The Winter Mantle (41 page)

'Do you still trust me, girl?' He could not control the hoarse note that had entered his voice, nor the speed of his breathing.

'Yes, my lord.' She stared back at him and he saw that although her gaze was steadfast her breathing was as rapid as his own.

'Well, you should not. Even a tame beast will turn wild of tooth and claw if provoked.'

'Have I provoked you, my lord?'

He went to lay the cloak on the coffer, giving himself time to gather his wits and his control. 'In ways you cannot begin to know,' he said with a short laugh. When he was more certain of himself, he turned to her. 'It is courteous of you to inform me that you are leaving on the morrow, i suspect that your mother does not know you have done so - or that you are here in my chamber.'

'No,' she said with pinkening cheeks. 'She does not know. Will you prevent us from going now that I have told you?'

He steepled his hands beneath his chin. 'Where does your mother intend to take you?'

The girl hesitated and licked her lips.

Simon had seen those sorts of gestures before. Dwelling at court, observation of expressions and bodily actions became second nature. 'Lies may help you get over a small slope, but eventually you will come to a mountain and the burden you have accumulated will be your ruin.' He studied her through narrowed lids. 'The truth or nothing.'

Her chin jutted. 'I was not going to lie to you,' she said. 'If I paused it was because I was unsure how you would respond to my answer.'

'Which is?'

'To the nunnery at Elstow, and then to my stepgrandfather's estates in Holderness.'

'Ah,' Simon said, and lowered his clasped hands. 'I thought that your mother might seek her sanctuary there. After all, your stepgrandfather has a vested interest in these lands - and a son.'

She looked nervous, but not surprised, and she made no attempt to deny the implication of his words. Her reaction pleased him.

Unlatching his swordbelt, he turned to lay it across the coffer beside his discarded hauberk. 'Do you want to go with your mother?'

Although his back was to her, he felt her surprise at the question. The breath she drew was audible.

'Do I have a choice?'

The tone of her response told him that she was already ahead of the conversation, that she knew where it was going - and perhaps that was why she had come to him in the first place.

'I think you know the answer to that,' he said. Facing her again, he bent double and extended his anus. 'If you could help me, it will save me calling my squire… unless you wish me to do so.'

She shook her head and, coming to him, peeled the gambeson off with nimble efficiency. 'We keep to the custom in this household that honoured guests should be served by us personally,' she said, and a rueful smile lit in her eyes. 'Most of the time, at least.'

'Your mother considers me neither honoured, nor a guest,' Simon replied, equally rueful. Then his nostrils flared. 'God's Sweet Death, I stink like a midden pit,' he said apologetically. 'Too many days in the saddle and on the road.'

She looked at the gambeson in her hands, its outer layer streaked greasy black from his hauberk and its inner layer giving off a staggeringly concentrated aroma of man. 'I'll put a broom pole through the sleeves and hang it to air in the wind,' she said. 'The laundrymaids can tend to your linens if you have fresh raiment in your baggage. I will see that your tunic is brushed and aired.'

He nodded, both amused and impressed by her efficiency. He wondered if she was using it as a shield. Or perhaps she was showing him how advantageous it would be for him to let her remain.

He pondered for a time as she folded his tunic to one side and cast his shirt into an open willow basket for taking to the maids. Chausses and leg braids followed. With great diplomacy, or perhaps a sense of self-preservation, she ensured that her back was turned as he removed his braies and cast them into the same basket as his shirt.

Simon stepped into the water. It was still hot and sufficiently deep to reach to his mid-chest. 'You still have not answered my question,' he said to Matilda's back. 'Do you want to go with your mother?'

She turned around, a dish of soft soap in one hand and a linen washcloth in the other. From pink, her cheeks had turned to red. 'You said that I had no choice.'

'Not exactly.'

'In so many words.' She came to the tub. A servant had left a jug at the side. She filled it with water from a spare pail and doused his head.

Simon spluttered beneath the deluge. Twice more she did it and then he felt the coldness of the soap and the kneading touch of her hands as she lathered his hair. 'No,' she said. 'I do not want to go with my mother. Why do you think I came to your chamber? It would have been as easy to leave your cloak in the hall.'

The pressure of her fingers set up opposing sensations of languor and lust. It might be the family tradition tor the women of the household to bathe honoured guests, but usually it would be in full public with servants present. He doubted that she had ever been in this situation before. Raising his knees, he concealed his arousal.

'I asked your mother to marry me,' he said.

Again she doused him, this time to sluice the soap from his hair. 'I know,' she replied. 'And she refused you.'

He took the cloth that she handed him and dried his face. The water rippling around his torso was rapidly turning a scummy grey. 'My own fault for asking the wrong woman.' He put deliberate emphasis on the last word and heard her small gasp of response. 'I always thought of Waltheof's daughter as a little girl, but while my imagination has remained still, the reality has moved on.' He gave a wry shrug. 'Your mother has made it plain what she thinks of a match with me. Indeed, if we were to wed, I think that it would be a marriage made in hell for both of us.' Reaching back, he took her arm in a wet grip and drew her round to the side of the tub where he could look at her. 'If I ask you now, it is not because you are second best, but that I had not seen you then and I did not realise.'

Her complexion might be flushed but she was in full control of her mental faculties. 'I know that in many ways I have lived a sheltered life,' she said, 'but my mother is a dowager countess and she has raised neither me nor my sister in ignorance. I
know that to truly make yourself lord of my father's lands you must seek a marriage alliance either with his widow, or with one of his daughters, who bears his blood in their veins. I recognise that this is a bargain of the market place, not of the scented bower.'

He gave her a pained smile. 'That is a speech inspired by your mother and delivered with the honesty of your sire.' He extended a hand to touch her cheek. 'You are right in most of what you say, but even in a market place there is space for a seller of rare jewels.'

She rose to her feet and moved away, but only to fetch more soap. 'And if I refuse you, will you go to my sister and ask the same of her?'

He heard the challenge in her voice and had to bite back a smile for fear of offending her. 'I might,' he admitted, 'but it would be a great pity. But I say again, you would not be here in this chamber except by your own will. And I have not forced you to perform the services of a bath maid.'

'No, my lord, you have not,' she agreed.

'So, what say you? Shall I send Turstan to fetch my chaplain while I dress?'

She looked startled and a little apprehensive - as if a game had suddenly become reality.

'There is no stepping back from this point,' he said softly. 'Either go now, or remain the night - as my wife. That is my ultimatum.'

Although she trembled like a leaf in the wind, she held her ground. 'I will remain,' she said stoutly.

He nodded. 'Good. I hoped you would agree.' Taking the dish of soap, he washed himself, not trusting his reaction should she offer to perform the task. After all, he thought with grim humour, they were not yet wed, and it would not be proper.

Matilda's stomach was queasy with fear, but she knew that she had made the right decision. It had been her choice to come to him in his chamber, no other's. To do so she had crept from the room where her mother and sister were sleeping with a murmur that she was visiting the privy. She had lied and used subterfuge. She had not screamed and pounded upon the door that he closed, and of her own volition she had ministered to him in the bathtub. Come hell or high water, she was not going to lose her courage now. He needed her, if not for herself then for her blood; she was Waltheof's daughter and the Conqueror's great niece. From the moment she saw her father's cloak, she had known that whatever happened she was bound and beholden to Simon de Senlis.

To keep her apprehension at bay and occupy her hands, she fetched the rough linen towels that had been warming on a stool near the brazier. Laying one on the floor, she held the other out to him. He rose to his feet in a surge of dirty water and took the towel from her. He was slender and wiry, but there was muscle nevertheless, firm and compact, closely following the line of bone. His chest and stomach were flat and hard, and a crucifix of curling dark hair ran from nipple to nipple and from the hollow of his throat to his genital area. The latter he covered smartly with the towel before she had taken more than a startled glimpse.

Taking a third towel from the stool to dry his hair, he went to the door and pulled it open. The squire was leaning against the wall, arms folded, but immediately came to attention.

'Fetch Father Bertulf and Aubrey de Mar,' he told the lad and looked back at Matilda. 'Do you have a female companion you wish to stand witness?'

Matilda frowned in thought. 'My maid Helisende, if you can rouse her without waking my mother,' she said.

The squire nodded and without question quietly disappeared on his errand.

Simon closed the door and, rubbing his hair, came back into the room. 'I am sorry it is to be like this,' he said. 'Most women like to have a fuss made of their wedding day. I promise you a full mass and a feast to follow as soon as I can.'

Matilda shrugged. 'I have never been very fond of ceremony,' she said.

'No?' he sounded sceptical. 'Not of wearing fine clothes and being the centre of attention?'

She shook her head. 'I enjoy celebrating. I like great gatherings, and it is true that fine clothes are appealing. But the glitter swiftly tarnishes when you are forced to it day in and day out. My mother says that I should never forget my rank. I am the great niece of a king and the daughter of an earl and I should live accordingly' She screwed up her face. 'In truth I am happiest on my hands and knees in my garden, with a piece of sacking tied around my waist and my hands dark with soil. The importance lies beneath. When we are dead, we become naught but bones, and then who is to tell the difference between a beggar and a king?'

It was grave wisdom for one of such tender years and Simon was touched, intrigued, and almost saddened. 'Indeed,' he said. 'However for my own sense of ceremony and to show the value I set by your consent, I will still give you a wedding day to remember… and, I hope, a wedding night.'

Matilda was immediately flustered. Her mother's protection meant that to a great extent men were an unknown territory. Helisende, giggling, had told her what happened on a wedding night and Matilda believed her because, although protected, she was not blind to what went on around her. She had often pondered the matter. What it would be like. How it happened. Thoughts she had kept to herself because they were immodest and unseemly and if her mother had known of them she would have marched her straight to confession.

She went to a wooden coffer against which his large green and gold kite shield was propped. 'Is this your baggage?' she asked a little too swiftly.

He told her that it was and, although her back was to him, she did not miss the note of rueful amusement in his voice. 'You need not be afraid,' he said. 'I will not harm you.'

'I am not afraid,' Matilda said stoutly, and it was almost true. Her greater fear was that this was all a dream and that in the morning she would be forced to go to El stow with her mother, and from there to Holderness and the tyranny of her grandmother's household. That thought led on to another. 'If my sister wishes to stay here too, will you let her?' she asked with a swift look over her shoulder. 'Jude is quieter than me, more likely to do my mother's bidding, but out of obedience and duty rather than desire.'

'Of course,' Simon said gravely. 'I will be pleased to offer her my protection.'

'Thank you,' she murmured and turned to his baggage again before she was trapped in that knowing, vulpine gaze. He did not have many garments, but those he possessed were of excellent quality. There were two shirts of soft linen chansil, bleached in the sun to the colour of ripe barley. His braies were of chansil too — both luxurious and sensible since the fabric was soft and would not chafe.

Simon's spare hose were fashioned from wine-red wool in close-woven diamond twill with bindings of red and blue braid. He had two tunics, one blue, one soft tawny, and both trimmed with the red and blue braid at neckline, hem and cuffs, garments that would take him from palace to castle to manor and be appropriate for all.

He donned the braies and shirt and sat on a stool to draw on the legs of the hose. Matilda saw him wince as he pulled the left one up his leg.

'What's the matter?'

'Nothing. An injury I have had since boyhood. It pains me now and again.' A slightly defensive note entered his voice.

From the way he had been limping earlier, and his grimace now, Matilda thought perhaps that it was more than nothing. 'We have some marigold salve if that will help,' she offered.

'There is no need,' he dismissed. 'It is only painful because I have been standing on it for too long. If I support it with leg bindings, it is not so bad.' As he spoke, he rapidly wound the length of braid from ankle to calf and lucked it neatly in the top. Matilda sensed that he was vulnerable, that he did not wish to pursue the matter.

She took a hesitant breath. 'Will you… will you tell me about my father,' she said.

He raised his head. His eyes were as clear as the best mead, but totally unreadable. 'What do you want to know?'