“In childhood fights, there is little sin. Again, God has surely forgiven…”
“God has shown me that no mortal love is without its corruption. When I told Isabelle that she could rid herself of the child, I did so out of love because I did not want her to suffer further for a violent act she had already endured. Do you not see? Out of the love I bore her, I urged her to sin.” Juliana stopped, her eyes growing wide.
“Yet she did not do so. Thus you sinned only in making the suggestion. Once she told you that she cherished the child, you did not urge her further.”
“Out of love, I failed to tell my father about the sin he would commit. Oh, I gave him reasons he should not marry her, but they were weak and he mocked them readily enough.” Juliana’s voice began to rise, her tone pleading. “He had suffered so after the death of my mother, my lady. How could I take that little joy from his eyes by telling him the real reason he could not marry Isabelle?”
“Juliana, these are not faults that a loving God would not forgive…”
“Will He forgive me for murdering my brother?”
Eleanor blinked in horror. Had she been wrong after all? Had she been so misguided by a proud and frail logic that she had forced an innocent man to wrongly confess, even die, to protect a daughter he loved? “Your father admitted…”
“My lord father did kill my brother, my lady, but it was I that sent Henry to his death.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
As Eleanor held the weeping woman, she raised her eyes, looked out the window encased by dark stone at the lighter gray of God’s heaven, and prayed for the wisdom she lacked. “Tell me the tale. In doing so, we will both wrest the serpent from your heart.”
For just an instant, Juliana pulled the prioress closer, then released her and moved away from the comfort of a friend’s arms. “It will take more than the telling to kill Satan’s beast, my lady.”
“It is a beginning.”
Juliana’s smile resembled the look of one in extreme pain who had just realized she would soon die. “As you heard, my father and Isabelle did not share a bed when she had her monthly courses. He found such womanly things distasteful, but he began to fear that his wife would use such absence to invite other men into their barren bed.”
“Did he have reason or were his fears born only of jealousy?”
“I have much to tell, my lady.”
Eleanor nodded and fell silent.
“While we were out on that tragic morning ride, Isabelle told me that although her courses had come early, they had been quite light, ceasing much before their time. Indeed, she suggested that her womb might have quickened. When I asked if she had told my lord father the happy news, she laughed and said she would in good time. She wished to wait until certain, but made me promise to say nothing until she gave permission. In the meantime, she said, she would enjoy a night or two quite alone since he believed her to be bleeding still.”
“Then your father was not as impotent as she claimed?”
“I found her quickening quite miraculous.”
“Such has happened.”
Juliana shook her head with a deep sadness. “Indeed I knew that my father sometimes did spend sleepless nights watching in the shadows to see if other men came to their marital chamber. Isabelle had seen him once or twice and told me so. Thus I tried to assure him of her innocence, claiming that I often came early and stayed with her on such nights to keep her company. Nonetheless, I began to share my father’s fear. She displayed her charms more, and much more than was seemly.”
“Did she truly do so often?” Eleanor asked, thinking of the young woman who had ordered suitors to sing of their passions in the tradition of courtly love and the girl who, with the innocence of youth, had chosen only to dance with her sister, Juliana.
“In the early days of their marriage, she had done no more than play at it, my lady. Indeed, she spent much time weeping in my arms over her lost babe. Oft we prayed together to bring her husband virility just once so she could have a child. I do believe she longed less for pleasure in the marital bed than for a baby girl with her mother’s eyes. Yet as her prayers continued to go unanswered, I began to suspect that she would lure some man into her bed so she might conceive once again. Her humors were growing quite unbalanced with her sorrow.”
Eleanor shuddered with a sudden chill of suspicion. “The night Henry died…”
Juliana struck her fist on the bench. “I was enraged! He had treated Isabelle cruelly that day, and I longed to see him punished. I suspected my father believed she had lied about her courses, as did I, and would be waiting in the corridor outside their chambers. It was then I decided how Henry should suffer for his actions.” She stared at her clenched fist with horror, then peeled it open with her other hand as if it had frozen in place. “I asked him to meet me in the chapel, and I told him that Isabelle had succumbed to his pleas and would be waiting for him. He thought my father was sleeping in the barracks.”
Eleanor felt almost dizzy from her racing thoughts. Once again, she felt utterly inadequate to the task. If only her Aunt Beatrice were here to advise her, but she was not. “And thus you believe you sent him to his death?”
The groan that came from Juliana’s lips was as hopeless as that of a soul facing the fires of Hell. “I meant only for my father to give him the beating he deserved, my lady! I did not mean him to die!”
Eleanor reached out and took her friend’s arm. “Again I will say it! You did not kill your brother. Your father did and with him lies the ultimate guilt. Juliana, you need only confess…”
“Confess I shall, but I will no longer live in this world!”
“Give yourself to God and enter a convent then. Your soul will find peace.”
“I must say more, my lady.”
How could there be, Eleanor asked herself, but the chill that had run through her body now settled in her heart.
“Isabelle did seem to have hope that she might conceive, and my father could not have been the one to give her that joy.”
The chill now froze Eleanor. “A man? She had seduced…”
“After what I saw at dinner that night, I did wonder if she expected your brother to share her bed that night, my lady.”
***
Eleanor stood at the window and watched as a solitary bird flew past. In such a moment, she felt alone, so utterly alone. “And he did come, did he not?”
Juliana said nothing. Then she rose and walked over to the prioress, standing so close that Eleanor could smell the sweet scent of her body. “Your brother is a man like all other men, my lady, but I believe he meant no ill.”
“The man who was to be your husband came to your stepmother’s bed and you say he meant no ill?”
“And so she may have hoped, but I do not know with certainty that your brother was complicit in her sinful desire that night.” She touched Eleanor gently on the arm. “Since Isabelle suspected when my father usually began his vigils, she would certainly have told Robert when to come and leave to avoid discovery. For this reason, I think his presence in the hall must have been by chance.”
Or not, Eleanor thought sadly. She had tried so hard to believe her brother innocent of adultery, but she could no longer ignore the evidence suggesting otherwise. “But it was Henry who came first.”
“When I heard the commotion in the hall, I waited, then left my room expecting to see my father with Henry. Instead, I saw the outline of another man and recognized the shape and size to be that of your brother. Coward that I am, I retreated to my room and prayed that my wicked plot would not bring my father’s blows upon Robert.”
“If he was coming to cuckold your father, he would have deserved such. How could you have borne such a thing, Juliana? He was to be your husband!”
Juliana shrugged. “In my heart, I believe him to be innocent for Robert is an honorable man, my lady.” The light was stronger now and, with eyes shut, she stood in the middle of the sunbeam that poured into the room with a warmth they had all forgotten in the snow-filled days. She turned to the prioress, her eyes as sad as those of Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre. “Do you know how jealous Henry was of the sisterly closeness I had with Isabelle? That jealousy was the only reason he sided with me over my wish to leave the world and take holy vows. Then he tried to taint the love with slander. When our families decided your brother and I should marry, he told Robert that he would have no joy of me in the marital bed unless his tastes ran more to boys. Your brother was chivalrous and defended me.”