Seed of the Broom Read online

  Kate sighed, fastened the thongs on the purple cloak and left Edgar’s room. Men were coming from their various details to warm themselves by the hall fire. The late afternoon was turning dark and grim. “Do not forget your appointment tomorrow,” she said passing the Welshman with the bandaged head.

  “Indeed not lady.” He twinkled a smile at her. “The pain has gone and I swear you are physician in disguise.” It was a rare compliment and Kate smiled her pleasure.

  The dark spiraling staircase as damp, the wall where she brushed it with her hand, wet and cold. She shuddered. The castle needed much repair. Lord Mellor had let it go to wrack and ruin. Well, it was not her concern. The new lord would have to see to such things.

  As if such thoughts were a magical incantation, as she turned on the spiral he was there. Even in the blackness it was impossible to miss him, for his size and breadth were more imposing that even the blacksmith’s.

  Kate’s heart thudded ominously. As he stepped onto her step, she pressed herself back against the walls, the more to keep a distance between them than to allow him to pass.

  “Kate,” he said, his voice dark and husky. “ Oh Kate…” A hand reached for her waist.

  “Please…” The words caught in her throat, the do not, strangled by the terror that came with the tumultuous movement in the very pit of her belly.

  “Please is pleasing to hear, Kate, but why did not you not come to me? At night? I have waited for you…”

  “Come to you?” She gasped out the words.

  “I could not come to you. The boy is close at hand…oh Kay…” He pushed close to her and she could feel the rough chilling dampness of the wall at the base of her neck. If only that wall would take her into it, away from this man.

  “Why should I come to you?” she asked, moving her head away as his own bent closer. His lips were cold against her ear, his tongue warm and luscious against her ear lobe.

  “To complete that which we started. Katy come to me, tonight at nine of the hour.”

  “You are surely mad,” she pushed against him and importantly, against the glorious feelings that were warmly gushing through her. She could feel the ache starting again, that dangerous throbbing that made her brain useless, that drove common sense out of her, that made her long only for things that delighted her flesh.

  “Mad with desire, aye that is a kind of madness.” His hand moved across her bodice, reached upwards to where the full mounds of her breast spilled from her gown.

  “No, do not do that, I shall not permit…”

  “What? Come Katy, you are as hot for me as I am for you!” His hand had manipulated a breast from her bodice, his mouth on the pink center, his tongue teasing until the nipple hardened, sending wanton feelings down to the very depth of her being. Her legs had turned to water. She felt limp with desire. He pushed against her. Even through her heavy skirt she could feel the eager thrust of his maleness and her own body longed to move against that hardness. She had to stop it, had to make it end, had to waken her sleeping mind. Remember, she cried to herself, he would make you a whore.

  He was unprepared for her sudden resolve. Her hand rang loudly against his cheek in that hollow spot. It must have hurt, for he gasped.

  “Woman you will not tease me!” his voice was chilling, all the more to fear than this rage. That much she had learned about him.

  He moved to thrust her back against the wall, but her hand went up to his hair. She pulled and tugged, his own hands going up to pull her hands away. His bulk held her fast against the wall. He seized her hands at last, pulling them free, a bundle of auburn hair in her fist.

  “Vixen would you scalp me?”

  “I hate you!” she spat.

  When he replied it was in an angry whisper. “I will have you, whether you wish or no. No King’s whore plays fast and lose with me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  A hand clutched at the ermine on the collar of her gaping cloak, mangling the fur. “You wear his things, but you shall wear mine after I have had my way. For a time you will please me, but just until I am weary of you, Kate. I will brand you with my brand and enjoy every moment. You may enjoy it or not. It doesn’t matter, but I tell you, no teasing whore stirs my blood and then runs away.”

  “I never was…was…you…How can you even think such a thing!” But he went then, leaving her alone and afraid, trembling with cold and, she dare not even admit to herself, a kind of precarious thrill. He stirred her blood and what was worse, he knew that he did!

  Instead of going to her apartment, she ran back down the stairs, out into the dismal chill of late afternoon. A groom was found and bullied into saddling a horse. He was then sent to inform Edgar that the lady had gone to the Abbey.

  There were no travelers staying at the Abbey. Pilgrims, peddlers and traveling folk did not take to the roads until late in the year. The brother on the gate fussed about her like a mother hen, taking her into a small room that had a huge fire, bringing a goblet of warmed wine, promising to have someone attend her horse.

  In moments the Abbot appeared. More severe looking, his hands folded in the sleeves of his cassock, he was a man at home in his surroundings, and completely in control. He led Kate to the settle by the fire, taking the opposite one for himself.

  “I…,” she began. “Father forgive me, I…the lord, the Welshman he would be familiar with me.” Kate buried her burning cheeks in her hands.

  “My daughter,” he replied severely, “he vowed to protect you, that he would not….” The Abbott hesitated. “I shall speak to him,” he said at last.

  “Oh Father, I confess, I cannot understand, I was not…could not somehow be adverse to those attentions, that I was not a victim as such, but a conspirator.”

  “I see,” the Abbot said with some emphasis, “and these attentions have led to sin?”

  “No, not a…” What had the lady Anne told her? The name, the word would not come. Their silence was stifling. Somewhere beyond the room Kate heard the clatter of pans, as if a pile had fallen over. The Abbot cleared his throat but did not speak. The word, a word whether it was right or wrong she was not certain slipped into her mind. “Not consummated,” she said.

  “Well then no harm done.”

  “But still he promises, he tells me that he will.” She shrugged shyly. “… without my will. Oh Father, what am I to do?”

  The Abbot mulled over the problem for such a long time that Kate was certain he knew no answer. And how could she expect a celibate to know the vagaries of human needs anyway?

  “You will answer his ardor by coldness. You will avoid being alone with him. I shall speak to him on the matter.”

  “That will make a naught of difference. I suspect he has no faith.”

  “My child you must not even think such things. His mother, despite her fall, has brought him up as a good Catholic.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “But you must also still your own feelings, daughter. I know it is hard, but you cannot allow yourself to be tempted to fall from grace. You were a young bride. Your husband was stolen from you before you could bear fruit of that union. But you must not allow this man to be familiar. You are of a good family. One day you will have a husband and bear him children and find peace.”

  “Yes Father.”

  The Abbot mused some more. “When you leave I shall give you a draught. Harmless to be sure, but it soothes the passion of young men. You will give some to the lord, without his knowing. It has no taste.” He smiled a little sadly. “Sometimes our younger brothers need such medicine. It can be difficult to deal with the craving of the flesh. Bless you, my child, I shall give you no penance, your own tormented conscience is penance enough. I could tell that something troubled you earlier this day, when I saw you.”

  “So many things torment and worry me father,” she admitted.

  “The least not your position. Why did you not tell me the truth?”

  Her head jerked up, her eyes wide in a pale face.<
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  “I saw the boy today. Mellor was not so fair of face to produce such a son. Only the one who bore the standard of the sun was so fair.”

  Kate fell to her knees, taking the Abbot’s hand, imploring his forgiveness, begging him to keep their secret.

  “Enough has been done, daughter, enough blood spilt. I have known that blighted family for many years. Their mother was a girl alongside me, Cecily, the Rose of Raby, so fair, so lovely, so strong. I will never betray one of her family. I would never harm the seed of the broom.

  When I saw Richard today, I knew the reason for your fear of Margaret Beaufort. If only I had known, then I should never have brought your plight to her attention, but fear not, they will see you as nothing on their grand stage. They shall not trouble to come, only to give counsel. If anything should happen, then you must send the boy here. We shall hide him and protect him and never speak his name. Now stand, daughter, come sup with me this night. We will have a room prepared, for it is too grim now for your to travel back..”

  * * * *

  “Where is your stepmother?” Caradoc demanded as Richard took his place at table. “I have commanded that no food be taken to her. She must dine at table as we all do.”

  “My stepmother has gone to visit the Abbot my lord.”

  “Gone to visit the Abbot?” he roared. “Why has she gone to visit him at such a time? Besides he was here only today.”

  “Do not bellow at the boy,” Dame Caradoc said, in a low voice. “It is not his fault. If any is to blame then ‘tis you!”

  “Me, how am I to blame?”

  “She will confess all to the Abbot you know.”

  “A pox on her if she does!” Then because he knew his mother had somehow trapped him, he murmured craftily, “Anyway what does she have to confess?”

  “Do not try to fool me. I know you. I have seen you watching the lady. I can read your face.”

  “I am not a child, Mother. Do not treat me as one.”

  “You behave like a child, wanting something that can never be yours.”

  “What do I want that I cannot have. I am lord here, everything is mine,” Caradoc said, feeling the stirring of discomfort.

  “You will never win the lady.”

  “I should never aspire to win that harridan!”

  “You lie,” his mother said, but lightly. She knew how far she could go with her son.

  Efan smiled. “Do you think that a King’s whore is too fine for me?”

  “She is no harlot and you know it well enough,” Dame Caradoc was quietly insistent.

  “I know more than you about her. I will go and fetch her back. She has no right to leave without my permission.”

  “As you will, of course,” Dame Caradoc said. “But it is very late. You perhaps will have to stay at the Abbey should you go. The path will be too dark for you to return.”

  “Aye, there is that. I long not for a night in a Monk’s cell. She will return in the morning. She will not leave the whelp.”

  Women and Priests, he thought, leaning back in his chair. The moment things were made difficult they ran and hid behind a Priest’s skirts. The Abbot would clip back his ears and hear everything she had to say. Then he would come and jaw at him. His mother was jawing at him still, her voice soft, the lilt of her language pleasant to his ear, but the content decidedly unpleasant. Women. They clung together against men!

  She was a simple woman, his mother, and did not understand the ways of the English. She had not seen the things that he had. Her own unworldliness at variance with the brutal shame her own people had made her suffer. His first memories were of her. Steamy hot, or chilling cold, dark cavernous kitchens. The clatter of pots, the delicious smell of meat roasting over a fire, he had been strapped to her back as she labored over seemingly endless heavy cooking utensils, scrubbing them clean. Her hands red and raw, sometimes her finger nails broken and bleeding. Later when he could walk, he was left tied to a nail in the wall, able to move only a small space in that noisy, hellish environment.

  Their home was a small hovel, one room, always dark, their bed straw, sometimes damp, occasionally the straw was so dry that it prickled the back of his neck like fine needles. Her parents had had driven her from their home, driven onto the inhospitable roads of Wales.

  First she had found refuge at a convent until he was born. The Abbess had then found her a position at a nearby castle. Instead of living within the walls, forever at the mercy of the other servants jibes, his mother had chosen to live in the hovel, so at least they could have some peace and she could be alone with her son.

  She could have pretended to be a poor and helpless widow, but she would not lie. He had inherited from her that stubborn streak and some might say, overbearing pride in telling the truth at all times. He would never lie, no matter the consequences.

  “Enough woman,” he said at last. “I shall hear no more of her virtues. She is not worthy of your admiration. I tell you, she is merely a King’s cast off!”

  “Did she tell you that she was?” the Dame asked softly.

  “She did not have to. I know women, and I know the nobility. Yea gods she wears a king’s cloak!”

  At dawn the lord’s horse was heard, its hooves striking the cobblestones. He had gone, a serving wench told Dame Caradoc when she asked, to visit the Abbey and to bring back the lady. Dame Caradoc smiled to herself. She was not wrong after all!

  * * * *

  The portly monk handed Kate two phials. One red, one white. The red had a scratch on the stopper. That was the one for the lord. The other as for Richard, a restorative. Fascinated, Kate spent sometime with the monk discussing remedies and cures, he giving her tips on the latest methods, adding to her wisdom of herbs and medicines. She would never be as good as he, for he had fine pans and jars for infusing and storing. He did nothing else but make cures and balms and lotions.

  “Come again,” he urged. “We may spend a day at work.” Then he gave her a leather pouch for the phials. “Do not mix them,” he said with a smile, as Kate fastened the pouch to her girdle

  “Oh no, I shall not do that. You think this will help my stepson? He is quick to exhaust.”

  “He is growing, that is part of his trouble. He is changing from boy to man and it is a strain. His strength is being tested to the limit, but my cure will speed recovery.”

  They left the cellar and slowly mounted the stairs, talking still of pills and potions. Rarely did the monk meet someone who was so interested in his profession as this lady. People often came for a cure. They did not care what was in that cure, only that it relieved their ailment.

  As they came from dimness into a pool of weak sunlight, a novice waited for them, as yet his hair still sprang from his head in full dark curls. He was very slender at the jaw like a hungry wolf. Something about him made Kate shiver a little. That lean face and those long narrow eyes held a cast that was neither warm or glowing. He did not seem to belong in that community.

  The Apothecary Monk was the youngest son of a prosperous merchant. The Abbot she knew came from a very old aristocratic family. The novice seemed like the son of a peasant, but surely, she questioned herself that did not prevent the lad having a vocation. She was being extremely uncharitable.

  “Lady the lord has come to collect you,” the novice informed her, his tone revealing an unpleasant amount of awe. It was when he went on to explain that Lord Mellor waited with the Abbot in the solar, that she realized that his accent was the same as Caradoc’s.. that the boy was Welsh too.

  Before a roaring fire, legs stretched out, back against the carved wood of the settle, Caradoc looked perfectly at east and the Abbot also, was settled comfortably. No sign of contrition or humiliation, of having confessed his desire and set to do a penance. Well, did she not know right well that men always stood together? They always conspired against women. But she had not thought that the aristocratic Abbot would join such a conspiracy.

  “Lady,” the Abbot came and drew her close to the fi
re. Caradoc stood too now, his bulk partly blocking off the flames. “The lord was concerned that you had not returned,” the Abbot said, almost as if he actually believed him. What Caradoc had come for was to see whether the Abbot knew anything, to see if he would be reprimanded and obviously, by this scene of intimacy, he had not been!

  Kate knew Caradoc well enough to know that he would not be sitting at his ease had he been reprimanded. He would have been prowling around the room like a lion with a singed tail!

  “How kind,” Kate heard herself say, by massive self-control avoiding even the smallest hint of sarcasm.

  “We thought you might have had a fall from your horse, anything could have happened,” Caradoc said, matching her calm.

  “It was too dark for me to take the journey back,” Kate said, which was not a lie.

  Once outside, mounted on their way, Caradoc pushed his horse in front of hers and Kate did not attempt to catch him up. He said nothing to her, not even when the Abbey was at far distance. When they arrived inside the castle, Caradoc gave his horse over to a groom. Then left her to dismount and do likewise. By the time she reached the hall he was no where to be seen.

  * * * *

  March came with roaring gales but fine dry days. The tempestuous roar of the sea frequently kept Kate awake at night. She was not used to the sea’s proximity. It was an alien sound but it was exciting too!

  The phial that the Apothecary had given to her had not been used. There was no need to calm the fire in the lord’s blood where she was concerned. The fever had broken of its own accord. At table he placed Richard alongside him, his mother on his other side. He never spoke to Kate. If they chanced to meet he merely murmured. “Lady,” and inclined his head before going his way. Kate never asked the Abbot if he had spoken to the lord for there seemed no need. It was obvious that something had been said. That was all that could account for Caradoc’s behavior towards her now.