After the maidservants, carpenters, and stone masons had broken their fast, they all dispersed to their various tasks. Annabel headed toward her mistress.
The older woman sighed heavily and wiped her face with her apron. “I’m off to the kitchen to prepare the midday victuals. Annabel, I need you to set to rights the upper hall. Sweep and strew new rushes and straw — that’s a good lass.”
The upper hall was now completely deserted. Annabel went to work ridding the room of the old rushes that had lost their freshness, as well as the dirt tracked in by all the workers coming in for their meals. She cleaned the entire room except for the screened-off section where Lord le Wyse slept.
She hesitated. Should she find Mistress Eustacia and ask if she was allowed to clean behind his screen, in her lord’s sleeping quarters? She would waste time going out to the kitchen to speak with her, and it seemed too trivial for that. Besides, she wanted to show Eustacia she was competent and eager to do a thorough job. Lord le Wyse was outside supervising the building work; he could be gone for hours, or he could come back at any time. What would he say if he caught her in his private area? Annabel glanced at the door and shook her head. Surely she would hear the door open and could scurry away before he saw her.
Resolute, Annabel rounded the corner of the screen. She swept around the bed and tried not to look at anything. She intended to simply finish her sweeping and move on, but her gaze was arrested by three painted pictures that were propped against the wall. They were similar enough that she guessed they were all created by the same artist. She continued with her sweeping and tried to stare down at the floor, but her eyes kept flitting to the paintings. Finally she stopped her work and bent to examine them.
The first illumination depicted a dead woman lying on a wooden bier. Around her stood many people, but they were all looking away from her, at a baby lying on a similar, smaller bier. The child was swaddled and its eyes were closed, its tiny fists resting against its chest.
The next one portrayed a group of skeletons smiling maniacally, holding up tankards as if in a toast. Behind the skeletons stood several people bent over and weeping into their hands.
Annabel ached for the person who had painted such a scene. The artist’s hurt and sorrow showed in each character, each color choice, each line. The pain-filled paintings brought to mind what she had seen last night in the forest — Lord le Wyse bent over, moaning in anguish. Perhaps these paintings held the answer to the mystery of why he was in so much agony.
The third picture was a wolf snarling at a young woman who, from her plain, ragged dress, was a poor villager or servant. A young, dark-haired man stood between her and the wolf with an upraised arm, bracing for the wolf’s attack.
Annabel leaned closer. This last image was somehow familiar, and she gasped as she remembered the story the maidens from Lincoln had told the night before about the wolf attack causing Lord le Wyse’s scars.
The sound of footsteps made her realize someone else had entered the room and was walking toward her. She’d been so engrossed in the paintings, she’d barely noticed.
“What are you doing here?” a voice rasped behind her.
Annabel spun around. Her heart leapt into her throat at the fierceness of Lord le Wyse’s tone. His eye was rimmed in red and his jaw muscles twitched as he clenched his teeth. Would he strike her? She shrank back.
“Answer me!” he commanded. “What are you doing?” His dark eye flashed as his words rumbled from deep in his chest. “No one is allowed behind this screen. No one. Do you understand?”
She opened her mouth to answer him, but no sound came out.
“Go.”
“Forgive me, I didn’t know,” she mumbled as she stumbled away from him and out of his reach, the broom still clutched in her hand.
As she darted past, she glanced up at his face. A flicker of some inscrutable but intense emotion passed over his features.
She hurried to the corner of the room where she’d left her basket of fresh rushes. Should she leave? Lord le Wyse’s presence in the room was so unnerving, she could hardly breathe.
She snatched up the basket. What else could she do but go on with her work? She grabbed a handful of straw and dried lilac and clumsily strewed the prickly stalks on the flagstones.
Footfalls echoed in the sparsely furnished room. She glanced over her shoulder as Lord le Wyse’s broad back disappeared through the entry and he shut the door behind him.
Annabel leaned against the cold stone wall. She should never have gone into his sleeping area, should never have had the audacity to examine his private things, those paintings. The memory of his angry face looming over her felt forever embedded in her mind. His lip curled and she saw the flash of white teeth and the rage in his eye.
Would she be punished? She’d wanted only to do her duty and avoid Lord le Wyse. Instead she’d enraged him, the last thing she ever wanted to do.
Chapter
5