Needle in the Blood (66 page)

Yet the wise woman was so matter of fact, so certain in her detail. Should she tell him? Not yet. She needs a little time alone with the new life swimming in her womb, her little mermaid, the two in one, an interlude of privacy before Odo takes possession of his child and makes up their trinity. They will be parted soon enough, the fish salter’s daughter and the king of England’s niece, in the inevitable social replication of birth. The cord of mother love severed, a husband will be found, and her daughter will be made to submit to the partial, imperfect nurturing and grooming of a stranger, a mother in law only, a woman to whom she represents limitable things: money, power, prestige, heirs, ambition. She remembers her own mother-in-law, binding her breasts with strips of linen to curtail the supply of useless milk and quicken her restoration to fertility, tightening the bandages until Gytha cried out in pain. No, she will not tell him yet; she will luxuriate in the freedom to love in secret for just a little longer, to imagine a life for this daughter, unconfined, impossible. She goes back inside.

***

Freya and the wise woman take Margaret through to the back room, each holding her by one arm.

“Where’s Gytha?” she keeps asking. “I’m not going without Gytha.” Her legs drag.

The two women push and pull, handling her as though she were a heavy sack,
a load of dumb bad luck
, thinks Freya,
a bag full of rotten seed
. Hardly worth the risk, if doing nothing could not be construed as a slur on her professional reputation. “Come on, Gytha will be back in a minute. The sooner we get started, the sooner it’ll be over.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Oh no, just a little sting,” the wise woman assures her breezily. “Now, up onto the bed with you. Legs apart, bend your knees. A bit further. That’s it, lovely. Good girl.”

Margaret lies as instructed, staring up at the roof, the thatch pushing between beams festooned with bunches of herbs and leather pouches with labels attached to their drawstrings. It reminds her of the room where she met Martin, and her mind floats back to that time of hope and clarity, the last time, it seems, when she understood anything properly. Since then, it has been as though the effects of Irene’s strange teas have never worn off, as though she exists on one side of a semi-transparent curtain and the rest of the world on the other. The only time anything makes sense, when she catches glimpses through a tear in the curtain, is when she is with the men who love her. Even now she exults in her secret courtships, the furtive smiles, the rolling eyes and jerks of the chin, teasing fingers, dark corners, muffled cries. How lucky she is to have so many suitors, the merest thought of whom floods her with passion.

“That’s it, dear, you relax; it will make it easier.” The cunningwoman emits a small, effortful grunt followed by a sigh. Margaret’s body jolts with the sudden stab of the long needle. Pain burns in her belly, her thighs, the base of her back, explodes hot red in her brain. Sweat breaks all over her body, needling her pores, prickling her hair. Her stomach heaves, flooding her mouth with bile. Hands pull her roughly onto her side; the last thing she remembers is the curiously pretty sight of her vomit, yellow and green with specks of red, cascading onto the earthen floor.

***

“Perhaps you shouldn’t go in there just yet,” says Freya, as Gytha re-enters the house, “not,” she adds with a knowing look, “in your condition.”

“Has it worked?”

“We shan’t know that for a while. She’ll be given something to help it along, when she comes round. She bled a lot, though, which is a good sign.” Seeing how the colour drains from Gytha’s face, she continues, “Look, madam, why don’t you go now? It will be an hour or two until Meg can be moved. We don’t want his lordship sending after you. Let Fulk take you back, and I’ll wait here.”

Gytha demurs and goes back outside, where Fulk is nowhere to be found. She calls him once or twice then, thinking perhaps he has moved out of earshot, or stepped behind a tree to relieve himself, then sets out alone, expecting he will catch her up. She has just rounded a bend in the path and is out of sight of the assart, when two men at arms in Lanfranc’s livery approach and fall into step on either side of her. One places his hand lightly on her shoulder; she stops. The rain has begun, slow, fat drops smacking against the leaves, spreading dark stains the size of pennies in the dust.

“What day is it?” she asks.

“Monday, madam,” one of the men replies. Gytha reaches around the back of her neck to untie the medal of Saint Christopher, which she has not removed since Odo put it there before their voyage to Normandy. Lanfranc’s soldiers are clearly nervous; one’s hand darts to the hilt of his dagger in response to her movement, making her laugh bitterly.

“Have no fear, I shall come with you quietly. I have nothing to hide from you. But please…” She puts on a wheedling tone, dangling the medal, still warm from its place between her breasts, in front of the soldiers. “Let me tie this to the oak here. It is a sacred tree.”

The men exchange doubtful glances, then the one who appears to be senior nods his assent. Wearing the Archbishop’s livery is no certain guarantee of salvation.

“I do not know the right words,” whispers Gytha to the spirit of the tree as she fastens the medal on its yellow ribbon in one of the lower branches, “but if my gift pleases you, guard poor Meg from the curse of thunder on a Monday.” She turns back toward the soldiers. “I will go with you now.” Where is Fulk? Perhaps his disappearance is her just desert for being so careless of Margaret.

***

“He’s not here,” says Osbern. “He’s gone out with Lord Hamo to inspect the firebreaks.” As lightning sheets across the square of sky framed by the parlour window and gleams on Fulk’s soaked hair, he adds, “I dare say they’ll be back sooner than my lord expected.”

Fulk brandishes the rolled parchment he is carrying; Lanfranc’s seal dangles from the ribbon appending it to the letter. “All the same, I’ll go after him. He needs to see this.”

Fulk would rather do almost anything than deliver this letter to his master. He thinks of using the storm as an excuse to await the earl’s return and give him the letter then. He thinks of simply taking a decent horse from the stables and setting out for the coast; back home in Normandy he could lose himself easily enough. But then he thinks of Freya, his ice princess with her winter blue eyes and her spun glass hair, Freya like a pale, polished gem, a diamond or…or…he doesn’t know the names of any others, found half buried in mud. He has seen what value his lordship puts on the lives of Saxon women and children, and he doubts the mere fact of Mistress Gytha being a Saxon would save Freya or Thecla if he were to fail in his duty. Or if he succeeds.

***

Odo and Hamo, oblivious to the rain, are deep in a discussion about replanting some of the breaks with low growing bushes to provide cover for game birds when they hear hoofbeats and, seconds later, Fulk’s horse slithers to a halt in front of them, mud and leaf slime spraying up around its fetlocks.

“My lord.” Fulk delves in the breast of his tunic and produces Lanfranc’s letter. “An urgent message. From the Archbishop.” He sounds panicky, yet Fulk is not a man to frighten easily. Telling himself it is merely that he is breathless from his ride, Odo takes the letter, breaks the seal, and reads it. His hands, he observes with irritation, are shaking.

“Do you know what this contains?” he asks Fulk.

“I have an idea, my lord.”

“A lot of men would have balked at bringing me such a message, Fulk, yet you have done it. Twice in a very few months. It begs the question, who is the more foolhardy, you or Mistress Gytha?”

“I couldn’t say, my lord.”

“No.” He sighs, drawing the wet, warm air into his lungs. He feels as though his arteries are full of frost, his mind as sharp and dead as an icicle. He bears Fulk no ill will; he knows he cannot afford to waste energy on futile emotions. “Well,” he continues, “we had better go and get her back again. Again. Hamo, go back to the castle and bring twenty good men from the garrison to join me at Christ Church. Quick as you can.”

“At the abbey, my lord?”

“Yes, man, the abbey. This is no time for scruples. Now, Fulk, let’s go and get even for your black eye, shall we? Were there a lot of them?”

“Three, my lord,” Fulk replies as they coax their horses into a stiff legged gallop in the slippery mud, “and a hulking great smith from the mint. I didn’t make it easy for them.”

“I’m sure not.”

***

She will say nothing. Odo must come soon and then they will let her go. For now, she will simply keep silent, even if the Archbishop himself tries to question her. He has been down to this room where they are holding her, some kind of strongroom, it seems, beneath the Mint Yard, the only light entering through a narrow barred window at ground level. Perhaps, usually, coins are kept here, or the ingots of gold and bronze and silver from which they are wrought. He had smiled, displaying long, yellow, irregularly spaced teeth, greeted her courteously and asked if she wanted for anything. Glancing up as a pair of clogs attached to bare mud-spattered ankles passed the window, he had apologised for the rain beginning to drip through it and the absence of anywhere for her to sit. He had not offered any explanation as to why she was there, and she had not asked. She must wait for Odo; surely it cannot be long.

***

When they reach Christ Church, Odo tells Fulk to wait at the gate to the Archbishop’s house. Voices are audible from the chapel adjoining Lanfranc’s apartments, singing a psalm.

“Afternoon Mass,” says Odo. “If I haven’t sent word to you by the end of the service, you must come after me. Hamo should have arrived with the other men by then.”

“Yes, my lord. Good luck, my lord.”

Odo dismounts and knocks on the gate with the butt of his riding whip. The gate swings back with a creak of hinges and a swish of water which has gathered in the hollows worn in the entrance by generations of passing feet. Lanfranc himself is standing in the middle of the courtyard, his cowl pulled over his head, looking, thinks Odo, as lightning flares, like Death’s plump assistant.

“I heard the knock,” says Lanfranc. “I expected it would be you, though not alone.”

“Do I need an army, then?”

“Come inside.”

“Afraid I might be struck by a thunderbolt?”

“Simply getting rather wet.”

They go into Lanfranc’s office where a servant crouches over the hearth, hastily laying a fire in response to the sudden change in the weather. Lanfranc dismisses him; he scuttles past the two men without igniting the fuel. Lanfranc then begins hunting for a tinder box.

“Should be on the desk, I don’t know.”

Odo contemplates Lanfranc, acting out the part of a querulous old man. Lanfranc is trying to rattle him, and he is succeeding. He attempts to compose some witticism about fire, never where you want it when you want it, always where you least look for it.

“Where is she?” he demands, giving up.

Lanfranc abandons his pantomime and sits down at his desk. “She is here. Safe.”

Odo shivers slightly. Cold? Relief? Fear? “What possessed you?” he asks.

“I am directed by my duty. Perhaps it would be best if we kept clear of such words as possessed.”

“Don’t tell me you really believe she’s a witch. You’ve seen her, she’s just a woman, not even a very remarkable one, unless you know her. Good God, man, she doesn’t even like cats. They make her sneeze.”

He speaks with such a warmth of affection that Lanfranc falters momentarily. “Let us not speak of witchcraft, Odo, it is a crude concept. Perhaps, though, she is your
fatalitas
, your…what do you say in French, your fairy?”

“
Fatalitas
, fate. Without doubt she is my fate, but fate is not magic or chance, fate is what we choose. Let me see her, let me take her home. The weather’s broken, by tomorrow this will all be forgotten. If, as you say, she has come to no harm, I will not fall out with you over it. We are no more immune to the pressures of hunger and thirst than other men, and such pressures may affect our reason.”

“Alas, Odo, I do not think this is as straightforward as you imagine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sit down.”

“What do you mean?” Odo repeats, ignoring Lanfranc’s invitation. He stands in front of the desk, leaning forward, gripping its edge with both hands. Let the old man get a stiff neck looking up at him.

“Do you know where we found her?”

Odo shakes his head.

Lanfranc sighs. “My men followed her from the house of a cunningwoman in the forest by Saint Augustine’s.”

“So? Women are always consulting such people. She probably wanted a charm against toothache or…” He stops himself before saying something that might be offensive to the elderly monk, or give Lanfranc too intimate a glimpse into the life he shares with Gytha. “It’s the way their minds work.”

“This woman has a particular reputation, Odo. She is an abortionist.”

His mouth goes dry, a fist seems to clench around his bowels, he wants to shut his eyes but he just goes on staring at Lanfranc, at his pious, pitying expression, his self-righteous, simpering mouth behind that wretched beard which is never properly trimmed.