“It’s not my needs I’ve come for,” she said. “The lord is requesting you.”
Simon’s heart—if indeed he could still claim even a part of that gentle organ—shriveled in his chest. Glayer Felsteppe asking for him could only mean that there was yet another crushing, splintery burden to lay across Simon’s shoulders. He wondered what horrific, grotesque defilement the man wished performed. Simon could hardly think of anything much worse than what he’d already done for Glayer Felsteppe, but that meant little; if there was one thing Felsteppe had always been wealthy in, it was the endless array of appalling acts he wished to have visited upon those he despised.
He didn’t realize he was shaking his head, already futilely refusing the unknown duty, until Eseld stepped closer and spoke again.
“Would that you not let it sit so heavily upon your heart, Father,” she said softly. He looked up at the old woman as she glanced over her shoulder and pushed the chapel door halfway closed. She turned back to him and gave him what she likely hoped was an encouraging smile, her teeth—what few she still claimed—yellowed and black, her thin lips drawing out the pursed wrinkles around her mouth.
“I know it’s a great burden you’ve borne, aiding his lordship. But surely you see that you will be paid back for your loyalty a hundredfold when your life on this dismal earth is over.”
Simon felt the prickle of tears in his eyes. The poor daft woman. “You truly believe that, don’t you?”
Eseld rushed forward and dropped to her knees on the floor, grabbing at the edge of the bench upon which Simon sat to steady her descent, and he winced as he heard the crackling of her joints. He wanted to jerk her to her feet, shake her. But it was she who pinched his cassock with her bony fingers.
“With all my heart. It seemed only a fortnight ago that he left my cottage, naught more to commend him save the farm we only partly claimed. He left for his great crusade, to be a champion for God, and he saved the king of Jerusalem! Despite his enemies’ best efforts to see him ruined.”
Simon stared down into her face, so lined and weary and gray, her hair so thin beneath the black linen cap that he could see her scalp shining in the dim candlelight of the chapel.
“And he sent for me,” she continued, her smile gentling. “His old mother. He needed me in his grand new house, to help raise his precious baby—my grandson! What a gift he has given me, given both you and me, by allowing us such small parts to play. Do you see?”
The bile rose in Simon’s throat so quickly that he couldn’t speak lest he be sick all over the old woman.
“And his work is not yet over; nay, nay!” She inched closer to him on her knees. “He is yet wresting his reward from those enemies who sought him dead. He is winning England for the just! And for me,” she said, her voice softening. “He is atoning for my sins, my failures. Because he loves me.”
“No,” Simon at last managed to strangle out and reached across with his right hand to grasp the woman’s forearm. “He cannot atone for your sins. No one can do that save yourself and Christ.”
“Oh, but he is,” she vowed solemnly. “He’s told me he is, and I believe him. And just as you were asked to do that which pained you—delivering him from his wretched enemies, like that hateful Rosemont woman who would have denied my son his own precious, perfect child—I, too, must persevere in the knowledge that we are doing God’s work as he has put it to Glayer.To his lordship,” she corrected in a whisper with wide, rheumy eyes.
“Eseld, listen to me,” Simon said, his voice trembling with fury and dread as he tightened his fingers around her bony arm. “Your son did not call you to Thurston Hold to save your soul, just as I am not in his employ because I am a loyal servant of God.” He swallowed and could feel the perspiration at his hairline.
Shut up! Shut up!
But he could not. Perhaps hewaspossessed by a devil inside him, not just the one residing in the lord’s chamber across the bailey. It didn’t matter really—he would be dead soon.
“Glayer Felsteppe is compelling me to do his most offensive tasks because what he knows of my past would see certain people I love very much destroyed. He is using my status as a priest to cover up the crimes he is committing—is forcing me to commit—and I vow to you now that the only one reaping glory and bloodstained reward from both our labors is him.”
“That’s not true, Father,” she said with a pained look and a sympathetic shake of her head. “His lordship loves y—”
“He doesn’t love me, and he doesn’t love you either,” Simon said through clenched teeth, rising from the bench and dragging the nearly weightless Eseld up with him. Her eyes widened in surprise now, but Simon couldn’t stop. “He brought you here to rub in your face all that he now commands; to treat you like a slave and humiliate you—why do you think you are not permitted to call him by his given name or reveal to any other than me that you are hismother?”
“I’m certain the king’s mother doesn’t call him Henry in his own court now, does she?”
“Glayer Felsteppe is not the king!” Simon insisted.
Eseld’s eyes narrowed at last and she jerked her arms free from Simon’s hold. “But he is the lord,” she emphasized. “And that’s as close to a king as the likes of you and I are ever to serve.” She leaned toward him, reaching her bony nose toward Simon’s own. “I know what you did,” she whispered. “His lordship told me how he saved you from ruin when the affair would have been revealed. How he secreted you away. He protected you—he continues to protect you—and you would repay him by turning his graciousness into a s-s-sin,” she hissed, the word moistening Simon’s lips so that he winced.
Damn Glayer Felsteppe; he had revealed just enough of the truth to the woman to convince her that everything he said was a certainty. Isn’t that what he always did, though? Build his lies and treachery around the existing good he wanted? It was like hiding a man’s silver in horse dung and then thanking him to load the manure for you. Robbing everyone he came across of their wealth, their homes, their sanity and reputation—their lives, in too many cases.
“He was not protecting me,” Simon said levelly. “It was he who threatened to reveal me. I had no choice but to cooperate with him.”
“And you’ll cooperate with him now,” Eseld said, shrinking back to her stooped posture and fixing him with a stern glare. “It’s for your own good. And Glander’s. So you go on to him now, as you were told to do. And you do whatever it is he asks of you.” She turned to walk back to the chapel door but stopped before exiting, her fingers wrapped around the handle. She turned back to look at him.
“And if I should ever again hear such slander against my son from your lips, Father”—she paused, and her gaze bore into his with an intensity that accurately portrayed the relation of mother and son—“I’ll tell him.” She bobbed toward the altar, repeated the sign of the cross, and then shut the door with nary a sound.
Eseld Felsteppe had always been a reverent woman.
Simon turned back toward the crucifix affixed to the stones above the altar, his knees trembling, his stomach roiling. The candles to either side of the ornate dais still flapped with the breeze created by Eseld’s soundless departure. He glanced down and saw his prayer book tented on its stiff pages on the stones in front of his feet.
He bent down and picked it up, smoothing its worn leather cover, pale and supple with age. It had been a gift upon taking his final vows as a priest. A gift from Bledsoe.
