“Though I did not wish to be with him like that, Lothaire, I am not blameless. I knew I should not go down in the cellar with no others near. I should not have let him kiss me nor returned his kiss. When I escaped and he beseeched my forgiveness, I should have kept running. When I saw he wept, I should not have given him my back. I knew it here and here.” She touched her chest and head. “Michael says it is the gift of fear the Lord gives us, one we ought to open as soon as it appears. But I did not even untie the string. The underserving fool I was tossed the gift aside as if I wanted—” She caught her breath. “I vow I did not want what he did. But why did I not run when I could have?”
It was a question to which Lothaire also wanted an answer, and he nearly demanded she look harder to find it, but Father Atticus supplied it. How many times had Lothaire denounced his mother’s divisiveness and threatened to send her from High Castle? How many times had he let her stay though her presence disrupted the household and made life more difficult?
The priest had named Lothaire’s weakness guilt and fear—of hurting his mother’s feelings, of being disliked, of Sebille’s sacrifice that had ever been greater than his.
Laura’s situation was different, but like Lothaire she also sought to salve her guilt and fear. Rather than open the Lord’s gift, she had yielded it to one who had proven so untrustworthy he was dangerous.
“What other reasons?” he pressed.
She looked down. “Lady Maude is the one who found me in the cellar, and never did she suggest it was my fault, even when Simon claimed I was willing.”
“Of course she did not think it your fault. You were beaten!”
She drew a quaking breath. “I loved her like a mother, and she would have been further hurt were the truth of her son known far and wide. And when she later learned why he was so changed from the boy I grew up alongside and why he did that to me…”
“What did she learn? How did she excuse such depravity?”
Laura drew her lower lip between her teeth. “He was not merely humiliated during training for being older than other squires. Terrible things were done him not unlike what he…”
Lothaire was jolted by the horror of what she could not finish, but it did little to assuage the longing to hunt the knave through hell. “Had I known,” he growled, “I would have killed him.”
“Maude said you would—yet another reason to hold close the truth. It would have ruined your life more than mine. And here is another reason. It is ill enough to be misbegotten, so the fewer who know how my daughter came to be, the less likely she will learn of it and suffer for it.”
Lord, douse this fire, Lothaire silently prayed. “When Simon heard you were with child,” he said, “did he offer to wed you?”
“He did, and Lady Maude believed it the best and responsible thing to do. But I could not even bear his voice, so how was I to bear his person? More, his bed? And what kind of father would such a man be?” She shook her head. “Though ever I would be known for a harlot, I refused him.”
Imaginings of how much worse her life could have been dampening the fire, Lothaire said, “In that instance, perhaps when it mattered even more with Clarice to consider, you opened the gift of fear.”
After a long silence, she said, “I suppose I did, though I must confess I did not yet love her. Indeed, I did not think I could since she was got by violent means. But though I have not been a good and present mother, I did come to love her. And easier it was when Simon died.”
Lothaire’s mind was turning, and it took the next corner fast. “You told he was not murdered, that his death was an accident whilst in service to his lord, but I never learned how he died.”
“Aye,” she breathed as if relieved to leave behind talk of Simon and her. “When he earned his spurs, Michael persuaded his lord, Baron Lavonne, to enlist his brother as a household knight. As there was much conflict between the Lavonnes and Wulfriths, King Henry ordered a marriage between the families, and so Baron Lavonne sent men—among them Simon—to collect his bride. The two sisters fled, and though Lady Gaenor escaped, Simon overtook Lady Beatrix and sought to ravish her. They struggled and fell into a ravine, and though the fall killed Simon and Lady Beatrix sustained a head injury, she was accused of murder, and Michael believed her guilty. Wishing to confront her son's murderer, Lady Maude traveled to Castle Soaring where Lady Beatrix was held. I accompanied her, as did Clarice, who was but three. It was then we met Baron Marshal disguised as Sir Piers.”
Lothaire nodded for her to continue.
“When Lady Beatrix told her tale, Maude and I knew Simon’s death was not murder. I told Lady Beatrix I could not reveal the secret of my own ravishment by speaking in her defense, but assured her I believed her. And Michael, who had fallen in love with the lady, had to accept the little brother he had loved was not the same who died.”
“If neither you nor Lady Maude lent your voice to Lady Beatrix’s defense, how was she acquitted?”
“I was not there, but Maude said that despite her head injury, she told a convincing tale.”
Remembering his audience with Lady Beatrix at Castle Soaring, Lothaire now understood her faltering speech. And knew what she had nearly revealed before closing her mouth—Laura's ravishment.
“Too, she had Michael at her side,” Laura continued, “and Maude testified for her. She gave no details but told her son had ravished another.”
Lothaire gripped the back of his neck. “I am glad she did right by Lady Beatrix, but she did not do right by you.”
“She gave my daughter and me a home and was the best grandmother—”
“That Clarice never knew,” Lothaire inserted.
“It could not be helped.”
“Your daughter—our daughter—believes you loved her father, that it was the loss of him that made you a shadow.” Recalling Clarice had told Lady Maude encouraged the girl to allow her mother to sleep because her nights were long, Lothaire ached more for all Laura had suffered. And now he better understood why she had sacrificed herself to remove her daughter from Owen and the boy she feared would ruin Clarice.
Only when he trusted his voice to carry did he ask, “Will you tell Clarice the truth when she is older?”
“I was certain I would not, that it would disturb her to know the circumstances, and still I do not think I shall, but she is stronger and more determined than me and I fear—”
“Nay, Laura, she is not stronger nor more determined, though we shall aspire to make her so. For now she is a girl, and you… I saw what you did to your attacker. Had I not come—”
“He would have done to me what Simon did.”
Lothaire shook his head. “I do not think so.” It was something of a lie, but only something. He believed she would have prevailed as much as he feared she would not have. But if she thought it possible she herself could have prevented the ravishment, perhaps she would sooner heal from the horror of once more finding herself an object to be desired and taken.
“I thank you,” she said softly.
He kissed her forehead. “What do you fear for Clarice?”
“That one day her curiosity may have me so pressed into a corner I shall have to tell her just enough about her father for it not to be a lie. But even that seems too much.”