Ailith turned round, intending in her own turn to apologise, and saw to her horror that two rough-looking men from a nearby rag-and-bone booth had approached Felice and were haranguing her. Obviously they had both heard enough of the argument to deduce that the slim, dark-eyed woman was Norman.
'Why don't you go home?' One of them pushed Felice's shoulder with the heel of his hand so that she staggered and almost fell. 'We don't want Normans on English soil, not unless they're sewn up in shrouds.'
Felice's warm complexion was as sallow as vellum. She clutched her cloak to her throat and licked her lips. 'Let me go about my business,' she said unsteadily. 'You have no right to block my path.'
'No right, hah! Do you hear that, Edwin! The Norman bitch says we have no right!' The trader looked at his fellow in mock-astonishment. 'There's no end to their insolence, is there? What do you reckon we should do with her?'
The other man leered at Felice and tugged his earlobe. 'By rights we ought to take her down to the docks and throw her off English soil,' he said, 'but I reckon as she ought to be given a message to take back to the Norman Duke.' Advancing on her, he seized her roughly round the waist and tried to kiss her. Felice struggled, jerking her head from side to side, her eyes wide with terror and revulsion.
'Leave her alone!' Ailith waded in. 'Do you truly think Harold Godwinson would be proud to call you supporters of his cause?'
'Know him personally, do you?' enquired the first trader, looking her insultingly up and down.
'Yes, my husband is commissioned to him,' Ailith answered coldly. Inside she was seething with terror, but she faced down the traders with an outward display of calm. 'And the Godwinson family are acquainted with the husband of this lady you have laid hands upon.' She was conscious that a crowd was gathering to watch the spectacle, and knew that if sides were taken, she and Felice would fare badly. 'Let her be.' Reaching out, she plucked Felice away from the trader. His eyes narrowed; his whole face was pinched and puckered with anger, but she had sown enough doubt to make him hesitate.
'Quickly!' Ailith drew Felice away towards the broader thoroughfares of Chepeside. 'They may yet change their minds.' Even as she spoke, a cabbage struck Felice in the back, causing her to stagger against Ailith with a frightened cry.
'Norman whore!' came the bellow. 'Norman bitch, go home!' A clod of filth from the gutter followed the cabbage, flattening in a starburst of hostility upon Felice's lovely soft cloak, spattering her wimple and cheek.
Felice uttered one short scream of terror, then bit it off behind compressed lips.
'Hurry!' Ailith drew her urgently onwards. 'They won't start a riot among the mercers' booths.'
Hampered by their skirts, the women ran, Ailith dragging the daintier Felice with ungentle haste. She did not stop until they reached the safety of the cloth sellers' quarter, where many of the stalls were owned by Flemings who had certain alliances with Normandy. Duke William's own wife Matilda was Flemish. Surrounded by opulent bolts of richly dyed wool, linen and silk, listening to the foreign accents conducting their mundane business, Ailith felt secure enough to pause for breath, Felice clinging to her side like a wilting flower to a rock.
A mercer who knew Ailith gave them the shelter of his booth and offered to lend them his senior apprentice to see them home.
'It isn't safe to go about the streets unescorted these days,' he advised Felice as he sat her upon a stool inside the house that adjoined the shop, and gave her a small wooden cup of sweet, strong mead. 'Best thing to do if you are Norman is go home until the trouble is over one way or another.' He had a kindly face and was genuinely concerned, but there was a hint of irritation in his tone that let Ailith and Felice know that he thought them out of their wits for venturing abroad in the first instant.
'We did not realise that the ill-feeling was so strong,' Ailith said in a small voice. She felt cold and shaky now that the danger was past. 'They just pounced on us out of nowhere.' She turned to Felice, whose lower lip was chattering against the rim of the mead cup. 'I did not mean those words I said; I'm sorry they brought that mob down on us.'
Felice shook her head. Her complexion was the unhealthy hue of raw dough. 'My fault too,' she whispered, and began to cry. 'I wish Aubert was here.'
In the months she had known Felice, Ailith had come to admire the Norman woman and feel more than a little envious of her sylph-like figure, her graceful bearing and poise. This bright April morning, however, Ailith realised what a slim facade her friend's sophistication was. Her own plain, robust strength of character was a far better protection against the slights of the world.
It became obvious to Ailith that whether they had protection or not, Felice was incapable of walking home. The merchant, with an eye to future profit, lent them his pack pony. Perched on its back, Felice clung miserably to the rope bridle as the mercer's apprentice guided them through London's streets towards the suburbs beyond the old Roman wall.
'Ailith, I don't feel well,' Felice whimpered as the pony clopped up the dirt track. 'My stomach…" She clutched at her belly, her face screwed up in pain.
Dear Jesu, she's miscarrying, Ailith thought with a rush of panic that did not show on her face. 'A moment longer and we'll be home —just round this corner.'
Felice swayed on the pony's back, her eyelids fluttering.
'If you fall off you will kill yourself and the child for a certainty!' Ailith snapped. 'You must hold on!' She pinched Felice's thigh as hard as she could.
Felice gasped. Her fingers clutched convulsively at the reins.
Ailith grabbed the pony's rein from the apprentice. 'Here,' she said with authority. 'I'll lead the beast, you catch her if she slips.'
They rounded the corner and in the curve of the next bend, Ailith greeted the sight of the thatches of home with a thankful prayer. Her initial relief died when she saw that several horses were tied up outside the forge. The harness and trappings were expensive and in the next moment she recognised Aldred's sturdy brown cob and Lyulph's roan gelding. An extremely handsome iron-grey stallion was drinking from the rain butt against the forge wall, and a mail-clad huscarl was patting his neck. Goldwin emerged from the forge, in conversation with a broad, fair-haired man who dwarfed him. Links of rivet-mail glistened on the man's arms and torso. Beneath the mail and the quilted coat he wore under it, a tunic of gold-embroidered scarlet dazzled Ailith's eyes. He was swinging his arms to test the fit of the mail.
'God and all his angels, it is the King!' Her hand went to her mouth.
Goldwin looked up in mid-comment and she saw him lose the thread of the conversation as his eyes met hers. Making an apology to Harold, he started towards her. Felice began to slip from the pony. The apprentice managed to catch her after a fashion and lowered her to the moist grass at the verge of the muddy track. Ailith knelt at her side, feeling sick with fright.
'Ailith, what in Jesu's name has happened?' Goldwin demanded. There was a breathless quality of fear to his voice and because of it, an underlying roughness of anger.
'We were attacked by some ruffians in Chepeside. Oh Goldwin, I think she is miscarrying!' Ailith's voice broke. Her chin puckered as she fought not to cry. 'Help me take her into the house so that she can lie down… hurry!' she added as he stared at her blankly. 'Do you want her to die out here on the road?'
'Do as your wife says, man.'
Ailith looked up at Harold Godwinson and saw a lion personified. His eyes were the same tawny colour as his hair, which fell in a heavy mane to his collarbones. A tore of twisted gold wire gleamed at his throat, and beneath it, thrusting out of the embroidered opening of his tunic, were wiry glints of body hair.
When Goldwin did not move, still rooted to the ground by shock, Harold himself lifted the limp young woman in his arms and turned towards the house. Ailith gained her feet. There were two cold, muddy patches on her gown where she had been kneeling. 'It's all my fault,' she said shakily to Goldwin. 'We had a quarrel in the street — over nothing, but her Norman accent
was recognised!'
'I knew something like this was bound to happen,' Goldwin growled. 'From now on you can send the maids for whatever you need. And it might be a good idea to stay away from Felice altogether until this trouble has passed.'
Ailith glared at him. 'Felice is innocent, alone, and in need of help. I never thought that you were the kind of man to be nought but a fair-weather friend.' Turning her back on him, she followed the King into her house.
A bracken mattress had been pulled out of a recess and Felice lay on it before the fire. She stirred, licked her lips, and murmured several rapid words.
'She's Norman!' The harsh condemnation was snarled by Ailith's brother Aldred who had been helping himself to a pot of soup from the hearth cauldron. His blue gaze flew accusingly to his sister. 'Small wonder that you were attacked in the street!'
'She has done nothing wrong!' Ailith retorted with equal heat. 'Yes, she's a Norman, but can you see her coming at you with a shield and sword? What kind of threat is she to your manhood?'
Aldred's fair skin burned red. 'By the Rood, if you were in my discipline, I'd take a belt to your hide! Our father was always too soft with you! And Goldwin's no better. Where is he? I've some advice for him!'
'Peace, Aldred,' commanded Harold sharply. Leaving Felice, he removed the pot of soup from his huscarl and tasted it himself. 'Master Goldwin is the best judge of how to rule his own household. As your sister says, the woman lying here is no threat to us, even if she is Norman.'
'But…" Aldred began, then swallowed powerfully and tightened his lips.
'She is your neighbour?' Harold turned to Ailith.
'Yes, Sire.' Ailith's heart was pounding so hard from the confrontation with Aldred that she felt sick. 'Her husband is a Rouen wine merchant. They came here at Yuletide, just before King Edward died.'
Harold nodded thoughtfully. 'His name?'
'Aubert de Remy. He told us that your brother Earl Leofwin had bought some wine from him.'
'Yes, I remember.' Harold's eyes narrowed. 'It was good wine too,' he murmured. 'Where is he now? Surely he should not leave his wife so ill-attended in times like these.'
Although Harold's voice was reasonable, Ailith's spine prickled with a sense of danger. 'He is away buying wine, I do not know where, but Felice expects him home soon, I think. Aubert did not realise that she was with child when he left.'
The King drank off the bowl of soup and wiped the drops from his moustache between forefinger and thumb. 'It seems that we must care for his lady until his return,' he said. 'And whenever that should be, I want to see him. I think that I too would like to buy some of his wine.'
Aldred made a spluttering sound and Harold sharply ordered him to wait outside. Glaring, the young man strode out of the door. Harold waited until he had gone, then bent a frowning gaze upon Ailith. 'Your husband is a loyal, hardworking man and I know that you have the same integrity. As you say, it is not this poor lady's fault that she is a Norman, and she is of no danger to us, but it would be in the interests of her own safety to keep her confined. When she is well enough to be moved without danger to her health, I will have her placed in the convent of St Aethelburga to be cared for by the nuns until her husband should return. I will make it known that she is under my protection and that if harm is done to her, matters will go ill with the culprit.' He smiled bleakly. 'Whatever Duke William thinks, I am a man of my word.'
Ailith bowed her head, torn between a deep relief that the matter had been lifted out of her hands, and anxiety at the deeper implications. Felice was virtually a prisoner, and if Aubert returned, he would likely face arrest.
'You keep the best soup cauldron this side of the river,' Harold said as a parting compliment, dazzled her with a smile, and ducked outside to his men.
A sound from the pallet caused her to spin round and discover that Felice was awake. The young woman's brown eyes were hazy with pain, but fully aware. 'I'm sorry.' Her whisper was weak. 'I have caused you so much trouble.'
'You would do the same for me,' Ailith said stoutly, concealing her misgivings. 'I'll send Sigrid to fetch her aunt Hulda.
She has skill in midwifery and matters of the womb. Lie still, everything is going to be all right.'
'Felice has not lost the child, but she might yet do so, and very easily,' Ailith told Goldwin when she brought him bread and meat to the forge at dusk. Her tone was frosty for she had not forgiven him for his lack of support earlier. 'Hulda says that the bleeding has stopped, but that she must rest abed for at least a sevenday… and that means here with us.'
Goldwin scowled. He banged another rivet into a link of the mail shirt he was making. Ailith watched him. She knew that he wanted her to go away, but she refused to yield. Their life together had been very sweet until recently and she had no intention of allowing it to sour any further than it had already done.
'I am with child too,' she said during a silence between the tapping of his hammer. 'I have been looking for a favourable opportunity to tell you, but you always seem to be frowning and short-tempered.'
Goldwin carefully set down his small hammer and his handful of rivets and links. 'You are with child?' he repeated, and instead of looking at her, he turned his back to fiddle with a stone jar of nails on a shelf. 'When will it be born?' His voice was gruff.
'At Yuletide, or just before. Are you not pleased?'
His hand slipped and the jar smashed on the hard earth floor, scattering the nails far and wide. He swore and she saw that he was shaking.
'Goldwin, what's wrong?' Worried now, Ailith hurried round his workbench and grasped her husband's sleeve.
'Oh, Aili, Aili!' His voice and control broke. Dragging her clumsily against him, he buried his face in her wimple and shoulder, his body shuddering. 'I have had such dreams of late — of battlefields and piles of bleeding corpses. I cannot think straight any more.'
She held him, rocking and soothing him like a child, a lump in her own throat.
'There is talk of war with the Norwegians,' he groaned into her neck, 'and William of Normandy is gathering a huge army across the narrow sea. I feel as if we are nought but a bone in the midst of a starving wolf pack.'
Ailith stroked his hair, then brought her palm tenderly down his face, over scratchy stubble and curl of beard. 'It is small wonder that you suffer nightmares the amount of time you spend in the forge. You cannot equip the entire English fyrd single-handed. You must cease toiling and fretting like this, or you will lose your wits.'
Goldwin inhaled shakily and kissed her palm. He squeezed her waist which was still trim, without sign of her impending motherhood. 'I could not be more proud that you are to bear our child, but I fear for our future, Aili.' Disengaging himself, he sat down on his bench and ran a distracted hand through his hair.
'It will be all right,' she said softly, and after considering him for a moment, picked up the trencher of food she had brought him. 'Come, we'll take this to bed with us and you can eat it there.' And fall asleep with your head on my breasts, she thought. It is what you need.
He looked at his bench and the beckoning pile of hauberk rivets and rings. Then he looked at the shards of pottery on the floor and the bright scattering of nails. Slowly he stood up. A weary, tentative smile curved his lips.
'If it is a boy,' he said, 'we shall name him Harold after the King.' Taking her free hand, he led her out of the forge into the starry April night, its darkness scored by the curve of the strange Dragon Star.
CHAPTER 6
NORMANDY, JULY 1066
Eyes narrowed against the dazzle of the sun on the sea, his chest bare, Rolf rode the dun gelding fetlock-deep through the gentle cat-lap of the waves. Behind him, on leading ropes, trotted two more acquisitions for Duke William's supply of Norman warhorses, and further behind still rode three grooms with the rest of the mounts — a dozen in total from his most recent expedition. He was required to deliver them to the main muster point at Dives-sur-Mer within the next fortnight.
Rolf ha
d been busy since the early spring, scouring the countryside and the market places of Norman and Flemish towns and villages for likely beasts. In doing so he had reached the satisfying conclusion that his stud at Brize had few rivals this side of the Pyrenees, and that only the stallions of Spain and Nicaea could better his own.
He urged the dun to a trot, his body rising and falling smoothly to accommodate the change of gait. Silver fans of spray skimmed away from the dun's hooves, and returned to the sea in a mesh of spangled droplets. The other horses quickened pace.
Higher up the beach, close to a small harbour and the huts of a fishing village, a gang of shipwrights toiled upon one of the vessels that were to transport the anticipated two thousand warhorses across the narrow sea to England. Three had already been completed and rolled at anchor in the bay, awaiting the command to tack up the coast to the muster at Dives.
A group of sailmakers sat in the lee of the dunes, stitching heavy linen canvases to equip the vessel under construction. Rolf looked at the dark red stripes woven through the buff-coloured linen and imagined the sail bulging in a stiff breeze. For a moment the movement of the hone beneath him became the pitch and roll of a ship's deck, and he fancied that he could hear the creak of the hemp ropes and clinker-built timbers. The strain of Norse blood in the line of Brize-sur-Risle might be in its fifth generation now, but it still exerted a powerful tug on Rolf's soulstrings.
His gaze left the sailmakers and crossed the open sea until it encountered the blue smudge of the horizon. He had met a merchant once who claimed to have sailed off the edge of the world and discovered a land inhabited by strange, copper-skinned men and even stranger beasts. Rolf was not sure if he believed him. The merchant had stayed for several nights at Brize-sur-Risle and when he departed, had made Rolf the gift of a red toadstone which he said would cure lameness in horses. Rolf wore it around his neck beside his cross and a small, battered silver hammer of Thor which had been handed down father to son since the time of his pagan great, great grandfather.
The Conquest Page 5