Page 84 of The Herald's Heart
He took his horse by the reins and paced beside her along the abbey wall.
“Dame Margery was a dear friend. We came to this abbey at nearly the same time as girls.”
“Then your care for her is twice as understandable.”
“I would do as much for anyone. I only wish I could have done more for her.”
“How so?”
“I was unable to save her from the cruelty that disturbed her mind. I told you once that Dame Margery became anchoress here after she’d been raped and lost her child.”
“I remember.” Talon tried to be patient, but he really wanted to get back to Larkin.
“What I did not tell you was that she only believed the child, a son, died.”
“The boy lived?” Perhaps if he prompted her, the abbess would get on with this story and he could go. Spend time in the earl’s chapel and perhaps begin to understand the anchoress’s words.
“Aye, ’twas thought best by all concerned that Margery not have any worldly tie to hold her back from the true communion with God that an anchoress seeks.”
“’Twas wrong to take that decision away from her.” Look at the decisions that had been wrested from him because of the actions of others. Now he had done the same to Larkin.
“Perhaps, but ever since the rape, she had bordered on madness. You saw her early reactions to you.”
He pressed his lips together over the illogical hurt those rejections had caused. “Aye, and I’ve never understood. Why would even one slightly mad like Dame Margery fear me so much?”
“Perhaps ’tis because you resemble your father.”
“I do bear the earl some resemblance. Why would that bother the anchoress?”
“The earl might be your father, but so might any of the three other men that raped Margery when she was a novice.”
Talon stared at her. “I don’t understand.” He had difficulty forming the words, comprehension just beyond his reach.
“You are Dame Margery’s son.”
“Nay! My mother was ...” Understanding grew, and acceptance settled within him. “How did I come to live with the earl as his son?”
“The earl’s first countess—the woman you believed was your mother—was Margery’s sister. When Margery became pregnant, she told what happened. Sadly, she could only identify one of her attackers.”
“The Earl of Hawksedge.”
“Aye. He and three friends had gone on a drunken revel the night before his wedding to Margery’s sister. When the countess found out what the earl had done, she insisted that you be raised as his heir or she would expose the whole sordid mess.”
“Women cry rape all the time, and few men are proven guilty.”
Mother Clement nodded. “But most of those accusations come from common women. Margery was already a woman of the cloth and on the eve of her own marriage to God. The church would not have tolerated even the implication that one of its daughters could be so violated.”
“So when the countess died, that is why the earl repudiated me.”
“Aye. He hated her and all women from the day she forced him to take you as his son. He hated women most for what he needed from them. So much so that I believe he spent as much time in prayer as he could in search of forgiveness for his hatred. His time on his knees increased with the death of each wife.”
“Do you think he, too, was mad? Larkin told me that Le Hourde confessed to raping and murdering three of the earl’s wives, including my mother. How can the earl not have known what his henchman did?”
“I do not believe he was mad. While he may have played a part in those deaths, none can say what that part was. Except perhaps Baron Le Hourde, who I understand died trying to kill Lady Larkin.”
“That is true. I must wonder now how many people Le Hourde killed, and if he might be the person responsible for the earl’s death.”
“Le Hourde would never kill the source of his good fortune. I believe the baron was the one to lead the earl into evil as a young man and continued to urge him to despicable acts as the two grew older. Why else would the earl gift a holding as rich as Rosewood to a landless knight of no rank, except to buy the man’s silence?”
