"Get up!" Rannulf roared.
"Not until you pardon the child."
The tone brought Rannulf somewhat to his senses. Whatever the meekness of the position, there was no meekness in that voice: "A pox take you woman, I am not angry now." The fury of his own voice penetrated his ears; his sense of humor was touched again, and he began to laugh. "At least I was not angry when I came in, and would not be except for your silliness. For God's sake, if not for mine, get off the floor."
Catherine took the hand he extended and rose to her feet.
"We will come to the subject of my son when I desire to come to it," Rannulf added severely. "Tell me first, since we are here, what has happened to the house."
"I had it cleaned," Catherine said, and then the thought of the repulsive condition the place had been in and his lack of consideration in bringing her to it overwhelmed her. Her voice filled with contempt. "I hope you did not desire us to live like pigs."
Perhaps he had misjudged her; perhaps she was not afraid of him after all. Rannulf had to laugh again at her indignation, but all he said was, "I care not how you live so long as the labor comes not upon me. Now, I am ready. Where is my son?"
Catherine's apprehension returned. "Above, but—"
A gesture silenced her. She had no right, after all, to interfere, and she knew now that Rannulf would not be unduly harsh with the child. He paid no more attention to her, and Catherine followed him up the stairs hoping that Richard's behavior would do her credit. She had worked hard with the boy. If Rannulf was pleased, all might yet be well.
Catherine watched her husband while he listened to Richard's apology, and her heart sank at the increasing rigidity of his expression. Rannulf, however, was not at all displeased. He was only striving, with growing difficulty, to prevent himself from laughing as he listened to the elaborate phrases that the child had obviously learned by rote. He did not wish to hurt the boy, nor to hurt his wife. Catherine had plainly taken great pains to teach Richard what she hoped would pacify his father's anger. There was a little pause, but Rannulf still could not speak because he was having trouble in controlling his mouth.
Richard raised his eyes to the stem countenance. "Oh, please, papa, I am sorry. Truly I am sorry, but you said you would return at once and then the servants began to pack your clothes and I knew you were not coming back. Let me stay with you, papa, oh, please, do not send me away."
That plea was completely natural, the child stuttering slightly in his earnestness, and Rannulf dropped his hand to the boy's head, all desire to laugh fading into tenderness. "The labor of keeping you does not fall upon me, my child. Nor is it safe, perhaps, to keep you in London where I have many enemies and one foot beyond these doors you are on a stranger's land—"
"You do not want me. You do not love me. You always go away from me or send me away from you." Richard's eyes filled with tears.
"Let him stay, my lord," Catherine pleaded. "I will not let him out from under my eye for a moment. No man shall harm him or take him—upon my life."
"Well …"
"Thank you, papa, thank you!"
A wet and smacking kiss was pressed on Rannulf's hand, and he shook his head. Give a child or a woman the smallest sign that a decision was not absolute and irrevocable and they assumed that the decision would be remade in their favor. Rannulf could not, however, destroy the joy that had filled his son's face. They were at peace; the danger to the child was not acute, and for some reason Catherine's assurance that she would guard Richard imbued him with perfect confidence.
"You should thank the Lady Catherine, Richard," he said, yielding completely.
The boy capered away, gave his benefactress a rough hug, and jumped upon the bed, sending a pile of neatly folded linen flying. "Oh," he laughed, "she does not mind. She likes to have me. She told me so."
"If you make her pick up what she has just folded ten times a day, she will soon be sorry."
Catherine moved to her husband's side, smiling at him with a genuine warmth. "Truly it is a pleasure to have him. He is such a clever child. Only think, he learned all that long speech and did not forget a word of it, and I only told him three or four times over what to say."
So she was not stupid at all! Rannulf burst into laughter. "I thought you meant me to believe those were his words."
"Nay, how could I be so foolish? A child does not speak so, and it would be an indifferent father who could not tell his own son's way."
Rannulf's eyes narrowed. Stupid! Perhaps she was altogether too clever. She seemed to read him very well. "And how is it known to you that I am not an indifferent father? What you saw of us together did not speak of great tenderness."
"How not? You were only afraid for the child's welfare. Have I not beaten my own child with one hand while I clasped him to my bosom with the other after he had committed some dangerous folly. My lord, even at the moment I came between you, I knew 1 did wrong."
Rannulf continued to frown, not angrily but thoughtfully, and Catherine, feeling that he might have a distaste for her discussion of her past life, changed the subject.
"Now, my lord, will you bathe and change your garments? You are wet and muddied. Did you ride far?"
"Not five miles, but the roads are very bad. I wish, however," Rannulf added caustically, "that you would content yourself with making my child and my house models of cleanliness and propriety. I am not four years old to be told when to change my clothes."
Looking sidelong under her lashes at him, Catherine thought that he was acting very little older. Still, if he wished to remain wet and dirty just because she had suggested that he change, it was his affair. In the future, she would know better how to manage. She would order the bath and lay out the clothing without question, and also, she decided, looking at her husband's face, she would employ a barber. A man should either grow a beard or shave, not walk around looking like a half-mown field. He was a well set-up man; he would look none so ill with those gray eyes and curly hair if he did but comb his disordered locks now and again.
Unobtrusively, Catherine put her scheme into practice. The bath and the barber appeared regularly; little by little, as she and the maids sewed them, new shirts, tunics, and
chausses
took the place of worn-out underclothing. The rents and stains disappeared from Rannulf's gowns and surcoats and new ones, beautifully furred and embroidered, gradually filled a sadly depleted wardrobe.
He noticed it—indeed, he was often the butt of sly jests about assuming finery to charm his new wife that sadly tried his temper—but again the situation was beyond his management. To send away a ready-prepared bath or refuse to don the garments handed to him seemed ridiculous, especially since there was no one to complain to but the maids who were only following orders.
Slyly, Catherine disappeared each time the bath or the barber was summoned or when a new set of clothing was to be introduced, and as long as she did not mention the subject at other times, Rannulf was at a loss for a reason to do so.
Occupied by her husband's needs and demands, by the training of Richard who had come to her hands with the manners of a wild animal covering his sweet nature, Catherine drifted into contentment. She thought no more of independent use of her father's vassals, but she was troubled by the political situation.
Catherine felt the tension in the court and, although she liked Maud and Stephen well enough, she had no sympathy with Rannulf's commitment to their cause. She had no leaning toward the rebels either, and wished that her father had taken the wiser course of holding himself aloof from all intercourse with either side. Then, perhaps, Rannulf would not freeze or look so black at her when she suggested that peace was a better state than war.
Neither side had the right of the matter completely, Catherine judged. The rebels were wrong because they had no right to fight against God's anointed king, but the king was not right because he had not fulfilled his duty to the country. Catherine flushed slightly with irritation. A pox upon both sides, she thought, as long as the disease does not infect my family.
The trouble was that she could not escape infection. Rannulf was bound to the king, and Lady Warwick said that his honor would not permit him to free himself from that tie. If anything disturbed the uneasy peace, doubtless Rannulf would drain her property as well as his own to support the king's war.
That notion annoyed Catherine, who not only felt that there were better uses for money but also knew her vassals would resent that use of their taxes. She did her best not to dwell on the subject for fear of quarreling with Rannulf.
The irritation, in spite of her efforts, was recurrent. After all, Rannulf himself had said once that the property was hers by inheritance and would go to her children. Why then should he be able to use it in a way of which she completely disapproved? She was sewing, puzzling the matter over in her mind once again when the page entered to tell her that Sir Giles Fortesque was below.
"Oh, he has doubtless come for Sir Rannulf's investiture, but he is an old friend. Send him up, I will speak with him since my lord is not here. It is not courteous to send him away without a greeting."
She advanced with a smile and an extended hand toward a man of about her husband's age. Sir Giles had been chief of her father's vassals and she knew him well. To her surprise, for he had always treated her as if she were another daughter, Sir Giles bowed profoundly and kissed her hand.
"Why, how formal you are grown," Catherine exclaimed. "Have you forgotten how you dandled me upon your knee?"
The man's leather face creased into smiles. "Nay, I have not forgot, but one does not dandle the countess of Soke upon one's knee. I would not fail in respect to my lady, presuming on past familiarity."
"I am countess of Soke because my husband is earl, but I hope I am still Catherine to you, Sir Giles."
"You are countess of Soke, husband or no husband, to us, my lady. I cannot tell you how grieved and enraged I was when we learned you had been stolen from us. I am to blame for that, I fear, but not through neglect or ill intention. I was so sure that Bigod would try to seize you that I summoned the men to guard that border. Alas, I did not know the king could be roused to such early action, and by the time we turned to your rescue, Bigod was behind us. We were trapped between two fires. And the king's order that the lands go to this Sir Rannulf are no more than black scratches on white parchment. Your father's daughter is the Lady of Soke."
For a moment Catherine stood with wide eyes, then dropped her lids slowly until her lashes concealed the misty irises. "You mean you would have kept me from the king—and from Bigod too?"
"If our lives and lands held, we would."
Catherine searched the face before her from under her lashes, but there was nothing in it except anger and the honesty she had long respected. "And what would you have done with me?" she asked slowly.
"Done with you?" Sir Giles was shocked, but he thought he understood the ignorance that prompted the question. The late earl sheltered his daughter too much. In marrying her to a weakling and shielding her from all knowledge of affairs, he had done her more harm than good.
"You are our lady," he explained, "and what you wished to do was for yourself to decide. We would have hoped that in time you would choose as husband a man worthy to wield the lands of Soke. Until that time, it was our duty to protect you and obey you."
Catherine had not asked out of ignorance, and she was well satisfied with the answer. "Well, I have a husband. He is from home just now, but he will want to see you."
"I do not wish to see him, however. At least not until I have spoken my mind to you and heard your orders."
Catherine nodded her satisfaction and reseated herself. Rannulf was about to receive quite a shock.
"The man, we know, was none of your choosing, and that is bad. Also bad is the fact that your father loved Henry well but was content to send him money, and I know Sir Rannulf rides constantly to war in the king's cause. We do not desire to have our lands overrun by Norfolk on the one side and by the king on the other. On the good side is that we know Sir Rannulf to be a just and honorable man who would faithfully judge between us, as your father did, and as faithfully succor us in time of need. Therefore, all except a few of us are agreed that the matter should be left to your judgment."
Now Catherine was puzzled. "But my judgment about what? I am married to Sir Rannulf already. What can there be left to judge?"
"The same thing, madam," Sir Giles said, his face suddenly grim. "We will accept this man as earl of Soke only if you are content to have him to husband. If you wish to be rid of him and have a man—perchance one of us—of your own choosing, we will kill him in the tourney."
"No!" Catherine shrieked, leaping to her feet. "He is a good man. Before God he is my husband, my troth is plighted to him. Through that marriage and the king's gift, he is your earl. I will not have him murdered by his own men to smirch my name, and yours also, forever."
"Calm yourself, madam. I did not think you would be party to such a plan, but Sir Herbert Osborn bound me over to put it to you."
"Sir Herbert offered for me once," Catherine snapped. "Perhaps he thought to free me from Sir Rannulf to snatch me to himself." She received a strange, considering glance, but she was too much distressed to think what it meant.
"Perhaps," Sir Giles said. "But there are others of his mind. I must speak plain, my lady, even if I offend you. Dearly as I loved your father and just as he was, he did not oversee his barons closely. We are somewhat accustomed to our freedom. That is good, and even I would wish to keep it that way . . . except that with overmuch freedom comes trouble. There is a party among us now that seeks to oppress the others. Thus far I, and those who think as I do, have kept them in check with words alone, but I think that if a strong man does not take matters into his hands soon there will be fighting."