The Winter Mantle (17 page)

Two gossiping women, walking down the track towards the lodge, carried rushwork baskets laden with freshly picked mushrooms and fungi. Simon eyed the bounty as they drew level. He was very fond of the mushroom pasties that William's cook made when the ingredients were available. Served with the best bread and tart blackberry sauce, there was no finer dish in the world.

Remembering the English that Waltheof had taught him, he greeted the women pleasantly in their own language.

They looked at him, startled, muttered a response, and heads lowered, wimples drawn across their faces, hurried past.

Simon was wounded, but not surprised at the rebuff. The English had acknowledged William as their king, but grudgingly - because they were forced to do so. They yielded deference with hatred in their eyes and it was not going to change for the sake of a single greeting.

He turned his pony to follow the women. Behind him, hooves thundered on the track and a messenger hurtled towards the lodge on a sweat-foamed courser. The man bellowed at the women to get out of his way and they leaped for their lives with screams of shock. A basket of mushrooms went flying and scattered the efforts of one woman's toil far and wide. She shook her fist at the horseman's dust and cursed him. Then her glittering eyes fixed on Simon and her voice fell to a low mutter. There was nothing Simon could do. If he dismounted to help gather the scattered mushrooms his lameness would be a hindrance and he would be vulnerable to attack. Besides, the messenger had been riding so swiftly that his news was clearly urgent and Simon wanted to know what it was.

Abruptly he reined his pony about and galloped in the messenger's wake. He could almost feel the women's glares burning his back and knew that they were calling him a Norman whoreson.

The messenger had dismounted outside the hunting lodge and was on his knees before William. Simon arrived in time to see the King's brows draw together and his colour begin to darken in response to what was being said. In the three years since Simon had come to court he had never seen William in a rage. Angry on occasion, it was true, but always a cold anger, held down with iron control. William was scorching now, though, his complexion almost purple.

'It is true, sire,' the messenger panted, his head bowed and sweat dripping from his forelock. 'The North has risen against your rule. The Danes have anchored in the Humber and marched upon York. Lord Malet begs that you come with all haste.' He coughed and someone stepped forward with a cup of the wine the hunters had been drinking. The messenger took several grateful gulps.

'All the North?' William repeated. His own voice was dry and husky, but when he too was offered wine he thrust it aside.

'Maersweyn, Gospatric, Edgar Atheling,' the messenger said, 'and Waltheof of Huntingdon. It was he who led them into York, and he and his men who caused the most damage. North of the Humber there are naught but English and Danes.'

Simon's stomach plummeted. He had been hoping to visit Waltheof in his earldom. He thought that Waltheof liked the Normans, that he was prepared to be part of their rule… but perhaps he too was like those women with their mushrooms, serving because he was forced and hating every moment.

William's eyes had narrowed at the mention of Waltheof's name. 'Splendour of God!' he rasped. 'Once and tor ail I will show the English who is their king, and I will write the lesson so large and in so much suffering that no one will be in any doubt!'

The hunt was abandoned; the hounds were returned to the kennels but the horses remained saddled. The messenger was ordered to change his mount, refresh himself and be prepared to take to the road again with instructions to William's commanders.

Simon helped to load baggage wains with William's effects, which were to follow in the wake of the rapid cavalry advance. No concessions were made to Simon's disability and he fetched and carried with the rest of them. Stools, hangings, caskets, lamps and candle prickets, trestle legs and boards, spare cups and flagons, a set of gaming counters and a tafel board. Then he aided the grooms harness the cobs to pull the wains and the pack ponies to carry more immediate supplies such as food and bedding and the royal tent. His leg ached ferociously, but he forced himself through the pain. If he stopped, he would have to think. Toiling like a demon helped to keep his anger and distress at bay.

As he struggled to load a sack of oats onto a pony's back, his arms burning with effort and his legs in danger of collapse, the load was taken from him by his father, who heaved it the rest of the way across the pack saddle.

'Ants work together,' said Richard de Rules, 'so why should you think you can do it all on your own?'

'I can manage,' Simon said defensively, but his legs had begun to tremble, giving the lie to his words.

'So can we all, but a little help makes things easier. I've been watching you from a distance and you've been working like a slave with a whip at your back.' From his shoulder he unslung a small leather costrel and handed it to his son.

Simon pulled out the stopper and drank. It was the King's best wine, potent and smooth. Usually the nearest he got to it was pouring it into goblets when he was on duty in the private chamber. The warmth of the drink burned into his stomach and fortified his limbs.

'What's wrong?' De Rules placed a perceptive hand on his son's taut shoulders.

Simon shook his head. 'Nothing.'

His father's gaze remained steady. 'It's Earl Waltheof, isn't it?'

Simon swallowed and felt his eyes begin to burn. He turned within the shelter of his father's embrace and fiddled with a buckle on the pack pony's bridle. 'I thought that when Lord William refused him Lady Judith he would turn against us, but he didn't he just went and stayed on his lands. So then I began to think everything was all right… and that I could go and visit him…"

De Rules sighed. 'Perhaps everything would have been all right if the Danes had not arrived,' he said. 'Even if the King had given Lady Judith to Waltheof, I do not know that he would have remained loyal. He is half Dane after all, and his father is buried in the city of York. His heart must surely lie in that direction.'

Simon shook his head. 'He is our enemy now.'

'Yes,' said his father gently. 'I am afraid that he is.'

It was the shortest day of the year, and the darkest. Lowering clouds and heavy drizzle had drawn a dark curtain across the land, so that the space between dawn and dusk was little more than twilight.

In the antechamber of the Queen's apartments in Winchester, Judith directed a maidservant to lay more charcoal on the brazier. Rain spattered against the shutters like tiny-stones. Over the hills of the North Country it would be falling as snow, she thought. They heard sporadic reports of the hard-fought skirmishes between her uncle's troops and the English and Danish rebels. Bitter, bloody, no quarter given. Reports said that all the land north of a town called Stafford was now a smoking, ravaged waste, that wherever her uncle went fire and sword were his terrible companions. There were rumours about Waltheof too. How he had slaughtered a hundred Normans single-handedly at York in a battle frenzy the equal of any berserker in a Norse saga. She had known that he had grudges to settle, but the depth and wildness of his rage had frightened her. Perhaps it was as well that she was not to be his wife.

From behind the closed door of the main chamber, Judith heard her mother give another low moan. The soothing voice of the midwife followed, with the sound of water splashing from pitcher to bowl.

'Surely the labour should not take as long as this.' Her sister
Adela moved from the window embrasure where she had been standing, supposedly spinning fleece, although there were scarcely two yards of thread wound onto the drop spindle from the distaff stuffed through her belt. 'Queen Matilda only took from matins to prime to birth Prince Henry, but Mama's been labouring twice as long as that.'

Judith shrugged. 'I know not,' she said, her tone short because she was worried. The infant her mother was struggling to birth had been conceived during the coronation festivities, the result of deliberate strategy. Eudo said that he was entitled to try to beget an heir. Adelaide, a stickler for duty, had been forced to agree, and in her forty-first year, with daughters old enough for marriage, had found herself with child again. Throughout the pregnancy she had been ill. Judith and Adela had done as much fetching and carrying as the maids, massaging their mother's swollen legs and feeding her slivers of expensive imported ginger to aid her querulous digestion.

"What if she dies?' Adela's lower lip quivered.

Judith rubbed her hands together. In spite of the fresh building of charcoal, the sealed shutters and the two gowns she wore over her undershift, she was cold. 'She won't die,' she said tersely. 'The midwives would have sent for the priest by now if that was the case, and Sybille would have been out to us. Don't you dare start snivelling!'

'I'm not.' Adela gave a huge sniff and folded her arms beneath her breasts in a defensive gesture.

Judith folded her arms too, keeping herself to herself, even though she could tell that Adela wanted the comfort of a hug.

A fresh burst of rain peppered against the shutters and the wind rattled the catch so hard that for a moment it seemed as if the wild afternoon would burst into the room. The wind died, and in the lull that followed a baby's wail pierced the heavy wooden door between the mam chamber and anteroom. Thin as a reed, sharp as an awl.

The girls stared towards the sound, transfixed. Judith's stomach churned. The door flung open and Sybille came out to them, her face flushed as if she had been labouring too and her sleeves pushed back up her wrists. 'You have a brother,' she declared with a half-moon grin. 'A fine boy.' She stood aside so they could enter the birthing chamber.

Adelaide was propped against a pile of bolsters in the great bed. Her dark brown hair, usually secured in two tight braids, was loose around her shoulders, since to have any bindings or knots in the birthing chamber might have impeded the delivery. A statue of Saint Margaret, patron saint of women in labour, stood in a niche, two candles burning either side of her image. Swaddled in Adelaide's arms was a small, pucker-faced bundle with a quiff of golden hair.

Adelaide looked up at her daughters. There were bruised smudges beneath her eyes and her lips were bloody where she had bitten them in her attempt not to give vent to her pain. But beneath the suffering there was glittering triumph and a love that was as fierce as fire, a love that had never kindled for the labour of bearing female children. Seeing that look, Judith was filled with a huge and jealous resentment. It took every ounce of her determination to approach the bed and look at the newborn intruder.

How is he to be named?' she asked.

'Stephen - it is one favoured by Eudo's line,' Adelaide said. 'Let the best wine kegs be broached and let everyone drink a cup to honour his birth. I trust you to see to it.' Her gaze swept briefly over Judith then dropped again to the new treasure of her son.

Adela leaned over her baby half-brother and extended a forefinger so that he curled his minute hand around it. 'He's beautiful,' she said, her expression utterly besotted.