Lady Warwick moved away, but others came, and although Catherine was tired out with tension and civility, she was happy to mouth platitudes about which she did not have to think. Her father's vassals! She had never given them a thought during the period in which she was frozen with grief, but they had loved her father and it was possible that they would not stand idly by and see her harmed.
Whether they would risk their lives and property for her was impossible to guess, nor would she ask them to take that risk if there were any chance that she could find safety by other means. Lady Warwick seemed so sure that the master of Sleaford was worthy of trust. Catherine stole a glance at the face of the man who stood beside her. His face was hard and his mouth was grim, but he did not look cruel and the attitude of the men who came to speak to him betokened trust and sometimes affection.
The stream of well-wishers was curtailed at last by the summons to dinner, and both bride and groom were grateful, although for different reasons. Catherine wanted peace to follow her own thoughts; Rannulf was bored by so much small talk for which he had no taste, and was pleased by the knowledge that in a few hours more he would have Catherine to himself.
He thrust away a dish of eels, telling his bride to pass them along to Stephen who adored them, but he allowed his gaze to drift down from her face to her throat, as round as and whiter than any marble column. He responded to her polite attempts at conversation largely with monosyllabic grunts, but he was by no means ill-pleased with them and Catherine, who was keenly alive to his mood, was not discouraged by his lack of response.
The meal, by the standards of the participants, did not last long. All Maud's efforts could not make eating a real pleasure during Lent. No quantity of salt, herbs, and pepper could change fish and eggs to beef and venison, even though every fresh- and salt-water fish, shelled and scaled, was provided. Roasted, baked, stewed, stuffed, or boiled—it was still fish.
Worse than that, however, was the starvation for fresh vegetables that all men, of high station or low, suffered. It was not, of course, that the eating of vegetables was proscribed in Lent, but by March the supply of even those fruits and vegetables that could be stored was running out. What was served was woody and tasted of mold; even the fresh-baked bread was tainted with the musty odor of the dank bins in which the grain had been stored for months.
The one advantage to the brevity of the meal was that it allowed less time for drinking, too. Nearly everyone was still sober when the tables were cleared and stacked against the walls, and Stephen, with a grateful heart, called for music from the minstrels so that his guests could dance.
The king knew that a major danger of a feast at court was that the political opponents, drunk and belligerent, would literally come to blows. They would continue to drink throughout the evening anyway, but the energetic dances would keep them busy and work off the high spirits engendered by the wine.
Rannulf danced once with his wife, leading her out onto the floor only after he had been prodded thereto by Maud, who had been reduced to telling him in Catherine's hearing that the dancing could not begin without him. Thereafter, nothing could move him to dance again, although he permitted Catherine to be led away by any man who applied for her company. When Hereford came up to ask for Catherine's hand for the third time, therefore, she did not wait for her husband's approval. If he did not care with whom she danced, she would choose the best partner. Rannulf, however, stopped his talk and looked at the dancing couple with a scowl. Until now he had paid no attention to what Catherine did when the music ended. This time he made his way across to her, grasped her wrist possessively, and led her away.
"It is not wise to spend overmuch time in the company of the earl of Hereford," he snapped when they were out of earshot.
Before she knew what she was doing, Catherine wrenched her hand free of Rannulf's hold. "What harm could he do me or I permit in a room full of people?"
"I do not believe he would do you any harm," Rannulf said, laughing. "His wife would skin him alive if it came to her ears, and he fears her as he fears the devil, although he fears no living man. Nonetheless, he is a pardoned rebel and for my wife to favor his company can do neither your honor nor mine any good."
Catherine was insulted to the point of speechlessness. It was bad enough to be lectured about associating with Hereford after Rannulf had done it himself, but her husband's disgustingly even-tempered reply proved he was not jealous. He did not want her, and he did not believe that any man could want her.
In this, Catherine was quite mistaken. Rannulf, although certainly not jealous, was far from immune to his wife's charms. He stood beside her watching the dancers with brooding eyes. He was too old for this sort of nonsense, he knew, but perhaps it would be pleasant to join them. It would be very pleasant to feel Catherine's hand on his and occasionally to place his hand on her hip. Still, dancing was an activity in which he scarcely excelled, and he had no desire to make a fool of himself like the old goats he was watching caper about. It came to him suddenly that he did not want to dance; he wanted to touch Catherine. Well, she was his wife. He did not need the excuse of dancing for that!
"Do you take pleasure in this?" Rannulf's glance indicated not only the merrymaking group but also his disapproval.
"Very little," Catherine replied. Ordinarily that would have been a lie, but this evening it was perfectly true.
"I also." Rannulf hesitated, trying to find a polite way to say what he wanted, and then merely extended his hand. "Come, then, let us go."
Catherine was in no doubt of what he meant but she was startled. "Should we not tell the queen?" she asked, not because she was reluctant to go with him, but because her mind was on the bedding ceremony with which it was customary to conclude marriages.
In the absence of any real legal system, Catherine knew that the best guarantee that a bargain would be kept was the presence of a large number of eyewitnesses who could affirm that the participants had fulfilled their commitments.
This led to the practice of marrying outside the doors of the church rather than before the altar—the outdoors being conducive to the presence of the largest number of witnesses. It also led to the practice of publicly bedding the bride and groom. The bride would be disrobed, as many ladies of suitable rank as were present attending her, and set naked upon the bed; the groom, following with his gentlemen attendants, would be similarly served.
After the jokes and remarks that such a situation would normally call forth were exhausted, the couple was left alone to consummate the marriage. That, however, was not the end of the affair by any means. In the morning both male and female guests returned to strip the sheets from the bed and display the bloody proof of the bride's virginity.
The system was very practical and Catherine had not the slightest objection to it. Simply, the public nudity of bride and groom offered proof that neither had any concealed defect or deformity, and the incontrovertible evidence of the maidenhood of the woman proved that she was not carrying any other man's child. Thus a great many repudiations of marriages on the grounds of bad faith were avoided. Rannulf had no objection to the system either and did not take Catherine's question amiss. After a moment of thought, however, he shrugged.
"I can scarcely expect you to be a maiden. I can see that you are whole nor, for a blemish, would I put you aside."
That carried the unfortunate inference to Catherine that he had married her for her lands, which was certainly true, and more, what was not true, that he intended to throw the fact into her face whenever he could.
Unaware that he had insulted his wife yet again, Rannulf proceeded, equally unintentionally, to frighten her nearly out of her wits by adding thoughtfully, "Since you have no power to repudiate me, having no family, I need not be concerned for that."
Catherine, believing that her husband was threatening her when he was merely examining aloud the aspects of conforming or not conforming to custom, felt literally sick with fear. The room spun and she caught unconsciously at Rannulf's arm to steady herself, drawing his attention.
He was mildly irritated at the conventionality of women. They could not deviate from the form in the least item, he thought, without believing that the world would come to an end. Nonetheless, if the bedding ceremony would make his wife happier, he was perfectly ready to go through it once again.
"If you wish," he said irritably, "I will summon the queen and we can proceed in the usual way. It was merely that in our case I thought the ceremony to be nonsense. Suit yourself, madam, I care not so long as we be quickly free of this throng."
There was no more to be said; Rannulf had stated the case exactly. Catherine knew herself to be utterly helpless in her husband's hands. She had no powerful father or brother to support her cause for love or to repossess her dowry. At this moment there was no single human being in the land to whom she could look for succor. It was quite true that in their situation the bedding process was an empty ceremony. Above and beyond all, the path to safety lay in not irritating Rannulf of Sleaford.
"What you say is true, my lord," Catherine murmured. "If you will, let us go."
Her docility received little open reward, for Rannulf grasped her ungently by the arm and propelled her through the nearest door. Once outside, his pace slowed and he glanced at Catherine with apparent uneasiness.
"Your maids will be still at the celebrations, I suppose. Do you need them? For me to fetch them would be no light task since I have never seen the creatures."
"No, I can manage alone."
A paragon, Rannulf thought. She can ride and undress herself. Through the mental scoffing, however, he was pleased at what he took for reasonableness, since he had not forgotten the flashes of temper, and understood that Maud had deliberately lied about or overestimated Catherine's gentleness. He handled her more carefully now, however, and suited his pace to hers as they moved down the staircase and across the court to Rannulf's quarters.
These were deserted, as was to be expected, since every servant was busy eating and drinking, playing rough games, or dancing, but Catherine was surprised to see that the room had not been readied in any particular way. For the first time in that long dreadful day, tears rose to her eyes at the proof of the depth of contempt in which her husband held her. She thanked God, however, for the freak of temper that had brought them to that place alone. At least she had been spared the humiliation of being sent with an escort of high-born ladies to that cold, dark, unswept chamber.
As soon as he came to the door, Rannulf realized the mistake he had made. Doubtless Maud had arranged a new apartment for the new-wedded pair, tastefully furnished and decorated, to which she had sent Catherine's possessions and possibly even her maids. There she would have led the bride and there Stephen would have escorted him. Under the circumstances it was reasonable that she should not have wasted the efforts of servants burdened with the preparation and serving of a great feast on cleaning and furbishing a room that would remain empty. But it was too late to worry about that now.
Leaving his wife in the doorway, Rannulf groped about for flint and tinder, lighted a candle, threw brush into the hearth, and reawakened the fire. "Come in," he growled, and seeing that Catherine was trembling, "here, drink this. It will warm you until the fire takes hold."
Catherine accepted the goblet and sipped the strong, sweet wine, watching in surprise as Rannulf straightened the bed and threw the clothing he had worn the previous day onto a chest at the side. If he was proud, at least he was not too proud to do a menial's work when it was necessary.
Perhaps in the press of his affairs he had forgotten to tell the servants to make ready or even had told them and they, wishing to enjoy themselves, had hoped but failed to return to the chamber before the bride and groom to prepare it. Certainly he seemed to be making an effort to remedy the oversight, and Catherine put down her wine and moved to help him. Between them, the place was quickly tidied and Rannulf threw more brush and then larger logs into the hearth so that the flames roared upward into the chimney and warmth seeped through the room.
He stood now with his back to the fire at one side of the fireplace, watching the play of the light on his wife as she folded the clothing he had carelessly thrown aside. It was none so ill. She was no complainer, nor did she scorn to lay her hand to any task that needed doing. And she was beautiful . . . very beautiful.
"If you undress here on the hearth, you will not be cold," Rannulf said, undoing his belt and pulling off his gown.
Whatever else needed to be done could wait. The woman was very beautiful, and she was his.
Obediently Catherine came. If there were any way in which she could gain a hold on this man, this was the way.
She did not linger intentionally over her disrobing, but women's garments were somewhat more complicated than men's. There were the side laces to undo which held the bliaut tightly to the figure, and the fastenings of the long sleeves of the tunic that held the sleeve smooth so that one might see the shape of the feminine arm beneath.
In the act of pulling her tunic over her head, Catherine's eyes fell upon her husband's body, which was well-lit by the leaping flames. Unexpectedly, a quiver of passion ran through her. Before God, he was a fine figure of a man, heavily muscled but without an ounce of surplus fat, broad at the shoulder, narrow at the hip, with hard thighs which gleamed slightly under the fine coating of hair.
Her first husband had not been ill-formed, but his flesh had been as smooth and soft as her own, lovely perhaps but ill-suited to a man. There was no softness about Rannulf of Sleaford; his skin was stretched tight over powerful musculature, and it was marred in many places by livid or ruddy scars.
Her sense of excitement grew; Catherine, not thinking of what she was doing, took two steps toward her husband and gently touched the largest of the scars on his breast. Could she but capture and hold him, this was a man to fulfill her pride.