Shadows and Strongholds (53 page)

There was a step behind him and Mellette laid her hand on his shoulder. 'Gome away,' she said. 'You can return later if you must. There are other matters that need your attention.'

He rose and turned, pushing her hand aside. 'There were always other matters that needed my attention,' he said bitterly. 'Never her.'

Mellette looked at him as if she thought he had lost his wits. 'She had enough of your attention to give you seven living children.'

'And an eighth that killed her.'

Mellette gave him a severe look. 'Childbearing is always a fight between life and death,' she said harshly. 'Women face it as men face war. It is their lot and their duty. Eve knew it well and shirked none of it.'

FitzWarin turned from his mother. The cold air from the window was like breath against his cheek. 'I never saw her smile,' he said.

His mother's expression grew impatient. 'Weep and grow maudlin and have done. The dead are the least of your duties.'

FitzWarin felt anger rising through the dark morass of his shock and grief. 'Do not prate to me of duty.' He clenched his fists. There was pleasure and revulsion in imagining them striking the old woman. 'If you knew yours, your tongue would be behind your teeth. My father was remiss in his, not to silence you with a scold's bridle.'

'How dare y—'

'Get out!' he roared and the sound echoed around the chamber, rending the living, crying out to the dead.

Mellette stared at his balled fists. 'You shame yourself,' she said and stalked out.

FitzWarin closed his eyes and fell to his knees. The silence after she had gone was blessed and just enough to pull him back from the edge of madness. He buried his face in his hands and wept.

September sunshine flooded the walls of Ludlow in rich golden light. Hawise was enjoying the benediction of this end of summer warmth after the dire weather of the last six weeks. She was also enjoying her moment of respite at Ludlow. Brunin and his father had ridden to rejoin the King. There was talk of peace with the Welsh, but the terms had yet to be agreed and there was no guarantee that Owain Gwynedd would agree to what Henry wanted. There was also no guarantee that the FitzWarin would have Whittington restored to them.

Mellette had remained at Alberbury, but Hawise had returned to Ludlow where she could await Brunin in warmth and companionship, rather than dwell in Mellette's cold, dowager world. She had brought Emmeline with her. There were many youngsters at Ludlow with whom the child could play, and the less restrictive atmosphere would help her recover from the loss of her mother.

'You have had a difficult beginning to your married life,' Sybilla commented as the women walked the dogs along the riverbank below the castle.

Hawise laughed bleakly. 'I have had no married life. Brunin and I shared a bed for a week at Ludlow. At Alberbury we had to sleep in the hall, wrapped in our cloaks with Emmeline burrowed between us. There was no space for privacy of any kind and everyone was in shock and mourning for the loss of Lady Eve… and of Whittington.' She grimaced at her mother. 'Lady Mellette stamped around being vile to everyone and it was left to me to order the household so that it didn't descend into chaos. Brunin's father…' She shook her head and watched two of the dogs splash into the river shallows after a moorhen. The indignant bird ran across the water and took off in a panic of dark wings. Emmeline giggled and pointed.

'He took it hard,' Sybilla said with a knowing nod.

'He was like a sleepwalker.' Hawise bit her lip. 'His eyes were open, but they were only seeing what was in his mind and the rest of us might as well not have existed. Brunin has had to take up the slack.'

'Then God have pity on Lord Fulke, and be praised you were both ready for the responsibility.'

Hawise gave a rueful smile. 'Prepared,' she said, 'not ready' She looked at her mother. 'I don't regret it though.'

'Then you are ready,' Sybilla said sagely.

They walked on, their path bordered by a second blooming of cow parsley and tall ox-eye daisies. The dogs shook themselves all over Emmeline, making her squeal, but in the next moment, child and hounds were running along the path, filled with exuberance.

Hawise's half-sister Cecily joined them from the castle, a light cloak pinned at her shoulders. She was wearing a fine linen veil that exposed her throat and the glossy shine of her braids. Somewhere between spring and autumn a smile had returned to her face. She was being courted by
Walter de Mayenne and negotiations had been entered into. Both sides were eager for the match to be made binding.

'I asked Marion if she wanted to come too, but she said not,' Cecily said as she fell into step with her mother and Hawise.

Sybilla sighed and gave a small shake of her head. 'I do not know what to do with the girl,' she said. 'The more I reach out, the more she withdraws from me, and yet I hate to see her trapped in a corner like a frightened wild thing.'

'She said she was busy with her sewing.' Cecily raised an eloquent eyebrow.

'Marion would sew from dawn until dusk if we let her,' Sybilla explained to Hawise. 'She only leaves her needle to eat and sleep. Sometimes Cecily can persuade her to come for a walk but of late she has shunned even that. I make her run errands for me and do other tasks, but the moment her hands are free, she is back at her stitchery… or else washing her hands.'

'She makes clothes,' Cecily said. 'Men's clothing mostly: shirts and braies and hose.'

'For whom?' Hawise asked, although she already had an inkling of the reply.

'Whatever imaginary lover dwells in her mind, although I suspect he wears the face of Gilbert de Lacy's knight. I put what she makes in a coffer. Such garments are always useful for guests and alms-giving days.'

Hawise brushed her hand over the seed-heavy grasses at the side of the footpath and felt chagrin. Once, for a brief span and almost to her downfall, her own dreams had worn the face of Ernalt de Lysle. 'What is to become of her?'

Sybilla looked troubled. 'Your father said before he left to join the King that he intended to arrange her a place in a nunnery. Certainly she is not fit to be wed, and after what happened, your father will not contemplate keeping her in our household. It is a sorry mess,' she sighed. 'I often wonder what I could have done differently when she was a child to change things.'

'The damage was already done when she came to us, Mama,' Cecily said, giving her a hug.

'But I feel that I have failed in not undoing it… Ah, no more, I do not wish to think on it.' Sybilla waved her hand and quickened her pace to show that the matter was closed.

Later, as the maids latched the shutters upon the dusk and lit the candles in the bower, Hawise sat down at Marion's side. Marion had placed her tapestry frame so that it caught the best of the candlelight from the wall sconce. She had abandoned the delicate sewing of earlier and was now working in couch stitch and woollen thread on a strip of linen.

'Do you want some help?' Hawise asked.

Marion shook her head. 'No,' she replied in a pale, flat voice. 'It's mine. I don't want anyone else to touch it.'

'What's it for?' Hawise tilted her head. The picture was in its infancy but appeared to depict a castle or similar building and a woman standing in the doorway. Outlined to the right was a man on a horse.

'To hang on the wall, of course.' Marion flicked her a contemptuous look as if she thought Hawise was a lackwit.

'In here?'

The contemptuous look hardened. 'It might be.' Marion bent her head to her task.

Hawise watched Marion manipulate the needle. Her finger ends were rough where she had pricked herself, despite the use of a thimble. 'You cannot hide in this for ever. No matter how many pictures you sew, there is still a world beyond the window.'

'A world, or a nunnery?' Marion sneered. The needle jabbed in and out.

'What else did you expect?' Hawise thought of her own labour on Brunin's yellow silk banner. A labour of love. Marion's looked like desperation. 'It's Ernalt de Lysle, isn't it?' she asked. 'You're making them for him.'

'You know nothing,' Marion snapped and turned her shoulder so that she was facing away from Hawise. shutting her out.

'It makes it seem real that you have to sew for him, like a wife or a sweetheart.'

'It is real.' Marion reached for the shears and snipped the thread. 'I told you, you know nothing.' Raising her head she looked towards the end window where a maid was pulling the last set of shutters closed.

A week later, Joscelin and Brunin returned to Ludlow from the royal court.

'What happened?' Hawise asked her husband when, for the first time since the week of their wedding, she had him to herself. He had dismissed the squire who would otherwise have helped him unarm and she had sent away her maids and a male attendant once they had finished filling the wooden bathtub. Steam rose in misty swirls from its surface scented with astringent thyme and juniper.

Brunin had come directly from the stable yard and he stank of hard riding. He pushed his hands through his hair which was flattened and greasy from wearing an arming cap and coif. 'What didn't,' he said.

Hawise was burning with curiosity but she damped it down and fetched him wine and griddle cakes. They would be dining in the great hall with everyone else but the meal was still a couple of hours away and she could tell he needed sustenance.

Brunin drank the first cup of wine fast, began a second more slowly and set about demolishing the griddle cakes with the efficiency of the ravenous.

'Henry and Owain Gwynedd have agreed to a peace,' he said, as he finished his fourth. 'Owain's pulled back from Rhuddlan and sworn homage to Henry and Henry's withdrawn from his campaign. The Welsh might have tweaked the lion's tail hut they cannot withstand a concerted assault, and Henry doesn't want to keep an army in the field through the autumn and winter. It suits all sides.'

'And Whittington?'

Brunin drained his second cup. 'Whittington,' he said heavily, as if speaking the word were a burden. He unlatched his swordbelt and threw it across the coffer, not in anger, she thought, but in weariness and resignation. 'Whittington is lost—for the moment.'

'Henry would not aid you?'

Brunin snorted. 'You would not believe the hoops of fire we have had to jump through like tumblers' dogs.' He stooped so that she could pull the hauberk over his head. While she laid it across the coffer with his swordbelt, he stripped the rest of his garments and stepped into the tub. She heard him gasp.

'Too hot?'

'Perfect,' he said, closing his eyes. 'It's one of the things I've dreamed about… when my dreams haven't been nightmares.'

Hawise stooped to his discarded clothes. There was a tear in his shirt that would need mending once it was washed. With a restraint that came from effort rather than instinct, she did not badger him, but left him to speak in his own time.

Finally he cupped his hands in the water, swilled his face, and looked at her through spiked, black lashes. 'The King didn't want to begin another dispute with the Welsh that would cause further unrest along the Marches. He gave Whittington to Roger and Jonas de Powys who claim it as theirs, and enfeoffed my father with a manor in Gloucestershire instead.' His voice was expressionless.