Needle in the Blood (30 page)

Her eyes follow Odo, sitting, standing, turning himself about in Osbern’s competent hands, his mind no doubt running on how best to settle the dispute to be laid before him, running, perhaps, a little on her. As Osbern smoothes the plum coloured chausses over his master’s calves, pulls his shirt over his head, laces his crimson tunic, buckles his girdle, and lifts the stiff, brocaded surcoat onto his shoulders, she understands that this relationship has a closeness, a depth of physical intimacy that a man in Odo’s position can achieve with no one else, not even a wife were he permitted one.

She feels the prick of foolish tears behind her eyes but cannot turn away, captivated by every move of her lover’s body, her concentration so focused on him that she can sense how his clothes feel against his skin, the warmth of fine wool, the linen crisp and cool, the sudden, sharp scraping when Osbern accidentally draws the comb over the tonsured part of his scalp. It is the only mistake Osbern makes and, although not punished, it is not overlooked, eliciting from Odo a sharp hiss of pain before he waves the comb away and holds out his wrists for the pair of wide gold cuffs set with red amber he has chosen to complete his adornment. The cuffs shimmer through her tears, their clasps lock, one after the other, fat, well-oiled clicks.

Finally Odo himself selects a crucifix from a stamped leather jewel case on his dressing table, a lavish affair of gold set with garnets to represent Christ’s wounds and a crown of tiny jet thorns. He kisses the crucifix and hangs it, on its ruby studded chain, around his neck, then goes to his prie dieu where he kneels in silent prayer for several minutes. Osbern moves quietly about the room, cleaning razors, folding clothes, shutting chests and boxes and comb cases, stoppering crystal bottles. As though, thinks Gytha, their perfumes are like exotic wild animals, rare and dangerous. He bundles up discarded clothing and wet towels and stokes the brazier, normally jobs for lesser servants, or the smallest pages, but these are unusual circumstances and gossip, like fire, is only a comfort until it runs out of control.

Gytha watches Odo, thinking he himself is a prayer, her prayer, with the soles of his shoes so neatly together and his hair curling into a drake’s tail at the nape of his neck and his body so straight and strong, bearing the stigmata of her teeth beneath all the layers of linen and wool and gold embroidery.

He finishes his prayers and comes to sit beside her on the bed, taking one of her hands between both of his. She turns on her side and curls up with her knees under the bedclothes pressed against his thigh.

“Tell me what you pray for.”

He looks reflective, does not answer immediately, so she is afraid she has overstepped some boundary she was unaware of, then says, “That God will remind me of the name of this saint whose relics we have to discuss, before it becomes clear to everyone that I don’t know it. You seem to have a saint under every bush in this country.”

“Oh, we are very holy people, my lord.”

“So why did I lately come upon a shrine to a Saint Venus? Can you unravel that puzzle for me?”

“I could, my lord, but you have to go down to dinner.” She gives a laugh like the splash of water, deep underground. He kisses her, chastely, on her forehead, because if he kisses her laughing mouth he knows he will not go. “Osbern will take care of you, and Saint Odo, and Freya, of course. And later, perhaps we can pray to Saint Venus together. Promise me you won’t try to get up.” He rises, Osbern hovering at his back with a clothes brush. “Oh, and Gytha, my sweetheart,” he says, as though it is an afterthought, “I never said Alwys had to go, just that my sister had my leave to find a replacement for her as an embroiderer. It’s all a matter of interpretation.”

***

Now he has gone, she tries to be angry, but she feels too weak. There is not enough room inside her for anger, yet he has cheated her, no, worse, outwitted her. She will leave, but she has no clothes. All the women have a spare set of everything; she will ask Osbern to fetch hers, but she does not know how. Osbern, by ignoring her so completely, even the imprint of her teeth in his master’s flesh, has made her uncertain she exists for him at all. Perhaps she cannot speak to him, her voice will not work, or her words will come out jumbled into nonsense, or he will simply be unable to hear her. She and Osbern, each in a separate sphere of Odo’s life, speaking different languages, each condemned to a fixed orbit, unless he chooses to lift them out of it. Everything comes back to Odo, and the cycle of rage and rebuttal begins again.

She will get up, borrow his clothes if need be. God knows, he seems to have enough of them. In her idle inventory of his room she has counted at least half a dozen clothes chests, all exhaling clouds of camphor and lavender. She will go back to the atelier, and tomorrow she will continue work on her fables. Yet how can she? How can she simply walk into the women’s dormitory as if nothing has happened, as if her body is not pierced by his as clearly as the linen stretched on the embroidery frames is pierced by his memories. Besides, his bed is warm and comfortable, holding the template of his sleeping self in all its folds and feathers, and she isn’t confident the bleeding has stopped completely. He is right; she should rest, allow herself to be taken care of.

***

She must have slept, for when she opens her eyes the clutter of objects in the room is lost in shadow, only a pool of light from a single candle on the nightstand showing her the figure of Freya, her back protectively curved as she offers her breast to one of the babies. Gytha does not look long enough to identify which, although even with her eyes squeezed shut she cannot now deny the soft, wet sucking of the child’s mouth on Freya’s nipple, nor the smell of milk resting uneasily in the air of this room which, for all its opulence, is a man’s room. Her body responds as though caressed by ghosts, her nipples harden and her womb clenches, repeating their unfinished catechism. She turns away from Freya, drawing her knees up to her chest, making herself into the smallest possible target for grief.

She aches for Odo, with a rush of elation that he is flesh and blood, sweat and substance, divided from her only by the floor of this room; if she listens carefully, she can probably distinguish his voice from among the babble drifting up from the hall below. Missing him is in time, not eternity.

“Are you awake?” asks Freya, shifting the baby to her other breast. Gytha opens her eyes and turns reluctantly back toward her. It’s Freya’s baby, she thinks, Freya’s little daughter.

“Can I get you something? Water? Something to eat? The manservant said to ask.” She looks around the room. “No shortage of anything, is there? Makes you wonder what he wanted with my few bits and pieces. It’s the second time it’s happened to me, you know. My family came from York originally. Fled down south after the harrying. You’ve never seen so much of…nothing, after the Bastard finished with us. He even had all the farm animals slaughtered, far more than they needed to eat, and just left them to rot in the fields.”

Gytha makes no reply, and Freya considers her thoughtfully. “The page said you’d been taken ill. When I came…I met the earl on the stairs. He said you’d asked for me specially. He said…He looked…” she gropes for the right word, “panicky,” she concludes with satisfaction.

Gytha smiles. “He was all for summoning his physician, as if I hadn’t lost enough blood for one day.”

Freya looks up sharply at this and Thecla, sensing her mother’s distraction, grizzles a little. “I hope he would not bleed you for women’s troubles in this month. It can only be done with the sun in Scorpio.”

“That’s why I asked for you. I was sure you would know what to do. I remember how you took care of Leofgeat and the baby.”

She tells Freya everything. Freya listens attentively, nodding from time to time, sighing occasionally when Gytha struggles for words to reduce this act of love and wonder and violence to a medical conundrum. Chastened, Gytha tries to see herself as Freya must see her, as a puzzle, a set of physical organs to be defended against the effects of emotional chaos, and begins again. When she stumbles to the end of her account, Freya lays the baby down on the end of the bed, straightens her clothes, and folds back the covers to examine Gytha. Thecla sneezes as she turns her head toward her mother and the fur tickles her nose. Freya laughs besottedly, but stops when she sees Gytha’s face. Gytha longs to say it’s all right, but it isn’t, so she says nothing.

Freya presses Gytha’s belly with cool, knowledgeable hands. She inserts her fingers between Gytha’s legs, asking as she turns her wrist whether she feels any pain. Here? Or here? Her tone is detached, as though she is a shopkeeper asking what weight of cheese or length of linen.

“Not pain exactly,” says Gytha, struggling to name what she does feel, this opening, melting sensation, sweet and visceral. Freya suddenly straightens up, wiping her hand on her skirt. She gives Gytha a quizzical, almost conspiratorial, look.

“I can’t find anything wrong with you, nothing your lover doesn’t have just as badly at any rate.”

Her lover. Her lover. “What do you mean?”

Freya picks up her daughter and sits back down. “That you’re smitten with lust just as strong as he is.”

“And how do you know what he feels?”

“Everyone does. Except you, it seems. He’s carried your image in his eyes as long as I’ve known him face to face, and it looks fixed, as though it was there a long time before I had the chance to see it.”

“It will pass.”

Freya frowns. “You sound almost as though you wish it. On the contrary, you should make sure you hold onto him.”

“He’s my enemy, Freya.” Gytha sits up, shaking her hair out of her eyes, hugging her knees. “I wonder you don’t understand that, after what you told me earlier.”

“They’re here to stay, Gytha, and they’re not all bad. Just people like the rest of us.”

“Odo isn’t people like the rest of us. He’s the Bastard’s brother. For all we know, the harrying of York was his idea. My…they do say most of the Bastard’s ideas are his.”

“And my Fulk is in his personal service. Be sensible.”

“I’m afraid. What will happen to me?”

“If you play your cards shrewdly, you’ll become rich enough to fart through silk and pick your teeth with gold.” Freya leans and kisses her sleeping daughter’s head. “I can help, you know. Binding spells, love potions, that sort of thing.”

Gytha reaches out and squeezes her hand to silence her, quickly withdrawing it as her fingers brush against the baby’s cheek. “One thing, perhaps,” she says, thinking of the blood, the familiar, though long forgotten, dragging sensation in the pit of her stomach. “I can’t have a child.”

“You don’t like children, do you?” The accusation stings like sparks from a fire in a high wind. “Children would be a good idea. Make sure he had to go on paying out even after you’ve grown old and fat and he’s moved onto fresh pastures.”

“I can’t.”

“Suit yourself. You could try this,” Freya suggests, “it works for some women. Take a piece of thread from your clothes, or a hair from your head’s best. Tie a knot in it and put it somewhere in the bed. Shouldn’t be difficult to hide it in a bed this size. It will tie up the neck of your womb and stop his seed getting in. You must say these words whilst you tie the knot.” She leans and whispers in Gytha’s ear.

“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll do it now.”

“No. When you’re thinking of him, of bedding him.”

When is she not thinking of him? When was she ever not thinking of him? Wincing slightly, she pulls a strand of hair from the top of her head and knots it deftly, just as she knots threads at the back of a piece of embroidery, to make a neat finish.

***

It is late when he comes back to her, stepping carefully around the inert form of Osbern, rolled in a blanket on the threshold to his bed chamber.

“You can go to sleep now, Osbern,” he whispers.

The fire is out and the room is cold. He takes off his clothes unattended and feels his way to bed in pitch darkness, guided by familiarity and the sound of Gytha’s breathing. He crawls, shivering, under the covers and snuggles up to her, curling his body around hers, her back to his chest, her hair catching in the chain of his amulet. He is so relieved to find her still there. He had not been sure she would be.

He has tormented himself with the question, in the part of his mind not engaged in the sharp delights of the evening’s legal and theological arguments. He has stipulated terms, driven bargains, made small compromises and subtle changes of emphasis. He has sent his guests on their way satisfied, full of fine wine and excellent food, each one thinking he has won a victory, each one convinced he basks in the bright, narrow beam of the earl’s special favour. Yet his heart was not in it, his heart was lying here all along, beating against her ribs. Of course she’s here; she belongs here.

He thinks he will lie quietly beside her, emptying his head, letting his heartbeat slow to keep pace with hers, until he sleeps. He thinks he will look at this new and wonderful situation in the morning and that daylight will show him the ways in which it is going to change his life. But his body has other ideas. His body burns. He tosses and turns about the bed in search of places where the sheets are cool, but his nerves are strung so tight that even the bland caress of linen sets them humming with desire. He wakes her, though when he shakes her shoulder, she turns to him so promptly he wonders if she was ever asleep.