The Conquest

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  Arlette paled. 'I was only going to say that you need to take careful thought for the girl's welfare. She has known such an uncertain life, that there are bound to be difficulties.'

  Rolf's eyes remained suspiciously narrowed, but he leaned back in his chair and slowly rubbed his forefinger back and forth across his upper lip while he considered her words.

  Benedict glanced around the family and tried to imagine Julitta settling into the household. From what he remembered of Julitta the child, and from what he had seen of Julitta the budding woman, there was going to be precious little peace in the bower. Just the sight of Julitta's wild red hair would be enough to send Arlette running for her shears and a thick linen wimple to tame and cover such wanton glory.

  'I am more than willing to take her under my wing, indeed I am,' Arlette added piously.

  'More than willing?' Rolf asked in a wintery voice. 'I would have thought the opposite.'

  His wife compressed her lips. 'As you say, she is your child, and I have always done my duty as your wife to the best of my ability. If I cannot love her, then at least I can see that she is prepared for marriage to a husband of your choosing… unless you had the Church in mind for her?'

  Rolf scowled and bit viciously at his thumbnail. 'Not the Church,' he said.

  Benedict agreed. If anyone should enter a religious establishment, it should be Arlette, the amount of time she spent on her knees. 'She will need gentle handling,' he said aloud, thereby earning himself another glare from the women. It was impossible to explain Julitta to them, the paradox of toughness and vulnerability that had so moved him. 'As you say,' he appealed to Arlette, 'she has known an uncertain life, has had to fight to survive.'

  'I am sure I am capable of taking that into account,' Arlette said, but her expression softened slightly at his acknowledgement of her own wisdom. 'After all, I have raised a daughter myself.'

  She looked proudly at the young woman sitting at her side, her posture echoing her mother's. Neat, prim, upright.

  Although it did not show on his face, Benedict's foreboding increased.

  'What is my sister like?' Gisele asked Benedict. Driven by avid curiosity, by what he had not said in front of her parents, she had followed him into the hall.

  Benedict shrugged. He glanced round. Most people had settled down for the night, drawing their pallets close to the banked fire. One or two still lingered over late games of tafel or completed small personal tasks by the grainy light of small rush dips.

  'Is she pretty?'

  Benedict reached out, placed his arm around Gisele's supple waist and drew her towards him. She resisted for a moment, glancing round, then deciding it was all right, capitulated. 'No,' he said, 'I would not call her pretty.' That was a word that conjured up a picture of safe, conventional attractiveness. He had known many pretty girls, his betrothed among them, but Julitta was like none of them.

  'Then she is ugly?'

  He nuzzled Gisele's warm throat and sought her lips. 'That neither,' he murmured. 'She… she resembles your father, and of course she has scarcely left childhood.' He stroked a tentative hand up her side towards her breasts. Usually this was forbidden territory, but tonight, Gisele's insecurity permitted him the liberty. She yielded passively to his questing touch, a slight frown between her eyes.

  'You'll meet her soon,' he said, an undercurrent of impatience in his tone. 'Then you can judge for yourself.' And knew as he spoke that any judgement Gisele made would be based on that of her mother. He felt her nipple bud beneath his fingers and in that same moment she pushed herself out of their embrace, a flush creeping over her throat and mounting her cheeks. Benedict started to speak, but Arlette entered the hall, carrying a wax taper on an iron spike.

  'Gisele, are you coming to bed?' It was an order framed as a question, terse with reproach.

  'Yes, Mama,' Gisele said as meekly as a child, and without even a parting word or glance for her betrothed, pushed out of his arms and hurried towards the taper's glimmer.

  Benedict sighed, scooped his hair off his brow in a gesture of frustration, and sought his pallet, ignoring the amused glances of the tafel players.

  CHAPTER 41

  Julitta curled up in the hay loft above the stable and hugged herself, moaning softly. The grief was a physical pain in her stomach, doubling her over, surging through her, filling all the spaces that had been blank with shock.

  At first, gazing down on her mother's body, shrunken in death, the flesh clinging to the sharp bones and pitiful hollows, she had been filled with a merciful numbness. That state had remained and carried her through the first day and night following the death. She had slept beside Felice, clinging to her for comfort, while Aubert bedded down on a pallet in the hall. Then, this morning her mother had been sewn in a shroud and taken away to the parish church of St Martin. There had been some dispute with the priest over Ailith's right to be buried within its precincts. Officially she was a resident of Southwark and Aubert had been forced to pay an indemnity of silver to have her remain.

  These considerations of etiquette had passed over Julitta's head. She only knew that they were quarrelling about her mother's body as if it were a scrap of carrion to be devoured by kites. That was when the numbness had begun to wear off. The pain had attacked her vitals in earnest when they finally reached an agreement and removed Ailith to St Martin's. Suddenly the house was bereft of her presence. Standing in the bedchamber, looking at the stripped mattress, awaiting the attention of Felice's maids, at the withered bunch of flowers in the glazed pitcher, Julitta had realised that her mother was truly dead, that a great empty chasm had opened in her life and although others might create bridges across it, it would never go away.

  Footfalls sounded on the hayloft ladder and the trap was thrown open. A pitchfork was tossed through the hole. A mop of hair, blonder than the straw, appeared, then a tanned face with wide-set grey eyes.

  'Who's there?' Mauger demanded suspiciously.

  Julitta jerked her head from her makeshift hay pillow.

  'Oh, it's you,' he grunted. 'I thought for a moment it was that accursed stable lad and his wench again. It wouldn't be the first time.'

  Julitta sat up and dragged her sleeve across her swollen eyes. Mauger stepped into the loft and, frowning slightly, picked up the fork. He was not much above average height and chunkily muscled. His brows were heavy, his face square in shape with slanted cheekbones and a considering mouth that seldom smiled. Julitta was wary of him. She had the vaguest recollection of teasing him, of being very naughty and leaving him to bear the brunt of the punishment. He had been about Benedict's age then, perhaps slightly older. Now he was a grown man, dour and solid.

  Mauger advanced to stand over her, his boots crackling on the warm, meadow-scented hay. Clearing his throat, he said gruffly, 'I'm sorry about your mother… and about what I said when Ben and I found you on the Southwark bank. Lady Ailith was always kind to me.'

  'I… I thought you didn't like us,' Julitta snuffled.

  Mauger's frown intensified. 'That's foolish!' he growled. 'What reason should I have to dislike you?'

  At fourteen, on the verge of womanhood and armed with the knowledge that came of dwelling in a bathhouse, Julitta could have told him the reason for his brusqueness with her. She was Eve and he was scared of temptation. But at the moment, she was no more than a frightened, grief-stricken child. 'You're always scowling. You never smile or try to be nice.'

  'You are Lord Rolf's daughter. I mind my manners and keep my distance, unlike others who should know better,' he said with heightened colour and strode away to unbar the large doors at the end of the loft. Throwing them wide to admit a torrent of sunshine, he began pitching forkloads of hay down to two stable hands below. Julitta watched him work, his movements forceful and jerky beneath her scrutiny. Patches of sweat glued his linen shirt to his body, and she knew that, but for her presence, he would have removed it.

  Suddenly he stopped work, and leaned on the pitchfork stale. 'Your f
ather's here,' he announced, and half-turning, looked her up and down. 'Best clean yourself up. You don't want him to get the wrong idea about you.'

  Julitta scrambled to her feet. Stalks of straw adhered to her gown, which was the threadbare one of her first arrival with a large patch near the hem where the original fabric had been scorched by a cinder. Her face, she knew, would be grimy with tears, and a rapid exploration of her hair revealed that, as usual, it had begun to escape its braids and it too was tangled with straw. She was imbued with a feeling of panic at the expectations being laid upon her, one after the other, in layers so thick that she was in danger of losing herself. What indeed was her father going to think of her after so long? And surely if he could not accept her as she was, his love was flawed, if he loved her at all. Perhaps she was just an inconvenience to him, a nithing. These thoughts flashed bewilderingly through Julitta's mind as she hurried down the rungs of the loft ladder. Suddenly she did not want to see her father lest he should be nithing in her eyes.

  Mauger's warning and her escape were not, however, swift enough. As she emerged from the stables, her skirts gathered above her shins the better to run, she was almost knocked down by a rangy dappled stallion. The man astride cursed and wrenched on the reins. The horse plunged across the path of the rider behind and he in his turn had to back and control his own mount.

  Her breathing swift and shallow, her stomach flopping over and over, Julitta watched the leading rider bring his horse to a stand. Her eyes fixed on the sinewy working of his fingers and wrists, the green linen cuff with its edging of blue and buff braid. And then she lifted her gaze beyond the mundane detail and met the furious glare of the man. The strong, clean features of her half-buried memory were overlaid with harsh lines of care. The laughing green eyes were stormy and opaque.

  'Have you no more sense than a hen to run out beneath the hooves of a horse?' he snarled at her.

  Behind him, Benedict de Remy, the second rider, drew breath to speak, a look of alarm on his face.

  Julitta was in no fit state to answer. Filled with dismay that this bad-tempered, harsh-faced stranger, so familiar and yet so different from her memories, now had responsibility for her life, she uttered a gasp and fled, her movement so abrupt that it set the grey horse off again. By the time Rolf had steadied the animal down, she had made good her escape.

  'These kitchen wenches are all the same,' Rolf snapped contemptuously as he dismounted. 'Their brains are only ever in one place!'

  Benedict cleared his throat. Rolf's temper had worsened with every step they took towards London. This morning he had been unbearable. Benedict could almost see apprehension sitting on his lord's back like a large, grey demon armed with nine-inch claws. It was not entirely Julitta's fault that the horse had played up. The beast was only responding to Rolf's tension. 'That was Julitta, sir,' he said neutrally.

  'What?' Rolf glared round at him. 'That raggle-taggle waif is my daughter?'

  'Yes, sir.' Avoiding Rolf's stare, Benedict dismounted. 'My mother has commissioned a seamstress to make Julitta some new gowns, but for the moment she only has the clothes in which she came to us, and a dress of my mother's that has been cobbled to fit. Do not think too badly of her. Perhaps you surprised her and she was hurrying to make herself presentable.'

  Rolf's mouth tightened. He continued to glower, but Benedict sensed that the disapproval was more self-directed than aimed at him. He took Rolf's bridle and made to lead their two horses into the stables.

  Rolf grimaced. 'Ah God,' he said, 'why should it take a lad of eighteen to show me the road when I have been on it so much longer?'

  Benedict paused, half-expecting a reprimand, but Rolf sighed heavily. 'You are right. At five years old Julitta was not capable of sitting still for a moment. I used to call her Squirrel because she was so quick and inquisitive.' A painful half-smile curved his lips. 'A different scrape every day, and I never had the heart to punish her because she was so independent and funny. I should have looked beyond the straw and tattered gown to recognise her.'

  Perhaps he had known it was her, Benedict thought, but had not wanted to believe it. The sight of Julitta running around like a hoyden in rags was all too close to Arlette's expectations of what he would find— a Southwark 'bath girl'. 'I think you should go and find her, sir,' he said with respectful neutrality.

  Rolf eyed him. 'So do I,' he said. 'You've a wise head on your shoulders, Ben.'

  Benedict looked modestly down, feeling a not unnatural glow of pride. He was quickly brought to earth by the sight of Mauger descending from the hay loft, a pitchfork in his hand and his sweat-soiled shirt slung around his bull-strong neck. The glow of hard work oiled his well-muscled body, and bits of chaff clung to his damp skin. His chausses had slipped down and hung on his hips, exposing a border of crisp pubic hair. Stalks of straw were snagged in the fabric. Mauger and Julitta in the loft together? It was a preposterous notion, but that did not prevent it from occurring to both Benedict and Rolf. A flush broke across Mauger's cheekbones at their scrutiny.

  'I did not remove my shirt until the lass had gone,' he said with dignity before Rolf could challenge him. 'I had no idea she was in the loft until I went to fork some hay.'

  'I do not doubt your honour,' Rolf rectified quickly. Mauger said nothing, but his grey eyes revealed that he was not deceived. With dignity, he shouldered the pitchfork and walked on.

  Rolf pushed his fingers through his hair. ' "As ye sow, so shall ye reap",' he quoted wryly to Benedict. 'What worries me is that not every man would have the honour to leave his chausses on, let alone his shirt.'

  Felice wiped Julitta's tear-swollen face with a cloth wrung out in herb-scented water. 'Come now, come now,' she murmured. 'You can't greet your father like this. Dry your eyes and sit up, there's a good girl.'

  'I don't want to see him!' Julitta flung. 'And he doesn't want me. I'm a burden, that's all!' Her lower lip jutted mutinously, but she obeyed Felice and raised herself from the bed.

  'Oh, that isn't true! He searched high and low for you and your mother all those years ago. Of course he wants you. You're his daughter!' She smoothed the wavy masses of hair with a gentle hand and wondered what had brought Julitta bolting into the hall like a terrified horse. It had taken all Felice's persuasion and not a little physical struggle to make the child abandon the idea of grabbing her cloak and a loaf and running away. 'It is what your mother wished for you, did she not?'

  'Only because she had no choice!' Julitta spat.

  'That is not true either.' Felice fetched a bone comb and began to tidy Julitta's hair, plucking out fragments of straw and cleaning it of hayloft dust. 'She had several choices, and she judged your father to be the best of them in the end. I know that she talked about it to you before she died.'

  Julitta gripped the coverlet in her fists and submitted for a moment to Felice's soothing ministrations. But in the end her fear and anger could not be contained. 'I don't want to see him!' she repeated and jumped to her feet. 'I won't go with him! It's all his fault that my mother is dead!'

  'Julitta!' Felice stood up too, her dark eyes beginning to flash with anger.

  'She is right,' Rolf said from the doorway, standing foursquare, banishing all Julitta's hope of escape. 'Had I heeded my conscience and had more self-discipline, Ailith would be with me yet, and none of this need ever have happened.'

  Julitta's knees weakened and she sat down abruptly on the bed, her eyes lowered and her head averted.

  Felice looked anxiously at Rolf. 'I do not know what to do with her,' she said.

  'Leave her to me.' Rolf touched Felice's arm. 'I am indebted to you for your care…"

  Felice smiled, but the gesture did not reach her eyes, which were troubled. She laid her hand over Rolf's, gave it a brief, sympathetic squeeze, and went out, leaving father and daughter alone together.

  Rolf advanced two uncertain paces into the room. Julitta's head remained averted.

  'I know that you want me to go away,' he said, 'b
ut that is something I cannot do. You have haunted me for far too long. If I could change the past, I would, but since that is beyond me, I can only offer you the future.'

  She was aware of him moving closer, could feel the warmth and vibration of his body now. 'You called me a hen,' she said in a low, aggrieved voice. 'You shouted at me.'

  'You almost ran beneath the hooves of my horse, you could have killed us both. Besides, that is not the true reason you will not look at me.' He reached out across the last few feet of space between them and tilted her chin on his fingers, turning her to face him. 'It is because of your mother, is it not? You think I betrayed her?'

  Julitta's thoughts and feelings were so tangled that there was not the slightest possibility of her being able to unravel them into coherence. All she knew was that she was angry at her mother for dying, and because the dead were inviolate, she had to take her anger and misery out on the living. And her father was a prime scapegoat.

  'Didn't you?'

  'Yes,' he admitted, 'I did betray her, and myself, and there is not a day that has gone by since then that I have not wished it undone. I won't betray her memory. Julitta, I want you to come with me to Ulverton. I want to do my best for you now.'

  'And if I don't want to go?' She tossed her head defiantly, shaking off his touch. 'You'll make me, won't you?'

  Rolf went to the window where only a few days before a jar of blue and yellow irises had blazed with brave colour. Now the top of the coffer was bare. He stood against the chest, arms folded, and looked out on the bustling yard, and beyond it, the wine wharf jutting into the Thames. 'Do you remember anything of your life before?' he asked. 'Do you remember Ulverton?'

  Julitta stared at her father's turned back. His hair was unruly like her own, but maintained in cropped order, and the colour was neither as rich nor as dark, and diluted with wings of silver. Her mother had said that she resembled him as much in character as in looks. Did she remember Ulverton? Dear Jesu, if she tried, she could remember far too much. 'Not really,' she said with a sulky shrug.