The breeze lifted the curtain of the sleeping-alcove and Johanna saw Gwenn Herevi. She sucked in a breath and drew back, full lips thinning. She hadn’t made a sound, nor would she; she would snatch at this heaven-sent chance of observing her rival unseen.
Gwenn was standing by the shelf where that statue of the Virgin was kept. Johanna saw her pick it up. She could hear her muttering under her breath. Gwenn Herevi couldn’t be talking to the statue, surely? The girl must be mad, Johanna thought hopefully. And salting that idea away in the back of her mind, where it would stay until she found a use for it – perhaps in her bid to win Ned Fletcher – Johanna squatted down on her haunches to watch what Sir Jean’s bastard was doing.
***
‘What do you mean, the wench refuses to do it?’ the Dowager Countess snapped. ‘We’ve been generous enough, haven’t we?’
Since her fall, Marie de Roncier’s legs were shaky, and as she continued to spurn crutches, she had had to submit to being carried down to the hall of Huelgastel. She had consented reluctantly to this indignity, but her son had sweetened the draught by ordering her a chair similar in construction to his own. Throne-like, it had armrests at the side, and Marie had discovered that there was nothing she like better than to sit in state in her cushioned chair and queen over her son’s kingdom. The Countess Eleanor, who spent more and more time in the chapel, made no objection. Enthroned in her chair, a rug draped across her useless legs, Marie glared at the pedlar from Vannes.
‘You’ve been more than generous, madame,’ Conan answered, and, seeing danger in his patroness’s flashing black eyes, he fell on his knees. The granite flags were hard and cold through the scant rush covering, but the pedlar had learned early on in life that the nobility liked respect enough to pay for it, and he didn’t mind a bit of boot-licking – or in the Countess’s case, slipper-licking – if it meant the noble lady would keep him in her employ.
‘Why won’t she do it?’ the Countess demanded, testily.
The woman was as tenacious as a terrier with a rat to shake, Conan thought. Then, because this thought set in motion an impolitic smile he had difficulty suppressing, he hastily looked at the floor. Let her think me subservient. Stammering, he tried to explain the unexplainable, ‘I...I think Johanna has a f...fondness for the child.’
‘Fondness?’ The Countess’s eyes were hard with disbelief. ‘Fondness? Don’t fob me off with lies! You can’t tell me that all these months we’ve been paying your sister to keep her ears to the ground, she’s been nursing a fondness for St Clair’s brat!’
‘I’m sorry, madame, but it’s the truth,’ Conan mumbled, bowing his head so low he could have kissed the flags at the Countess’s feet. He wished his belly did not ache. This bending double did not help his delicate constitution. A drop of that wine on the side trestle would put some fire in his insides... Out of the corner of his eye Conan saw the Countess’s red satin slippers tap – there was life left in those feet then – and the next moment he felt the sting of her cane as she flicked his temple.
‘Oh, stop grovelling, do,’ she clucked impatiently. ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying when you mumble at the ground.’
The pedlar tried to meet the Dowager’s gaze, but her coal-black eyes were bolder than any whore in Vannes and, finding himself out-stared, he found himself looking at her bosom instead.
Marie made a choking sound in her throat. ‘It’s not good enough,’ she said.
‘My apologies, madame,’ Conan mumbled, uncertain whether she was referring to the disobedience of his sister, or his looking at her sagging breasts. To be safe, he shifted his eyes to the wimple covering her throat. Was it a scraggy throat under the spotless linen? The throat of an old bird who had lived too long?
‘You’re certain she can’t be persuaded? Have you offered her more?’
‘Aye, madame. I only had to hint at poison, and she went all tragic on me. Saying as how did I think she could harm a child who’d sucked the nourishment from her own p–’
Marie flourished her cane for silence. ‘Spare me the sordid details.’
Her bold eyes fastened on something behind Conan and, turning, he saw Count François de Roncier stalking up the hall. With a sigh, he bent his creaking spine even lower. His stomach gurgled a protest. ‘Good evening, mon seigneur.’
‘You may go,’ Marie said. Conan hesitated, and she glared past her hook of a nose, restively tapping her cane on her chair leg.
‘You...you will employ me again, won’t you, madame?’
Thin, bloodless lips were stretched into what might have been intended as a smile. ‘Naturally I’ll employ you. I can’t rely on your sister, but so far I’ve not been able to fault you.’
‘I...I assure you, madame, I am yours to command,’ Conan said eagerly, and because he knew it was expected of him, he ignored his griping belly and gave another ingratiating bow. ‘My thanks, madame.’ Thankful that his sister’s mutiny had not lost him a good source of income, he bowed himself out.
Marie smiled apologetically at her son. ‘I have to admit, François, that the plan I discussed with you earlier has failed.’
‘The brat’s wet nurse refuses to “spice” his gruel?’
‘That’s it in a nutshell. I’d hoped the wench could be persuaded, and we could have solved your problem with the minimum of bloodshed, and without arousing suspicion. After all, infancy is fraught with dangers – why, your own sister Sybille died when she was barely six months old. It would have been the lesser of two evils.’ Marie sighed. ‘However, apparently the pedlar’s sister has feelings for St Clair’s heir. I regret her attitude, but the girl’s brother says she won’t budge on this.’ Her thin mouth drooped. ‘I don’t want you to lose ground to St Clair any more than you do, François. Perhaps the time has come for firmer measures.’
François smiled. ‘You’ve come round to my way of thinking, Mother?’
‘Aye, my son. I think that I have.’
***
Jean was in the stables. He had dismissed the groom and was brushing his dead wife’s horse, Dancer, himself. The mare’s coat was brown, she had liquid eyes and white stockings on three of her legs. A pretty creature, Jean had bought her for Yolande soon after she and the children had been evicted from Vannes. Yolande had not ridden Dancer since she had first discovered that she was pregnant, but Jean knew that she had loved the animal. After Yolande’s death, Jean had lifted responsibility for the grooming of the horse from the stableboy’s shoulders and taken it upon his own. He had not missed a day since his wife’s death. The grooming of Yolande’s mare had become in some inexplicable way a ritual whereby he imagined he maintained a link with his wife. No one came running to him with day-to-day concerns while he was in the stable, and he indulged in flights of fancy that a year ago he would have dismissed as maudlin and unrealistic.
He would pretend that he was grooming Yolande’s mare prior to their taking a ride together. Any moment now, he would think, Yolande will walk smiling through that open door, and I will link my hands together to form a step for her, and she will mount, and we will be off, trotting sedately out of the yard and...
‘Ned? Ned?’
Recognising his eldest daughter’s voice, Jean came out of his daydream with a jolt. He moved to the door and leaned out. Gwenn was tearing across the yard towards the too young and too handsome captain. Jean sighed wearily and his brows jutted, for Gwenn was barefoot and her skirts were bunched up round her knees. She was running so fast she looked certain to run into the Englishman. Momentarily forgetting his bereavement, Jean slipped into an older, happier, mode of thinking and resolved to remind Yolande to have a word with the girl. Then remembrance shivered cold through his veins. Yolande would not speak to Gwenn, or anyone, not in this life. Yolande was dead. It was up to him to sort his daughter out...