John did not like this at all. “Can you not control your daughters, madam? Do you mean to make whores of them?”
Alida stiffened. “I have not had the care of this daughter these many years.” She managed to sound hurt that she had been deprived of this daughter for so long, as well as hint that had she had such care, the girl would be the epitome of virtue.
When John raised one eyebrow at her, she did not understand his meaning. The truth was, John found his stiff daughters, with their pious ways and their perfect manners, to be quite boring. Only the saucy Joanna interested him on the rare times when she challenged him.
Alida continued. “The corset and hood belonged to Callasandra and since that night she has not been more than inches away from the side of that young man, that Talis.”
John sat there blinking at her. All day yesterday and today Talis had been with him. They had been training in the courtyard and Talis had been especially good, alert and strong, twice knocking Hugh to the ground until Hugh was complaining about being too old for the games. In the afternoon they had all walked about the gardens, with John showing Talis where everything was, telling him what he planned to do. Since finding Talis, John acted as though he might die tomorrow, and he wanted his son to know everything.
“You are mistaken,” he said. “There has been no girl near my son.”
It took Alida a moment to still the sarcasm that came to her lips. Well did she know that a purple dragon with flaming nostrils could stand next to that boy John claimed as his son, and John would not notice it. Unless, of course, the dragon threatened Talis’s life, then John would no doubt put himself between the fire and his beloved son.
She smiled at him. “You are too busy with weighty matters to notice a pale girl near him, but she is there. She has been near him constantly these last few days. You must send her away.”
“What does she matter?” John asked, not wanting to thwart his son. “If the boy wants her, what do I care? If it makes him happy to have the girl admiring him, what does it matter to me?”
With her hands balled into fists, Alida tried to control her temper. Mere minutes ago her husband had come to her, long-faced, miserable because he was eaten with jealousy, afraid he was going to lose the adoration of his precious son if the boy married. John had tried to conceal his misery, but it had been easy to guess that he wanted his wife to give him a reason not to allow Talis to marry. Why else would he have come to his wife? Had John wanted Talis to marry he would have said yes and never considered consulting his wife.
But now that Alida had done her wifely duty and played the villain, John was tying her hands by refusing to physically separate the children. Their daily proximity was going to be crying nine months from now.
“It is not seemly,” Alida said weakly, knowing this argument was going to have no sway on her husband. No doubt if the boy wanted a gaggle of whores near him, John would allow it.
Tired of all this talk, John heaved himself up and started to leave the room. He had now dumped most of the problem on his wife; he had accomplished what he wanted. “I will speak to Rasher,” he said. “This must be done.” He would rather have hot irons placed on his body than go to that man and beg.
On impulse, Alida said, “May I go in your place?”
John looked at her.
“May I go to him and speak for you? I have heard that Gilbert Rasher has not felt kindly toward you over these years.”
At this John laughed, letting her know he knew more than she had assumed he did.
Encouraged, she smiled at him. “Perhaps a woman’s softness might get more from him. I hear he is now between wives and we have a few unmarried daughters.”
John smiled broader. “Rasher’s taste gets younger the older he gets. Although, what he needs is Edith.”
At that jest, at the thought of the prim, bossy Edith with a drunken wastrel like Gilbert Rasher, both of them laughed heartily. For the first time in years, they shared some of the intimacy they had known at the beginning of their marriage, before John gave up the idea of getting a son from her.
“Yes,” he said, his hand on the door. “Perhaps you could bargain with him.” There was gratitude in his voice. As he opened the door, on impulse, he turned back to her and kissed her sweetly on the mouth. A kiss of friendship, of years shared, a kiss hinting that there might perhaps be more later.
“I will do my best,” she said; then, after he left, she leaned on the door and closed her eyes.
For a moment, Alida leaned back against the door. This was her fault, she thought. She was the one to have caused all of this. If only on that night so many years ago she had not demanded that she be carried to the chamber where that poor girl was dying. If Alida had not interfered, that boy John loved so much would not have been born.
Stepping away from the door, Alida knew that it was too late for regrets. All she could do now was try to right her wrongs.
First of all, she could not allow that charismatic young man, Talis, to stay at Hadley Hall. Whether he stayed as John’s son or as John’s daughter’s husband, was immaterial. If Talis remained near John, John would give him everything: land as well as all his love and attention. All the children Alida had given him would receive nothing. John would ignore his daughters more than he already did; they would never get husbands. John would as soon toss his sons away as look at them again.
No, Alida had to get rid of Talis. But how? She well knew that if Talis continued asking to marry Callie, John would soon overlook his jealousy and allow the boy to marry.
Alida’s head came up. The solution was to prevent Talis from asking. The solution lay in making the children stop wanting to marry each other. What did they know about love and marriage, anyway? They were children and they had never even seen other people who might be worthy of their affections.
She had to separate them, both physically and within their own minds. If she could plant a seed of doubt within the minds of the children, make them doubt their love for each other, in time they’d no longer want to marry each other.
Yes, she thought, her mind racing with the beginnings of a plan. If everything worked out the way she planned, in the end, the only person who would be hurt would be John. And at that thought Alida’s heart soared. She wanted to hurt him.
As for the others, she would have to be quite unkind to her own daughter at first, but she’d make it up to Callie later. Later she would find Callie a husband of the best sort, a man who would love and take care of her. Talis would go to court, find favor with the queen, and marry some beautiful heiress. Her own sons would inherit what was rightfully theirs. If John were not “saving” all his money to give to Talis, Alida would be able to persuade him to dower his daughters for husbands.
Yes, Alida thought, smiling. She would be able to go to her grave knowing that she had straightened the horror of what she had done so long ago. Now, with death so very near her, she knew she had to make amends. When she saw Talis’s mother in heaven, she wanted to be able to tell her that she had taken care of that poor girl’s son.
Opening the door, Alida called to a passing maid. “Where is Penella?” she asked.
The girl was young and new. “Penella?”
“In the kitchens, ma’am,” said a woman peeping around a corner. “You sent her to the kitchens years ago.”
“Send her to me. Instantly.” Knowing that her time on earth was limited made Alida want to make amends for the bad that she had done in her life. Penella had been a good maid, a loyal one, but she had betrayed that loyalty once and Alida had not been able to forgive her. But now Alida felt that perhaps Penella had learned her lesson, and besides, Alida needed someone she could fully trust.
“Can I trust you?” Alida said, her voice cold as she looked at her former maid, standing as close to the fire as she dared. In the years Penella had been in the kitchens, she had aged centuries. Alida would not have recognized her: emaciated, grizzled hair, raw hands, deep lines in her face, stooped shoulders.<
br />
When Penella looked into her mistress’s eyes, Alida saw begging, no pride at all. She had been well punished for what she had done that night so long ago when she had warned the peasant man that he was about to be set afire. There had not been a day of her life that she had not regretted what she had done.
“You may trust me to the giving of my life,” Penella said with feeling in her voice, meaning every word she said. For a comfortable bed, for warmth, she’d now kill the peasants herself.
“Sit,” Alida said warmly. “Eat all you want.” When Penella was seated, her trembling hands reaching for the food on the table before the fire, Alida said, “I want you to tell me everything you overheard from the old woman who came here that night. She told me about this Talis and my daughter. I want to know what you remember. Every word.”
For a moment Penella thought she should protest that she had obeyed her mistress and left them in privacy, but one look at Alida’s face told her that now was not the time for pretense. She had eavesdropped on every conversation her mistress had ever had.
It wasn’t easy to clear her head enough to remember all of it, but with each delicious bite of proper food—whole food, not the leavings of others—she knew that the continuation of such food depended on what she remembered.
“She said they are two halves of a whole. If something hurt one it hurt the other. They want what is best for the other, will sacrifice personal wants for the other’s good. They cannot be separated; separation will destroy them. They are very jealous, especially the boy. He cannot bear for the girl to give her attention to anything but himself. The girl worships him, lies for him, would steal, and possibly even kill, for him. But he has a sense of honor and will commit no foul deeds for anyone.”
At this Penella could not resist thinking that a few years in John Hadley’s kitchens would knock the honor out of anyone. It was honor that had made her warn that peasant; she’d thought that what was being done to the innocent children was not “right.” It was amazing what an empty belly could do to a sense of honor. Now she’d no doubt set the fire herself if it meant a few days without hunger.
“Good,” Alida said, and poured her maid some wine. Over the years she had almost forgotten Penella’s remarkable memory. “I need your help. I need your complete discretion, but I need to be sure that I can trust you to be loyal to me and me alone.”
For a moment Penella looked up from the food, her eyes glittering. “I will do whatever you desire of me,” she said, and the words came from inside her soul.
“I want to get rid of the boy,” Alida said.
Penella put down her plate of food. “I will kill him.”
“No!” Alida said sharply. “I want to send him back to his real father. I do not want him connected to this house.” She lowered her voice. “And I have a secret that must be kept. I am dying. I have two years at the most.”
Penella did not so much as glance up from her plate at that, and Alida knew what she had lost. At one time Penella would have done anything for her mistress out of love, but now her only love was in survival. But Alida had no time for sentiment. She had to save her family, and, like Penella, she would do anything to accomplish that purpose.
28
Yes, yes, Edith,” Alida said irritably. “I know the girl is pliable, that she gives you few problems. And I know you are doing the best you can with her and I am pleased with you, but I wanted to know what you thought of her as a person.”
Edith looked blank at this, not knowing what her mother was talking about. She liked reporting accounts to her mother, liked making lists. “She chases after that boy. I mean,” she said, lowering her head and blushing, “our brother.”
“Oh, Edith, you are a mother’s dream of a daughter.”
Edith’s head came up at this. She wasn’t sure she’d ever before received a compliment from her mother. At least not like this. If she turned in account charts and managed the servants perfectly, with no flaw at all, her mother might utter a “good,” but that was all. It was a great deal more than her father, who Edith wasn’t sure knew who she was. “Thank you,” was all Edith could manage to say to this fulsome praise.
“Here your father has set down in your midst a girl like that and you have taken her under your wing and given her the best of treatment. You act as though she were your…your equal.”
Edith could make no reply to this, as she’d thought the girl was her equal.
“I can see that you are so good-hearted that you don’t even see the differences. Does it not bother you that her talk is that of a farmer? She has learned nothing of importance in her life—unless one counts growing beans as important. Perhaps she would be good at tilling the soil, since she has no hands for the lute. Did you ever see such hands! They are as wide as a plowshare. And her feet! Do you think she has ever had on a pair of shoes before now?”
Alida smiled at her wide-eyed daughter. “Look at you! I can tell you never even saw these things. You are a good daughter, Edith, the best.”
Alida walked to the window. “Edith, my dear, dear daughter, may I trust you?”
“Yes,” she said, then her voice broke. She’d never seen her mother like this, so open and kind, so needy. Edith felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes to think that she’d sometimes thought that her mother cared nothing about her, that mayhap her mother didn’t even like her. “Yes, you may trust me.”
“This boy, this Talis. Do you not think he is handsome?”
“He is my brother. I cannot judge a brother as handsome or not. It is my duty to—”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Alida said, as always annoyed with her daughter’s lack of passion. She sat on a chair opposite her and took her hands in hers. “The night he was born I was in pain. You cannot yet know what the pain of childbirth is, but during it a woman sometimes does not know all that is going on.”
Edith had no idea what was going on now.
“The night the boy was born I was confined with another woman, a dark woman, with dark skin and hair and eyes.” She looked deep into her daughter’s eyes. “Eyes like the boy’s.”
It took Edith a long time to figure out what her mother was saying. “You think the children were switched?”
At that, Alida put her hand over Edith’s mouth and looked about the empty room as though for people hiding. “You cannot say such aloud. It is something that has worried me all these years. I was too much in pain to see what baby I was delivered of. That dark girl’s child was born at the same moment. It was all so confusing.”
“But that would mean…,” Edith whispered.
Alida leaned toward her daughter and also whispered. “Yes, that would mean that Talis is not your brother. It would mean that Callasandra is your sister. She does look a bit like she could be one of my daughters, does she not?”
“Dorothy said she did, but I—” Edith decided it was better not to tell her mother how she had ridiculed her sister for saying such a stupid thing.
“Oh, Edith, what am I going to do? You can see how your father worships that boy. How could I go to him and tell him that I think there is a possibility Talis might not be his son, that he has only one more daughter, this one even less satisfactory than the others?” For a moment she buried her face in her hands. “And I have no one on earth I can truly trust with this knowledge.”
“You may trust me, Mother,” Edith said softly, feeling more privileged than she ever had before in her life.
“Can I, Edith? Can I truly trust you?” Before her daughter could answer, Alida said, “I hope I can because I have been told of a widower who is looking for a wife. He is thirty years old and has two young sons, such sweet boys who desperately need a mother. And I have been told that his wife was a pig of a housewife, so the man would be grateful for a wife who could keep his estates in order and tend to his children.”
Edith squeezed her mother’s hands so hard she hurt her. “I will do anything for you, Mother. Anything at all.”
“What a ver
y good daughter you are. Now, shall we discuss some arrangements? I think this boy, this Talis, should be given a few lessons. In dancing, and manners, playing a lute, courtly etiquette for a woman, that sort of thing. Do you think Joanna and Dorothy would like to help him with these lessons?”
Edith had to control herself to keep from laughing aloud. Each of her sisters would sell her soul to so much as touch the beautiful Talis. She wondered if Joanna’s heart could stand it if he lifted her onto a horse. “Yes, I think I can persuade them to help. Although they are very busy.” She didn’t want to sound too eager, lest her mother think her daughters did nothing useful.
“Yes, I am sure they are,” Alida said, knowing that there was not a square inch of fabric within the county that had not been embroidered by her “busy” daughters.
“And, Edith,” Alida said innocently, “do you think Callasandra should be allowed to spend so much time near the boy? Do you not think you could find enough tasks to keep her occupied? Perhaps she could manage a garden somewhere, since that is her background.” Her head came up as though she’d just had an idea. “Father Keris needs help caring for the medicine herbs.”
At this Edith caught her breath. The medicine garden was full of poisonous herbs: wolfsbane, belladonna, hemlock, foxglove, all the herbs used to produce sleep and alleviate pain, or, if improperly used, to kill. They were grown in a separate garden so they wouldn’t be confused with the kitchen herbs. The Poison Garden—as it was called—was on the top of a hill about a mile from the house in a place where no one else went.
Of a sudden, there were a thousand questions that ran through Edith’s orderly mind. “If Callie is our sister, should she be sent to the Poison Garden? It is very lonely there; something dreadful could happen to her; it is not a job for a lady. And if the world thinks Talis is our brother, how will it look to have my sisters tittering at his touch, as I know they will? And if—?”
“Edith,” her mother said sternly, “I am treating you, not as a child, but as the adult you are, and I am trusting you with this great secret. I leave it to you to keep my secret, to honor my trust. And I leave it to you to follow your own judgment as to what you do or do not do. I would never ask you to do something that you feel is against your morals.” She leaned forward. “But whatever you do, you must never hint to your father or your sisters that you think there is some doubt as to the paternity of that boy. Do you understand?”