With great ceremony the women stripped Jude of her garments and combed her hair until it lay in a shining skein down her back. Seeing how much she was shivering, Matilda folded her in a wrap of beaver fur while they awaited the men.
'It will be all right,' she murmured and kissed her sister's temple.
'I know it will,' said Jude, giving her a tight, nervous smile. 'Sybille told me everything… the way she told you. If it were left to Mama, I would be as innocent as a spring lamb. And if I had believed everything that Ranulf told me before the wedding, I'd not be a virgin now!'
That broke the tension and Matilda started to giggle. So did Jude. The raised eyebrow of disapproval they received from their mother only increased their mirth.
Footsteps sounded outside the chamber door, and the wood resounded to the thump of a fist and loud voices craving entrance, with many jests about 'forcing portals' and 'turning keys in greased locks'. Judith's frown deepened and her lips started to purse. Pushing aside the maid who had been about to admit the men, she raised the latch herself and, throwing the door wide, blocked the threshold with her body.
'I thought dragons were supposed to be hot, not cold,' slurred Ranulf's brother Roger, wavering where he stood.
Ranulf flourished a bow in Judith's direction and managed to stand upright again without falling over, revealing that he was reasonably sober. 'Madame belle mere,' he saluted her. 'I have come to claim my bride, if you will but yield her to me.'
Matilda saw that he was wearing Simon's bearskin cloak -useful because it draped him from collar to ankle, the surplus length folded like a cape around his shoulders. Beneath it, he was naked save for his shoes.
Judith inclined her head in return. 'Treat her well,' she said in a voice that cut across all their jesting and merriment like a whip, 'or you will answer to me.' She gestured stiffly for the men to enter the room then stepped back, her sleeve across her nose as if to diffuse the potent wine fumes.
'I will cherish her all my days,' Ranulf replied, although his eyes were now on his bride, not his mother-by-marriage. 'Why should I not when she has beauty and lands and she sets my heart alight?' He took Jude's hands within his own, his expression soulful, laughter dancing in his eyes.
'You would be surprised how many men find reason once they have grown bored of the taste of the fruit,' Judith retorted. Her spine as rigid as a broom handle, she returned to the middle of the room, determined that a degree of propriety should be maintained.
'Not me,' Ranulf said confidently.
Judith gave him a hard stare. 'I hold you to it,' she said, and ushered forward the priest to bless the couple and the waiting bed.
That ritual performed, Ranulf swept his bride up in his arms and placed her amid the sheets to a chorus of halloos and yells of encouragement.
'I need no help this night,' Ranulf retorted cheerfully and tossed the bearskin cloak back to Simon.
'Well, just call out if you do,' Simon grinned.
Ranulf's teeth flashed in response. 'If you hear me shouting, it will be for a different reason entirely!' he quipped, causing Jude to blush fire-red.
More whistles and bawdy comments followed, but the wedding party took the hint and trooped from the room on a final volley of advice and good wishes.
The wine continued to flow and the kitchens continued to supply bread and small pastries, stuffed figs, honey sweetmeats, and tender slivers of lamb marinated in wine, cooked on a griddle and served on skewers of beechwood.
Simon and Matilda mingled among their guests who showed no sign of flagging. Matilda danced with Earl Hugh of Chester and fended off his determined attempts to flirt, finally escaping on the arm of her uncle Stephen. The latter was only two years older than she, with a mane of thick flaxen hair, ice-blue eyes and his father's cleft chin. Folk said that he was one of the few members of the house of William of Normandy who actually looked suitable to wear a crown.
'Do not you dare call me uncle,' he said as they moved and turned in the pattern of the dance. 'It makes me feel like an ancient greybeard, and I'm scarce old enough to grow a whisker. Cousin will suffice.'
'I would not dream of giving you grey hairs,' Matilda said sweetly, and playfully tapped his arm. 'It was good of you to come.' She liked Stephen. Her mother had been avoiding him rather grimly all evening.
He bowed. 'It was good of you to invite me,' he said gallantly. 'There was a time when my parents cultivated notions of acquiring your lands for my inheritance. I would have understood if you had chose to keep me at arm's length or even barred your gates.'
Matilda warmed further to his charm and candour. 'You are welcome whenever you choose to visit,' she said. 'My husband is sure enough of his own abilities not to feel threatened. Besides,' she added with a switt glance around to make sure that her mother was not within earshot, 'we are neither of us our parents.'
'Thank sweet Christ for that!' Stephen declared, adding hastily, 'I will say nothing against my mother, God rest her soul, nor against my father, because he is not here to defend his reputation… but I have never been as eager as they to saddle up and ride a horse made of ambition.'
'Oh, I think everyone has ambitions,' Matilda said. 'But of differing kinds. Perhaps if you had not had everything given to you on a golden platter, you would be hungrier.'
He frowned for a moment as if to protest, but the expression was replaced by a thoughtful look. 'I suppose that is true,' he said. 'My mother was always fleeing from the fact that her mother was a laundress and my father was deposed of his own lands in Champagne. For me it has been different. I have what I want. If I strive, it is only to please them.' His eye corners crinkled attractively. 'What of your own ambition, cousin?'
Matilda smiled. 'That is easy,' she said lightly. 'To stay awake long enough to see these nuptials to their close.' She was learning from Simon, she thought. How to fend off probing questions. How to hide what she did not wish to reveal.
The dance ended and they parted. Hugh of Chester was ensconced in a corner, a girl on each ample thigh and his legs spread to allow breathing space for his crotch. Matilda avoided that part of the room. Simon was deep in conversation with
Abbot Ingulf of Crowland, and her mother was talking with members of the Tosny family. Unobtrusively, Matilda slipped among the crowds, a word here, a murmur there. Her eyes felt gritty; she was tired, but she bolstered herself with a cup of wine. What
was
her ambition? Her brow furrowed at the thought. To live without looking over her shoulder to the past. To be surrounded in the warmth of a love as deep and thick as a winter pelt. Whether or not such ambition was attainable was another matter.
Had she known it, ambition was also the subject of Simon's conversation with Abbot Ingulf.
'Indeed, I have seen strange and changing times,' the Abbot said, shifting his leg to try to ease the gout that was plaguing him. 'I was a clerk in the household of the Holy King Edward and it was there I first learned my trade. Got to know Normans too.' He bestowed Simon a wintry smile. 'It stood me in good stead because I learned that we are all the same in the eyes of God.'
'Indeed,' Simon said politely. Abbot Ingulf was garrulous and the evening was growing late. Although Simon had never needed a great deal of sleep, the length of the day was beginning to tell. He clenched his jaw to suppress a yawn.
'When King Edward died, I left the royal service,' Ingulf continued and refreshed his goblet, obviously prepared to settle into a long, enjoyable monologue. 'Harold Godwinsson had his own preferred clerks and I was still a young man with a young man's restlessness. It is true that I had travelled many roads with King Edward's court and seen more of England in my youth than most men see in a lifetime… but that only increased my wanderlust.' He took a swallow of wine and washed it round his mouth. 'Serving the King, there had been little time for God, so I packed my satchel, took up my staff, and went on a pilgrimage.'
Simon forgot to be bored and turned to the Abbot with a refreshed gleam in his eyes. 'Where did you go?'
'To the Holy City of Jerusalem,' Ingulf said with a ring of pride in his voice. 'And there are not many men who have done that in a lifetime either. Some say they will go, but by the time they are ready it is too late and their bodies are not strong enough to withstand the journey. Certainly I could not do it now. I doubt that my gouty leg would permit me as far as the Narrow Sea.' Ingulf leaned down to rub the affected limb.
Simon gazed at him. The spark of interest had rapidly become a flame and it licked at his core 'What was Jerusalem like?' he demanded and poured wine into his own cup, all notion of sleep thrust aside.
Ingulf smiled. 'Not paved with gold, as some will tell you, but golden in its own way, with the sun shining on the stones and gleaming upon the roof of the Holy Sepulchre. To walk in the dust where Christ walked is the most humbling and exalted experience a man can have. I have seen Gethsemane, and the place where Our Lord was entombed,'
Ingulf spoke on and Simon listened, rapt, as the Abbot told him of the great Byzantine cities with their cisterns and fountains, of lands perfumed with exotic spices and heat and dust beyond anything that Simon had experienced.
'Of course you would have to go yourself, to truly know what it is like,' Ingulf said in a voice that was growing creaky and hoarse. Two further cups of wine had disappeared down his gullet and he was starting to slur his words. 'And while you are still young enough to do so. The way is arduous and there are many dangers.'
'I intend to,' Simon replied fervently. 'Even as a child I relished setting my feet on different ground.'
The Abbot smiled sceptically. 'Mayhap you will, and mayhap not,' he said. 'I have known many men - and some women - swear to see Jerusalem when the fire is in their eyes, but it goes no further because it is easier to dream than to do. It was simple for me. I had no master, and I could not return to royal service. But others have harder shackles to break.' He lifted his gaze and swept it meaningfully around the hall. 'You would have much to leave behind, my lord.'
Simon nodded, and some of the brightness went from his eyes, but a glimmer remained. 'Indeed I would, and I know that the time is not ripe, but the seed is a fruit and it is still growing. I will get there.'
The Abbot nodded. He tilted his cup to his mouth, found it almost empty, and set it ponderously aside without refilling it. 'The drink does as much talking as the man,' he said. 'It is not always wise to pay heed to an old fool whose tongue has run away with him.'
'Not always,' Simon agreed, 'but is it not also said
In vino veritas
?'
'Ah, you know your Roman proverbs?' Ingulf smiled. 'Truth in wine. Perhaps after all you will succeed.' He levered himself to his feet, wincing as the gout gnawed at his toes. 'I'm afraid I have a pilgrimage to make of this moment - to the privy pit.'
When he had gone, Simon sat for a brief time alone. The Abbot's tales had stirred the old restlessness, which had been lying like sediment at the bottom of a deep pool Now it swirled through his blood with the wine, infusing him with desire.
It was late in the night, much closer to dawn than dusk, when everyone finally settled down for the night. Since Matilda and Simon had given up their chamber to the bride and groom, they had bedded down in the women's solar with several other guests.
'What were you and Ingulf talking about so deeply?' Matilda wanted to know as she curved her arm around Simon's body in the dark.
'Mmmm?' He turned slightly. 'His life before he was a monk. He used to be a royal clerk, and then he went on a pilgrimage.' Simon's voice was sleepy and deliberately indifferent. He knew that Matilda would not respond with enthusiasm to the notion of his becoming a pilgrim. She would likely see it as abandonment. Besides, he was aware that for the moment it was no more than a stirred-up dream. He folded her hand in his and pretended to settle into sleep. Within moments, the pretence had become reality.
Simon and Matilda presided over a somewhat subdued table the next morning. The bride and groom had yet to rise and only the hardiest souls had stumbled to the trestle to partake of bread, cheese and watered wine. Matilda was sleepy, but since she had not overindulged at the flagon was in a reasonable condition. Simon was rather green around the gills and she had given him an infusion of willow bark tisane to dull the worst of his headache.
'I should know better at my age,' groaned Ingulf, and gave Simon a pained look. 'Your wine is too strong and smooth, my lord. I am accustomed only to ale and water.'
Matilda did not believe that for one moment. An abbot of Ingulfs status was bound to keep a fine cellar - his guests would expect it of him.
'You were the one who sent it past your lips,' Simon retorted with a wry smile. 'I think you are annoyed at your own inability to resist temptation.'
The Abbot raised his hands, admitting culpability.
Matilda rose. 'I will go and brew a cauldron of headache remedy,' she said. 'Likely there will be many in need.' Especially Hugh of Chester she thought. By her reckoning he had sunk almost two gallons of their best wine.
She set off down the hall but was apprehended by a mud-splattered messenger. Her steward hastened to intercept the man, but she gestured him aside, signalling that she was content to deal with the matter herself.
'I am Matilda, Countess of Huntingdon and Northampton,' she said. 'Whom do you seek?'
The messenger bowed and Matilda's nostrils twitched, for he stank of smoke.
'Abbot Ingulf, my lady,' he said and showed his teeth in a grimace of distress. 'He is needed immediately at Crowland; there has been a terrible fire.'
'A fire?' Matilda pressed her hand to her throat and felt her pulse leap against her fingers. 'Dear sweet Christ… How much has been lost?'
'Many of the buildings my lady. The guesthouse, the dorter, the library…'
Matilda swallowed. 'What of the chapter house? What of my father's tomb?'