The Love Knot (20 page)

'Who is it . . . Rohese?' Catrin held up her lantern and peered, her other hand at her throat to steady the leaping of her heart. 'What do you want?'

'I have to speak with the old one,' said Rohese de Bayvel, and glanced anxiously round. Within the depths of her cowl, her face was narrow and pinched. Catrin had not been much in the bower this last month; most of her time had been taken up with nursing Ethel, and she was shocked at how ill Rohese looked.

'Ethel is sleeping,' she said. 'She is very frail and I do not want to wake her. Can you not wait until the morning?'

Rohese shook her head. 'I need her now. Wake her up.'

'Ethel can do nothing for you that I cannot,' said Catrin. 'If it's more of that love philtre you want, then I am sure I can mix it for you.'

Rohese stiffened. 'I want nothing from you,' she said with a curl of her lip.

'Then come back when it's light.' Catrin held her ground. Although not as tall as Rohese, she was more than her match in stubborn courage. '

Rohese chewed her lip. 'It is a private matter.'

By which Catrin judged that it was more than a simple love philtre that Rohese required.

'How can a biddy sleep with all that noise?' The hanging was tugged aside and Ethel poked her nose into the biting cold. She was clutching a blanket to her bosom and her hair swung in a heavy grey braid.

Catrin glared at Rohese. 'I'm sorry we woke you.'

'Don't matter, I was wakeful anyway.' Ethel opened the hanging wider. 'Won't you come in, my lady.'

Picking her way daintily like a skittish horse, Rohese entered the shelter. 'I want to see you alone,' she murmured, with a meaningful glance at Catrin.

It was with some difficulty that Catrin kept her tongue behind her teeth. Ethel, however, had no such nicety of restraint. 'What's meant for my ears is meant for hers too. Like it or leave it, my lady. I promise we'll not spread tales.' Dragging herself over to the fire, she began to poke it to life with a long iron bar. Catrin knew better than to try and take it from her. Instead, she dusted off the stools, which were clean anyway, and kindled a rush light.

Rohese fidgeted and even cast her eyes across the bailey towards the gleam of the whitewashed keep as if she would return to the bower. But then, with a sigh, she stepped across the threshold and dropped the curtain. 'I need something to bring on my flux,' she announced. 'I'm more than two weeks late.'

Catrin compressed her lips. Small wonder that Rohese did not want her present after all that the woman had said about Amice. An unmarried woman whose flux did not come was wading in deep water.

'Well, what can you do for me?' Rohese snapped.

'Depends on the reason you haven't bled.' Ethel leaned the poker against the small spit at the side of the tripod and went to consult her jars and bundles of herbs. 'Is it likely that you're with child?'

'No, of course not!' Even in the dim light of the shelter, Catrin could see that Rohese's complexion was dusky. 'How can you say such a thing!'

'Easy. 'Tis the most likely cause. Only other ones I know are starvation or a deadly sickness of the vitals.'

'I tell you, I am not with child!'

'Suit yourself, my lady.'

Catrin watched Ethel reach to the bag containing the penny royal and gromwell. They were herbs used to promote menstruation in women whose fluxes had ceased for whatever reason. Sometimes they worked, but their efficacy was haphazard. Stronger herbs carried stronger penalties such as vomiting, purging and even death. Ethel only gave them when a woman was certain to die anyway if she carried a child to term.

'Take three pinches, my lady, in a cup of wine, and say a prayer to Saint Margaret,' Ethel instructed, handing Rohese a twist of linen. 'I'm not saying that it will work, but happen you might be fortunate.'

Rohese took the pouch, put a silver quarter penny into Ethel's cold, left palm and, without looking at Catrin, swept out.

'Well, well. Wonder who the father is?' Ethel fetched a blanket and seated herself at the hearth. She transferred the penny from her bad hand to her good, then tucked her fists in her sleeves.

Catrin thought of the occasion she had seen Rohese slipping away into the camp and shook her head. 'Will she bleed?'

'Might, but I doubt it.' Ethel clucked her tongue. 'No good playing with fire and not expecting to be singed.'

'No.' Catrin drew her cloak around her body and stared into the revived red embers.

'Still,' Ethel murmured, 'a little singeing on occasion is no bad thing.'

Catrin watched the flames licking the life from the wood and wondered if she was right.

*

Following mass on Christmas morning, there was feasting and merriment in the keep's great hall. Outside, the air sparkled with a clarity that hurt the eyes. Inside, it was a smoky fug, scented with apple-wood from the fire, with evergreen from the branches of holly and fir adorning the walls, and with the aroma of spices from the numerous dishes that crowded the trestles. The bailey was deserted, for almost every member of Bristol keep not on duty was in the hall feasting and merry-making.

Ethel had been found a relatively quiet corner by the fire with others who were elderly or infirm. There was a jug of hot wassail wine to keep them occupied, and several platters of small delicacies - cheese-wafers, slices of smoked sausage, small salted biscuits, fried nuts, and candied fruit. Tucked in a new blanket, that had been a gift from the Countess, Ethel was highly content with life.

Catrin, however, was less so. 'He's not coming,' she said, sitting on the bench at Ethel's side. Before going to mass, she had washed from crown to toe in the scented soap and donned a new undershift of soft embroidered linen, topped by the gown of crimson and gold that Oliver had yet to see. While still damp, she had bound her black hair in braids and secured the ends with fillets of enamelled bronze. She knew, with a certain degree of pride, that she could match any woman present in the hall today, but it was swiftly becoming an empty triumph.

'Time aplenty yet,' Ethel answered around a mouthful of cheese-wafer. 'Besides, there's plenty more fish in the sea for an attractive young woman. Do you a world of good to dangle one on your line.'

Catrin pulled a face. Several men had inveigled her to dance or tried to manoeuvre her beneath the mistletoe to steal a kiss, but she had kept her distance. One or two would be quite interesting to 'dangle on her line', but Catrin was wary of hooking a fish larger than she could handle. It was one of the reasons why she was sitting here amongst the old and the infirm, instead of joining in the games and dancing at the hall's centre. Indeed, if the truth were known, the merriment daunted her a little, for there was a wild undercurrent, a predatory edge to the playing that could so easily turn a crowd into a mob.

She watched Richard and Thomas FitzRainald. The boys were playing a boisterous game of hoodman-blind with some other youngsters, and thoroughly enjoying every moment. She smiled wistfully at their pleasure and helped herself to a cup of the wassail wine, welcoming the trickle of the hot liquid down her throat. She thought of the last Christmas when Lewis had been alive. Her feet had not touched the floor for dancing. She had been one of the crowd out there, brimming with laughter, giddy with drink . . . probably insensible in the end too, for the memories would not focus, remaining a colourful blur.

'Go on, wench.' Ethel gave Catrin a nudge and almost spilled the wassail wine. 'Get you gone. Spend your life waiting and it'll be over before you know it.'

With a small sigh, Catrin drank down the wine to the spicy dregs and stood up, pondering where to go next in search of a haven. Perhaps she ought to stand beneath a kissing bunch and let fate take its course.

A sudden fanfare at the hall door made her swing round in surprise. People began falling to their knees and bowing their heads, almost like wheat beneath a reaper's scythe. Catrin stared, wide-eyed.

'The Empress Mathilda,' someone hissed and, tugging on her sleeve, dragged her down. For a moment, she held the same pose as everyone else, but then could not resist a half glance upward.

The sole-surviving legitimate child of the old king was a little shy of forty years old. There were few lines on her face, but those that did exist were deeply graven, like sharp pen strokes. She was gorgeously dressed in royal purple and gold, with a lining of ermine tails to her cloak. Escorted by her half-brother, Earl Robert, she walked with a regal glide, her head carried as high as those of her subjects were bowed. The pride, the elegance, the very severity of feature led to an impression of beauty, but in the way that a killing winter day was beautiful. To touch was to freeze.

Reaching the dais and mounting it, Mathilda sat down upon the high-backed chair that had been appointed for her.

She surveyed the hall without expression and, having taken her due from those who bowed, she flicked her fingers in dismissal. Catrin continued to regard her, thinking it small wonder that many of the barons chose to support King Stephen instead. Hauteur of such a degree was unlikely to endear men to her cause, men who were already suspicious of taking orders from a woman. A smile, a word, would have cost nothing and repaid the effort tenfold.

'Take more than a cup of wassail wine to prize that one out of the ice,' Ethel muttered. 'Still, if I had the husband she's got and that pack of fools for followers, I'd be frozen too.'

'Her husband's supposed to be one of the most handsome men in Christendom,' Catrin said. 'Geoffrey le Bel, they call him.'

'Geoffrey the ten years younger and as tricky as they come,' Ethel snorted. 'They've fought ever since they've been wed.'

'Yes, I'd heard the rumours and the scandal.' She looked again at the Empress, who was leaning to listen to her brother, her white fingers curled around the stem of a fine silver goblet. How much pain, Catrin wondered, did that cold facade conceal? How deep was the ice? Her first husband had been an emperor. Recalled home at his death to become the heir to
England
and Normandy, she had been forced into marriage with Geoffrey of Anjou, the mere son of a count and still in adolescence. The marriage had foundered, but parental pressure had shored the broken edges and forced it to hold together in mangled shards. Three sons later it still did, but everyone could see the gaping holes beneath the shoring. If not for their children, if not for their political need of each other, Geoffrey le Bel and Mathilda Domina Anglorum would gladly have let their marriage sink.

'I would not change places with her for the world,' she murmured.

Ethel gave another little snort. 'Speak for yourself. I'd change places in return for a night with Geoffrey le Bel.' 'Ethel, you're drunk!'

The old woman chuckled and did not deny the accusation.

Catrin felt a tug on her sleeve and turned to find Richard and Thomas at her elbow. Both of them must have been outside, for their cheeks were red with cold, and there were sparkles of melting snow on their tunics.

'You've to play a game!' Richard cried, wafting the hood at her from the hoodman-blind.

'Ah, no,' Catrin laughed, starting to shake her head, but she did not really mean it. Having viewed Mathilda's coldness, she needed the relief of laughter.

The boys dropped the hood over her head, so that the face opening was at the back, and her vision cut off by a layer of itchy, dark wool. Then they spun her three times round, but instead of releasing her to feel her way and try to capture one of them, they took her arms and drew her where they wanted. For a horrified moment, Catrin thought they were leading her up to the dais to present her to the Empress. But then she felt cold air on her skin and the delicate sting of sleet.

'You know that you two will pay for this,' she said with a shiver, as her shoes slipped in the soft, dark mud of the bailey floor.

The response was a muffled giggle. One of them let her go, but the other tightened his grip on her arm.

'How much had you in mind?' a deep voice demanded with amusement.

Catrin seized the hood in her free hand and dragged it off her head, the movement taking her wimple and circlet too. 'Oliver!' Suddenly her breath was short and, despite the cold, her cheeks were burning. Giggling, his two accomplices ran off back to the hall.

He laughed and swept her up in his arms, crushing her face against the sodden wool of his cloak and the hard rivets of his mail hauberk. 'I suppose you'd given up on me.'

'The thought of you never crossed my mind,' she retorted with spirit, as he set her back on her feet. 'I've had no lack of offers to stand beneath a kissing bunch, you know.'

He sucked in his cheeks. There was a grizzle of beard encircling his mouth and pricking his jawline, its colour copper-blond in the light from the blazing pitch torches guttering in the wall sconces. 'Taken any of them up?' he enquired.

'What do you think?'

He looked at her a moment longer, the sleet glimmering silver and fire-gold between them. 'I think,' he said softly, 'that I have missed you beyond all reason, and that there is not a kissing bunch large enough in that hall to show you how much.'

Catrin swallowed. Jesu, she wanted him, and not just beneath a sprig of evergreen and mistletoe. 'Ethel has one in her dwelling that might suffice,' she offered, looking at him through her lashes, and was gratified to hear his hoarse intake of breath. She circled her toe on the muddy ground of the bailey floor. 'Unless of course you'd rather join the feast and try the others.'