The Love Knot (58 page)

Catrin shook her head. 'There isn't any.'

'No, there isn't.' He swallowed the wine straight down and then grimaced at the cup. 'It brings it all back,' he said softly. 'I look at him and I see myself all those years ago. And I know that there is nothing I can do for him except ply him with drink and stop him from going out and picking a fight to ease his rage. Tomorrow it will be the same, and the day after that and the day after that. He will watch the soil drop on to her coffin and he will think about killing the grave diggers and dragging her out to try and waken her one final time.' As he spoke, his expression grew progressively more bleak.

'Don't,' Catrin said, a tremor in her voice. She brushed at her eyes.

'Friends and companions will surround him and he will curse them for keeping him away from her,' Oliver continued, as if he had not heard. 'He will hate her for dying; he will hate his children for looking like her and, most of all, he will hate himself for sowing the seed that killed her.' Very gently he put the cup down at the side of the hearth, but Catrin could tell that he had wanted desperately to throw it.

'One day he will begin to heal,' Oliver added, looking down at his hands, 'but it will not be for a long time, and he will carry the scars until his dying day.'

Catrin could bear the understated emotion and grief no more; she threw her arms around his neck and sat in his lap to be comforted. Oliver's arm tightened around her waist and he buried his face against her throat.

'Ah God, Catrin, why is it always so hard?'

To which she had no answer for she was about to make it harder yet. For a moment she remained quiet on his knee, summoning up the courage and fighting several quite plausible procrastinations.

'Oliver, there is something I have to tell you.' She cleared her throat. 'I have been trying to find the right moment. Indeed, I was going to tell you last night . . .'

'What?' He blinked. 'Oh yes, "the hardened gossip".' His voice was dull. 'Can it not wait?'

'I wish it could because now is not the time, but delay will only make things more difficult yet.'

She felt him tense. 'Is it about Louis?'

'No. Jesu, I don't even want to think of him, let alone talk.' Licking her lips, she drew a deep breath. 'Oliver, I am with child.'

He sat very still and the silence was deep, punctuated only by the soft sound of Rosamund's breathing.

'I was going to tell you sooner, but you were away with Prince Henry and I wanted to be sure that the signs were not false.'

'When will you be brought to bed?' he asked tightly.

The way he phrased the words was telling to Catrin. He did not mention the child, as most men would, but spoke instead in terms of the labour. 'I am not quite sure,' she said. 'Some time in December I think.'

There was another silence while he counted and then it was broken by his voice, fierce with anger but low-pitched to avoid waking the child. 'Then you are halfway through the carrying. Are you going to tell me that as a midwife you did not know?'

'We have been apart for almost four weeks,' she said defensively.

He pushed her off his lap and jerked to his feet. 'But still you must have known long before that.'

'Not enough to be sure,' she lied, but he turned round and outstared her.

'How much do you need to be sure?' he demanded. 'I thought that you did not travel well from Rouen to Carlisle. It wasn't just seasickness, was it?'

'I thought it was.'

He made a disgusted sound and went to stare out of the shelter entrance. 'You thought I would force you to stay in Rouen if you told me.'

'I swear on God's Holy Cross that I did not know for sure I was with child then. One missed flux does not make for a definite pregnancy, and there had been other times when my bleed was late.' Catrin bit her lip. She had been dreading telling him and now that she had, it was as bad as she had imagined. 'I did not want to trouble you too soon.'

'So you trouble me halfway through your term on the night that my friend's wife dies in childbirth,' he said roughly.

She heard the grit in his voice and saw how stiffly he was holding himself, the outline of his body blocking the light that was growing outside.

'Should I have left it longer?'

'Christ, you should have told me at the outset!' He whirled round and faced her with tear-glittered eyes and an anguished expression. 'It's time I could have had that has been time squandered!' Grabbing her arm, he drew her outside the shelter and stood her in the grey morning to look her up and down.

Instead of drawing herself up and sucking her stomach in, Catrin leaned back a little so that her belly showed against the folds of her gown. 'Not every woman dies in childbirth, else there would be few people in the world,' she said forcefully. 'It's as much a hazard as going to war. Edon died because her body was worn out. If a woman bears one baby after another, year in, year out, she is bound to suffer. Your wife died because her hips were too narrow to allow the child's passage.' She raised her palm to his face. 'I have neither of those difficulties; I am young and strong. You must have faith.'

'Even when it has been betrayed?' he said bitterly.

'What else is there to do?'

He shook his head. 'You could have taken . . .' He bit down on the end of the sentence and stared across the bailey.

But Catrin knew what he had been going to say. 'I could have taken a potion to bring on my flux?' She suppressed the urge to slap him across the face. 'Yes, I could, and it would have been as dangerous as childbirth itself. I would have been sick until I vomited blood; I would have purged my bowels and while losing the child I would have bled heavily from my womb.' Taking his hand, she pressed it against the mound of her belly. 'Yesterday I felt the first movement. This is our child, Oliver. It will live, I swear to you, and so will I.'

She felt his fingers tense as if he would draw away, but she held him there a moment longer so that word and sight and touch were inextricably combined. 'I swear,' she repeated firmly, fixing his gaze with her own.

With an inarticulate groan, Oliver pulled her into his arms and held her in a tight embrace. 'Then keep your oath,' he said, his voice rough with emotion, 'for if you do not, I will follow you into the afterlife and neither of us will ever have peace.'

'I will keep it, you'll see,' she said and, with soothing murmurs, led him inside and lay down with him on the narrow bed. For what little remained of the night, they lay in each other's arms and neither of them slept.

Catrin gradually grew accustomed to Devizes. She missed Bristol for the river, the salt tang of the sea and the great array of trading vessels which had made purchase of every conceivable commodity a simple matter of going down to the wharves. She missed the familiarity of place and people, but she was not sorry to have left.

The women's bower in the castle had become a dolorous place since Edon's death, everyone cast into shocked mourning. Since the household was still grieving Earl Robert's death, the atmosphere had been unbearable.

Devizes was completely different. Here there was vast energy and bustle created by the red-haired young man in search of a crown. Henry was never still. Even if he physically stopped, his mind was whirling like a top. Those who surrounded him became charged with his vigour. They needed to be for Stephen and Eustace were like terriers after a rat, determined to seize Henry by the back of the neck and shake him until he was dead. They chased him hither and yon across the south-west, burning the harvests in the fields and slaughtering the livestock as they went.

Fortunately for Henry, if not the suffering people, allies such as Rannulf of Chester and Hugh of Norfolk created various diversions to draw Stephen and Eustace away when they came too close to their goal. Stephen turned north to Lincolnshire; Eustace to East Anglia. But the feeling of danger still crackled around Devizes like the air in a thunderstorm.

'Devon,' Oliver announced to Catrin, with a bemused shake of his head. 'In two days' time.' He sat on the bench that ran along the sidewall of their dwelling. They were renting a house owned by the monks at Reading. It had belonged to a merchant who, feeling his years, had exchanged it for a pension and care at the abbey.

'Henry is going to Devon?' Catrin turned from the cauldron, a ladle of stew poised over a bowl. She saw his eyes flicker over her body and then determinedly look away.

Despite the looseness of her robe, her pregnancy was unmistakable now. Privately, Catrin thought that if she grew any larger she would burst, but did not say as much to Oliver. He was so ridden by his fear that one word out of place was enough to tip him over the edge. She was not unduly bothered by her size for she felt healthy and strong. There was only a slight swelling of her ankles at the end of the day and the baby's kicks were so vigorous that she had no qualms about its well-being. Securing a good midwife was proving difficult, but she was not going to mention that to Oliver either. With Henry's army based in Devizes and so many camp followers and wives in the town, midwives were in great demand and short supply. Until she grew too large, Catrin had attended at several births herself and was still receiving enquiries which she had been forced to turn away.

'With Stephen and Eustace out of the way, Henry has plans of his own; while the terriers are away, the rat intends making some inroads of his own,' Oliver said. 'We're going to make a sally against Bridport.'

Catrin ladled the stew into the bowl and set it down in front of him. His gambeson, once cream, was a dirty charcoal grey from the constant wearing of his steel hauberk. A summer in the saddle had left him wire-thin. His hair was almost white and his skin was so sun-bronzed that the greyness of fatigue was undetectable. Nevertheless she knew that it was there. Prince Henry drove men so hard that the path behind him was littered with their broken debris.

'Is that wise?'

Oliver shrugged. 'We can likely take it, and there's a useful harbour. If matters go well, then we'll look to take other places.' He rubbed his eyes. 'But provisioning the men is hard. The grass has almost stopped growing in the fields so we have to transport fodder for the horses or commandeer it from the nearest friendly castle. Half the time they haven't got enough for themselves because of the wrecked harvests.' He dipped his spoon, stared at the stew, then ate it, but without relish. 'It's not going to win us a kingdom.' 'Then what is it going to do?'

'Prove to Stephen and Eustace that Henry's a thorn who refuses to be plucked from their sides. Prove to all witnesses that he can command men and go on the offensive even in the throes of being the underdog - and you know how much popular opinion loves an underdog. Henry milks that one for all it is worth.'

Catrin nodded. 'I can see the sense in that. But if it still is not going to win him a kingdom, what is the point?'

'It's laying the ground. It does not take a seer to foretell that we'll have to return to Normandy sooner or later. Henry needs more troops, more backing, more maturity.'

She went to the door and looked out on the narrow street. A group of children, Rosamund among them, were floating twigs in a puddle, thoroughly absorbed in their game. She called her daughter to come and eat, and as she watched Rosamund come skipping felt a lump in her throat. Six years old. In another six she would be growing into a woman and the baby in Catrin's womb would be the child that Rosamund was now. She could not bear to think that they might still be at war when that time came.

'I wish I did not have to leave you,' Oliver said, as she turned back into the room to ladle out a smaller bowl of stew for her daughter.

'And I wish you did not have to go, but there's no profit to be had in wishing.' She forced herself to smile. 'Perhaps it is for the best. If you stay, you will only spend your time worrying and demanding to know if I'm all right. With Prince Henry's supplies to look after, you'll have no leisure for anxiety.'

He echoed her smile but with less success. 'I don't need leisure for anxiety,' he said. 'It will hound me whether I am occupied or not.'

'I swear on Ethel's love knot that no harm will come to

me,' Catrin said steadily. 'I promised you a strong child and . a healthy wife and mother to care for it, did I not? Just look to yourself. It will need a father too.'

Rosamund danced into the room, her gown soaked, her face and hands muddy. Her arrival ended the conversation as Catrin attended to her and Oliver resumed eating, but Catrin could still sense the currents of fear and anxiety as a tangible presence within the room. It didn't matter how many assurances each gave the other, the feeling of naked vulnerability remained.