The Love Knot (40 page)

Catrin compressed her lips and laid hold of the hauberk skirt. 'Your patrol went well?' she enquired tightly.

'Well enough,' he said, his voice muffled as he stooped over. 'The people never have anything to report. Too busy cowering behind their doors or hiding their best animals from my view, but I saw no signs of trouble.' He stood straight, his complexion slightly flushed. 'Besides, Mathilda's party are finished after what happened in Oxford at Christmas -Madam High-and-Mighty forced to flee through the snow in her night-gown . . .' He licked his lips and grinned. 'That would have been a sight worth seeing.'

'Apparently no one did,' Catrin answered shortly. She did not like Mathilda, but it did not prevent her from giving the woman her due against the mockery she heard in Louis's tone. 'From what I understood, she fled not in her night-gown but in a white robe so that she would seem a part of the landscape -and she succeeded.'

'Yes, but Oxford is Stephen's now. She has lost any initiative that she once possessed. It can only be a matter of time.' The gold braid on his robe sparkled as he crossed to the window embrasure and poured wine into a goblet. 'Oh, she is to be admired for her fight, but it's futile. She might as well take ship for Anjou and return to that husband of hers. At least he had the good sense not to leave his own shores.'

Catrin watched her husband drink the wine and was irritated by his confident posture and the glib contempt in his voice. 'I do not think she will do that,' she contradicted with a toss of her head. 'Earl Robert is as good a commander as Stephen, if not better, and each year that she holds her position, her son grows older.'

'I doubt she can cling on for another nine years.' Louis took a gulp of wine. 'Want some?' He held out the cup.

Catrin shook her head and fought a renewed surge of nausea.

'Of course, it will be a pity for her supporters,' he remarked, watching her narrowly. 'They will lose their lands, and those already dispossessed will have to find other employment. She won't need an army when she goes back to Anjou.'

'You mean Oliver, don't you?' Her voice was hard with anger.

He spread his hands. 'I mean them all. In truth, I feel lor their misfortune.' He cast a complacent look around his magnificent bedchamber. 'I gambled, Catty, I won.'

Her belly churned at the note of self-satisfaction in his voice. He said that he felt for their misfortune, but it was probably pleasure, not compassion. 'Yes, you won,' she said, her lip curling with disgust, 'but how long before you have to gamble again, Louis?' She swept her hand around the bedchamber, encompassing everything that his look had done. 'How long will you keep this? You bleed the villages dry to support your pleasures. You spent the wool clip before the sheep were even sheared.'

He stiffened and his nostrils flared. 'I am the lord of a castle. I have to make a display of my wealth. Anyone would think that you prefer to live in a hovel.'

'I did once, and I still do!' she flung at him. 'You display wealth that is not yours. You're living a lie, Lewis of Chepstow, a paltry, pathetic lie!' The last word ended on a cut-off scream as he strode across the room and struck her across the face.

'Shut your mouth, you shrew!' he roared. 'It is a wife's duty to honour and respect her husband, and I see very little of either from you!'

'I'll give it where it's due!' Catrin spat back, her cheek numb where he had struck her. With growing fear and anger, she watched him reach for his sword belt.

'No, my lord.' Amfrid stepped forward, a look of horror on her round, homely face.

'Get out!' Louis snarled, repeating the command on a full-throated bellow when she hesitated. With a frightened glance at her mistress, Amfrid ran from the room.

Catrin faced her husband, her breathing harsh and swift, her stomach so curdled that her throat made small retching motions as she struggled not to heave.

'Give me a single reason why I should not beat the venom out of you,' he said, curling the leather through his slender fingers.

She tightened her lips. While she would not yield to save her own hide, there was more at stake now. She could give him all the reason in the world, if she could but manage the words. Cold sweat stood out on her brow, and the room tilted and swayed like the deck of a ship.

'Well,' he queried with an arched brow, 'has the leather got your tongue?'

She shook her head and swallowed. 'No, Louis. But before you mark me, you had best know that I am with child.'

He coiled the tongue around his fist. 'You're what?' His look changed from one of dominant, masculine challenge to delighted astonishment.

'With child,' she repeated, and fell to her knees, dry-heaving into the rushes.

Louis threw the belt away from him as if it were a poisonous snake and knelt beside her, his expression suddenly full of concern and tenderness. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

She shuddered and retched against the supporting strength of his arm, a strength that had almost struck her down for telling the truth. 'I have only just discovered it myself,' she said. 'I wanted to be sure.'

'I wondered what had made you so crotchety of late. Now I know, I can forgive you.'

Catrin was too wretched to treat his reply as it deserved. Besides, she did not have the strength to continue the fight.

'A son,' Louis said, his voice deep with exultation. 'I am going to have a son.' His hand possessively on her arm, he looked into her green, wan face. 'When, Catty, when will he be born?'

'It might be a girl,' she said, with a last flicker of perversity.

'No, it will be a boy.' Louis shook his head vigorously. 'My line always breeds sons. When?'

'November, I think, around the feast of Saint Martin.'

Gently, he raised her from the floor and bore her back to their bed. He took the damp, lavender-scented cloth from the bowl on the coffer and bathed her temples. 'I was hoping for such news,' he said, 'what man would not? You did not quicken in the first year of our marriage and I thought that you might be barren.'

'So now I am worth more to you than ever?'

He did not hear the sarcasm in her tone. 'Beyond value,' he said. 'You are carrying our son. I will hold a great celebration in your honour and I will send word to the King and William d'Ypres. They are bound to send christening gifts.'

Catrin closed her eyes. She was suddenly so weary that even breathing was a burden. Instead of being cause to plan steadily for the future, the tiny seed growing within her was just another reason for Louis to scatter the largesse he did not have.

'I wish I could give you the troops and leave to besiege Ashbury, but I do not have the resources,' said Robert of Gloucester. 'And you are too valuable to me here.'

Oliver looked at his lord with dismay, but he was not surprised. Ashbury was not a great or strategic keep. It was true that it guarded a minor crossing of the Thames to the far west of Oxford and that it had a thriving market, but its capture was not essential to the Empress's cause.

'It is mine,' he said, 'and it has been my family's since the time of King Alfred. The waiting is hard.'

Earl Robert sighed and fondled the brindle head of his mastiff bitch. 'I know that, I am not blind to your need. But it cannot be. Perhaps later in the year I will be able to spare you, but not now. The great keeps need to fall before we can take the small ones.'

Oliver had been fed the 'perhaps later' speech so many times that it raised not a flicker of hope. Perhaps never was the more likely outcome. He would die a hearth knight, rolled in his cloak by the fire if he was fortunate, dead of his wounds on a battlefield if he was not.

'Yes, my lord,' he said, and turned from the trestle to give the next petitioner his chance at being denied. They had lost Oxford in the winter, but since then had reclaimed Wilton, defeating Stephen in a pitched battle that had almost been a repeat of Lincoln. They had captured his steward, William Martel, and Stephen had paid with Sherborne Castle for his release. The King was being held in check, and Oliver had dared to hope that his chance to regain Ashbury had arrived.

There was an ocean of restlessness in him that could not wait for time to turn Henry Plantagenet into a man.

Geoffrey FitzMar was waiting for Oliver in the hall. His two-year-old son perched on his knee chewing a hard crust of bread. The infant had a fluff of blond hair as pale as Oliver's own, and eyes the violet-blue of gentians. Edon was expecting a second child in the spring. Geoffrey had his family to keep him sane. Being a hearth knight by trade, a younger son without hope of land from the start, he had no roots dying for want of soil to plant them. Looking at his friend, the small child in his lap, Oliver knew bitter envy.

Geoffrey glanced up at him and the smile left his open features. 'He refused you,' he said.

'Ashbury's not strategic enough and I'm too experienced a soldier to be given leave. If I won, I wouldn't be a hearth knight any more, would I?' He pushed the toe of his boot moodily through the floor rushes. 'I can understand his reasoning, but it riles me nevertheless.'

Geoffrey shook his head and looked sympathetic. 'I wish I could help.'

Oliver watched the infant offer his father the sucked, soggy crust of bread. If Emma and their child had lived, his daughter would be almost eight years old by now. No wife, no child, no land. He imagined himself in years to come. A grizzled, embittered old man with a frozen heart and charity for neither man nor woman. It was a frightening prospect.

'Da,' said the little boy, and jumped up and down in his father's lap. 'Da, da, da.'

Oliver went outside. The late September sun was setting over the bailey in tones of rich, burnished red, and the sky was a hollow, perfect blue. Prince Henry was receiving a jousting lesson from two of the Earl's knights. Richard and Thomas were with him, and their boyish trebles rang out over the greensward as each in turn took a shortened lance and attacked the quintain post on their ponies. Oliver watched their juvenile attempts to hit the swinging shield on the end of the rotating crossbar and found a smile, remembering his own first lessons in the art. Having no desire to be drawn into the circle of good-natured advice being shouted at the youngsters, he sidled quietly along the wall of a storage shed. It was to no avail for, almost immediately, he heard his name being called.

Reluctantly he turned, and found himself being ridden down by Richard. The boy clung to his grey pony like a centaur, his face flushed with the speed and pleasure of the sport.

'There's a messenger looking for you,' he said.

'For me?' Oliver raised his brows. 'I do not know anyone who would send me messages.'

Richard shrugged. 'They were mostly for Lord Robert, but the man asked us in passing where he could find you.' The boy tilted his head. 'Do you think it could be from Catrin?'

Oliver's belly churned. 'I think not,' he said. 'I told her that it was best if she severed all ties.'

'Yes, but what if she's in trouble?'

Oliver flicked his fingers. 'Go back to your sport before your imagination runs away with you,' he said brusquely, while his own imagination gathered speed.

Looking doubtful, Richard wheeled his pony. 'Tell me, won't you?' he said over his shoulder.

Without answer, Oliver strode off in search of the messenger.

He found him breaking his fast in the kitchens with a beaker of milk and a heaped platter of new bread and curd cheese. The man was flirting with one of the kitchen maids, but broke off his teasing to present Oliver with a rolled-up strip of vellum secured with a length of braid. The seal bore the ubiquitous design of a warrior astride a horse, his sword raised on high. The letters around the outside of the seal were smudged and illegible.

'Who gave you this?'

'A merchant from over Winchcomb way.' He took a gulp of milk and sleeved his mouth. 'Brought it to Gloucester last night. Said he'd been paid to carry it by one of Stephen's lords.'

Oliver gave the messenger a penny, broke the seal and went outside. The letter was slightly travel-stained at the edges and bore a late August date. It was a scribe's writing, fluid and precise, and it wasn't from Catrin. It was from her husband, informing him in triumphant detail about Catrin's new status as lady of a fine keep. He was maintaining her in the manner of a queen; they were both ecstatically happy and anticipating the birth of their first son.