"If it should come to such a pass that you’re no longer safe within your own household..." he began.
Madeleine placed her finger on his lips and then touched his cheek, lightly.
"You’ll rescue me!" she said, smiling.
He caught her hand in his.
"It’s not a joke," he said, his face very serious and his voice roughened with anxiety.
Gently, Madeleine freed her hand from his grasp.
"I know, Jervis," she said. "You’re my knight already, even though Sir John still sees you as a squire and I’ll certainly come to you if I find myself in danger"
She stood and moved away from him, smoothing her skirts.
"Might it come soon?" she asked, swinging round to face him.
Jervis shrugged.
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Belaset’s Daughter
"I’m not sure if your husband does not feel threatened then you will be safe. But if he thinks..."
Again, Madeleine stopped him, shaking her head.
"Don’t say any more, Jervis," she said. "The less I know about the situation, the less likely I’ll be to betray myself, or you, by an unguarded look or word in my husband’s presence."
Jervis nodded.
"You’re right," he said. "And just as clever as I always suspected you to be. You have spent time thinking things over, though, haven’t you?"
It was Madeleine’ s turn to heave a sigh.
"Ah, I have a great deal of time to think, Jervis," she said, ruefully. "But still," she went on, putting her shoulders back and glancing around the chamber. "I am luckier than many wives my husband gives me a good deal of freedom to come and go as I wish, provided I do nothing to cause him embarrassment."
The door opened and Joan reappeared, the boy still with her, and bearing a jug of the promised mead. She looked relieved to see that Jervis was still sitting in the same place, and that Madeleine was standing some way from him. Much further than she could have moved, had they been too close together, she though, with satisfaction. Master FitzHugh seemed to have some sense of decorum, at least.
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Belaset’s Daughter
CHAPTER TWO
Judith woke with a start and lay, heart pounding, as the nightmare slowly left her. It was always the same: she was back in the house in Leicester and the mob were shouting outside. The door burst open and they were in, bludgeoning her father as he stepped forward to protect the family. She saw him fall, blood streaming from his head, saw one of the men pick up her baby brother and throw him down. She heard the screaming and the wail cut suddenly short, as the baby hit the floor. Her mother grabbed her and they ran, her two sisters running behind them. Outside, the tumult continued and she was running through thick smoke and trying to keep up with her mother. The two of them turned a corner and she knew her sisters had not seen them. She screamed at her mother to stop and wait, stop And that was when she always woke up. Now only her mother and she, the eldest daughter, survived. There was no-one else no father, no sisters, no baby brother.
Her breathing slowed gradually and her heartbeat returned to normal. Even the sadness was less piercing after ten years. Would the nightmare ever stop? She doubted it, but hoped it would come less frequently. Throwing back the bedcovers, she rose to prepare for another day.
Glancing through the window of the room in which she sat later in the morning, Judith could see down the slope and into the grounds of the great Priory of St. Pancras, built on the flat land bordering the Winter Bourne. The tiny figures of the monks and the lay people who acted as their servants went about their daily business. Watching them over the past few years, she had grown familiar with their routines, the times of their services in the priory church, the hours they spent working in the gardens, their mealtimes even their festivals and times of fasting. It was strange, she mused, how much she knew about their religious rites, and how little they knew or cared about hers. Jews and Christians,
living so closely together, and yet so far apart.
Sighing, she bent her head again to the parchment on the table in front of her, and read the words over. It was her ketuba, the marriage contract sent by messenger from London to her mother, who now sat opposite her, waiting for her to speak.