Priscilla Royal - Tyrant of the Mind

Weaknesses he had, of course, albeit ones known best to God and to his own soul. Had those in his circle of acquaintance been asked what chinks the baron might have in his armor, some would have pointed to his code of honor, which he would not bend for solely personal gain. Others might have suggested it was his passionate loyalty to king, friends, and family. Had this been brought to his notice, he would have smiled and shaken his head. To him, his greatest vulnerability was love.

Since the death of his adored wife almost fifteen years ago, he had lost all tolerance for stabs to the heart. Physical pain from a sword or mace was naught compared to the pain of her loss or to the possibility of betrayal because of love. As a consequence, he guarded against expressing the emotion with the ferocity of Cerberus, the three-headed dog standing at the gates of Hell.

There were exceptions. His grandson knew he loved him. After all, a six-year-old boy could do little to hurt him, except die, and Adam had reacted quickly when the lad had sickened, demanding a healer whose reputation was rooted in fact, not rumor. On occasion, Adam had shown his boys how dear they were to him, for he was lucky in his sons. As children, Hugh and Robert had always been both obedient and loyal to their father. They had also grown into good men.

Eleanor was different. He had adored her above all his other children from the moment of her birth, but, since the death of his wife when Eleanor was six, he had been unable to look at the daughter without seeing his beloved Margaret. Whatever joy he felt when Eleanor stood beside him was instantly balanced by the ever-fresh pain of his wife’s death in childbirth. Thus the love he bore his daughter had become the one emotion he feared most, his greatest weakness, and the one he kept most carefully hidden. Especially from Eleanor.

***

“My lord father.”

Eleanor walked into the dining hall, accompanied by Sister Anne. As the baron bowed out of respect for her vocation and she curtsied in acknowledgment of his rank, she felt herself tremble. She still felt reduced to the status of a child in her father’s stern presence despite her taking office as the head of a sizable priory.

“How fares my grandson?” he asked, emotion roughening his voice.

“Well, my lord.” Eleanor gestured to the woman beside her. “Sister Anne has brought her fine skills to bear. Richard has passed the crisis.” Once again she folded her arms into the sleeves of her habit and grasped her arms to stop the shaking. Sister Beatrice, her aunt, had oft told her she was foolish to react so to her father, but his deep voice had always sounded so formidable to her young ears.

“As soon as I let him out of bed, Richard will play havoc with any calm here, my lord,” Anne added. “You might find greater peace fighting the Welsh.”

Eleanor watched her father smile, the relief painting his face with a glow she saw only when his grandson was the object. In truth, she felt no jealousy of her nephew. Still, her heart did ache on occasion when she saw her father smile at Richard, and she wondered if the memory of the baron looking on her in such a fashion in the years before her mother’s death was only a fancy born of longing.

After her aunt had taken Eleanor to Amesbury to raise, he had visited her, but she soon began to wonder why he bothered. Whenever she had run to him, arms open as had been her wont in a happier life, he would step back and greet her with formal severity, his dark eyebrows coming together like armies engaging in battle. Although he did hug her at the end of these short visits, the gesture was abrupt, and he would quickly depart, leaving only the scent of leather and horses in her empty arms.

The baron’s voice broke into her musings. “I am deeply in your debt, sister,” he was saying to Sister Anne. “Ask what you will, and I will give it to you if it is within my power to do so.”

These words brought back the one memory that Eleanor kept close to her heart for those times she most doubted her father’s love. It had been the winter after her mother’s death. She had been not much older than Richard, and, like her nephew, had had a dangerously high fever. She thought she was having a vision when she looked up and saw her father bend over her bed, then lift her up into a fierce hug, his cool tears falling in great drops on her fevered neck. Later, when she told her aunt of this thing, Sister Beatrice said it had been no fevered imagining at all. When he had gotten the news of her illness, she told her, the baron had ridden without a stop from Winchester to Amesbury in a torrential rain to be at his daughter’s bedside.

Why then, Eleanor had asked, did he never show her such love at other times? As her aunt took the thin little girl onto her lap, she had explained thus: “Because your mother took both your father’s heart and the babe she died of with her to the tomb. You look so much like your dead mother that he can never see the daughter without seeing the ghost of the wife.”

Sister Anne’s voice brought Eleanor back to the present once again. “You should ask God for what He wishes, my lord,” the tall nun was saying to the baron. “Your grandson’s return to health is His doing, not mine. I am only the instrument of His grace.”

“It seems that He and I must work out due recompense then.” Adam smiled and nodded at his daughter. “Perhaps the Prioress of Tyndal will act as mediator.”

Eleanor caught herself smiling back at her father with the eager pleasure of a child just given rare acknowledgment. Indeed, she had had nothing at all from him, either encouragement or family news, since she had left Amesbury to take her new position until Richard’s illness. Yet Sister Beatrice had told her that tales of her cleverness in keeping Tyndal from debt after the events of last summer had reached the court. Surely, her father must have heard the stories. After all, how many prioresses had ever been faced with a priory full of resentful monks and nuns, a murdered monk in their cloister, a hard winter of reduced revenues, and all at the same time? Even if any other women had been so tested, how many had successfully surmounted each difficulty with skill and wit? If she had not brought wealth to her family by consenting to a good marriage as her father had wished, had she not at least brought honor?

Anne touched her arm. “If I may be excused, my lord,” she was saying to the baron, “I will return to your grandson and leave you and my lady to speak in private.”

“Good sister, you must take some refreshment first. Food and wine will be brought to you. I’m sure Richard’s nurse can watch over him for a few more hours while you take your ease. She may be a fluttery woman, but she is competent enough in her care of the boy. You need the rest.”

The tall nun bowed her thanks, smiled at Eleanor, then left father and daughter alone.

“She is clever, your nun,” the baron said as he gestured for Eleanor to sit in one of the chairs at the high table. “Where did she come by her training?”

“Her father was a physician who shared much of his knowledge with her, I believe. She and her husband also had an apothecary shop before she came to Tyndal, although I have heard from a reliable source that their success at it was due most to her skill in the healing arts.”

“A physician’s lass then, and an apothecary’s widow too? Death must have had a hard time wresting her husband from her with her fine skills. How did he manage to die on her?”

“She is not a widow, father. Her husband wished to become a monk and she followed him to Tyndal.”

“Nor would I have thought her so compliant! I have heard tales at court about the rough treatment she deals out to any patient who fails to follow her direction.” His lips twitched into his usual humorless smile, but she saw no mockery in his eyes. “Does she long for the world?”