Swallowing, Linnet turned away to fetch his belt. Bearing Robert had almost killed her, for she had not reached her full growth then and her hips had still been narrow. Giles had told the midwives to save the infant - he could always take another wife and what use was a bad breeder anyway? But she had survived and one of the midwives had advised her how to avoid quickening again too soon. It involved vinegar douches and small pieces of trimmed sponge or moss soaked in the same. Of late she had stopped using them in the hopes of conceiving again but thus far there had been no interruption to her monthly bleeds.
Giles donned his braies and tied the drawstring. ‘You think I enjoy ploughing a corpse?’ He flayed her with a look. ‘I might as well spread the legs of an effigy for all the response I get from you!’
She risked a single frightened glance at his lean, tense frame, then looked at the floor. When he touched her, she did indeed wish to be dead or turned to stone.
‘Mayhap you dream elsewhere,’ he said as he plunged into his shirt and tunic. ‘You must know that I was displeased with your boldness this afternoon.’
‘I’m sorry, my lord; I was only thinking of Robert’s welfare.’
‘Were you indeed? I saw the way de Gael looked at you after you spoke to him. A man of his ilk needs little encouragement.’
‘I swear I gave him none, my lord.’ Cold fear rippled up Linnet’s spine. She knew what he was capable of when riled. ‘On my soul I swear it.’
Giles snatched the belt out of her hands and she flinched. ‘On your soul?’ he enquired softly. ‘Shall we not say rather “on your hide”?’ He ran the learner through his fingers until they stopped against the dragon’s-head buckle.
‘On my hide, I swear it,’ Linnet said, looking at the intricate curlicues of English workmanship on the cold, solid bronze and knowing how much their impact hurt. ‘I swear it.’
Giles drew out the moment, letting her suffer. ‘I might have trusted you once,’ he said huskily and a shadow of pain tensed the corners of his eyes. ‘Then I discovered that any bitch in heat will run to be serviced by the nearest dog!’ He jerked the belt around his lean waist and latched the buckle. ‘If you give me cause to reprimand you again, you know the consequences.’
Linnet lowered her eyes and stared at the floor. She could see his legs, the right one thrusting belligerently forward, encased in soft red leather. ‘Yes, my lord,’ she whispered, feeling cold and sick.
He pivoted on his heel and headed to the door. ‘Hurry up and get dressed, you’ve a household to order. Make yourself useful for something at least!’ He flung out the door and she heard him descend the stairs, yelling at one of his squires to summon a boatman to row him downriver to Leicester’s house.
After a moment Linnet gathered herself sufficiently to take a comb from her coffer to tidy her hair. She did not want to summon her maid; she needed a moment of solitude to compose herself, to fix in position the calm facade she would present to her household. Hair smoothed, she picked up a small clay jar of marigold salve to anoint the mark on her throat.
It was not the first time that Giles had bitten her, nor the most painful, but as she broke the beeswax seal and took a daub of ointment on her fingertip, her eyes stung with tears. Jesu, how she hated being at his mercy, trapped like a fly in a web.
Vision blurring, she sat down on the strongbox, which stood beside Giles’s clothing chest. The studs on the iron reinforcing bands dug into the backs of her thighs, which were still tender from the grip of his fingers. Beneath the strongbox’s twin locks lay the coin from the sale of their entire wool clip and all the rents and toll monies from their villages. So did all the silver plate from the keep at Rushcliffe. The latter was part of her dowry and Giles had no right to bestow it upon Robert of Leicester for some dubious scheme in Normandy. Giles needed this coin to keep the moneylenders at bay. Promises did not put bread on the board and her husband had already taxed the villagers to the limit of their means. If there was a bad harvest this year, some of their people would starve for the cause of an adolescent youth with delusions of grandeur.
Giles was supposedly accompanying Leicester across the Narrow Sea to offer support to King Henry’s efforts to crush his rebellious sons, but Linnet suspected that treachery was intended. Giles disliked the controls that King Henry had imposed on baronial rights and would certainly not beggar himself to go to the King’s aid. To her husband, the prospect of an untried youth on the throne held endless possibilities, especially for the men who helped to place him there. It was a gamble, it was treason, and she had never seen Giles so excited - irritable and exhilarated at the same time. And it was she who bore the brunt of his mood swings.
Rising from the coffer, Linnet wiped away her tears on the heel of her hand. They were a release, nothing more. Giles was not softened by them and she would have dismissed them from her armoury long ago had she not discovered that others were less impervious to their effect.
She set her jaw and summoned Ella with a stony composure that did not falter even when the woman’s eyes flickered over the ugly, blood-filled bruise on her neck with knowing, unspoken pity.
‘You’ll be wanting warm water and a towel first,’ Ella said practically and went to fetch them.
Linnet lit a taper from the night candle and crossed the room to the small, portable screen at the end. Behind it, exhausted by the long, fraught journey, her son slept in his small truckle bed. Against the pillow, his hair stood up in waifish blond spikes. He was fine-boned and fragile, light as thistledown, and she loved him with a fierce and guilty desperation. Frail children so often died in infancy and she would find herself watching him intently, waiting for the first cough or sneeze or sign of fever to have him swaddled up and dosed with all manner of nostrums. And if he did live to adulthood, what kind of man would he make? Never such a one as his father, she vowed, although God alone knew the ways in which he would be twisted when he left the safety of her skirts for the masculine world beyond the bower.
‘Never,’ she vowed, hand cupped around the candle flame, protecting her child from the hot drip of the wax. If only it were as easy to protect him from his future.
4
Richard de Luci, chief custodian of the realm during King Henry’s absence across the Narrow Sea, reclined in his pelt-spread chair, goblet resting comfortably on the neat curve of his belly, and regarded his guest. ‘What do you think about the latest news from Normandy?’
William de Rocher, nicknamed Ironheart, stroked his chin. In his youth his hawkish features had been striking but advancing age and the effects of a life hard-lived had imbued his visage with an unsettling cadaverous quality.
‘You mean about Queen Eleanor being caught defecting to Paris disguised as a man, to join her sons in rebellion? Nothing would surprise me about that wanton.’ He cast a dark look at his own wife. Dumpy and plain, she sat like a lump of proving dough beside de Luci’s elegant wife. At least Agnes knew her place, and if she ever approached the borderline of his tolerance, a bellow and a raised fist sent her scuttling back to her corner with downcast eyes and a trembling mouth. But some women, brought up without benefit of discipline, were wont to snarl and bite the hand that fed them. ‘I trust she’s well under lock and key now?’
‘Indeed so, but it doesn’t make the rebellion any less dangerous.’
Ironheart grunted and considered de Luci from beneath untidy silver brows. ‘I hear the Earl of Leicester has approached you for permission to cross to Normandy and offer his support to the king. Rumour has it, too, that he has amassed no small amount of treasure to fund his expedition.’
De Luci stared at him, then laughed and shook his head. ‘I swear to God, William, you know more than I do half the time!’
‘I listen at the right keyholes,’ Ironheart replied with a dour grin. ‘Besides, Leicester’s not exactly been making a secret of the fact, has he?’
‘You’ve never approved of Robert of Leicester, have you?’
The grin faded. ‘His father was as solid as granite; you could trust him with your life, but I wouldn’t trust his heir further than I could hurl a fistful of fluff. And, before you ask, I’ve no evidence to prove him unworthy. It’s a feeling inside here, a soldier’s gut.’ He struck the area between heart and belt.
‘Then it’s not jealousy because your sons spend more time in his company than they do in yours?’
Ironheart looked insulted. ‘Why should I be jealous?’ he scoffed. ‘I am their father, he is just a turd clad in cloth of gold. Let them have their flirtation. Once they’ve unwrapped Earl Robert’s bindings, they’ll back away.’
De Luci pursed his lips, not so sure. ‘I’m willing to give Leicester a chance,’ he said and, with a rueful smile, patted his own paunch. ‘A diplomat’s gut, William.’
Ironheart snorted rudely and held out his wine cup to be refilled. ‘I know which I’d rather trust.’
De Luci chose to ignore the remark and changed the direction of the conversation. ‘Did you know I’d commissioned Joscelin for the rest of the summer?’
‘No, but I thought you might, the situation being what it is.’
‘If the opportunity arises, I’d like to give him more responsibility - perhaps a seneschal’s post. He’s proven his abilities in my service time and again this last year and a half.’
William stared down at his war-scarred hands. ‘I forget how old the boy is,’ he said, ‘and how old I am growing.’ Then he gave a laugh that held more snarl than amusement. ‘He’ll make you a good seneschal if you give him the chance - one of the best.’
An atmosphere, rather than anything said, caused de Luci to glance at the women. Behind her doughy impassivity, he could tell that Agnes de Rocher was furious. Her fists were clenched and there were hectic red blotches on her throat and face. But then, he and William had been discussing Joscelin’s advancement, which was tantamount in Agnes’ presence to drawing a sword.
‘Rohese, why don’t you take Agnes above and show her those bolts of silk that arrived yesterday from Italy,’ he said to his wife, hoping to rectify the lapse of his diplomat’s gut.
‘By your leave, my lord,’ murmured Rohese de Luci, giving him a look compounded of irritation and sympathy as she signalled for the finger bowl.
De Luci returned her look with one of apologetic gratitude and knew that he would now have to purchase the bolt of peacock-coloured damask she had been angling after.
As the women curtseyed and left the hall, William’s breath eased out on a long sigh of relief. ‘When Martin enters your household next year to be a squire, I’m going to buy her a pension in a nunnery,’ he said, eyes upon his wife’s disappearing rump.
De Luci quirked an eyebrow. ‘Does Agnes know?’
‘Not yet.’ Ironheart shrugged. ‘I can’t see her objecting. We live separate lives most of the time as it is.’
De Luci said nothing, although he gave his friend a wry glance. If Agnes de Rocher was scarcely the ideal wife, William de Rocher was certainly not the perfect husband. De Luci had been a groomsman at their wedding almost thirty years ago and had watched them labour under the yoke, mismatched and tugging in opposite directions. And after Joscelin’s mother had left her mark on their lives, any chance of marital harmony had been utterly destroyed.
Ironheart took a long swallow of his wine. ‘To future freedom,’ he toasted. ‘Let’s talk of other matters.’
Ironheart’s squire handed Agnes from her litter and set her down in the courtyard at the rear of the house. William dismounted from his palfrey. The perfume of rain-wet grass and leaves drifted from the orchards beyond the stables and warred with the smell of the saturated dung and straw underfoot. At the end of the garden the Thames glinted in the last green glow of twilight. A groom and his apprentice emerged from the depths of the stables, the latter bearing a candle-lantern on a pole. By its light, William saw that the stalls were crowded with horseflesh, little of it his own.
Bestowing his mount’s reins upon the lad, he stooped under the lintel and, hands on hips, regarded the additions. A handsome liver-chestnut with distinctive white markings swung its head from the manger and regarded him with a liquid, intelligent eye. He knew Whitesocks well, for he had bred him from his own stud herd and gifted him to Joscelin four years ago as a leggy, untrained colt.
Agnes sniffed furiously. ‘How long are these animals going to eat us out of house and home?’ she demanded, goaded by resentment to a boldness that she would not usually have dared.
‘It will only be for a couple of days. He’ll be stabling them at the Crown’s expense after that,’ William answered in a preoccupied voice.
The mildness of his response encouraged Agnes to press harder. ‘You know that Ralf and Joscelin hate the sight of each other. This is just asking for a confrontation. ’
‘And I am master in this house. There will be no trouble.’ He stroked the satin liver-chestnut hide. ‘Besides, Ralf ’s not here. He’s out wasting his substance in some den of fools.’
Agnes glared at her husband’s long, straight spine and mane of unkempt, badger-grey hair. As a bride of sixteen, she had loved him so hard that even to look at him had made her queasy with joy. And in those first months he had been kind enough for her to imagine that he at least returned a measure of her affection. She had borne him four daughters in as many years and became pregnant again within three months of Adele’s birth. Exhausted, sick and miserable, she had watched William ride away to war and every day she had prayed for him, callousing her knees on the cold chapel floor.
Her pleas to God had been answered after a fashion, for three months later he had returned unscathed, bringing with him a contingent of Breton mercenaries to garrison their castle. He had also brought a woman, the sister of one of the mercenaries. The glow of early pregnancy had been upon her, making her shine like a candle among common rush dips. She had been dark-haired, green-eyed and regal of bearing, and she had given William his first son to replace Agnes’s own stillborn baby boy. It was then, seeing the blaze of joy, triumph and naked love in William’s eyes, that Agnes had begun to learn hatred.