The Winter Mantle (29 page)

Waltheof laughed. 'Small wonder that she's so plump!'

Matilda laughed too, thoroughly enchanted. Her father lifted her up and set her on the pony's back. She felt the cool leather of the saddle against her thighs and the pressure of the stirrups across her instep as he secured her feet.

'Well,' Waltheof said, 'can you think of a name?' Clicking his tongue, he led the mare around the yard at a gentle walk. Matilda grinned radiantly and preened like a queen.

'Honey,' she said after a moment, 'because she's that colour.'

Her father smiled in that special way he had that was only for her and when he was particularly pleased at her cleverness. 'Very fitting,' he said, 'and much better than "Glutton".'

Matilda screwed up her face at the word and he chuckled deep in his throat, a lovely warm sound that made her feel bubbly with pleasure.

For the next few weeks he continued to teach her to ride. It was a golden time, steeped in honey like the name of her pony, and its memory was to tantalise Matilda for the rest of her life. Everything was perfect. She basked in her father's warmth and attention. Saint Fiacre, aided by the water of the well elf, ensured that her apple tree began to grow, thrusting a single green shoot through the soil. She collected poppy and marigold seeds with the gardener, ready for sowing next year. She played with her little sister and Helisende, and the days seemed to stretch for ever, warm, shining, secure. Nor was the idyll spoiled by her mother, who left the tending of her daughters to Sybille even more than usual. When the reason was revealed, it only added to Matilda's pleasure.

'Your mama is to bear you another brother or sister,' Waltheof told her as he took her out on Honey, a leading rein attached between his mount and the mare like an umbilical cord. 'In the winter time.'

Matilda frowned. It was harvest now. Her papa had promised to take her to his manor at Ryhall on the morrow when he went to oversee the reaping. Winter came after harvest; she vaguely knew that. There were other things she vaguely knew as well. Only last week she had watched a goat drop two kids in the enclosure by the kitchen garden. Sybille had explained that young ones grew inside their mothers until they were ready to be born… unless they were chickens, of course… or trees.

'I see I have silenced that busy tongue of yours.' Her father's voice was warm with amusement but held the hint of a question.

Matilda looked up at him. Since she was constantly told that she was a gift from God, she assumed that it was God who put the babies inside the mothers to grow. 'Mama will want a boy,' she said.

Her father's eyelids tightened slightly but his smile remained. 'It matters not,' he said. 'It is God who chooses and we should be thankful for his gift of life.'

Matilda nodded, her notion of how babies arrived in the womb reinforced by his words. She liked babies. One of her favourite toys was a doll made of leather, its limbs stuffed with lambs' wool. She would wrap it in linen scraps for swaddling and croon to it, as she had seen the women of the household croon to their own infants.

'Are you pleased?'

Again she nodded. She did not feel as delighted as when she had been given Honey, but the sensation inside her was happy.

When they returned from the ride, her papa had visitors. Matilda recognised his friend, Ralf de Gael, because he often came to visit. They would go away to hunt and play chess and drink a lot of ale. She knew that her mama disliked Ralf de Gael, and Matilda agreed with her. The attention her papa paid to his friend meant he had less time for her. Although De Gael always brought her a present, she had the instinct if not the intellect to understand that she was of no consequence to him - indeed perhaps a nuisance.

Her father flung himself down from his own horse, lifted her carefully from Honey, then strode to embrace his friend and slap him heartily on the back. Matilda watched the greeting with resentful eyes and a pouting lower lip.

'I see your eldest is growing into a pretty little wench,' declared De Gael. He stooped to Matilda and a white grin flashed across his thin, handsome features. 'Looks like her mother at the moment, though, eh?'

Her papa laughed and lifted her in his arms. Matilda clung to him fiercely and scowled at De Gael.

'Heaven preserve us from jealous women!' De Gael chuckled. 'Never mind, sweetheart. I've brought you a pretty brooch, all the way from Denmark… and since you have Dane blood, I thought it fitting you should wear it.'

Matilda turned her face into her father's warm, strong neck, rejecting the visitor. Against her cheek, she felt him tense, but he did not rebuke her for her rudeness. 'You have been talking to Danish traders then?' he asked in a strange, flat tone that she had never heard him use before.

'You could say that.' There was a cautious note in De Gael's voice too. Matilda wanted him to go away. She clung like a leech to her father, knowing with a growing sense of dismay that already she had lost him.

'They bring news that you might find interesting,' De Gael added as they walked towards the hall.

'I have plenty to interest me these days already,' Waltheof said, 'and my wife is with child again.'

'Congratulations,' De Gael replied, but not as if he meant it.

In the hall Waltheof sent a servant to summon Sybille and inform Judith of De Gael's arrival. 'Although you will excuse her if she does not attend on us,' he said ruefully. 'She is at the stage where she is constantly sick.'

De Gael gave a knowing grin. 'And I would only make her worse,' he said.

Sybille arrived. She curtseyed to the men and reached to take Matilda from Waltheof. Matilda tightened her arms around her father's neck until she was almost throttling him and screamed as Sybille attempted to prise her off.

'Come,' Sybille cajoled, 'your papa will play with you later.'

'No!' screamed Matilda. 'No!' She kicked out, her emotions so overwhelming and raw that even had she wanted she was powerless to stop the tantrum.

De Gael winced. Looking astonished and nonplussed, as if a flower had bitten him, Waltheof unhooked her arms from around his throat and handed her to the maid. Sybille tucked the threshing, screaming Matilda under her arm and struggled out of the hall. Taking her to the stables, ignoring the stares of the grooms and attendants, she threw Matilda down in the clean straw of an empty stall and there let her flail out the storm.

Matilda's voice gave out and the wildness of her emotion drained her body of all its energy, leaving her limp and tearful. Crouching in the straw, Sybille gathered Matilda in her arms and gently rocked her back and forth, smoothing the flushed brow and shushing her. Matilda's eyelids drooped and she fell into an exhausted slumber, her dark gold lashes spiked with drying tears. Tenderly, Sybille lifted the child and bore her back to the women's chambers, where she laid her on a pallet near the window and covered her with a light blanket.

'What is wrong with her?' Judith demanded. 'She looks feverish.'

'She is all right, mistress,' Sybille said quickly to dispel Judith's concern. 'The Earl of Norfolk is here and Mistress Matilda did not want to be parted from her father.'

Judith pressed her hand to the slight curve of her belly. 'Ralf de Gael,' she sniffed, her tone leaving no doubt as to her opinion of their guest. 'Is it just me and my daughter? Does no one else see through his posturing to what he is?'

Sybille lowered her eyes and fiddled with the strap end of her belt. 'He and Lord Waltheof have long been friends.'

'Lord Waltheof does not need "friends" of that ilk,' Judith said scornfully. 'There are men of considerably more character whose company he could seek. If he did as much drinking with my uncle's sheriffs as he does with Ralf de Gael, then he might conduct better business with them.' Turning away, she went to lie down on her own bed. 'My head aches,' she said, closing her eyes. 'I am indisposed - and I believe the malaise will last until that man leaves.'

Ralf de Gael studied the golden liquid in his cup. 'English ale,' he said. 'I have never understood why men have a preference for wine when they could drink nectar like this.'

'It depends on the alewife, and the freshness of the brew,' Waltheof replied, 'but our Wulfhild is the best brewster in the entire earldom.'

Ralf toasted him, then reaching to his tunic, unpinned a fine circular brooch set with irregular globs of polished amber like new, clear honey. 'The brooch for your eldest lass,' he said with a rueful smile. 'I do not think that she was best pleased to see me.'

Waltheof smiled too, albeit with a more pained expression. 'She likes me to herself - not that I mind if I have nothing else to do.' He turned the brooch over in his hand. The Danish silverwork was superb; this would have cost more than a half penny at a huckster's stall. 'Whenever you visit, it is always to take me away for several days' hunting. You cannot blame her for the association.' He pinned the brooch to his own cloak so that he would not lose it.

Ralf drank his ale and replenished his cup from the pitcher set to hand. 'Are you not going to ask me about my news from the Danish trader?'

Waltheof frowned. 'I have small interest in my Danish cousins these days.' It was not entirely true. He could still feel the surge within him like the wash of a wave against a longboat prow, but he held back. There was too much at stake, and the Danes had proven unreliable allies in the past. 'I cannot see what you would gain from intriguing with them either.'

Ralf gave a shrug that was slightly too nonchalant. 'It is better to be informed on these matters than to hide your head beneath the sheets - or under your wife's skirts and pretend that they do not exist. King Sweyn of Denmark is dead and it is said that his son Cnut intends to send a fleet to England. If we hear these things in Norfolk, then just as surely you must hear them in Huntingdon.'

Waltheof turned his head aside, but he could not ignore the words. 'They are of no interest to me - save that perhaps I should keep my men in readiness should the King have need of them.'

Ralf gave him a long, thoughtful stare.

Waltheof swallowed. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. 'What are you saying?'

'Nothing.' Ralf spread his hands in an open gesture that to Waltheof rang false. 'My mention of Danish traders was premature and not the reason why I am here.' He forced a smile.

'Then why have you come — to hunt?'

The Earl of Norfolk shook his head and a more natural smile lit his features. 'I came to invite you to my wedding and to a week's feasting and sport afterwards in celebration of my nuptials.'

'Your wedding?' Waltheof's gaze became one of astonishment. 'Jesu, Ralf, I did not realise that you were courting a bride!'

'Ah, well it has not been a long courtship,' he said, 'but the match suits all parties. I am to marry Emma, sister of Roger of Hereford.'

'Congratulations!' Waltheof clapped his friend on the shoulder. 'What's the lass like?'

Ralf laughed and described a curvaceous shape in the air. 'Fair-haired, generously endowed and good-natured. It will be no hardship to do my duty.'

The mention of 'duty' caused Waltheof to wince slightly, for it was the word that most frequently soured his own marriage. He and Judith were miles apart on its meaning. He would see it as his duty to attend his friend's wedding, and he knew that Judith would say that his duty was to remain with her.

'You will come?' asked De Gael, prompted by Waltheof's hesitation.

'Of course I will,' Waltheof said with overdone heartiness and beckoned for another pitcher of ale. 'You danced at my nuptials. It is only fitting that I should dance at yours.'

'You should not go to this wedding,' Judith said when Waltheof joined her in their chamber that evening and told her of his intentions. 'No good will come of it.'

Waltheof's brows drew together. 'What is wrong with the match? Surely, Ralf and Emma FitzOsbern are well suited?'

'Too well suited,' Judith snapped. 'I know that my uncle does not approve of the friendship between their families.'

'Do you?' Waltheof sat down on a bench set against the wall and folded his arms. 'I have heard no rumours. Has William moved to ban the wedding?'

Judith shook her head. 'No,' she said irritably, 'but my mother says that he does not trust De Gael.'

'Your uncle trusts no one whose blood is not Norman,' Waltheof said curtly. 'He gives me honours then hems me around with his own men, he makes sheriffs of his common mercenaries and turns a blind eye to the brutalities that they perpetrate.'

Judith had been lying on the bed. Now she rose and drew a bedrobe over her chemise. Her hair hung down her back in a dark silk curtain. Waltheof loved to run his fingers through its heavy masses, but tonight he knew that it was out of bounds. The flesh around her eyes was puffy and, despite the glow cast by the candlelight, he could see that her complexion was wan and drawn. She was not carrying this child well, and he felt a stab of guilt run through his exasperation.

'I grant that De Gael is of Breton stock and that your uncle has been at war with Brittany, but that is not reason enough to be suspicious of a man.' He narrowed his eyes at her. 'In truth, you have never liked Ralf.'

Going to the small prie-dieu standing in the corner of the room, Judith lit the wax candles either side of the ivory statuette of the Virgin Mary. Kneeling on the embroidered prayer cushion, she clasped her hands. 'There are men of far better character whom you could make your friends,' she said. 'And more suited to your standing.'

'Hah!' Waitheof exhaled bitterly and, going to the flagon on the coffer, poured himself some of his wife's wine. It was always wine in the bedchamber. If he wanted ale, he had to send a servant to fetch him some and then suffer Judith's scowling disapproval. 'My standing. Sometimes I think that is all you care about.'

'Someone has to care, because you do not,' she said, flashing an angry look over her shoulder. 'You demean your rank by jesting with grooms and gardeners and kitchen maids. How will folk respect you when you cannot behave fittingly?'

The disdain in her eyes kindled a glowing coal of anger in his belly. 'When I cannot behave like a Norman, you mean?' he threw at her.