly Cecily shifted her lantern, so the light was not directed towards the hoofprints that must be visible. ‘Sir?’

‘You will not say where your sister has gone?’

‘I…no!’

His face went hard. ‘You do her a disservice.’

‘How so?’

‘If by refusing me and fleeing she thinks to ally herself with the Saxon resistance, it will go badly for her when she is captured. And captured she will be, in the end. For what Duke William holds, he holds hard.’

As do you, Cecily thought, recalling that firm grip on her wrist. She raised her chin. ‘Sir, it is true that my sister came to St Anne’s, and it is true that she has fled, but she did not tell me where she was going.’

‘Would that I could believe you.’ Folding his arms across his chest, he glanced speculatively at the north gate. ‘If I were determined to flee, I’d head north, since our forces already have London and the south reasonably secure. What think you, Lady Cecily? Is my guess a reasonable one?’

Cecily shrugged, affecting a nonchalance she did not feel. Here was a man who would not take kindly to being deceived, and that was exactly what she was trying to do—to deceive him. How would her father have reacted in Adam Wymark’s shoes? The answer was quick in coming—her hot-tempered, proud, impatient father, rest his soul, would have beaten the truth out of her.

Would Adam Wymark beat her? She stared up at him, a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette with the torchlight behind him, but his expression was lost in the half-light and she could not read him. Had he seen the hoofprints? He was certainly looking in that direction…

To distract him she burst into speech. ‘In truth, sir, I know little of such matters. And you may beat me, if you like, but I’ll know no more afterwards than I do now.’

‘Beat you?’ His tone was startled. ‘I don’t beat women.’

Cecily snorted. Most men beat women. Her father certainly had. He had loved her, and yet he hadn’t hesitated to take a switch to her on a number of occasions—most notably when she had at first refused to enter the convent. Beatings had been part of her life for as long as she could remember, and even at the convent they continued. To Mother Aethelflaeda, physical chastisement—‘mortification of sinful flesh’—was a means of enforcing discipline and instilling the necessary penitence and humility in the nuns in her care.

‘I don’t beat women,’ he repeated softly.

Cecily bit her lip. He sounded as if he meant it. ‘Not even when they cross you?’

‘Not even then.’

His gaze went briefly to her mouth, lingering long enough for Cecily, despite her lack of experience, to realise that he was thinking about kissing her. As his particular form of chastisement? she wondered. Or mere curiosity on his part? Or—more unsettling, this—would he think it a pleasure to kiss her? And would it pleasure her to kiss him? She had never kissed a man, and had often wondered what it would feel like.

Shocked at the carnal direction of her thoughts, Cecily took a couple of hasty steps back. ‘Be careful, my lord—’

‘Sir,’ he reminded her. ‘I told you, I am but a mere knight…’

‘Sir Adam, if you seek to rule my father’s hold, you’ll find velvet gloves may not be enough.’ She frowned. ‘What would you do to my sister, if she were to return?’ Surely then he must see Emma chastised? By rejecting his suit so publicly, her sister had shamed Fulford’s new knight before his tenants. Might he want revenge? On the other hand, perhaps he had heard of Emma’s beauty—perhaps he still wanted to marry her? Her confusion deepened as she discovered that this last thought held no appeal. How strange…

Sir Adam was her enemy. Of course—that must be it. What kind of a sister would she be to wish an enemy on her sister?

He had tucked his thumbs into his belt, and was looking at her consideringly. ‘What would I do with your sister? That, my Lady Cecily, would depend.’

‘On…on what?’

He took his time replying. From the direction of the stable came the clinking of chainmail and the odd snatch of conversation as his men settled their warhorses for the night. The wind cut through Cecily’s clothes, chilling her to the bone, and despite herself she shivered. Adam Wymark glanced at the north gate, and Cecily thought he was smiling, but in the poor light she could not be certain.

‘On a number of things,’ he murmured.

And with that the Breton knight Cecily’s sister had rejected gave her one of his mocking bows and a moment later was stalking back to the stable.

‘Tihell!’ he called.

One of the men broke away from the group in the yard. ‘Sir?’

‘Don’t get too comfortable, Félix. I’ve a commission for you,’ Sir Adam said.

His voice gradually faded as he and his subordinate moved away. ‘I want you to rustle up a couple of sharp-eyed volunteers…’

Wishing she had more time to get used to the day’s turn of events, for her head was spinning, Cecily stumbled towards the cookhouse. Lifting the wooden latch, she was instantly enveloped in a comforting warmth.

Yellow flames flickered in the cooking hearth, and grey smoke wound up to the roof-ridge. A fire-blackened cauldron was hanging over the centre of the fire on a long chain suspended from a cross beam. At the hearthside, a three-legged water pot was balanced in the embers, bubbling quietly. Some chickens were roasting on a spit. Cecily inhaled deeply. Roast chicken and rosemary. The chickens were not destined for the novitiate, but that didn’t prevent her mouth from watering.

Two novices were in charge of that evening’s meal—Maude, Cecily’s only true friend at the convent, and Alice. With one hand Maude was stirring the contents of the cauldron, and with the other she steadied it with the aid of a thick cloth. Her skirts and apron were kilted up about her knees, to keep them clear of the flames, while her short leather boots—serviceable ones, like Cecily’s—protected her feet from straying embers. As was Cecily’s habit when working, Maude had rolled up her sleeves and discarded her veil and wimple. A thick brown plait hung down her back, out of the way. Dear Maude.

Alice was kneading dough at a table, shaping it into the round loaves Mother Aethelflaeda so liked. Alice’s loaves would be left to rise overnight, and in the morning they would be glazed with milk and finished with a scattering of poppy seeds.

It was part of a novice’s training to learn all aspects of life in the convent, and Cecily knew how to make the loaves, as well as the many varieties of pottage that the nuns ate. Pottage was the usual fare, unless it was a saint’s day—or, Cecily thought ruefully, one was fasting or doing penance. This evening the aroma coming from the stockpot was not one of Cecily’s favourites, yet on this shocking, disturbing, distressing evening it was strangely reassuring to observe the familiar routine.

Here, in the cookhouse, all seemed blessedly normal. So normal it was hard to believe that a troop from Duke William’s army had just invaded St Anne’s.

‘Turnip and barley?’ Cecily asked, wrinkling her nose.

Maude nodded. ‘Aye—for us. There’s roast chicken for Mother Aethelflaeda and the senior sisters.’

‘We’ve guests,’ Cecily told her. ‘They’ll want more than barley soup.’

‘I know. So I saw.’ Maude grinned and ruefully indicated a reddened cheek that bore the clear imprint of Mother Aethelflaeda’s hand. Wiping her forehead with the pot cloth, she continued, ‘Mother beat you to it, and she made a point of insisting that the foreign soldiers were to have the same as us novices. Oh, except they can have some of that casked cheese…’

‘Not that stuff we found at the back of the storehouse?’

Maude’s grin widened. ‘The same.’

‘Maude, we can’t. Is there none better?’ Cecily and Maude had found the casket of cheese, crumbling and musty with mould, when clearing out the storehouse earlier in the week. It looked old enough to date back to the time of King Alfred.

Maude winced and touched the pot cloth to her slapped cheek. ‘Not worth it, Cecily. She’ll check. And think how many Ave Marias and fast days she’d impose upon you then…’

‘No, she won’t. I’m leaving.’

And while Maude and Alice turned from their work to goggle at her, Cecily quickly told them about her sister Emma and her sad news; about Emma’s proposed marriage to Sir Adam and her subsequent flight; about the reason for Sir Adam’s arrival at St Anne’s; and finally—she blushed over the telling of this—about her indecorous proposition to a Breton knight she’d only set eyes on moments earlier.

‘So you see, Maude,’ she finished on a rush, ‘we must say our goodbyes this night, for I’ll be leaving with these knights in the morning—before Prime. I’m returning to Fulford.’

While Maude still gaped at her, Cecily turned for the door. ‘Mind that pottage, Maude. You’ve not stirred it in an age.’

Cecily snatched a few moments in the chilly gloom of the chapel to try and calm herself and come to terms with her new circumstances. It was not easy. She was about to leave a quiet, ordered, feminine world of prayer and contemplation and re-enter the world that she had left behind—her father’s world. She shivered. Her father’s world was a warrior’s world, a noisy, messy, intemperate world, where real battles were fought and blood was spilled.

And that, she reminded herself, as she stared at the altar cross shining in the light of a single candle, was why she was returning. Someone had to look out for her baby brother and her father’s people. It had been a wrench to leave the world outside the convent walls and, though she had no great love for life at St Anne’s, she did not expect her transition back into it would be easy.

In the way of warriors, one warrior in particular—one from across the sea—kept pushing his way to the forefront of her mind. Wincing, she recalled her proposition to him—worse, she recalled that he had ignored it. Something about Sir Adam disordered her thoughts. But she was going to have to overcome her fear of that if she was to be of use to Philip and the people of Fulford.

Cecily’s thoughts remained tangled, and all too soon she was interrupted by Maude, come to tell her that it was time they served the convent’s unlooked-for guests with their evening meal.

The soldiers—about a dozen—sat round a hastily erected trestle in the guest house. The instant Cecily walked through the door she registered that SirAdam was sitting next to Sir Richard, on a bench at the other end of the table. Deliberately, she kept her gaze elsewhere.

Tallow candles had been hunted out of storage and stuck in the wall sconces. They guttered constantly, and cast strange shadows on the men’s faces—elongating a nose here, the depth of an eye socket there. A sullen fire hissed in the central hearth, and clouds of smoke gusted up to the vent in the roof, but several weeks of rain had seeped into both thatch and daub. It would take more than one night’s fire to chase away the damp.

The men were talking easily to one another and laughing, seemingly perfectly at ease having found some shelter in their new country. Their voices, masculine voices, sounded strangely in Cecily’s ears after years of being attuned only to women. Her hands were not quite steady. A fish out of water, she did not know what to expect. It was most unsettling. Shooting them subtle sideways glances, she tried not to stare at the shaved cheeks and short hair which made boys of them all. But some of them were young in truth—and surely too young to shave? She wondered how much of their manner was simply bravado.

Moving about the table as unobtrusively as possible, Cecily set out tankards of the ale that was usually served with meals. It was too chancy to drink water straight from the well. She continued to avoid Sir Adam’s gaze.

More than anyone else at the convent, she had no good reason to welcome him and his troop, but Mother Aethelflaeda’s parsimony was shaming. Did he set his poor welcome at her door? She hoped not, because she dared not court his dislike—not when she was reliant on him to take her to Fulford.

The sisters had beeswax candles aplenty in the chapel—why couldn’t they have brought out some of those? Beeswax candles burned more evenly, and gave off a pleasant scent that was a world away from the rank stink of tallow. It wouldn’t have hurt to be more hospitable. Tallow candles were used mainly by the peasantry; they were cheap, and they spat and sputtered and gave off cloying black smoke. The room was full of it. To make matters worse, the Prioress had had all the dry wood bundled into the sisters’ solar and had insisted they used green wood for the guest house fire. The result was inevitable: a spitting fire and yet more smoke.

Sir Richard coughed and waved his hand in front of his face. ‘It’s worse than the Devil’s pit in here,’ he said. He spoke no less than the truth.

Cecily shot a covert look across the trestle at Sir Adam. He was leaning on his elbow, quietly observing her. He murmured noncommittally to his friend, his eyes never leaving her.

Flushing, she ducked her head and hurried over to the cauldron of pottage. She concentrated on ladling out the broth into shallow wooden bowls and tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore him. To think that she had proposed marriage to him…What must he think of her?

‘Where’s Tihell?’ Sir Richard murmured.

Intent on her ladling, Cecily missed Sir Adam’s swift headshake. ‘Oh, just a small errand.’

Sir Richard lowered his voice further, and Cecily thought she heard her sister’s name. She strained to hear more, but Sir Adam’s response was inaudible, and out of the corner of her eye Cecily thought he briefly touched his forefinger to his lips.

Maude slapped the mouldering cheese and several loaves of that morning’s baking on the trestle.

Sir Richard took a sip of his ale and grimaced. ‘Saxon swill,’ he muttered. ‘Never wine. Even mead would be better than this.’

Aside from Sir Richard’s comments about the lack of wine, Cecily heard no other complaints. But when she put a steaming bowl of broth before Adam Wymark she distinctly heard his stomach growl. Acutely aware of the lack of meat in the pottage, and the fact that they had been ordered to offer novice’s portions, which would not fill her stomach, let alone that of a tall, active man like Sir Adam, Cecily finally met his gaze.

‘Mother Aethelflaeda’s generosity knows no bounds,’ he said dryly, breaking off a hunk of bread and dipping it into his bowl.

‘Mother Aethelflaeda bade me tell you that our order has been impoverished by the warring,’ Cecily said. ‘She conveys her apologies for the simplicity of our food.’

‘I’ll lay odds she also said that since we are God-fearing men we will not mind Lenten fare instead of a meal.’

Sir Adam’s assessment was so close to the truth that Cecily was hard put not to smile. Demurely, she nodded. ‘Aye, sir. Mother Aethelflaeda also said that in the case of you and your men such fare would be especially apt, as every man who fought at Hastings should do a hundred and twenty days’ penance for each man that he has killed.’

He stared at her, chewing slowly; Sir Richard choked on his ale; a man-at-arms guffawed.

A dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Did you know that His Holiness the Pope did bless our cause over that of your Earl Harold the oath-breaker?’ Sir Adam asked.

‘I did not.’

‘No, I thought your Prioress would keep that interesting titbit to herself.’ He reached for the cheese platter, and eyed the cheese for a moment before sliding it away, untouched. ‘Tell me, Lady Cecily, do all the nuns eat this…this…fare?’

‘We novices do, sir—save for the cheese.’

‘You call this cheese?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Unexpectedly, a grin transformed his face. ‘You save that for special guests, eh?’

Cecily hid a smile. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do all in your order eat like this?’

Thinking of Mother Aethelflaeda’s chickens, roasting on the spit, Cecily was careful to avoid Maude’s eye, but her burning cheeks betrayed her.

‘Aye,’ he murmured. ‘A proud Saxon lady that one. One who would deny us what she may. I could swear I smelt chicken earlier.’

Cecily shot him a sharp look, but he met her gaze blandly.

Mumbling a reply, Cecily beat a hasty retreat and returned with relief to ladling out the pottage.

By insisting that Maude hand out the remaining platters she managed to avoid talking to Sir Adam for the rest of the meal. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him converse with Sir Richard. Not long after that, as soon as she decently could, Cecily murmured her excuses and left the new Lord of Fulford to bed down for the night. She had a few hours left in which to accustom herself to the idea of placing herself at the mercy of the man who had come to take her father’s lands. She prayed that it would be long enough.

What had she done?

Chapter Five

Next morning, Adam woke when the day was but a faint streak of light in the east. The guest house floor was unforgiving, and the cold had seeped through to his bones. Grimacing, he stretched, noted that his squire Maurice Espinay was up before him, and that the tantalising smell of fresh baked bread was floating in from the cookhouse.

His stomach grumbled. Hunger had been his constant companion since Hastings—the more so because he did not permit his men to ravage the countryside. Most Norman commanders saw it as their right, but Adam could not see the sense in looting and pillaging a village if one ever planned to rule it. Hopefully, when he and his men were settled, they could leave hunger behind.

AsAdam unwound himself from his cloak, he saw in his mind’s eye the lively dark eyes and the smiling mouth of Gwenn, his dead wife and his love. He thought about her most on waking. In the early days of his grief he had tried to discipline himself not to think of her, but as a strategy that had proved useless. Grief was a sneaky opponent. On the rare mornings he had succeeded in pushing Gwenn’s memory away, the grief had simply bided its time and crept up on him later, when he had not been braced for it. So, sighing, Adam had given himself permission to think about Gwenn first thing, since that was when he woke expecting to find her at his side.

Some mornings were more bearable than others. Even though it was two years since Gwenn had been laid to rest in the graveyard at Quimperlé, there were times when the grief was as fresh as though she had died but the day before; times when it was impossible to believe that never again would he look into those smiling, loving eyes. Ah, Gwenn, he thought, relieved that this looked as though it was going to be one of the more bearable mornings. Today he was going to be able to think of her sadly, to be sure, but without the lance of pain that had so crippled him in the weeks immediately following her death.

Briskly, Adam rubbed his arms to get his circulation going. His stomach growled a second time and his lips curved into a twisted smile. Gwenn was spared further suffering—she was safe beyond cold, beyond hunger—but he most definitely was not. Wryly he wondered what crumbs Mother Aethelflaeda would throw them for breakfast.

Shivering, he washed in the icy brackish water Maurice carried into the guest house in an ewer. Then, after eating a meagre nuns’ breakfast of bread and honey, washed down with small ale of a bitter brewing, he left the lodge with Richard to arm himself for the ride to Winchester and thence to Fulford. His stomach still rumbled. The poppyseed bread had been mouthwateringly good—fragrant and warm from the oven, not the crumbs he had feared being given—but there had not been enough of it. Not nearly enough.

Daylight was strengthening by the minute, and a light frost rimmed the horse trough white. As the two knights walked towards the stable their breath huffed out like mist in front of them. Glancing skywards, Adam noted some low-lying cloud, but thankfully the rain was holding off. Rain played havoc with chainmail, and his was in sore need of an oiling. It was not Maurice’s fault. Emma Fulford’s precipitous flight had left them with no time to pause for such niceties.

Where was Cecily Fulford? he wondered. She should have put in an appearance by now. Prime could not be far off. He conjured up her image in his mind and her blue eyes swam before him, her lips pink and kissable as no novice’s had any right to be—except that she was always worrying at them with those small white teeth. Worrying, worrying. Where had she slept? In a cell on her own? Or in a dormitory full of other novices? Had she been as cold as he? Had she broken her fast with fresh poppyseed bread?

‘We can’t afford to take any risks going through Winchester,’ Adam said, once Maurice had him armed. Their helms dangled from wooden pegs and their long shields were stacked with several others against a partition. ‘I don’t want a seax in my ribs.’

With his mail coif heavy about his neck, he leaned against a stall and watched Richard’s squire, Geoffrey of Leon, do the honours with his friend’s chainmail.

Straw rustled underfoot. ‘Nor I,’ Richard mumbled, emerging red-faced through the neck of the chainmail.

Maurice led the destriers out. Their hoofbeats initially rang loud on the stone flags in the stable, but when they reached the beaten earth in the yard the hoofbeats changed, became muted.

‘Maurice?’ Adam leaned through the stable door. ‘Commandeer a pillion saddle from the Prioress.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And don’t take no for an answer.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Put the saddle on Flame, when you find it. Oh, and Maurice—?’

‘Sir?’

‘Charge Le Blanc with guarding our rear on the road, will you? You can keep watch ahead. If anyone attacks, it’s possible they’ll do it in Winchester.’

He ducked back into the stable. Lady Cecily Fulford. He was glad she was to accompany them. Her presence would be invaluable—and not just for her help with the language. Where was the girl? Impatient with himself for letting musings on Cecily Fulford’s whereabouts distract him from the business at hand, Adam rolled his shoulders so his chainmail sat more comfortably. He trusted that she had not changed her mind about going with them…he wanted her to go with them, he realised. Purely as an interpreter—nothing more, naturally. She would be most useful.