The Winter Mantle (51 page)

His gaze slipped from hers. 'There was some damage to the chapter house, but the tomb of Earl Waltheof is intact.'

Relief flooded through Matilda, adding to the shock and almost buckling her knees. Somehow she remained on her feet. It was the discipline of duty, so forcefully instilled in her by her mother, that carried her through the next moments. She brought the messenger to the dais; she sent servants to prepare Ingulfs mule and baggage. She murmured the right words, but it was all a facade. Behind the mask she was a little girl screaming hysterically as her father rode away.

'A rush dip was left unattended in the dorter when the brothers went to prayer at matins the day before yesterday,' the messenger said as a distressed Ingulf demanded information. 'It tipped among the floor rushes and caught alight, then set fire to the straw sleeping pallets. By the time the alarm was raised the place was ablaze and the flames had spread. We saved what books we could from the library, and we managed to stop the fire before it had done much damage to the chapter house.' Here the messenger darted a nervous look at Matilda, whose complexion was ashen. 'I say again, my lady, your father's tomb was in no way damaged.'

Matilda nodded and clenched her hands in her gown to stop them from trembling.
But it might have been
, she wanted to cry.

'It is indeed a shock and a great pity,' Simon said, and set his arm around his wife in support. 'We grieve with you.' He gave a practical shrug of his shoulders. 'But there has been no loss of life, and dwellings can be rebuilt. Indeed, it is an opportunity to do so on a finer scale. I agree that the loss of the books in the library is a tragedy, but many of them can be replaced, and you have monks among your brethren who are skilled illuminators. You could have lost so much more.'

Ingulf left soon after, armed with a promise of funds from the earldom to help rebuild the abbey. In a state of shock, Matilda saw that the wedding guests were attended to, suckled her son, conversed sensibly with all, and later was not to remember a single thing she said or did. Had there been no nuptials to supervise, she would have ridden back to Crowland with Ingulf in order to see for herself that her father's tomb was undamaged.

'He did not burn, and therefore you should not torture yourself,' Simon said, looking so sincere that she knew he was wearing his courtier's mask and humouring her.

Matilda bit her lip. 'It is with me all the time,' she said. 'I cannot help but wonder. You would do so too, were it your own flesh and blood.'

'Your father was as close to me as my own kin,' Simon said sombrely. 'My blood is mingled with his in our son. It is no use dwelling on what might have happened. You are building a castle of woe for yourself out of a single grain of sand. Ingulf says that he will have your father's bones translated to the church and buried with reverence beneath the altar. They will be safe from all harm there.' He took her arm. 'God has him in his care. You should lay your own burden down.'

She shook her head, for, although she understood what he was saying, the very authority of his reason made her want to rebel. She did not want to lay her burden down, because while she had it the connection to her father remained strong. She carried it out of love, she guarded it jealously, and the notion of relinquishing it was too frightening to contemplate.

Crowland Abbey, Spring 1093

You are sure you are strong enough for this ordeal?' Judith asked.

Matilda nodded and valiantly swallowed a retch. She had eaten a dish of mussels the previous day and it had severely disagreed with her. They had all wanted her to remain at her manor of Ryhall rather than making this journey to Crowland, but she had insisted. Her father's coffin was to be opened so that his bones might be washed in holy water and reinterred before the altar of the repaired monastery church of Crowland Abbey. 'I am all right,' she said. It wasn't true, but she was determined to do what she must.

Judith raised a sceptical eyebrow.

Matilda turned her head from her mother's shrewd gaze and stared at the landscape through which they rode. It was late spring, and the wetlands were beginning to dry out. Sheep grazed the higher ground of the reedy marshland and goats nibbled at the scrub and brambles. There was money to be made from wool. The weavers of Flanders paid good silver for the numerous fleeces that came out of these marshlands and was shipped on galleys from Boston to Ghent.

In front of her Simon was talking with animated pleasure to his brother-in-law. She thought that they were discussing hunting, for she had heard hawking terminology mentioned several times, then Ranulf said something about a girl called Sabina and Simon laughed and lowered his voice over the reply.

Feeling hot and sick, Matilda glowered resentfully at his spine.

'It is to be expected of men,' Judith said. 'Their ways are like children. Few of them ever grow up.' She spoke with a slight curl to her lip.

'Perhaps it is better to be a child than an adult,' Matilda murmured with an almost wistful glance at her son, who had fallen asleep on Sybille's shoulder. She would have carried him herself had she not felt so unwell.

Judith made an irritated sound to show what she thought of such reasoning.

Matilda eyed her mother. Judith had said nothing about her own feelings towards the opening of Waltheof's coffin. Perhaps she did not have any. Or perhaps the walls she had built around herself were too strong to be broached.

'Did you never miss him?' Matilda asked. 'Don't you ever feel guilty about the manner of his death?'

For a moment she thought that her mother was not going to answer, that she was going to retreat further behind her defences, but Judith sighed and drew the reins through her fingers. 'Of course I felt guilty about his death,' she said. 'And I mourned him too - because he was a child, and the death of a child always comes harder than that of an adult.' She turned slightly in the saddle to face Matilda. 'But he was the one who made his bed, no matter that others laid the covers. I come here out of duty, not to fall weeping over what has happened in the past.'

She dug her heels into her palfrey's flanks and rode on ahead, her back as straight as a rod, her hands competent on the reins.

'Has she been upsetting you again?' Jude joined her. Since there was only room to ride two abreast on the path, she had been hanging back.

Matilda gave her sister a wan smile. 'No,' she said. 'We were in need of a respite. We curdle in each other's company like milk and vinegar.'

Jude nervously stroked her mare's neck. 'How do you think it will be to look on our father's bones?'

The words sent a flash of queasy heat through Matilda's belly. She swallowed a retch. 'I do not know,' she whispered. Every time they came to Crowland, they would see Abbot Theodore's skull displayed with the deep bite of the sword cut in its cranium. The sight had seldom bothered her. She was accustomed to saints' bones and relics as an everyday part of her life, but Theodore's skull was two centuries old, was not of her flesh, and Theodore had not tossed her in the air, or sat her in his lap, or walked with her in a garden, his warm strong hand enclosing hers. To see those hands bereft of flesh, and the dark eye sockets… 'It has to be done, she said. And I have to see it done… but I will be glad when this day is over.'

'I too,' Jude said sombrely.

Matilda shivered. With no break of trees or hills between Crowland and the North Sea, the wind was frozen and punishing. There were kindly days in the fens, but this was not one of them.

The fire-damaged parts of Crowland Abbey had been demolished and rebuilt in timber as a temporary measure. Stone had been cut from the quarries at Barnack and brought to the site in preparation for some serious rebuilding, and a French mason had been employed to oversee the work. The church itself was intact, and it was here that Waltheof was to be laid to rest, but first his remains had to be washed and wrapped in a fresh shroud of purple silk, provided for the purpose by Simon, who had bought it from an Italian trader in London.

Matilda had been sick twice since entering the abbey precincts. Her stomach was still rolling and the ginger in wine that the infirmarian had given her to abate the nausea had had little effect. It was as much the tension that was affecting her now as the bad mussels. Gripping Simon's arm, she clenched her teeth and held herself rigid as the inner coffin was carried to a linen-covered table and set down with great care.

Simon surveyed her white knuckles and fixed expression with troubled eyes. 'Do you want to go outside?' he murmured.

Matilda shook her head. It was beyond her to open her mouth and speak. Cold sweat dewed her brow, and her vision swam in and out of focus. The voices of the monks, softly intoning in Latin, echoed off the walls. The infirmary had been rebuilt after the fire, and the resinous scent of new wood hung in the air. Matilda hardly dared to breathe, for even the tiniest movement upset her precarious stomach.

The wooden lid was carefully removed with the gentle levering of crowbars to reveal the inner wooden coffin. Fluid filled Matilda's mouth. She forced herself to look, although her eyes were dry and stinging. Her father was never going to ride through Northampton's gates because his soul was in heaven and what remained of his body was here…

Between them the monks carefully eased the lid from the coffin, and to Matilda it was like the occasions when she slid the wooden cover from the well in her garden. She still threw silver to the elf because it was a tradition ingrained, but if an elf really had popped out of the well she would have run screaming. Now she was hemmed around. Could not run, could not open her mouth to scream.

They had reburied him in the robes of a Benedictine monk, dark within the darkness of the coffin, strong cloth unrotted by the years, and knotted about the body by a girdle of rope. Within the confines of the deep cowl shrouding the skull there was a glimmer of rich copper-red. Fierce, vital, still gleaming with the life that its owner had left behind. Flesh upon brow ridges, bony dark sockets sealed with sunken lids. Not entirely a skull, but not full-fleshed either.

Matilda gulped and strove to inhale, but her chest was empty of breath. A sound of swarming bees filled her ears, and although she stretched her eyes as wide as she could there was still no light. She felt Simon's arm tightening around her like a vice, thought she heard a voice calling her through the buzzing, but it was too far away, too distant for her to respond, and the darkness was stronger.

She woke up in the guesthouse, the scent of lavender strong in her nostrils. Jude was pressing a cloth to her brow and Simon was chaffing her hands. Matilda stared at them, her focus blurring and clearing by turns.

'It's all right,' Jude murmured. 'You fainted away when they opened our father's tomb.'

Matilda heaved and Simon quickly thrust a bowl beneath her, but her retching was dry. Shudders tore through her body. Simon cast the bowl aside and drew her against him, holding her hard until the spasms eased.

Although she was exhausted, Matilda willed herself to sit up and look at him. 'I… have they washed the bones?' she gulped. Her mind filled with the image of the coffin's dusky interior, the gleam of hair, the hint of features sunken within the recess of the cowl.