‘Have you no shame, Yolande?’ the older woman demanded, in the fluent French which betrayed her noble Breton blood. She flung her hairbrush onto her polished oak coffer with a clatter, and sank onto the stool in front of the mirror. Yolande was standing directly behind her. Izabel sent a look of calculated entreaty at her daughter’s reflection which hung beside hers in the silvered glass. A treasured wedding gift from her long-dead husband, the costly leaded mirror with its scrolled and gilded frame was worthy of a princess; and it sat oddly in this plain cell of a bedchamber. ‘Keep it from your girl. Gwenn has no need to know – knowing what respectable people think of you can only hurt her. Keep it from her as long as you can. Have you no sense?’
Her daughter’s green eyes were very cool. Like Gwenn, Yolande Herevi was small in stature. Everything about her was composed and in its place. Since she was at home, Yolande wore no veil, but she was no slattern, Izabel would grant her that. Her brown hair had been loosely wound into soft, elegant coils which on any other woman would have unravelled into a disorderly mess, but not on Yolande. After the birth of each of her three children, Yolande had wrestled to keep plumpness at bay, and she had won. She had kept her high cheekbones and her waist was trim. Though she was over thirty, the skin on Yolande’s cheeks was as fresh and clear as a fifteen-year old’s, which was remarkable in an age where hunger or disease or overwork carried most people off before they saw forty. She used a charcoal pencil to darken her eyelashes and eyelids, and was not above using lip-balm to moisten her lips; but she looked well enough to scorn the pastes and other cosmetics which some women used. As far as looks went, Izabel was proud of her daughter. She had a direct gaze, an honest gaze which gave the lie to her notoriety.
‘I did what I had to,’ Yolande spoke coldly. ‘It ensured our survival.’
The two women glared at each other in the cloudy glass.
In the street below, a hawker with a trumpet of a voice was selling fish. The densely packed houses channelled the man’s patter through the window and projected it into the centre of the bedchamber. Izabel listened, hauled in a deep breath and tried another line. ‘Raymond had to know. I see that. He hears the townsfolk tattling. You can’t conceal anything from a lad his age. But not Gwenn. I pray you, Yolande, don’t tell Gwenn. Please, listen to me. She’s only thirteen.’
‘Only thirteen,’ Yolande murmured.
There was profound bitterness in her daughter’s voice, and Izabel knew what Yolande was alluding to. Yolande had been thirteen when she first met Jean, but then, many were married at twelve. Out of the corner of her eye, Izabel glimpsed her own reflection and with something akin to surprise, saw that her features seemed to have collapsed. She was showing every one of her fifty years. Her eyes had been as bright a brown as Gwenn’s when she had first stared into this mirror. Now they were faded and circled with a white rim of age. The black widow’s homespun that she had worn for years was a washed-out grey. Drab it looked against the fresh green of Yolande’s silken gown with its fashionable pendant sleeves. Izabel clutched at the silver cross which hung at her breast with fingers bent like crabs’ claws. She looked more like an ancient nun than a widow. On one thin claw a wedding ring gleamed, but the golden band was scratched and worn, and it shone feebly. ‘I wonder which of us will wear out first?’ Izabel muttered, staring at her ring. She had not meant to speak aloud.
‘Maman!’ Her daughter’s green eyes flew wide. ‘What a dreadful thing to say!’
‘I was referring to my ring, not to you!’ Izabel laughed. ‘Look, there’s naught but a thread of it left. I was wondering if it would wear out before me.’
‘It won’t work, Maman,’ Yolande said flatly.
‘Work? What won’t work?’ Izabel raised a sparse brow.
‘You won’t deflect me from my decision by distracting me with black thoughts. I know your tactics after all these years.’
‘Black thoughts?’ Izabel snorted, and waved at her image in the mirror. ‘Look at me, Yolande. I’m being realistic. I can’t have much time left.’
‘Maman, don’t–’
‘How did the girl called Izabel Herevi turn into that faded fool we see in the glass?’ Izabel put her hands to her head and smoothed a wisp of grey hair into place, noting that Yolande had caught her lower lip between her teeth. Hiding a triumphant smile, Izabel fumbled down the side of the coffer. ‘Have you seen my wimple, Yolande? I seem to have mislaid it. I’m glad they’re in fashion. They hide grey hairs so well.’ And in another tone. ‘Jean loves you, and it’s my belief he always has. Why did he never marry you?’
Yolande set her jaw, took hold of her mother’s shoulders and shook them gently. ‘Maman, look at me. You know he cannot, because of your land.’
Izabel’s head sagged. ‘My land. Land I never had possession of, and never will, not while my nephew has breath in his body.’
‘De Roncier. Oh, how I hate that name. Jean hopes to secure it for you, Maman. But he cannot declare his interests openly, and if he marries me that would be tantamount to a declaration of war.’
Izabel gave a weary sigh. ‘You said that before.’
‘Aye, and obviously it bears repeating, for you will harp on about my being an outcast, and marriage–’
‘I hate to see you shamed. I want you to be able to walk about with your head held high. And now you’re thinking of telling Gwenn that you’re a...a...’
‘A concubine, Maman? A kept woman, her union unblessed by Holy Church?’
Izabel flinched. ‘You can’t Yolande. You mustn’t.’
‘Gwenn has to face it sometime, Maman,’ Yolande said, quietly ruthless. ‘Time is running out.’
‘No! And what of the babe? Have you thought of that? If you tell Gwenn–’
‘Maman,’ Yolande sighed, ‘Katarin has almost reached her third birthday. She’s a child, no babe, but still too young for it to make any difference to her. And as far as Gwenn is concerned, why, it’s my belief she knows already. My girl’s no fool. She knows what the townsfolk call her moth–’
‘Ah! Here it is!’ Izabel drew out the length of coarse bleached fabric that served as her wimple, and set about covering her head. Dragging on her veil, she meticulously tucked the grey strands out of sight.
‘Maman, you can’t hide everything behind a veil.’
‘What do you mean?’
Yolande ran a hand over her smooth, high brow. She had no proof, but instinct warned her that Father Jerome, the so-called ‘Black Monk’ and a consecrated priest, was connected with Count François de Roncier. ‘Mother, do think. You went to Mass this morning. You must have heard the people chattering about the monk.’
‘Monk?’
‘The Black Monk.’ Yolande set her teeth. ‘The new preacher who is urging everyone to repent.’ Izabel was pretending to adjust her headgear, but Yolande knew she was listening. ‘De Roncier is spinning a web to trap us in. Our past is catching up with us.’
‘Our past? Don’t you mean your past?’
‘No, ma mère, I mean our past.’
Izabel’s cheeks reddened. ‘I wish you hadn’t chosen that road.’
‘What other road was there?’ Yolande snapped. ‘You were glad enough to take the coin I brought you! If it wasn’t for me you’d have rotted in a gutter long since!’ No sooner had she spoken than Yolande regretted her momentary loss of control. Had guilt had made her mother flush? She doubted it. Guilt was not an affliction Izabel was ever stricken with. Her mother clung to her self-righteousness as though it were a shield; and if self-righteousness was her mother’s protection in this corrupt world, who was Yolande to snatch it from her? Izabel had known little enough joy in the span of years allotted her.