A Lady Under Siege(8)

The wedding itself was another extravagance, and Gerald had gone into debt to pay for it, borrowing heavily from the Earl of Apthwaite to throw a party for the hundreds of guests invited from far and wide. It was a three-day festival of wine, music, and every kind of cooked meat, wild and tame. Sylvanne had been overwhelmed, and although everyone was gracious to her, and praised her beauty and deportment to the heavens, still she wondered what they really thought of this simple country girl marrying into an old and noble family, especially after overhearing a notoriously opinionated Baroness describe Gerald as “a young fool without proper counsel.” The grand old woman had been pontificating to a gaggle of other ladies in the coolness of the garden between dances, not realising Sylvanne had slipped out for a breath of air herself, and was listening from the shadows. “The aim of any marriage should be to solidify alliances with families of equal or greater power,” the esteemed Lady had asserted. “Poor Gerald has let love’s poison-tipped arrow lower his good name and water down his bloodline, mating with a mere milkmaid, however prettily clothed for the occasion.” A murmur of agreement had arisen from the ladies, and not a single voice had risen in her defence.

The dutiful daughter had agreed to marry Gerald under intense pressure from her father, and after marriage she transposed that sense of obligation to her husband. She became the dutiful wife. Did she love him? She told herself she would, with time. There were reasons to love him, for he was tender with her, and kind-hearted, though he had an impetuous streak and was terribly unwise with money. She scolded him for it, but he laughed it off as none of her concern. As a year of marriage turned to two, then three and four, and they remained childless, cracks began to show in his kindness toward her, for he expected from her the son that was essential to keeping his bloodline intact. Sylvanne’s mother, with her expertise as a midwife, gave her all manner of herbal concoctions to help her conceive, but to no avail. In all corners of Christendom a barren womb could only be spoken of in public as a woman’s shame, but in private, in a rueful whisper so soft God might overlook it, her mother put the blame on a caprice in Gerald’s bloodline. Such a failing called for discreet cures, and the remedies she concocted to make the husband more virile had to be slipped by Sylvanne into his food and drink surreptitiously. Each remedy in turn raised her hopes and expectations, only to disappoint. She remained childless.

Her marriage, forged in great expectations for happiness, had slowly begun to metamorphose into one wherein happiness grew ever more elusive, as the essential contract at its heart was neither fulfilled nor satisfied. She lived in a kind of stasis, awaiting resolution. Then one day, out of the blue, came a messenger, an envoy from Thomas of Gastoncoe, a powerful Lord with abundant lands two days ride to the east. Lord Thomas wished a private meeting with her, an unheard of thing for any man to ask of a properly married woman. The request had aroused in Gerald a horrible suspicion, and for the first time he had struck her in anger. Lord Thomas was denied, yet persisted in his demands for a meeting, and Gerald in his jealousy could not be placated. She took this as a sign that he truly loved her, and loved him a little more in return. She worked hard to regain his trust, for she had done nothing wrong, and fully supported her husband when he rudely dismissed each new entreaty from Lord Thomas.

The strange desire of this Thomas to meet with another man’s wife then took on the appearance of single-minded insanity—he raised among his subjects a sizable company of soldiers, and sent them to lay siege to Gerald and Sylvanne in their little castle, with its granary still not properly replenished since the wedding, its larder nearly bare. Thomas’s soldiers encamped outside the gates, and poor Gerald, “the young fool with no proper counsel,” had no powerful ally to call upon. He and Sylvanne and their loyal retinue became prisoners of the worst sort, prisoners without provisions. Rationing was required almost immediately, food was scarce and poor. A few weeks later Sylvanne missed her monthly cycle, and she had rejoiced at first, and rushed to tell her husband, who was greatly pleased that she had finally conceived him a child. Shortly thereafter she came to realise that every female besieged alongside her was suffering a similar symptom, for severe hunger makes a woman cease to menstruate. When she told Gerald, it was the most painful admission of her life, and it seemed to break something inside him. An unnamed illness began to sap his will to live, his resolve to endure and prevail over his besiegers. From that day forward she never heard him express confidence, or optimism, never saw him smile, or even look a little healthy, for his every word and gesture spoke of fatigue and resignation. Then his very body began to waste away, much more obviously than the rest of them, who also suffered hunger and deprivation. And now he lay upon the bed, unspeaking, looking as much like a corpse as a living being. “Live for me,” she whispered to him. “Please live for me.” She told herself now that she loved him, but more than that she could not imagine life without his protection. And she could not imagine what strange obsession could have compelled Lord Thomas to perpetrate this siege that was killing her husband.