Catherine Coulter by The Valcourt Heiress Read Free Book Online

Lisle, has anyone been to the chapel?”
    “Tupper found poor Father Adal’s body amid the wreckage of the altar, run through his chest with a sword. The beautiful altar, carved nearly two hundred years ago by the first lord, the Demon smashed it to splinters. No one else has gone to the chapel since, no one has any faith left. Do ye know, I dusted that altar for seventeen years. I ask you, how can a man destroy an altar?”
    “The Black Demon,” Miggins said. “He bain’t afraid of anything or anyone, God included.”
    After seeing the wreckage of Wareham, Merry had to agree.
    “Here,” Lisle said, knelt down, swept away shards of glass with her strong hand, and gently pried up one of the stones against the wall.
    Merry fell to her knees beside Lisle to lean over a hole two feet deep and two feet wide. Folded neatly within were gowns and shifts, a tangled flow of ribbons, even three pairs of slippers, all sadly out of fashion now, but who cared about that? She knew pointed slippers were now worn at Queen Eleanor’s court in London, and these toes were rounded, but they were finely cut leather, covered with red velvet, a bit faded, darned here and there, but again, it didn’t matter, they were beautiful.
    Lisle picked the clothes out of the hole and handed them to Merry. “They’re sound enough still.” She stuck her hand into the slippers. “Lady Anne had big feet.”
    Merry sat on the floor, pulled off the filthy boots, and slipped them on, tied the ribbons around her ankles. She grinned up at Lisle and Miggins. “I have big feet too. They are perfect. Thank you, Lisle.”
    “Now a shift and a gown.”
    The shifts were well-tended, but Lady Anne had been shorter than she was and they came only to her knees. As for the gowns, there were four. Merry chose the oldest, a green wool, shiny from many brushings, that came only to her ankles. Who cared?
    “I didn’t see any stockings else I would have stuffed them into the hidey hole as well. I wonder what happened to them?”
    “No matter,” Merry said, and pulled off her cap and began to straighten her braid.
    “Allow me,” Lisle said, and began to twine the matching green ribbon through the thick braid.
    Miggins stood back and looked her up and down. “What a fine little mistress ye are, Merry. That’s right, Lisle, make her look a lady, wipe those dirt smudges off her pretty face. The finer she looks, the faster all the people will look to her and obey her.”
    Merry certainly hoped so. Before they left the wrecked bedchamber, Merry lifted her eyes upward and thanked Lady Anne for her bounty. As for the boy’s clothes, let Lisle burn them.
    “Thank you both. Please, Lisle, Miggins, there is so much to do, please do not ask for explanations just yet. Father Adal, how old was he?”
    “Not a young man, but he had a head of hair left,” Lisle said, “and usually a pleasing breath.”
    “Did he read and write?”
    “Oh aye, and he spoke beautiful Latin, at least that’s what Lady Anne told everyone.”
    Merry thought about this for a moment. “If you would consent to it, I would be Father Adal’s bastard. Surely God will not mind, since our cause is just. I read and write too, you see, and thus that would explain it, since he would have taught me. What think you? Will you agree to it?”
    “Hmmm, Father Adal came after Lord Garron left, mayhap some five, maybe six years ago. Why not? Lisle, we will see what the girl can do. If she fails, it doesn’t much matter.”
    “Thank you. Thank you both.”
    “We will tell the others,” said Lisle.
    Merry hugged both of them, then rubbed her hands together, her list already clear in her mind.
    The girl, Miggins thought, fair to bristled with energy.
    She laughed when Merry said, “Now it’s time to begin setting things aright.”
    Miggins said, “I’ll bet old Tupper’s last tooth that Mordrid stole Lady Anne’s stockings far before the Retribution came.”
    “Who is Mordrid?”
    “She was one of