The Love Knot (9 page)

The Countess found a wimple of cream-coloured silk, edged with crimson embroidery, and secured it lightly over Catrin's braids with a brass circlet. Then she stood back to admire her handiwork. 'Much better,' she declared. 'Child, you are quite lovely.'

Catrin reddened at the compliment. Fine feathers, it seemed, did make a fine bird.

For the rest of the morning, she and Edon sat in a corner of the bower, cutting and sewing the linen and wool into new garments. Catrin did not want to parade about the keep in the red gown. It was too fine to wear except in the hall at night and on special occasions. Rohese did not offer to help with either the cutting or the sewing, and Catrin was glad, for it saved her the bother of refusing. She had a strong suspicion that given the opportunity, Rohese would have ruined the fabric in some way. Catrin resolved to keep her distance as much as she could.

Edon proved a competent seamstress in her own right and was brisk with a needle. As she stitched, she asked tentative questions about Catrin's past. She was obviously curious, and just as obviously trying to be tactful. Unfortunately the two did not marry.

'I'm so sorry about your husband,' she said, after Catrin had reluctantly yielded the information that he had been killed in a fight. 'It must have been horrible to lose him when you had been wed so short a time.'

Catrin fought the urge to snap at her companion. Edon could not know how deep the wound was, but she was doing an admirable job of grinding salt into it.

Edon looked at her sidelong, and her face fell. 'I shouldn't have said that, should I?' She touched Catrin's arm in an apologetic gesture. 'Geoffrey's always telling me that I never stop to think.'

'It doesn't matter.' Catrin's voice was ungracious.

'Yes, it does, I can see that I've hurt you.'

Catrin's needle flew. 'It is in the past, it cannot be changed, and there is no use in grieving.' She gave Edon a tight smile. 'There is no use talking about it either.'

'No, no of course not.' Edon bit her soft lower lip and returned to her sewing.

Catrin had said that she did not want to talk about the past, but now that it had been called to mind it was not so easy to banish. She could still see Lewis on the last day of his life with perfect clarity; his wind-ruffled dark curls and burnished mail, his hands on his mount's bridle, quick, clever and graceful.

'The last night we were together we quarrelled,' she said. The words emerged of their own volition, as if the edges of the wound could no longer be held together. 'He had come late to our bed after a night of gambling and drinking with the other men. There had been a woman too -one of those dancing girls you sometimes see - and his skin stank of her scent. We had never argued the way we argued that night. I refused to kiss him in the morning before he rode away. I turned my cheek and I turned my back. By the time I had regretted the deed and run after him, he was gone.' She took three swift stitches. 'I never saw him again.'

'Oh Catrin!' Once more Edon touched her.

Catrin laughed bitterly. 'Reason and good sense were never mine where Lewis was concerned. I gave him my body before we were wed and he took it with never a second thought - my heart too, and that he broke.'

Edon gave the suspicion of a sniff. 'I cannot bear anyone to be sad. I wish I'd never asked you.'

Catrin was irritated, but tried not to let it show. It was not Edon's fault that she appeared to have feathers for brains. She was the kind who would weep over a minstrel's song in the hall and wax sentimental at the smallest opportunity.

Although she knew that Edon wanted to be embraced, Catrin could not bring herself to such an intimacy so soon. 'Then let us talk about it no longer.'

Edon nodded and sniffed again, her small nose pink. 'You're not angry with me, are you?'

'No,' Catrin said. Irritated certainly, she thought. And yes, at her core, she was angry, but not with Edon. Biting off the thread, she selected a new strand. 'Tell me about yourself instead.'

For the next half hour, Edon took Catrin at her word and poured such a glue of mundane trivia into her ears that she became almost insensible. Edon's husband Geoffrey was, it seemed, a paragon among men. He was tall, exceedingly handsome, gentle, witty, brave and kind. Catrin doubted that such a male existed, except in Edon's imagination. A man without flaws was one without a soul. But she kept her counsel and smiled in the right places whilst her eyes glazed and her jaw ached with the effort of preventing a yawn.

She was rescued from purgatory when an elderly woman appeared in the chamber doorway.

Edon ceased her litany of 'Geoffrey says', and put her sewing down with brightening eyes. 'Here's the midwife,' she murmured to Catrin. 'She's going to attend my lying in. I asked her to find me an eagle stone; I wonder if she's got it now.' Raising her arm, she beckoned.

The woman had paused to catch her breath after the arduous climb up the winding stairs from the hall. She returned Edon's salute and, after a moment, came over to them. Catrin noted that she moved slowly with a slight limp on the left side, and she was still panting as she sat on the bench beside the two young women.

'When you pass three score years and ten, you shouldn't go climbing twice that number of stairs in one attempt.' She placed her hand to her breast as if the motion would calm her heart.

'Did you bring it, did you bring my eagle stone?' Edon demanded like a greedy child.

Catrin could have kicked her for such lack of consideration. 'Would you like some wine?' she offered. It was perhaps not her place to do so, being the newest addition to the Countess's women, but Catrin had no time for such conventions.

'Bless you, child.' The woman smiled, exposing her worn teeth. The lines on her face deepened and crinkled, revealing humour and endurance.

Catrin went to a vast oak sideboard where stood a flagon of wine and several pottery cups. As she poured, she was aware that the other women were watching her action. Let them judge, Catrin thought, affecting not to notice their disapproving looks.

When she returned with the drink, Edon was enthusing over a smooth, egg-shaped stone the colour of dried blood. There was a gold mounting at the apex of the oval and a ribbon had been threaded through it.

'Look at my eagle stone!' Edon said, dangling it in front of Catrin. 'It's to protect me during my labour. I have to tie it round my thigh and pray to Saint Margaret.'

Catrin gave the cup of wine to the old woman and duly admired the object. 'Do they really work?'

'Of course they do.' The midwife had been about to take a sip of the wine, but she lowered the cup and gave Catrin a warning glance. 'I've been using them at childbeds for more years than you've lived, young woman. Give any wife an eagle stone to hold and she will have an easier labour. Lady Edon will have no difficulties, I promise.' She smiled again, including Edon in the gesture, and raised her cup in a toast before taking a long drink.

'I haven't seen you in my lady's solar before.' She smacked her lips in appreciation of the Countess's best wine. 'Although I hope you'll be here next time.'

'Catrin's home was raided by mercenaries,' Edon said before Catrin could speak for herself. 'She had nowhere to go, so Countess Mabile took her in. There's a little boy too, the Earl's half-brother. He kept us awake all last night with his bad dreams, but I feel sorry for him.' Edon jumped to her feet. 'I'm going to show Alais my eagle stone. She's getting married soon. Perhaps she'll want one for her trousseau.' Edon wrapped the ribbon round her fingers and took her treasure across the room to a plump young woman seated at a small weaving loom.

The midwife shook her head and her eyes twinkled. 'There is no malice in her,' she said. 'Young and giddy, that's all.'

'Did you truly mean what you said about the eagle stone?'

'Of course I did. Belief is the strongest power we have. Tell a wench that one of those things will ease her travail, and sure enough her pangs diminish.'

'And what if the birth goes wrong?'

The woman finished the wine in the cup and pinched her lips to wipe them. 'I sell hope, not miracles,' she said. 'Sometimes a skilled midwife can rescue a mother and babe in difficulty, but if not, then it is God's will, and all the belief in the world will not change matters.' She nodded sagely as she spoke, then gave Catrin a shrewd look. 'I thought you must be Lord Oliver's lass the moment I set eyes on you. "Forthright and sharp of wit," he says to me, "looks so dainty, you'd never believe she was as stubborn as an ox." '

Catrin's face flamed as she was assailed by several emotions at once, not least among them embarrassment and anger that Oliver had seen fit to discuss her with another. She was bewildered too. 'I'm not his "lass",' she said frostily, 'and he has no right to talk about me behind my back.'

'Oh, don't take on so.' Etheldreda gave her a reproving look. 'You turned him upside-down and he had to talk to someone.'

'But why you? I don't understand.'

'I've known him since I delivered him into my apron back in the time when life was safe. Helped to birth his older brother too, God rest his soul.' She crossed herself. 'Master Oliver's the last one now, and one of Stephen's godless mercenaries sits in the hall that should be his.'

Catrin frowned, feeling more bewildered than ever. The woman patted her hand. 'In the winter, I had to flee my old home, so I came here to Bristol. There's always call for a wise-woman and midwife among the troops. Oliver's good word and my skill have granted me work in the keep as well as the camp. He makes sure I don't starve.'

It was then that Catrin made the connection between the midwife and Oliver's mention of an 'Etheldreda'. She stared at the elderly woman sitting at her side, one age-spotted hand curled around a cup, the other lying in her lap and showing a slight tremor. The only features that might have belonged to the dark-haired temptress of Catrin's imagination were the snapping black eyes. Defensiveness and anger were replaced by chagrin and amusement.

'I thought you were his mistress,' she laughed.

Ethel laughed too, a loud, throaty chuckle that caused the other women to cast censorious glances in their direction. 'His mistress, God save us!' she whooped. 'Well, I admit to holding him naked in my arms, but he was new-born at the time, and I've never heard a yell so loud.' She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and coughed.

Her humour was infectious, and Catrin too found her eyes filling as she found release in laughter instead of tears. It was difficult to sober, but before she crossed the line between mirth and hysteria, she sought a scrap of spare linen from her sewing to wipe nose and eyes, and changed the subject.

'Oliver said that you would give me a sleeping potion for Richard.'

'Yes, I've got it here.' Etheldreda rummaged in her shoulder satchel and produced a small leather flask with a stopper. 'Four drops in a cup of wine is all you should need. Time and healing will do the rest.'

Catrin removed the stopper and sniffed the contents. 'What's in it?'

'Mainly white poppy. Master Oliver brought a store back from the Holy Land. In small amounts it induces sleep, calms and soothes, but too much can be dangerous.'

Catrin nodded. 'I wish I knew more about herb-lore,' she said wistfully. 'My mother taught me a little, but usually she sought out the castle's herb-wife or asked at the abbey if she had need of a cure.'

The old woman watched her replace the stopper and set the flask carefully to one side. 'Would you truly like to learn?' she asked, adding swiftly, 'It is not an idle question.'

Catrin did not hesitate. 'You would teach me?'

'As much as can be taught. Knowledge of the hands is inborn, and other things can only be learned by experience, but if you have the healing gift, then I could help you to make it grow and be of use to others.'

Somewhat bemused by the turn that events had taken, Catrin wondered why the old midwife was giving her such attention. Surely she did not make such offers to her other clients. 'Did Oliver ask you to take me under your wing?' she asked suspiciously.

'Hah!' Etheldreda snorted. 'If he knew I'd offered to train you, he'd burst his hauberk. If I take you under my wing, 'tis as much for my sake as yours.' She raised the recumbent left hand from her lap and laboriously waggled her fingers. 'Look at this. Hasn't been right since I suffered a seizure in last winter's cold. My body is weakening. I was born the year of the great battle on Hastings field, and by my reckoning, that makes me well beyond three score and ten. If I reach four score I predict 'twill be a miracle, and I've neither daughters nor kin to bequeath my knowledge. Unless I find someone soon, it will all die with me.'

Catrin absorbed this and felt a little daunted. She had always been fascinated by the twin skills of midwifery and herb-lore. Perhaps it was because of their mystery, or the power that possessing knowledge conferred on their owner. Or perhaps it was the need to feel less vulnerable. 'Why would Oliver object?'

Etheldreda snorted again. 'He's a man, and like all men he's wary of women's matters. Besides, he's afraid.' 'Afraid?' Catrin blinked.

'His wife died in childbed. Three days she was in labour, and nothing I nor anyone could do to save her. Mouth of her womb wouldn't open, so we couldn't even take the child out in pieces to save her life. Had to make Caesar's cut in the end when she was dead.' The midwife shook her head. 'He took it mortal bad.'

'I knew his wife died,' Catrin said unsteadily, 'but I did not know the details.'

'Well, now you do.' Etheldreda raised a warning forefinger. 'And best keep it to yourself. I ain't a gossip, and it's not my habit to carry tales. A midwife should be as close-mouthed as a priest in the confessional except on rare occasions, and this be one of them. Master Oliver tolerates me out of family obligation and old affection, but he don't like midwives or women's business. He's better than he was in the early days, but he still fights shy.'

'I won't say anything.' Catrin thought about him comforting the dying Amice at Penfoss. How difficult that must have been for him in the light of what had happened to his wife.

'So,' said Etheldreda briskly, 'do you still want to learn?'

Catrin looked at the elderly midwife in her plain homespun gown and thought of the fear, respect and hostility that her trade engendered. Lives depended on her skill. She surmised that there must be great satisfaction on one side of the coin, despair and danger on the other.

'It is not for those with a weak stomach or heart,' Etheldreda said as if reading her mind.

Catrin swallowed and seized the horns of fate. 'Yes,' she heard herself say. 'I do want to learn. I need a sense of direction.' She glanced around the Countess's bower. There was little sense of direction here. A morning's sewing with Edon for company had left her feeling cooped-up and frustrated. She had to have more. 'There is still my duty to the Countess,' she felt honour-bound to murmur.

Etheldreda wagged her forefinger. 'If there are stones in your path, then you either cast them aside or find your way

around them. Otherwise, you might as well just stay where you are. I know the Countess Mabile. She'll see your learning as a boon. It'll suit her not to send all the way to the camp when she wants a calming tisane, or some rosewater cream to rub into her hands.'

Catrin gave a doubtful nod, still not quite convinced. The midwife returned the cup to her and eased to her feet. 'Well, I'd best be on my way. I'll come and talk with you tomorrow, and if you're still of the same mind, we'll begin your training.' Again she delved into her satchel, and brought forth a small, exquisitely fashioned piece of knotwork, the loops woven in red, black and white wool, and suspended from a red cord.

'Here,' she said. 'Take this and wear it around your neck. All wise-women have a healing cord to remind them of the grace of the Trinity.'

Catrin took the talisman. 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit,' she said.

The old woman studied her narrowly. 'Maiden, Mother and Crone,' she contradicted. 'Women's magic'

Catrin returned Etheldreda's stare, and a thrill of apprehension ran up her spine. 'Is that not dangerous?'

'Only inasmuch as men choose it to be. Is not the Blessed Virgin Mary a maiden and mother? Was not John the Baptist's mother beyond child-bearing age when she bore him?'

Catrin began to have more of an inkling why Oliver would 'burst his hauberk' if he knew what Etheldreda was proposing. It, was not just the midwifery, but the integral weaving of the old female religion, albeit disguised in the lore of various female saints.

'Of course,' Etheldreda said with a little shrug, 'you do not have to wear the token at all. It only means as much as each individual wants it to mean and, in my case, I intended that I am not a good Christian,' she said, 'but the old gods - and goddesses - have their place too.' Then she put her finger to her lips as Edon returned from her rounds with the eagle stone.

'I must take my leave, mistress,' she addressed Edon. 'Tomorrow I will return and see how you are faring, but you seem in fine, good health to me.'

Edon preened at the compliment. 'Geoffrey says I'll make the perfect mother.'

'Aye, well I'm sure he's the perfect husband and father,' Etheldreda said. Not by so much as a flicker of expression did she betray what she was actually thinking, but she did avoid Catrin's eyes and needed suddenly to turn aside to cough.

Catrin watched the midwife make her way slowly across the bower. Near the door the old woman paused and approached the corner where Rohese de Bayvel sat at her own needlework. There was a brief, muted conversation and another flask changed hands in return for a glint of silver. Etheldreda went on her way, and Rohese concealed her purchase in the folds of her gown, her colour high.

Power indeed, Catrin thought wryly, to bring a blush to the face of the haughty Rohese. She fingered the red cord at her throat, and listened with half an ear to Edon's chatter, but her thoughts were upon the sudden changes wrought in her life and the old woman descending the tower stairs.

The black stink of smoke still hung on the air, but Oliver was almost glad, for it served to disguise the aroma of putrefying flesh. The high summer weather and the open wounds on the corpses had advanced the decomposition at a rate which would have been unbelievable had not Oliver seen its like many times during his years of pilgrimage.

The burial party worked with covered faces, and Father Kenric swung his incense burner in long, low arcs. It kept the flies away to a degree, but the sickly sweet smell of the burning spices only added to the stomach-rolling stench. Oliver had taken his turn to dig the soil. He had helped lift the bodies on to linen shrouds, and wrapped them up. Not one of them wore a single item of jewellery. Fingers had been hacked off to steal rings too tight to remove.

The sight, the smell, the silence were worse to Oliver than his first discovery of the scene. Two days ago, the fire had been a raging, living thing, and there had been survivors in its midst. Now there was nothing but distasteful, tragic duty among the ashes and the dead. At least there had been survivors, he told himself as he walked around Penfoss's perimeter stockade. If Catrin and Richard had been in the compound at the time of the attack, they too would be lying amongst the slain. He shied from that image, and thought instead of Catrin standing in Bristol's bailey, her head tilted to one side, her hazel eyes bright with suspicion as she spoke to him.

In the five years since Emma had died, there had been few women in his life; he could count the occasions on the fingers of one hand, and they had made the approaches. It was the first time since Emma's death that he had been moved to make an approach himself. He wanted to discover the Catrin behind the shield that held him at bay, but getting her to lower her defences was likely to be as difficult as lowering his own to let her in. He found himself envying men like Gawin, who had a wealth of experience with women and the brash confidence to pick and choose at will.

In the early days of his bereavement, he had entertained thoughts of becoming a monk. His brother had talked him out of the impulse, saying that he did not have the nature to dwell in the cloister. 'It takes more than a hair shirt and a scourge to make a monk,' he had said. 'Christ, if every husband who lost his wife in childbed entered a monastery, half the men in
England
would wear tonsures.'

Simon had been right, Oliver acknowledged, although at the time he had thought his brother unfeeling and obstructive. The pilgrimage had been the compromise. Oliver touched his belt, and felt beneath his fingers the pewter badges that were both proof and reminder of the time he had spent as a wanderer, changing from lost boy to man - or at least growing a hard shell over the lost boy, so that no one knew of his existence except himself.

He came to the broken gates and stared up the rutted track and into the deep green of the forest. The leaves swished and rustled softly in the breeze. Now Simon was dead in battle and his wife of the sweating sickness. A stranger sat in the great hall that had belonged to Oliver's family since before the coming of William the Conqueror. He was the last one to carry his name. Responsibilities to the dead were sometimes greater burdens than those to the living.

Impatient with himself, he was turning back to the burials when a movement caught the corner of his eye. 'Ware arms!' he bellowed over his shoulder to the digging soldiers.

The compound erupted, men throwing down their spades and drawing their weapons. Oliver freed his own sword and backed within the gateway, his breathing swift and hard.

A troop of riders and footsoldiers emerged from the forest on to the track, steel hissing from scabbards, shields surging to the fore. Oliver saw that their numbers matched those of his own men, but the strangers had the advantage of horseback.

'Halt in the name of Robert, Earl of Gloucester, on whose land you trespass!' Oliver cried.

'Land's for the taking these days,' their leader sneered, but he drew his fine bay stallion to a stand. A new shield with bright red chevrons on a blue background covered his left side and he carried a honed lance in his right hand.

Without removing his eyes from the soldier, Oliver gestured over his shoulder. 'Then come and take six feet of earth for your grave.'

'Six feet of earth, eh?' The man grinned and hefted the lance. 'That would be poor payment for saving your life on the road to Jerusalem, Oliver Pascal, or do you choose! to forget old friendships and debts?'

Thrown off balance, Oliver stared at his adversary. 'Randal?' he said, dragging the name from the depths of the past. | 'Randal de Mohun?'

'Ah, you do remember then?' Tossing the lance to one of his troop, the soldier swung down from his saddle with an athletic bounce. An expensive grey mantle lined with squirrel fur swirled around his shoulders and was pinned with a silver brooch of Welsh knotwork. 'Call off your dogs; put up your sword. You don't really want to fight.' His teeth flashed like a snare within the full bush of black moustache and beard.

'You shouldn't take the risk,' Oliver said, but gestured his men to return to their grisly work, and sheathed his sword. However, he did not relax. For all that Randal de Mohun had saved him from certain death at the hands of brigands and been his companion on the pilgrim road for almost six months, his liking for the man had never been more than tepid. 'What are you doing in these parts?'

Removing his helm, de Mohun waved his own men to dismount. Sweat glittered on his forehead and made tiny dewdrops in the thinning peak of hair on his brow. 'Riding through on the way to Bristol to seek employment.' He nodded towards the compound. 'What happened here?'

'A raid by a band of wandering mercenaries,' Oliver said with a hard glance at de Mohun's men. 'Riding through' had

been spoken far too glibly. 'Prowling' or 'scavenging' were more appropriate descriptions. Randal de Mohun was a man with an eye to every opportunity that came his way. To judge by his manner of dress and the strength of his troop, he had been fortunate of late. 'They butchered all the occupants, plundered what they could, and torched the rest.'