Warlord(110)

‘And Aggie the Miller’s wife has just had twins – two beautiful boys.’

‘What happy news,’ I said, in a carefully neutral tone.

The circle had formed again, but now a young man and a girl were dancing together, nimbly, in the centre of the ring. The love between the young couple was almost visible, and they moved like one creature, arms linked, toes pointed in perfect symmetry, eyes fixed on the other’s face.

‘And little Daisy Johnson is to be married next week,’ she said. ‘To William the Thatcher, of all people – he must be thirty years old if he’s a day! Twice her age!’

‘He’s a good man, a skilled craftsman, and a kind one. She will be well provided for in William’s house—’

Goody snapped: ‘The Devil take you, Alan Dale – why are you being so difficult about all this?’

‘You know why, my darling,’ I said calmly.

‘One mad, unhappy woman utters a stream of pure moon-addled gibberish, nothing but hateful, hurtful ranting, and you take that as a reason not to fulfil your lawful promise to marry me and give me babies! You are scared of her, Alan, aren’t you? You’re frightened. Admit it. You – the big, tough, fighting man – are scared of her silly threats.’

I was stung, and an angry retort sprang to my lips. But I managed to swallow it, something that I had failed to do on several occasions in the past few months. Besides, Goody was right: when I looked into my heart, I realized that a part of me was frightened of Nur’s curse. When she had burst into our betrothal feast the year before, she had uttered these words: ‘I curse you, Alan Dale, I curse you and your milky whore! Your sour-cream bride will die a year and a day after you take her to your marriage bed – and her first-born child shall die, too, in screaming agony.’

The words had burned themselves into my brain: and if Goody did not fear the curse, I knew, deep in my unreasoning heart, that I did.

‘We have not heard from that poor crazed woman for months now: there has been no sign of her at all since you returned,’ Goody continued. ‘She has likely gone away or curled up in a hole and died – she cannot hurt us, my love. Her words of hate have no power over us. Let us be married, and soon. And then in a while Miles shall have a playmate! And you will have an heir, a little Alan. Would that not please you, my love?’

Goody spent most of her days at Westbury with Marie-Anne, and while a wet-nurse, a plump, plain village girl called Ada, tended to Miles’s basic needs, feeding him and changing his soiled napkins, the two gentlewomen, my betrothed and Robin’s wife, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time clucking and fussing over the baby, playing with him, cuddling him. I could not understand it – he was a fairly pleasant infant, to be sure, with the correct number of fingers, toes and the like. But he did not seem to do anything except feed or cry or sleep. I was bewildered by Miles’s ability to enthral the household females. Occasionally I would lean over his basket and examine him, to see if I could discover the source of his fascination, always without the slightest success.

Goody was staring at me expectantly: and I realized that I would have to come to some decision on this matter.



I cleared my throat to give me time to think.

While the threat of Goody’s death a year after the day of our marriage alarmed me, I realized that my girl might have a good point. We had neither seen nor heard anything from Nur in the three months that I had been at Westbury. As Goody said, it was entirely possible that the Hag of Hallamshire, as she was sometimes known in these parts, might well have abandoned her feud with us and gone away. I looked into Goody’s lovely pink-and-white face, and made my choice.

‘My love,’ I said, ‘you know that it is my deepest desire to wed you, to take you into my bed and to fill your belly with a child. God knows, it is not a lack of regard for you that has restrained me thus far. You are entirely right, my angel, until now I have gone in fear of the curse – but no longer. I will make this pact with you: if we have heard nothing from Nur by Christmas Day, if she is truly gone from our lives, we shall make our plans to marry next Easter, with all the pomp we can muster: a lavish event, attended by every great person of our acquaintance, that will set the whole county a-twitter. I will take you as my bride the first Sunday after Easter, and to my bed that night. Would that please you, my darling?’

Goody made no verbal reply, but she gave a secret smile, leaned into me, and kissed me deeply on the lips, her hot little pink tongue flickering into my mouth. Suddenly, it seemed to me that Easter was a lifetime away.