The Love Knot (2 page)

The stiffness remained a moment longer, then the battle-light left the boy's eyes which filled with the glitter of unshed tears. A lump was swelling on his temple where Oliver had cuffed him.

'I was out hunting squirrels with my bow,' he said jerkily, 'and I saw the knights in the forest riding away from here with bloody swords. I ran home and I found ... I found ..." His throat worked and the words strangled.

'All right, all right, go gently, lad.' With a feeling of guilt for his own violence, Oliver rose off the boy. Small wonder that the child had reacted as he had. Great wonder that he was not reduced to a cowering huddle.

Gawin came up to them, the boy's arrow now in his hand.

'Are you hurt?' Oliver looked from the flight to Gawin's white face.

'Stung more than anything, thanks to decent mail,' Gawin said with a grimace. 'It's not a full-grown man's barb or I'd be dead, but it's still made a nasty nick. The repair to my hauberk will cost the best part of half a mark.' He pressed the upper edge of his quilted gambeson against the wound to stanch it and gave the boy a jaundiced look. 'I told you we should have ridden on.'

'Put your morals before your mouth for once,' Oliver snapped. He jerked his head at the blond woman lying in the dust, alive but lifeless. 'That's his mother. Look around you. What would you have done in his place?'

Before Gawin could respond, the boy leaped to his feet and sprinted across the compound towards the other, younger woman who had stopped in mid-flight when he attacked the knights. 'Catrin,' he sobbed and she swept her arms around him and hugged him desperately, burying her cheek in his hair.

Gawin looked puzzled. 'I thought you said yonder was his mother.'

'She is.' Thoughtfully Oliver returned to Amice and, removing his cloak, laid it gently over her. Her eyes were now clear, and this time they widened in recognition.

'You missed the festivities, Oliver,' she whispered with a bitter half-smile.

'I missed them more than ten years ago, Amice. Look, we have horses; we'll take you to tending and shelter.'

The sinews tightened in her throat and she folded her knees towards her belly and clutched with rigid hands. 'It is too late for that!' she gasped.

The other woman hastened over, the boy in pursuit. 'I knew this would happen,' she said grimly as she flung herself down beside Amice. 'It's been threatening for days now, and after what they did to her . . .'

'Knew what would happen?' Oliver demanded.

'She's with child, but not carrying well. For the last month she's been spotting blood. That's the father over by the gate, Aimery de Sens. They slaughtered him like a Martinmas hog and raped her as he died - one after the other, turn upon turn. Richard, go and bring me some water.' She gave the boy the wooden bowl and spared Oliver a look from clear, amber-green eyes. 'I thought you were scavengers come to pick over the bones.'

Oliver watched the boy trot away to the well and shook his head. 'We were on our way to the Severn ferry when the smoke guided us to you from the main track.' He looked at her curiously, for her French accent bore a lilting inflection. The boy had called her Catrin, which he thought might be Welsh. 'How came you to escape this carnage?' He gestured around.

'I was in the woods gathering oak bark for dyeing, but close enough to hear the commotion — and see what the whoresons did.' She leaned over Amice. 'What quarrel did we have with anyone?'

'We have to get her to safety.' Oliver's gut was queasy. He would rather face the entire hoards of hell single-handed than deal with a woman in childbirth. It was worrying too that a band of raiders should be abroad in the heart of Gloucester's territory.

'No. If she is moved, she will bleed to death. I have only a little knowledge, but that much is certain.' She sat back on her heels and regarded him sombrely. 'Her only chance is to remain completely still.'

'Is there no midwife nearby?'

'Dead,' she said with a grim gesture at the bodies strewing the compound. 'And the nearest settlement is more than ten miles away.'

He swore beneath his breath. Jesu, Gawin was right. They should have tarnished their consciences and left well alone.

Walking carefully so as not to spill a drop, the boy returned with the bowl of water. Catrin took it from him and gently raised Amice enough to drink.

'I'll go and make camp,' Oliver said abruptly. He felt as helpless as a straw cast upon the surface of a raging flood. 'Come, lad, you can help me.'

The boy hesitated, but at Catrin's nod and his mother's forced smile followed Oliver.

It was a little beyond full dark when Amice's child came stillborn into the world, drenched in its mother's blood which continued to trickle and seep despite all Catrin's efforts. The afterbirth that followed the baby was torn, and Catrin knew that when such a thing happened the mother either bled to death or died within a few days of a suppurating fever.

Sitting at Amice's side, her hands red to the wrists, Catrin uttered a small sound of frustration. The fair-haired knight had given them his own portable shelter for the night and had built an open fire before it. Then he had made another camp across the compound for himself, his companion and Richard, giving the women a modicum of privacy. For much of the time Catrin had been aware of his presence in the corner of her vision as he moved among the dead, straightening and composing, murmuring prayers. Between the labour pangs, Amice had told her his name and a little about him. What she had said had made Catrin even more aware of his quiet, deliberate movements.

'It is no use, Catrin,' Amice said in a reed-thin voice. 'There comes a time when death will not be cheated.'

'My lady, I . . .'

'Be quiet, there is no time to argue.' Amice licked her parched lips and Catrin helped her to sip from the bowl of water. 'Bring me Oliver Pascal. I need to speak with him — hurry.'

Catrin rinsed her hands and, drying them on her gown as she walked, approached the men's fire. Richard was staring into the flames, his hands wrapped around his upraised knees. He raised his eyes to her face, then slid his gaze over her bloodied clothes. Catrin wanted to cry. Instead, her voice wooden with control, she delivered Amice's summons to Oliver.

'How is she?' The knight rose swiftly to his feet, his expression full of question and anxiety.

Catrin compressed her lips and shook her head. 'There is nothing that anyone but God can do. She has lost the baby and there is too much blood.'

He flinched, but Catrin was too busy containing her own emotions to notice. Sinking to her knees beside Richard, she drew him into her embrace.

Oliver crossed the compound. Behind him, a pattern of glowing embers marked the place where half a day since buildings had stood. From what the child had told him, Oliver understood that Aimery de Sens was a man of few ambitions beyond the bedchamber and even fewer personal enemies. Penfoss had simply fallen foul of a random raid. It was destruction for destruction's sake, and someone had derived warped pleasure from the deed. Oliver shivered at the thought and wondered how men managed to live with themselves.

Reaching the shelter, he stooped inside and crouched beside Amice. His dark cloak covered her from throat to feet, making her resemble a corpse on a bier. Her skin was waxen, her eye sockets the dark hollows of a skull. To one side there was a pile of bloodied rags made from a torn-up undershift.

For a moment his inner eye exchanged these cramped surroundings for the well-appointed bedchamber of his brother's keep at Ashbury, the fire built high, the huge walnut-wood bed dwarfing Emma's pale, still form. Her cold hands were wrapped around the cross that the priest had given her to hold in her dying moments and had it not been for the drained complexion, the bluish tinge in socket and cheekbone, she might have been asleep. Five years had passed, but the memory was still unbearable.

'Amice?' Kneeling, he held her hand.

Turning her head, she forced her lids apart. Her fingers twitched and Oliver felt the cold strike through his own warm flesh.

'You know that Richard is the old King's son,' she said in a thready whisper.

'Yes, of course I do.' And what a scandal it had been at the time. A girl of sixteen and a man old enough to be her grandfather. People said that the troubles in
England
now were God's payback for Henry's fifty years of lechery.

'It has been so long. I do not know the roads you travel these days, but I ask . . .' she swallowed. 'I ask you to take Richard to his kin at Bristol.'

'I serve his uncle, Earl Robert, and I'm bound there of my own accord. You need not worry about the lad. I'll deliver him safe.'

She gave him the ghost of a smile. 'I know you will. You were always steadfast, whatever the temptation.'

He winced. She did not know how close he had come to yielding to that temptation.

'Emma saw it in you. I was jealous of her.'

He cleared his throat and looked away; he did not want to think about Emma. 'It is in the past.'

'It is as fresh as yesterday,' she contradicted.

Oliver fought the urge to leap to his feet and stalk away. What she said was true. Despite the passage of time, some memories remained as sharp as glass. If Amice had been jealous of Emma, how much more had he envied Amice her life and her healthy child. Both might have been his had he chosen differently. Now, in place of envy there was weariness and the all-too-familiar sensation of guilt.

'There is one more boon I must ask of you while I yet have breath,' Amice whispered.

Oliver clenched his jaw to withhold the snarl gathering within him. When he spoke, it was with great gentleness, his hand smoothing hers. 'Name it, and it is yours.'

'Find a place at Bristol for Catrin too. She is a widow without family and she has been a loyal companion to me.'

'As you wish.'

'Nothing is as I wish.' Amice smiled bitterly. 'Yesterday was better.' She closed her eyes. 'In the garden, Emma and I . . .'

Oliver set his hand against her throat. The pulse still beat there, but erratically. Her breath stirred the guard hairs on the wolfskin border of his cloak; then it didn't and her mouth fell open. Oliver released her hand and gently crossed it with the other one upon her breast. In the garden. Was that a reference to the past or where she was now?

Taking his cloak, he returned slowly to the fire where the living were gathered.

Catrin rose from her place beside the boy and hurried to meet him. Her eyes went from his face to the cloak draped over his arm and he saw the small shudder run through her body.

'I will tell the lad,' he said quietly. 'Go and prepare her so that he can look at her if he wants.'

Her gaze filled with hostility. 'It is not right. You are a complete stranger to him.'

'Sometimes it is better that way. You will still be here to give him comfort, won't you?' He nodded towards the small shelter. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be!' she snapped. 'You know nothing about us!' Her face started to crumple and she pushed blindly past him.

Oliver frowned and smoothed the fur on his cloak. Perhaps his regret was for not knowing until it was too late. After a brief hesitation he went to the fire and took Catrin's place beside the boy.

'You don't need to tell me,' Richard forestalled him. 'I know she's dead.'

'Weep if you want.' Oliver extended his hands to the flames, drawing life and warmth back into his body. Across the fire, Gawin poked the burning wood, sending flickers of yellow heat into the night sky.

'I don't feel like weeping,' Richard said stiffly.

'It will come.' Oliver took the flask of ginevra that Gawin stretched out to him, gulped a burning mouthful and passed it on to the boy. 'Sooner or later everyone has to weep.'

Richard took the flask, drank, then choked on the fiery brew; but when he had ceased coughing, he put the flask to his lips and took a second, longer swallow. 'She is better dead.'

Which was not the kind of remark for a ten-year-old to make about his newly deceased mother.

'Why do you say that?' Oliver retrieved his flask before the boy could avail himself again.

Richard shrugged. 'She always had to ruin what she had,' he said moodily.

When nothing else was forthcoming, Oliver broke the silence by murmuring, 'I knew her before you were born, when Earl Robert was her guardian.'

'Did you lie with her like all the others?'

Oliver's palm flew, but he stopped it just short of the boy's ear. Richard did not flinch, his stare blank and dark with misery. 'Christ, boy, what sort of question is that?' Lowering his hand, Oliver wrapped it around his belt and drew a steadying breath. 'No, I did not lie with her,' he said evenly. After all, it was the truth, no matter how easily he could have joined the ranks of 'all the others'. 'She was my wife's cousin and childhood companion. Last time I saw her was at your father's court when you were a tiny baby.'

'We didn't stay there long,' the child said in a savage voice. 'Did you know that she wasn't married to Aimery de Sens? He's just my most recent "papa", but of course he's dead now too.'

Oliver's fingers tightened around his belt. He made a conscious effort to relax them. The boy's pain was a raw, open wound, hence the provocative tone, but what he said was probably true. Amice's nature had been inconstant and wanton as he had cause to know. Had she been male, she would have been granted a modicum of leeway, but as a woman she was damned as a whore. It was unfortunate if the boy had been a witness to the darker machinations of adult behaviour. 'No, I didn't know,' he said, 'but it makes no difference to me. She was a friend, and she was kin by marriage.'