Page 46 of The Forsaken
“I would be delighted,” Kate replied truthfully. “I quite enjoy making jam. I must admit that I’ve been known to help myself to a spoonful or two. Or three,” she confessed.
“And who could blame ye? I enjoy sampling it meself,” Joan added with a smile. “It’s when the sampling turns into outright gorging that we have a problem.”
“What should I start on next?” Kate checked on the loaves and looked around the kitchen.
“Perhaps ye can churn some butter, if ye feel up to it.”
“Of course. It’ll be my pleasure.” Kate filled the butter churn with milk and took a seat on the bench set against the wall. The churn was surprisingly modern and had a foot pedal instead of a hand crank. Kate set her foot on the pedal and began to rock the churn back and forth.
“Guy used to like coming to the kitchen when he were a little lad.” Joan’s face softened at the memory. “He said he wanted to help, but what he really wanted was a bit of company. He was often lonely, the poor mite.”
“How old was he?”
“About six. My lady died when Guy was five and Margaret was three. I kept Margaret here with me while I worked, but Guy was left to fend for himself. William and Hugh had gone by that time, and he missed them something fierce.”
“What were they like, as children?” Kate asked. She knew next to nothing about her husband and his family.
Joan laughed and shook her head in amusement as if she recalled some particularly amusing incident. “They were a handful, I’ll tell ye that. Their lady mother, God rest her soul, compared them to horses once.”
“To horses?” Kate asked, so surprised she stopped pushing the pedal.
“She had a funny way with words. His lordship brought her from Normandy. She spoke English well but often translated sentences in her head from French, and they came out sounding odd. She didn’t have too many ladies of her station to talk to, so that didn’t help neither.”
“Why?”
“People are wary of foreigners,” Joan explained, as if that should be obvious.
“But the people hereabouts support a French queen.”
“Aye, that they do, but a queen is a queen, and a French woman is a harlot and a witch, best avoided.”
“That seems awfully harsh,” Kate exclaimed. She could understand how lonely Marie must have been, if her own experience of life at the keep were anything to go by.
“She was beautiful, and kind. She left us too soon.”
“So why did she compare her children to horses?” Kate asked.
“Oh, that. Marie said that Gulliume—that’s what she called William—was like a work horse: strong, steady, and hardworking. Hubert was like a destrier, bred for war. And Guy was like a pony: gentle and sweet, and perfect for children.”
“And Margaret?”
“Margaret was like a newborn colt—shaky and frightened,” Joan replied, the smile having faded from her face at the mention of the little girl.
Kate liked the whimsical descriptions. She hadn’t known William, but both Guy and Hugh had mentioned that he’d been loyal, decent, and honest. Hugh, from what Kate knew of her husband so far, was aggressive, ambitious, and morally ambiguous when it suited him. And Guy seemed sensitive and chivalrous.
“Funny how bairns born of the same parents can be so different,” Joan mused as she deftly skinned a rabbit. “Those boys had their own personalities from the day they were born, and no amount of schooling or scolding could change them.”
“What about Margaret?”
Joan shook her head in dismay. She never mentioned Margaret unless Kate asked about the child outright. Perhaps the memory was too painful. But Joan’s next words quickly dispelled that notion.
“Margaret was clumsy, and oblivious to all around her. Not clever and canny like her brothers. That bairn had no sense of self-preservation, so someone always had to keep an eye on her, even once she got too old to be minded round the clock,” Joan added.
“Guy blames himself for her death.”
It was difficult for Guy to speak of his sister, but he’d shared with Kate that Margaret had drowned in the river when she was only five. She’d gone there with Guy, who had been distracted by something he saw and wandered off. He didn’t see his sister slip on the mud and fall into the river. Margaret’s desperate screams got Guy’s attention, but it was too late. The waterlogged skirts had dragged the struggling child under before he got a chance to call for help. He’d nearly died himself, trying to rescue her, but she’d drowned nevertheless, and her body hadn’t been recovered until it washed up downriver and was found by one of the de Rosel tenants.
“More fool he if he does,” Joan snapped. “Margaret was old enough to know not to come too close to the river. She just wasn’t paying attention, as usual. It weren’t Guy’s fault.”
