Guyon slowly let his hands fall to his sides. He was breathing hard, as if he had just run up a tower in full mail. 'You see what happens when you stir a banked fire,' he said ruefully. 'I've been wanting to do that for a long time.'
Judith swallowed. He was melting her with that burning brown stare. Their relationship was paused on the brink of another plane and it terrified her. Snatching hot chestnuts from the fire indeed!
Guyon paced to the window, braced his forearms on the thick wooden ledge and looked down at his hands gripping the dusty edge while his blood cooled. He had seen the fear in her eyes and did not know how to deal with it aside from schooling himself to further patience. There were remedies of course, none of them satisfactory. There was no pleasure in drinking water when it was wine you wanted.
Judith hastily sleeved her eyes as Simon walked into the room, grinning broadly, a half-eaten apple in his hand. Christen had just defeated his grandfather in a move that was as much a surprise to herself as it had been to the old man. 'Is it all right?' he asked, nodding around the room and taking another bite of the fruit. 'Don't worry about the bed. Grandfather says he knows where he can get hold of one.'
His back turned. Guyon muttered something at his spread hands and then laughed without humour.
'It belongs to the Abbess of St Anne's,' Simon added, brow cocking curiously. 'It's got a feather mattress and silk hangings and everything else. It was part of her dowry, but the Bishop says she has to give it up ... What's wrong, Guy, have I said something funny?'
'No,' Guyon said, turning round. 'It's not funny at all . Do I have to say grace before I get in?'
'Depends on what you have in mind,' Simon said. 'For what we are about to receive and all that.' He smiled round at Judith. She turned pink and, choking an excuse, she gathered her skirts and hurried from the room.
'I didn't think that she would take offence. I'm sorry,' Simon said, staring at the still moving curtain with a perplexed frown on his face.
'How many Hail Marys does it take to work a miracle?' Guyon asked wearily.
CHAPTER 17
Judith lifted the goblet. It was made of the finest silver gilt delicately incised with a scroll work pattern of vine leaves. The wine within was sweet-sharp and cold from the well in which it had been chilled prior to being brought to table.
The King's new hall of Westminster blazed with rich colour, the wall s painted in a bold, angular design that glowed red and blue, gold and shadowed matt black. Banners sparred the wall s in vivid primary colours. Candles flamed and dripped, cream and gold, reflecting the napery on the long trestles. The high barony of England glowed like a mobile, flowing tapestry.
Judith sipped her wine and watched the weaving men and women - her uncle Arnulf de Montgomery, as objectionable as ever; her maternal uncle William Breteuill was with him and they were talking amiably enough, although the frequent flicker of their eyes betrayed their mistrust. Her most notorious relative, Robert de Belleme, was not here at this gathering, preferring to hold his own court in Arundell prior to taking ship for Normandy, but Arnulf, among others, was his informant as to the happenings at court during his absence.
Further down the room Gilbert de Clare, lord of Tunbridge, was deep in conversation with his brother Roger and with Robert FitzHamon of Gloucester who had been at her wedding. Guyon himself stood on the edge of the group that included them, having just arrived from the direction of the latrine. He was resplendent in a gown of garnet-red wool embroidered with thread of gold. The tunic, unlike the ones worn at knee length for the rigours of everyday life in the marches, swept the tops of his ankles. He was a lord of some importance and at court, if nowhere else, had perforce to dress as one, even down to the heavy rings encumbering his fingers.
A man on his way from the hall paused in the act of pinning his cloak to speak with the group of men. Prince Henry. She had seen him sitting on the high dais beside the King, his brother. He was of middling height and girth with a shock of soot-black hair and narrow features. Guyon replied to something the Prince said and Henry laughed aloud. The plain features lit up, became attractively mischievous and he thumped Guyon's shoulder and walked on. Guyon bowed, then straightened to glance across at her. Caught in the act of her own scrutiny, Judith blushed and quickly attended to her wine. A youth refilled her cup to the brim and passed on down the board with the flagon.
She drank in deep gulps until her panic had subsided. She could not forget the delightful, unsettling sensations aroused in her by the skilful play of his hands upon her. The body as a weapon. It was a two-edged sword and she had yet to learn how to handle it. What was it the Welsh said?
Arfer yw mam pob meistrolaeth
.
Practice is the mother of mastery. Guyon had a vastly unfair advantage and he knew it. It was there in every look he had given her since that afternoon. He had not touched her again. He did not need to. The tension between them was a palpable entity crackling the air. The eye sufficed, speaking all that the tongue avoided and the body suppressed.
Some tumblers leaped before the trestle, their costumes parti-coloured and sewn with bell s. One of them between gyrations juggled with six flashing knives, catching them expertly by the hilt.
'Enjoying the experience?' Hugh of Chester said in her ear.
Judith jumped and turned round. The Earl was opulent in blue silk, loose cut for comfort over his great belly. Roped gold winked across the width of his breast and there was a huge round Welsh brooch pinned to one shoulder.
'I am glad to have come, my lord,' she said with a smile, 'but I think I prefer the clean air of the marches to that of the city.'
An elderly man at the Earl's shoulder was staring at her with frank, almost startled curiosity.
Chester introduced him as Sir Hubert de Caen, a veteran of Hastings and aide of the late King William. Judith smiled and responded politely.
'Ravenstow's wife?' Sir Hubert murmured, taking Guyon's place at the trestle. 'Forgive me for asking, but surely you are related to the Conqueror?'
'Well yes,' said Judith, looking doubtful, wondering at his intention. 'My grandfather and King William were cousins.'
He looked disappointed. 'The tie is no closer than that?'
'I'm afraid not.' She glanced up at Earl Hugh, who shrugged his flesh-padded shoulders and surreptitiously tapped his head.
'It is curious,' pursued Sir Hubert. 'You are the living image of Arlette of Falaise, the old King's mother. She had freckles too, you know, and hair of your colour in her youth and that same way of looking.'
'I am sorry to disappoint you, but the lady Arlette is no part of my bloodline. My grandfather was related through the male line.'
'Remarkable,' Sir Hubert murmured, shaking his head as he rose stiffly to his feet.
The juggler nearly missed one of the knives but swooped and recovered. On the dais, Rufus roared with laughter at a joke. Hugh of Chester moved on with his companion. Judith drank her wine, looked for Guyon and choked on it when she noticed that Alais de Clare had accosted him by one of the stone arches supporting the roof of the hall . A blue and gold banner drifted in the haze above their heads. Alais had her arm linked proprietarily through his, her face upturned and dazzling. He dipped his head to listen to what she was saying. She giggled and flashed a glance around and then stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear, her hand going boldly down between them.
Judith sat in stupefied amazement, watching her, and then the wine in her blood exploded into rage. She jerked to her feet, shivering the surface of the remaining drink in her cup, walked around the startled juggler and stalked over to her husband and the courtesan.
Taking hold of Guyon's free arm, she stood on tiptoe in mimicry of Alais, but instead of whispering, she bit him. Guyon jerked with a stifled yelp. 'Just thank Christ I chose your ear,'
Judith said and looked at the startled older woman. 'You must be Alais,' she said. 'I have heard much about you, so I won't waste any more of my time, yours, or my husband's,' and, in guardroom English, purloined from childhood escapades, she told Alais de Clare precisely what she could do.
Guyon spluttered. Alais gaped at Judith in horrified astonishment. Judith, taking her rival's rooted shock for defiance, raised her arm to strike her, but Guyon seized her wrist and bore it down in a grip of steel.
'It is best if I go, Guy,' Alais cooed in a pillow-soft voice and patted his arm. 'You can give me your reply later.' Ignoring Judith's dagger-bright stare, indeed ignoring Judith altogether, she left him and moved on to intercept, with a ready smile, a young baron attached to Chester's household.
'What in God's name do you think you are doing?' Guyon hissed at her. 'You're a marcher baroness, not a fishwife and the sooner you remember that the better!'
'And she's a high-bred gutter whore!' Judith spat in return. 'I suppose you have arranged to bed with her!'
'You've hardly grounds for complaint, have you?'
For a moment they glared at each other, the air between them charged with tension. And then Guyon released his breath on a hard sigh. 'I wasn't making a liaison behind your back,' he said and tugged her silk-twined braid. 'Jesu God, don't you think I have enough trouble controlling the woman I've got without noosing myself to a featherbrain like Alais de Clare?' He grimaced and rubbed his bitten ear.
Judith lowered her lids and looked down at her soft gilded shoes. The impetus of the wine was beginning to wear off. She felt foolish and a little sick. 'But I thought ... Christen said that you and she used to ...'
Guyon snorted. 'Once, twice, no more. I was too drunk the first time and too desperate the second to make better provision and Alais was so pleased with herself that she made the whole court a party to her conquest until her husband clapped his hand over her mouth and pushed her at Henry. He's very partial to brainless blondes.'
'And you are not?'
'I have a marked preference for tawny-haired vixens.' He slipped his arm around her narrow waist, drawing her close to his side.
On the dais, William Rufus laughed again and clapped a brawny arm across the shoulder of the slender young man seated next to him. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed with a mouth like a freshly bitten strawberry.
'His latest toy,' Guyon said. 'He's called Ernoul and comes from Toulouse. It's fortunate that Anselm of Canterbury isn't here, he'd have a seizure.'
'Who's the priest on the dais with him, then?'
Judith asked and shifted her hip from the intimate sidelong pressure of his thigh.
Guyon pretended not to notice. 'Rannulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham. He wouldn't flinch if Rufus led a goat in here and held a black mass before his very eyes, providing there was money in it of course.' He cast his gaze around.
'Flambard designed this hall . Rufus says it's too big for a room and too small for a great hall , but that's just his nature.'
'As is Ernoul?'
'As is Ernoul,' he said and tried not to think of how it felt to have the King's arm draped heavily across the back of your neck, or to feel his breath hot on your cheek and know that any moment you were going to be sick. Probably Ernoul didn't mind. Probably Ernoul was being paid a lot of money.
Judith shuddered. The royal court was twice as dangerous and barbaric as life in the marches.
As in nature, the bright colours were a warning not to touch. She too knew how to stalk and snarll in all that jungle of colour, but inwardly it worried her. When everyone was a predator, someone was bound to get eaten.
The evening continued. Yet another course of the interminable feast arrived. Things disguised as other things, stuffed and gilded and caparisoned in mimicry of the great gathering they were intended to feed. The wine changed from cold, sharp Anjou to a cloying French red.
The dishes ran the gamut of the head cook's heat-sweated imagination. Decorated roast meats served with spicy perfumed sauces, pies filled with fruit and chopped meat and one full of tiny live birds that flew amok and twittered around the hall , soiling the new hangings in their panic.
The King sent to the mews for his sparrowhawks. Musicians played with varying degrees of skill . A jester told some bawdy jokes. A sword swallower amazed the gullible. The knife juggler attempted a refinement that did not quite work and was carried off bleeding like a stuck pig.
Rufus did the rounds of his vassals, full of a bluff, jovial bonhomie, the force of it hinting at the choleric temper that lay close to the surface.
The King was a squat, compact barrel of a man with a round, sanguine face and short, powerful limbs. None of the Conqueror's sons were able to boast their sire's inches, although all of them possessed his breadth and inclination towards middle-aged corpulence. Florid and strutting like a barnyard cockerel, Rufus chucked Judith beneath the chin as though she were a kitchen maid. 'So,' he grinned, 'this is Maurice FitzRoger's wench, eh?'
'Sire.' Judith lowered her lids. His fingers were as thick and clammy as raw sausages, but instead of being limp they gripped powerfully, pinching her flesh.
'Skinny little thing, isn't she?' Rufus mused to Guyon as if Judith was deaf. 'No sign of a belly on her yet either?'
'I'm in no hurry, sire,' Guyon responded with a lazy smile. 'A flat furrow's easier to plough than one with a slope.'
Rufus let out a great guffaw and his variegated grey-brown eyes squeezed into puffy slits. His sense of humour was crude and boisterous and it was the kind of remark that he wholeheartedly appreciated.
Judith lifted her taut jaw off his fingers, feeling like a market beast on a block. Rufus opened his eyes and she glared back at him.
'God's blood!' He chuckled softly. 'I remember my grandam Arlette giving me that look when she was wrath.'
It was the second time that evening that she had been compared to the dead Countess of Conteville and it disturbed her not a little.