Page 92 of The Queen’s Witch

“Continues in good health.”

He nodded, but sorrow shadowed his eyes. “Sarah, were you with Elizabeth when she died?”

“No. I had gone to—” Though I had just been gathering herbs to help the poor girl, he would not care where I had gone. “I was not with her.”

“Was anyone?”

“No. She died peacefully, in sleep.”

“And alone. No one was there.”

His distress was palpable. Before I even knew my intention, I said, “She was not alone. God was there.”

It comforted him, those three words I did not believe. At this moment, his comfort was more important than my truth. And yet, witnessing the solace he took in his God, even if he hated the recent perversions of the Church, only confirmed for me once again the vast gulf between us.

He said, “Will you stay here with my mother? She . . . Will you stay?”

“Yes. Roger”—addressing him for the first time by his given name—“is Lady Cecily in danger?”

“I am working to see that she is not. I and many others.”

He turned away, and I, Goddess help me, devoured the set of his shoulders, the curl of his brown hair over the back of his collar, until he turned a corner away from me.

Elizabeth’s funeral was simple. The village priest, Father Kerwell, said a Mass in the manor chapel, attended by the entire household. Some of the women wept as the coffin was lowered beside other Gysbournes. Roger stared steadily at the ground. I knew, without being told, that he grieved twice: once for Elizabeth, and again because he had not truly loved her, not as she had loved him.

Later that same day, after a long and closeted conference with his mother, he left Gysbourne Manor.

A cold September promised an even colder winter. The remainder of the harvest was as poor as what had come before. Cecily threw herself into caring for James and in aiding the estate’s tenants and villagers with such goods as could be spared, and I was kept busy concocting and distributing tisanes and poultices and pills made of herbs and honey rolled with powdered roots, their potency sometimes enhanced with minor, silent spells. These cottages, huts, farmhouses pulsed with anger, although not against the manor. Roger was respected and Cecily loved, and I hoped that these common folk would, if it came to that, safeguard her if her son could not. The spells with which I eased cottagers’ pains were all bent to that end. I would protect Cecily as fiercely as Grandmother had protected me.

Roger was seldom home. I never saw him alone. In company with Cecily, he avoided my gaze, although I knew he was aware of me, as I was—constantly, achingly—of him. With his mother and his little son, he was tender, with everyone else courteous but preoccupied. I did not need divination to know that something momentous would happen soon. I needed whatever it was to actually happen, and so be over. In a few weeks I must leave Gysbourne Manor to reach Salle by Samhain.

At the end of September Cecily said, “I will attend vespers tomorrow at Saint James Church in Louth. I am of a mind to talk to Sir Edward Panshawe from Glynn Hall and Mistress Wylmot from Sencler . . . You do not know them, but they may be able to give me information about . . . about I hardly know what. But there is so much restless anger here—you feel it, do you not?”

“My lady, Master Ainley advised you to not leave Gysbourne Manor.”

“And I have not. But I wish to hear Mass said as it should be. Father Kerwell’s services are . . . spiritless.”

This was true; half the worshippers dozed through his sermons. True but irrelevant. I tried again. “My lady, the persons you named are unlikely to tell you anything you do not already know. The anger in Louth comes from the bad harvest and cold weather.”

She said quietly, “It is not like you to lie to me, Sarah.”

I had no answer. Our entire history together was, on my part, a lie.

She added, “I will go to Saint James well guarded. It is only a few miles on good roads.”

I did not like it. My uneasiness did not matter. On Thursday we would go to vespers at Louth.

Saint James Church was enormous, a veritable cathedral, with the tallest spire I had ever seen. Whatever was preached inside, I did not hear it. Lady Cecily talked with the other landowners before she entered the church. I remained outside, where a growing crowd of common folk, clearly not here to worship, milled about and listened as riders came and went with fresh news, all of which further inflamed the mob.

“At Bolingbroke!”

“Raynes! The king’s commissioner!” The man spat, his face red with cold and distorted by fury.

“More taxes! I cannot pay ’em all now!”

“Raynes!”

“If they confiscate Sir Edward’s lands, what becomes of us?”