Remembrance

at they want.”

“What does it matter?” she would say. “Talis means no harm when he puts a tiny frog in my shoe or empties out an eggshell and fills it with mud.”

“True,” Will said, “but sometimes people do mean harm, yet you believe everyone has a good heart.”

“I think there is more good in the world than bad,” she said indignantly, making Will throw up his hands in despair. Truthfully, she had no idea what he was talking about. It was just more pleasant to be good, wasn’t it?

Now, she tried to remember what Will had told her. Today she needed to be clever. She wasn’t as naive as Will seemed to think; she had seen those many years ago that there was evil lurking about in that castle that now was blackened stone. At the time of the children’s birth, she had still been grieving because her own babies had died. When God had given her two more babies to care for, she hadn’t looked much past the two of them. But she had been vaguely aware of the anger and turmoil of the people around her.

Because of these things she was going to see Lady Alida alone. She would talk to her of her pretty little daughter (to Meg, Callie was as beautiful as a princess in one of Callie’s stories) and hardly mention Talis, since that was bound to be a painful memory to her ladyship. Then, after their talk, Meg planned to take the money for the teacher and leave—forever. She would swear never to bother her ladyship again. Actually, she wouldn’t be bothering her now if this teacher weren’t so important.

Meg thought this bargain would be perfect, since it was what both women wanted. Lady Alida would get to hear that her daughter was well cared for and happy, and Meg would get the money for a teacher. Afterward, the two women would probably never see each other again and that would suit them both—and her ladyship would be reassured that her husband would never hear about his adopted son, if that was her wish.

Meg had thought of going to Lord John first, but that idea had not appealed to her. By now John Hadley had obviously forgotten the black-haired boy—or perhaps he thought he was dead—so Meg did not want to remind him that Talis was alive and living with her and Will. John might want to take Talis away. But Meg did not plan to tell Lady Alida that she didn’t want Lord John to know where Talis was. In fact, if her ladyship gave her any problems, Meg planned to…well, perhaps threaten was too harsh a word. Maybe she might just mention the possibility of telling his lordship about the children if the money was not forthcoming immediately.

Yes, Meg thought, and was very pleased with herself. Will would be very proud of her. For once she was being very clever indeed.

21

The maid was whispering so frantically to Alida that at first her ladyship did not hear what the woman was saying. Sometimes Penella took too much upon herself; sometimes the woman reminded Alida of the horrible time before the fire, that time Alida now wanted to forget had ever happened.

Looking at Alida now no one would guess she was the same woman she had been nine years ago. Then she had been beautiful. She had worked at her beauty, trying her best to entice her husband to her bed, always trying to win his love, which she was sure he’d give her as soon as she gave him a healthy son.

But after the night of the fire—Alida refused to think of anything else of that night, refused to remember that she had been the one to start the fire that had killed several people, including her own newborn daughter—she had changed. When she saw that her husband was willing to give her if not love then companionship, she began to will herself to not remind him of the time when he had desired her body. Almost overnight she had aged twenty years: her hair had grayed, her waist thickened, her skin dulled. When they were together now, she and her husband were friends, old friends who worked together and enjoyed each other’s company. Now when her husband looked at another woman, Alida smiled fondly and thought how pleasant it was to no longer have such passions raging through her old bones.

The greatest pleasure she had in her life was her children. She saw to their education, to their religious training, to all aspects of their lives. Somehow, she had been able to persuade John that his sons were indeed worth something. James, the elder one, had a club foot, true, but he could ride a horse, so she pointed this out to her husband. And for all that Philip, the younger son, had very weak lungs and tired easily, he was willing to try anything his father asked of him.

Of course John never knew that it was his wife’s willpower that made his sons do whatever they did. James could not sit a horse easily, not so much because of any physical deformity but because his inclination was toward his studies rather than learning to handle a sword nearly as large as he was. Had his father been different, had James not been the eldest, the boy would have been sent into the church or to law where he could spend his life with his nose in a book.

As for Philip, at night, in secret, Alida often went to him and talked to him about how important it was that he spend all day in a saddle chasing some wild-eyed boar through the forest. When the boy’s weak body was ravaged with pain and exhaustion, she administered herbs and, if need be, threats and punishments, to get him to face his father without tears and pleas to be excused. Philip had to choose which parent’s wrath to provoke, and of the two, he knew his father to be the more lenient.

As for Alida, try and deny it as much as she could, she was haunted by that time when her husband had come so close to giving away everything he owned, as well as what she owned, to a boy who was of no blood relation to him.

Now, with Penella buzzing in her ear like a mosquito, Alida was, for an instant, transported back to a time she had worked hard to forget. She remembered all too well that night when the insanity had overtaken her. She had not been herself that night; what she had done had not been her doing. The devil had overtaken her soul that night; he had possessed her—and her husband. The devil had maddened all of them on that night.

After much annoying buzzing, Alida realized that the woman who had been the wet nurse on that night-in-hell was here. Now. Was waiting to see her.

“Who has she seen?” Alida asked sharply, all her senses alert, when she and her maid were alone.

“No one,” Penella answered, proud of herself, hoping that this deed would put her back in her lady’s favor. A short time after the night of the fire, Lady Alida’s attitude toward her maid had changed, but Penella did not know why. Whereas once they had been almost friends, abruptly Alida’s attitude had become one of coolness and distance. Whereas once Penella and Penella alone had been privy to her ladyship’s thoughts, suddenly Alida confided in no one, and there were times when Penella caught her mistress looking at her with what was almost hatred.

Since the coolness began, Penella had done everything she could imagine to ingratiate herself to her mistress, had worked long hours for her, done anything she wanted, thought of whatever she could want before she named it. She had made herself as valuable, as indispensable as possible to her mistress. Lady Alida had taken all her work but no longer were there any confidences, no longer time when they talked about children or the future. After a lifetime of the borders between mistress and maid being blurred, now the boundaries were very clear-cut.

Had Penella been less adoring and more astute, she might have figured out what had caused her ladyship’s withdrawal. A few months after the fire, an old man who lived alone in a derelict hut in the woods, eking his living out of a bit of ground and tending to injured falcons brought to him by John’s men, saw her ladyship limping along the path after her horse had thrown her. Trying only to make conversation and distract the lady from her pain, he mentioned that it was a blessing that young Meg (everyone was young to him) had escaped the fire with those two babies. Upon questioning, he told Alida that Meg and Will had come running through the woods. Since they were some distance from his hut he wouldn’t have seen them if he hadn’t been, er, unable to sleep. At the look of rage on her ladyship’s face the old man was sure that she’d guessed that he had been poaching, as he did every night.

After her ladyship left, the old man

knew his days were numbered. He had been found out and he knew that if he didn’t leave of his own accord, a hangman’s noose would take him. When Alida’s man came stealing through the woods that night with murder in his mind, there was no sign of the old poacher.

The old man would never know what went through her ladyship’s mind when she was told he had disappeared. She couldn’t have cared less that he was poaching. What were a lot of rabbits to her? For months she had felt safe that the boy her husband wanted to put in the place of her children was dead. Now she had found out that he was not dead. Somewhere, he was still living. More than anything in the world she wanted to start a search for the boy, find him and kill him. She could never be safe until the boy was dead—by her own hand if need be.

But there was no way she could start a search without her husband finding out. And if there was a search, he was bound to discover the reason for it and know that the boy was still alive. Then, no doubt, he would start a search.

All Alida could do was sit still and hope that no one else had seen the wet nurse and her husband fleeing with the newborn children through the woods in the dead of night. After many long hours of thinking about this, Alida began to wonder how they had known there was any danger. The only answer could be that they had been warned. And only Penella could have warned them.

At that moment Alida began to hate her maid—and she knew best how to punish her. Penella’s great pride was that she was close to her ladyship, sometimes so close that she thought she was the lady. Many times Alida had caught her maid giving orders in a manner that she had no right to use. Previously, it had been amusing to Alida. Amusing until the night when her maid had overstepped herself—and in the process may have ruined Alida’s life.

Alida punished her maid by withdrawing her favor from her. She shared no more secrets with her; treated her as one of many instead of as special. Burning her at the stake would have been kinder to Penella than such treatment, and Alida well knew this. It was the perfect revenge.