Priscilla Royal - Tyrant of the Mind

***

As the door closed behind the priest, Eleanor shut her eyes so tightly they hurt, her body once more begging for a far closer bonding with the monk than that of brother and sister. Then, taking a deep breath, she faced the two women. “I share your grief over the loss of Sir Geoffrey, a good and honorable man who saved my own father’s life.”

“He was that, my lady, as well as a kind father to me,” Juliana said. She tried to move but found it difficult to pry herself from Isabelle’s grasp.

“Nay, Juliana, stay close to me.” Isabelle looked up at her stepdaughter, revealing as she did a face ashen with fatigue and eyes red from so many tears. “Now that your father is dead, you cannot go to Tyndal. Surely you see that.”

Juliana turned her head away from Isabelle and frowned, but Eleanor saw pain in the look, not anger.

Isabelle fumbled at her stepdaughter’s hands. “You can pray all you like in the chapel at Lavenham. There is no need for a more distant cloistering.” The corners of her mouth turned vaguely upward, but the smile was feeble. “You must stay with me. Think of how much I need your comfort and companionship now. My oldest friend. My dearest sister.” She pulled Juliana’s hands to her breast and looked at Eleanor. “Sir Geoffrey may have murdered Henry, but he was a good husband to me as he was a good father to Juliana. I shall not marry another but will remain a widow for the rest of my days.” She reached out to touch Juliana’s face. “Hear me, my sweet friend, for I share your desire to remain unmarried! I swear to take mantle and ring in front of the bishop with a vow of chastity for the remainder of my life. Thus you need not marry either, don’t you see? You can stay and give me consolation. We can give each other succor in our prayers, two sisters bound in grief.” Isabelle tugged at Juliana’s robe and laughed, but the sound held little mirth.

As gently as she could, Juliana pushed her hands away, walked to Eleanor and knelt in front of her. “I still beg admission to Tyndal as an anchoress, my lady,” she said, her voice muted but her words firmly spoken.

“No!” Isabelle screamed. “You cannot do this. There is no need!”

“Hush, Isabelle,” Juliana said.

Isabelle threw herself down on the rush-covered floor and crawled to the kneeling woman. She wrapped her arms around her stepdaughter’s legs and pressed her head into the back of Juliana’s thighs. “Don’t you see that God has answered both our prayers?” Her voice was muffled and hoarse. “When I married your father, I knew he was an old man and must soon die. His death now, however, is surely a sign from God! As a widow, I have enough income from my lands for both of us to live in peace and comfort. George will not force you to marry Robert nor anyone you do not fancy. God surely means for the two of us to live, as we have…”

Tears began to flow down Juliana’s cheeks. “It is you who does not understand, Isabelle. I do not want to share a life with you. My calling to become an anchoress is a true one.”

“You cannot leave me! I will not be left alone again!” As Isabelle struggled to her knees, she grabbed the front of her robe, ripping the fabric of her dress from neck to waist and clawing deep ridges into her chest. Blood quickly filled the wounds and flowed down her body in crooked rivulets.

Eleanor and Juliana stared at her in shock.

“See how you have slashed my heart!” the widow screamed as she smeared the blood across her breasts. “You say that I am the one who does not understand, but you are the one who is blind! You have lost one mother to the tomb, but God has torn two mothers from my arms. Two ! Then He cut the sweet babe from my womb, a child who might have had my mother’s eyes to look on me again with love. Indeed, God has stolen from me everything that I have dearly loved. Now, surely, He can leave me one sister for warm and loving comfort?”

Juliana paled, then jumped to her feet and stepped away from the bleeding woman.

Isabelle stared at her stepdaughter with mute despair. Then she began tearing at her own face.

Eleanor rushed forward and grabbed her hands as the woman tried to claw her eyes. “Juliana,” she cried as she wrestled with Isabelle. “Bring Sister Anne. Quickly!”

Eleanor sat in silence, unable to form thoughts. The memory of the writhing, screaming widow flooded all words from her mind. Perhaps it had taken only a short while to restrain Isabelle so Sister Anne could force a drink of sleep-inducing poppy juice down her throat, but it had seemed to take forever.

“I pity her, my lady. Few among us have been faced as often as she with the choice between two equally evil paths and no other.”

Eleanor looked at Juliana, but she was still seeing the whimpering Isabelle with her exposed flesh and raw soul bleeding from more wounds than she could count. She had felt inadequate to deal with such pain and knew how thoroughly she had failed in comforting the woman. Perhaps Isabelle had been right about her. Perhaps she had fled from the world because she was unable to face its harshest realities. “Aye,” she said wearily. “She has suffered much.”

“I knew of the rape.” Juliana’s eyes were moist with unwept tears.

“As did I, but only after your brother’s murder.”

“She told me that she was pregnant by Henry.”

“And that she told me as well.”

Despite the chill air, drops of sweat began to glisten on Juliana’s forehead. “It was then she told me she would marry my father, not my brother.”

“A sin to have intercourse with both son and father, however unwilling her sexual act with the former. Even if God were to forgive that, man’s law would still find any marriage with your father invalid as a consequence of the rape.” Eleanor inwardly cringed at the sound of her own voice. Her words were so cold, so pale, against the bloody backdrop of Isabelle’s searing agony. “How did you reply to what she told you?”

“I told her she must marry Henry, that there was no other choice. If she did marry him there would be no shame in a birth soon after the vows for we had all long expected them to marry. To bed my father, however, would not only make him an unwitting sinner and she a witting one, but it would be a cruelty to so use and deceive a man who had been as kind to her as if she had been his own daughter.”

“To be abused by Henry and then marry him, knowing that she now owed him the marriage debt for the rest of their lives together? Could you have so willingly shared a bed with the man who had raped you, then borne his children and supported him as a wife must do?”

Juliana sharply turned her face away. “What choice had she? Common wisdom tells us that she could not have been raped because she quickened with child and thus she must have taken pleasure in the act.” Returning her gaze to meet Eleanor’s, her brown eyes turned as dark as a moonless night. “I may not concur with common wisdom, my lady, but I repeat: What choice had she in fact? A man may make as many bastards as he wishes and take them all to his wife to rear, but a woman is a whore who has but one, unless she marries the father.”

“From the anger I hear in your voice, Juliana, I wonder that you advised her to do something you found as abhorrent as she.”

Juliana walked over to the pitcher and poured some wine into her cup but stared at the contents without drinking. The sweat on her forehead was now running down her cheeks like tears. “You are most observant to detect the serpent wrapped around my heart. In truth, I did tell Isabelle that she had no choice, but did not do so until after I told her that there were ways of getting rid of the child and that I would help her find a safe remedy.”