CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A rapping at her door stirred Constance from her bleary half-sleep.
She had put her head down on the work table intending only to rest her eyes for a moment - after a week of weeping, they were reddened and sore - but she must have been more exhausted than she'd realized, for she had soon found herself drifting between dreams and wakefulness, always uncomfortably aware of the table's edge digging into her stomach but still hearing echoes of voices that had not been in this room with her for days.
I cannot risk it. Not for anything.
You thought I'd give up a household and a family of my own? For you?
Why had she ever made the attempt? She had nothing to offer a lover that they could not find more easily elsewhere. No woman would forfeit a proper home and family for Constance's sake, and she had been more than foolish to hope otherwise. That knowledge did nothing to soothe the sting.
Whoever was at the door had not ceased their rapping; the sound made Constance's head ache.
"I'm coming," she said aloud, in the hopes that her visitor would cease their noise.
It didn't work. With a groan, she rose from her chair and crossed the floor, throwing the bolt of the door and then pulling it open.
"We're not taking any new custom just now -"
She blinked, stopping midway through her sentence.
She had begun speaking before the door was open, expecting that she would be greeted with a face opposite hers'.
But there was none. It was not until she glanced down that she saw the source of the rapping: her second-oldest nephew, Robin, was standing on the threshold, rocking from his toes to the balls of his feet as she spoke.
"Is Margery here?" he said as soon as she fell silent. "Mother sent me to find her."
Constance blinked, bringing a hand up to rub at her gritty eyes. "I've not seen Margery for a week," she said. "Is she not at home?"
Robin shook his head. "No one's seen her since last night."
"Last night?" So far as Constance had been aware, matters between Margery and Matilda had been improving - or at least, they had not been worsening.
Certainly Margery had given her no indication that she was so unhappy at home, she was considering running away.
And even if things had gotten that bad, where could she possibly have gone?
Who in town would hide her? "Did she not come home for supper? "
Robin's face scrunched in a frown. "We-ee-eell, she was at supper - I remember on account of she was helping Sarah and she didn't even scold when Sarah spilled pottage on her.
And she put the little ones to bed after.
She didn't come down for breakfast, but Mother said let her be, so no one saw if she was gone then.
And then Mother sent Tom up to wake her when she hadn't come down by noon, and Tom came back down and said she wasn't there and her bed was made up.
And that's when Mother sent me to look for her here. "
"Well, she's not here." Constance was already reaching for her cloak.
More likely than not, Margery had merely slipped out early that morning to go and meet someone or do something her mother wouldn't approve of.
But if that was true, then why hadn't she returned before her mother noticed she was gone?
And what had she gone to do? There were other ways to get away unnoticed; she could have simply told Matilda that she was going to see Constance, and no one would have been any the wiser when she returned.
That she hadn't - and that she'd failed to return in time - made Constance's stomach knot up, even as she told herself it was likely nothing.
It could be nothing. But if Margery had fallen into bad company, or even gotten lost or fallen into a ditch wandering about at night - it might not be.
Robin chattered all the way back to Matilda's house, and Constance nodded and "hm"-ed and absorbed none of it.
It was the first time in a week something other than Isabel's absence had come to occupy her thoughts, and she was coming to bitterly regret her wish for a distraction.
By the time they reached Matilda's, her reassurances to herself had lost all power to soothe her nerves, and she could feel her heart racing.
If something had happened - God, how could she bear it? How could any of them?
Matilda was sitting at the table with Richard when Constance and Robin came in; she half-rose from her seat with a cry when she saw Constance, then paled and collapsed back down when she saw that Margery was not with them.
"Oh," she said - moaned, really - and covered her face with her hands.
Richard had one hand resting on her knee, the other on the table. The knuckles on both hands were white.
"Robin, go upstairs," Constance said, and her nephew did as he was told without complaint.
Undoubtedly, he could feel the tension in the air, thick and cold and choking.
Constance dropped into the chair across from her sister, reaching across to take her hand.
"Matilda," she said, calmer than she felt. "Matilda, what's happened?"
Matilda moaned again, clutching at her face with the hand that Constance had not taken.
"She's gone," she said, "and I've no notion where or how or - oh God, with who -" Her whole expression convulsed, like she was about to be sick.
"I thought she was ill, so I let her sleep late - I never thought -"
"Matilda," Constance said. She stayed calm because she had to: because someone had to.
She could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen her sister thus undone: last winter, when Sarah had taken a terrible fever.
The day William had run away. And now, today.
The sight of her white face did something to Constance that she would not have thought possible, stripping away the grown woman she thought herself and revealing the frightened child who remained underneath.
Her older sister was not supposed to look like this.
She was not supposed to be frightened. She was the one who soothed all their fears, who took all their troubles and banished them through sheer force of will.
For Matilda to be so undone betrayed a deep and fundamental error in the order of the world.
It was one of the worst things Constance could imagine.
"You saw her last night," she said. She had to fight to keep her voice level.
"It's just past noon now. She's not yet been gone a full day, and you don't know when she left.
It could be she's been gone no more than a few hours, and she cannot have gone far in that time. Have you sent anyone to look for her?"
"I sent Simon," Richard said. Matilda seemed unable to speak. "I asked him to look for her at market, and at the square - the players arrived on Sunday, and she was mad to see them, but Matilda kept her home because she'd been poorly. I thought perhaps she went off to see them before they left."
"There you go, then." Constance squeezed her sister's hand. "She's probably just gone to see the players. She'll be back before -" She had been about to say, before you know it, but that seemed in poor taste. "Before the day is out," she said instead.
"We quarreled," Matilda said, with the air of someone making their last confession.
"When she wanted to go, earlier - she had a chest cough last week, and with the rain of late, I was afraid she'd be caught out in bad weather and catch another chill.
And she was angry with me." Her bottom lip was quivering.
"She was angry - and I was angry too - but I never thought, this -" Her hand clenched tight around Constance's.
"If she's run off, if she left last night, she might have gone anywhere - she might have left the town, she could be halfway to Newark!
And she's no money, nor any sense to avoid men on the road who might - they might -"
"There's no cause to think that," Constance said firmly.
Privately, she shared a few of her sister's fears - at least, the ones regarding Margery attempting to set out on the high road - but this was no time to stoke them.
"We're not yet certain that she's left the town at all.
And she couldn't have done it last night - the gates were closed.
So even if she left first thing, she can't have gotten far on foot. "
Matilda did not appear to be listening. "I tried to do as you said," she whispered, "I tried - and things were better - but then there was this silly matter with the players, I could have let her go, but I was worried and I was cross and -" Tears stood out in her eyes.
"If some harm comes to her because of me - because I was too stubborn -"
"It's no fault of yours', love," Richard said. He was still squeezing her knee. "She was ever willful."
"She is a child, still," Constance said, her voice sharp.
"And children are wont to willfulness." Under the circumstances, there was no one who she would entertain slanders on Margery's name from; but she was especially uninterested in hearing them from Richard, who had, so far as she could tell, done nothing to ameliorate matters between his daughter and his wife.
Richard blinked at her. "Of course."
All three of them fell silent. Matilda was wringing her hands.
Constance could hear a faint scuffling sound above; the other children, banished to the bedroom while the adults convened below.
Listening with their ears pressed to the floor, unless Constance missed her guess.
It was what she would have done, at their age.
"Ought I take the boys and Sarah for the day?
If you're taken up with looking for Margery, it would be best to have them out from underfoot. "
"No," Matilda said, so vehemently that Constance was taken aback. "I want them here. If another went missing - I couldn't bear it -"
"Who's gone missing?"