The Handfasting (37 page)

“It
is true then. You have been much hardened by your ordeal.”

For
a mere moment, Roland’s eyes widened in disbelief. It was a flash of reaction
before he shuttered his expression and leaned against the stone wall behind
him.

“I
am no harder than the experiences your God has thrown to me.”

“My
God?” The friar questioned, but didn’t expound. Instead, he looked toward the
other intruders, noticed their backs. Even in the meager light Roland could see
the man flush.

“Perhaps,”
Kenneth suggested, as he now dabbed at beads of sweat upon his forehead leaving
little smears of blood from the cloth that had staunched the bleeding of his
throat, “if you would dress, we could discuss our reasons for descending upon
you in this manner.”

Roland
looked down at his naked state and frowned. Were the clergy so modest? Those he
met on crusade had not been, but it mattered not to him. He reached for a robe,
shrugged into it as he looked toward the others, then back at Father Kenneth.

There
was something in the friar’s discomfort, the decided embarrassment, that sent
Roland’s mind scrambling back to moments before; collective gasps, turning of
backs, the struggle with the door beam, the small stature of his captives.

As
awareness dawned his mind slung it back as absurd, until he could no longer
deny the evidence.

“You’ve
come to my room with an army of women?” He asked in disbelief.

Father
Kenneth reached for the heavy cross that hung from his neck. “Aye, the sisters
of Our Lady’s Convent.”

“You
bring nuns to my room?” Still Roland could make no sense of the matter as his
gaze raked over the scene before him, “and in secret? Using a passage that my
family knows nothing of? As though women such as this could not be met within
the hall, and with respect?”

With
an explosive shudder, the wooden door to Roland’s room was rammed from without.
Barred from the room, Ulric tried to break through. “Hold free!” Roland barked.
“Hold free Ulric, I am in no danger!"

The
hall would have filled with the first of his warriors cry. The whole of the
castle would be on the other side of that portal.

"They
have locked you in, m'lord." His page argued.

"Aye,"
Roland rolled his eyes, "it took three of them against one of you, and you
are no more than a tyke. I am safe, so desist. It is naught but the friar and
nuns.”

Silence
hung ominously in the air. Roland glared at Kenneth. The friar hesitated
patting softly at his cross, before he offered, “we’ve come to speak of your
lady wife.”

Like
a storm, the stillness shattered into roiling shards of life, arrows of ice
propelled by Roland’s voice. “Lady wife?” He tilted his head in question, “I
have no lady wife. No,” he leaned back against the poster of the bed. “The only
woman in my life is a murdering whore who hides behind a worthless marriage
document. Though she is no virgin, our bodies never ‘joined.’  The union was
not secured.”

“Roland!”
Kenneth warned but the knight refused to listen.

“What
is it you have to say about this woman? Has she stolen from the convent? Has
she murdered any children? Turned to sorcery?” Fueled fury carried him away
from the friar, three great strides before he spun back. “What could she have
to do with you?”

He
stopped, stood, sucked in deep draughts of air. He tried, unsuccessfully, to
calm himself.

“Speak!”
His bristled command burned with the sting of anger. But Father Kenneth said
nothing, as if waiting for the fury to burn itself out.

A
man of small stature, round at the center, Kenneth’s brown hair encircled his
bald crown much like a halo, in keeping with his benign countenance. With no
fear for his own safety, he reached up to rest a hand on Roland’s shoulder. A
touch to calm, to ease tensions, much as he had done when Roland was a boy.

Roland
flinched, but did not pull away.

“Come
by the fire, son, so we can talk of these stories you have heard.”

“Stories?"
Roland wrenched his shoulder from the friar’s touch, and stalked back to the
fireplace. "Was it a mere accident that my wife gave my father a goblet of
poison? Did she not run away with my sister’s husband? Was he not found? Tortured?
And all for a pack of stories?”

Arrogantly,
he lifted the chin of the woman who stood there, to see her face more clearly.
It was lined with years and experience. Though the tension was clear, it was
neither based in fear nor anger. Nor did she look ready to flee.

She
was not afraid for herself, but concerned by the hardness of Roland’s heart. He
knew it, sensed it, but cared not. Hardness had saved him from far more pain
than soft feeling ever had.

“Good
sister, have you come to tell me the wonder of a wife who brings such end to
men’s lives?”

“Roland,”
Father Kenneth interrupted, “This is the Mother Superior from Our Lady’s
Convent. Mother Rose.”

He
released her chin to offer a mocking bow, “My apologies, Mother Superior, for
my insolent behavior.”

The
stately woman nodded, acknowledged the apology, if not the sarcasm behind it.
Resignation over-rode her concern, for she eased as she gestured toward the
high-backed chairs and bench beside the fire. “Shall we be seated?”

Roland
nodded, appalled at his own lack of behavior. He knew better, knew that he
should not condemn without hearing them out. To give himself time to calm, he
threw wood on the fire, stoked the flames to burn hotter, brighter. He’d be
damned if he would light lamps. Better they not see into his eyes, to see what
he really thought. Better to know their minds first.

Mother
Rose settled on one of the chairs, Father Kenneth behind her, a hand on the back
of her seat as though, together, they had more strength than alone. Roland took
the bench, one leg crossed over the other, formal, patient. Not so the other
nuns, the rustle of habits, the barely voiced whispers proved their agitation.
Roland refused to reveal his own.

Kenneth
pulled him back to the reason for their visit. “Tell us what you have heard of
Veri?”

Roland
recoiled. He couldn't help it. He had yet to translate his Veri, the sweet
young child, to Lady Veri the murderess. Two entirely different beings. It was
a cruel blow to be reminded of the former, to be reminded of the change.

Still,
he had no desire to offer any insight; he didn’t want to help her case, even
indirectly. “Why don’t you tell me? What do you think I would have heard?”

The
sister glanced at the friar who patted his cross again, a sure sign of
agitation.

“I
will tell you,” Mother Rose offered, “as we have probably heard the same
tales.” She took a breath. “You have been told that your Lady Wife” at his
raised eyebrows she corrected herself, “Lady Veri, is a witch. That she was . .
. wanton. That she shape-shifted and flew from this room to escape retribution.”

“How
clearly word spreads.” He trusted his voice to disguise the disquiet he felt

“You
have also been told that she poisoned your father, gave him a full goblet of
wine with a spell on it, so that he was the only one to drink of it and die.”

“What
sort of spell could do that?”

Rose
ignored his sarcasm. “Do you believe all the lies?”

Roland
snorted, "Do you think me a superstitious fool? Surely it is as obvious to
you, as to me, that she had no need to shape-shift and fly from this room to
escape. Nor do I believe that she 'spelled' the wine. She had an uncanny knack
with herbs. If anyone knew how to measure a potion just so, it would be
her."

Friar
Kenneth leaned forward. "Roland, do you truly believe she was of a nature
to take a life? After she spent so much time saving it?"

The
question stuck, like a fishbone to the throat. Roland rose against it, though
he fought the desire to pace out the agitation. Instead he stood before the
fire, fixed by the dance of flame.

With
a yearning hunger, he wanted to believe the friar's insinuation that Veri was
still good and sweet and honest. He wanted to believe that the stories flung at
him, upon his arrival home, had no basis in truth.

He
hated the fact that he knew better.

The
crusades had driven deep the reality of mankind's cruelty against man. It
taught him to trust the world's ability to twist innocent souls toward evil.
He'd seen precious little evidence of goodness' reign. It just didn't happen.

That
Kenneth still believed in such fairytales was a measure of the man not the
society that reared him.

The
Veri Roland remembered would never have taken a life. On the contrary, she had
found him alone and dieing in a meadow, the victim of an ambush, and saved his
life by tending to his wounds.

Before
Roland left for crusades his father had been reduced to a wasted shadow of his
former self. Veri healed him with her uncanny ability with herbs. Child or not,
she saved them both. That was why Roland had given her the protection of his
name, a secured future at Oakland, in gratitude, and with his father's
blessing.

His
father who was no more.

Time
changed all things, all people.

"Roland?”
Kenneth prompted.

He
turned back, sadness tamped, if not distanced. "Who knows what manner of
woman she became. All females transform when they come of age, especially when
they are steeped in the affairs of a castle as great and powerful as Oakland.
Ambition has taken the least likely and made devils of them."

"She
was not like other women, Roland," Mother Rose tried, "she was not raised
. . . "

"Raised?"
This did lift his interest.

When
the child had found him in that bloody meadow, she had been alone, had nursed
him alone. It had always been a sticky point to him. Orphaned, absolutely, but
why would a child of no more than eight, possibly ten, years be abandoned? And
where would she have acquired such skills? She claimed her father was a coal
maker, her mother knowledgeable with herbs but still . . ."

"We
knew of her at the convent. Actually, I knew of her before you found her."

"And
you left her abandoned in the wilderness?"

The
mother superior concentrated on the lint of her habit. She stroked, plucked,
but did not look up, as she formed her reply.

Rather
than give confidence to Veri's plight, this new information made her even more
suspect. She was something other than an abandoned child of the wilderness. She
had allies. She had adults who would guide her.

The
church was always hungry for land. His step-mother and her sainted Father
Ignacious where testament to that.

"She
was not so much alone, as you might think.” Rose finally met his eye,
challenged him with the directness of her stare.

"And
a convent, such as Our Lady's, is well versed in healing and herbs.” Roland
nodded, as a picture grew within his mind. That it was not equal to the picture
the Mother Superior would wish him to see, mattered not to him.

"Yes,"
she nodded, smiled,   "we are known for our healing. As a child, Lady Veri
spent many hours among our gardens, though she did not live with us."

"There
must have been someone."

"There
was," distressed, Mother Rose looked to the alcove, studied the women
there. She seemed to reach some conclusion for she continued. "There was a
grandmother, an old woman, terribly feeble. Veri had only just lost her when
she found you."

"I
see," he lied. He did not see at all. Answers to questions that plagued
him for years, that Veri's simple answers had never quenched, were now being
answered. But why not before? Why had she never mentioned the old woman? Why
had Veri lied back then? When Ignacious had flung accusations of the devil at
her, why had she not said she was associated with Our Lady's?  

Obviously,
her falsehoods started well before he left Oakland. Hell, they started before
he had even brought her here.

The
sister's words had not paused with Roland's thoughts. He barely registered what
she was saying until he heard,   ". . . she had enemies."

His
head shot up.

"Enemies?
An odd thing to say of an innocent, hapless child. How would she gain
enemies?"

Rose
looked over her shoulder to Kenneth who stretched his neck as if to ease a
tight collar. When he cleared his throat, Roland realized he had never seen the
friar in such a state of discomfort. Never. Kenneth was the calmest of men,
with a soul known for soothing others. Roland frowned.

"She
gained enemies here, Roland. As you know, Father Ignacious never approved of
her, your step-mother, well . . ."

"Threw
her in the dungeon once, nearly had her hung."

"Precisely."
Kenneth nodded, smiled that he was making his point.

"That
was why I took her to wife, to ensure her place, her acceptance." Roland
argued.