The Love Knot (25 page)

'No, my lord.' Oliver knew that the Earl doted on his eldest daughter, Malde. She was married to Rannulf, Earl of Chester, whose power on the northern marches of
Wales
made him almost a prince. Thus far, Rannulf had been loyal to Stephen, but it was not a cloak that had ever fitted the power-hungry Lord of Chester particularly well. Robert and Rannulf had a healthy respect for each other but were not the fondest of in-laws. Malde, and the desire to extend their mutual influence along the Welsh borders, were the ties that bound them together. But Rannulf's defection to the Empress's cause would bind them closer still. 'How long do I have?'

'Ten - twelve days at the most. Stephen has the town, Rannulf the keep. Or rather, Malde has the keep,' he added, with a swift hiss of anxiety. 'Rannulf is in North Wales summoning levies to march on Lincoln. I have to muster troops with all possible haste. My exchequer will equip you with funds.'

'My lord.' Oliver bowed out of the room and hurried down the stairs into the hall, his mind working to the swift pace of his feet. Grabbing Gawin, he commanded him to run and pack a saddle roll.

'What for?' Gawin looked at him slack-mouthed over the rim of his cup.

'We're going into
Wales
. Stop staring, we've to ride out now!'

Gawin lurched to his feet and almost over-balanced. '
Wales
?' he repeated.

'Yes, to recruit troops. You can sober up in the saddle. Go!'

Shaking his head in bemusement, Gawin steadied himself and reached for his cloak.

Oliver collected his spare tunic and cloak from his pallet, then went to tell Ethel that he had to ride out on the Earl's business. He could not make his farewells to Catrin for she was away in the city at a childbirth.

'Will you be gone long?' Ethel asked. She was huddled by the fire in her new green mantle. The hands that poked out from beneath the garment to absorb the heat shook with palsy.

'No more than ten days, but then we'll all be marching north.' He stooped to help himself to a flask of mead and several of Ethel's oatcakes. 'Give Catrin my love and tell her that I wish she was here, but I'll speak to her when I return.'

'From your ten days or from the North?' 'The first I hope,' he answered with a grimace and, saluting Ethel, strode off in the direction of the stables.

Somewhat to Oliver's surprise, the recruiting went smoothly and well. Randal de Mohun might have been obnoxious in camp, but on campaign, with responsibility, he was efficient and professional. He was also a good judge of the quality of fighting men and, by a mixture of emotive words and material promises, attracted an excellent number of recruits to join Earl Robert's banner. His ebullience and boldness, the expansiveness of gesture and dress, were well-contrasted with Oliver's more reserved approach. Men saw that there was room for more than one sort of soldier in Earl Robert's ranks. Those who did not take to Randal de Mohun could talk quietly to Oliver and make their decision at a more measured pace.

'We've done well,' grinned de Mohun, as they sat over a camp-fire on the last evening before their return to Bristol. 'The Earl will pay us a bonus for this lot.'

Oliver nodded agreement, his jaws busy with a chunk of gristly mutton from their supper stew.

'Lincoln, eh?' De Mohun rubbed the side of his beard with his thumb. 'It's a rich city, so I've heard. Plenty of pickings, and its citizens deserve no more than what they get for supporting Stephen.' His eyes gleamed with relish.

Oliver gave up and spat the meat into the fire where it sizzled and hissed. 'I know it is the nature of war,' he said, 'but I do not enjoy burning people out of their homes and taking away their livelihoods.'

The mercenary gave him a sharp, sidelong look. 'To the victor, the rewards,' he said. 'I could not afford a sword or tunic like this out of my own pay. I risk my life. It is only right that I be recompensed.'

Oliver shook his head. 'In the end there will be nothing left. If you bleed the river dry, the landscape turns to desert.'

'Oh yes, I agree.' De Mohun smiled. 'But a little running-off now and again does no harm. You are too tender, Pascal.'

Oliver shrugged. 'The more I see, the more tender I become,' he said grimly, and thought that it was perhaps the opposite for some men. He suspected that his companion actually enjoyed the acts of looting and rapine. They were probably the urges that had driven him to be a mercenary in the first place.

De Mohun snorted and shook his head. 'You're a strange one,' he said. 'If you came to me as one of these raw recruits, I'd leave you behind and tell you to tend your sheep.'

Oliver smiled without humour. 'And I'd be glad of it,' he said, and used the excuse of checking on his horse to quit the fireside and company that chafed him.

Catrin was returning to the keep from the market place, her basket full of Ethel's favourite eels to tempt the old lady's waning appetite, when she heard the riders bearing down on her from behind. Spinning round, she clutched her basket to her bosom and stepped aside.

The leading horse was a powerful bay, its rider clad in chain mail, his bright cloak blowing in the brisk wind. For the briefest instant, Catrin had the terrifying sense of standing in the woods at Penfoss watching just such a troop gallop through their gates, except the leading horse had been a chestnut, the shield had borne a different blazon and weapons had been bared. The sensation was gone in a flash, but it still seemed like a true memory rather than a trick of the imagination and it made her shiver.

A grey destrier swung out of the line and headed straight towards her. Again Catrin's heart swooped and plummeted, but in response to a different blend of emotions. 'Oliver!' she cried.

His grin dazzled beneath the nasal bar of his helm. During ten days in the field, his jaw had sprouted an embryo beard of startling Viking-red. Riding up to her, he leaned from the saddle and extended his palm. She took it, set her foot over his and, in a flash of scarlet silk hose, straddled the stallion's rump. Lodging one hand in his belt, she clutched the basket of eels with the other.

'Have we not met somewhere before?' Oliver jested, his eyes flickering from her face to the basket, to her red hose, as if he could not decide where to look first.

'I am sure I would remember if we had,' Catrin retorted, her eyes dancing.

'And do you?'

'I could be persuaded.'

He laughed and twisted in the saddle to embrace her, then made a hasty grab for the reins as the horse jinked sideways. Catrin uttered a small scream and, laughing, gripped his belt more tightly.

Randal de Mohun watched the play with a half-smile on his lips and contempt in his eyes. 'I did not realise your "protection" extended that far, Pascal.' There was an edge to the jesting tone of his voice.

Returning to the ranks, Oliver gave de Mohun a cool look. 'As of Twelfth-Night, we have been betrothed,' he said. 'Catrin is my wife in all but the final blessing.'

After one glance at de Mohun, Catrin lowered her eyes. There was something about the mercenary that caused her flesh to crawl. It was more than just the incident when he had tried to kiss her as she tended his hand.

'Then I congratulate both of you.' De Mohun inclined his head in a mocking salute. 'I'll drink to your happiness the moment I'm free of my duty.'

If he hoped for an invitation to do that drinking with Oliver's coin, he was disappointed. Oliver fixed a polite expression on his face and held it there, refusing to be drawn.

Just to be irritating, de Mohun needled them with his presence for a while longer, but finally he gave up and rode off down the line to snarl at the recruits.

Catrin's scalp prickled. She did not know whether she preferred him in her sight or out of it.

'Yes,' Oliver murmured as if reading her mind. 'He is a wolf. A very fine wolf who will sit at your fire and save your life from other wolves, and then, because it is his nature, he will snap your hand off in his jaws.' 'I thought he was your friend.'

'Only in the days when I thought it was daring to have a wolf at my fire and I had nothing to care about.'

'Well, you do now,' she replied, 'so have a care to yourself too.' She was not just speaking of de Mohun, although he was cause enough for concern. Now that the first joy of greeting was over, she had time to remember that Oliver's return was fleeting; that very soon he would be on the road again, this time to full war.

Oliver laughed. 'You need have no fear on that score,' he said vehemently.

While they were dismounting in the castle bailey, Gawin approached them. 'Has there been any news, Mistress?'

She dusted down her skirts and glanced at him. 'News?'

'About Rohese?' He bit his lip.

Catrin shook her head and could not help but feel pity for him. 'No, I'm sorry,' she said. 'There has been no word in the town.'

He nodded his thanks and, downcast, turned away. Oliver watched him and sighed. 'I would not usually say this, but setting out on campaign will be the best thing for him - clear his mind, help him find his balance. It's the first time that he's had to face the reaping of what he has sown.'

Catrin nodded sombrely. 'It was probably the first time for Rohese too.'

Oliver sighed heavily. 'God have mercy on them both.' Which was the nearest he would come to saying that he thought Rohese was dead. Gathering Catrin into his arms, he kissed her. 'I have to go and make my report to the Earl and I don't know when I'll be free, but save some eel stew and a seat by the fire.'

'I can think of warmer places,' Catrin said mischievously, 'but only if you shave that stubble.'

He cupped his jaw. 'I promise, if you promise.'

Laughing, she pushed herself out of his arms and went to tend to the dinner.

Ethel was waiting for her. 'He's back then,' the old woman said, and eased her stool away from the fire so that Catrin had room to cook the eels she had just put down.

'How do you know?'

Ethel chuckled. 'Your face gives you away. Besides, I saw the horses in the bailey.'

'There are always horses in the bailey these days,' Catrin said with a small shrug. Sitting on her heels, she looked at Ethel. 'But he won't be staying for long. I don't want . . .' Her voice betrayed her. In silence she donned a linen apron and picked up a sharp knife.

'You will not lose him, lass.' The old midwife touched her breast. 'I know it in here.'

'Lightning does not strike in the same place twice, you mean?' She stripped the skin from an eel with a sharp, downward tug.

'I just know it. Time was when I could command the sight by scrying in a cauldron of simmering water. I ain't got the art any more, lost it when I had my first seizure, but I still have inklings at times. He'll come back to you, never you doubt.'

Catrin finished preparing the eels in silence. Then she wiped her hands on the apron and looked intently at Ethel. 'Truly? You have truly seen?' Her breathing was suddenly short.

Ethel made the sign of the cross. 'I swear it on the Heavenly Virgin. He was riding that grey of his in the midst of a victory procession. I could see a crown shining and there was great rejoicing.' Her voice tailed off and her eyes grew dark and distant.

'What else did you see?' When Ethel did not respond, Catrin gave her a little shake. 'Ethel?'

The midwife came to with a start and shook her head. 'What else did I see?' she repeated vaguely. 'I don't remember. It was confusing and I was tired. All I know is that you need not fear for Oliver's well-being on this march.' She rummaged beneath her mantle. 'You could give him this though, as a talisman.' She handed Catrin one of her famous knots, threaded on to a strip of leather. It was woven with three colours of hair - raven-black, flaxen-gold and dark, rich copper.

Catrin gave Ethel a questioning look. 'Mine and Oliver's I can see,' she said, 'although I will not ask how you came by them, but whose is the red hair?'

Ethel shuffled self-consciously on her stool. 'It is mine. Do you think I was always this dirty sheep colour?'

'No . . . I . . .'

'Time was when I could put autumn herself to shame.' She leaned for her satchel and, with shaky fingers, unfastened the latch. Delving to the bottom, she drew forth a pouch of light green silk and from it produced a plait of hair, thick as a wrist and the colour of a copper beech leaf. 'I had it cut off when the first grey threads started to show. It was a hot summer and I didn't miss my hair - I had to wear a wimple anyway. Sometimes I use strands in weaving my knots, but not often. You can see how full and thick it still is.' There was pride in her voice.

The sight of the plait filled Catrin with poignancy. She narrowed and blurred her eyes and tried to imagine Ethel as a young woman with glossy, auburn tresses and a spring in her step. 'You must have been beautiful.'

Ethel made a preening gesture. 'I had my admirers,' she said. 'I tell you something else too, something that I have never told anyone before.' She lowered her voice. 'Oliver is my great-nephew.'

Catrin raised her brows in startled question.

Ethel nodded. 'I am the bastard daughter of his great-grandsire. My mother conceived me at the midsummer festival in the fields beyond the bonfire.' She gave me a one-sided smile. 'Old lord Osmund had the red hair but, fortunately, so did my mother. She was able to pass me off as her husband's, but I always knew that I was different to my brothers and sisters.'

'So there is a family tie between you?' Catrin looked down at the knot in her lap. 'Did Oliver's great-grandsire ever know?'

Ethel shrugged. 'He never made a point of enquiring after me, but we never went short. Sometimes there would be gifts from the keep - a new goat when ours died, the end from a bolt of linen with enough on it to make me a chemise. He paid for my brother, Alberic, to be educated for the priesthood at Malmesbury. The bond was known but never acknowledged, and after he died it was forgotten.' She stroked the plait and returned it to its pouch.

'Why tell me now?' Catrin asked.

Ethel shrugged. 'Perhaps it is a secret that I don't want to take with me to the grave.'

Catrin looked at her with dismay widening her eyes, and Ethel looked back serenely.

'I would be a fool not to realise how frail I have become,' she said. 'I am a herb-wife. I know what can be healed and what has to be.' Then she smiled and gently shook her head. 'That stew is not going to be ready before midnight.'

Taking the hint, Catrin tucked the hair knot away and resumed chopping the eels. She did not want to think of Ethel dying, but she saw the truth as clearly as the old woman, and knowledge was a two-edged sword. She could not decide whether it was better to live in ignorance or know what the future held in store. Oliver was going to be all right. Ethel was going to die.

Gazing into the fire, Ethel watched the flames dance, but they did not speak to her again and she was glad. She did not have the energy to discern their meanings. They could be so ambiguous, and that troubled her. Behind the shining crown and Oliver's return, there were dark currents that threatened to ruin the future of those that Ethel loved best, and she knew that there was nothing she could do.

In years to come, Oliver would always remember Lincolnshire as a flat, waterlogged land, devoid of colour in the bleak January weather. He would see again the boggy roads over which Earl Robert's army floundered and trudged, smell the mud, taste the all-pervading frozen damp that numbed the flesh and rusted mail overnight. He would also remember the anticipation and the sense of power as Robert's army united with Chester's and marched with dogged, inexorable purpose upon Stephen and Lincoln. The cold, the discomfort, were not lessened, but they were made bearable by the knowledge that the tide was no longer running in Stephen's favour but in theirs.

To reach Lincoln, the combined armies had to find places to cross the river Witham and an ancient Roman ditch called the Fossedyke, which protected the city. Their guide, a local villager, swore that there was a shallow ford on the latter, but when he led them to it, squelching and cursing across the boggy floodplain, it proved to be a swift-running channel of brown spate-water. On the other side Stephen had set a small company of guards. As Robert of Gloucester and Rannulf of Chester approached the water's edge to try and gauge its depth, they were assaulted by a barrage of stones, clods of mud and yelled insults.

Oliver drew rein and, with frozen hands, fumbled in his saddle pouch for his wine flask. Hero was caked belly-deep in stinking marsh mud and bore scarcely any resemblance to the groomed, silver-dapple stallion that had set out from Bristol less than two weeks since.

Oliver drank from his flask and as he washed the pungent red wine around his teeth, thought that he seemed to have been on the road for ever. Although it was only Candlemas now, the peace of Christmas was a distant star on a fast vanishing horizon. His glance strayed to the woven knot of hair laced to his scabbard attachments. Catrin had given it to him on their last night together as they lay in the loft above the stables, wrapped in their cloaks and each other's arms.

The thought of her added warmth to the wine as it flowed through him, and he touched the knot. It made the physical distance between them seem less. The threads of bright copper-auburn trapped his eye, causing him to shake his head in bemusement. Strange to think that Ethel was his kin in truth. He had not known her when her hair was this colour, for she had been well past her fortieth winter when he was born, her red colouring faded to a sandy-grey. He wondered if he would have treated her differently had he known she was family and was glad that he had been unaware until now. The obligation of blood was weighted with guilt, whereas the obligation to an old woman who had once lived on his family's lands was considerably more simple. He took another drink of wine and then hastily looped his flask back on his saddle as Miles of Gloucester and a companion drove their horses into the icy, swift-flowing water of the Fossedyke.

On the other side, King Stephen's men watched with growing apprehension. Their horses backed and circled. They hurled further flurries of mud and stones as Earl Robert's men plunged into the dyke. A spear flashed in the air and fell harmlessly between the horses. Before it could sink, someone leaned down from his saddle, caught it up and cast it back at Stephen's men. It landed in front of them, its tip quivering in the mud of the far bank as both a threat and a promise. A horse panicked and flailed into one of its companions, creating mayhem. Bravado evaporating, Stephen's small band of sentries turned tail and fled to raise the alarm, leaving their post unguarded and the way free.

Oliver set his teeth and spurred Hero into the churning spate of the dyke. He had been prepared to be frozen but still the shock took his breath away as the water immersed the stallion to the saddle girth and spray flew up drenching Oliver through mail and padding. He heard Gawin cursing the icy tug of the current as his dun splashed and floundered. Any man who fell off his horse or failed to keep his feet would drown, dragged under in seconds by the weight of his mail and sodden gambeson.

The first troops to gain the opposite side set about securing a rope across the dyke for the infantry to grasp as their turn came to dare the chest-deep water. There were many Welshmen among them, accustomed to fording deep streams and plodding through inhospitable terrain as part of their daily existence. They took the crossing with such a flourish that they encouraged their less experienced English counterparts to do the same.