His Duty, Her Destiny Page 20

  One rather interesting development to make Nicola smile more than ever that day concerned the attachments made by Ramond and Fergus’s sea captain to her maids, Lavender and Rosemary. She had seen them pair off and stand in deep conversation or wander off, ostensibly to admire the gardens and orchard, and she was pleased, for Rosemary’s hazel eyes had widened at the powerful physique of Master Ben Munro who, although not a young man, had all the vitality and quick wit of one who had lived and loved and seen the world. Their attraction for each other had been evident from the start.

  The bond being strengthened between the gentle Ramond and Lavender, both the same age, was equally discernible, as it had been to Nicola even at Bishops-gate, for the maid’s blue-eyed fragility was much to Ramond’s taste, as was her trim figure and neat attire, and though she was not of noble birth, the Coldynghams could afford to overlook that. Her dearest wish being to please people, she was exactly what he needed, and she glowed whenever he spoke to her.

  The evening at Holyrood Wharf was unforgettable in many ways, not only for the genial company that eased their hearts past the previous turbulent days, but also for a new and kinder relationship that gave Nicola hope that Fergus’s desire for her would last. He had been so attentive, dispelling her fears of a return to the former aloofness, keeping hold of her hand, protecting her from her brother Daniel’s tendency to coarseness after a little too much of George’s best Rhenish.

  ‘I’m getting to like your other sides,’ she whispered to him as they took the staircase to the upper floor. ‘Are there any more that I haven’t seen?’

  ‘Plenty, my lady,’ he said. ‘Turn left and I’ll show you some.’

  He did, and they spent another night of bliss, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  They had been relieved to know that, because of the number of guests expected at the funeral of the prioress, it was to be held at mid-day instead of the more usual eventide. Their re-visit to the site of Nicola’s Bishops-gate house was, however, an extra reason for deep sadness, for now the blackened frame had been felled and laid to one side ready for removal, and the whole of the ground cleared to give an uninterrupted view of the garden beyond, now laid waste and trampled by many feet. Roses still festooned the high wall, but the door that once had been concealed was now open, half-hanging off its hinges, showing all the world of the connection. Not for anything would Nicola have broadcast that private relationship to those who stared on their way to the convent next door.

  As they expected, the service and mass was attended by everyone who had known Prioress Sophie, and the church of St Helen’s Priory was packed to capacity, with many more hearing the mass from outside the west doors. The Coldyngham family were led to a place at the front where the plain coffin rested on a white-draped bier, and from there Nicola could easily visualise the petite figure who had wanted her to know the secret she had held in her heart for thirteen years, far too soon for the pain to have abated.

  If that part of Nicola’s affairs had tended to lose impetus in the last week or two, it now rushed to the fore again as her resolve to keep her promise strengthened. The prioress had known her life was drawing to its close, but not even she could have known how fine she had cut her meeting with her next-door neighbour, or how unexpected the manner of her demise. It was all heart-breakingly sad.

  At the end of the mass, Sister Agnes, the one who tended the roses, whispered a message to Nicola as the company of nuns and priests gathered into the nave for the private burial in the crypt. ‘Sister Clare requests,’ she said, keeping her head low, ‘that you meet her after the interment.’

  ‘Yes…where?’ said Nicola.

  The nun’s eyes shifted under the frown of a passing priest. ‘In Mother Sophie’s room, if you please, my lady.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Oh, yes, alone.’ The nun bobbed a curtsy and glided away into the black-and-white robed procession.

  Accordingly, having asked Fergus to excuse her for a few moments of privacy, she made her way along the denuded and charred cloister, past the broken garden door and the sad glimpse of her own garden, through the smoke-blackened portals of the annexe that had been the prioress’s last abode, and into the deserted room where the bed was as white and flat as a marble slab.

  Sister Clare was waiting for her, her eyes red with weeping, her hands clasping a leather-bound book of psalms. ‘This was hers,’ she said, softly patting the book. ‘I had to go through her belongings, but, since we’re not supposed to have any, it didn’t take long. Thank you for coming, my lady. I don’t want to detain you.’

  Her demeanour was so forlorn, her voice so pleading for comfort, that when Nicola opened her arms to her, she came into them like a child, clinging and trembling, seeking warmth. ‘The smoke came in,’ she whispered, her eyes filling again. ‘When I returned that night, the young novice was overcome with coughing and Mother Sophie was gasping. I had gone to sleep, you see, and the fire was blowing this way. And I could not carry her alone. I had to go for help…but…’

  ‘Yes, it was too late. There was nothing you could have done, Sister.’

  ‘There was not even time to shrive her, m’lady.’

  ‘But she would have received absolution long before that, surely. She knew her end was near.’

  The nun drew away, fumbling at the book and opening it to reveal a small flat package from between two pages. ‘I found this. It has your name on it. See…Coldyngham, it says. She must have wanted you to have it, eventually. Shall you take it?’

  The package was only half the size of a page, made from folded parchment and very fragile after many openings and closings. Nicola took it and sat down on a stool, opening it on her knee, taking advantage of this moment of isolation to find out what it could be that had her name on it. Momentarily, the meaning of the contents took her breath away: a shining curl of hair, just enough to wrap around Nicola’s forefinger like a ring, the colour of new copper and finer than anything she had ever seen, like strands of finest silk. Baby hair. On the inside of the package were scrawled the words in faded pencil, February 14th 1460.

  Nicola’s breathing returned slowly as if she’d been wakened from a dream. Her half-sister. The same birthday as her own. Her father’s love child, conceived in a nunnery. She would have to show it to Fergus’s mother and ask her where she was. Demand to know, if necessary. She had promised to find her.

  She folded the precious keepsake back into its packet and placed it in the embroidered pouch that hung from her girdle. ‘Did you know of this?’ she asked.

  Sister Clare nodded. ‘Only myself and two of the older nuns,’ she said. ‘No one else. The priest who knew is gone from us now. She was an exceptionally good prioress,’ she added, tearfully. ‘She understood all our weaknesses.’

  It was those kindly words that Nicola took back with her to the group who stood talking together with some of the parents whose daughters were pupils here. George knew many of the merchants, and so did Fergus. ‘Come, my lady,’ he said, going to meet her. ‘Why, what is it? You look pale, sweetheart.’

  ‘No, I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been to the prioress’s room. Just think, my father might have sent me here for my learning.’

  ‘And then we would never have met as children, would we?’

  Later on, Nicola and George had the chance to tell the acting prioress of their decision to rebuild the house as part of the priory at Nicola’s expense as a kind of memorial to their late father, though Nicola knew as well as George that it was more as an atonement for the distress at the hands of the fire she had unwittingly caused them. Overjoyed, almost overcome by gratitude, the nuns and priests were led around the shell of the house, the men discussing technical problems, the women putting their needs first and foremost, while Nicola found it almost impossible to dismiss the recurring thoughts of her father stealing out through the garden door in search of the love he had discovered. Having discovered it herself, she could understand how such a thing could have h
appened.

  ‘Be sure to keep this door in the plans,’ she said to George as they passed from the cloister into her mangled garden where Melrose had stolen lettuces. ‘The wall is still good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘we’ll build it in. It’s a perfectly good doorway. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if Father used it more than once, you know.’

  The hair prickled at the back of Nicola’s neck, and she looked at her brother carefully to see if he was being uncharacteristically frivolous. But he was not. ‘Used it?’ she said, stopping by the well. ‘What for?’

  ‘Visiting,’ said George. ‘Something I heard when I was a lad with ears that flapped whenever there was talk of women and such. You know,’ he smiled, sheepishly.

  ‘What did you hear? Who from?’

  ‘Oh, the cousins, who’d heard it from Father’s sister, who’d heard it from others. You know how it goes. There was talk of Father having set his eyes on a cousin of his who was sent into a nunnery to stop the relationship developing, and they seemed to think it was St Helen’s Priory. If it was, and I have no proof of it, then he’d be in a convenient place to make contact with her again, wouldn’t he? Strictly against the rules, of course, but these things do happen, sadly. And Father did spend a lot of time here, didn’t he? You remember?’

  ‘I remember only too well,’ said Nicola, remembering also the prioress’s account of how they first met. Love at first sight, she had implied. Or had it been love at second sight, as it had with herself and Fergus?

  ‘Were they young when they fell in love?’ she said. ‘Or was it after my mother died?’

  ‘Oh, this was well before he was first married. But you know how it can be when you carry a flame for someone. It can keep alight for quite some time, can’t it? And this cousin, if there was one, must only have been in her early years when she became a novice. Parents were so terribly strict in those days, Nick. Thank heaven ours were not like that.’

  ‘We saw very little of them, didn’t we? So this early love of Father’s was a cousin, was she? They couldn’t have married, then, because of the close relationship. Is that why she was sent here?’

  ‘Well, I can only suppose so, unless she preferred the cloistered life to one without the man she loved. Anyway, it’s only hearsay. It’s just that the presence of the door in the wall always makes me think it could have a grain of truth in it. Of course, we’ll never know now. Come on, love. We must make ready to go.’

  A cousin he could never have married. Yet they had had a child, in the face of every opposition. Was that courageous, or foolhardy?

  But by the time they had reached Fergus’s grand house, the question was still unresolved, for she knew in her heart that the answer lay elsewhere.

  It crossed her mind more than once that any sensible person would have asked Fergus himself what he knew about his parents’ adoption of an illegitimate daughter, and indeed she came close to it in the time allowed to them between their betrothal and their departure. But she was reluctant to disturb their new relationship and there was so much else to keep them occupied, luggage to prepare, last-minute purchases to be made from Cheapside and essential ingredients to gather for her simples-chest. Time for talk of that nature would have to be held over for the days of their voyage.

  Fergus’s injuries were responding well to her intimate treatments, though any physician would have scolded, telling them that the exercise they were getting was hardly the best way to a speedy recovery. She did try, that night, to get him to rest more, even threatening to make him sleep alone, but Fergus had his own ideas about what constituted rest. ‘Are you tiring of me, sweet maid?’ he said, holding her in his arms. ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

  ‘I’m very tempted to say so, just to make you rest more.’

  ‘So it would be untrue, would it?’

  ‘Very. I have always wanted you. You know that I have.’

  He leaned over her so that she felt the warmth of him upon her cool breasts. ‘Is that true, lass? Is it true that you’ve always wanted me? Even when…?’

  ‘Yes, even then. Always. But you’ve changed, Fergus. You’re much kinder.’

  ‘Yes, forgive me. There was a reason for it, I think, but perhaps now is not the time to go into all that.’

  ‘I know. There’ll be time to talk about the whys and wherefores in the days ahead. Sleep now. We have to be up at dawn to catch the tide.’

  ‘To please you, then.’ He lay back, wrapping his arms around her and letting a hand wander along her silky thigh. ‘I’ve won you, Nicola Coldyngham,’ he whispered, yawning. ‘I’ve won you. I am ten feet tall.’

  She smiled and kissed his jaw, thinking of the day just past and of the days ahead.

  The Coldyngham family were there again early next morning to see them set sail out of the port of London, to watch them head eastwards to the estuary; from there they would sail southwards to the Channel, westwards across the south coast and from there northbound through the Irish Sea. With some good south-westerlies, Captain Munro predicted a voyage of about four or five days.

  To Charlotte’s fears that Nicola might be seasick, there was only laughter. But there had been tears at the thought of losing Melrose the white rabbit until Fergus suggested that Philippa and Louis should be her keepers only until Nicola’s return, when they would have to give her back. It was agreed.

  Out into the choppy waves of the wide estuary, Lavender and Rosemary went hurriedly to lie down on their bunk-beds, leaving their mistress to stand with Fergus and Ramond on the forecastle with the wind whipping her face and the sound of the waves against the bows, pluming along each side, white and sparkling in the sun. Fascinated by the diminishing landmarks along the Essex and Kent coastline, her admiration of Fergus’s knowledge grew with each hour, and it began to seem that there was little at which he did not excel.

  The crew cast sideways glances at their employer’s woman, approving his choice and vying with each other for one of her shy smiles. The cabin-boy, a mere fifteen years old, fell in love at first sight, to Fergus’s amusement, as did the cook. Ramond decided he had work to do, but Nicola stayed on deck for most of the day, marvelling at the distant coast, the sheer expanse of sky and water, the swooping of seabirds and the nimbleness of the crew. And Fergus was never far away from her side. At dusk, they weighed anchor at a small fishing village on the Isle of Wight, where the ship rocked gently on the swell to the sound of slapping water and creaking boards, and Nicola knew the stealthy anticipation that soon her mission would be complete, after which she would be able to attend to the all-important business of her future with this enigmatic creature called Fergus Melrose.

  Recalling their first hurried, even frantic, experience of Fergus’s loving in that cabin, Nicola now had to admit that her determination to make decisions affecting her life, although rational, had not always led to perfection. The so-called seduction was a prime example, the attempt to live alone and unchaperoned was another. It was, she decided, an overreaction to events in her life that had led to a lack of faith in men. No one man in particular, just men, and a belief that she could do better. And for once in her life she was coming round to the idea—only coming round to it, mind you—that she had discovered the one man whose way of doing things was good enough for her to follow, after all.

  Turning herself to him in the narrow bunk, she felt for his face and velvety head, still awed that he now welcomed such intimacies. More than welcoming, his embrace pulled her under him once more. ‘Nicola,’ he murmured, kissing her. Not once had he used the childhood Nick by which her brothers knew her.

  ‘Fergus?’ she whispered.

  ‘I want you.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Again, and again, and again…’

  So far, the few times of their loving had been different, for now he was teaching her how to make it last through phases that ebbed and flowed like the tide, leaving room for laughter, teasing, words of admiration and gentleness bet
ween more urgent spells. Sometimes, like this one, they were silent and submerged in the intensity of their passion, using only body signs to express their needs and intentions. Finely tuned to his commands as she had always been, Nicola followed his lead, finding no reason to do otherwise when all he did seemed to be for her pleasure as well as his. And now, instead of being puzzled by his lack of words, she found it exciting to be swept along in the flood of his desire, and she began to improvise, silently fighting him, nipping at his upper arm and warding him off with hers, and refusing to co-operate with her legs.

  She felt his silent laughter upon her face and knew that he had correctly interpreted her mood of contrariness and, for a while, as he toyed with her struggles, they were well matched and attuned, making a game of something they would both win, eventually.

  But Fergus’s main advantage was in his injuries and in her care of them, and she would not beat at him as she might otherwise have done. ‘You will not always win, Fergus Melrose,’ she panted, writhing in the grasp of his hands over her wrists. ‘I shall not take pity on you for much longer, so be warned.’

  ‘That’s my beauty.’ He laughed. ‘You can fight me now as much as you wish and I shall only win when it pleases you. Is that it, Nicola Coldyngham, termagant that you are? I can tame you, lass.’

  ‘So is this the best you can do, then?’

  ‘It’ll do for now. We’ve plenty of time, and I know a good way to quieten you down. Be still now.’

  ‘I shall not be still and I shall not be quiet.’