The Love Knot (24 page)

Oliver's complexion darkened. Catrin gazed at him blankly for a moment, then realised that he had taken her words to heart. 'I do not number you among them, you fool!' she cried. 'Yes, we acted upon our lust, but it was mutual and I know that you still honour me.'

He lifted his shoulders. 'With my life,' he said, 'but I want others to know of that honour too. How can I chastise Gawin when I am not in a state of grace myself?' He cleared his throat, then said tentatively, 'Catrin, would you become my wife?'

Catrin felt a hot chill of delight and fear run down her spine. Both acceptance and refusal hovered on her tongue and left her speechless. The silence stretched and began to strain.

She gnawed on her underlip, seeking with difficulty the words that would make him understand. 'I was married to Lewis on a winter morning just like this,' she said at last. 'I do not want a second joining to hold memories of the first.'

He frowned. 'I should not have asked you.'

She felt him tense to rise and swiftly clamped her hand around his leg to make him stay. 'Perhaps not quite so soon,' she said, her throat dry. 'Although I can see why you did.'

'Then the answer is no?'

His voice was far too expressionless for her comfort. She had hurt him and that had not been her intention. The only grounds she had for refusal were caused by old wounds that were not of Oliver's making.

Drawing a deep breath, she said, 'I swear that before the next Christmas feast, in a different season, I will become your wife. Is that grace enough?' Finishing her drink, she returned to his lap and curved her arms around his neck, sensing that he needed more than words as reassurance.

After a moment, his own arms tightened around her, the mead sloshing over the rim of his cup. 'More than enough,' he muttered against her throat. 'I thought you were going to refuse me.'

Catrin laughed shakily and curled her fingers into the thick hair at his nape. 'I may have panicked, but not to the point of losing my reason.' She toasted him with a sip from his mead. 'To our future.'

'To our future,' Oliver repeated, and drank from the place where she had set her lips.

Later that day, they visited Amice's grave to lay a wreath of evergreen and pay their respects. It was Richard who put the wreath on the grave and crossed himself. He had grown since the summer, his face elongating and his nose developing a sharpness that was more than reminiscent of his father, the old king. He bore himself with assurance, no longer a bewildered and bitter child but a boy on the verge of adolescence.

In the frozen, cold twilight the snow sparkled, and Catrin shivered within the warmth of her cloak as she looked at her former mistress's grave. For no reason she could fathom, the memory of Randal de Mohun intruded on her prayers and disturbed the melancholy beauty and silence of the cemetery. Oliver reached for her hand and squeezed it. Gratefully she squeezed his in return and stepped a little closer to his reassuring presence.

The remainder of the twelve days of Christmas passed in a blur of feasting and celebration. Earl Robert's court played boisterously, releasing tensions pent up by the winter confinement. Each table was set for twelve people and twelve courses were eaten, beginning with thin broth and dumplings and progressing through various elaborate fish and meat dishes, including the obligatory roast boar. The feast culminated in the presentation of a magnificent marchpane subtlety in the shape of Bristol Keep, the rivers Avon and Frome winding in blue almond paste around the edge of the serving-board.

Each night Oliver and Catrin ate until they could eat no more, then joined the rough and tumble of the games in the hall. Hoodman-blind, hunt-the-slipper, hot-cockles. They danced caroles around the apple wassail tree in the centre of the great room and laughed at the antics of the mummers and jugglers.

Sometimes they would slip away from the carousing — to be alone, to make love. Ethel's home gave them a haven, if she was absent. If not, there were hay lofts and byres to shelter them. They also took to riding out on the snowy roads beyond the city, and once they joined the court in a hunt but did not stay long with the jostle and noise of the dogs and horns. After the exhilaration of the first gallop had worn off, they turned aside for the untrammelled silence of other woodland paths, abandoning the loud belling of the dogs and the tantivy of the hunting horn.

Their breath rose in white puffs on the wintry air as they rode amongst the stark, black trunks. Oliver's cloak was a splash of blue brightness, Catrin's crimson gown and hose as rich as blood against the backdrop of crunching snow. The only signs that others had passed the same way were the tracks of wild animals: the narrow elegance of a fox, the dainty spoor of a lone roe deer.

Catrin and Oliver drew rein on a ridge overlooking the winding grey of the river. Fields stretched away on the other side, punctuated with coppices of hazel and hornbeam. It was a common enough view, but its very tranquillity in the winter cold made it beautiful. Catrin inhaled the crystalline air and sighed with pleasure.

Oliver tugged off his sheepskin mittens, and from the pouch beneath his cloak drew out a smaller drawstring bag. 'Hold out your right hand,' he said.

Her eye on the bag, Catrin pulled off one of her own mittens and did as he bade.

'I spoke to a goldsmith a few days ago,' he continued. 'A man well-versed in Irish knotwork. Although he was busy and it was the holiday season, I told him of my urgency and he fashioned me this.' Into his palm, he tipped a gold ring worked in cunningly twisted gold wire to form the shape of a triple knot. 'I had it blessed by the Earl's chaplain.' His tone was diffident. 'It's a betrothal ring, if you please, or a Twelfth-Night gift, if you don't.' Taking it in his hand, he slipped it on her middle finger.

Catrin blinked, her eyes suddenly full. The only other rings she possessed were the ones that Lewis had given her on their wedding day, but they were hidden beneath the mitten on her left hand as well Oliver knew. 'It's beautiful,' she whispered, touched to her core. 'And it fits perfectly.'

Oliver grinned. 'Well, I confess to measuring your finger with a piece of string while you slept.'

Catrin sniffed and turned her head to wipe her tears. The new gold shone in the winter sunlight. 'I can give you nothing so perfect in return,' she said, her throat tight with emotion.

'You've already given me more than perfection,' Oliver said. 'My pleasure is in your promise to be my wife.' He leaned across his horse to kiss her. Their lips met, tingling with cold, and their breath mingled in a single cloud.

Her step so light that they scarcely heard her, a doe pattered through the trees and leaped past them on to the crown of the ridge. Her thick, winter coat was shot with glorious hues of red and gold. Beneath the thick pelt, her flanks heaved with effort. The noise of hounds in full cry belled the air and there was terror in the doe's huge brown eyes.

Catrin gasped and broke from Oliver to gaze at the deer. She loved the rich flavour of venison but, watching the animal flee for its life, she found herself willing it to escape.

The doe poised on the ridge, cloven hooves dancing, ears flickering, then she gathered her haunches and took off in a series of enormous bounds, her legs showering spangles of snow with each leap. At the foot she did not stop but sprang straight into the grey water and began swimming strongly.

Catrin clenched her fist upon her new ring and silently urged the doe on. Ripples arrowing her breast, head carried high, the deer reached the opposite bank, scrambled from the river, and shook the water from her coat. Then she was away, fleeting across the fields towards the bank of woodland in the distance.

'She's free.' Oliver's taut expression relaxed and there was a sudden cloud of vapour as he let out the breath he had been holding. 'The hunters will never chance the hounds, or themselves, in that freezing water.' He too was fond of venison, but today his soul was with the deer, not her flesh.

As the huntsmen and dogs swirled around them, then ranged the top of the ridge in frustration, Oliver and Catrin turned for home in the pleasure of their own company.

The only item that marred the joy of the season was the continuing absence of Rohese de Bayvel, who had not been seen since the early hours of Christmas morning. A search had proved fruitless. She had left her gowns and all her personal effects, even the double-thickness cloak that had been a Christmas gift from the Countess. The guards on duty had seen nothing. It was as if she had been swallowed off the face of the earth in a single gulp.

Gawin spent three days hiding in a drunken stupor, but when finally he sobered he was filled with guilt, if not remorse.

He confessed his sins to a priest, who gave him a penance of twenty days on bread and water and absolved him. But he remained ill-at-ease. He searched the town, the wharves, the leper hospital and convents, all to no avail.

'She cannot just vanish, someone must have seen her,' he said, with a frustrated shake of his head. He was sitting in the hall with Oliver, a January wind whistling at the shutters and sending occasional gusts of chimney smoke belching into the room.

Oliver considered the younger man. There were dark circles of late nights and heavy drinking pouched beneath his eyes, and a slight tremor to his hands. 'No one in the keep or the city has seen her. Catrin has asked on all her rounds. I think you must accept that you are not going to find her.'

'Say what you mean. You believe she's dead, don't you?' Gawin picked up the flagon they had been sharing and tipped the dregs into his empty cup. It would be his fourth to Oliver's two.

Oliver rested his chin on his hand. 'I think it likely. All you can do now is pray.'

'Pray!' Gawin snorted. 'Do you think if I kneel down here and now that she'll walk back into the hall as if she had never left?' He tipped the wine down his throat.

Oliver shook his head in disgust and started to rise from the table. 'You are drinking yourself into a state of idiocy,' he said tightly.

'It gives me pleasure.' Gawin filtered the sludgy dregs through his teeth. 'And it helps me forget how much more trouble the bitch has been than she is worth.'

Oliver was saved another session of grabbing his adjutant by the scruff, as Richard appeared before the two knights, his dark blue eyes agleam.' Lord Oliver, you're summoned to Earl Robert's presence immediately,' he announced, hopping from foot to foot with excitement.

'Am I now?' That was interesting news. A half-hour since, as he and Gawin were sitting down, Oliver had seen a messenger out of the corner of his eye. The man had looked hard-travelled with mud spattering his garments and eyes red with fatigue. After a lull, the game, it seemed, was afoot once more.

Gawin took his cup, and lurched off in pursuit of another flagon and the company of a group of knights around a dice game. He would not spend time alone if he could help it.

Oliver followed Richard above-stairs, taking the familiar route to the Earl's solar. He was keen to know what news the messenger had brought but he refrained from asking the lad. Part of the responsibility of being a squire was learning to keep a closed mouth, and he did not want to tempt or compromise Richard when the boy was so obviously trying not to burst.

The solar door was open and the guard gestured them to enter. The Earl was already surrounded by other adjutants and knights, and two scribes were frantically writing at a trestle set off to one side. Even as Oliver stepped over the threshold, an older squire left at a trot, a sealed parchment in his hand.

Oliver approached the group surrounding the Earl and heard the tail end of a conversation involving the words 'move fast' and 'catch him while he thinks he's safe'.

'My lord, you sent for me?'

Earl Robert glanced up. His eyes were bright and his complexion flushed. 'Ah, Oliver.' He beckoned vigorously. 'I need you to ride out and recruit men for me. Go into
Wales
and along the border. Offer whatever it takes to obtain them - within reason,' he added, with a jerk of his brows. 'I want them sooner than now, whatever you can get. If they have mounts and weapons, all the better, but it is not necessary. You will leave immediately. Take de Mohun with you. He's got a good eye for a likely man.'

'De Mohun?' Oliver recoiled and then, seeing the look in the Earl's eye, said, 'Yes, sir. May I ask the purpose?'

'My son-in-law has snatched Lincoln
Castle out of Stephen's hands and garrisoned it with his own men. Malde is holding it for him while he recruits troops to strengthen his position. He has asked me for aid. Without it, he cannot hold Lincoln Keep, and by law it is rightfully his. I have said I will come to him with all haste. For all that Stephen is a chivalrous man, I will not make him the gift of my daughter as a pawn.'