Lords of the White Castle (82 page)

'No,' Maude rallied. 'He will not thank you for interrupting his patrol and there is nothing wrong with me that a day's bedrest will not cure.' Her voice rang with determination. If she believed, then it had to be.

Clarice came running, Mabile in tow. Maude smiled and made light of the incident for her youngest daughter and scowled at the knights, bidding them hold their tongues in front of the child. Although Mabile's grasp on reality was tenuous, her detachment was not total.

Clarice hastened to warm the great bed with a hot stone and add fresh kindling to the brazier.

Ralf Gras shook his head at her. 'There is naught broken that I can tell,' he said in a low voice, 'but still there has been much damage done. My lady says that she feels no pain—and that is not a good sign.'

Clarice glanced at the bed where two of the patrol were gently laying Maude. Her eyes were closed and her pallor obvious. 'I do not care what she has told you, Ralf, go and bring my lord. I will take the responsibility.'

He nodded brusquely and strode from the room.

Clarice approached the bed and touched Maude's legs. 'You are sure you feel nothing at all? Can you move them?'

Maude frowned and struggled, biting her lip. 'Not an inch,' she said with frustration and the beginning of fear.

Very gently, Clarice hitched up Maude's skirt, then gasped.

Maude raised herself and stared in dismay and despair at the swollen livid bruising. She had seen men with damage from morning star and mace blows, but nothing as extensive as this. 'And no wonder,' she said, falling back against the bolsters with a small thump. Cold sweat dewed her palms, her armpits and brow. Holy Mary, Mother of God…

'I'll make up some cold compresses,' Clarice said. She was clearly at a loss. Such a remedy was totally inadequate and they both knew it. For a moment, they exchanged looks.

'I have sent for Fulke,' Clarice said.

Maude gave an exasperated shake of her head. 'You should not have done. He is burdened enough already and I do not want him to see me like this.' Not three hours since they had lain together in this bed and talked of making another child between them. Now… She placed her hand over her belly. 'I will be all right, by and by,' she said.

'Of course you will.'

Again, their eyes met. The voice said one thing, while the mind knew another. Maude threw her head back on the bolster and closed her eyes.

During the night, feeling began to return to Maude's legs, and it came as pain. Hot, crushing, terrible. Clarice gave her willow bark in wine to drink, but although it was an efficacious remedy for a headache, it did little to take the agony from her damaged limbs. The cold compresses eased her a little, but there was pain inside too, a shrieking agony in her lower back that was so bad it made her vomit. By morning, she was so distressed and sweat-soaked that Clarice took the decision to dose her with the more dangerous medicine of syrup made from the seeds of the white eastern poppy. An hour later, Maude fell into a restless doze and the sweating abated.

Leaving her with the maid, Clarice went to break her fast, although in truth she had no appetite. Her eyes were hot from lack of sleep and her stomach queasy with anxiety. She had seen folk recover from injuries more gory, but the areas had been small. As far as she could tell, Maude had broken no bones, but her flesh had been severely macerated. Clarice only needed to think of what happened to an apple or plum when it was dropped from a height to know what the outcome would be. It wasn't fair, and the knowledge that life never was gave her no consolation at all.

Rain slammed against the shutters and every sconce and niche carried either torch or candle to mitigate the gloom. Clarice joined Mabile at the fire and forced down a wastel roll spread with honey and a cup of rosehip tisane.

'Mama better?' the child asked. She was cradling a straw doll, swaddled to look like a newborn infant.

'Yes,' Clarice said, yielding the small truth, withholding the greater one. 'She's sleeping now.'

Mabile rocked the baby and herself. 'Papa coming?'

'Soon.' Providing that Ralph had found him. God pray that he was not too late. Finishing the bread, her cup still in her hand, she returned to the bedchamber with Mabile and a vigil she would rather have abjured.

Fulke returned shortly after. Still in his mail and saturated cloak, he swept into the bedchamber like a whirlwind. Clarice leaped from her seat, a warning finger set to her lips, and he jerked to an abrupt halt. His eyes were wild, his entire demeanour one of suppressed violence. Swallowing, he took Clarice by the shoulders, set her bodily aside and advanced to the bed to look down on his wife.

'Mama sleep,' Mabile said. One small hand was folded around her mother's thick silver braid. He looked down, his gaze so fierce that Clarice thought he would burn a hole in the bolster, then he swung round and came back to her.

'How bad?' he demanded.

'I am not a healer,' Clarice began, before he cut her off in mid-excuse.

'You of all people I expect to be honest. How bad?'

Clarice felt a tightening ache in her throat. She shook her head, making the gesture serve for all the words she could not speak.

The time seemed to stretch for eternity as she watched him take the burden of her meaning and settle it across his shoulders like the spar on a cross.

'I am sorry,' she whispered.

He said nothing. Spangles of rain glittered on his cloak and the wet steel of his hauberk flashed as he breathed unevenly.

'I have dosed her with syrup of white poppy to ease the pain….' Clarice said, wondering why there was no such remedy for pain of the soul. And now she had to hammer a nail into his cross. 'But it might be best to send for the priest so that he is here when she wakes.' She touched him when he did not respond. 'Shall I do that?'

His eyes stumbled to meet hers and she saw that they were opaque and glazed. 'The priest,' he repeated slowly, as if they were speaking in a foreign language.

'To shrive her soul.'

His head came up. 'She is not going to die. I won't let her.'

He asked her for honesty and then he rebuffed it. She did not blame him. 'Then to pray for her recovery,' she said tactfully as she took his cloak. 'If you are going to sit in vigil, you must unarm. A sword cannot help you here.'

His look sharpened and focused, and she felt the force of his anger at his own helplessness strike her like a mace blow.

'You cannot hold her hand and drip rain all over the sheets,' she continued.

He gave a graceless shrug of capitulation and she helped him out of the wet hauberk and gambeson, ordering his squire to take them away for drying out. She brought him wine and wastel bread. He drank the former, ignored the latter, and seated himself at Maude's side, his eyes intent on his wife's face as if he would hold her to life with his will. His hand smoothed her hair off her brow.

Clarice hesitated, then left to fetch the priest, taking Mabile with her.

Very gently, Fulke pulled aside the bedclothes and raised Maude's chemise to look at the damage wrought. The sight of the swollen, livid bruising filled him with fury and despair. How could this have happened? If the tree had fallen one moment sooner or later, she would have been unscathed. God's will? How could God have willed something like this? Tenderly he replaced the covers and knelt in a position of prayer at her side. Her breathing was swift and her skin was hot to the touch. After a life of battle, he knew the signs. A man would be crushed by his falling horse, or receive several body blows from a mace or morning star; he might survive the impact, but never live for more than a few days. His urine would flow red, or not flow at all. He would develop a fever and die.

'Maude.' He took her braid in his hand, holding it the way their daughter had done. He felt hollow, an empty space where there had been a fullness of love and laughter, of quarrelling and companionship. 'Maude, stay with me.'

She moaned softly and her head moved from side to side on the bolster. Her eyelids flickered and she looked at him. The clear green was misted as if with fog, and her pupils were small, dark pinpoints.

'Fulke?' she whispered. Her hand groped and he took it in his, squeezing it as if he would imbue her with his own life force.

'Yes, beloved, I am here.'

'I told Clarice that she should not send for you, that she was making a fuss over nothing… but I am glad she did not heed me.' Her voice was a hoarse whisper. 'It happened so swiftly. I didn't even see the tree fall… so quick…'

'Hush.' He smoothed her hair. 'Save your strength…'

'For what?'

'Ah God,' he groaned, swept by fear, grief, and the need to keep her with him. 'Do you remember when we first met? You were the contrary little girl who had snatched my brother's ball because he would not let you join his game?'

Her brow was furrowed with pain but she forced a smile. 'I remember. What of it?'

'Be contrary now for me, Maude. I don't want you to leave me.'

Reaching up, she touched his face and he saw her try to smile. 'I don't want to leave you either,' she said huskily, tears welling.

'We have years yet.'

'Yes. Years….' She closed her eyes. Her teeth clenched and he saw the pain tighten the tendons of her throat. He remembered she had looked that way when giving birth to their son on the banks of the Afon Morwynion. He had been helpless then; he was helpless now.

'Where's Clarice?' she gasped.

He cleared his throat. 'She has gone to fetch you the comfort of a priest—not that you need one.'

'I need… Jesu….' She broke off, writhing with pain and pointed to the flask of poppy syrup on the coffer.

Fulke picked it up. His fingers trembled as he removed the stopper. 'How much?'

For a moment the pain rode her so hard that she was incoherent. He watched her fight her way through it, like a swimmer battling the tide, and drag herself half on to the shore, exhausted. 'Two measures in wine,' she panted, gesturing to a small cup made of hollowed-out bone.

'You are sure?'

She nodded, biting her lip, her features gaunt with suffering.

With shaking hands, Fulke poured the syrup into the measure, then into the cup. Twice. Then added sweet mead to disguise the bitterness. Maude's glance flickered to the door as if fearing an intrusion. Her fists clenched on the coverlet and as he set his arm behind her shoulders to lift her up, she cried out in agony. He tilted the cup to her lips and she drank. Some of the liquid spilled from her mouth corners, but when he would have removed the goblet, she grasped his hand and held him talon-fast, gulping and swallowing until she had drained the cup to the lees.

After she had drunk, she subsided on the bolster and briefly closed her eyes. He thought that she was going to sleep, but her lids rose and she looked at him. 'Fulke, promise me that you will stand firm whatever happens; promise me that you will not break.'

Her gaze was as sharp as glass, piercing him with its intensity. 'I cannot change the habit of a lifetime,' he said with a strained smile, trying to make light of her words and failing. They both knew the meaning. She wanted the security of his oath to take with her on her journey, and although he gave it to her willingly, he did not know if he could keep it. She was not his life, but she was the light in it, and how could he stand firm if he was stumbling in the dark?

'Promise….' Her voice was as clear and brittle as glass too.

Somehow, he found the strength to answer without faltering, although his throat was as tight as a wound cord on a siege engine. 'I promise.'

'I hold you to it… do not forget.'

The priest arrived with the articles of the sacrament in a small, leather-bound box. Fulke wanted to leap to his feet and roar at the man to get out, for in his dark Benedictine robes he reminded Fulke of the first crow hopping towards a corpse. Maude must have felt his aversion, for she renewed her grip on his hand.

'Let him come,' she whispered. 'I am in need of spiritual comfort.'

Fulke slowly rose to his feet. 'As you wish,' he said softly. He did not look at the priest as he left the room, but back at her. She met his eyes and her lips curved, but he saw the effort it took, and he could not smile in return.

Outside, Clarice was waiting for him.

'Do not,' he warned grimly,' play the mother hen. If you offer me food, drink or a bath, I will not be responsible for the consequences.'

Clarice, who had been about to do exactly that, turned away and carefully added more fuel to the charcoal brazier burning in the centre of the solar. 'You should send for Hawise and Jonetta and your sons,' she said, taking refuge in a different form of practicality.

He nodded. 'I was about to summon the scribe.'

Clarice's heart ached. She wanted to ease his burden, to give him comfort in order to comfort herself, but knew from his words, from the stiffness of his body that she would be rebuffed. She glanced towards the room where Father Thomas was occupied with Maude. 'When he has finished, I will give her some more poppy in wine.'

'There is no need,' Fulke said with a brusque gesture. 'I have already done so.'

Her eyes widened. 'You knew the dosage?'

'No, but Maude did. Two measures.'

Clarice turned quickly away before her face betrayed her. One measure was strong and only just safe. Two would kill. Maude had taught her the lore, emphasising the strength of white poppy syrup. She pressed her clenched fist to her breast, clutching the knowledge to her heart and feeling as if it would break.

Behind her, she heard Fulke's shaken breath and the rustle of fabric as he moved. 'She knew,' he said hoarsely. 'Oh yes, she knew.' And strode from the room.

Clarice stared into the brazier and felt the delicate surface of her eyes begin to burn and smart from the strength of the glowing charcoal pieces. She could remember her mother dying of the lung sickness when she was a small child, but she had scarcely known her. The bond Clarice had forged with Maude, however, had been everything. Mother, daughter, companion and confidante.

'I cannot bear it,' she whispered, and even as she uttered the words knew that they were an indulgence of the moment. She could and would bear the grief that was coming. She was Clarice the solid, Clarice the dependable, Clarice the gently mocked for her wise-woman ways. That she was also Clarice the bereft and Clarice the lonely were facets that would go unnoticed except by herself.