Almost Innocent Read Free Page A

and the child left without further speech.
    They went in silence across the outer ward and into the court. Magdalen was resigned to the coming punishment. Her feet took little skipping steps to keep up with the impatient, angry stride of her father as he marched with her to the donjon and through an arched doorway into the great hall of the castle. An ancient hound, sprawled before the massive fireplace, raised his grizzled head at the arrival, but the servitors and wenches bustling around the vast room, laying fresh rushes interlaced with lavender, barely glanced at their lord and the child as they went up the stone staircase leading from the hall. They went down a long passage and into the women’s wing of the castle.
    In the bedchamber Magdalen shared with her aunt, Lord Bellair whipped her. Nothing was said by either ofthem until it was over. The child made no sound, although tears crowded her eyes. He replaced the switch on the shelf beside the hearth and turned back to the room, the frown still deep on his brow. She stood with her back to him, her shoulders rigid, her head averted lest he see the trembling lip and tear-sheened eyes.
    He shook his head in weary incomprehension, appreciating despite himself the pride that kept her from showing him that he had hurt her, yet wishing she would offer just a hint of contrition. Just a hint, and he could make some move toward her, but she stood there, fierce in her refusal to offer him the slightest help.
    Such a fierce, indomitable,
unnatural
child she was. Even as he chided himself yet again for using such a term as “unnatural” in reference to an eleven-year-old child, he knew that it expressed what he felt about her. Was she touched by destiny, or tainted by the past? One of the two. He caught himself wondering what her horoscope would foretell, then dismissed the thought abruptly. With God’s grace, the child’s future would be no concern of his. And it was a future to begin this day.
    He walked to the door, and when he spoke his voice was without anger. “I am expecting visitors this day. You will be presented to them in the great hall. Wait here until your aunt comes to you.” The door closed behind him, and the key turned in the lock.
    Magdalen’s tears now flowed freely. They flowed for the smarting of the switch, but more for her own perverse nature that would not permit her to behave properly, that set imps of wickedness coursing through her veins so that she wanted to dance and sing and must always be moving, could not be still with her tambour frame or lute, could not restrain her exuberance and the joy of her soul, could not feel that she belonged in this drear, damp, border land of cold stone and heavy forests. And yet she had known no other; had known no caretakers but her father and her aunt, who, she knew in her heart, did the best they could with her,although she seemed constantly to disappoint them. She could not accuse them of injustice. So why did she seethe so with resentment sometimes, with the certainty that she didn’t belong, the certainty that she had never belonged, that these people were only passersby in her life? She flung herself facedown on the poster bed, but she was not made for tears and never wept for long. The tears dried rapidly as speculation about the coming visitors took her mind off her soreness.
    Leaving Magdalen, Lord Bellair went in search of his sister. He found her in her square parlor, warmed by a blazing log fire, lit by thick wax candles in wall sconces. Skins covered the stone-flagged floor, and a branched candelabrum threw golden light on the long table set beneath the narrow windows, where the February gloom offered meager illumination.
    The Lady Elinor, seated at the table, looked up from her embroidery as her brother entered. “Good morrow, brother.” Her smile faded as she took in his expression. “Is aught amiss with the preparations for the visitors?”
    “Not to my knowledge.” He went to the fire,