Almost Innocent by Jane Feather

Fortunately, only she was aware of that discomfiture and the reasons for it. What had passed between herself and the Lord de Gervais would draw no remark from other eyes. But she was deeplymortified. Yet she knew she had no right to be. She was the truly bedded, wedded wife of the Sieur Edmund de Bresse . . .
    T HEY HAD ARRIVED at Bellair Castle the previous January, a messenger sent on ahead to warn of their coming. Magdalen had stood on the battlements, huddled into her fur-lined, hooded mantle, watching for them. The long and wearisome years of seclusion stretched behind her, years when the existence of the Duke of Lancaster’s daughter, wife of Edmund de Bresse, seemed to have been forgotten by all. When Edmund and de Gervais had prevailed in Picardy and Edmund was in possession of his castle, the duke had sent a formal note of congratulation to his daughter, informing her of her husband’s safety and prowess in the field. The message had not mentioned Guy de Gervais, and she had received no word of him in all those years until the day before, when the heralding messenger had told her that Lord de Gervais accompanied her husband on this journey to the border lands, when Edmund de Bresse in victory was come to claim his wife.
    Standing on the battlements, she had stared out across the plain until spots began to dance in front of her eyes. The sentinels in the watchtowers would see them coming before she did, and the subsequent bell ringing would reach her wherever she might be in the castle. But she still stood, exposed to the bitter snow-tipped wind, straining her eyes into the distance.
    The bell clanging its alert from the eastern tower came the instant before she herself could make out the slight shifting on the horizon. In the courtyard below, the call to ride out was heard, and the sounds drifted upward of men running, booted feet ringing, iron-shod hooves clattering, harness jingling. She turned to lean over the parapet, looking down on the scene. Lord Bellair was about to mount his palfrey. He was dressed with his usual lack of adornment, a heavy plain woolsurcote over his tunic, but he rode forth to greet his guests with an escort that could only do them honor.
    Magdalen left the battlements and on impulse crossed the inner court and went through the arch to the outer ward. Mad Jennet’s hovel was still standing against the far wall, its outer structure sadly in need of patching, the reed-thatched roof showing gaps. But smoke curled from the central chimney hole, and the flicker of a tallow candle showed in the unshuttered window.
    She had no time to pay this visit, yet some powerful need that she could not put into words was driving her. She pushed aside the skin at the doorway and stepped within. These days, when she visited the old woman, it was always to bring her something from the stillroom to ease her aching limbs, or a basket from the kitchen to fill her empty belly. Occasionally since her return to Bellair, she had prevailed upon the castle servants to clean out the filthy rushes and lay fresh, but the stench still caused her to put a hand across her mouth and nose.
    “Jennet?” She could make out nothing for a moment in the dimness, then saw the huddle on the straw pallet in the corner. “Are you ailing, Jennet?”
    A knotted, twisted hand emerged from the filthy scrap of blanket. “Fetch the friar to me, child. I’m minded to lay down this mortal coil.” The old voice creaked like unoiled leather. “I’d be shriven before I die.”
    Magdalen peered at the wizened face. She had no idea how old mad Jennet could be. The woman herself probably didn’t know. But she’d been occupying this corner of the outer ward for as long as Magdalen could remember, and she’d never looked any younger.
    “My husband comes within the hour,” she heard herself say. “And another with him. Will you read the water for me, Jennet, one last time?”
    “Give me your hand.” The command was surprisinglycrisp,