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“Never mind. I expect you’ll understand it for yourself soon enough,” Bertran said with a smile, and patted Tristram on the back.
“Careful! It’s still tender from the accursed hair shirt,” Tristram cautioned his friend with a scowl.
“You’ve had worse and you survived,” Bertran countered callously, adding another pat to his friend’s back, yet lighter than the first.
“Bastard,” Tristram hissed between his teeth, but smiling faintly as he did so.
“Weakling,” his friend countered with a good-natured grin.
Chapter 20
Judith had waited half the night for Tristram to come to their chamber, but she’d at last understood that, as the night before, he no longer wished to be near her. And she understood there was no choice but to seek him out and speak the truth once and for all. She would reveal to him her reasons for wanting to end their marriage. And she would listen to what he had to say even if he would acknowledge he loved another.
She sought him out and at last found him in the chapel. His head was bowed in prayer, and in the light coming from the stained-glass window, he looked as beautiful as an angel. In his hand he held a rosary she knew only too well and, Judith noted, with a stab of pain in her heart, that kerchief with the embroidered letter B. So even now he prayed for his lady love at Court – the lady Bernadette…
Judith stormed out of the chapel, then pressed her back on one of the stone walls outside, knowing it was unseemly to harbour such frantic, jealous thoughts. Yet she couldn’t restrain herself, and when Tristram finally emerged out of the chapel, she found herself speaking, unable to hold off the venom which had built within her all these years, “And still you think of her!”
Tristram first cast her an astonished glance, then he shook his head. His beautiful dark eyes were filled with deep grief, and even in spite of her jealousy, Judith thought to caress his long eyelashes and try to brush away the hurt from his eyes. She loved him too much. And she couldn’t bear to see him in pain, even if that pain was over another woman.
“I do. I think of her always,” Tristram said with a soft nod. He sighed, with a bitter shake of his head. “Who told you of her? FitzRolf I guess?”
Ever since she had decided she would stay on as his wife, Judith had vowed to be always truthful to Tristram.
“No. Years ago… I saw the kerchief among your things.”
Tristram didn’t seem angry at her revelation. He raked a hand through his hair.
“I’ve always kept it. This kerchief she embroidered with the letter of her name, and her rosary to remember her by. She’s gone to Heaven, yet even after all these years it’s hard to speak her name, even in prayer.”
His lady love was now dead? Judith felt wretched for having harboured such uncharitable thoughts towards a woman no longer among the living.
“Still, it is upon this day, of remembrance of her death, that I should strive to speak her name… Berenice!”
Berenice? Not Bernadette? Perchance her mother had recalled the name wrong after all. The names were similar.
“Berenice,” Tristram repeated with a wistful smile upon his face. “It’s only fitting that, ten years to the day she died, I should attempt to speak of my sister.”
“Sister?”
The world stopped around Judith and her heart started thumping like mad. Sister?
“Twin sister, aye,” Tristram amended, as if lost in a musing of his own. “My mirror image, people would say. Always attuned to me, and I to her.”
He shook his head, as if recalling himself, and his voice became harsh and dispassionate.
“Enough of this though. I’ve had my time of prayer and remembrance. And now there are other duties to attend to.”
He walked away abruptly, and Judith remained staring after him, her heart in turmoil. She’d been so wrong about this! How could she have been so wrong? And why hadn’t she brought herself to ask her husband of the kerchief? Instead, she’d sought her mother’s counsel. And her mother…Why would her mother speak with such knowledge of her husband’s lady love? Perchance Aunt Edith had deceived her. It was no secret that Aunt Edith had wanted Judith married to her own husband’s son.
Instead of feeling relief upon her husband’s revelation, Judith felt guilt and grief. She’d thought Tristram in love with another, and he’d not been guilty of it. Instead, he’d been in pain, and she hadn’t been able to perceive it. She went over all their remembered talks in her head, frantically, attempting to recall Tristram’s gestures and words to her. His gentleness after they’d wed. His willingness to listen to her. And his genuine pleasure to talk to her. Tristram had truly listened to her and to what she’d had to say, while she…She hadn’t listened. Because, if she had, she’d been able to understand he carried hidden grief over a most beloved sister. So he was right in his anger of her. She had betrayed him, just as he’d said she had.
As she walked down the inner bailey, caught in the turmoil of her thoughts, Judith heard a voice call her from her behind. A woman’s voice.
“My lady, I am the midwife. I was told you came to look upon me some time ago, so here I am.”
This was indeed the midwife in the village whom Judith had called upon some days ago on Tristram’s advice. She’d not found her at home, and then she hadn’t had the courage to go in seek of her again. Her name was of course familiar. She was called Nell Tyler, and when her father had been alive, she’d been his leman. Judith stared at the woman in full curiosity, because she’d often glimpsed her from afar whenever she rode to the village, but she’d never approached her or spoken to her. Judith was closely acquainted with each and every member of the villages under her care, but she had always avoided this woman. So this was Nell Tyler, the woman her father had kept. She was not beautiful, not even half as beautiful as Judith’s mother. Yet Judith came to see she had keen, pretty eyes and a likeable face.
“I-I have no need of you,” Judith said artlessly.
