The Love Knot (3 page)

Richard frowned and toyed with the frayed end of one of his leg bindings. 'What will happen to me now?'

'As to that, I do not know. I told your mother that I would take you to your half-brother, Earl Robert, at Bristol. You will be cared for, I promise.'

'Promises are easy.' The boy's tone was far too adult for his years.

Oliver sighed and rubbed his hand over his jaw where the prick of red stubble was beginning to replace the morning's smoothness. 'Not to me,' he answered, 'and not of this moment. I swore to your mother that I would see you safe, and do so I will. Catrin too.'

'What if I don't want to go?'

'Since I promised your mother, I suppose I would have to tie you to my saddle.'

The boy threw him a look to see if he really meant it. Knowing that he was being tested, Oliver returned the look for long enough to impose his will, then rose to his feet. 'Do you want to see her?'

Richard silently shook his head.

Oliver rubbed his jaw again in thought, then turned and stooped. 'Here,' he said gruffly, 'roll yourself in my blanket and try to sleep. It will be a long journey on the morrow.'

When Richard did not move, Oliver draped the blanket around the boy's shoulders himself and then went to check on the horses before walking a circuit of the burned-out settlement.

Kneeling beside her former mistress, all signs of the bloody struggle cleared away, Catrin sniffed and knuckled her eyes. She had been fond of Amice, who had taken her in, a soldier's widow with nothing more than two silver pennies and a roan mule to her name. For almost three years Catrin had sheltered beneath Amice's generous, mercurial wing, turning a blind eye when a blind eye was required, being a companion and confidante, sometimes a scapegoat, but always needed - if not by Amice, then by Richard. What would happen to her and the boy now she did not know; she could only hope that Robert of Gloucester would have the compassion to take them in, penniless dependants as they were.

A shadow passed between Catrin and the fire. She glanced up in alarm, then breathed out in relief as she saw it was the knight, Oliver Pascal.

'I didn't mean to frighten you,' he said, and crouched at her side, adding when she did not speak, 'I'll keep vigil now while you go and rest. I'm taking you and the lad with me to Bristol on the morrow and it will be a long ride.'

Catrin eyed him warily. 'I suppose Amice asked you.'

'She did, but I'm bound there anyway. I serve the Earl and I've to report to him.' He looked at her curiously before leaning over to replenish the fire. 'Amice said you are a widow without kin, but surely you must have had a home once?'

Catrin watched him select and arrange the split logs. In all the earlier conflagration it was ironic that the wood pile had not been touched. 'Chepstow, I suppose, since I was born there, but there is no one left in that place to welcome my return,' she said with a shrug. 'My mother was Welsh, my father a serjeant of the Chepstow garrison, but they are both dead. My husband was also a soldier there.' She compressed her lips, her mind filling with a vision of Lewis's thin, dark features and blazing smile. 'And he too is dead.' 'I'm sorry.'

The predictable response. She had heard it from so many lips by now that it was irritating and meaningless, a stepping stone to buffer the discomfort of others. 'Amice came to Chepstow a six-month after my husband's death,' she said, eager to have done with her story. 'When she left, I begged to go with her rather than dwell alone with my memories.'

He positioned the last piece of wood and dusting off his hands, rested them on his thighs. 'I too am a soldier, one of Robert of Gloucester's hearth knights,' he said after a while, 'although not by choice. My family lands lie close to Malmesbury and my older brother lost them, together with his life, when he declared for the Empress Mathilda. I'm his heir - his dispossessed heir.'

'I'm sorry,' she said in the same polite tone he had used to her, paying him back in the same coin. Then felt honour-bound to add, 'And I'm sorry about your wife. Amice told me about her.'

He gave her a long, level look. 'Sorry doesn't help, does it?'

Catrin blinked and turned away. Mary Mother, she was not going to weep in front of this man. 'I must go to Richard,' she said and started to rise.

Oliver grimaced. 'Be warned then; he was angry - with her, not me - and because of the anger, the grief is trapped within him. He asked me if I had lain with his mother like "all the others".' He glanced grimly at the dead woman's shrouded figure, the red shadows licking the hem of her gown. 'How many "others" were there?'

'Because it matters to you or to him?'

She saw the twitch of his brows, the knotting of muscle in his jaw. 'Obviously it matters to him,' he said stiffly. 'I am not about to sit in judgement if that is your fear.'

'I do not fear your judgement,' Catrin snapped angrily. What else was he doing but sitting in judgement? 'Yes, she liked the company of men, yes, she took them to her bed when she would have been wiser to abstain, but Richard was always well cared for. Her heart was too soft and she sought for love in all the wrong places, but if that is a sin, then more than half of us are damned!' She drew an unsteady breath that caught across her voice in distress.

He stared at her, his mouth slightly open in a surprise that might have been comical under different circumstances. The fire spat and a burning ember flared in the space between them. 'And the rest either find it or go without,' he rallied as the blossom of wood dulled to grey, but his gaze held poignancy and regret rather than challenge. He made a rueful gesture. 'Go and take what rest you can. Tomorrow will be a long day.'

That at least was not something to be disputed. Catrin had neither the heart nor the sharpness of mind to spar any more tonight. Glancing at the weary set of Oliver Pascal's shoulders, she thought that neither did he.

The morning dawned overcast, with a whisper of drizzle in the air. The stink of smoke had seeped into clothing, hair and skin. Every breath tasted of it and everyone was eager to leave the remains of Penfoss behind. It was impossible to take the dead with them or, with just three adults and a child, to dig graves here. Only Amice's body was going to Bristol. As Earl Robert's former ward and Richard's mother, it was politic to bring her for burial at the church of Saint Peter. The other corpses were laid out in the compound and covered with green branches cut from the forest by Gawin's war axe. Oliver prayed over the bodies as a mark of respect but he did not linger. A priest and burial party would come from Bristol within the next few days to perform the necessary rites.

The pack horse's load was redistributed to accommodate the burden of Amice's body. Gawin's dun bore most of the displaced supplies, and there was just enough room for Richard's narrow frame to ride pillion. Oliver watched as Gawin settled the boy on his mount's tawny rump. Richard's features were composed this morning, shunning all contact, but the anger still bristled visibly within him. It was a position Oliver understood all too well, and only hoped that the comforting security of Bristol
Castle and the nearness of kin would help to break down those brittle barriers before they shattered inwards.

From his conversation with Catrin the previous night, he thought that she understood too. This morning her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and he did not believe that it was all the result of smoke. She, at least, had learned to weep.

Oliver swung into the saddle and leaned down, offering his hand to her. 'Set your foot on mine,' he commanded, 'and pull against my grip.'

' I know what to do,' she said brusquely, and drew a section of her skirts through her belt. 'My father and my husband were soldiers, and I could ride before I could walk.'

Oliver tightened his lips on the urge to grin and make a light remark. He could see that she hated being made dependent on anyone.

The hand she slipped into his was cool and work-roughened with short nails. Two rings gleamed on her heart finger, one at the base, the other at the first knuckle joint. Both were of engraved gold. Her husband, it seemed, had been that rare entity, a rich soldier. Most scraped by, affording food and weapons with only small coin for luxuries.

He drew her up behind him and she settled - not side-on as a lady of gentle birth would have ridden but directly astride like a man.

Oliver could suppress his grin no longer and it broke across his face, brightening his dark grey eyes and setting two deep creases in his cheeks.

She glared at him. 'Something amuses you?'

'No, no. It is admiration, not amusement,' he replied, his grin not diminishing in the least. Her hose, he noticed, were of a wonderful, frivolous shade of red and enclosed a shapely ankle and calf.

Seeing the direction of his gaze, she made to tug her skirt down, then drew back and straightened instead. 'Gawp if you want,' she said disdainfully, 'but don't let your eyes pop from your skull before you have delivered us safe to Bristol.'

'Thank you, and I'll try not to,' he said gravely, refusing to be cowed. 'You must blame admiration again, not so much of your hose, fine though they are, but of your mettle.'

She gave him an irritated look. 'Spare your compliments, not the horse.'

Still grinning, Oliver faced his mount's ears. 'Grip my belt,' he said, 'I know you're a horse-woman born and bred, but if you fall off, you'll tear more than just your fetching hose.'

He could almost feel her scowl deepen, but the interlude had given a moment of light relief to a grim situation and Oliver was not contrite. He gathered up the reins and Hero sidled and attempted to buck. Oliver heard a stifled oath behind him and suddenly two hands grasped his belt.

'You did that apurpose!' she accused furiously.

'I swear I did not!' Oliver protested, but marred his innocence with a smothered chuckle. He half expected her to snatch away her hands, but they remained, together with a stony silence, as the small party rode out of the gates and left the burned-out husk of Penfoss behind.

At first, Catrin sat behind Oliver and nursed her anger in a pet of determined self-indulgence. He neither fed her ill-humour nor sought to cajole her out of it, but left her in peace to brood.

A twelve-inch from her eyes, his mail-clad spine swayed with the rhythm of the horse. Through the riveted links she could see the quilted linen gambeson beneath and the dark streaks that the steel had smudged on it. The belt she clutched was of high-quality buckskin incised with a pattern of oak leaves. At regular intervals, small pewter pilgrim badges had been punched through the leather. She recognised the cockle-shell of Saint James, the sword of Saint Foy and the palm branch of Jerusalem. Catrin decided that he had probably visited each place and tomb himself, for his skin was weathered beyond the capabilities of the English climate.

As they rode, her anger began to evaporate. She reviewed the moment when she had straddled the horse and his eyes had widened on both her posture and her scarlet hose. Her mouth twitched with grudging amusement as she saw the humour in the situation. Lewis would have laughed too, she thought. Then he would have slid his hand up her leg and . . . Catrin tightened her fingers in Oliver Pascal's handsome belt and mentally shook herself. Scarlet hose as may be, such imaginings were not for now.

He must have felt the sudden grip against his spine, for he half turned to look at her. Catrin quickly lowered her lids, avoiding all eye contact, and so did not see the glance he cast at her scarlet legs, or the smile that he swallowed before facing forward again.

The drizzle ceased and the clouds began to shred, allowing peeks of sunlit blue between. Catrin gazed at her surroundings. There were so many shades of green in the early summer forest that they dazzled her eyes; in addition to the individual hues of each variety of tree the play of light and sunlight altered their leaves from pale gold to dark emerald in the passing of a cloud.

A flash of a barred blue wing and the harsh shriek of a jay made her jump. Somewhere a cuckoo sought a mate, the two notes of its song monotonous and sleepy, and a woodpecker drummed for insects beneath the bark of an ash tree. She glanced sidelong at Richard, bumping along behind the other knight's saddle, and saw that he too was observing the woods with an air of concentration.

Last night in the darkness he had curled up against her in a light ball and her throat had ached. When she had wept, it had been as much for him as his mother. In defending Amice, Catrin had told Oliver the truth whilst withholding the facts. Amice had indeed cared for her son, but as she would care for a puppy or a special trinket. He was petted, loved and cuddled, until something distracted her - usually a man -and then cast aside until the distraction had lost its novelty. Catrin had done her best, but knew that her steadiness had made Amice's whims all the more bewildering to the child. Small wonder if he was angry.