Chapter Seven
The cold wind from the North Sea whined around the stone corners and through the chinks of Snape Castle’s dank chapel. His face as chill and unmoving as the walls surrounding him, Sir Roger Ormond watched the flames of thick beeswax candles flicker above the casket of his second wife as an age-bent priest muttered through the poetic sequence passages of the mass of the dead.
“Liber scriptus proferetur, in quo totum continetur, unde mundus judicetur,” he intoned in a reedy, nasal voice. Then shall written book be brought, showing every deed and thought; from which judgment will be sought.
Roger’s lip twitched. His one good eye stared at the rough-hewn wood that concealed the body of his wife. What thoughts had ever lingered in Edith’s goosedown brain? he wondered. The woman had barely ever whispered more than two sentences together. When she stood before the throne of God, what judgment could he render to such a coney rabbit as her? What deeds had she done, either good or bad, during the three-and-twenty years she had lived upon this earth, except to hover in the shadows and whimper when Roger visited her bed? Aye, the wench had been a ghost long before she died.
But the children... His eye moved from the larger coffin to the two smaller ones next to it. Somewhere deep inside him, a stinging pain thumped against his heart, as if a lute string, too tightly wound, had snapped, recoiling painfully upon the musician’s fingers. Edward, nearly five, and his sister, little Edith. Their mother accompanied her children in death. Roger sighed softly. Was it only two days ago they had clambered upon his knee, begging for the spiced wine-dipped sops from his trencher? How like little birdlings they had been, so rosy and bright, as they gobbled the dripping treats from his fingers!
Then had come the headaches: first the boy, then little Edith, and afterward, in the gloaming, their mother had pressed her temple against the cold stone of the stairwell and sworn she could not climb the curving steps. The children had cried that the hall spun about them like a whirligig, and Roger had seen their eyes grow too bright by the devil-dancing fire on the hearth. Roger had ordered them carried up to bed, the three tucked in together. In less than an hour, their bodies had poured forth a stinking sweat. Little Edith had raved that she saw a small boy, all clothed in gold, standing by the door, beckoning to her. Edward had moaned that his head was bursting. Their mother had said nothing, merely whispered the name “Jesu.”
Then, at the turn of the hourglass, the three had breathed as one and then were gone. The nurse, a superstitious old fool from the Border country, swore she had seen their spirits arise from the soaking bed and fly out the high arched window—the baby in her mother’s arms and Edward laughing and skipping before them.
Riders from York had warned Roger that the dread sweating sickness had stalked the cobbled streets of that fair city since late August, but he had ignored them. Even when he heard that the king’s paramour, Anne Boleyn, had been taken ill, Roger had shrugged off the news as only a tidbit of court gossip. There had never been an outbreak of that strange illness at Snape Castle, not even the year before, when so many in the southern shires had died. Suddenly, within the space of a week, Roger had lost a number of peasants who tilled the home fields, then some of the household in the laundry and pantry, then a groom, a gardener, and, last of all, death had reached out his bony hand and dared to take Roger’s own.
So merry at dinner the children had been; so very dead by that evening’s doleful supper.
“Judex ergo, cum sedebit, quidquid latet, apparebit. ..” The priest droned on. Before the Judge enthroned, shall each hidden sin be owned.
Roger shifted slightly, then glared at Edith’s coffin again. She had no sins, hidden or otherwise—of that much Roger was sure. She hadn’t had the wit to commit them. He, on the other hand... Zounds! Time enough for thinking of that later—when these same words were uttered over his own wooden box.
A snigger from his blind side distracted Roger’s morbid meditations. He shifted his position so that his son’s profile came within his line of sight. Of late, Walter had taken to staying on his father’s right hand, even though he had known from early childhood this annoyed Roger. Though his left eye was still as keen as a swooping hawk’s, Roger’s loss of the right bored deeply into his vanity. Where once a silver-gray eye had regarded the world in unison with its mate, now a jagged white scar pressed the lid shut, covering the empty socket. A Border cattle raid thirty-two years ago, during Roger’s youthful days, when both his judgment and his fighting skills were green, had left him half-blind and twice as wise.
With Edward and little Edith gone, his eldest son, Walter, remained the lone survivor of eight children — the result of Roger’s two misadventures in the marriage market. Women did not seem to last long here in the cold, wet north. Even as the funeral mass was being chanted, another woman—some chit from France—was on her way to Roger’s door. He wondered if Walter’s bride-to-be had put any meat on her bones since the last time he saw her, eight years ago. He remembered her as a scrawny pullet of nine or ten — all legs and arms, with large dark eyes and a high-pitched giggle. She had better be more filled out by now, or the winter would claim her before she got half a chance to breed Walter a son.
Walter chuckled again, trying to muffle the sound in the folds of his thick woolen cloak. Roger frowned at his son’s disrespect. Walter had never taken to his stepmother, but he should at least show the proper manners at her funeral. As Roger turned to glare at him, Walter lowered his head, drawing deeper into his clothing, like a tortoise into his shell.
Roger glared at the tall man next to him. Something was not quite right. He noted the pallor in Walter’s complexion, and the angry inflammation around his eyes. Sweet Christ! Not his only son! Feeling his father’s gaze upon him, Walter turned away. As he did so, the neck of his cloak slipped, revealing a small ulcerated lesion under his jawbone.
Roger clenched his teeth as he spied another sore behind Walter’s ear and a third creeping into his hairline. As for the hair itself, Roger noticed for the first time that it looked more like an old, moth-eaten fur than the healthy brown locks Walter took such care to comb and perfume. God’s teeth! The boy was riddled with the pox!
The bitter iron taste of bile rose in Roger’s throat. All his life he had devoted himself to one goal — to advance the Ormond family from that of the petty landless knight his father had been to one of England’s finest families, like that of his overlord, Sir Thomas Cavendish, earl of Thornbury. By the good fortune of riding on the victorious shirttails of Henry Tudor at Bosworth field, Roger’s father had been granted Snape Castle, a poor holding on the windswept northern moors. Through two advantageous marriages, as well as a number of savage raids on his weaker neighbors and across the Scottish border, Roger Ormond had managed to expand his father’s lands and increase the family fortune. Only fear of the powerful earl of Thornbury, whose vast domain now lay directly to the west of Snape Castle, kept the rapacity of the ambitious Ormonds at bay.
When Walter first arrived at Henry VIII’s court six years ago, all the world, it seemed, had eagerly spread out their costly cloaks at the feet of the handsome young man. Roger winced inwardly at the memory. How proud he had been to see his son and heir feted and fawned over by the great of the land! That pride had turned to gall all too soon. Roger could not remember a time when his anger had so choked him as when Walter came crawling back to Snape, whining of his ill-treatment at the hands of the king himself.
Roger had hoped the disgrace would straighten out the headstrong boy. Perhaps in time, and with gold, the damage to the family’s ambitions might be repaired. Instead, Walter had slunk into lower company and absented himself often from Roger’s watchful gaze. Now the ghastly piper demanded to be paid his dire reckoning. And the price? God’s nightshirt! What an ignoble end to such a promising beginning!
The priest had barely uttered the final Pax Domine when Walter turned on his heel to leave.
“Nay!” Roger’s hand clamped around