“I told her she must marry Henry, that there was no other choice. If she did marry him there would be no shame in a birth soon after the vows for we had all long expected them to marry. To bed my father, however, would not only make him an unwitting sinner and she a witting one, but it would be a cruelty to so use and deceive a man who had been as kind to her as if she had been his own daughter.”
“To be abused by Henry and then marry him, knowing that she now owed him the marriage debt for the rest of their lives together? Could you have so willingly shared a bed with the man who had raped you, then borne his children and supported him as a wife must do?”
Juliana sharply turned her face away. “What choice had she? Common wisdom tells us that she could not have been raped because she quickened with child and thus she must have taken pleasure in the act.” Returning her gaze to meet Eleanor’s, her brown eyes turned as dark as a moonless night. “I may not concur with common wisdom, my lady, but I repeat: What choice had she in fact? A man may make as many bastards as he wishes and take them all to his wife to rear, but a woman is a whore who has but one, unless she marries the father.”
“From the anger I hear in your voice, Juliana, I wonder that you advised her to do something you found as abhorrent as she.”
Juliana walked over to the pitcher and poured some wine into her cup but stared at the contents without drinking. The sweat on her forehead was now running down her cheeks like tears. “You are most observant to detect the serpent wrapped around my heart. In truth, I did tell Isabelle that she had no choice, but did not do so until after I told her that there were ways of getting rid of the child and that I would help her find a safe remedy.”
Eleanor hesitated, then replied in a quiet voice. “A sin for cert.”
The weak smile on Juliana’s lips was at odds with the terror Eleanor could see in her eyes.
“And her response to your suggestion?”
“She refused.”
Eleanor nodded and sipped at her own wine, more to gain time to think than from any wish for it. “Then you are innocent of a graver act,” she said at last. Juliana’s head was bowed and she could learn nothing from her look. “Did she say why she refused?”
Juliana’s laugh sounded brittle, but the terror had receded from her eyes. “She hated the father but love quickened for the babe.”
This matched what Isabelle had told her before. “Did she tell Henry about the child?”
“No, but when Sir Geoffrey claimed he was the father of Isabelle’s baby, Henry suspected the truth. My brother may have suffered from many faults, but simple he was not. He was quite able to count both days and months.”
Faults he had indeed, but Juliana’s words reminded Eleanor that there was another issue that troubled. “I must say I was surprised,” she said softly, “that Henry took her with such force. He had every reason to believe they would wed in good time, although no formal betrothal had taken place. Did she tell you why Henry had attacked her?”
Some men might rape a whore they had bought or some other man’s woman as an act of humiliation, but she did not believe they would ever ravish the one they cherished. Although Henry had been thoughtless, a willful and often selfish man, Eleanor did not remember him as a brutal youth. She could certainly imagine him beseeching Isabelle, like the whining puppy of her father’s description, but Eleanor had always thought that Henry wanted Isabelle as his companion in life as well as a playfellow in bed.
“I asked. She replied with a laugh.” Juliana rubbed her cup as if to polish it, then took a deep drink of the wine. “In the summer we all spent together, did you ever see her behave as she did the night my father mocked my brother?”
The change in direction with that question surprised Eleanor, but she had been quite taken aback at Isabelle’s wantonness during that dinner. Running a hand so shamelessly up Robert’s thigh was not the gesture of a faithful or happy wife, nor was it something Isabelle would have done that innocent summer so many years ago. She shook her head.
“After she lost the babe, her manner with other men became quite immodest, and I warned her that her actions promised more than she might be willing to give to the men who watched her. She told me what she told my father, that she meant nothing by it. I fear I doubted that sometimes, although not as much as did my father.”
Eleanor did not like the thought that just came to mind. Could Isabelle have used Henry? Was such a thing possible? Yet if it were, why? Why would any woman encourage a sexual attack? “Did she perhaps explain the choice of your father as her husband?”
“Out of gratitude, she said. She owed her lands to our family for the comfort we had given her. She had only entered her fourth winter when her parents died. The day she came to us, my mother told me that I must treat her with the gentleness and affection any sister owes another for she was a most solemn child. Indeed, my task was a happy one because I quickly learned to love her, and she soon gained a merrier manner. Our family became her own. She had little choice if she wished to stay with us. If she would not marry Henry, she must marry my father.”
“What of George? Surely she could have married him.”
“He was already betrothed to a woman who died after Isabelle married my father.”
Were all the Lavenhams so cursed with such ill fortune, Eleanor wondered. “Yet this marriage dishonored your father and caused him to sin most deeply, however unwittingly. You were grieved, yet you did not tell him that his own son was the father of the babe Isabelle carried?”
Juliana fell to her knees and began to weep, her sobs so sharp and gasping that Eleanor ran to her friend. Juliana pushed her back with one hand.
“Stay back, my lady! There is a snake that lies in my breast, its fangs dripping with a venom that will send you to Hell should it bite you.”
Eleanor stepped back, making the sign of the cross as she did. “Shall I bring Brother Thomas to you, my child?”
“Nay, my lady. Nay.” Then the sobbing slowed and Juliana rose, wiping the tears from her swollen face. Turning her back on the prioress, she walked over to the window and looked down into the open ward. The sun was shining with winter pallor. In the background, there was the sound of the slow dripping of melting ice. It punctuated the long silence between them.
Eleanor waited.
“Do you love your father, my lady?”
“Aye.”
“If you had a sister, would you not love her as well?”
“Such love is precious in God’s sight.”
Juliana turned, and her eyes narrowed with pain as she looked at the prioress. “Is it?”
“Teach me your meaning.”
“I have not yet confessed this, but you must hear it from me first for it is at Tyndal where I long to entomb myself.” She took a deep breath. “When I offered to help Isabelle destroy the child within her, I first heard the hiss of Eden’s snake. When I failed to tell my father that he was committing a sin by marrying the woman I called sister, I saw the snake approach.”
“God is merciful to the penitent, and both these sins He will forgive. Isabelle did not take your advice about the child, and your father would probably have refused to believe you just as he did when Henry tried to tell him enough of the truth. But you asked about love? What do you mean?”
“When Adam and Eve were in Eden, they were at peace with God in their innocence. Satan rejoiced with the closing of those garden gates, for man became corruptible, sinful, and cruel. That I understood, yet in my willful ignorance, I believed I could remain pure because I wished no man ill but felt only love for those around me. Even when I wrestled Henry to the ground and cuffed his ears, I injured only his pride. Indeed, I loved my brother, although I despised his petty meanness.”