The Love Knot (16 page)

'If it is not enough, then I am sorry. There is no more I can say to mend the rift between us.' He tensed, preparing to rise, but the pressure of her fingers increased, bidding him stay.

'Then say nothing more. If not all, then it is indeed enough.'

He turned again to look up at her. Her colour was still high and the wariness had not entirely left her expression, but there was a gleam in her eyes and the hint of a curve to her lips. 'And is it not said that enough is as good as a feast to a starving man?'

She snorted with reluctant amusement and gave him a gentle push. 'Go and take your bath. Even if we are to be friends again, I don't want to share your lice!'

'Scold,' he grinned.

'I give as good as I get,' she retorted, laughter dancing in her eyes.

Oliver was enchanted. He wanted to grab her waist and swing her round in his arms, but wisely forbore. Their relationship was on an even keel again and he was not about to rock the boat. 'Well, may all your "gettings" be fortunate ones,' he answered mischievously for the pleasure of seeing her blush. 'Just one question. What happened to your red hose? Have you suddenly become a staid and respectable matron?'

'I have always been a staid and respectable matron,' Catrin said flippantly, then shook her head with a regretful sigh. 'The Countess's lap dog took a fancy to chew them when I left them on my pallet, and they're beyond repair. The Countess gave me a pair of her own, but they're brown wool and they wrinkle and fall down unless I add yards of leg binding. I have never considered myself a vain woman - how could I and wear a dress like this? But until the cold weather bites, I would rather go without. You need not laugh,' she added, setting her hands on her hips.

'I wasn't.' Oliver swallowed so hard that he almost choked. 'I count it a great tragedy.'

'Your bath,' she said sternly, and made a shooing motion. Oliver leaned back into the shelter to grab another of Ethel's oatcakes, and made off with a spring in his stride that had not been present before.

Shaking her head, Catrin took an oatcake herself and stooped to revive the fire with the bellows, her own movements light and joyful.

The summer months ripened into autumn, and autumn in its turn yielded to the fallow season of winter. Catrin spent less time with the Countess and her women, and more in Ethel's shelter, absorbing knowledge about herbs and simples, and attending births with the elderly midwife. Catrin did not care that Ethel made her work her hands and brain to the bone, for she was learning and she was happy. The world of the bower was a stultifying cage of petty jealousies. Ethel might be grouchy and irascible on occasion, but whatever she had to say was said and then forgotten, not whispered behind her hand or left to fester.

Measuring Catrin's progress, Ethel began to delegate responsibility. In late August, Catrin delivered her first infant under Ethel's supervision. A month later, she attended the birth of one of the soldier's women on her own.

From diagnosing and treating simple ailments, she moved on to those which required more complex remedies, blending the herbs and mixing the potions under Ethel's watchful but uninterfering eye.

Oliver supped at their fire when his duties did not take him away from Bristol. Catrin warmed to his companionship and found herself missing him on the nights when he did not come by. Sometimes Ethel would retire to her bed-bench, grumbling about her old bones and late hours, leaving Catrin and Oliver talking softly over the dying fire. Other nights, they would stay in the keep, listening to the minstrels and playing at dice and tafel.

One bitter evening in late November, they were sitting over

Oliver's wooden tafel board in the great hall. The wind could not pierce the thick stonework of the castle, but it whistled in at the window embrasures with a vengeance and thrust icy fingers beneath the door at the hall's far end. The huge fireplace gave off little heat except to those sitting almost on top of the flames and belched smoke at them for the privilege.

'Emma used to hate the winter,' Oliver said with a glance around the barn-like hugeness of the room. 'If she had had her way, we would all have hibernated like squirrels or hedge-pigs until April.'

He occasionally spoke of his dead wife these days. Catrin had noted that when he did, it was always with a slight narrowing of his eyes, as if he were seeing her from a distance. He ought to let Emma vanish over the horizon rather than try to draw her closer, Catrin thought, but did not say so. She felt the same way about Lewis and it was easier said than done to let go of the past.

'I mislike the chilblains and the way that the days are over before they can begin,' she said. 'But there is much to enjoy as well - the Christmas feast, the beauty of snow seen from within a room lit by a roaring fire, with the comfort of mulled wine. Lewis and I used to . . .' She bit off the rest of the sentence and gave a short laugh, realising how easy it was to fall into the trap of 'once upon a time'.

'Used to what?' He looked at her with a poignant half smile on his lips.

She shook her head self-consciously. 'Nothing, it doesn't matter.'

'Yes, it does. What used you to do?'

Catrin sighed. 'We used to lie beneath the covers, wrapped in each other's arms, while the wind howled like a wolf. There was nothing but us and the winter storm . . . nothing.' Her throat tightened and she swallowed.

'With us it was the summer, on a cloak beneath a night thick with stars,' he murmured.

They looked at each other. 'Lord, what fools,' he said with a down-turned smile and a shake of his head. Without any purpose, he picked up one of the tafel pieces and turned it round in his fingers.

'I know that it is Emma in the summer mural in the Earl's chamber,' she ventured cautiously. 'Richard told me. She must have been very pretty.'

'She was.' His expression was distant with remembering. 'I was offered the pick between Emma and Amice. Both had similar dowries and status. My family thought that I would choose Amice because she was as lovely as a ripe peach, but she held no appeal for me. I had grown up with a brother and parents all large and fair-haired. I craved difference, not more of the same.' He set the tafel piece gently down. 'She was dark and fey, gentle and shy as a doe, with a way of looking at me that made me feel like the king of the world. When she died, I became a beggar.'

'I know,' Catrin murmured. 'It was the same for me when I lost Lewis.'

Once more their eyes met and held. He started to speak, but Catrin had heard no more than: 'I still have my begging bowl, but I no longer need—' when Ethel appeared at their side. Her cloak sparkled with water droplets and her ankle boots were splashed with greenish muck from the quagmire of the bailey. She was leaning heavily on a stick of carved hickory wood.

'I've to interrupt your gaming,' she said, the hint of a wheeze in her voice. 'Lora the soap-maker's wife is in travail and we're needed.' She touched Catrin's shoulder. 'Should be an easy birth. 'Tis her first, but she's broader in the beam than an abbot's barn. I've left everything ready by my hearth. We can pick it up as we leave.'

Catrin nodded and lifted her cloak off the bench. Another gift from the Countess, it was fashioned of grey wool with a fleece lining. It insulated her excellently against the cold, and it was so thick that it took a long time for rain to penetrate. There was no hood, but Catrin had bought one of those for herself from the market place. It was a perky, bright brown with a border of scarlet and yellow braid. She pulled it on now, over her wimple.

Ethel turned away, already limping towards the door. 'Make haste,' she said over her shoulder.

Oliver pushed the pieces aside. 'Do you want an escort?'

Ethel paused and shook her head. 'No, they've sent the journeyman and the apprentice to fetch us.' She turned fully and looked at him, the seams around her black eyes deepening. 'We'll be home 'afore cock-crow, whole, hearty and rich.'

'I hope so,' Oliver said woodenly.

'Folk know better than to interfere with a midwife about her lawful business. 'Tis as deep as an unspoken curse. At dawn, you come to my fire and I'll give you fresh oatcakes to break your fast.' She gave him a nod of supreme confidence and went on her way.

'She's right, you know,' Catrin said, and lightly touched his arm. 'Our trade endangers us, but equally it protects us.'

'Just have a care.' He gave her a dark look from beneath his brows.

'We always do.' She tightened her grip on his sleeve for an instant, then hastened after Ethel, her midwife's satchel bouncing at her side.

'They're gaining a reputation as the best midwives this side of the Avon, and not without cause,' said Geoffrey FitzMar, who had also watched the women leave the hall. He sat on the bench that Catrin had vacated, and rearranged the tafel pieces. 'I know for sure that they saved my son's life. Do you want another game?'

Oliver could hardly refuse. Besides, it was probably better than nursing his worries alone with a flagon. He gestured assent.

'You must be proud of them.'

'Hah, I have small say in the matter!' Oliver declared somewhat bitterly.

FitzMar looked puzzled. 'I thought they were beholden to you.'

Oliver opened his mouth to tell FitzMar about Ethel in precise detail, but thought the better of it before the words emerged. She frequently enraged and exasperated him, but beneath her tough exterior was an ailing and vulnerable old woman. And as to Catrin . . . He thought of her frowning in concentration over her next move on the tafel board because she was determined he would not defeat her. He remembered how she had squeezed his arm. 'Be that as it may,' he said, 'they go their own way, and yes, I am proud of them -your move.'

As Ethel had predicted, the birth of Lora's baby was simple and straightforward. The infant, a son, was large and yelled lustily the moment he emerged into the air. Lora neither tore as she pushed him out, nor bled more than a trickle, and the afterbirth emerged smooth and whole within moments of the infant's delivery.

The ecstatic father paid the midwives twice the agreed fee of a shilling each, presenting them with twenty-four silver pennies apiece. He also gave them both a jar of soap. It was not the usual grey, strong-smelling liquid used for washing linen, but was thicker, flecked with green and delicately scented with lavender and rosemary. This was a much rarer and more costly soap for washing of the person, and increased their wages twofold again.

Their thanks were waved away with a declaration that it was no more than their due, and after a warming drink of spiced mead they set out for the keep, escorted by the two manservants and in high good spirits.

They passed the church of Saint Mary and took the lane that ran through the butchers' Shambles, the crowded wattle and daub houses to their left and the Avon gleaming on their right. Fishing craft and rowing boats were moored up for the night. There were piles of nets and twists of rope, the plash of starlit water and the heavy smell of the river.

'What I would like to do,' Catrin announced, touching the outline of the soap jar in her satchel, 'is to immerse myself in a steaming hot tub, and perfume my skin all over.'

'Hah!' Ethel wheezed. 'If you did it in this weather, my girl, you'd freeze your nipples off!'

The men escorting them snorted with laughter. Catrin put her nose in the air. 'It was only a wish,' she said, feeling foolish.

'Aye, well, you'd do better to sell it and buy yourself an

extra chemise for when the snow comes. 'Tis what I'm going to do.' Ethel looked at her slyly. 'But then I don't have a man to impress, do I?'

Before Catrin could find a suitably withering retort, there was a shout behind them, and they turned to see a thin, middle-aged woman in threadbare garments crying at them to stop.

'Are you the two midwives from the castle?' she demanded as she ran up to them. Her breath crowed in her throat and her eyes were wild. A lantern guttered in her hand. 'Someone said they had seen you pass.'

'We are.' Ethel leaned on her stick and appraised the woman shrewdly.

'Then praise God. Come swiftly, I beg you, it's my daughter.' She gestured over her shoulder to the maze of lanes and alleys in the darkness of the Shambles. 'I can't stop the bleeding, I don't know what to do!'

'All right, calm yourself, mistress, we'll come,' Ethel said, and waved her hand at the two men. 'Best return to your master. I do not know how long we will be.'