Needle in the Blood (77 page)

“Where is Fulk? This child needs her bed.”

“Not,” protests Thecla, who is very taken with a curly coated red and white heifer being led across the square, planting her feet daintily in pools of mud. The women laugh and Freya tells herself she is being ridiculous.

“You don’t have to accompany me, you know. There’s more than enough here,” she touches a seam of the sable cloak, “to set you and Fulk up for life as well as for me and the baby.”

“Oh no. The earl would never stand for it.”

“We’re a long way out of his jurisdiction now, Freya. Over there,” she nods toward the mountains, “even King William’s writ doesn’t run.”

“His eyes watch it though.” Rising on a motte above the town is a keep, whose like they have seen, and steered clear of, all over the counties they have passed through on their journey. A cylinder of dusty, dun-coloured stone, scored with lead-lined drains, it regards the town and the surrounding country through deep arrow slits. “You know what it looks like, don’t you, stuck up there on its mound?”

They are still laughing when Fulk returns, a troubled look on his face as he glances up at the keep. “You know who the lord is here?”

“Well no, of course we don’t,” snaps Freya. “All we know is our feet are wet and our bellies are rumbling. What have you done about it?”

“Fitzosbern,” says Fulk, ignoring her. “Only the king’s oldest friend, so they say.”

“It’s true,” says Gytha. “We mustn’t stay here, not even one night. We must go on before they shut the gates. He’s not here himself, is he? There’s no standard on the keep.”

Fulk shakes his head. “Held for him by a man called Neufmarche. Mistress is right, though. It won’t be dark for a while yet, especially going west. Here.” Fulk unwraps his short cape, which he has been using as a makeshift bag. “Some bread and cheese. Till we find somewhere for the night.”

***

They find the mountains neither as high nor as deserted as they looked from the town square. Having passed the first night tolerably comfortably in the hay barn of a farm a mile or so downriver—where Thecla was spoiled with hot milk and honey, and griddle cakes smeared with damson jam, and they learned the town was called Y Gelli by the local people, though Hay by the English and God knows what by its latest masters, and the river was the Wye—they set out once more toward the heart of Brysheiniog, keeping the river to their back and the mountains ahead of them. Every climb is rewarded by the unfurling of immense views, hills and mountains shaded from rock black to the most delicate violet; every descent brings them into meadows where the yellow winter grass is giving way to new growth, scattered with clover, buttercups, and spikes of purple orchids. The country is crisscrossed by streams full of spotted trout, still sluggish in the icy water, which Fulk catches in his hands and they cook even in the middle of the day with a clear conscience, fish being acceptable fare during the fast. They pass through hamlets where neither English nor French is spoken, though the language of Odo’s jewels is well enough understood, until one morning, looking down from the track they are following along a ridge strung between two peaks like a washing line, they notice a roof emerging from a fold in the shoulder of the further hill.

Not much of a roof, they discover, as they climb down toward it, leading the horses over a scree of loose earth and boulders, the thatch caved in completely in parts and broken beams pointing at the sky like fingers with ragged nails. The building beneath, however, seems sound enough, a dry stone structure of the local granite, a stubby L shape, perched on a ledge of close-bitten grass with a brook cutting through the flank of the hill on its southern side, followed by a sheep track. About a mile away, in a valley still in shadow this early in the day, they can just make out some kind of fenced settlement, one large building with a timber roof and several smaller thatched ones grouped inside a palisade.

While Fulk lets the horses drink from the brook, and Freya, saying it looks like rain, rummages among the mules’ packs for something to wrap Thecla in, Gytha goes inside the building. The longer arm of the L is a bare room, its earthen floor spattered with desiccated bird droppings and its corners thick with spider webs. The shells of last year’s swallows’ nests cling to the broken rafters. A high, thin wind carries the ghosts of their songs, lifting the loose thatch and whipping up eddies of dust. Poking at one of the old nests with a stick she finds lying on the floor, Gytha wonders when this building was last used by men.

She walks through a low arch with the remains of a curtain pole fastened above it into the smaller room beyond. Once again, its only ornaments are webs and dust and empty nests, but in the middle of the floor is a standing stone, intricately carved. In the pearly light filtering through the holes in the roof, the stone glitters slightly as she stoops to examine the decorations. It is covered on all sides except the top, which is smooth and greasy with old tallow, with dense geometric patternings of circles and crosses giving way on one side to an image, framed by trails of stone ivy, of a haloed saint striking with a lance at the breast of a winged serpent.

“A saint slaying a dragon,” she mutters to herself with a rueful smile.
And are there not dragons to be found in Wales?
he had asked as they stood before his tomb at Saint Vigor. What had she answered? Something about dragons more easily tamed by kisses than armies? “Well, Odo, it seems I have found my tomb. It may not be the one you intended, but at least it has a saint and a dragon.” Straightening up, pushing her fists into the small of her back, which is beginning to feel the strain of carrying her growing infant up and down so many steep hills, she notices for the first time an arched doorway in the wall opposite the stone’s saint and dragon face. The hinges screech as she pushes open the door, which sags, gouging a fan of earth out of the floor, then promptly falls down with a loud thud which startles the horses and makes Thecla cry. Stepping over it into the grassy court formed by the two arms of the L, Gytha announces, “This is it. I shall live here.”

Fulk and Freya exchange eloquent looks.

“You know what I said to you in Y Gelli, Freya.”

“Yes, madam.”

“I meant it.”

“Thank you, madam.”

“Roof’ll need completely replacing,” comments Fulk, reaching up and snapping off the end of a rafter where it overhangs the door. “Rotten. But you could do all right. Couldn’t grow much at the back, too much shade. But there’s room for a pig there.” His face brightens. He scuffs up the soil with the toe of his boot. “Beans, peas, grow anywhere they will. Don’t know what we’ll do for bread though. Need something to trade. Honey maybe. We could keep a couple of hives. Plenty of clover in the valleys. Fish. Water parsnip I shouldn’t wonder…”

“Oh, Fulk, do shut up.” Freya glares at him, colder than the brook rushing past his feet.

“I am confident I can find a way to live,” says Gytha, “but first I suppose we should find out if it belongs to anyone. I think the smaller room may be a chapel of some kind.” By silent consensus they all look down at the settlement below them. “I shall change. Freya, help me.”

It is late morning by the time they ride up to its gates, the sun almost at its zenith, an indistinct glow of pale pewter behind a veil of cloud. Though nothing is visible behind the double palisade of sharpened poles, it is obvious this is not a village but the stronghold of some local chieftain. One gate opens a chink as they approach and a small man with inquisitive eyes and delicate hands appears in it, flanked by two others, not much taller, but considerably broader than himself, both armed with bows charged. Gytha urges her horse forward, Fulk a few paces behind, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“My name is Aelfgytha,” she says to the small man, speaking slowly to be sure she is understood. “My mother was Aranrhod and she came from these parts. My father was an Englishman. I wish to speak with the master of this house.”

The small man takes in Gytha’s gown of yew green Flemish wool beneath the sable cloak, the jewels in her ears and on her fingers, the quality of her horse. “The master of this house is Owein ap Llwyr,” he replies, in a voice unexpectedly resonant for so dainty a frame, “but he is away now at his daughter’s wedding. I am Gereint, his steward. How may I be of service?” His English, mercifully, is fluent, though richly accented.

“Firstly by offering us kinder hospitality than a chink in the gate and drawn bowstrings. We have been on the road a long time.”

“Forgive me.” Satisfying himself that they are no more than one man, a couple of women and a child, Gereint signals his men to lower their weapons and shouts an order in his own language which elicits much creaking of ropes and a widening of the opening in the gate. “We are obliged to be cautious since the Normans settled themselves in Y Gelli.”

Trusting that Fulk’s Norman origin will be sufficiently concealed by the length of his hair and the beard he has grown since they left Canterbury, Gytha gives Gereint a conspiratorial smile and says, “We understand completely, believe me.”

They ride into a spacious, well-kept courtyard bordered on one side by a long, low hall with an undercroft and on the rest by the usual collection of kitchens, bakehouse, dairy, forge, armoury, women’s houses, stables, and mews. It is much as you would expect of any lord’s establishment, except that the buildings are not in muted hues of wood and stone but are a conflagration of colour, every inch of plank or plaster covered with designs like those Gytha saw on the stone altar in a blazing discord of madder and ochre, weld and woad and a vibrant purple she thinks probably comes from the ground shells of certain kinds of shrimps. The people she sees going about their business in the courtyard are dressed, men and women alike, in tunics embroidered with similarly vivid swirls and crosses, the higher among them, such as Gereint, also wearing gold and silver jewellery of intricate workmanship. Even in the watery light of the pewter sun, her eyes are dazzled. She begins to wonder if this is the root of her embroiderer’s skill, which was always more than simply having small hands well-suited to close work, if it came from her mother and the bright visions of her people among their black rocks and seaweed grass.

Fulk helps her down from the saddle and Gereint leads her into Owein ap Llwyr’s hall, which seems sparsely furnished to eyes used to Odo’s magpie excesses, though the walls are hung with many bright tapestries and paintings on hides, and the roof beams elaborately carved with mythic beasts and goblin heads with their tongues sticking out and heads wreathed in ivy, some gilded, some painted in the same colours as the outside walls. She becomes anxious when she sees Fulk and Freya taken off to some other part of the compound, but she will not show it for fear of insulting Gereint by mistrusting his hospitality. Seating herself on the stool he offers, she casts her eyes down and folds her hands over her belly.

“Your husband,” says Gereint, standing before her with his back to the fire. “Where is he?”

“Dead, sir.”

“I am sorry. Have you no family you could go to?”

“None, sir, but my two servants and their daughter. But I have not come to you for charity. I do not lack substance. Rather, I desire to fulfil a promise made to my husband on his deathbed, to ease his passage to heaven by dedicating my life to God.”

“A worthy notion, though I fail to see how Owein ap Llwyr can be of service to you.”

“There is a chapel, in the hills about a mile from here, fallen into neglect. Is it in Lord Owein’s gift?”

“Saint George’s, you mean. It is, but as you say, in a parlous state. There was a hermit there, but he was killed in Fitzosbern’s raids three summers back. There has been no one there since. Surely you would be best pursuing your goal in a convent. If you are set on this part of the world, I’m sure my lord could recommend you to a place.”

“I am a naturally solitary person, sir. My own resources are sufficient to me.”

“But the child?”

“I believe I know enough to raise and educate her.”

“Her?”

Gytha gives a self-deprecatory smile. “Just a fancy I have.”

“I understand,” says Gereint warmly, “my wife is just the same. We have five sons and she was convinced every one of them would be a girl. Preparing me for the worst, I suppose. Well, I cannot think Lord Owein would make any objection.”

“I have means. I will make Lord Owein a gift in exchange for the chapel and the hermit’s house.” Opening the purse hanging from her girdle, she takes out an uncut sapphire the size of a robin’s egg and holds it on the flat of her hand while Gereint inspects it with something close to wonder in his shrewd, black eyes.

“That is very…impressive,” he says.

“I have more.”

“Two such and it’s yours.”

That is robbery
, she thinks, but then again,
is any price too high to pay for perfection? And was there ever a steward who did not like to line his own pocket as well as his master’s?

“Done.” She draws a second stone from the purse, a ruby this time, and slightly larger. Gereint sweeps them from her palm as though they might be withdrawn, or even disappear in a puff of coloured smoke, if he fails to act quickly.

“For that you may have roofing materials and whatever else you need to make the place sound.”

“I thank you. I will send my man to discuss our requirements with you, once we have assessed everything. And now, if you will forgive me, I should like to make a start.”