Chapter 23
Vespers had barely ended when Brother Osbert informed Aelfric that the lady in their care requested temporary sanctuary.
“Sanctuary!” Brother Aelfric’s jaw dropped to the floor. For fully two minutes, he stood paralyzed. It took them both significantly longer to shuffle down the echoing length of the passage, and even twice as long to knock on Prior Joseph’s door.
“What is it?” said the Prior, looking up from the tome on his desk.
The two monks shuffled in but remained on the threshold.
Father Joseph, stern of face and demeanor, did not think it odd that his monks wavered where they stood.
He did not suffer fools lightly, and his formidable beak of a nose was easily put out of joint.
The small community of Saint Ives went out of its way to ensure that it happened only rarely.
He drummed his fingers impatiently. “Well, speak up.”
In less time than it took to say upheaval, Father Joseph found himself bobbing along like a cork in water in an effort to reach the earl’s cell. He hoped to prevent his priory from going up in flames. In this instance, hope let him down. The earl’s reaction was worse than he had anticipated.
“She what?”
The earl’s bellow bounced from wall to wall, alerting the entire priory.
“But m’lord, we’ll not, ah, we’ll not allow—” the Prior tried to assure the furious young lord who had somehow managed to grow several menacing feet in only the past minute or so.
Edward rose from the narrow cot in his spartan cell with an incredulous oath.
He loomed over the father, interrupting him as his rage spilled out.
He pulled a tunic over his head and shoved his feet into his boots.
“And how, pray, do you intend to do that? This woman does not care if you allow her. She does whatever she wishes. You,” he roared contemptuously, “surely have not the wit to contest her. But believe me, I do.”
In but minutes, the Prior and a ragtag army of wide-eyed monks hastened after the bristling man storming his way through the cloisters to the guest house.
It did not take long before the unprecedented excitement drew the laggers from their pious cells.
They too joined the cavalcade. For the Prior, the matter had a more practical relevance.
It did not do, Father Joseph knew, to allow one’s most generous patron to commit murder inside the hallowed halls of God’s house.
Nor, for that matter, outside the boundaries of the holy precincts.
The Prior had every intention of preventing either from happening.
Truth be told, however, he had a burning curiosity to see the instigator of the chaos that appeared to have overtaken his priory. A female, who had tormented his patron into blaspheming so gaudily that the number of penances and Hail Marys necessary to obviate those sins could hardly be calculated.
The uproar had also brought out the earl’s knights from their cells and the men-at-arms from their dormitory.
All of them in procession chased down the path, buckling on their swords, or pulling on articles of clothing as they went.
It appeared from the resignation in their expressions that they might have encountered similar upheavals before.
Father Joseph had known Edward since birth. He’d followed his progress with pride bordering on devotion. He’d never heard the slightest discourtesy from the man’s chivalrous mouth; at least that was the version of Edward Rowley that he preferred to think of. This version was certainly…flamboyant.
Surely, there had never been a single day like this in all the days of the priory’s three hundred-and-forty-two-year history. Father Joseph had no intention of missing it.
At the Priory of Saint Ives, the battle lines could not have been clearer: a righteous battalion of men on the one side and a single maiden—with the assistance of a large dose of audacity—on the other.
Lily saw the earl barreling down the path, followed by a cavalcade of his knights and monks, many of whom she had not seen before.
He burst into the parlor and made a beeline for her. She skittered away. He feinted and, whipping her clear off her feet, slapped her over his shoulder without much more trouble than if he’d lifted a sack of gilly flowers. He grunted when she hit the back of his head with her elbow.
“Desist!’ he yelled, and his free hand smacked her bottom smartly.
It stung. Lily reared up and hit him between his shoulders. The blood rushed to her head, and she thought she might expire with humiliation and outrage. “How dare you?”
“Do you want more?” he inquired through gritted teeth. He didn’t wait for her answer but began shouting orders, quite ignoring the fact that he had a grown woman draped over his shoulder. “Father Joseph, seat yourself, if you would? Dunstan, Mathew, you will stand witness.”
“Put me down,” Lily hissed, “please.”
To her surprise, he did, shoving her onto a stool at the very far end of the room, a good way from where the crowd of jurors gathered. As if she had contagion. Or worse—as if she was on trial. Certainly, it felt like a manorial court.
Her father had conducted similar proceedings, usually involving disputes over foraging rights or doubtful ownership. Ownership indeed.
Her current owner, she did not fail to notice, took up all the space in the chamber. His Arrogance. All eyes were upon him.
Under different circumstances, Lily might even have seen the irony, but in this bastion of disapproval, she could find nothing to smile about.
“Now then,” said her judge and no doubt soon her jailor, “Father Joseph, would you be so kind as to explain to this… the lady why her request for sanctuary will be denied?”
The old Prior got up off the bench and slipped his hands into the wide sleeves of his cassock. Chin up and with a show of importance, he cleared his throat. “I will do so, m’lord,” he said and dutifully scowled at Lily.
He had the appearance of a hunting eagle, she thought, but one with a head too big for his shrunken body.
“M’lord, it grieves me that such unseemly tumult should be brought within the walls of this house of God.
And now we must listen to the wrangling of household strife.
And why? All because of a woman’s caprice.
How does it endure for such a thing that she is willing to cast doubt upon the holy and sanctified utterances of our brother in Christ, Bishop Renard?
Such conduct shames us, by all that is holy. Such obstinacy shall not be tolerated.”
The good Prior took a deep, cleansing breath and continued: “Be assured, m’lord, your honor is stained by no fault of your noble self, and this priory stands ready in loyalty to uphold your just cause.
“Your claim for sanctuary in God’s House is spurious, lady. You would do well to rescind it.”
The earl made a huffing sound of satisfaction.
“As was explained to her on several occasions, there was no objection voiced at the betrothal,” said the earl almost jovially.
His temper, it seemed, was improving by the second.
No doubt because all things were proceeding in his favor.
Already, his voice had modulated to only a mild boom.
“I cannot countenance such a fraud. Nor do I,” said the Prior with a nod to his fellow collaborator, and rapidly warming to his task, he ploughed on: “This house,” he thundered, “shall not permit itself to be made the stage for contention between those whom the sacrament tells us should soon make one flesh.”
Lily stood. “By what proof…?” she began, but she was cut off by a communal howl of male disapproval.
The Prior sent her a ferocious glare. “You,” he said, pointing his shaking finger at her, “do not have leave to speak.”
Lily glanced at Brother Osbert in appeal, but the lay brother hastily cast his eyes downward, and any disobedience to male prerogative died an ignoble death. So much for justice, she told herself painfully. They did not even make a weak pretense at it.
She heard the Prior muttering on about sin and tolerance, but she’d already turned away from the travesty.
It had been a desperate gamble, to be sure.
Nothing would prevent the inevitable if the earl wished it.
She had better adjust to the reality. “Such is the lesson of the day,” Lily murmured, but no one seemed to hear her.
“Now, father, I need you to remind the lady why practically her claim is false,” said Edward impatiently. “In simple terms, if you would? So that she can understand, her mind being of a scattered disposition.”
“As you wish, m’lord,” said the Prior, turning his burning contempt once again on Lily.
“Now, listen as well as you are able. You participated in a betrothal ceremony conducted under the auspices of the holy church. Do you dare to tell me that a bishop of that same church would unlawfully conduct a solemn ceremony? You may answer,” he added.
But Lily did not speak. She sat down with all the dignity she could, and in her solitude, removed herself from the onslaught of reprobation.
“We are concluded,” Edward announced with one more withering look at her. Stalking to the door, he ordered everyone to leave, even the Prior, who began to object, but was unceremoniously ushered out along with the rest.
The door slammed shut with a crash.
He knew she watched him with wariness as he came to where she sat. He assumed she would by now consider him her vanquisher.
Edward tried to relax his arms that were curled in frustration at his sides; he loomed over her. “That’s the public side I warned you about. Now for the private side, and you will like this even less. Look at me,” he demanded, pulling her up and roughly lifting her chin.
Her pride. She would deny him the victory of her tears.
Lily might have taken even more pride had she known that the tears she refused to shed had confounded him, even though he knew he was the cause, or part of it.
He had not missed the sheen in her woebegone face.
Or the significance. So sad, so beautiful, so spirited.
He almost wanted to offer her comfort. Again.
This time, he would not, he told himself.
She defied him at every turn. How dare she show him courage now? And a niggling voice poked back at once. When has she not shown me her fighting spirit? From the start, with the odds against her. A campaigner.
Aye, that is how she comports herself.
No, they’re all the same, said the side that wished to rail at her.
There is nothing inside this one that cannot be found in a hundred others.
But even as he thought it, he knew that wasn’t so. There was no other Lily.
He stared at her. She held his gaze. The silence grew thick. The hour late. ”I am staying here with you, Lily,” he told her and took her arm. “It is the only way I can be sure of where you are.”
He could see her shock. “Do you intend to consummate our union here on sanctified ground?” Even for him, this was an outrageous sin. “You will damn us both,” she whispered, but he threw off her arm in disgust.
“Do you not listen?” he shouted. “Have I not said that matter will wait for Ravensworth?”
The last echo of his bellowing still reverberated around the small parlor when Lily retreated to the hearth. He did not stand in her way. She watched him cautiously; he could see the pulse in her neck fluttering like an imprisoned bird.
She tried to disguise all that she felt; her need to come to him for comfort, did he not know her well enough to see it, naked, enmeshed with her wariness of him? He knew her desire before even she did. It thrilled him and dismayed him this potion of hunger and fear.
“Well,” she said, trying to find a barrier to hide behind. “Let me commend you on that fine example of fairness. One side voiceless, while the other all resplendent power.”
Edward rubbed the back of his neck. They were both, he knew, exhausted.
“Why is it that each time I win the contest of our wills, all I wish for is your benediction?”
She did not answer, still wrapped in her own internal conflict.
“What do you want of me, Lily?” he said.
This time she heard him, though he spoke the words so quietly it took a moment for her to realize what he was saying.
He looked at her as he might look for a single gem within a treasure trove. Her expression of bewilderment reflected his own conflicted state. He sensed something small and lovely awakening inside her, something hopeful.
She stood up and walked toward him. “I want,” she said, “to be allowed to be me. To speak for myself.” Her voice, softer than down, floated about the room, spiraling slowly, slowly, slowly to land atop his head.
Silence.
Edward was aghast.
She pushed ahead. “In exchange, I am willing to hear your voice. To heed you. Not to obey or disobey but to heed.”
Edward stared back at her. For the longest time, he simply stood there. He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, and when he opened them, he stared some more. He made as if to walk toward the door, but then, he spun around and came back to the same spot and stared again.
She expected him to erupt in fury, he could tell. Instead, Edward Rowley, 5th Earl of Ravensworth, shocked her and perhaps himself by bursting into laughter. It poured from him. Burst like pent up water through a dam wall.
He threw back his head, and it exploded from him in great, shuddering gusts.
Outside, all the former jurors tried their best to see what was happening behind the pebbled glass, including Father Joseph. They could make out nothing.
Then with a crash, the door slammed open, and they watched as the earl spilled out the doorway on legs drunken with laughter.
“Mathew, see to it that she is here come morning,” he chortled and hit the younger man on the back so hard, he nearly fell to the ground. But the earl didn’t seem to notice, for he was consumed with mirth as he made his way back to the priory.
Long after Saint Ives had settled into its usual contemplative silence, the glee emanating from behind the earl’s cell door continued. Noticeably, no one dared to issue anything by way of a challenge. If he kept the entire priory awake with his noise, what matter?
* * *
Lily remained awake also. There she lay in her chaste little cot, worrying over each and every word of their conversation. What had she said to provoke such hilarity in him? She found herself as perplexed as everyone else.
She might not understand it, but she knew who would be blamed for it.
She would be. It would be added to her very long list of flaws.
She could already hear their self-righteous accusation, to wit, that she, by her willfulness, had pushed the fine Earl of Ravensworth, the brave, the valiant Earl of Ravensworth over the edge of sanity.