Forbidden Forest by Michael Cadnum Page B

priory, fresh and not like the everyday brew, which was little better than fermented porridge.
    The Heavenly Host knew, as Margaret did then, that ordinary days, with cheese rinds and candle stubs, were all chaff, nothing, to be swept aside. Only such feasts mattered, and a daughter seeing her father—and a bride her new husband—with newborn eyes.
    From within herself Margaret cast a vision of joy out onto the people around her. And she did not forget to offer a prayer to Saint Anne, the patron saint of wives who wished to conceive.
    That night Margaret bathed.
    This was her first visit to the bedchamber that would be hers, and she was hushed by the light of the many beeswax candles, their honey perfume brightening the air. A basin was set on the wooden floor, and house servants poured ewers of steaming water into it, their steps crackling over the alder leaves on the floor. Thin bay leaves and rose petals were sprinkled into the vaporous water under Bridgit’s direction.
    Bridget was no longer in the girdle and headpiece she had worn during the wedding, and yet she gazed at the servants so imperiously that they lowered their gazes before her and kept silent.
    â€œIt will be too hot,” said Margaret when they were alone.
    Bridgit arranged the wedding finery carefully on a clothes rack as she helped Margaret step out of it, down to her softest linen garments, the ones next to her skin.
    â€œMy lady will be pleased to let the water be so warm,” she said in her most Parisian-sounding voice.
    â€œSpoken like the cook to the stewing hen,” said Margaret in the same accent.
    Bridgit smiled, but she did not laugh.
    â€œI won’t sit in that,” said Margaret.

Chapter 21
    Often the newlyweds of Nottingham were cheered by a rowdy congregation of friends, maiden wife and blushing husband both burrowing under sheets to the accompaniment of the ribald songs of their neighbors. But Sir Gilbert kept his guests downstairs and entertained them into the night, the songs and singers well out of Margaret’s sight.
    Newly washed, and not used to the feeling, Margaret pulled the fine Frankish blankets up to her chin. “I’m sleeping in a room just behind the door at the end of the hall,” said Bridgit, with a meaningful glance. She meant both that she was close, if Margaret needed comfort, and also that this house was so grand, it had an upstairs hall that led to so many rooms that one could get lost. The bedchamber itself had an outer room, where the master of the house could admire his appearance in a gilded metal mirror.
    Not many dwellings outside the sheriff’s castle had staircases, a fact that had been noted in explaining overwrought Phillipa’s tumble down the entire flight of broad wooden stairs, cracking her skull. Few men and women were accustomed to treading high stairs.
    Margaret was left alone, brilliant candlelight all around.
    At the foot of the bed was her walnut-wood marriage chest, full of the treasures she and her father had saved up for years, for the dreamed-of day when she was a wife. She knew the inventory by heart: a bolt of black say, a fine cloth; several ells of serge de Ghent , another fine fabric; a fine gold necklace with a pearl full unblemished that had belonged to her mother; and other treasures her father had scarcely been able to afford, including a nest of brass spicer’s weights.
    Her eyes brimmed with tears as she remembered William’s care in helping her assemble these treasures over the years. She loved her father, as she would learn to love her husband.
    I am a wife .
    At some point in the night the candles burned low. One of them, trapped in a draft through an unseen rent in the house’s timbering, guttered and went out. Margaret, feeling already the mistress of her room, if not the entire house, rose and snuffed nearly all the fine candles, leaving only two burning. Celebrants downstairs were dancing to a clapping of hands and a