The Love Knot (42 page)

Taking her hand, he pulled her down beside him on the cold silk coverlet. She shivered and gazed past him at the rafters. Louis ran his thumb delicately along the scar and kissed her cold, goose-pimpled skin. 'Two months, Catty,' he murmured against her throat. 'It's been a long, dry wait.'

She shifted slightly beneath him and her hands clasped behind his neck. 'Don't tell lies,' she murmured. 'I know you've been drinking at different fountains.'

He thought about making a vehement denial, but decided that it would begin another quarrel and he had patience for neither argument nor placation. 'Only because I could not have the one I wanted,' he muttered against her breasts. 'Open for me, Catty, let me in.'

Obligingly she raised and spread her thighs. He felt their satin touch against his flanks and then the clinging, liquid heat of her inner body.

'This time it will be a boy,' he panted as he worked himself deep inside her. Her body swayed with his movements, but she made no response of her own, except to wriggle a little and interrupt his rhythm now and again as if she was uncomfortable. When he looked into her face it was blank, apart from a slight frown between her eyes and the catching of her underlip in her teeth.

He ceased to move and rose on braced elbows. 'What is wrong with you tonight? You're as welcoming as a lump of venison on a slab.'

'Does it matter, as long as you obtain the son you desire?' She looked at him, her hazel eyes weary.

'Of course it matters,' he said furiously. 'I'm your husband. In the past I've made you scream like a banshee at the gates of hell. You know how much it pleasures me.'

She sighed. 'You want me to scream?'

'God damn you, woman, I want you to want me!' He felt himself begin to wilt inside her; something that had never, ever happened to him before with any woman. He lunged desperately, but the heat and strength had gone and he slipped from her body with a wet plop.

'Jesu, you witch, what have you done?' He looked down at his softened organ in growing horror.

'Nothing,' she said scornfully. 'It is your own mind that unmans you. You cannot always have what you want for the smiling, Louis. It is your right as my husband to command my body, but do not look for desire when all you desire is to slake your lust and beget yourself a son.'

'Christ, that would be the desire of any man. You put something in my wine, didn't you?' He seized a handful of her glossy, black hair. 'Didn't you!'

'Don't be so stupid!' she flared back. 'If I had put anything in your wine, it would have been wolfsbane and you wouldn't be worrying about a limp cock, you'd be dead!'

He wound her hair around his fist and seriously thought about strangling her. Heat pulsed in his groin as he imagined the act; her struggle. He pushed her flat, his wrist across her throat, sought, fumbled, and plunged.

This time she did scream, after a fashion, and her body arched against him. Louis fixed his eyes on her face, watching the war between her fury and fear. He had never taken a woman in rape before and the experience was so novel, his pleasure so great that it was almost a pain.

Catrin continued to spit and struggle, but Louis was in no hurry to complete the act and took his time, holding back, toying with the delightful sensations. Begetting his son was going to be a pleasure after all.

In her cradle, Rosamund started to cry. Catrin's struggles became desperate.

'Lie still!' Louis snarled, tightening his grip until she choked.

Above the sound of Catrin's fight for air, his grunts of pleasure and the baby's wails, came a vigorous pounding on the bedchamber door.

'Go away!' Louis yelled.

My lord, come quickly, we are under siege!' an agitated voice responded. 'There is an army outside our walls!' 'What?'

An army, my lord, with siege machinery!' the voice repeated, and pounded the door again.

For the second time, Louis lost his erection. 'All right, all right,' he bellowed. 'Keep the skin on your knuckles!' Releasing Catrin, he levered himself off her and flung on his clothes. 'We'll finish this later,' he snapped over his shoulder and, pushing his feet into his shoes, strode to the door and banged out of the room.

Coughing and choking, Catrin sat up, her black hair spilling wild. There was a raw throb between her thighs and her scalp was sore. She lurched to her feet and staggered to the cradle where Rosamund was now bawling for all she was worth. Stars

fluctuated before her eyes and she had to steady herself for a moment before she was able to stoop and lift the screaming infant from the cradle.

'Hush,' she soothed, 'hush,' not knowing if she was talking to the child or herself. Holding Rosamund to her breast, she rocked the baby back and forth, her hand cupping the tiny, fragile skull. Rosamund rooted against her flesh. Catrin cradled her and put her to suck.

Until recently she would not have thought Louis capable of the kind of violence he had shown just now. Too late, she was coming to understand that the changes he had promised her were not for the better. The child in him was too strong for the man to defeat, and a wilful child in a man's body was so dangerous it was terrifying.

She brushed her forefinger over Rosamund's downy, dark hair, and wondered with quiet desperation what she was going to do. She could live the lie and play his soul-destroying game, or she could fight him every step of the way as she had fought tonight and lose not her soul but her life. Or she could, as she had taunted, put wolfsbane in his cup.

Afraid of her own emotions, she wrapped her cloak around herself and the suckling baby and, going to the bower window overlooking the gate house, freed the catch.

A bitter, rain-laden wind beat into her face. The fields were brown, the winter trees dark and skeletal. Where smoke should have been rising in gentle twirls from the village houses, there were thick black gouts instead, interspersed with the red lick of fire. Closer to the keep, she could make out the forms of the soldiers, both mounted and on foot. They were spreading out to encircle the castle and they had brought siege machinery with them.

Frozen to the marrow as much by what she saw as by the weather, Catrin jerked the window shut and, nursing her daughter, turned to the small charcoal brazier burning in the middle of the room. Part of her fear was for herself, but most of her terror was for the baby lying in her arms. The sight of the smoke and the soldiers flooded her mind with the images of what had happened at Penfoss. Only it was not Aimery de Sens who sprawled across the gateway with a cut throat but Louis, and she was lying where Amice had lain. She had heard the tales of what Welsh and Flemish mercenaries did to the small babies whose mothers they had raped and butchered. It did not help her state of mind that while Louis was a good reconnaissance soldier, he had never been faced with this kind of challenge before.

'Jesu, be silent!' she snapped at herself. Gently prising a sleepy Rosamund from her nipple, she returned the baby to the cradle and donned a chemise and warm gown. Worrying would only make the situation worse. If the maids saw her panic then they would panic too.

She bound her hair in a wimple, took Rosamund and carried her from the room and down the stairs. If the village was in flames, there were bound to be people seeking succour within the keep.

They were the soldiers of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Catrin was told by a weeping village woman, who had watched them take her cow and her pig and set fire to her cottage.

'One of 'em says to me, "tell your lord that the Earl of Oxford's come to call.'" She stared round the great hall, her body rocking back and forth in a rhythm of grief. 'He said that they'd cut the right hand off every man in the village.'

'Soldiers often make empty boasts. He said it to frighten you.' Catrin set her arm around the woman's shoulders and tried to ignore her own misgivings.

' Even if he did, they'll still burn it all to the ground and leave us nothing. My animals gone, my home a heap of ashes!' The woman rocked harder and wailed. 'I'll starve!'

'Of course you won't, Lord Louis will see that you do not.'

'He ain't done nothing but take from us since he came,' she answered and turned her head away, refusing all Catrin's efforts to comfort.

Leaving her in the care of another village woman, Catrin went to the large iron cauldron set over the hearth and helped to dish out pottage and sympathy but quickly realised that it was a fruitless exercise. The villagers might have been forced to take refuge in the keep, but they had closed ranks. It swiftly became obvious to Catrin that they hated Louis and had much preferred their previous, irascible, wine-swilling lord. At least he had not dwelt in luxury while they strove to eke a living from their fields. Catrin discovered that they blamed her too. Old Lord Humphrey had not been married and he had never shown a desire for fancy hangings or glass in the windows.

Unable to bear the sidelong hostile glances any more, Catrin left the baby with Amfrid and went up to the battlements to speak with Louis.

The wind bore the acrid stink of smoke, and beneath their walls the soldiers were setting up camp and preparing to roast a yearling calf. Loaded on baggage wains were shaped sections of wood and lengths of rope which would be assembled into siege machinery.

Louis's complexion was greenish-white as he peered out of one of the wooden crossbow towers jutting out from the wall walk. 'The whoresons,' he spat. 'The stinking whoresons.'

'We were always going to come under threat of attack.' Catrin watched the busy purpose of the men below and contrasted it with the stunned shock of the troops within the keep. 'They look as if they know their business,' she murmured.

Louis stiffened and threw her a narrow look. 'Since when have you been so knowledgeable on military matters?'

She felt the anger in him, his need to bolster his confidence by striking out. 'I don't need vast experience to believe the proof of my eyes.'

He made a curt gesture of dismissal. 'Your place isn't up here. You should be with the other women tending your sewing and rocking your precious cradle.'

Catrin tightened her lips. 'With all the villagers taking refuge within these walls, my place is everywhere,' she pointed out. 'You read meaning into my words that does not exist. I came to look, nothing more.'

'Then if you have seen enough, you can go.' His gaze flickered sidelong as a soldier approached.

Catrin lowered her eyes. She had sense enough not to continue the argument in front of others, especially when every ounce of morale was required. Besides, he was sure to find ways of twisting whatever she said.

'Yes, my lord,' she said sweetly, dipping him a curtsey, which she never did, and left the battlements, her head high and her spine as stiff as a spear.

Louis watched her for a moment, a frown on his face, then he turned to the soldier. It was the Welshman, Ewan, his red hair standing on end in the breeze, his features impassive.

'She's right,' he said in his lilting accent. 'They do know their business.'

Louis gnawed on his thumbnail, chewing away at the quick. 'Meaning?'

Ewan shrugged. 'I've always been the hunter, never the prey.'

Louis stared at the gathering soldiers, not one of them within crossbow range. The walls gave him no sense of security, but made him feel as if he had been brought to bay. Trapped. 'Neither have I,' he said as blood welled in the bed of his thumbnail. 'And I don't like it.'

There had been a sharp frost overnight and when Oliver stepped out of the alehouse door, he was confronted by a glittering silver dawn. The first breath he drew almost cut his lungs. On the horizon, the rising sun was a hazy orange disc.

Blowing on his hands, he ducked back within the dwelling where Godard was stacking the two straw pallets they had used as beds against the wall of the room. The ale-wife put a jug of hot rosehip tisane on the trestle and two bowls of steaming gruel, each sweetened with a dollop of honey.

'Cold morning,' she said. 'You'll not want to ride far without stoking your braziers.' Although she addressed both men, her glance was reserved for Godard, to whom she had taken a fancy. Godard, in his turn, seemed quite smitten by the ale-wife - ale-widow to be precise. She was perhaps in her thirtieth summer, with a sheaf of tawny hair bound in a green kerchief, and large bones well-fleshed and buxom. Her name was Edith, in honour of the old King's wife.

'Any more of this fare, mistress, and we'll not want to ride at all,' he said gallantly, as he sat down and dipped his spoon.

Oliver watched the exchanges between them and smiled bleakly to himself. Hope sprang eternal. Godard was popular with the keep women in Bristol. Despite his brusque manner, he had a knack of being at ease with his feet beneath a trestle, and he was always willing to hew wood and draw water.

'Do you ride far?' she ventured.

Oliver sat down in front of his bowl. 'Ashbury.'

She took a besom from the corner and started to sweep the beaten earth floor. 'You're going to hire out as soldiers then?'

Oliver shook his head and spooned the thick oat porridge into his mouth. It was by far the best he had tasted, better even than Ethel's. 'No, I was born there. It's a sort of pilgrimage.' If he could not possess then at least he could look, and there were graves to be visited.

Edith gave two vigorous sweeps of the birch broom, then rested on the handle to look at him. 'I've lived here all my life,' she said. 'This alehouse belonged to my mother before it came to me, so I know everything that goes on hereabouts. If you were born at Ashbury then you must be an Osmundsson.'

Godard blinked and gazed at his lord.

Oliver continued to eat his porridge and said nothing.

'You even look like Lord Simon, except your hair is paler and you don't wear a beard. He often stopped here on the road home from Malmesbury,' she added.

Sighing, Oliver pushed his bowl aside. 'I am known as Oliver Pascal in Norman company,' he said, 'but you are right. Simon was my brother, God rest his soul.'

She nodded and narrowed her eyes. 'You're the younger son, the one whose wife died in childbed.'

Oliver inclined his head stiffly. He was wounded enough already without having her curiosity probe at his emotional flesh.

'The rumour is that you were killed on pilgrimage.'