Needle in the Blood (62 page)

The man looks bewitched, he thinks, as Odo is shown into his office, or at least like a man in whom the humours are catastrophically out of balance. A fire burns in his eyes which Lanfranc has not seen since the meetings in Rouen at which the conquest was planned. His embrace, as they exchange the kiss of peace, is brief and wary; even Odo’s skin feels as hot and dry as the parched fields beyond the city walls where the corn lies stunted and shrivelled, taunting the hungry. Yet his smile is as it always is, broad, ironic, self-deprecating as only the smile of a supremely confident man can be, and his grip on Lanfranc’s shoulders is firm, perhaps a little too firm. And when he opens his mouth, what he says is mundane enough.

“I’ve come to set your mind at rest about some lost property.”

***

Gytha wakes to find him gone. Closeted with Lord Hamo for a good hour before Terce, explains the serving girl who brings her breakfast, complete with flowers, and now departed for Christ Church. Drawing back the bed curtains, Gytha looks out of the window. The sun, whose heat here seems malevolent, is already high, approaching its late summer zenith she estimates, squinting up into the dense blue of the sky. He must return soon. Dismissing the girl, she settles back among the pillows to wait. She nibbles at the white rolls, picks at the preserved damsons and almonds toasted with honey, leaves the wine because there is insufficient water in it for breakfast. She is not very hungry, but her meal helps to pass a little time while she plans how else to occupy herself.

Sext is rung and still he does not return. She rises and dresses herself, deciding against summoning Countess Marie’s maid, who has been lent to her until Freya arrives, because, without assistance, she can spin out the process for as long as she wishes. Having left Normandy so precipitately, she has only the gown she travelled in. She brushes it carefully, with an ebony brush inlaid with mother-of-pearl, then spits on her shoes and rubs them with a corner of the bedsheet. She arranges her hair in a fantastic elaboration of twists and plaits, then takes it all down again because, she thinks, it looks more like a fancy loaf than hair. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she notices a small tear in her skirt, a result, no doubt, of being thrown from her horse yesterday.

And realises there are no sewing materials in Odo’s apartments. She will have to find the maid and have her bring some up. Very well. She leaves the bedroom and crosses the parlour to the door giving onto the head of the stairs, and stops with her hand on the latch. She cannot do it, cannot go out into the household, knowing what is being said, knowing what they think of her. She should have stayed in Normandy, come back with Freya as any sensible woman would. Any decent woman.

She is being stupid. She has Odo’s protection; whatever they are thinking, they will not dare say it to her face. But they did yesterday, the starving, the grief stricken, the ones whom he could not protect. Here, though, in the castle, it is different. No one is starving here, and everyone knows her. They will not accuse her of bewitching him. But perhaps she has.
I believe God made me to love you
, he told her. Perhaps even he believes himself to have been bewitched, and that is why he has become so cool. She stares at her hand on the latch, her left hand. She snatches it back as though the latch has burned her. The tear will have to wait; it doesn’t matter, no one is going to see her.

***

This is the place to begin, with Brother Ealdred and his revelations, catch the old man off-balance and only then make mention of the sermons against Gytha.

“And I wonder what I can have lost that has come to you?” asks Lanfranc, his tone warmed by relief.

Odo snaps his fingers at the clerk he has brought with him. The clerk steps forward and hands his master a document. “A few days ago,” says Odo, “I received a visit from a Brother Ealdred of Malden.”

Lanfranc starts tugging at his beard.

“It’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” Odo goes on pleasantly. “What do we do with troublemakers? Get them out of the way? Or keep them close.”

“Brother Ealdred was at Worcester on my proper business.”

“If you cast your eye over this,” Odo puts down the document on Lanfranc’s desk, smoothing it out over the grey hairs scattered there by the old man’s nervous tugging, “I think you’ll find he wasn’t. He was at least premature in pricing up Worcester’s library on your behalf.”

The silence tightens between them as Lanfranc reads. “You must give me time to consider my reply to this, Odo. You understand I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of it. Are you sure it’s genuine?”

Odo shrugs. “Why should it not be? Ealdred’s motives seem plausible enough to me. He is a man of strong convictions.”

“Oh yes,” says Lanfranc ruefully. “May I keep this?” He waves the parchment at Odo.

“Be my guest. It is a copy, of course, but exact in every particular, save Brother Ealdred’s hand, which is uniquely fine, I think.”

“Uniquely, it seems.”

“I have written to His Holiness, of course.”

“Of course.” Oh, of course. “I will write to him myself immediately, to remind him of what other authority exists for Canterbury’s claims, Bede and so forth.”

“I also referred His Holiness to the transcripts of witness testimony in Cardinal Hubert’s possession, though I do not think it was conclusive on either side, do you?”

“Perhaps not so far as you heard it. I imagine I do not have to remind you that you left Winchester before the council ended.”

“I have since seen all the papers.”

“And signed the agreement.”

“Hardly binding if a major part of its legal foundation turns out to be fraudulent.”

“I will speak to you again on this matter in a week, Odo.”

“Take as long as you like, Archbishop. But a word of warning. In case you thought to take comfort from the fact that Thomas can do little from as far afield as York, be sure I already have troops on the borders of all three dioceses. I have only to tighten the noose a little and my ‘hangmen’ are already on their way.”

“A week,” repeats Lanfranc, in a tone designed to bring an end to their interview, but Odo seems to have other ideas. Drawing up a stool, he sits down opposite Lanfranc.

“You may go,” he says to his clerk. “Wait for me outside. Well, Lanfranc,” he continues once the clerk has gone, “whatever have you been up to in my absence to bring down the wrath of God on us so with this drought?” Acutely aware, although he cannot see it, of the squat outline of the new cathedral rising confidently beyond the cloisters, he adds, “Is it what Saint Anthony condemns as the lust of building, do you suppose?”

“Not my lust, brother.” Lanfranc watches him for his response, his black eyes beady as a magpie’s when it has some glittery thing in sight.

“Who can know the mind of God? I simply suggest it as a possibility, an example I might use in my own preaching. The shepherd who became so absorbed in building the finest fold ever seen that his back was turned when the wolf came and took his sheep. Rather fine, don’t you think?”

“I have done what I could.”

“You have done nothing,” Odo shouts, rising from the stool and slamming his hands down flat on the desk. “Absolutely nothing. How many lives do you think you have sacrificed just to give my mistress a bad name? Hamo says you have blocked him at every turn. You may believe I am destined for hell, Lanfranc, but I’ll wager you’ll be there to greet me.”

“My concern is all for the good of your soul, Odo. Your welfare is of particular interest to the king, your brother, and therefore to me.”

William. Suddenly he finds the thought of William’s solicitude cold comfort. Turning from the thought of it, he takes a deep, calming breath and smoothes the frown from his face. “I’m arranging to have grain brought in from my estates elsewhere, Normandy if necessary, and I’m lifting the hunting restrictions till Saint Andrew’s day. My verderer is overseeing the cutting of firebreaks round the town, and by this time tomorrow I’ll have guards on the wells and dowsers out all over the county hunting for underground water courses. Seeing as a rule it hardly ever stops raining here, there must be whole seas under our feet. I’ll be the apple of their eye again in no time, you’ll see.” He pauses, then adds as if it is an afterthought, “Extraordinary how I knew nothing of all this until I returned to England.” He gives a light, chilly laugh which does not fool Lanfranc for a moment. “I’m obviously not paying my spies well enough. Tell me, what is the going rate now? Clearly it has risen since my departure.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Stealthily, Lanfranc draws his hands into his sleeves, slides his frail, lawyer’s wrists away from Odo’s broad hands.

Odo raises his hands and shows Lanfranc his palms in mock surrender. “Ah well, perhaps the messengers all met with accidents. The Channel is a cursed stretch of water even in the middle of summer, and the roads are not that safe, whatever my brother would have us believe. What’s done is done. I just wanted to be sure you knew that I know what has been done. I will leave you now. I have given you a great deal to think about.”

“One last question.”

Odo waits with his fingers on the latch.

“Brother Ealdred?”

“He is safe.”

***

Gytha used to be fascinated by these apartments, enthralled by Odo’s possessions in all their lavish eclecticism and opulence. The dragon’s lair, the cave of the robber baron. But now she knows he has entire houses like this, in Rouen and Caen, London and Rome, as well as his official residence in Bayeux. What is moonstone when you can look at the moon, or gold in comparison with the sun? She picks up books, but puts them down again unopened, put off by bindings of ivory and filigree and gilded leather studded with gems. Letters and pictures do not breathe nor silks serve any better to cover the body than woollens, and idleness passes the time more slowly than work.

Her gaze falls on the flowers left by the girl who brought her breakfast. Broom, dyer’s greenweed, goldenrod, and lady’s bedstraw. Every one yellow. She stares at them. Fleabane, and the daisy called goatsbeard. Yellow. For a moment it seems as though her heart stops beating and the blood stills in her veins. Yellow flowers to ward off witches, golden wands and haloes to protect against the powers of darkness. Is this the fate she decreed for herself when she threatened silly Trudy with the dark arts if she attempted to change Lady Edith’s gown? She picks up the vase, of blue, semi-opaque glass, and flings it and its contents into the empty fireplace. The glass shatters, and water seeps into the ashes, precious water, holy water. Better to go thirsty than leave a witch to flourish. Ash tarnishes the flower petals, only hedgerow flowers, humble and hardy enough to withstand drought, yet she would not touch them. Holy Mother of God protect her, she could not touch them. Cannot stay here where their tawdry eyes stare at her from the empty hearth.

She runs out of the parlour, slamming the door behind her so that people going about their business in the great hall glance up and see her running down the stairs from the private apartments, struggling with the latch on the wicket until someone, hearing the frenetic rattle, opens it from the outside. She flees the castle keep, slipping on the crumbling motte, down through the inner gate, past the guards who stand aside for her in amazement, across the outer ward to the atelier. Where else can she go? They know her in the atelier, that she has a sharp wit and a tongue to match, but she is not a witch. Sister Jean will help her.

Once inside the building, she heaves the door shut behind her and leans against it, heart pounding against her breastbone, breath rasping in her throat. She closes her eyes, then opens them again, letting them gradually adjust to the interior light after the glare outside. She becomes aware of Sister Jean’s drawings, their curled edges touched by dusty sunlight and lifting a little in the draught she has created as she came in.

She starts to walk slowly down the hall toward the dormitory, pausing occasionally to look at the drawings. So many memories. How many yards of grey and indigo wool looped and twined into rings of mail since the first time she saw these pictures, confused and troubled as to how the beautifully executed images could relate to the brutes she had witnessed, with their short cropped hair and their ugly language that made them sound as though they were being strangled, looting, burning, and raping her country?

This sad, supplicant woman, standing outside her burning house, holding a small boy by the hand. What has she to do with the smell of charred flesh or the burning sensation of a Norman prick rammed into a dry, shrinking cunt? Colonising the country with a whole generation of Norman bastards. And what can that possibly have to do with the tides of fire flooding her nights with Odo, melting them together until she no longer knows where he ends and she begins?

This man hiding in the vine, looking as though he has seen a vision of eternity nevertheless knows nothing of the mundane, messy, pain-ridden way he will get there. This comet, more like a toppled weathervane than the falling, feathered star whose awful loveliness set King Harold’s chaplain rifling through the Revelation of Saint John by its fractured light.
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood: and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
She shudders, acknowledging the truth there may be in signs.