Why should she live when her baby was dead? She had asked him that often enough, and he never had an answer, except that God demanded lives when He was ready. Est had to believe that. Otherwise the whole city would have committed suicide just as she did.
At least Est had found a way to manage his own grief. Even after his darling Emma left him, he still had something he could do. And he would do it.
Cecily was playing with her rag doll in the yard behind the house when her father came home that day. She cocked her head to listen as he crashed angrily into the house, and she heard the plates and mugs rattling as he thumped his staff on the small sideboard and bellowed for wine.
She hunched her shoulders a little. He was cross again. He often was just now. It might mean he’d smack her if she misbehaved, and she didn’t want that again.
‘Wine! In God’s name what does a man have to do to get a little drink in this place?’
There was a hurried slap of sandalled feet through the hall, and Cecily heard the calmer tones of her mother. ‘What is it, husband?’
‘Don’t stare at me like that, woman. I’ve been working hard today, and don’t need your high-and-mighty manner. Fetch me a jug of wine.’
There was a muttered command and Cecily heard more feet. A moment later the maid appeared in the doorway, nodded to Cecily with a smile, and darted out to the little lean-to shed at the back. She reappeared carrying a leather jug filled with strong red wine and murmured, ‘Stay out here for a while; just play quietly,’ as she passed.
‘Well? What has happened today?’
‘More thefts from the cathedral, but when I try to pin it on that slippery bastard, there’s nothing I can do about it. He wasn’t there, he was playing knuckles at his house, he had witnesses to prove he was never near the cathedral … he makes me puke! Always the first with the quick answer, always so sure of himself …’
‘Can you not accept you could be wrong? Agnes knows him and says he is a very pleasant man, and she-’
‘Tell her I’ll not have him in this house!’
‘Husband? I don’t-’
‘Never. I don’t care if Agnes is a friend of his. If she wants to entertain him, she can do so in her own house, not here.’
‘You would throw her from our home? Where would she live?’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘I would rent her a place somewhere. A decent little house.’
‘Why?’ Juliana’s voice was sharp now. Cecily was sure that she had turned her head to peer at her husband from the corner of her eye, as though her right ear was more reliable than the other. ‘Husband, why should you seek to exclude my sister from our home?’
‘It’s not her, woman! It’s him! He’s a murderer and a thief! I’m sure of it.’
‘You have been for many years — what of it? You have never shown what he has done or how.’
‘Because-’ Daniel roared, and then his voice dropped as though he was too weary to continue this argument. ‘Because, wife, he threatened me today. He said if I didn’t leave him to continue his business, he would murder all of us: you, me, the children, all of us. I won’t have him in the house, because he could set a trap for us if he knew the place too well. Now do you understand why I don’t want him here? Do you think I’d put you and the others at risk?’
The knock at his door stirred Reginald, and he felt his face wreathe itself in a smile of delight. God’s ballocks, he’d thought she’d changed her mind! The vixen was here after all. Well, it was a relief. She had said her husband was going to be out for the night, so when she didn’t turn up Reg had assumed she was still angry with him because of the other evening. Well, he should have realized that the woman had too much of a tickle in her tail not to want him to scratch it!
His bottler had been sent away, and the other servants were in the main hall. Only a very few people knew of this other door at the back of the house, and he hurried to it before the quiet knock should disturb his son. The last thing he needed was for the lad to overhear them together, and then ask his mother what Father was doing … If Sabina ever got to hear of his nocturnal activities when she was away, all hell would break loose, and if it did, Reg didn’t want to be in the same city, let alone the same house.
It was with a feeling of satisfaction that he reached for the latch and opened the door, only to find that it was not his lover outside.
Instead her husband stood there smiling at him.
Chapter Four
Henry winced as he shifted in his seat. The great gouge in his breast and shoulder where Daniel’s pickaxe had torn through him was always painful. Whether it was a sharp, stabbing sensation as when the wound had been inflicted, or had sunk to a dull throbbing, it was always there, and always in his mind.
Before that day, he’d been a fit, healthy man. Given a little money, he could have found a woman and married, maybe. No chance of that now, though. Daniel had robbed him of his future. All he was was a carter. A lonely, bitter carter.
The strange thing was, he hadn’t really known Estmund that well beforehand. Est had been one of the men Henry had known about the city, but they weren’t close friends or anything. Yet Henry was a generous-hearted man, and when Estmund had been so distraught he had wanted to help him.
It was that awful day when the cathedral decided that Emma had committed a mortal sin by killing herself after their child had died. Poor little Cissy. She had been so tiny when they buried her in her pit. Unbaptized, she was not eligible for a place in the graveyard, and Henry still thought it was that, more than her death alone, which had made Emma so disturbed and grief-stricken. To think that even when she died she would not be with her child in Heaven had been the final blow. If God wouldn’t have her Cissy, she wanted no part of His Heaven.
God! But when Est found her, that was a terrible day. For all that he was still suffering, Henry couldn’t feel regret for helping him. The man had lost daughter and wife, and then to learn that he was not permitted to bury Emma in the cemetery was enough to unhinge his mind.
It was good that Est seemed to trust him. Est was not the kind of man to get close to anyone, but he accepted Henry’s companionship. Before that dreadful day, when Henry won his wound trying to help Est, they would rarely speak. Few people did during the famine. After that day they sat together in companionable silence, Est staring into the distance while Henry lay on his bed, Est occasionally wiping his brow with a cool cloth. Some women from the street had come to help, and Henry was gradually nursed back from the brink of death.
The silence was good for a while, but both needed to talk. Est started to tell Henry of his life, of his past and his shattered hopes. To Henry, that meant they were both recovering. When Est was silent, Henry would talk until he grew too tired, and then Est would wipe his sweating face again, speaking of his love for his dead Emma and Cissy. There were few enough men who would bother to try to share their feelings, Henry thought later, but when the whole city was starving, when the likelihood of their dying in a short while was so high, there was little to stop them unburdening themselves.
No, Henry had hardly known Est before Emma’s death, but there was something in Estmund that had appealed to him: a kindliness and generosity of spirit. That was why he had wanted to help him. And perhaps too it was the damage wrought on Henry in his attempt to help Est that had spurred Estmund to live on. He had a responsibility again, someone to look after.