The Love Knot (37 page)

'What?' She gave him a glance over her shoulder.

He made a contrite, prayerful gesture. 'You're beautiful and I love you.'

She gave him the ghost of a smile and put her nose in the air. 'That begins to make amends.'

'And I humbly promise to keep the faith.'

Still smiling, despite herself, Catrin went down the stairs.

'King Stephen is not well,' she said later, as she and Louis lay together in a daub and wattle shelter in the bailey. Usually it held sheep, but it had been swept out to provide accommodation for the overspill of troops. All around them, others were settling down to sleep, huddling in their cloaks for warmth against the sharp winter cold. 'Serious?'

'No,' Catrin said doubtfully, 'but he is so thin and he looks so tired. If he cannot throw it off, then it might grow worse. I told him that he should rest, but he just laughed, and asked what I thought he had been doing all those months in Bristol. I said fretting.'

Louis drew her close and nuzzled his lips against her throat. 'You are indeed a wise woman, Catty.' His voice was teasing, but his thoughts were troubled. She was the one who had changed, and she was proving more of a challenge than he had first complacently thought. Instead of leading a saddle-broken, if somewhat contrary, mare to a mounting block, he was discovering that he had his fist around the rope of an untamed wild horse. And yet he would not let go for the world. She was too valuable. He had seen her worth written in the eyes of a disinherited knight and of the King of England.

'Am I?' Her tone was almost forlorn. 'Sometimes I think I am very foolish.'

'That's just the lateness of the hour talking,' Louis dismissed easily, and pressed closer still within the cloak, letting her feel the swell of his erection, but making no greater move. After her earlier speech, he wanted to show that despite his needs, he was capable of consideration and restraint. 'Everyone thinks that sometimes.'

'Even you?'

He permitted himself a smile against the heartbeat in her soft, white throat. 'Even me.' His lips touched a fabric cord. Setting his finger beneath it, he drew it up out of her gown and chemise. It was warm from her body. In the light from the horn lantern burning on a shelf above their bed of straw, he examined the plaited knot of red, black and white wool. 'Why do you wear this thing?' he asked, unable to keep the distaste from his voice. It looked tawdry and cheap, the sort of trinket a peasant would own. 'Most women have crosses, or little religious badges.'

She grabbed it from him. 'I'm not most women.'

'True, but that does not answer my question.'

She sighed, as if he were being awkward. 'It was given to me by the wise-woman who taught me all I know. As a sort of badge of apprenticeship, if you like, but it means more to me than that. It's a reminder of her and the bond between us. She was like a grandmother to me.'

Louis concealed a grimace, imagining a toothless, smelly, old crone.

'In a way, it's a sort of talisman too,' she murmured. 'It represents the three strands of womanhood. Maiden, mother and crone.'

'Oh,' he said without interest or enthusiasm. She tucked it firmly back inside her dress and chemise. 'But, if you want, I will wear a cross on top of my garments.' 'I will buy you a cross,' he said. 'A fine silver one inlaid with garnets from Midlothian.' He stroked her spine. 'If I had the coin, I would invest you with jewels like a queen.' 'I don't need jewels.'

'Mayhap not, but I would still dress you until you glittered to show the world how much I value you.'

She gave a little sigh - of contentment, he thought. Their lips met. The kiss could have been a preliminary to more lovemaking, but Louis kept it tender and gentle, proving what a good husband he was.

When their lips parted, he rolled half on to his back and stared at the rafters, the sparrow droppings illuminated by the glow of the lantern. Nearby, someone was softly snoring. He fixed the sights, sounds and textures in his mind. He wanted to remember this night so that in the future he could look back from a position of wealth and influence and see it as the threshold of his rise to fame. Once I slept in an animal shed. Look at me now.

He fell asleep with a smile on his face.

At Ethel's former hearth in Bristol, Oliver celebrated the Christmas season with wine and ginevra, with Welsh mead and Galwegian usquebaugh to deaden the pain. But although Oliver's body grew numb, his mind seemed to focus with all the more clarity. If anything, the grief of losing Catrin cut keener than his grief over Emma. Emma was dead and forever beyond his reach, but Catrin still lived, and breathed and loved. So near, and yet so impossibly far.

'You do yourself harm brooding out here,' said Geoffrey FitzMar, finding him there. The young knight had been released with Earl Robert a couple of weeks after Oliver. 'At least come into the hall and get drunk with everyone else.'

'I prefer my own company,' Oliver said with frozen dignity.

Geoffrey scrubbed a forefinger beneath his nose in perplexity and sat on the spare stool by the hearth. 'Richard wanted to come and fetch you, but I put him off, said that I would do it.'

'Is that supposed to bribe me with guilt?'

Geoffrey shrugged. 'I just thought that you wouldn't want the lad to find you like this. I know you are deeply wounded, but it is the Christmas season. It might heal you a little to stand under a kissing bunch.'

Oliver gave Geoffrey a vicious look. 'I don't want to be "healed a little",' he snapped and took a gulp from the almost empty flask of usquebaugh. 'What is the point of having your heart ripped from your body time upon time? I will sleep with my sword from now on.' He touched his belt to emphasise the point and, in so doing, felt the decorative love knot that Ethel had woven. Now he tore this free and, with a look of loathing at the mingled red, raven and flaxen hair, cast it on the fire.

Geoffrey began to exclaim, but bit the sound between his teeth. Lunging to his feet, Oliver wove his way unsteadily to the hall. He did not suppose it mattered where oblivion came from, just as long as it did.

Godard lumbered out of the shadows, snatched the poker from the spit bar and, with a deft movement, flicked the knot from the fire and stamped on it. The outer edge was charred and singed, but the inside was whole and the pattern still visible. Oliver's aim had not been good.

'He might regret it later,' he said to a startled Geoffrey.

The young knight tugged at his curls and looked dubious.

'The old woman knew, but she never said nowt.'

'Knew what?'

'That the husband was still alive. Read it in the smoke she did - a dark-haired man from the enemy side who would bring misery and strife.'

The hair rose on Geoffrey's nape and his gaze flickered anxiously. 'She had the sight?'

Godard shrugged. 'Who's to say? All I know is that she knew.' He gestured to the blackened token half-hidden under his boot. 'I'll keep it for the nonce. It'll not be mended else.' With a nod, he set about banking the fire against any dangerous stray sparks.

Geoffrey turned to the keep. The sounds of merriment drifted like smoke on the wind. 'I'd best go and join his lordship before he injures himself or picks a fight,' he said with a sigh.

Catrin was binding the sprained ankle of one of William d'Ypres' knights when Louis came running through the camp to find her. The King's army was heading for York, but had broken the march to rest overnight at Northampton.

The weather had held fine, and a soft, late April sun was warming the thatch on the roofs and gilding the wooden tent supports.

'Catty, leave that,' Louis panted. 'The Queen wants you immediately.'

Catrin stared at her husband. 'The Queen?'

'Yes. The King's been taken with a high fever in the night, and he's refused all his doctors. Quickly, there's no time to lose.' He snapped his fingers at her.

Catrin resented the gesture. She was not a dog to come to heel, but in the next moment she forgave him as she saw the agitation in his eyes.

'A moment will make no difference,' she soothed, and wrapped the last layer of bandage around her patient's ankle, securing the support with a bone pin. Beside her, Louis fumed and bit his thumbnail. Finished, she picked up her satchel.

'More haste, less speed,' she could not prevent herself from saying.

Louis scowled but said nothing, obviously too preoccupied to either rise to the bait or make a retort. Instead, he set off at a striding walk that ought to have belonged to a much taller man.

Catrin ran along beside him. 'I am surprised he has not been taken ill before now,' she remarked. 'I said at Christmas that he looked exhausted. He has driven himself too hard, and Lenten fare is not the food to put flesh back on a man's wasted bones.'

'Just see that he recovers now,' Louis said grimly as they entered the great hall.

Catrin glanced at him. She had never seen Louis so out of countenance before. Life was lived with a gambler's jauntiness. That much had not changed since the Chepstow days. 'I will do what I can.'

He stopped abruptly and swung her round by her arm.

His face was so close that she could see the faint sprinkling of freckles across his nose, and the tiniest barber's nick on his cheekbone. 'You'll save him, and you'll let him know that it is your skill that has kept him out of a shroud.' His upper lip curled into what was almost a snarl.

'Louis, you're hurting me.' She tugged herself free and rubbed her bruised elbow.

He stepped back and, with a little shake of his head, breathed out. His tone softened and he stroked her cheek. 'Catty, if he dies, then so do my hopes of becoming a baron. Save his life, and you will have not only his eternal gratitude, but that of the entire royal party, and we can make what we want of it.'

Now she understood. He was in the midst of the largest gamble of his life and her skill was the luck that loaded his dice. 'Everything has its price in your eyes, doesn't it?' she said with contempt. 'I wonder about my own worth to you. If I had not been known to the King and desired by another man, would you have valued me enough to bind me with old wedding vows?'

His eyes narrowed. 'You know I would. Don't be such a shrew.'

Without a word she turned from him and approached the stairs to the royal chamber.

On the second Sunday in May, the castellan of Wickham Keep drank too much, fell off his horse, landed on his skull and killed himself. The news was delivered to Stephen in Northampton, where he lay weak as a kitten but recuperating, under the watchful eye of the Queen, his senior retainers and Catrin.

During the first week of his illness, his brother, the Bishop of Winchester, had administered the last rites to a man delirious with fever and on the brink of death. The Queen had knelt in prayer by her husband's side the night through, while Catrin laboured over him with steam inhalants, aromatic chest plasters and honey and blackcurrant tisanes.

Another twelve hours passed before the fever broke. Sweat poured out of Stephen as if he were a leaky bucket, and as swiftly as the sheets were stripped and replaced he soaked them again. By the time it was over, he was lying on a table-cloth purloined from the dais trestle in the hall, and covered with blankets borrowed from his retainers. Catrin was as exhausted as a limp sheet herself, and scarcely had the strength to feel triumph as the King opened lucid eyes for the first time in three days.

Since then he had continued to improve and a fortnight later, although still possessed of a wheezy cough and confined to bed, was conducting daily business from his chamber.

'Fell off his horse,' he repeated, tossing the vellum message on the bed and scowling at the man who had brought it. 'I don't believe it. Good God, the man was almost born in the saddle!' He drew his furred bedrobe around his painfully thin body.

The messenger looked at the floor and shuffled his feet. 'Sire,' he mumbled.

'Oh, it's not your fault. Begone.' Stephen waved his hand in terse dismissal. As the man bowed and scurried gratefully to the door, the frown deepened between Stephen's brows. Picking up the letter he studied it again, narrowing his eyes at the scribe's untidy scrawl.

'He was a good man, de Chesham, but overly fond of his wine - to his cost and ours, God rest his soul.' He made the sign of the cross with the same irritation with which he had dismissed the messenger.