A Love For All Seasons (2 page)

Johanna watched Peter go. No doubt he meant to find some place to hide where he could indulge himself in emotions no longer appropriate to a lad his age. Hatred for Katel stirred anew in her. How dare he misuse their son by speaking ill of her before him. Damn Katel. Damn her for believing he would ever let her leave him. What if he'd used her absence to create some new way to torment her? She turned her horse toward the market square and home.

It wasn't far to the city's center. Stanrudde's small green was where the unemployed came to be hired, goods were measured against the standard, trade infractions were judged, and merchants pilloried. The city's market hall stood at the wee square's far end. Although taller and wider than the houses on the square's other sides, it looked much the same with its wooden walls stretching upward into a thatched roof. This year's unending chill and persistent moisture, whether rain, snow, or today's sleet, had dulled the building's whitewash to the same gray as the clouds overhead.

As Johanna brought her palfrey to a halt next to Theobald and the menservants, Katel's agent shot her a scathing glance. She ignored him to look at the armed men gathered before the hall. Save for their captain who was a professional soldier, the town’s guard, Stanrudde's policing force, was drawn on a rotating basis from the city's young and fit. They were a motley group, some in padded cloth vests, others in leather hauberks. The only thing they had in common, beyond the swords fast buckled at their sides, were their bored expressions as they watched their betters argue. All twelve of the council members stood near the pillory, worrying among them the issue of the hungry. Just now, the crippled wool merchant was violently protesting the idea of driving the starving beyond the city walls while the big smith insisted the crowd was too big to be controlled.

It was with ease that Johanna found her husband among them. Katel was the shortest and roundest of his peers. Once, long ago, her husband had been a comely man, slender of build, with golden hair, clear-cut features, and fine dark brown eyes. Now, at six and forty, some fifteen years her senior, his years of overindulging in drink had left his skin unnaturally red and his nose bulbous. His eyes and mouth were trapped in piggish folds of fat, while his hair had thinned and grown lighter still, making him appear full bald beneath his cap when he was not.

Held in place by a massive gold chain, Katel's gray cloak parted far enough to reveal he wore his maroon samite tunic beneath it, the one embroidered in precious metal threads. Johanna sneered. It was a good thing he wore his thicker cloak, the one lined in squirrel fur. Only that garment was wide enough to conceal the patchwork at his gown's seams; it had been altered many times to accommodate its owner's ever widening girth as Katel could not afford to replace it.

Scorn died. Their gowns and jewels were all that now remained of the wealth Katel had once commanded. Over the last years, his drinking had caused his trade to suffer and prosperity to slip through his fingers. This year, what little profit he'd earned had been eaten in maintaining the sham of wealth or lost through poor investment. Had it not been for the income from the properties Johanna's sire had bound in trust for Peter, they might well have stood with the starving before the abbey.

"Master Katel, your wife has rejoined us," Theobald called when he deemed he'd waited long enough for his master's notice. "Shall I escort her home?"

Katel turned, a soft smile on his face. Johanna's hatred set to simmering all over again. It wasn't some plot Peter had seen, rather Katel gloating over how he could yet force his wife to his bidding when she'd vowed never again.

It was with a mummer's finesse that her husband's face took on an expression of deep hurt. "Why there you are, Johanna. Wherever have you been these last months?" he called, his voice carrying in its tenor tones the sound of a docile and loving husband who nobly bore grave insult.

Stunned by his wholly unexpected words, Johanna's eyes flew wide. From all around the square, shutters squealed as they opened to let folk peer past the panels at her. So too, did the guard and Stanrudde's most important men turn to look. They all stared at the woman they thought was Stanrudde's richest wife, waiting to hear what wrong it was she'd done.

Sixteen years of Katel made Johanna almost as able a mummer as he. She bowed her head in the perfect portrayal of a meek housewife. "Husband, how come you to ask so strange a question?" she cried with just the right note of feminine distress. "You know full well that I have lived within the walls of a convent for these past months."

"If that is so, then why did the lady prioress write to complain you'd left their house?" Katel asked, the quiet hurt in his voice ringing around the square. The unspoken implication of adultery weighed in his every syllable.

Johanna flinched. Never once in all the years of her marriage had she considered an adulterous liaison. She dared not. Were she to stray from her wedding vows and be discovered, the terms of her father's will gave Katel control of the properties entrusted for Peter. It was to guarantee her son had something to inherit when he came of age that kept Johanna faithful to her vows. That, and the pleasure of using her virtue to stand between Katel and the wealth he wanted. Now she carefully raised her head to look at him.

Katel watched her, deep satisfaction glowing in his eyes. Her husband was waiting for a protest of innocence. Johanna hesitated. But he'd not actually accused her. If she protested it might seem a guilty outburst.

Her gaze strayed to those around him. Even though a prioress and all her nuns would swear that Johanna had held close within their walls for the past five months, Katel's broad hint had already dirtied her good name. Whether high or low, every man watched her in new suspicion, while eying her husband in pity as a man obviously too dense to add the sums and see his wife was cuckolding him.

"My pardon," Katel said to his fellow council members, "I would see my wife safely settled within mine own walls. You will excuse me?" The loving tones of his voice made him out to be the perfect cuckold: the husband who, for his heart's sake, could barely understand why his wife had left him in the first place much less recognize how she now sinned against him. Johanna damned him again and again. Was he so far gone in his hatred for her that he no longer cared how such an accusation might hurt Peter?

Too heavy to mount with ease, the spice merchant turned to walk at his troop's head as they made their way down Market Lane. With the need to protect her child and herself burning in her heart, Johanna turned her horse to follow him. The moment they were private she'd give him the sharp edge of her tongue over this game of his, whatever it was.

Taller than any of the buildings around it, the house built by Walter of Stanrudde had once been a home, the source of happiness and pride for Johanna. But back then, the house with its fine slate roof had sat openly on the lane’s edge, no wall between it and the street. No longer. Katel wanted no one seeing into his private domain. To that end he’d erected a barrier made up of line upon line of round, grayish stones, some whole, others split to reveal their glossy black hearts, framed by squared columns of limestone. With that wall hiding the house’s face, all that could be seen from the street was cold stone and bitter mortar. Her marriage to Katel had poisoned what had once been haven and happiness for her.

Her husband strode within the gate, but only Theobald and Johanna rode in behind him; the five menservants who had accompanied them rode on, taking their worn mounts to the spice merchant's larger stable, located just outside the city walls. The one behind whom Leatrice, Johanna's maid, rode paused just long enough to allow the young woman to dismount before continuing on. As Katel retreated across the courtyard, seeking respite from the wind in the shelter of the forebuilding, the small square outthrust of stone that enclosed the house's external stairway, Theobald swung down from his saddle.

Johanna stayed where she’d stopped her mount just inside the courtyard, not yet willing to give herself up to Katel's control. From long habit, she glanced toward the small kitchen shed that stood at the far end of the house. No smoke flowed from beneath the peaked vent that perched atop its thatched roof. Why would Wymar, their cook and sometimes her only friend within these walls, have let the kitchen's fire die? Curiosity was brief against the larger matters presently at hand.

Leatrice came to a stop near Johanna’s horse, her cloak held tightly around her. Framed by thick hair so dark a brown it was almost black, the maid’s pretty face was solemn as she gazed upon her master. Then she glanced at her mistress. Johanna saw the reflection of Agnes’s misery in Leatrice’s brown eyes and shook her head, finding no triumph in the girl's forthcoming ruin. Despite Leatrice's arrogance, Johanna rather liked her. This lass had a boldness all Katel's other women lacked.

"Why, here is my little sweetheart," the spice merchant called in friendly greeting to his paramour, who had accompanied her mistress to the convent. "I have missed you these five months. Come kiss me in welcome!"

The wind opened Leatrice's cloak as she started across the tiny courtyard, molding her maroon and gray gowns to the bulge Katel's babe made in her belly. Katel's brows rose in surprise then ebbed into an expression of bland disinterest. "Oh, but I thought you more careful than this," he said to her. "Whose child is that you bear?"

"Master," Leatrice cried out in hopeless protest, "you know the child is yours."

"Now Leatrice, do not add lying to the list of your sins," he replied in what was an almost gentle warning. "I daresay there've been more than a few who've tasted of you. Indeed, it appears you've shown a decided lack of virtue. Your immoral behavior now requires I dismiss you from my employ. Begone with you."

Katel did not even trouble himself to the pretense of outrage. In a world that believed only the words of men, a breeding and unmarried woman was especially suspect. He was well shielded from any accusation Leatrice might make.

The maid paled until her eyes were great, dark circles in her face. She dropped to her knees in the muck before her former lover and bowed her head. "I beg your pardon, master. You are right to chide me for trying to shift my sin onto your innocent shoulders. Can you forgive me?" she begged, her voice sweet and feminine.

Pleasure tinged Katel's cheeks a deeper pink. Johanna's eyes narrowed in disgust. This was how he liked his women, groveling. He lay a paternal hand upon the maid's shoulder. "But, of course. No harm has been done to me."

"You are too kind, Master Katel." Leatrice made it sound as if she truly believed this. She came to her feet then retreated to the gate where she paused to look back upon her master. Anger lurked beneath her shock and hurt, the sort that comes when one trader discovers he had been cheated and seeks some avenue for revenge. "Since you have convinced me that I should speak only the truth, I have no choice but to tell all of Stanrudde that your good wife has lived as a nun for these past months." With that, Leatrice turned and hied herself beyond Katel's reach as quickly as one in her state could move. She was too bright to believe her attempt to strike at him would go unpunished.

Johanna choked back a grateful laugh. Now, here was a new twist. Not only was Katel being betrayed by a woman, but by the one he'd just destroyed.

Rage darted across Katel's face. "An empty threat," he snarled quietly. It wouldn't do for the neighbors to hear him shouting at a maidservant lest they suspect he wasn't the kind master he seemed.

"Shall I fetch her back for you, master?" Theobald asked, his face dark with the desire to repay Leatrice for the damage she did his employer.

"Nay, she may say what she pleases. It cannot hurt me." Katel looked up at Johanna, vicious pleasure filling his expression. "Soon, all the world will know my wife is an adulteress, and I will have those properties."

Bolstered by Leatrice's unexpected support, Johanna leaned forward in her saddle. "Katel, to prove adultery, one must produce both a paramour and witnesses," she snapped in scorn. "I defy you to do so."

The confidence that bloomed in Katel's eyes sent a stake of fear through her heart. "I can do both. When I tell the world you came not virgin to my bed, they'll believe you capable of repeating the same sin. As for who laid with you, who else would I name but the same man who deflowered you those many years ago. Only lust for you could have brought Robert the Bastard back to Stanrudde."

Shock stole Johanna's breath from her. Rob was here? Although it was sixteen years since she'd last seen him, her mind retrieved his image as if they'd parted only yesterday.

He'd been but seventeen then, not even fully bearded. Still, her fingers remembered the rough softness of the skin on his jaw. His dark brown hair was thick and heavy. When she toyed with it, she could make it curl along the raw-boned outline of his cheeks. His nose was narrow and just a shade too long, his fine gray eyes smiled at her from beneath gently curving brows.

With the memory of his smile came the sweet recall of his lips pressed to hers. There had been great joy in the melding of their bodies. Pleasure's ghost was followed by a sword's thrust of pain. Johanna's skin chilled to a deathly temperature as her fingers tightened around the palfrey's reins and her heart descended into seething blackness. She had loved and trusted him, but Rob had deserted her. His cruel betrayal had trapped her in this hell that was her marriage.

Turning her searing gaze on her husband, she hissed, "Fool! You picked the wrong man to name as my paramour, for where Robert of Blacklea is, I will never be."

With that, she turned her horse. Making vicious use of her goad, she sent the poor, tired beast hurtling out of her home's gate, then back down Stanrudde's lanes. All that mattered was that she put as much distance as she could between herself and the man she most despised.