Laverna Lodge
The Year of Our Lord 1371
In the forty-fifth year of the reign of Edward III
Three nights later, I put my plan into action. I knocked on my husband’s bedroom door, took a deep breath, and entered.
Turbet didn’t acknowledge me. Seated on a chair near the window, a blanket over his lap and another around his shoulders, he was reading. A candle flickered on the table before him and a few melted in sconces on the walls. Every time I came to his room (which wasn’t often), I was overwhelmed by the tapestries. Every single one depicted knights bearing down on distressed naked maidens, swords drawn. They froze my blood. Sweet Jesu. Imagine going to sleep with those images in your head. Mayhap, that’s the kind of sport my husband enjoyed; I wouldn’t know as he never drew his sword from its sheath in my presence. I shuddered, closed the door, and joined him.
A goblet in one hand, Turbet’s other sat atop a document unfurled in his lap. His gaze was fixed outside. Snow brushed against the mullioned window, its gentle touch a beckoning whisper. Behind him was the huge bed, the curtains drawn to keep in any warmth. An empty pallet was made up beside it. Good, Nicholas wasn’t there.
I’d almost reached his side when he spoke. “I don’t recall summoning you.” Wine stained his lips, made his words thick. He’d consumed a few. Whether this would work in my favor, I’d soon learn.
“You did not, sir. But I need to speak with you.”
“Well,” he said, putting his goblet down, winding up the document and flinging it on the table. It struck the top, rolled a few times then came to a halt against the jug. “I don’t need to speak to you. And I certainly don’t want to hear you prate. Begone.” Without even looking in my direction, he flicked his fingers.
Heat rose up my neck, ignited in my chest.
I raised my voice. “I’m not certain, sir, who it is you think you’re addressing, but I’m your wife and you will hear what I have to say.” I stood behind the chair opposite, gripping the top.
“I don’t care for your tone,” he said loudly. “Out, I say. You’re not wanted.”
“Oh, you’ve made that more than evident from the moment we married. To be exact—” I paused, “since our wedding night.”
His top lip curled in a snarl. “And whose fault was that, eh?”
“As I recall, you were the one who had difficulty ah . . . how shall I put it, standing to attention.” His eyelids fluttered. “Fulk Bigod never had such problems and he was older than you by at least ten years.” My heart was slamming against my ribs, I was standing on my tiptoes, ready to flee.
“You dare to say such things to me?” He began to rise from his seat then changed his mind. I wasn’t worth it. “The reason I couldn’t . . . I didn’t . . .” he searched for words, spit gathered in the corner of his mouth, “was because I find you physically repulsive—” His hard eyes met my steady gaze. “And your freckles abhorrent.”
If he thought his words would hurt, then he was mistaken. Not only had I heard them before, I knew they weren’t true. I’d caught the looks he gave me when he thought I wasn’t watching. I knew he’d told Fulk on many occasions he was fortunate to have such a pretty and willing wife. The men he invited to the house made it clear they found me desirable. The only exception was Mervyn Slynge, but his ward, the obnoxious Kit, made up for that. Why, every time I saw him he undressed me with his eyes. Lest you think me vain, I knew I wasn’t everyone’s mazer of ale, but I also suspected my husband was insulting me to mask his own failings. Part of me felt pity, part of me felt fury I was cheated of my wifely rights, the comfort and pleasure of sex. But this wasn’t the moment to be thinking about that. It was the last thing I wanted from this man.
With a sneer, his eyes raked me from top to toe. “Why, you’re covered in the huckery things.” His wrist flipped in the direction of my breasts. “They’re all over your chest, your great heavy nugs—why, a babe would crawl over iron nails to escape from those things. They’re like overstuffed cushions and just as likely to suffocate any soul who comes near them.”
I curled my hands into fists at my side. I wouldn’t bury them beneath my arms, hide the bosoms he dreaded, as much as I wanted to. Instead, I thrust them forward.
“They’re even on your quoniam, I’m sure. Marks of the devil, placed there to sap a man’s seed, his desire.” He began to make dark, hollow sounds that might have been laughs. They ceased as quickly as they began. “If I couldn’t perform, the fault’s not mine, but yours, you Satan-sent daughter of a whore-son.”
His lungs were spent bellows as he wheezed and puffed, staring at me, waiting for me to collapse under the weight of his contempt. When had he become so very old? So very cruel?
I let the torrent wash over me and, instead, leaned over the chair so my heavy nugs swung, and exposed my gapped teeth by giving him a huge smile. Even if Turbet Gerrish hated my body, it had afforded my first husband and me much joy.
I willed my heart to cease its wild percussions, my breathing to slow.
Turbet grabbed his goblet and sank further into his seat.
Below, the sounds of the house continued. Low voices, footsteps, a shout. A door closed, another opened. Wind whistled through the window, making the candle gutter before it took hold again. A strong flame, firm. A trickle of sweat made its way from the corner of my brow, down my neck, and disappeared beneath my shift. I held my ground; watched my husband. His brows knitted, his hooded eyes roved back and forth, back and forth from window to table, to his lap, with a mere flash in my direction. Without a nightcap I could see how thin the hair on his head had become, his scalp gleaming. It made him look frail. Aye, weak. Easy to control . . . I knew this was what his first wife had done—dominated him and the household, forcing him to cede to her will through the withholding of not just sexual favors, but money, his children’s affections, hers. It had been a savage thing to do, whatever her reasoning, but that didn’t give him the right to inflict the same punishment upon me. Nor was it an excuse for me to deploy her tactics to have my way. But since my queynte didn’t work as it had with Fulk, I wasn’t left with much choice. I inhaled and prepared to go into battle.
Before I could, he spoke. “You forced me to say that. You wouldn’t leave when I insisted. But there it is, you have the truth. I find you—”
“I know,” I said, walking around the chair and sitting down. “I know.” I clasped my hands in my lap. I was afraid if I didn’t, I’d lean over and punch him in the face. “I’m not deaf. I heard you clearly along with the rest of the household. You’ve said it before. Many times. Lest you’re forgetting, I’m also an ugly little bitch. It’s not slipped my memory.”
Did he flinch?
“I’ll have you know,” I said softly, “I’ve been called worse.”
(Just for the record, I hadn’t—not then.)
He glanced at me.
“They’re just words.” (I was yet to learn the power they had to inflict injury—The Poet taught me that.) “But none of that matters,” I continued. “And nothing you say, no crude insults or unkind words, will prevent me from speaking tonight. All I ask is that you listen very carefully.”
He released a long, weary sigh, drained his goblet, then quickly refilled it. He didn’t offer me any.
“You’re a stubborn bitch, aren’t you? I knew that already, of course. Fulk used to say much the same, only he found it endearing.”
My heart swelled.
“Funny, I thought I might too,” said Turbet wearily. “Very well. If it’s the only way I can get you to quit my sight, have your bloody say and leave.”
Somewhere in the house, something was dropped, the sound reverberated. A hound barked and the others joined. There was a scurry of feet, low voices, something being dragged, then silence. I said two Ave Marias in my head and, just when I thought my husband’s patience would expire, began.
“I know you killed Fulk Bigod.”
There was a beat. Turbet blinked, then sat bolt upright. “I what? Wait. What did you say?”
“I said,” speaking coldly, “I know you murdered Fulk.”
Honestly, the look on his face was beyond priceless.
“Murdered him? Are you mad, woman?”
“Aye, mad, bad, and ugly, ask my husband. God’s truth, I know you’re responsible for Fulk’s death and nothing you or anyone else says will persuade me otherwise.”
It was the longest he’d ever held my gaze. Then he drank. When he’d wiped his mouth, he began to shake his head. “I’d nothing to do with your late husband’s death and you know it. You’re non compos mentis. Evil spirits have deprived you of your senses. Thank God and all the saints I never sarded you lest a child result.”
“I’m in perfect health, thank you, husband, and my mind is sound. I think when I agreed to marry you, it was a little unhinged. That’s why it’s taken until now to know that what I suspected all along is true: you killed Fulk.”
“Repeating it over and over doesn’t make it so, woman. But, alright, I’ll play your little game. Tell me how I killed him.”
“By gifting him with a fur that was infected with pestilence.”
“What?”
“Aye. The moment my husband was covered with the fur you brought to the house, he sickened. He died swiftly and painfully, thus leaving his widow and her inheritance at your disposal. Those lands you’d been trying to acquire, which he refused to sell, were in your grasp. It was a cunning, wicked plan but it worked.”
His jaw dropped, he started forward in the chair, his goblet forgotten. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples. He opened one eye, then the other. “You’re really quite mad, aren’t you?” He pulled the blankets around his shoulders and tucked another around his legs. “In the morning, I’ll have Jermyn make arrangements for you to be sent to St. Bethlehem’s in London. You’ll be better off there. We all will.”
Ignoring his threat, I continued. “You went out of your way to purchase a fur that arrived on a vessel from Kaffa, where the pestilence was raging. You placed it among the other cloths you’d imported and delivered it straight to our door. Straight to my husband. You never touched the fur—or the other cloth for that matter, not even when they were unloaded in Bath. I know, I asked.”
“Why would I touch it? Touch them? There’s no reason. I’ve servants to do that for me. The carter—” He pressed his lips together as he remembered. The carter had died. “It was God’s will, a great misfortune.” His voice quivered, his fingers curled around the edges of the blanket.
“Not only did you kill my husband, but you infected at least four other families in Bath, causing the deaths of thirteen people. Not that you cared; you got what you wanted. Fulk’s land and sheep to sell and thus maintain your extravagance—as anyone in town will admit, you didn’t use it to pay your debts.”
Turbet stared at me for a long, long time. “What utter rubbish.” He began to chuckle. “Oh. My. They’re going to love you in Bedlam. You do know that people pay to stare at the loons through the gates each day? What entertainment you’ll provide. Why, I’d pay a groat to listen to your fabulations. Your friend Geoffrey must be proud.” His laughter died suddenly. He poured more wine, regarding me with amusement over the rim of his goblet. “You stupid little fool. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life!”
I stood, smoothing my shift, pressing it into the contours of my body. I fetched another goblet and helped myself to the jug. I took a long draught. It was good.
“Neither have I,” I said and sat back down.
Ready to contest, to argue further, Turbet was momentarily lost for words. “Did I hear alright? You admit this is nonsense.”
“Aye, I do. It’s a complete and utter fabrication. To you. But, imagine this, dear husband. Tonight, the moment I leave this room, I start to tell the servants this version. I whisper in Jermyn’s ear, Milda’s, the blacksmith’s, all of the household, including your unhappy tenants.”
Turbet sat up straight. “I won’t allow it. I’ll call for Jermyn this moment and have you gagged.”
I shrugged. “Matters not what you do. Word will still escape. Do you think I’ve kept this to myself?”
His eyes bulged, his cheeks paled.
“All too soon,” I went on, lowering my voice, making it sinister, “all of Bath will know what I’m accusing you of. How long before your fine friends, Master Mervyn, the bishop, and your fellow merchants, learn what you’ve done? Master Kenton? Then where will your reputation be, husband? You’ll be known as a levereter—corrupt to the core. Do you think people will keep giving you credit, buying your wool, your cloth, if there’s even a whisper of doubt attached to it? If someone is just a tiny bit anxious that what they’re buying might, just might, be infected not only with pestilence but with the sins of the man who used such a method to dispatch his enemies?”
“Enemies? But Fulk wasn’t my enemy, nor those poor souls who died from the sickness. I don’t have any enemies.”
“Everyone has enemies, husband,” I said carefully. “Especially those who work hard to cultivate the esteem of others but never repay them—in coin or kind. Fancy dinners and promises only go so far—ask the King, ask the princes. And what about your arrangement with the monks and other merchants? What if a whisper of your business with Master Kenton or the Hollander merchants was to escape? What would the guild do to you, your business? Other merchants? What damage would such knowledge do to your standing then?”
Turbet shook his head in horror. “Dear God. I’ve married a hedge-born Jezebel.” He stared about in dismay, his cheeks ashen, his eyes sunken in the half-light. “No one’s going to believe you,” he said hoarsely.
I leaned back in my chair and put on my best smirk. “Oh, husband, I thought you understood. I don’t need anyone to believe me. I just need them to listen, something you’ve failed to do for a long time.”
Turbet was listening now. I could almost hear the whirring of his mind as he calculated the damage such a rumor would do. Whether it was true or not, made not a whit of difference. To a man who prided himself on his reputation, who did everything in his power to maintain a facade of wealth, business acumen, congeniality, popularity, this would be a death knell.
His hands began to shake. “This . . . this . . . it would ruin you as well.”
“What do I care about my position? What is it, anyhow? I’m hardly a wife. You keep reminding me I’m nothing.”
“I . . . I can change that.”
“Even though you find me physically repulsive?”
“I didn’t mean it that way, I—”
“I don’t care whether you did or not.”
“Wife, Eleanor, I want—”
I held up my hand to prevent him saying more. “I don’t care what you want, Turbet Gerrish. It’s my turn to tell you what I want, what you must do if you don’t want this nasty rumor to spread . . . like a personal pestilence.” I lowered my hand.
“Go on.”
Better than “begone.”
“You’re to give me control of not only the household, but all your business interests that involve the sheep, pastures, villeins, and their lands.”
His eyes became so round, I thought they would roll out his head. “Surely, you jest? You? The household is already yours, the villeins, I can concede, but the sheep? By them you mean wool production.”
“I do.”
“Never!” he exclaimed, flinging himself backward in his chair, fist thumping the arm. “Why, it’s men’s business, my business. It’s what I do. I can’t have a woman running my affairs. I’d be a laughing stock. I’d be seen as a loiter-sack, a weak man who allows his woman unnatural authority.” He heaved himself out of the chair, the blankets pooling in a heap on the floor.
He began to pace, words tripping out of his mouth.
I had to put a stop to this. I leaped up and grabbed a hold of his arm, wrenching him around to face me. “I haven’t finished.”
“Oh, I think you have.”
“No one can call you a cumberworld or whatever else you’re imagining if they remain ignorant of our arrangement.”
He halted.
“If they don’t know I’m managing your affairs, how can they say anything? Cease your pacing. Sit. Listen to me, Turbet Gerrish.” I led him back to the chair, poured him another drink, pushed it into his hand. I piled the blankets over him once more, fussing like a real wife, as if there was affection when facts were, I didn’t want him so cold he couldn’t focus. I knelt before him, my hands gripping either side of the chair. He was a captive audience. “How do you think Fulk’s fortunes improved once he married me?”
Turbet gave a half-shrug. “I never asked . . .”
“It was me. I was the one who advised him about increasing the flock, hiring extra servants so I might weave. It was me who trained the others, just as I am now. And I was doing it well before Fulk’s illness. But I can do so much more. Nay. Your task is to listen,” I said sternly, when he tried to interrupt. “I know you’ve sold my land to the Abbey, well, most of it, that you lease other parts and demand the villeins do boon-work. But, just as you have with your lands, you haven’t given them enough to be self-sufficient, you’ve given too much over to pasture. Aye, I know you intended the villeins would card and spin and maintain our wool supplies, but that idea went to hell in a handbasket when they up and left, didn’t it?”
He had the grace to look uncomfortable.
“Increasing the size of the flock the way you did, without selecting which sheep to mix with those we already had, brought disease. We’ve lost almost half. Thus the villeins were not only deprived of land they needed to grow food, they lost the extra income from spinning fleeces as well.
“What did you do about that? Instead of making concessions so they remained, cultivating and strengthening the sheep we kept healthy—and that was only because I insisted they be kept apart—you sold more land to buy more sheep, sheep that have a poor-quality coat which no one wants to buy.”
“Aye, but in time, with inter-breeding, the quality will improve. The flock will be fine.”
“The flock might be, eventually, but what about your tenants? My tenants? Those who haven’t left to seek better conditions? They’re hungry and sick. Do you know they’ve been out working the fields in the snow? Aye, shoveling it away so they might till the soil, tend whatever they’ve planted. Do you think they’ll remain once the snows melt and they find the crop has failed? Nay. They’ll be off to find a better master. Somewhere they can at least earn a living. It isn’t hard these days. Masters are prepared to pay well for good laborers. How will you maintain your lands when there’s no one left to work them? How will you make money when you’ve been forced to sell all you own?”
I didn’t add, all I own as well.
Turbet considered my words, then pouted. “And what would you have me do, eh?”
I sighed. How could he not see what to me was so obvious?
“What you should have been doing in the first place: buying wool from the markets, from the goddamn monks if you have to, and giving it to the villeins to spin on our behalf. Alyson and the others can weave it. As can I. In the short term, we can raise the prices of our cloth to cover the cost of buying in and still make profit. As it is, we’re adding to our debts, watching any earnings being pissed against the wall.” I hefted the jug. “After it has been drunk.”
I sat back on my haunches.
“Unless you let me make some much-needed changes, Turbet Gerrish, cede control to me, I swear on God’s bones I will take us all down. At least if I do it, it will happen quickly instead of the long drawn-out way you’re going about it. At least my way will only impact those it deserves to.”
“I don’t deserve it,” he whimpered.
I could barely stand the sight of him. How could I have once thought this man husband material? He wasn’t worthy to lick Fulk’s boots, covered in cow shit and all.
I rose. “Think on what I’ve said, Turbet. I’ll give you until the morrow. Remember, no one need ever know it’s me behind the decisions. It will appear as if it’s all you. Your reputation won’t be harmed, I assure you.”
“Won’t it?” he asked. “Seems to me whichever way I decide, it is. If not my reputation, then my life. What man gives his wife authority?”
I was heading to the door when he spoke. I turned. “A man who has no choice.”