Lords of the White Castle (58 page)

The party set off again, but within a quarter of a mile, Maude knew that she could not go on. The pain in her belly was becoming deep and unbearable. As her mount picked its way along the riverbank, it stumbled slightly on a hidden mouse hole and Maude was unable to catch her cry in time.

Fulke swung round from the head of the troop and was immediately at her side. 'What is it?'

The contraction tore through her and, for a moment, she could do nothing but cling to the reins, blind of anything but the pain. 'The baby,' she gasped as her womb relaxed, briefly releasing her. 'I am in travail!'

Fulke looked at her in horror. She saw him struggle with panic and even through her predicament felt a moment of bleak humour. He could fight his way out of anything, but a woman in childbirth was enough to turn him as pale as whey.

'Carreg-y-nant is less than five miles,' he said.

'You might as well say five thousand miles, it is too far.' She set her teeth as her belly tightened again.

'But the girls took more than half a day to be born. Can you not wait?'

Maude would have laughed had she not been in such extremity. 'I can wait,' she gasped with a last thread of reason before the pain tore into her, 'but the baby will not.' As if in confirmation, at the height of the contraction, she felt a strange rending within her body and suddenly her gown, her saddle and the horse were soaked in birthing fluid as her waters broke.

Fulke swore blasphemously. Dismounting, he thrust the reins at one of the other knights. 'Take the men aside,' he said. 'Make a fire and boil some water from the river.' Turning to Maude, he lifted her gently from the saddle.

She heard him speaking to Gracia, was dimly aware of being carried to the waterside and laid down on a blanket.

'No,' she panted, 'save the blanket. You'll need it later.'

Fulke removed it. Gracia pushed up Maude's soaked skirts and looked at Fulke. 'Kneel behind her and hold her, my lord. She has no birthing stool so you must suffice. It is not seemly, but there is no help for it.'

Through the redness of pain, Maude was aware of him doing as Gracia instructed him. She felt the support of his arms, the power of his body bracing hers. She put her hands behind her, sought him and gripped for dear life.

Gracia was no midwife, but at least as the eldest of ten siblings she had attended at a birth before and knew what had to be done. However, both of Maude's girls had been born at their allotted time in a warm chamber with many attendants. This one was coming two months early into a rough wilderness and, if not stillborn, would likely die within hours of birth.

The urge to push was overwhelming. Pain squeezed her loins and she screamed through her teeth. Behind her, Fulke was rigid as she gripped him.

'Jesu,' he said shakily, trying for humour and failing. 'It's worse than a battle.'

'It is a battle!' Maude groaned. A woman's battle that men rarely got to see, with no ransoms taken, no mercy for the weak.

She cried out as another contraction surged over her.

'Push!' cried Gracia, peering between Maude's parted knees, i can see the head!'

Maude swore, her shriek rising like a vixen's and her nails digging into Fulke's flesh, branding his forearms with deep half-moons. Tears of effort, anger, and pain ran down her face.

'Why is Mama screaming?' demanded Hawise's high, frightened little voice from the place where the men were making camp. Someone gave a soothing murmur.

Maude bit down on her lower lip. Now she was not even permitted the relief of a scream. The next contraction rose and surged with the violence of a wave at high tide.

'Push!' urge Fulke and Gracia. She imprisoned her voice in her throat and concentrated on releasing the child from her womb. It came in a sudden, hot, slippery gush and a thin wail filled her hearing. Alive then, she thought, as she slumped against Fulke, gasping with effort.

'A boy,' Gracia declared tremulously as she uncurled the cord from between the baby's legs. 'You have a son.'

Compared to the state of her daughters at birth, Maude was shocked at how scrawny and small this new addition was. His wail was weak and querulous with a slight hiccup between breaths.

'He looks like a skinned coney,' Fulke said, and taking the blanket Maude had bidden him save, wrapped the baby in one of its corners. The wails quieted to snuffles. Father and son considered each other nervously.

'If I might have your knife, my lord, I can cut the cord,' Gracia said.

In a daze, Fulke handed her the weapon. The maid probed beneath the blanket and snicked off and tied the cord.

Fulke returned the infant to Maude. She took him gingerly. He was so light, so small. It was indeed like handling a skinned coney. 'He ought to be christened,' she said and swallowed against the tightness in her throat. 'If he… if he dies, I want it to be in the grace of God.'

'He's not going to die,' Fulke said forcefully, as if the strength of his voice would make a fact out of uncertainty.

Gracia bit her lip. 'There is no priest, my lady, and I do not have the dispensation of a midwife.'

'I want him christened….' Maude's voice cracked. It was the most and least she could do for him. She drew him close, pressing him to her body warmth. He was covered in a waxy grey substance that made him look as pale as a corpse. Tears of exhaustion blinded her eyes. Her womb contracted painfully and, between her legs, she felt the slither of the afterbirth.

'Roger de Walton was trained for the priesthood, but he never took his vows,' Fulke said. 'He is the nearest we have to a priest.' He left the women and approached the fire, returning moments later with the young knight in question. Rather clumsily, de Walton took the baby in his arms whilst Fulke filled a drinking horn with water from the river.

'How is he to be named?' de Walton asked, worried lines furrowing beneath his mop of blond hair. He looked like a man holding a pig's bladder balloon that might burst at any moment.

'After his father,' Maude whispered.

Fulke nodded and gestured to de Walton.

The baby's wail became a fractious roar of sheer indignation as the cold river water was trickled over his forehead. Roger de Walton rather self-consciously murmured the words of baptism and bundled the baby back into Fulke's
arms
.

'With a yell like that, he's going to cling to life,' Fulke reassured Maude. 'Look at him, he's strong.'

She heard the pleasure and pride in his voice. The power of the baby's cry and the fact of his baptism had calmed her fear. She knew that she must have miscalculated the time of his conception, for although he was small and scrawny, he was still too vigorous for a child born two months early. To Fulke, she managed the semblance of a smile, but only a semblance. They were still under threat of pursuit in the middle of nowhere and several miles from shelter. Out of the deepest part of the woods perhaps, but not yet clear of the trees. And she was so tired, so very tired.

On the morrow, they brought Maude in slow stages to the grange at Carreg-y-nant. They made her a litter out of cut saplings and blankets for it -would have been too dangerous for her to ride astride a horse or even sit pillion. Although her labour had been swift, she had bled considerably and was as pale as bleached linen, her eyes dark-ringed and bruised with exhaustion. It was impossible that she would be able to move on to Whittington the next day as Fulke had intended. Looking at her as they rode through the gateway of the grange, he was filled with apprehension. She had been very quiet for most of the journey, responding to his attempts at conversation in monosyllables. The baby had suckled from her a couple of times and although scrawny and small, was tenaciously holding his own. It was Maude who worried him. He could not bear to think of losing her, but he knew that women often died bearing children, if not at the birth, then soon after.

At the grange, the monks furnished Maude with a pallet and a brazier in their tiny guest room. She was given hot mead to drink and a nourishing mutton and barley broth, after which she fed the baby again and fell asleep.

'She will recover, my lord,' Gracia reassured Fulke softly as he stared down at his sleeping wife and unconsciously gnawed on his thumb knuckle. 'Peace and sleep are what she needs.'

'Peace!' Fulke uttered the word as if it were a curse. 'I doubt she's had that since the day Theobald died.' He cast his gaze around the stark, limewashed walls, bare of all decoration save a simple wooden crucifix and an aumbry cupboard with a studded wooden door. There was peace for her here. The monks' only visitors were shepherds. It was a rare occasion indeed when they received travellers such as themselves. 'If I have killed her—' He spoke very low and broke off abruptly.

'In God's name, Fulke, stop belabouring your conscience,' Maude muttered without opening her eyes and scarcely moving her lips. 'It would take more than you to kill me. I knew what I wanted when I consented to wed you. Now go away, you great ox, I'm trying to sleep.'

'See,' said Gracia, spreading her hands palm upwards.

Reassured, if not at ease, Fulke leaned over to kiss his wife's brow and returned to his men in the small refectory, discovering that in his absence more guests had arrived. If the place had been full before, now it was as packed as a barrel of herrings, the glint of the mail like so many fish scales enhancing the comparison, not counting the nose-catching aroma of so many unwashed, hard-travelled bodies.

'My lord.' Fulke bent the knee as Prince Llewelyn shouldered forwards, a mead cup in his hand.

'Get up,' Llewelyn said. 'There's little enough room to breathe, let alone to kneel.'

'No, my lord.' Fulke wondered with a sinking heart if he and his troop would have to move out to accommodate the Prince's entourage, Maude would have to stay. However brave she was, she was not fit to travel even another hundred yards.

'Fortunate then that we are only tarrying to dine and water the horses,' Llewelyn said. 'I understand that congratulations on the birth of a son are in order, Fulke.'

'Thank you, my lord.' Fulke did not miss the slightly wary expression in the other man's eyes. Something was either afoot or amiss.

'Maude is well?'

'Tired, my lord. The birth was swift but rough. The child came early, but he has taken no harm from it.'

'I am glad to hear it.' Llewelyn's tone was stilted and Fulke began to feel decidedly uneasy.

'It is fortunate that I have seen you,' Llewelyn continued, thus confirming Fulke's concern. 'It saves me the task of summoning you. Certain changes have come about and we need to discuss them.' He glanced around the packed room, grimaced, and pushed his way to the door. 'Outside might be better,' he said.

With deep misgiving, Fulke followed him. 'Certain changes' had an ominous ring about it.

The air was fresh and clear compared to the sweaty fug inside the small refectory, although there was still a pungent smell of sheep from a pen of ewes gathered for milking.

Llewelyn drew a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. 'You know that I have been negotiating to marry with Rhannult of Man?' he asked.

'Yes, my lord.' Fulke could see nothing to affect him in Llewelyn taking the Manx King's daughter to wife.

'Well, it has come to naught because I have received a better offer—better for me that is, and one that I cannot refuse even if it does take a very long spoon to sup with the devil.'

The short hairs at Fulke's nape began to prickle, John, he thought, and stopped himself short. It was impossible. John did not have any unmarried sisters and his wife was too young to breed. But he did have a bastard daughter.

'King John has offered me his daughter Joanna to wife,' Llewelyn said. 'She is of an age to marry and he has offered me the lordship of Ellesmere as her dowry. The wedding is to take place in Shrewsbury before Martinmas.'

'Congratulations, my lord,' Fulke said woodenly, the words emerging as if they were choking him just by being in his mouth. Llewelyn was right. It was an opportunity that no sane man would refuse whatever the length of spoon required. It would mean security for Llewelyn and for Wales. It would also mean his own position at Whittington would become untenable.

Llewelyn looked at him sombrely. 'I have been in negotiation with John's representatives for some months. There is to be a truce between us. I will not raid his lands and he will not seek to encroach on Wales—for the moment at least.'

Fulke swallowed. 'And what of me, my lord? I do not suppose that I will be a welcome guest at your nuptials?'

Llewelyn sighed. 'I wish I had better news for you,' he said, 'but I do not. John has asked me not to succour his enemies at my court. He even said that he would increase the size of his daughter's dower if I were to present him with your body.'

The prickling at Fulke's nape extended down his spine. 'I have served you with loyalty, my lord,' he said, his voice husky with the effort of controlling his fury. 'I have given you my trust. Are you going to betray that loyalty and trust at the whim of a man who has never kept a promise in his' life?

'Fulke, it is not as simple as that.' Llewelyn made a gesture that asked for understanding. 'I would hope to keep the loyalty and trust of my men because I return that loyalty in full measure. But this is different. I cannot afford to sacrifice the peace and security of my entire people for one marcher holding that lies on the very edges of my jurisdiction—for one man.'

'I thought you were different,' Fulke said, the- bitterness swelling and surging in his chest.

'I am. I refused to arrest or kill you. I told John that it was his dispute, not mine. But beyond that, I cannot help you. My hands are tied.'

'By John,' Fulke snarled. 'You speak of freedom and then you hold out your wrists to be bound!'

'Fulke, enough,' Llewelyn warned. 'I have given you my reasons and they are sound. Raging will avail you nothing.'

'The same as serving you then. Nothing.' Fulke bared his teeth. 'I need not renounce my fealty since you have renounced yours in my enemy's favour. You will live to regret it, my lord. You are not entering into an alliance, but a trap!'