The Lode Stone Read online

  “I have nothing to offer a new husband.”

  “You are still beautiful, and young enough to bear many sons. And there is the bed and the table.”

  “No,” I said. I gathered my children and returned home. I wanted to be angry at her unwanted advice, but I was only tired. My mother could not feed us forever. She would take us in when I lost my home, and we would sleep on the floor around the hearth where I had slept as a child. But I was a grown woman now; sooner or later I would have to remarry. My mother was right. Better to do it sooner while I had a good bed and a solid table to offer in place of a dowry. Her advice was sound, but I would not take it. Not yet, and I hoped not ever.

  ***

  I walked home slowly after delivering their clean laundry to my two remaining patrons. I stared ahead, taking no interest in anything around me. Two extra loads of laundry was little enough to do; it was something else that dulled my mind and slowed my step. Ever since Lord Charles had described the battle in which Simon died I had felt this weariness like a weight on my chest. He was not coming home. I had known it the minute I saw his horse, but knowing it and feeling it were not the same thing.

  For the sake of my children I tried to rouse myself from my lethargy. Somehow I must find a way to keep our cottage. Would it be any use to speak to Lady Celeste? Would I be allowed in to speak to her if I could get through the castle gate? What would I say? I was struggling to form an effective appeal when once again I heard the whinny and stamping hooves of horses on my street. I hurried toward my house.

  There, in front of it, taking up the entire street, was a large wagon with two cart horses harnessed to it. Two strong men wearing royal livery were loading my table onto the wagon. The two benches were already on it, and our bed and feather mattress as well.

  “What are you doing?” I cried.

  They ignored me, occupied with pushing the heavy wooden table onto the cart. I dropped my baskets and ran forward to grab the arm of the nearest one.

  “Stop! What are you doing with my belongings?” Where were my children? Surely they had not hurt the children!

  “I have my orders.” The man shrugged off my hands and continued to help his comrade push the table onto the wagon bed before they both turned back to me. The taller one standing on the wagon bed jumped down and came toward me. “Madame Melisende, wife of Simon the blacksmith?” he said.

  “Yes, that is me. What is this? Where are my children?” My hands balled into fists.

  “The little maid took her brother to their Grandmaman, Madame.” The man held his hands up placatingly, a slight smile twisting the corners of his mouth up. “They are unharmed. We have been ordered to move your belongings out of this house, ready for the new tenant.”

  “This is my home! I paid my rent in full last autumn. It is not due again until the day after tomorrow! Kindly put my things back inside!”

  “I have orders, Madame. We are to move you to your new home.”

  “But I do not have a new home!”

  Lord Charles was turning me out of my home, renting it to a new tenant. As lord of the castle he owned most of the houses in the town. There was no use appealing for justice, Lord Charles was also judge and commander over everything that happened here.

  “Where am I to live?” I cried.

  “Madame Melisende.” I turned to see Simon’s horse trotting toward me with Lord Roland riding it. He gave me an apologetic smile. “I meant to arrive before my brother’s men.” His smile widened into a grin. “You own a quarry, Madame Melisende. You are moving to the house in town that goes with it. A little hut beside the smithy is not suitable for the mistress of a stone quarry!”

  I drew my breath in sharply. Roland had talked his brother into giving the quarry to me after all. But I had not thought of having to leave my home.

  I looked at our little hut, where Simon and I had been happy together, and the smithy beside it where I had heard him whistling as he worked. A third man came out of our house and handed me a misshapen clasp of bent iron.

  “This was nailed above the door,” he said, his brows puckered as he looked at it.

  Simon was cheerful even about his mistakes. “Good fortune comes at the cost of misfortune,” he had said, showing me his first failed attempt at a new design for a belt buckle.

  “Melt it down and start again,” I told him. He was just starting his smithy and we could ill afford mistakes.

  “I will the next one,” he said as he hung it on the nail over our door, like some Simon-strange kind of benediction. “This one will remind us not to fear a new challenge. To look forward with hope.”

  I closed my hand around the ugly thing and took a deep breath.

  “And the woods beside the quarry?” I asked, looking up at Lord Roland sharply.

  Chapter Seven: To the Manor Borne

  I had not been poor while Simon was the town’s blacksmith. Although we had to live beside the smithy in case Simon was needed to shoe a horse or repair a tool someone depended on to do their day’s work, our cottage was of average size within the town. But now I was wealthy beyond belief. As I sat beside the driver on the seat of the wagon that held all my earthly belongings I did not feel rich, turned out of my home with so little to show for our life together.

  I looked back at the cottage where Simon and I had been so happy together. Would I ever be so happy again? It wasn’t big—the house I was going to would be much bigger, no doubt. But this had been our home. Home is where you are loved.

  Home is where you are safe, Simon had corrected me once.

  You are safe where you are loved, I had answered him.

  Not always, he said, and I knew his childhood had not been easy. But we are safe here. And he had smiled. Such was his confidence in the favor of Lord Barnard and his sons. And this was what it had led to: I had not been safe in this house.

  But I had been loved here. Perhaps I would be safe in my new house as the wealthy owner of a quarry. But as we drove away I looked behind and mourned, as though I was leaving not a cottage but something immeasurable, something I might never find again.

  We drove through the town, past the market held each week in its center square. In spring and summer the market was busy all day, every day, filled with pilgrims starting their long journey from here to Santiago de Compostela along the Via Podiensis. The square was empty now that it was fall and the sun had passed its high-point. We crossed it quickly and continued up the hill to the nicest part of the town where the wealthy merchants lived—people who knew my husband, who might even nod to me while discussing a task with him—but who would never have considered us their equals. I shivered, embarrassed to be riding through their streets with such a mean load of furnishings for my new house. I looked straight ahead, pretending not to see the servants and sometimes their masters or mistresses stopping to watch me pass by. The men riding beside the wagon wore Lord Charles’ livery, making our progression of interest to all who saw it. Soon enough word would spread of my new status and we would see what they thought of me then. Today I only wondered how many would remember me riding stiff and hot in my worn laundry shift with my unembellished wood bed and table and well-used cooking pots and meager pile of clothes and linens.

  I had asked Lord Roland to tell my mother what was happening. She would be stricken with terror to have my children rush to her home crying that they had been ordered out of their cottage and did not know where their Maman was. Thank heaven he was not part of this procession, adding to its gossip-worthiness!

  We stopped before the iron gates of one of the larger town estates. Through the trees I could see a huge structure, surely too large to be a single home. I gasped out loud when I realized we were going no further, and came very close to demanding to be taken back home. Only there was no home behind me to go to. Someone else would live there now, where we had been so happy, and I must live in this huge mansion where my children and I would echo in the empty rooms and never see our neighbors. I blinked my eyes, indulging myse
lf for a moment longer, then I bit my tongue and jumped down from the wagon. This was what I had asked for. I might be angry at circumstances, but I would not regret my choice.

  One of Charles’ men rode up and handed down to me a set of iron keys. A set, mind you, six heavy keys jangling against each other on their iron ring. One for the gate, I supposed, one for the door, one for each supply room—linens, herbs and spices, wine... I nearly laughed at the thought of it. That I should have sufficient of any of these to warrant locking them up! But why else so many keys? My mother had told me stories of her days as servant in one of the wealthy merchant’s homes, before she married my father. The mistress of the house had a set of keys like this tied to her belt. I must get a strong leather belt. I shook my head and strode toward the gate with my back to the guards so they would not see my mouth pinched together and my eyes dancing as I tried to hold my nervous levity inside.

  The two points of the gate were topped with iron fleurs-de-lis, the curved top rail adorned with gold-leaved curlicues. Such a waste of iron, I thought, being the wife of a blacksmith. The former wife. I still held the beaten, misshapen buckle in my left hand, but now it embarrassed me. How could I have imagined hanging it above the door of my new house? What if someone saw it? But I would keep it hidden somewhere in my chamber. I would not forget my life with Simon, nor my poor beginnings, nor would I let my children forget.

  I stood at the gate looking helplessly at the ring of keys in my right hand. They all looked alike.

  “This one,” Charles’ man said, taking one up and showing me its rounded top with a fleur-de-lis stamped into one side. He fitted it into the lock and turned. With a solid click the gate opened. He handed the keys back to me and returned to the wagon.

  I walked up the road through the palmetto trees. Ahead of me the house loomed, three stories tall, large enough to fit in half my old neighborhood. If I got lonely, I could have them all come live with me! I fought back another fit of hysterical laughter. Their pigs and chickens could root and roost between these trees! Now I laughed out loud. If only Simon...

  All laughter died inside me. If Simon were here we would be snug in our old house right now; I would not be walking down a road—a road—from the front gate to the door of this cold mansion. I marched forward stoically, gripping the heavy ring of keys in one hand, the hopeful misshapen buckle in the other.

  There were two doors to the entrance, not one. I walked up the stairs on the left side of the undercroft staring from the double doors ahead of me to the keys in my hand. How was I to know which door to open with which key? Would I look foolish if I simply knocked?

  The doors swung open simultaneously, as though someone inside had been watching my arrival. A man in Lord Charles’ livery bowed to me. “This way—” he paused, not knowing what to call me. Nor did I know, so I waited also, eager to hear his decision. He resolved the dilemma by bowing lower and turning as he straightened to lead me through the front hall.

  It was richly decorated with tapestries depicting leaves and flowers as though I walked through a garden. Several chairs stood along the walls between the long windows, with a few tables here and there. I was embarrassed at the thought of my table, rough and inelegant. I hoped they would not carry it in behind me, and turned in fear to look. They had not entered. Perhaps they had left it in front of the house. Or taken it round behind, if I was lucky.

  A huge fireplace was built into the center of the room. As we walked toward it I noticed a stairway on each side wall, leading up to the second floor where I assumed the master and mistress slept. Wait—mistress...that meant—me. I shook my head. It was too much...too grand. How could I live here? It would destroy me. At the very least, change me beyond recognition.

  When I was a child, overcome by some childish fear, my father would tell me to bite my tongue hard. “It makes those feelings go away,” he said. The first time I had bitten my tongue too hard and burst into tears. He bent down and wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Are you still afraid, ma petite?” he asked. My eyes widened...the fear had disappeared!

  I bit my tongue now and raised my chin. Alys and Guarin would take their cue from me. I would not let a mere house undo us.

  Charles’ man led me around the stone fireplace, where I was astonished to see Lord Charles sitting behind a huge table awaiting me. “My lord,” I murmured, curtsying.

  “You may be seated,” Charles said.

  When I had perched on a chair across the table from him, he lifted a parchment lying in front of him and waved it at me. “This writ cedes to you on behalf of your son, or husband should you marry, the quarry to the north of Ville de Le Puy,” he paused to raise an eyebrow and frown across at me, “and the woods adjoining it, as far north as the river Borne, as far south as the road leading to the quarry, and as far to the east as the common fields. This is what you asked for, and this is what I grant you to honor your husband.”

  I considered reminding him that Simon’s horse must go to Roland, but there was a cool warning in his expression and over these past few weeks I had finally learned the value of holding my tongue.

  “You did not ask for a house.”

  “I had a house.”

  “You also had a husband who was a blacksmith, which gave you the right to rent the smithy and the house beside it. Now you have neither.” He paused, letting me consider that. When I said nothing, he nodded once. “But you must live somewhere, Madame Melisende. I would not see Simon’s wife and children without a roof over their heads when it rains. You must have a house appropriate to your new station. This house, for example. I have decided to rent it to you.”

  Rent? I could not pay the rent on my little cottage beside the smithy, how would I live here? “How much rent?”

  “It is a fine big house, is it not?” He looked at me coolly. I realized that I was about to learn the cost of my insolence.

  “I do not need such a large house.”

  “Ah. Your humility is touching. But you are now a wealthy woman, and you must live as one. I cannot have people think my quarry no longer produces good stones.”

  My quarry. But I thought of Alys and Guarin and kept my mouth closed.

  “Your quarry now,” he said, as though he could read my thoughts.

  “How much is the rent for this fine house?”

  “A house this big? And furnished exquisitely. And with a stable behind it with six horses and a carriage.”

  My heart sank. A house this size would have at least eight servants, whom I would have to pay. I might get it down to five, and two more for the stable. How would I pay the rent as well? I understood now the game he was playing and waited grimly.

  “I usually ask a set rent, as you know. But what if the quarry is flooded or the men are struck down by a summer fever? I could not throw Simon’s wife out of her home.”

  I listened with dismay. I would have to pay the quarry workers, also. And whoever Lord Charles had hired to oversee the operation. I took a deep breath. Sufficient onto the day, I told myself. For good measure I bit my tongue as well. “How much, my Lord?”

  “I will accept for rent half what the quarry yields each year. Good year or bad, you will keep half your profits.” He paused for me to thank him. When I said nothing, he continued, “You may keep whatever you earn selling timber from your woods, as well. I have other woodlands.” He smiled with a tilt of his head as though bestowing a favor, but his eyes were cold and unforgiving. I had taken his quarry. I had taken a section of his woodland. I had not even left him Simon’s horse—Lord Roland had been riding it today. Lord Charles had conceded to all my demands. But he would have half the yield of his quarry back, without the expense of extracting the stone. I was angry and no doubt he saw it, but I kept my silence.

  “Rent is due in two days.” He let me think about that before saying, “Although the full amount from the quarry is rightfully mine this year, I will be benevolent and give you half, for Simon’s sake. You will need to pay the workers over the coming y
ear, and to maintain your grand house.” He raised one eyebrow in a sardonic smile. “You will see by the amount I give you what I expect to receive in rent next year. I will want a reckoning. Do not run my quarry into the ground.”

  “My quarry.” I plucked the writ from his hand, looking him steadfastly in the eye. I did not trust him, but dared not offend him further. And I needed his first payment to be generous. “I am not renting the quarry, my Lord, I am renting the house. It must have a set price. I will pay you every year the amount you withhold from me in two days’ time,” I proposed. “Half of last year’s profit from the quarry. Good year or bad, you will be assured of that price for renting this house and property.”

  He looked at me a long minute. “Very well. See that you manage your holdings well, Madame, and do not regret your bargain. Believe it or not, it is easier to lose everything when you are wealthy than when you are poor.” He stood up. I jumped to my feet as well, while his men snapped to attention. “I have now fulfilled my obligation to your husband. Do not look for more generosity from me in the future.”

  I curtsied, not trusting myself to speak. I was overpaying on the house but at least now I would know my rent, and I would not have Lord Charles looking over my books each year. I would learn to make my quarry more successful than it had ever been under this arrogant lord. And I had assured myself of a good payment in two days’ time.

  As soon as he had left a woman approached me. She looked about my mother’s age and wore a set of keys identical to mine tied to her belt. “Welcome, Madame,” she said with a curtsey. “I am the house matron.”

  I was about to tell her there was no need for curtsies and formal titles between us, but I stopped myself. Perhaps, given the suddenness of my ‘rise’ there was more need, not less, to observe the difference between us. I did not like the thought, but Lord Charles’ warning—more likely his expectation—that I would not be able to maintain my new position still rang in my ears. I nodded and asked her name and did not offer mine.