The woman leaned back, waving Eleanor to another stool. “Have you never taken a vow, Isabelle?” Sir Geoffrey’s wife twittered in malicious imitation. “Oh, aren’t we ever so arrogant with that proud tone of voice. Have I never taken a vow, you ask? Doesn’t marriage count?” Isabelle wobbled her head back and forth, pursing her lips as she did. “Perhaps not to you. Marriage reeks of lust, does it not, and you have surely taken a vow against that. How you have changed since we all made merry together that last summer before you returned to Amesbury, Eleanor.”
“We have all changed since then.” Eleanor kept her voice even. She could almost smell the bitter enmity well mixed with the woman’s wine-infused sweat.
“Some more. Some less.” Isabelle waggled her finger at the prioress. “Now you are given in marriage to God’s Son, but did your bridegroom know before your vows that you were less than chaste when you came to him?”
Eleanor knew that silence was the wisest response.
“I know your secret!” Isabelle said in a loud whisper. “Did I not see how you and George played with each other the summer before you took your vows? Do you think I have forgotten?” Her expression darkened as she leaned forward. “Did you not give him your paps to suck by midsummer’s eve as if he were a hungry babe, and did he not wiggle his fingers like eager minnows in your private places?”
Eleanor paled with anger. “Did George tell you such tales?”
“Nay, he is too much the courteous knight to brag of your secret times together in the forest glade, but I know the ways of men and women. He may not have broken you and taken you for a proper ride, but most surely you did buck under his hand ’til calmed.” She poured wine from the pitcher and gulped the cup dry. “Are you certain you won’t take a cup of wine to ease the day’s chill?”
Eleanor sat back and closed her eyes for a moment to regain her calm. Showing anger would mean taking the path Isabelle wanted her to follow and away from the real reason the woman had gone on this attack.
“Games played in the heat of youth are only games,” Eleanor said at last. “You attracted enough bees to your honey as I recall, but no ill came of that. Where then was the sin in what we all did that summer?”
A drifting fog born of wine fumes veiled Isabelle’s eyes as she tried to pour unwatered wine into her cup and missed by half. A rivulet of red meandered across the wooden chest and dripped down to the rushes beneath. “In the fall that came after, perhaps, but what would you know of that, my lady? You went off to Amesbury and sent not a word to any of us.”
Not quite true, the prioress thought as she struggled to find a clue to Isabelle’s bitter confrontation. Surely it could not be concern over George’s broken heart after all these years. Isabelle’s account of what had passed between George and Eleanor was more colorful than the reality of it, but George had loved her. If Eleanor had written him, he would have harbored hope when there was no possibility of any consummation. She had therefore chosen the lesser cruelty of silence. Nonetheless, she had written to Juliana on occasion and had certainly included Isabelle as well, but the correspondence had become sporadic as often happens between friends whose lives take different routes. The last letter she had written was on the death of Juliana’s mother. The reply had been proper but no more. Isabelle had never sent her any message at all.
No, Eleanor was sure that Isabelle was not harboring such hot anger on behalf of George’s thwarted dreams. Had she resented the greater friendship Eleanor had had with Juliana? Nay, she doubted that. The woman in front of her, drinking yet another mazer of wine, had never sought such closeness with Eleanor. Whatever was troubling her so?
“Perhaps some important message was not delivered to me, Isabelle, or a letter I sent you all was lost? I did write on the death of the Lady…”
“We received it.”
“I did not hear the news of your marriage to Sir Geoffrey…”
Isabelle snorted. “Marriage?”
Eleanor heart skipped a beat. Had she hit on it?
Isabelle put her head back and roared with laughter. “You call what I have a marriage? Aye, maybe a nun in holy wedlock would call it such. Yet when I took my vows, I swore to honor the marriage bed, not undertake chastity. What strange things vows are. In truth, I am as much a nun as you, Eleanor.”
“I do not quite understand…”
Isabelle splashed more wine into her cup. “Don’t play the innocent with me. Or are you really that dull of wit?”
Now was the time for a display of temper, Eleanor decided. “Indeed, I may have taken other vows, but I did not take one of stupidity. If you have something to say, out with it, but I have no desire to pry into things you might not wish to tell me.”
Isabelle slapped her belly. “What is there to hide? Have I quickened with child since I became a wife?” She bent forward, her reddened eyes trying to focus. Her breath smelled like soured milk. “I am a young woman and was with child on my marriage day, but I have not quickened since. What does that tell you? The world would say that Sir Geoffrey may warm the bed with his body but his lust cannot warm his wife’s seed. Many would advise him to set me aside for a woman who could conceive.”
“If he got you with child before…”
“Got me with child, you say?” Isabelle’s laugh stung the prioress’ ears. “In truth, his member has withered with one of those vows you hold so precious, Eleanor. He promised God he would remain chaste if He saved the dying mother of his children. Although God did not hold to His part of the bargain, my husband apparently decided to keep to his, despite a new wife, until the Judgment Day.”
“Then how…?”
Isabelle reached out, lifted the pitcher of wine over her head, and shattered it at her feet. Bits of pottery flew, one large piece rocking to rest at Eleanor’s foot. Red wine splattered their robes, then slowly began to seep into the rushes between them.
The two women stared at each other. Isabelle’s face changed from red to white and back again. Eleanor remained silent in the face of so much anger, so much grief, and too much drink.
“One night, Sir Geoffrey came to my chambers,” Isabelle began, her voice low but each word spoken with an abrasive clarity. “I poured him much rich wine and soon he was quite drunk. As we lay dressed upon my bed, I let him kiss and play with me. Then, when he had passed out, I stripped him of his braes. Poor man! Despite all our merry games, his member was still as tiny as a babe’s! On the morrow, he awoke with me naked beside him. I pointed to the blood on the sheet and wept, saying he had taken my maidenhead. A little chicken blood, the oldest trick in the world, but he believed it. Of course he did not remember the act, but such proof that he was no longer impotent gave him so much joy.” She put her head in her hands and swayed with mirthless laughter.
“If not he, then who did get you with…?”
“In truth? ” Isabelle sneered, bending so close to Eleanor that she could feel the heat of her breath. “It was Henry. He was the father of that child. He had raped me….”
Chapter Eighteen
After Eleanor had entered the Lady Isabelle’s chambers, Thomas went back to his own. He wished he had not given his word about examining Henry’s body. With great cheer he would pass the duty on to almost anyone else, but give his word he had and there was naught he could do to take it back. Nonetheless he would delay the task for an hour. The corpse might wait just a bit longer. After all, the living should take some precedence over the dead. Children most of all.
Walking through the door to his chambers, he smiled, then picked an object up from the corner where he had propped it. He tucked it under his arm and gave a boyish skip of joy before walking back down the hall with a gait more seemly in a man.