Afton of Margate Castle (30 page)

But all the nuns, trained to a life of frugality in words, alms, and effort, spoke volumes with their eyes. Lienor’s eyes were particularly revealing, magnified and deepened by the white guimpe that surrounded her face, and she had not yet learned to keep them fully guarded and cast down. When Lienor looked at Agnelet, Hildegard was surprised to see more than concern in the novice’s eyes--fascination and a faint longing were also revealed there.

Hildegard first attributed Lienor’s unusual interest to the fact that Lienor had taken the baby in, and perhaps she felt a certain proprietary interest. Hildegard was going to rebuke the novice for this fault, understanding it completely, but she discovered Lienor’s attention to the baby was substantially different from that of the other nuns. The other nuns doted on the child, cuddled and cooed at her, but were quite willing to leave her when the bell chimed for prayers. Lienor, however, never willingly touched the child and shrank from holding her, but was the first to tug on the sleeve of a sister nun when Agnelet cried or needed care.

One afternoon at recreation, Hildegard decided to explore Lienor’s reaction to the child. She felt responsible not only for Agnelet, but for Lienor’s spiritual struggles, and Hildegard could not understand the girl’s reaction.

It was a balmy spring day in the convent garden, and the nuns sat in a circle, so none would feel left out, and each was occupied with something to mend, embroider, or weave. Speech was carefully regulated during the recreation, for conversation had to be of interest to all and maintained in the spirit of sisterly love. Fortunately, Agnelet was a favorite topic.

Hildegard smoothed the torn tunic in her lap and began to mend the tear with mathematically precise stitches. “Our little Agnelet can now sit up by herself,” she spoke to the assembled nuns. “Have you noticed this, Lienor?”

 
The novice smiled and nodded, keeping her eyes on her stitching.

“I have often remarked upon the child’s beauty. If it were not for the unfortunate deformity we all have chosen to ignore, she would be perfection itself, don’t you agree, Ula?”

Ula, an older nun, nodded in agreement with the abbess.

“In fact, I’ve so fallen in love with the little angel’s face that I confess I’ve concocted a little game with the women who occasionally visit the chapel. I find one woman with Agnelet’s perfectly straight nose, another with her bright blue eyes--”

“Excuse me, Madame,” Ula interrupted, timidly waving a thimbled finger. “But they have darkened. I believe they will be gray.”

“Gray.” Hildegard inclined her head thoughtfully. “Sometimes I even look for women with the shape of her fingers.” Hildegard casually glanced toward Lienor and noted that the novice’s hands trembled. “Sometimes I wonder if my game is wise.”

Hildegard looked pointedly at Lienor, her question repeated in her glance, and Lienor’s eyes met the abbess’s and stirred as a sea of trouble. The novice shook her head almost imperceptibly before turning again to her work, but Hildegard saw the movement and knew she had stumbled onto fertile ground. The novice Lienor knew something about the infant, and whatever the knowledge was, it was too great or too heavy to be spoken.

***

Later that afternoon, Madame Hildegard heard a quiet tap on the door to her sparsely furnished office. “Come in,” she called, folding her hands. She was not surprised when the novice Lienor came into the room and knelt before her desk.

“Rise, my child,” Hildegard responded. “What is it you seek?” Lienor tapped her chest with two fingers, the nun’s sign for “excuse me,” and Hildegard smoothed her face into a pleasant smile. “You are no bother to me, daughter. How can I help you?”

Lienor pointed to her throat, then looked heavenward and made the sign of the cross. “Your vows?” Hildegard asked. “Do you still wish to take your vows?”

Lienor nodded, then pointed to her throat. Hildegard nodded, understanding, and regretted the request she had understood. “You wish to continue your vow of silence after you have taken your vows,” she said calmly. “Are you sure this is wise, my child? One of our purposes is to sing praise to God. Can you sing in silence?”

Lienor bowed her head and lay her hand upon her heart. “Of course you can sing in your heart,” Hildegard answered, her voice softening. “Can you give me a reason for this request, my child? Surely the penance for your past sin has been paid.”

Lienor looked up and Hildegard saw that the girl’s dark eyes glistened with tears. Hildegard knew she should not ask, but she could not ignore the unerring instinct she had developed from years of searching women’s hearts. Her hand closed around the cross that hung from her neck and she inclined her head gently. “Has this request something to do with the infant you brought to me?”

The dark circles in Lienor’s eyes widened, but her face remained passive. She would not answer, and Hildegard understood. The cross slipped from her grasp, and she folded her hands once again. “My child, this request is between you and God. I trust that when you are at liberty to speak, you will let me know.”

Lienor nodded and closed her eyes. Hildegard stood and traced the sign of the cross on the girl’s forehead, wishing as she did that she could read Lienor’s mind as easily as she read her heart.

***

Afton smothered a laugh as Ambrose toddled three steps forward, then fell on his hands in the dust. The cool September breeze flipped her mourning veil off her head, and Afton snatched it from her hair and stuffed it into the belt at her waist. What did it matter, if she did not dress like a proper widow? She was an independent woman, and she cared little for what the villeins said about her. The only people who mattered anymore were Ambrose and Corba.

Wido had died in the spring, a victim of pneumonia. The doctors bled him in vain, for he tossed feverishly through four days and nights, mumbling about crops and sheep. On the fourth night, he died. Corba had been distraught, and Afton was grateful for a chance to comfort her mother as Corba had earlier cheered her.

Corba was a fount of knowledge these days, and Ambrose was Afton’s reason for living. For the first time in her life she understood the motivation behind Endeline’s passion for motherhood, and the love Afton bore Ambrose eclipsed every tender feeling she had ever known.

Corba found Afton’s single-minded devotion to her child amusing, for her attention had always been divided between her duties as a villein and the needs of her husband and other children. But for Afton, Ambrose alone mattered, and he filled her days and nights with a reason for rising, working, and caring. In him she saw not a single trace of Hubert, but only a mirror image of herself: gray-blue eyes, golden hair, and rosy cheeks, usually smeared with mud or twice-chewed food.

Afton found great contentment in caring for her son and dreaming of the days to follow. As a free man, he would inherit the mill and its business when he was of age, or he could sell the property and leave Margate for another village with a fairer lord. He could enter the service of the church, if he so desired, or sail the seas in the service of the king.

“I would even marry again, if doing so would free you to do as you pleased,” Afton whispered to her son as he nursed in her arms. “I would die for you, Ambrose.”

She kissed his forehead and smiled at his greedy suckling. Her son would not bear arms or enslave others. He would not toil in the fields of a master for little or no reward. He would never be sold, or traded, or offered in exchange for a sheep. Ambrose, son of Afton, would forever be a free man.

With the help of her mother and brothers, Afton turned her attention to running a prosperous mill. She soon found that she had a gift for working with people, and running the mill was a thousand times more gratifying than sewing or weaving tapestries. A necessity of village life, the mill was a monopoly strictly enforced by Perceval. If the villagers wished to eat, they had to bring their grain to Afton to be ground into flour. The mill operated throughout the entire year, though the busiest months were after the harvest in August and September. In those months the villagers streamed through her gate with freshly harvested grain, but even in the winter there were small bags of hoarded rye or wheat to be ground into flour. The lazy stream that trickled by the miller’s property kept the millstones turning in all but the freezing winter months, but then Afton knew she could borrow the village ox and led him in a never-ending circle until the villagers’ grain was ground.

The villagers were amazed at Afton’s manner. “The girl from the castle complimented me on my fine wheat,” one whiskered man told the village tanner. “She said it was obvious I worked hard. Can you imagine? Perceval’s steward tells me I am the laziest man on earth!”

“She let me watch the grinding,” the tanner’s wife added. “I told her Hubert had given me bad flour from good rye, so she helped me pour my grain straight through the funnel meself. Old Hubert would never have done that!”

Afton made her biggest impression when it came time for the villagers to pay her. The payment for grinding, the
multure
, was one-sixteenth of the ground grain, but Hubert had frequently demanded one-eighth as payment. “I’ve been grinding wheat at ‘ome to escape Hubert’s cheating,” one woman confided to Afton. “But my husband heard the penalty for even owning a grindstone was to lose a hand. So since you’re being so fair and all, we’re bringing our grain ‘ere.”

“Even the weights are true,” Corba told the village smithy. “My daughter took care of things. All of Hubert’s false weights are now at the bottom of the stream, rusting and rotting like he is, the cheat.”

The villagers who had come grudgingly to Hubert’s mill now came readily to Afton’s, and she found that she was able to reap enough reward from her labor to provide for herself and Ambrose. So she was not much disturbed when Corba appeared at the mill house, a frown etched into her forehead. “I have been working at the castle today,” Corba said, easing herself slowly onto a bench. “And there is news of trouble for you, my daughter.”

“How so?” Afton asked, putting her scale under the rough-hewn work table.

“The kitchen maid overheard Hector rebuke Josson because the revenues from the mill are down.”

“That is impossible.” Afton lifted Ambrose from the small cradle at her side. “I give Perceval one-fifth of my income, and that is his due. My one-fifth is larger than Hubert’s tribute, so why is there cause for complaint?”

“Because Hubert always gave Hector an extra tribute,” Corba said, sighing. “Such is the way of villeins and stewards, daughter. you do not understand. Perceval’s stewards must be paid in addition to what Perceval is owed. If they are not--” She opened her hands helplessly.

“Perceval’s steward will not be paid by me,” Afton snapped. She softened her tone and looked into her mother’s tired eyes. “All is well, mother. We have been through the worst, mama. You will see.”

***

No one brought grain to the mill on Sunday, so Afton was startled to hear the creak of her gate. A horse whinnied outside, and she thrust a crust of day-old bread into Ambrose’s hand and smoothed her tunic. “Someone’s coming to visit your mama,” she told her son, running her fingers through his light wisps of hair. “So you play here in mama’s chamber and stay quiet.”

The aged Hector, more stooped and gray than she remembered him, and his assistant stood at her door. “We bring greetings from your lord Perceval,” Hector said, his voice quavering even as he cast furtive eyes around the hall as if searching for hoarded riches. “We have come to inquire about your rent.”

The assistant cleared his throat awkwardly, and Afton studied him. She vaguely remembered his face from her days at the castle, but then he had been a boy. Now he was grown tall, but his skeletally thin frame seemed barely able to support his heavy cloak.

The young man noticed her curious glance. “I am Josson, my lady.” Hector glared at the younger man, but Josson took a deep breath and continued. “It seems that the rent you have lately paid is less than the amount pledged by your husband.”

Afton lifted her chin and stepped out of the horse, closing the door firmly behind her. “I know not what my husband pledged, for he did not allow me into his affairs. But I run a fair mill, and pay the lord his due rent of my earnings. One-fifth is all I intend to pay.”

Hector’s eyes narrowed in displeasure, and Afton returned his intense stare. Josson tried to lighten the atmosphere and waved a bony hand. “My lady--”