The Winter Mantle (64 page)

'You do not have to come,' she said to Simon when she found him in their bedchamber, donning a pair of thick chausses over the pair he was already wearing. He was also apparelled in the thick, quilted gambeson he usually wore under his armour.

'I want to,' he said. 'I have never truly made peace with your mother. Besides, you cannot go alone.'

Matilda felt a flash of resentment, keen as a recent wound. She went to her coffer and drew out woollen hose, and a thick pair of naal-binding socks. 'I have grown accustomed to my own company,' she said a trifle tartly.

He reached for the braid leg bindings to wind between ankle and knee. 'Don't you want me to accompany you?'

She bent her head to remove her boot and draw the sock over the one she was already wearing.

'Matilda?'

She lifted her head. 'Of course I want you to come,' she snapped. 'But at your own behest, not from duty or pity, or because you think I'm a lost sheep who will bleat her way over the edge of a cliff if not supervised.' She turned to the other foot, her movements abrupt and her face hidden by the folds of her wimple. 'And because I want you with me, I feel guilty. I have seen how you have been limping on that leg today because the cold is gnawing your bones.'

Simon's smile was humourless. 'Ah then, my love, you have sealed the bargain. You should know better than to cite my leg as a reason why I should stay at home.' In the absence of his squire, he flipped a leg binding around his own calf with expert speed and tucked in the end. 'Nothing you can say or do will keep me now.'

'Nothing I could say or do could keep you before,' she retorted and with a grimace tried to stamp her way into her boot, the fit now made much tighter by the additional sock. 'God's wounds,' she muttered through her teeth.

Simon came to her, and, bending on his good knee, look her foot in his hands and applied leverage. She felt his grip at her ankle, warm, hard and sure. It was not the touch of a man in a state of weakness. 'Yes, my leg pains me,' he said, 'but it would do so whether I came with you or remained here. I have your father's cloak; I will be warm enough.'

Her foot shot into the boot and he fastened the horn toggle at the side. She touched his hair, and watched the gold strands shimmer among the brown. 'It is your cloak now,' she murmured as he performed the same service to her other foot.

'Is it?' He gave a vexed smile. 'Even now I am not certain.' He eased to his feet. He was adept at controlling the response to his pain, but she saw the betraying tightening of his eyelids and winced for him. There were meanings beneath the words, like rocks under the deception of calm water, or bodies in a shallow grave.

'You have always had your own way of wearing it,' she offered.

He started towards the door. 'You need not sweeten the potion,' he said. 'I knew the burdens when I fastened it at my shoulders.'

'All of them?' she too rose, and followed him. There was a tension in the air, like the quiver after the last note on the harp when a song was ended.

'No, not all,' he admitted, 'but still, I knew what I was doing.'

She believed him. She had seldom seen Simon nonplussed or ill at ease, whatever the situation. It came from being a squire at old King William's court, she thought. That, and a feline degree of self-containment that she had never been able to win past.

He set his arm lightly across her shoulders. 'And I have never regretted it.'

It was Matilda's turn to smile and tighten her lids. 'You do not need to sweeten the potion either.' She drew out of his arms, proving that she could do so, and went down to the waiting horses.

Judith's room at Elstow was almost as cold as the outside air, where frost was growing on the trees like silver moleskin and the air was as sharp as crystal in the lungs.

Entering on the heels of the anxious infirmarian, Matilda's teeth continued to chatter. 'Why is there no brazier?' she demanded.

The nun shook her head and looked apologetic. 'The Lady Judith said that there was no point in having one. We tried to bring one in and light it, but she grew so angry and distressed that Mother Abbess said that we should respect her wishes.'

Her dying wishes
. The words hung unspoken but as tangible as the white vapour that puffed from Matilda's nose and mouth. The room was as bare as a crypt. The walls were barren of all save a crucifix - Christ in hollow-ribbed suffering keeping watch over stark, limewashed plaster. Two plain coffers stood near the bed, one holding a thick wax candle that burned with a steady golden flame in the midnight deep. Seated next to it, her eyes red and puffy with weeping and the rest of her face pinched with cold, was her mother's maid, Sybille. There was a silver goblet in her hand, half full of some dark-coloured liquid. On the bed itself Judith was propped up high against the bolsters to aid her breathing. Spots of feverish colour stained her cheekbones, but otherwise her complexion was ashen. Her grey-streaked hair lay in a single braid, coiled to the left and lying like a rope over her faltering heart. Within their gaunt sockets her eyes were closed, but she was conscious and aware, for her hands were occupied with a set of prayer beads and her lips were moving as she recited the psalms.

Matilda moved to the bedside, Simon following in her wake. The crackle of their feet on the rushes did not disturb Judith's concentration and she continued to murmur.

'Oh, my lady, thank Christ you have come. I did not know if you would!' Sybille rose stiffly to her feet and embraced Matilda, tears running down her face. 'She has been waiting for you! A messenger has gone to your sister too, but she will not arrive for several days yet and my lady does not have that time to wait.'

'Sybille, hush. You always did have a tongue like a bell clapper.' Judith's voice was weak and reedy, and by the end of the sentence she was fighting for breath.

'Mama.' Matilda pushed out of the maid's arms and knelt at the bedside. She took her mother's frozen, skeletal hands and chaffed them in hers. 'You should have sent for me sooner.'

'So that you could watch me die for longer?' A spark kindled in Judith's eye caverns. 'Where would be the point in that?'

Matilda rubbed her thumb over Judith's icy knuckles. 'To be with you,' she said. 'To offer succour and comfort.' There was a tightness in her throat, but it was more a familiar response to being near her mother than anything of grief. Even at the end, Judith could not be conciliatory.

The sound of the dying woman's struggle to breathe filled the room. 'I need neither succour nor comfort,' Judith gasped. 'I have grown so accustomed to being without that their lack disturbs me not.' Her lips curved in the travesty of a smile. 'Instead I have my pride… or I had it.' She swallowed jerkily. Matilda took the half-cup of wine and held it to her mother's lips. Judith took a moistening sip, no more, and leaned her head against the piled bolsters while she gathered strength. 'Still, I am glad you have come.' Her voice was a faded whisper that trailed off as her eyes fixed on a point beyond Matilda's shoulder and widened with a blending of fear and astonishment.

'Come out of the shadows,' she croaked hoarsely, 'I do not see well…'

Simon stepped forward, and the candlelight around the bed illuminated the blue of his cloak, glittered on the braid border, and cast a yellow glow on the white fur lining. His shadow wavered on the limewashed wall, fuzzy and distorted so that it looked more ursine than human.

'Madame, belle mere,' he said and, advancing to the bed, stooped to kiss her cold brow.

Matilda fell her mother shudder, and knew without being told that Judith had for a moment believed that the presence of her former husband stalked the room.

'I am guilty,' Judith wheezed. 'I have been shriven, but still I am guilty… God might forgive me, but I will never forgive myself.'

'Hush, do not distress yourself,' Matilda murmured. 'You cannot make an end like this…' She squeezed the cold hands beneath hers and tried to imbue them with some vestige of her own warmth and life. Softly in the background, she could hear Sybille's choked sobs. 'My… my father would not want to see you like this.'

'Of course not… your father is a saint!' There was a bitter note in the thin voice. 'He is revered for what I took to be his weakness.'

Matilda steeled herself not to leap to her feet and turn her back on her mother. Not to pour out all of her own bitterness and resentment. Her struggle must have shown in her eyes, however, for she caught Simon's gaze on her in troubled compassion. He gave a slight shake of his head, offering both wordless support and the advice that she should say nothing.

Biting her lip, she held her place, and was suddenly glad that they had not arrived sooner.

'I loved him,' Judith whispered, and two tears suddenly spilled from her eyes and rolled down her gaunt cheeks. 'Despite all, I loved him.' There was no breath in her to cry, and her thin body shook with the rigours of her struggle.

In terror Matilda watched her, thinking that she was going to die of this moment. Shriven perhaps, but far from at peace. However the spasms ceased, and although Judith gasped like a fish too long out of water, her eyes were yet lucid. She extended one palsied hand to touch the white fur of Simon's cloak. Her fingers closed in the harsh guard hairs and dug through to the snow-softness beneath.

'Then that is all that matters,' Simon said and, unfastening the catch, laid the cloak across her body. 'You have to let all else go.'

She looked at him and seemed slowly to absorb his words, for her breathing calmed a little and her clutch became less desperate on the fur.

'Was Waltheof able to do that?' she wheezed.

'Yes,' said Simon without hint of a stumble or pause and meeting her gaze squarely.

'You tell me what I want to hear…"

'I tell you the truth.'

She made a disparaging sound, but her crisis was fought and won and she had regained her control. 'I am glad that you are my daughter's husband and not mine,' she said, and stroked the lining of the cloak.

'So am I,' Simon said.

Judith almost smiled at the remark. 'I hear you have not revoked your crusader's vow,' she said after a pause to gather strength.

'No, belle mere,' Simon said gravely, 'I have not revoked it.'

'Then pray for me.'

'Gladly.' Simon dipped his head in acknowledgement and moved from the bed, leaving the cloak draped across her body. If he was cold without its enveloping warmth, he gave no sign. Matilda was moved by his compassion and filled with pride and awe. She supposed it was the result of his life as a courtier. Being a squire to the Conqueror had been excellent training for everything that life… and the leaving of life could hurl at him.

Judith closed her eyes and slept, but even in slumber did not relinquish her grip on the cloak.

From the abbey the matins bell sounded, calling the nuns to stumble from their pallets in the dorter and walk in procession to the chapel. Simon went quietly from the room and returned with his second cloak - an affair of dark green wool trimmed with the contrasting red of squirrel and lined for warmth with sheepskins. He also brought a flagon of hot wine, a small loaf and a half wheel of yellow cheese.

'Food?' he murmured.

Matilda shook her head. Her stomach was tied in a knot and she could not think of eating, but she took the wine with gratitude and drank a warming mouthful. There was ginger in it, and she welcomed the trickle of heat it sent through her frozen body. Sybille drank too, cupping her hands around her goblet and sniffing with cold. She too refused the food that Simon offered. Shrugging, he settled himself on the second coffer and ate a portion of bread and cheese.

'On campaign you eat to keep your strength, no matter if the sight of food revolts your belly,' he said, but made no more effort to force the women.

Twice more as the night drew on Matilda heard the abbey bell summoning the nuns to prayer. The candle burned down on its spike and Sybille brought out a new one from the aumbry in the corner. Matilda saw that there were more candles in the recessed cupboard - at least half a dozen of golden beeswax, and as thick as a strong man's wrist.

'Kindle them all,' she commanded the maid. 'We may not have heat, but at least we can have a blaze of light.'

Sybille did as she bade, empty ing the aumbry of its contents and seeking out extra wrought-iron spikes. 'My lady would say that it is a terrible waste,' she said with an apprehensive glance at the bed.

'For this once I think that the cost is justified,' Matilda answered. 'Let her path be lit fittingly.' Rising from the bedside, she lit a candle from the guttering one on the coffer and from it kindled the rest until the room was huge with light.

From the abbey the prime bell rang out, once more beckoning the nuns to their devotions. Outside the chamber a grey winter dawn was breaking. Simon rose to his feet and, murmuring that he was going outside for a piss, limped stiffly from the room.

As the door closed softly behind him, Judith raised her lids as if they weighed as greatly as pennies made of lead. Her gaze fixed upon the brightness of the candles, and then with effort, slid to her daughter.

'A profligate waste,' she murmured rustily.

'A fitting salute,' Matilda retorted, and lifted the cup of wine from the coffer to offer her mother a drink.

Judith made a feeble gesture of denial. 'Leave be,' she whispered. 'I am beyond that…' Her hand groped and sought upon the coverlet, found the edge of the fur cloak and clutched it. A look of relief softened the lines on her face. 'I dreamed of your father,' she said, and a faint smile wavered on her lips like a reflection blurred in water. 'He was wearing this… and unlike me, he had not grown old…"

Matilda wondered uneasily if her mother was going to have another seizure of grief, but the smile remained, and when the dying woman breathed, 'I loved him,' there was a kind of sad understanding in her face. 'But not enough.' There was another soft breath that stirred the fur on the white pelt, and one that did not, followed by a sound like a key grating in a lock. Then there was silence. The candles flickered, their light glinting in the shine of Judith's fixed stare.