The Love Knot (18 page)

She continued to scowl at him, wanting to capitulate but hampered by her pride. With a sigh, he turned from her and retrieved her wooden knife from the grass. 'When you can hold me off for a turn of the cook's small hourglass, I will consider that you have evened the odds. If you're angry with me, Catrin, then use it.' He held out the weapon. 'Take it and show me.'

'Angry with you?' She shook her head and closed her hand around the wooden haft. 'I am angry with myself.' She tilted the blade at the angle he had shown her earlier. 'Tell me again. The sooner I master this, the sooner I'll be rid of your lecturing.'

Their eyes met, held in challenge for a moment, then sparked at the same time with reluctant humour.

'My "lecturing" might just save your life,' he pointed out, struggling not to grin. 'Now, let's begin again. Disable, disarm and run.'

By the end of an hour, Catrin was no longer cold. Flushed and panting, all self-consciousness forgotten, she strove to hold Oliver at bay, making up for her lack of skill in sheer determination. Indeed, her moments of success, brief though they were, filled her with exhilaration and a certain rashness.

'Disable, disarm and run!' he yelled at her, laughing despite himself as he parried a swipe aimed at his belly. 'God's bones, you don't have to stay for the kill!'

'But what if I want to?' she gleamed back at him.

'Resist it, you're not good enough yet!' He wove beneath her guard, grabbed her wrist, and sent the dagger flying over her shoulder into the grass where their feet had imprinted patterns of green amongst the silver hoar blades. First she struggled against his grasp, then she didn't. She was acutely aware of the touch of his fingers on her wrist, the swift beat of her pulse against his encircling palm, their rapid breath mingling in the frozen air.

His hold relaxed and he ran his thumb over the delicate skin he had just been gripping. 'Disable, disarm,' he murmured again, and his other hand circled her waist and drew her against him. He lowered his head and, with closed eyes, Catrin raised hers.

'You must be desperate to seek a tryst out here.'

Catrin shot out of Oliver's embrace with a gasp and saw the old gardener leaning on his spade, watching the two of them with relish.

'And kill,' Oliver muttered beneath his breath.

Catrin was not sure if she was relieved at his intervention or not. Her loins were heavy, her flesh sensitive. How far would lust have progressed in a winter garden? She was not sure about that either.

'I like a woman who can fight, myself,' the gardener continued. 'Makes the conquest more interesting, doesn't it?'

Cheeks blazing, Catrin retrieved her wooden knife from the grass. Her plait had become unpinned and swung down beneath her wimple.

'I won't tell if you won't.' The old man hefted the spade. 'Long time since I been to confession anyway.' He screwed up his eyes. 'You're old Ethel's assistant, aren't you?'

'Yes, I am,' Catrin said, mustering the shreds of her dignity.

'You got anything for the ague, a nice warming liniment rub?' He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

'You'll have to ask Ethel.' Despite herself, Catrin felt the urge to laugh at the old rogue. 'I'm learning still.'

'Aye, I can see that. It's a pleasure to watch.' With a wink at Oliver, the gardener stumped off to prod at a heap of manure. 'You let me know when you've got some experience, girl.'

Catrin stared after him, her arms akimbo, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry.

'I think I might wring the old buzzard's neck,' Oliver said softly.

Catrin turned and saw her own irritation and amusement reflected in his eyes. 'But he is right,' she replied. 'It is a desperate place for a tryst - in winter at least.'

For a moment he did not answer, then he spread his hands. 'Then would you consider somewhere warmer?'

She tilted her head on one side. 'For fighting or trysting?'

'Both, but I cannot promise the order.'

Despite the cold, Catrin felt as if she was melting. The last man to look at her like that had been Lewis in the early months of their marriage, when a single glance was all that it had taken to tumble them breathless into the nearest bed. But she was no longer a green and innocent girl and had no intention of tumbling into any sort of bed with Oliver - yet. She held back, keeping the two feet of distance that separated them, and holding her wooden knife as he had shown her. 'I never hold much trust in men's promises anyway,' she said.

'I keep mine.'

She bit her underlip and nodded. 'Aye, I know you do. So when you say that you cannot make one, it behoves me to be cautious.'

Before he could defend himself, their banter was curtailed by Gawin's arrival, his stride swift and agitated. 'Found you at last,' he addressed Catrin, not Oliver. 'You had best come swiftly. Ethel's taken a fall.'

'Oh, sweet Jesu!' Catrin thrust the wooden knife into Oliver's hand and pushed past Gawin at a run. Oliver followed hard on her heels.

Ethel lay on her pallet, her face grey. The laundress who had been visiting sat beside her, offering comfort. When she saw Catrin, a look of deep relief crossed her face.

'She was standing up to bid me farewell, and she just turned giddy and fell,' said the woman, as she gave her place to Catrin.

'Fuss over nothing,' Ethel mumbled. 'Everyone feels lightheaded when they rise. I just stumbled, that's all.' An egg-shaped lump was ballooning at her temple and there was a deep cut on her hand where she had caught the cauldron tripod as she fell.

'Maybe so, but better a fuss over nothing than paying no heed,' Catrin admonished and ran her hands lightly over the old woman to make sure that there was no other damage.

'You think I would not know if it was more than a trip?'

'Yes, 1 think you would,' Catrin said shrewdly and, with gentle hands, drew the fleece cover up over Ethel's shoulder.

Ethel met Catrin's stare. Then she closed her eyes. 'Tell the others to be gone. They block my light.'

Catrin rose and turned.

'I heard,' Oliver said with a wry smile and deliberately raised his voice. 'It is common knowledge that healers always make the worst patients.'

'There's nothing wrong with my hearing either,' Ethel rallied from her pallet. 'If there was, I wouldn't have to listen to you.'

Oliver's smile became a grin. 'I'm going,' he capitulated. Facing Catrin, he tugged the end of her black braid where it showed beneath her disordered wimple. 'Fight or tryst,' he murmured, 'don't let me wait too long.'

Catrin reddened and responded with a brusque nod. 'I won't.' She glanced over her shoulder at Ethel who was watching them through supposedly lowered lids.

Oliver stooped to kiss Catrin's cheek. As his lips brushed her skin, he murmured, 'She does not befool me for one moment either. Let me know how she really fares.' Then he straightened, saluted, and went on his way, ushering the laundry woman with him. Gawin had already left for an assignation with one of the kitchen maids.

Catrin returned to Ethel. The old woman's eyes were fully shut and she was breathing slowly and evenly, but Catrin was wiser than to believe the outward evidence.

'Ethel.' She knelt at the side of the bed-bench. 'Ethel.' No response. Catrin raised the coverlet and reached for the midwife's gnarled left hand. It was cold in hers and when she squeezed it, there was the merest tremor of response. 'Ethel, I know you're not asleep.'

The seamed eyelids fluttered, and Catrin saw a sudden glisten of moisture in the bruised pouches beneath.

'My hand,' Ethel whispered. 'Catrin, I can scarcely feel my hand.'

'A slight seizure,' Catrin reported to Oliver later that day. 'A repeat of the first one I would say. It hasn't affected her speech, praise God, but she cannot hold a cup in her left hand and the leg on that side too is affected.' 'Will she recover?'

Catrin shrugged. 'I cannot tell at the moment. It is not as if I have had much experience of treating folk of her age.' This being because there were few folk of Ethel's age on which to practise. 'I have done what I can.'

Oliver sighed and nodded. 'I have known her since my birth and, despite what you see between us, there's respect and affection.'

'That is what I see between you,' Catrin responded. 'You are as concerned for her as she is not to concern you.'

He pulled a face at the truth of her statement, and after a pause asked, 'What of your midwifery? You cannot go out into the city alone - knife or no knife.'

Catrin's expression became wary. 'I will tackle that obstacle when I come to it. Besides, escorts are usually provided. Whoever fetches me will see me safe.'

'As they did two nights since?'

'That was different.' Catrin began to bristle.

'Indeed it was,' he agreed. 'But you don't need many different occasions like that to wind up another corpse in the Avon.'

'Then I'll hire someone to escort me,' Catrin snapped. 'Jesu, you're like a dog with a bone!'

'Be grateful,' he said. 'If I wasn't, you'd be dead.' And this time it was he who walked away, without giving her further opportunity to flay him with her tongue. This time too, she knew that he was in the right.

As winter deepened its grip, Earl Robert gave Oliver command of a patrol in the Forest of Dean, its purpose to protect the Earl's interest in the iron ore diggings and forges which provided the steel to make tools and weapons for the Empress's cause. There had been raids, and the Earl judged Oliver a competent deterrent.

He had ridden out at dawn on the day following Ethel's seizure. Concerned for the women, he would rather have remained in Bristol, but orders were orders and Earl Robert's word law. It irked him that there had been no opportunity to talk to Catrin before he left - either for fighting or trysting. He missed her; he needed to know that she was safe, and was so chafed by his anxiety that he was unbearable to those around him.

'Still, we'll be back in Bristol for the Christmas feast,' Gawin said, trying to lighten Oliver's heavy mood. They were riding along a forest track not far from the forge at Darkhill. The wind was bitter, sown with sleet, and the trees gave small protection, their branches winter-black and fluttering with a ragged tracery of dead leaves.

'More than three weeks away,' Oliver growled, not in the least co-operative. 'And that's three more weeks of this and worse.' He cast a jaundiced glare at the sky and eased his position in the saddle. 'It hasn't even been light today.'

'At least we'll soon have a fire to warm our hands.' Gawin's tone was placatory.

Oliver grunted. Actually, the thought of warmth and food was welcoming, albeit that he would have to spend the night rolled in his cloak guarding a cartload of horseshoe bars before the morrow's journey to the ferry barge. 'I suppose so,' he yielded grudgingly, then raised his head at the sound of a furious yell from the track in front of them.

Wrestling his shield round to his left arm, Oliver drew his sword and urged Hero to a trot. Gawin fell into line at his left shoulder, and the other soldiers in the troop closed formation. Moments later, they rounded a sharp bend and came upon the sight of three ragged men with knives being held at bay by a single giant who was swinging an oak quarterstaff with accuracy and gusto. One of his attackers was on his knees, clutching his broken arm and screaming. As Oliver watched, the giant threw another one off his feet with a heave from the quarterstaff. The third man ran in low, attempting to slash the quarry's hamstring, but the quarterstaff arrived before the knife and dropped the attacker with a hefty blow to the temple.

Feeling somewhat superfluous, Oliver uttered a yell and spurred forward. The two robbers who were capable took to their heels among the trees. Oliver signalled to Gawin and two others, who detached from the troop and cantered after them.

The giant faced Oliver, his beard bristling and his quarterstaff at the ready. Sweat beaded his brow and he was visibly winded, but not to the point of being incapable of defending himself.

Oliver sheathed his sword and put his shield on its long strap to show that he posed no threat. 'What happened?'

'You can see,' the man said, with a brusque gesture. 'They were waiting at the roadside and they set upon me.'

One of Oliver's troops had dismounted to investigate the robber in the dust. 'Dead,' he announced. 'Skull's stove in.' He picked up the ragamuffin's knife and handed it up to his master.