Chapter 6
Agnes
The letter arrived while she and Sara were playing dice in her solar. Agnes took it from the serving girl curiously but tossed it aside as soon as she recognised the handwriting.
This was the third letter Muriel had sent since leaving. Agnes’s first thought was to throw it into the fire. She didn’t want to know what Muriel had to say.
But that was foolish. Instead, she picked it up, tossed it into the wooden box within which she kept all her correspondence, and snapped the lid shut.
There was a rap at the door. Beneath the table, Qwippe sat up. Agnes, too, stilled. If it was yet another letter, they could go hang.
‘Enter.’
The door opened. It was not another servant but Barden.
‘I did not see you in the hall,’ he said. ‘You appear to be busy. Apologies, I will—’
‘No, no.’ Agnes stood, beckoning him inside. ‘I have received another letter.’
‘From your family?’
He was sharp. He tried to hide it, but it was there.
‘Indeed.’
‘Are they well?’
She wondered if that was the question he really wanted to ask. She considered lying to him, but relented quickly. The marriage seemed more likely every day: he needed to know the truth.
‘I cannot say,’ she said, leaning on the table. ‘As I have not read their letters. I know what they will demand of me, and I have no desire to capitulate to them.’
Barden raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’
‘They do not want me to marry you. They have their hearts set on a … a family friend. Francis mac Cainnich.’
‘Who is he?’
The truth of that was too painful: Barden did not need to know it.
‘I have known him since we were young,’ she explained. ‘Rich, powerful. Scottish. We were promised to each other when we were babes. And then of course I married Nicholas, and now that he is dead, Francis – and my family – think that I belong to him.’
‘Hence why they do not wish for us to wed.’
‘Precisely. And since Nicholas’s death I have come into lands and wealth that Francis would sorely love to call his own.’
He scowled, scratching at his scar. ‘Of course.’
Agnes wanted to reach up and stop him – she could only imagine what sort of damage he did to the poorly healed skin with all his picking. She did not: it would be far too intimate.
‘Why were you looking for me?’ she said instead.
His expression slipped. He looked worried.
‘I wondered if we may talk.’
He looked very worried. Anxiety hardened in Agnes’s stomach. Had he come to refuse her? If he did, it would make her family’s determination even stronger.
‘Of course,’ she said, cautiously. ‘Sara … would you give us a moment?’
Sara gave her a knowing look before seeing herself out of the room.
‘Would you care to talk over a game?’
She waved a hand towards the chess set. It would do her good to have something else to focus on, a way to channel her thoughts, if Barden really was here to refuse her hand.
He nodded, but said nothing. Agnes quickly set up the pieces, gesturing for him to take the seat opposite her. The game started slowly. But it was clear that Barden was showing his usual impatience from the outset.
‘Are you—’
‘Agnes.’ Barden moved a piece with unthinking swiftness. ‘When we wed—’ He made a strange, strangled noise. ‘If we wed … I need you to understand that our union will be a contract above all else. An arrangement.’
Agnes made her own move. That was her understanding of the matter, too. She thought he was aware of that.
‘Of course.’
‘I—’ Ash stilled, his hand floating over a piece. ‘I have made vows before,’ he said, staring at the chequered surface.
Something was being offered. The fear that Ash had come to call off the match began to fade, something more sinister beneath.
‘I thought you were unmarried?’ She curled it into a question.
‘I am.’
‘A widower, then? I thought someone would have told—’
‘I am not a widower.’ He moved another piece.
Agnes kept her eyes on the board instead of Barden’s face. There was more here. She shuffled a pawn forward – a useless move, designed to buy more time.
‘We promised—’ Barden said, at last. A sentence with no ending.
‘You made vows, which you could not see through?’
Barden said nothing, just moved another piece.
His silence was an admission, heavier for its stillness.
She wondered what unsuitability had stopped those vows from turning into something more.He did not seem the sort of man who would rush into marriage with a stranger if he had no choice.
If he’d made a vow to another, he would uphold that, she was sure.
Which meant that the vow had broken, in some way. Through parting, or time, or—
She moved her piece. ‘And now? What happened to her?’
Something cracked in Barden’s expression. Without pause, he grabbed his king and shoved it towards Agnes’s knight – a clear forfeit.
‘Dead.’
‘Ash—’
He was on his feet and was gone. The door slammed behind him with such force that the knight toppled over.
Agnes picked it up and rolled it between her fingers. She wondered who the woman who had inspired such devotion had been. And it was devotion – there was no mistaking the pain in Barden’s eyes as that single, horrible syllable had fallen to the board between them.
Quietly, she set the pieces back into place.
The conversation with Barden had unsettled her. She left the room sometime after he had, keen not to appear as if she were chasing him, and paused at one of the windows.
The sun was high and bright, the air crisp and clear.
It was a good day for a hunt. It was a good day to be her.
She needed the relief of it, especially after that conversation.
She could already sense the unsettled feeling beneath her skin.
Back in her chambers, she swiftly undressed, replacing her shift with hose and undershirt before reaching into the very bottom of her clothes chest for her cuirass.
To call it a cuirass was not quite accurate.
It was a thick garment that finished just below her ribs with ties beneath her arms, somewhere between an arming doublet and a gambeson.
It was sleeveless, secured with straps over her shoulders.
She had sewn it herself: a layer of linen, a thick layer of wool, and a layer of boiled leather all held tight together with sturdy thread.
As she pulled it out, she fiddled at the seams. It was becoming loose again – the leather growing too supple. She would have to make another.
She slid the cuirass on over the undershirt and began to tighten the lacing. The tightness and padding transformed her, the curve of her breasts, which had never been particularly large to start with, flattened.
She’d made the first of many iterations of the garment when she was still young, fashioned haphazardly out of a stolen gambeson. She’d started the project in a moment of desperation: she had been binding her breasts with cloth bandages for years, and it hurt. She had needed a better solution.
Since then, she’d tweaked the design every time she outgrew it or wore it out until she had landed upon something that seemed to work reliably. She reused as much as she could, repurposing the boiled leather when it wore out or changed shape.
She ran her hands over her chest and down her sides with a soft, easy smile. It was tight around her chest, but she could breathe for the first time in days. She pulled the rumpled disguise of her dress back on, then headed from her chambers into the yard to fetch Qwippe and her bow.
No one attempted to stop her as she walked from the manor towards the woods. Once beneath the canopy of trees, she made her way to the disused woodsman’s hut.
The hut had not been fit for purpose since before Agnes had arrived. Where it once contained food and supplies, now all that was left were a few half-decayed chairs and the wooden chest that Agnes had dragged there herself.
It was full of clothes – things she had bought and stolen and, in some cases, made herself, hidden away where no one would find them.
After tossing aside her gown, Agnes pulled on a tunic – old and faded, perfect for hunting, with loose fabric that finished the job of hiding her silhouette.
She slung a belt low around her waist and then after a moment’s pause grabbed a thin walking cloak; this early into spring there was still a chill in the air.
She grabbed her cap, too, using it to cover her hair and tying it beneath her chin to hide some of her face.
There. She stepped through the ruined doorway of the hut and out into the woods, smiling as the spring sun hit her skin.
Like this, she could relax. Very rarely was she seen, and by and large those who did see her overlooked her.
The first time she had been spotted by a servant she had hastily constructed a tale about running into Lord la Cleve and his wife, and had claimed that Lady Agnes had given her – him – permission to hunt in the grounds: a show of camaraderie with a fellow Scot.
It had been a risky lie, and she had been forced to rush back to the hut and quickly return to her woman’s clothes before the servant could come to find her to verify the tale.
She had confirmed that she had met a young Scotsman in town, told the staff that he was a member of a neighbouring lord’s household, and ensured word spread that they grant him use of the grounds and lands.
Nicholas had watched her with a close, amused eye.
When the housekeeper had turned to him to confirm the story, Agnes’s heart had lodged in her throat. And yet, to her great surprise, he had verified her account.
Afterwards, he’d given her an arched smile and said, in that teasing way of his: ‘What are you up to, wife?’
It had only been later that Agnes realised he must have assumed the mysterious Scotsman was her lover. And it was later still – much later, just before his sudden illness – when he discovered the truth of the thing.
She didn’t know if it was his nature or his illness that made him indifferent towards the revelation. He didn’t truly understand it – as far as he was concerned, she was just swapping clothes. Dressing up like a child in their parent’s things.
Now, she was rarely interrupted when wandering the grounds. She was adept at keeping out of the way regardless, and until Barden’s quick discovery the only one who recognised her when she was dressed like this – besides Sara – was Qwippe.
Her quiver bounced against her hip as she walked, Qwippe a little way ahead sniffing out scents.
This was how things should be: this was the freedom she craved.
It was the freedom she would lose, if wed to Francis.
It was not even a fear: it was a fact. He would find out, he would stop her, he would punish her.
She swallowed the thought down, keeping her eyes up at the treetops. They rustled pleasingly in the spring breeze, the sound like a mighty wave crashing.
She sent Qwippe out and away with the smallest hand gesture. It took mere moments before there was a discordant bark. She readied the bow.
The tension in her body seemed to flow into the weapon, down the string, filling it with the coiled, unshakable energy running through her bones. With each arrow loosed, each one notched, each shot made – even when they flew through the trees, hitting nothing – the tension eased, channelling out.
The sunlight dappled against her skin, warming her, soothing her mind. A hare bounded through the brushes ahead of her.
She took aim.