Page 61

Marta had tried to console her, to convince her that somehow things would work out. Caryn had only stared at her and said things would never work out for her again.

Men were dead because of her. Her husband had been wounded. He had trusted her with his life and those of his people, and she had failed him.

Just as she had failed herself.

“Will you be all right, my lady?” Girart stood at the convent door, the other two men behind him. He had ever been kind to her and she had liked him. She was surprised at his kindness now.

“She will be fine,” said Mother Terese, the stern-faced abbess of the Convent of the Holy Cross. “Her sister, Gweneth, is here and there are others who are her friends. This place was once her home.”

Home? Caryn thought vaguely. The only home she had known in years had been at Braxston Keep. The only place she had felt needed… the only place she had ever really belonged.

“Come, Caryn. We must see to your garments.”

Still she said nothing. She didn’t deserve the beautiful forest green tunic she still wore. Sackcloth and ashes, and hours on her knees in prayer. Even that wasn’t punishment enough.

“You will feel better once you are settled,” the abbess was saying. “God will forgive your sins, even if your husband does not.” They traveled the dreary corridors, even more loathsome than she remembered. Mayhap because this time she knew she would never escape them.

“In a way your arrival is a blessing. In return for our care of you, Lord Raolfe has been generous. ’Twould seem he is a good man and fair. ’Tis a shame you failed him so completely.”

It went unsaid ’twas what the abbess had expected all along. Caryn had been a misfit in the convent, had plagued them all with her misadventures. She had been a miscreant and a troublemaker. She deserved exactly what she got.

She followed the tall thin abbess into a long narrow cell with a corn husk mattress at one end. This would be her home from now till the end of her years.

Caryn felt rough hands on her forest green tunic, felt the combs being drawn from her hair. Several of the sisters, one she recognized as the hateful Sister Agnes, helped her to pull on a coarse linen shift. A brown woolen tunic followed, then she was once more left alone.

Caryn sank down on the lumpy corn husk mattress. She touched the damp stone wall, rested her cheek against it. It felt damp and cold, just like her heart. Tears leaked from beneath her lashes as she curled up and closed her eyes.

Ral, I love you so. I am sorry that I failed you. She sobbed against the rough gray stone, wondering how everything could have gone so wrong.

***

Ral lifted his head from the table. Around him several knights snored while other men’s ribald laughter echoed against the castle walls.

“’Tis getting late, my lord.” Richard nudged his shoulder. “Mayhap ’tis time you went to bed.”

Ral’s arm snaked out across the table, scattering platters of leftover food, empty wine goblets, and overturned drinking horns. He reached for one of the latter, held it upright and extended it to Richard. “See it filled for me.”

Richard hesitated a moment, then motioned toward the page half-dozing in a corner. “Bring the wineskin. Lord Ral would have more.”

Leo scurried forward, filled the horn, then backed away. Ral downed the contents and held out the horn for more, which Leo reluctantly poured.

“He is ever like this since Lady Caryn is gone,” Leo whispered to Richard.

“Aye,” he agreed with a grimace. “Soon he will sleep as soundly as the others and I will have some of the men see him up to his bed.”

“I do not believe what they say of Lady Caryn. I do not believe she would ever betray her husband.”

Neither did Richard nor Ambra nor at least a half-dozen others, yet Caryn herself had said it was so.

Richard turned away from the pitiful sight Lord Ral made, his dark head lying once more among the litter on the table.

Standing in the shadows a few feet away, Marta watched him and worriedly shook her head.

For six full days he had been drinking, his movements jerky and out of control, his voice slurred, his commands barely coherent.

The pain was too great, Richard knew, the hurt too deep, too raw for him to bear. Richard understood that pain as no one else in the castle. If the woman had been Ambra, if she had turned to another, if she had betrayed him—he was not certain that he could go on.

“I will see he gets upstairs.” That from Odo, who looked as grim-faced and worried as he and the others. Along with Girart and several of the men, they lifted the huge man who was their lord and carried him up the steep stone stairs.

It was no small task that was fast becoming a nightly chore.

Richard watched the men until they disappeared down the passage, then wearily set out for his chamber. He would find succor in his young wife’s welcoming arms. Lord Ral would find only an empty bed and a hellish night of bitter memories.

Richard wondered if Caryn’s nights passed anywhere near the same.

** *

For the first few days they left her alone. To meditate, they said, to pray for God’s forgiveness. She had spent the time in bitter isolation, unwilling to leave her cell, sick inside and unable to swallow a mouthful of the dismal convent food.

Then early one morning, her tortured sleep was ended by the sound of someone entering her cell. Fatigued from her fitful rest, Caryn slowly opened her eyes, her heart beating dully.

At the foot of her pallet, she recognized the outline of a girl in a tunic the same brown woolen as her own and knew in an instant that the girl was her sister. Caryn sat up rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Hello, Gweneth,” she said softly. Even in the darkness, she could see her sister smile. The black-haired girl knelt beside her and Caryn took her hand. “You should not be up so early.” But there was no censure in her voice.

She had avoided her sister on purpose, been unable to look into those guileless blue eyes for fear of what her sister would see in her own.

Gweneth did not understand that Caryn was her sister, yet there was a sense of recognition, a glow of warmth for someone she knew as a friend.

Though she had not spoken since the day of her accident, she felt great empathy for the people around her, sharing their joy, their pain, their happiness, or their sorrow.

Gweneth seemed to blossom with goodness, so much so there wasn’t room for anything else.

In the shadows above them, sunlight crested the high barred window in the small narrow room, slanting down, warming the lumpy pallet Caryn sat on.

“The sun comes up,” she said needlessly, for already Gweneth tugged her hand, urging her up from the floor.

Pulling on her woolen tunic, she followed her sister’s lead, letting Gweneth guide her down the hall and out the door.

The lovely girl led her to the garden where she had planted a patch of marigolds.

Gweneth pointed to the sun and then to the beautiful yellow flowers.

“Aye, they are like tiny suns,” Caryn said.

Plucking one, she slid the stem behind Gweneth’s ear.

In back of them a familiar voice called out her name and Caryn turned to see her friend, Sister Beatrice, smiling and waving in their direction.

Caryn and Gweneth waved, too. Lifting her skirts up out of the way, her sister raced back toward their friend at the door of the convent, but Caryn did not follow.

Instead she glanced down at the patch of bright yellow flowers.

She was glad the marigolds brought sunshine and joy to her sister.

For herself, the sun had gone out of her life the instant that she had lost Ral.

From that moment on, though the warm yellow rays continued to beat down, her insides felt cold and she seemed to exist in darkness.

She wondered if ever the sun would warm her again.

***

“I tell you something is wrong!” Odo paced in front of the desk in the solar while Ral poured over the Braxston ledgers.

“What? What could be wrong? ’Tis not as though she has denied it.”

“It matters not what she has or has not said. I still say something is not as it seems.”

“Leave off, Odo. I tire of this foolishness. You make me wish to forget we are friends.” Ral had finally roused himself from his week-long drunken stupor. It had helped him dodge the pain for a time, but unless he climbed into the wine flagon, he could not avoid it forever.

“’Tis because we are friends that I speak to you thus. I implore you to discover the truth.”

Ral slammed his hand down onto the table. “You want the truth? The bitter truth is that my wife was in love with another man. He was greedy and ambitious. He used her to get what he wanted, but got himself killed in the bargain. That, my friend, is the truth!”

“Your wife was in love with you, not Geoffrey. If she told him your plans for the Ferret, she must have had a reason.”

“I cannot believe you defend her. You, who did not even like her.”

“That was true… in the beginning. Then I saw her care of you, how happy she made you. I saw the way she looked at you when you no more than walked into the room. I saw the way you looked at her.”

“You talk nonsense. The woman was in love with Geoffrey.”

“She was in love with you!”

Ral sighed wearily. There wasn’t a particle of his being that believed it. “Even were that the truth, the woman betrayed me. I cannot live with a wife I cannot trust.”

“I do not believe she would purposely betray you. You meant too much to her.”

“Enough of this! Why do you insist she cared for me? Nay, even loved me? Never once did she say those words to me.”

“Did e’re you say them to her?”

“Nay, but—”

“Once she spoke of the love she felt for you,” he said softly. “Never have I seen such a look on a woman’s face. A man would forfeit a kingdom for a woman who looked at him that way.”