The Winter Mantle (69 page)

Duty, that word again. Matilda shrank from it. Was she more than a duty to Simon? 'And you bide with Lord Hugh out of love?' she scoffed.

Alaise gave a ripe snort of laughter. 'Oh aye,' she said forthrightly, 'I'm fond of the old fool, it is true, and he knows his way around the bedsheets for all his size, but I'd not be as fond if it weren't for this and this.' She plucked the rich red wool of her gown, and touched the gold brooch pinned high at her shoulder. 'We keep each other satisfied.'

Was that why she was looking at a baby and not at a mother and child? Matilda wondered. Was it lack of satisfaction that had driven Simon and his mistress apart?

The only way was to find out. 'Here,' she said to Alaise, and gave her a silver coin from the purse on her belt. 'Add this to your collection.'

Will you take wine, Countess? You must be thirsty after your journey.' The Abbess lifted a handsome silver flagon.

Matilda did not particularly want to drink wine with the Abbess, but she knew that the courtesies had to be observed before the meat of the matter could be discussed. 'Thank you,' she nodded. 'It is too early for the dust of the road to lodge in my throat, but I have travelled far.'

The Abbess poured the dark red wine into two exquisite goblets of carved rock crystal with silver bases. A wealthy convent, Evreux, not a place to take in common waifs and strays. But noble mistresses, perhaps.

Matilda took the solid weight of the goblet into her hands with a murmur. She sipped the wine and proclaimed agreeably on its excellence. They discussed the state of the roads and the dangers for travellers, and spoke of the turning season. Then the silence fell and the moment came. Matilda set her cup down on the trestle table at the side of her chair. 'You must have an inkling why I am here,' she said.

'The subject, perhaps, if not the reason.' The Abbess inclined her head. 'Indeed, Countess, when your husband visited us he did not mention that you were here in Normandy.'

'That is because he does not know.'

The Abbess' eyes widened briefly before she lowered them to contain and conceal her surprise. Her face remained smooth, expressionless. It was a skill of nuns, Matilda thought, and wondered if Simon's leman would have it.

'I intend to discuss the matter with him as soon as he returns from his duties in the field,' she said.

'I see,' the Abbess murmured.

Matilda had the uncomfortable notion that the woman did see - and all too well. 'I need to speak with the child's mother,' she said.

The Abbess started to shake her head.

'I will remain here until I do,' Matilda said determinedly. 'It goes without saying that I am prepared to be a generous benefactor for your support in this matter.' She lifted the travelling satchel she had brought with her onto the table and withdrew a fat leather pouch of silver coins.

The Abbess' nostrils flared. 'You need not resort to bribery, Countess,' she said coldly. 'Even were I to take it, I should tell you that Sister Sabina paid her dower in gold.' She rose to her feet. 'I will ask her if she wants to see you, but if she refuses I will not force her.'

Matilda wanted to withdraw the coin and crawl under a stone, but it was too late for either to be of much use. 'Then give this money to the needy,' she said. As alms without condition.'

The Abbess took the bag of coins and carried it to an aumbry set in the wall. She unlocked the triangular door using a key at her belt and placed the coins within the small cupboard. 'I will go and see if Sister Sabina will come to you,' she murmured. 'There is more wine in the flagon if you wish it.'

She left in a soft rustle of dark wool skirts. Matilda rose and wandered around the room. The walls, for all their limewashed spaciousness, felt as if they were pressing in upon her. Taking deep breaths, she went to the open shutters and looked out on a vista of trees, newly clothed in spring greenery. Sabina. Until the Abbess had spoken, Matilda had not known her name. It was of the nobility, or the merchant classes. And she had paid her dower to Christ in gold - her own, or Simon's? Throughout the journey from Gisors to Evreux, she had been pondering what to say, what to ask. How much could she bear to know? How much would she rather abjure? She had no answers, just more questions and uncertainty.

Behind her, the door quietly opened. She was aware of a cold draught on her spine, but she did not immediately look around. One more deep breath. One more moment to calm the thundering of her heart. Slowly, slowly she turned.

A young woman stood just over the threshold. Her dark gown was tidy, her rope girdle was neatly tied, and the knotted ends hung at precisely the same level. A string of polished amber prayer beads was looped through her belt, ending on a carved wooden cross. Her wimple framed a pale, oval face with delicate features and arresting, deep grey eyes with soot-black lashes. There were fine lines at her eye corners and the hint of others beginning between nose and mouth. Matilda had been prepared to face a simpering younger woman, all plump curves, and was thrown to discover that this Sabina was perhaps much closer to Simon's age than her own.

There was a tense moment that seemed to last for ever, stretching and stretching like a strand of raw fleece spun on the distaff, twirling, pulling out, preparing to snap.

'I wasn't going to come.' Sabina was the first to speak, her voice clear and steady, breaking the tension before it broke the thread. 'But then I thought that if you had come so far it would be discourteous and cowardly to refuse this interview… and in truth I was curious to see you.'

Her manner was stately and dignified. She neither curtseyed to Matilda nor yielded deference, but she was not insolent. Just supremely aware of her own worth.

'Curious?' Matilda smiled icily. She could feel all her Norman blood gathering and welling up in her, willing her to play the bitch. Her mother, her grandmother, Robert, Duke of Normandy, whom some had called Robert the Devil, and all held down hard by the generosity and strength that had been her father's mainstay and his failing. 'Well, perhaps no more curious than I have been to see you.'

'He told you about me then?'

Her composure was not as firm as it first appeared. Matilda saw the way the crucifix on her bosom shivered to the rapid beating of her heart.

'He told me nothing, nor does he know I am here. But your son and his lies in a basket in Gisors and I am expected to take him into my household.' A coal of anger burned in her voice. 'I came to see what manner of woman you were - pious nun, used innocent, or why lorn whore.'

Sabina's eyes flashed and Matilda saw that she had drawn blood.

'I am no whore!' she said proudly. 'I have given myself to no man but my husband, God rest his soul…"

'And mine!' Matilda bit out.

Sabina gave her a look, which said she thought that Matilda was being unfair. And yours, my lady,' she concurred, 'but not for payment.'

'Then for what — love?' The word emerged raw with pain.

Sabina winced. 'By your mercy I would ask a cup of wine,' she said.

'Perhaps I do not feel merciful,' Matilda said coldly, but negated her words by stepping aside and gesturing to the trestle.

Sabina lifted the flagon and filled the rock crystal cup that the Abbess had been using. Then she took a long drink and Matilda saw that her hands were shaking. Compassion slipped past her guard, despite her determination to be ruthless.

'I knew Simon many years ago in the time of Rufus' father,' Sabina said as she lowered the cup. 'I was the daughter of one of the King's falconers and Simon was a royal squire. We were not lovers then, but we played at love for a summer.' She fixed her gaze firmly on Matilda. 'I came to my husband a maid, and never looked at another man for all the time we were wed.'

'Go on,' said Matilda harshly, refusing to give quarter.

Sabina bit her lip. 'Saer died on crusade — he drowned when our ship overturned in Brindisi harbour. I was witless with grief. Simon took me into his camp.'

'As a laundress,' Matilda said with a sarcastic nod.

A pink flush stained Sabina's cheeks. 'And nothing more, my lady,' she said in a voice that could have sharpened a knife. 'Not until he took sick of the evil humours in his leg and almost died. They fetched the priest to him twice.' She swallowed hard and her composure slipped another degree. 'I had lost my husband and my children. Should I have let the love of my youth die too? I fought for him tooth and nail. It was a bloody battle, but I won.' For a moment the memory of the triumph blazed out of her eyes, but as it faded she dropped her gaze and took another swallow of wine. 'Once he regained enough strength to appreciate his life, we celebrated our survival, and at the time it did not seem wrong. Home was so far away that it had almost no meaning. It was as if we were cast adrift. It was lust, I admit, but it was more than lust too.'

'And the child?'

Tears suddenly welled in Sabina's eyes. 'I had not reckoned on conceiving,' she said. 'But then I did ask God for one - it was the reason Saer and I went on crusade.'

'And yet you gave him up.'

'I had decided to take holy vows before I knew I was with child. I cannot keep him here for then he would be raised to become a monk. I wanted him to have more choice than that… and I thought it was fair that he should know his father and that his father should know him.'

Matilda considered Sabina through narrowed lids. 'But why settle for a nunnery?' she asked. 'Did you not want to remain as Simon's mistress? You could have kept your child then.'

The tears overflowed and spilled down Sabina's cheeks. 'Oh, I thought about it, my lady,' she said. 'But where would have been the peace in that? I would have wanted the whole, not the half - and it must be the same for you. It might have been different if Simon did not love you - but he does, deeply. I cannot compete with that.'

Matilda's brows rose. 'He has a strange way of showing it,'

she said. Her stomach churned. How did this woman know that Simon loved her when she did not?

A glimmer of impatience flickered in the tear-wet eyes. 'I make no excuses for either of us,' she said, 'save to say that given different circumstances it would never have happened. I know that he did not look at other women on our journey. There were brothels aplenty along the way and the only time he visited one was to drag Turstan out by the ears.' She sniffed and blotted her eyes on her sleeve. 'He bought you the bulbs of the milkflower in the markets of Constantinople and he thought of you constantly. Are you going to crucify him for one frail slip?'

Matilda felt a burning begin behind her own eyes. She would not weep, she told herself furiously. 'I needed to know it was one frail slip,' she said, managing to keep her voice steady by keeping it hard. 'I needed to know why you chose the convent and gave up your child.'

Sabina nodded stiffly. 'I would have wanted to know the same,' she said.

Again a silence fell between the women, Matilda studying the smooth dignified features of the woman who had chosen the convent above the castle, and Sabina considering Matilda's statuesque Viking beauty and knowing that her choice was right.