Forbidden Forest Read online

  As the wheelers maneuvered the dully gleaming, iron-shod wheel into position again, the great circle cutting a shallow rut in the ground, the criminal made no complaint. He spoke the common tongue now, begging Heaven’s mercy in a tone not of an anguished, injured man, but of a believer in full faith that his suffering would be acknowledged by the angels, and help to cleanse his sin.

  Margaret could not watch as the wheel did its work on his forearms. She heard them well, two smaller, less sickening reports, broomsticks snapping. The wheel crushed the felon’s thighs and upper arms. The turning, sun-shaped disk that the sweating assistants steered into position was a symbol of the round, wheeling heavens above earth. The frame was adjusted under the criminal’s body, and then the wheel broke his back and ribs—and still no curse or even scream assaulted the hush of the crowd. Many knelt in prayer, thankful to see such holy penance, as the wheel continued its relentless route.

  “I have been too proud,” said Margaret.

  “My lady should be very proud, marrying a worthy knight tomorrow,” said Bridgit, brushing her charge’s hair.

  “No, I mean sinfully so.” The wheeling had filled her with shame. A wretched sinner had died piously and well, and here she was quailing at the thought of her marriage.

  Superbia. Father Joseph had said it crept into every Christian heart. “Some people are even proud of their piety,” he had laughed, shaking his head.

  The candlewick made a subtle fizzling whisper, the stub burning low. Bridgit had brought this house-made candle from the dining hall, shielding it against drafts with her hand. It was the only illumination in the room. William had met with some burgesses in the shop that afternoon who had gathered with the pretense of wishing a father well on the eve of a wedding. Bridgit did not have to be told that if her master did not purchase a shipment with the silver from the wedding contract he would soon not have a single candle stub to light.

  “I have not been obedient, in my heart,” said Margaret.

  The brush stopped for an instant.

  The dark-robed Nottingham had knelt when the wheel’s work was done and had slipped a knife through the crushed ribs, into the sinner’s heart. The crowd had murmured approvingly at this—many wheel-broken criminals were hung up to die over a period of days.

  “I should do as my father wishes,” Margaret continued. “And after I am married, what my husband desires will be my wish too.”

  “This is what we are taught,” said Bridgit, the hairbrush beginning its strokes again. “Although Heaven in its wisdom has never asked me to marry. The men of this kingdom are not upright or warm-livered enough for a woman like myself.”

  Margaret took Bridgit’s hand.

  “Oh, my dear, never worry for a moment,” said Bridgit, taking her lady in her arms.

  “I don’t know why I feel so,” said Margaret. “Shouldn’t I be happy?”

  “Why, you are happy, my lady,” said Bridgit, blotting Margaret’s tears.

  Chapter 19

  Margaret told herself she would never sleep the night before her wedding. Even as a little girl she had known that such a night would be one long vigil.

  She did sleep, although badly, waking moment by moment. But each time the dark was perfect outside. She could hear the watchman calling that long, high-voiced syllable that sounded to her like swell, swell, as if he were treading the streets imploring the moon to swell and grow round.

  “All is well, all is well,” he was saying, the words grown smooth over the hundreds of nights of duty. Where did her beloved Matthew’s bones lie? she wondered. For all the love she still held for him, his face was blurred now in her memory. She prayed that he might be at peace.

  She put her hands to her face, to her hair, wondering how, when she was a wife, this new state would change her nature. She had seen the wives of worthy men, their cool gaze dismissing beggars, no word spoken. Would she be like that, or would she still spare a farthing for the minstrel and a loaf for the blind man at the city gate?

  Bridgit swept through the earliest gray dawn, calling sweetly that it was time for the maidens of the kingdom to stir themselves. Margaret knelt, and after her usual morning prayers added a special prayer to Saint Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of brides. She had rehearsed this prayer for many months.

  In this strange body, arms and legs that belonged to her father but were soon to belong to a knight of wide renown, she moved the way a poppet might, a doll given unexpected but uncertain life.

  Bridgit gave her watered white wine and wheat bread for breakfast. Margaret dipped the bread in the wine. She could not eat more than a few bites.

  “Eat well, my lady,” said Bridgit. “This is no day for a weak woman, nor the night to come, either.”

  Bridgit had arranged for the gown maker and his seamster to be on hand, and the mantler too, as Margaret stood in her father’s workshop—the only room in the house large enough to admit such activity. Margaret now believed she knew how a knight must feel as his squire and shield bearer, draping him in chain mail, girdled and strapped him, cinching tight the raiment of battle.

  Bridgit gave her anise seeds to chew, “So your wedding breath is sweet.” But Margaret knew the woman was simply providing her with something to occupy her tongue and her mind as the apprentices and their masters did their work, deftly, cunningly, full of courtesy and well-wishing.

  “Too slow, by my faith, every one of you,” said Bridgit.

  “I cannot walk or breathe,” said Margaret. It was not a complaint—to be so straitened by her layers of clothing was proof of the new station in life she was about to achieve. No new eminence, Margaret had been taught, could be attained without the price of measured suffering.

  “A lady can walk encased in stone,” said Bridgit.

  Margaret directed the mantler to leave them, and she stood arrayed like one of the Holy Virgins of Heaven, she imagined, and felt exactly that far removed from her usual life. Her father’s workshop smelled even now of crushed cinnamon bark, powdered mace, and other spices used to flavor wine.

  “I knew you would be so,” said Bridgit, weeping. “I knew you would be as a queen is, and I am thankful to Heaven I lived to see this day.”

  The wedding mantle was purest white wool, combed soft, the finest any draper could provide. Margaret wore it through the streets on her way to Saint Alban’s, the train carried by women Bridgit had chosen herself, women of “chastity and deep worship.”

  The street was not paved, and the damp earth, though so crisscrossed with ruts and hooves and footprints that it was flat in most places, was strewn with rushes and white flowers, pale irises, and white rose petals. It was proper that Margaret should keep her eyes downcast, and she did, although sometimes she lifted her chin and took in the brown rooflines and the dark shutters flung wide so that each window could be crowded with faces.

  Only before the church itself was there any pavement. The cobbled street there sounded so hard underfoot that footsteps rasped, especially the steps of men, her old neighbors with their ready smiles like strangers.

  Chapter 20

  Weddings were always at the church door, and while occasionally the ceremony was followed by Holy Mass within the sanctuary, in planning the wedding Sir Gilbert had expressed no desire for “any further prayers on the day of my joy.”

  Today, as Margaret ascended the steps, the familiar church door gleamed, its brass hinges bright in the sunlight. Each step was too high—her knees lacked the vigor to bring her all the way before Father Joseph.

  A few heartbeats, a few deep breaths, and the ceremony was underway.

  “Till death us depart,” vowed Sir Gilbert. He was tall, and with his eyes fixed on Father Joseph he looked both gentle and lit from within by some deep inner emotion. “If Holy Church it will ordain,” his vow continued. “And thereto I plight my troth.”

  Father Joseph smiled, and Margaret’s words came from her lips like those of a foreign tongue, unfamiliar but solemn. “For richer or for poor
er,” she vowed, “in bed and at table.”

  As they exchanged rings they both gave voice to the further promise, “With my body I thee honor.”

  At the wedding feast Sir Gilbert was like a man she had never seen before. Margaret had never seen the knight in such blissful cheer or heard him with such a good-natured, beam-ringing laugh. All during the wedding feast she reminded herself that this happy man was her new, Heaven-blessed husband.

  Sir Gilbert wore a gown of velvet trimmed with miniver, the fur of a rarely sighted squirrel from the far north that had to be caught, legend held, by white hounds. He kissed every guest, as was proper, and gave each man a squeeze of the arm or a pat on the shoulder. The wedding gifts were plentiful, supervised by Sir Gilbert’s servants, who arranged them on a table. An ornamental bridle from the saddler, candleholders, a portrait of Our Lady framed in agate and bloodstone. Otto, moneyer to the king, had given a tall silver ewer that gleamed chief among all the gifts.

  Margaret’s dowry had been slim, but the treasures she brought with her on marrying were not what tempted this knight, as Bridgit had explained. “Your beauty has run him through,” Bridgit had said.

  As was proper, her new husband kissed her once again, took her hand, and uttered words of his great love for her with all the guests gazing on. Margaret knew other women had heard such words murmured, but she had never understood what it was like to have the breath on her own ear, the love all hers.

  Her gown was decorated with a ring brooch, set with red rubies and ice-blue sapphires, that had belonged to her mother, and her sleeves, with long and sweeping points, reached nearly to the floor. The outer garment she wore, gown and surcoat, was the finest draper’s art, silk that rustled when she so much as took a deep breath. Her husband was lifting a cup as she watched, and draining it and looking around, searching for her, finding her with his eyes.

  Players made music on reed pipes, a red-faced man playing a recorder and a man with one blind eye fingering a stringed rebec. The melody was punctuated by a drum that had been hung with bells so that it chimed with every beat. Small kettledrums called nakers, hung from a player’s wrists, and a small leather-skinned tabor all encouraged dancing. Some of the musicians were attendants at one of the great houses of Nottingham, hired for the wedding feast, and others were wandering folk. “We cannot have too fine a noise,” her father had said.

  Roebuck venison was served, and fallow deer purchased specially from the royal foresters, and veal, and infant pig and acorn-fed sow and boar spitted and gilded over the fire. Both green wine and red were plentiful, and golden ale brewed by the 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.

  “It 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.

  “My lady will be pleased to let the water be so warm,” she said in her most Parisian-sounding voice.

  “Spoken like the cook to the stewing hen,” said Margaret in the same accent.

  Bridgit smiled, but she did not laugh.

  “I 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 half-shouted, half-sung ballad.

  Much whooping and laughter meant that the guests were probably playing a drinking game, perhaps the one that had the would-be champion lying on his back while his friends poured wine into a funnel in his mouth. The sound of cheers from below announced a winner. She recognized the rough voices of Hal and Lionel, joined together in a song about a priest who had to ride a goose across a swollen river. Margaret knew the ballad—it had about twenty verses.

  When she woke she was surprised that she had slept at all, and ashamed. The new bride should await the husband—it was something she recalled from one of Father Joseph’s homilies, comparing Holy Church to a bride awaiting the bridegroom, steadfast, true.

  When she woke again the house was silent. Not perfectly—the rise and fall of quiet snoring echoed faintly throughout the dwelling.

  The house remained still until a dull blue seeped through the crack in the window shutters and a bright-voiced bird began to sing.

  For a long while Margaret did not give way to any feeling but one of wifely patience. She had heard of wedding parties that went on for days. The bridegroom would be swept along in celebrations that ran to other villages, with cockfights and marathon bouts of wine swilling, while the bride, serene in her chamber, would await her husband at the threshold.

  But when the singing bird was joined by another, a woodcock announcing the new day, she did allow herself to feel a dash of curiosity. It was only curiosity, she told herself, nothing more. Certainly she was not impatient—not a bit. Servants would arise soon and begin to mop up the por
k bones and venison shanks and spilled wine.

  She rose and tiptoed across the chamber. When her toes touched wet on the floor, she gave a sigh of exasperation. A bath was all very well, she wanted to explain to Bridgit, but the spilled bathwater left broad, cold puddles.

  One very large puddle stretched from where she stood to the crack under the door.

  She knelt and put out one hesitant hand. What she touched was not water. And it was not spilled wine, or urine from a tumbled chamber pot.

  It was blood.

  Chapter 22

  Sir Gilbert was lying on his belly with his arms at his side, his head turned, his eyes open.

  He did not breathe. When she spoke into his ear—“Husband!”—he made no movement.

  A jet-handled knife was buried to the hilt in his back, just below his fine miniver collar. Margaret knelt and told Sir Gilbert that he did not need to fear, that she was here and all injury done to him would be made well.

  But even as she said this, she began to pray in her heart for the soul of her departed husband. She wrapped her fingers around the hilt. This was a rare, rich weapon, and one so delightful to the eye that she half believed the wound it made could not be mortal, even as she withdrew it, with effort, and saw the unbleeding, precise hole.

  She hurried down the hall.

  The house was a choir of snores—deep, sonorous breathing, rasping inhalation. Each door was shut tight, and each portal was identical to all the others. Trapped and friendless, Margaret nearly fainted, her breath shivering in and out of her body, her hands trembling.

  And then she forbade herself to give in to such feelings. She prayed to be strong and full of faith. She hesitated before each door once again, until she came to a door at the end of the hall.

  “What have you done?” asked Bridgit. “Margaret, Heaven help us!” She put her hands on Margaret’s shoulders, looking into the bride’s eyes.