Needle in the Blood (45 page)

“Which ribbon?” he asks when he is ready to bind the single, fat braid he has made.

“You choose.”

He selects a gold one; he always likes to see her dark hair set off with gold. “You know,” he says, “there may be a way around William.”

She laughs. “As though he is a wreck in a harbour mouth.”

“A wreck sometimes,” admits Odo. “He ails greatly in his belly.”

“It is his greed.”

Odo gives an exasperated sigh, but having begun, he might as well continue. “I mean, I might take you to court, if you could be…if it could be seen that you were not unfriendly toward us.”

“I don’t understand. When have I ever shown myself unfriendly to you, my lord?”

“Not me, Gytha, us. The Normans. William.” Absorbed by the elaboration of his new notion, he does not notice a change in the quality of her stillness, a tensing of muscle which squares her shoulders and sets her jaw. “There are a number of Englishmen at court, you know, perhaps people you knew once. My brother Mortain is to get an English wife. I signed his request to the Pope for an annulment myself while I was in London, the present countess being clearly barren.”

“Poor woman,” she says, with an intensity which catches him off guard.

“She will not go empty-handed. I didn’t think you cared for her.”

“I don’t, except that she is a woman, as I am.”

He shrugs. He has no time now to embroil himself in the contrary business of women’s likes and dislikes. “So will you do it? Come to court with me? Give William a chance?”

“William,” she says with icy deliberation. “Let me see what I can recall of my one and only encounter with your noble brother. But on second thought,” turning to face him, letting a note of dawning revelation enter her voice, “I don’t have to, do I, as you have reviewed it so often in your dreams? Perhaps you are better equipped to remind me.”

“It is possible my brother regrets…certain of his actions.” He fiddles with the ribbon, weaving it between his fingers, then drawing it out and starting again.

“You mean,” still that false dawn in her tone, “that, although he is quite content to have defeated King Harold, usurped his throne, and let him be chopped into pieces like dog meat, he is now very sorry he declined to let Lady Edith have what pieces could be found to give them Christian burial. Surely, my lord bishop, I do not have to tell you that there can be no forgiveness without genuine remorse.”

“Gytha.” Discarding the ribbon, he tries to take her hands, but she twists them out of his grasp and stands up. “All I want is to find a way for us to be together. I love you, I’m proud of you, I want you to be acknowledged as my, what do you call it? My handfast wife, as your precious mistress was to Godwinson. Surely a form of words…if that’s what it would take. Surely my love is worth that much. And it would be your chance to help put an end to the strife between our peoples.”

Now she laughs, a harsh, strident sound, without humour. Though her cheeks are flushed, the skin around her mouth and at the corners of her nostrils is white as bone. “So now I am to cry your wares like a market trader, am I? Roll up, roll up,” she assumes the dipping and rising, singsong notes of a peddler, “Odo fitz Huerluin’s universal dispensations, only three a penny…I tell you, my lord, there was no such bargaining between my lady and King Harold. They didn’t weigh love in a scale.”

“I had no idea you were so unworldly, mistress. I hadn’t noticed you refusing any of my gifts to you.” He picks up the pearl and ruby necklace from the nightstand, but she dashes it out of his hand then swipes at the stand, sending everything flying. Jewels shower the floor, a water jug smashes, its contents darkening the oat straw from white to dull yellow.

“Take them back then!” she shouts, her mouth contorted with rage. “Everything. They’re probably all stolen anyway. Everything you have is stolen from us. You’re a fraud, Odo. You’re nothing but what we made you.”

“I am nothing but what William made me,” he says quietly, beyond anger. “If you cannot accept that, then there is no hope for us.”

“I can’t accept it because I don’t believe it.” She had her hand on the door latch, but her vehemence propels her back into the room. “How could I hold you in any esteem if it were true?”

For a moment he believes she is going to drop to her knees and plead with him for it not to be true. But it is. There is no escaping it. He shakes his head sadly. “If it weren’t for William, I wouldn’t even be here. We would never have met.” With a rueful laugh he adds, “Not even in my dreams. The whole thing is built on William, don’t you see?”

“If you really think that, then there is no hope.” With her hand on the door catch, she looks at him. The regret in her eyes is immeasurable, but that it is there at all gives the lie to what she has said. There is always hope.

“Let me finish your hair,” he cajoles, picking up the gold ribbon again.

“Why? For whom?” Behind him, among the dark folds of the bed hangings, a woman is dancing, a woman clad in grey and white whose hands describe a ghost, a memory, a lost ideal. Gytha shivers, folds her arms tight across her midriff, pinching the flesh over her ribs to make sure she is real.

Sensing a softening of her mood, Odo holds out his arms to her. “I can only stay tonight. The king believes I am already on my way to Winchester. Please let us be kind to one another.”

“It’s Lent, your grace.”

“That didn’t seem to trouble your conscience earlier.”

“But now I am repenting of my sin. Surely you should give thanks for it.” Pushing open the door she goes out into the yard. “Bishop,” she flings back over her shoulder as she leaves.

Annunciation to Eastertide 1072

From the hall entrance, Agatha surveys the courtyard through swirls of dust whisked up by a stiff, cold breeze. Winter is not quite done with them yet. Her eyes water, making the figures in front of her shimmer, giving a false impression of fluidity in their composition. Freya is reaching up to Fulk, who bends from his saddle to take a package from her. Food, no doubt. She is always feeding him and, young and big as he is, he is always hungry. Leofwine sits in the dust with a grubby fist in his mouth, Thecla staggers, tugging at her mother’s skirts to keep her balance.

Although the convent bells are only now ringing Prime, carried intermittently to the ears of the people in the yard by the vagaries of the wind, the smith is already at work, the glow from his fire splashing warm orange into the grey of dawn, the clang of hammer on iron competing with the bells. Odo’s horse threw a shoe earlier, that is the only reason he is still here, the only reason he sits on the horse now, with the new shoe gleaming on the rim of its hoof, in the middle of the dusty, rutted yard, his man at arms a few respectful paces away, and stares at Gytha, who stares back as though they are both mute.

Failing to find the smith asleep in his forge, he had gone into the hall looking for him, and although he had tried to keep quiet, prowling among the wool stands and embroidery frames and the blanketed mounds of sleepers on stockinged feet, peering into the piss and stalebreath-smelling gloom without the aid of a candle, she had awoken; had sat up quickly, hugging her knees under her blanket, the plait he had so carefully made earlier frayed like a worn rope.

“I’m looking for the smith,” he had whispered quickly, in case either of them believed he had any other purpose in being there.

“Try the kitchen,” she replied, then lay down once more with her back to him, the carapace of blanket hunched up to her neck.

Yet once the smith was roused and the horse shod, she appeared in the yard, her cloak fastened over her chemise, her ankles bare above her unlaced shoes, an uncompromising set to her mouth which was at odds with something much more equivocal in her eyes.

“God grant you a safe journey, my lord,” she says now, fitting her words carefully into the silence.

He nods his endorsement. “Shall I write to you, Gytha?”

“As you please.”

Nothing is as I please
, he wants to tell her,
nothing has happened as I planned. I thought of everything, foresaw every eventuality; I memorised Caesar and Tacitus, studied Bede, rode through the shipyards at Avranches with saws rasping their secrets in my ears and tar fumes stinging my eyes to tears; this venture stretched and pierced me the way the sailmakers stretched and pierced their canvas, I was as bent and nailed by it as the planks and clinkers for the hulls. Yet I remained unprepared, hopelessly unarmed; I never expected to fall in love, with you or your damned country. I am a practical man; I do not believe in comets or wicker men and I know the age of miracles long ago gave way to the age of reason; I have no idea what to do now.

When he looks out of the open gate, over the narrow bridge, to the broadening rim of nacreous light on the eastern horizon, his mind escapes the mists to take refuge in thoughts of Winchester and the fight to come. It will be close, but he is certain of winning it. York’s claim to the disputed bishoprics is supported by a mass of evidence, not to mention three hundred years of custom and William’s preference for maintaining English practice wherever feasible. And as for the oath, he can hardly wait to see the look on Lanfranc’s face when he is compelled to accept Thomas’ allegiance merely to his person, for his lifetime, and not to his holy office in perpetuity. All Odo has to do is bide his time and let nature take its course; once Lanfranc is dead, with Thomas’ support, he can make his own move on Canterbury. And by the time the court assembles for Easter, Gytha will have come to her senses, and he will send for her to join him. With a nod to his man at arms, he kicks his horse into an easy trot, out of the gate toward the bridge, taking the lane south, toward the London road and thence to Winchester.

Gytha remains in the courtyard long after he is lost from view, dipping beneath the hill sloping away from her gate, obscured by the dust of Fulk’s departure. Her face turned to Freya as she gathers up the children and goes into the kitchen, she smiles, but sees nothing, is unaware of Agatha, still watching from the hall doorway. Her skin feels clammy, her back aches as though she has been kicked by a mule at the base of her spine, a pain easier to concentrate upon than that of her heart. The backache, at least, is a blessing, for she knows it heralds her courses, another month safely got through.

She must consider what to do next. She cannot stand here forever, while her blood chills and congeals, looking for the silhouettes of Odo and his companion against the brightening sky once they breast the hill. She cannot stay here at all; if she is to be a whore, she will at least be an honest one rather than playing happy families with a Norman bishop. Judith has been right all along, and she has been so blinded by foolish love she could not see it. She wonders if Judith’s understanding is a matter of her age; being past her fertility, her perceptions are no longer scrambled by the demands of her body. What a release that must be, to dry up, no longer to crave the warmth of a man inside you.

How long before Fulk returns and the escort arrives to take the women back to Canterbury? Four days, five at the most? Fulk, travelling alone, may well make the journey more quickly. Plenty of time to instruct her…
Odo’s
steward and pack up the little she will take with her. She will go to Saint Eufrosyna’s where she can re-enter Lady Edith’s service. No, too easy for him to find her. On the other hand, what makes her think he will even bother to look? Now he has discovered she cannot be manipulated as easily as a cartoon embroidered on linen, even though she would be a lot simpler to transport from house to hall to cathedral nave and put on display? And even if he did come looking for her, he would hardly violate holy sanctuary, even for her. Especially for her.

Practical matters, simple questions with simple answers; if she sticks to those, everything else will take care of itself. In time. “Will you carry on with the work until the escort gets here,” she asks Agatha on her way back inside, “or pack up and wait? So no harm can come to the hanging?” She gives the nun an ironic look, one eyebrow raised a little higher than the other.

She could destroy it, she realises. How easily sparks might fly from the hearth or a hot coal go astray, how effortlessly Odo’s lies and pretensions be reduced to dust, mingled with earth and straw and the scorched bones of her house. Then the villagers would come, scrape among the ashes for the odd coin or pewter vessel, and content themselves with the least damaged planks and palings to repair their fences. No doubt the steward, fearful of his master’s anger, would order a few hands lopped off here and there, some confiscation of grain or livestock to set an example. Though Odo’s place in history might be compromised, hers would be assured. Oh, that was in the year the earl’s madwoman burnt the manor down, they would recall. That dish? Part of my mother’s wedding portion the year the old hall was destroyed. Look, there’s a burn mark on its base I could never polish out…

“I think it best to carry on,” Agatha is saying. “Or the Devil will find work for idle hands. Will you join us today? I’m inclined to think you need something to occupy your thoughts, other than…”

“We wouldn’t want the Devil to find any more work for my hands, would we?” cuts in Gytha with a strained laugh. She looks for Margaret, who is helping a young lad lift the shutters down from the hall windows, and is already making her way toward her as Agatha, screwing up her eyes at the white light angling across dust motes, remarks that she is late with her prayers.