Clarise did not believe that heat encouraged the body to expel a baby any faster. All it caused was premature exhaustion. She stepped into the cell with the intention of extinguishing the brazier’s flames. The sight of blood between Doris’s legs drew her up short. Her gaze flew with alarm to the midwife’s stoic expression.

“Push with the next pain,” said the shriveled woman. She had yet to notice Clarise, for her shoulder was positioned toward the door. More than that, a blinding film clouded the woman’s right eye.

Doris gave a tortured gasp. The cook’s big body tensed with pain. The midwife leaned forward, lifting the blanket. “ ’Twill soon be over,” she predicted, scooting to the edge of her stool.

Clarise could not have moved if the castle fell into ruins around her. The stain on the pallet spread, until it went clear to Doris’s ankles. The sight was ghastly, yet the midwife’s grip remained steady as she held up the blanket.

Again, Doris was racked with pain.

“Push,” urged the midwife. “Push!”

A baby eased out of the passage in a breech position. It had obviously come before its time. Scrawny in size and coated in a cheesy substance, it lay still and silent on the soiled pallet. There was not a sound in the room, other than that of Doris’s heavy breathing.

Then the midwife bent low and dragged a metal object from the beaten bowl at her ankles. It was an iron cross.

Clarise took a look at the lifeless baby and the dull cross and fled the room. She succumbed to her sudden need to pull Simon from his sling and hold him close.

An hour later she summoned the courage to visit Doris again. The servants had moved into her cramped chamber, telling Clarise that the cook could stand to have at least one more visitor. The women shuffled aside as she entered, giving her room to kneel at Doris’s side. “We suffer with you, Doris,” she said, not knowing what else she could possibly say to ease the woman’s pain.

Doris closed her eyes. Her doughty face was ashen from the loss of so much blood. “ ’Tis God’s will, my lady,” she said bitterly.

Clarise floundered in her helplessness. “What can I do for you?” she dared to ask. She was not the mistress of these people, and yet she felt protective toward them. They had no one to lend an ear to their complaints. No one but the stern Dame Maeve.

A fat tear squeezed between Doris’s stubby lashes. Behind Clarise, the servants scuffled near the box that held the dead infant. “Looks just like ’im,” someone whispered.

Like who? wondered Clarise. Did they know who the father was?

“If I could have a mass for my babe,” the cook finally murmured. “If I could have him buried close, in the castle graveyard, where my mother and brothers lie, ’twould ease my spirit.”

It took Clarise a second to understand the significance of Doris’s request. Priests would not venture near to Helmesly with the interdict in place. Who would perform the burial?

Her spine stiffened with resolve. The chapel must be restored to use. The servants hungered for Godliness. They seemed to blame their seneschal for their inability to worship. It would be a favor to Lord Christian to open his chapel doors. Finding a priest, however, lay beyond her powers. Perhaps she could convince the Abbot of Revesby to ignore the interdict and perform the necessary sacrament.

“I will do what I can,” she heard herself say. And in the same instant, she thought of several improvements she might make at Helmesly before the seneschal returned. Would it help her cause at all to make his castle more welcoming? It might dissuade him from violence, she reasoned, to find his home transformed when he did come back.

She could place a tapestry or two upon the walls, make torches to brighten the great hall, gather flowers to add color. At this juncture she would try anything within her powers to earn his good will.

She felt precisely like a straw dummy hanging in the wind, awaiting the thrust of a lance.









Chapter Ten


















With Simon ever present in the sling tied across her shoulders, Clarise carried luncheon for two to the outer ward. The day was growing hotter, much like the situation in which she found herself. She hoped today to make an ally of Sir Roger. If anyone could aid her with her cause, it was he.

She found the knight in the training arena, tightening bowstrings on the arsenal of bows. With no men-at-arms to train, he focused his energies on keeping Helmesly in constant readiness for war. All the fighting men were off with the Slayer at Glenmyre.

Clarise hailed him from a distance and showed him her basket. They found a shady area in the orchard, where Sir Roger spread the blanket under a pear tree. She didn’t miss his quizzical look. If his watchfulness were any indication, he knew that she was up to something.

“Have you any news?” she asked to distract him. She pulled Simon from the sling and laid him on his stomach in the center of the blanket.

The knight eased himself down beside her, his joints protesting loudly. “Nay, nothing more than to say that Ferguson has yet to strike. Perhaps he has changed his mind with my lord on site defending Glenmyre.” He began to unpack the basket. He lifted out a bit of dry meat and grimaced. “How does the babe today?” he asked.

“Fully recovered,” Clarise assured him. She patted Simon on the back. The future baron grunted in an effort to lift his head. There was much to catch the eye. A butterfly settled at the edge of the blanket and fanned its black and yellow wings at him.

Clarise glanced sidelong at the knight to gauge his mood. He appeared more somber than usual. She guessed it must chafe him to linger at Helmesly awaiting summons, but such was his duty as second-in-command.

She began by informing him of Doris’s miscarriage. He listened intently, clucking with compassion to hear that the baby was stillborn. Clarise did not miss the pitying glance he sent her way. No doubt he was thinking that she had suffered a similar loss. For the hundredth time she lamented the necessity of that particular lie. “I wonder who the father was,” she said out loud. “The servants must know, for one of them whispered that the babe looked just like his father.”

“Did you see the babe?”

“Nay,” she admitted. She had scarcely been able to glance at the lifeless infant.

“Hmmm,” said the knight. “Doris is a spinster.”

Which meant that she could be with whomever she pleased, provided she was discreet. “As you can tell, the event will have an impact on the food we eat,” she remarked, indicating the meat at which he had already pulled a face. “Doris was the best cook in the castle.”

They settled on splitting a capon wing and sharing the wine. “ ’Twill take her a week or so to recover,” she said, accepting the wineskin he handed her. “I could speak to the others about the quality of the fare.”

“You had best leave that to Dame Maeve,” he warned. “She is jealous of her duties, that one.”

Clarise agreed with him and steered the conversation back to the day’s events. “Is there only one midwife in these parts?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said. “Why?”

“Then the woman I saw this morning must have been the one who oversaw Simon’s birth?” She knew she was prying, but she could not imagine the Slayer putting up with the shriveled woman’s malpractice.

Saintonge cast her a glowering, sidelong look. “Aye, she was the same,” he answered bitterly. “Lady Genrose was fine until that shrew took over,” he added.

Clarise took note of his disapproval. “I do not agree with her methods,” she felt safe in adding. “Heating the chamber is a heathenish practice. She was insensitive to Doris’s pain and seemed not at all dismayed to deliver a stillborn.”

“As I said, there are no other midwives.” Taking a bite of the bread, he added that the men would grow discontent if they were made to eat such fare.

The time had come to lay her proposition before him. Clarise reached into the basket. “Would you like a sugared almond?” she offered. “ ’Tis the last one in the kitchens.” She held out the confection she had squirreled away for bribery.

His gray eyes narrowed, and his familiar smile took hold of one edge of his mouth. “What do you want?” he asked. “I know you ventured into this heat for something. Out with it.”

“ ’Tis a simple request, really,” she assured him.

“Speak it then,” he said kindly.

She experienced an inward twinge. Would the knight be so congenial when he learned how very much she had kept from him? “First I need the key to the chapel.”

“What!”

“Doris asked that her babe be given a mass,” she quickly explained. “She wants him buried in the castle graveyard with the rest of her family. The servants hunger for a spiritual life, Sir Roger. I know that the interdict prohibits services of any kind,” she added, cutting off the protest that was certain to come, “but they will be happier with a chapel where they may venture in and pray.”

Sir Roger itched a spot inside his collar.

Clarise saw that Simon’s eyes had begun to cross as he examined the pattern on the blanket. She put him in a new location.

“Who would bury the babe and say the proper words over his grave?” Saintonge finally asked. His question betrayed at least some consideration.

“Perhaps the Abbot of Revesby would come? The servants think highly of him.” She also had personal reasons for wanting to meet the good abbot. If she didn’t soon get a hold of Alec, she was doomed to confessing her guilt to Lord Christian.

The knight shook his head. “I doubt he will defy his colleague again.”