The Winter Mantle (65 page)

'Mother?' Matilda leaned over the still form on the bed. She took one of the cold wrists in hers and searched along the delicate blue vein for the pulse of life, but found nothing. Very gently, she pressed the open lids shut.

Sybille rose stiffly from her kneeling position at the other side of the bed and, easing a cramp in her spine, went to unfasten the latch and throw wide the shutters on a grey dawn sky. 'To aid her soul's passage,' she declared. Her face was wet, but then Sybille had always been swift to show emotion, the opposite of the mistress she had served for forty years.

The daylight streamed weakly into the room, taking away some of the glory from the candle's blaze and casting a pallid light on Judith's body. A cold draught guttered the flames and Matilda could almost fancy that it was indeed her mother's soul leaving its earthly shell and drifting heavenwards. She felt numb. There was no sting of tears, no rush of grief. Nothing, save perhaps a regret as cold and sad as the air blowing through the room.

Leaving the bedside, she joined Sybille at the open shutters and put her arms around the woman's shoulders. The light was steadily paling in the east, and she could see the lay workers going about their business. The smell of new bread from the bakehouse wafted suggestively past her nostrils. She saw Simon talking to one of the knights of their escort as the two men trudged back up the path from the latrines. Simon's hands were tucked in his belt in a stance that was so familiar it sent a small leap of emotion through her.

'Only time I ever knew her happy were in the first days of marriage to your father,' Sybille sniffed. 'But they were as different as a cat and a dog. I knew it would end in grief, more's the pity for both their sakes. I pray she finds her peace with God now.' She made the sign of the cross on her breast.

Matilda echoed the maid's gesture. 'I hope so too,' she murmured, but the words came by rote. Sense and meaning would come later - or perhaps not at all.

'I should fetch the priest and the Mother Abbess.' Sybille wiped her eyes on her sleeve. 'My lady will want to lie in the chapel…"

'No, let me do that,' Matilda said quickly. 'You knew her the best of us… You were her closest companion. It is fitting that you should prepare her for her final resting place.'

Sybille nodded. 'Yes, Lady Matilda. I would be honoured to see to laying her out.'

'Good then. Do you make a start and I will join you presently.' She kissed the maid's damp cheek and was briefly engulfed in the choking hold of a fresh wave of Sybille's emotion. In truth she was glad that at least there was someone to weep for her mother.

Descending to the bailey, she went to intercept Simon and bring him the news that Judith had died.

He had finished speaking with the other knight, and now he came towards her, his hands still gripping his belt, his stride stiff and uneven in the frosty morning cold. Even though her feelings were frozen, something must have shown on her face, for his step quickened and his thin brows drew together in concern.

'She has gone,' Matilda said as he reached her. 'And I am glad for her. Perhaps now she will have the peace she never found in life.' The muscles of her face felt stiff, as if the cold had invaded and frozen them.

He folded his arms around her. 'God rest her soul,' he murmured. 'I know it was troubled.'

Matilda pressed her face into the russet wool of his tunic. 'Sybille is composing her body ready for chapel,' she said. 'I must make arrangements for masses to be said for her soul and see that alms are distributed in her name.' She rubbed her cheek against his breast. 'Everything stops while we wait for death to come, and then everything becomes as busy as a beehive.' She gave a little shiver. 'And then everything stops again,' she said softly. And that perhaps is a worse silence than the first.'

He rubbed his fingertips gently at the small of her back. 'But only as winter comes before spring,' he said. 'If you can weather the cold, then the season will turn.'

'I am in the winter now,' she said. 'I feel nothing. I am frozen.'

'Well, half of that is because you have been sitting all night in a room so cold that it would turn fire to ice in the snap of a finger,' he remonstrated. 'And you wouldn't eat any food to fuel your belly when I offered. At least ask some hot gruel of the nuns before you set about your tasks.'

'I thought it was women who were supposed to be scolds,' she found the spark to murmur.

'I was caring, not scolding,' Simon retorted.

The words lit the tiniest flicker of warmth at Matilda's core. 'You might have married her,' she said.

'But I didn't.' He sought downwards and found her cold lips with his own. She felt their pressure, the warmth of his mouth, breathing life into hers. Her fingers caught and gripped as a stab of heat shattered the ice encasing her vitals. She made a sound in her throat, half pleasure, half anguish, and he absorbed it into the strength of their kiss. She swayed where she stood, locked in longing and a need so great that it almost felled her.

The sound of the draw bar sliding back from the main gate and the entry of a horseman on a blowing bay courser made Simon break the kiss and lift his head. Leaning against him, her body a mass of tingling sensation, Matilda watched the rider approach. He wore a thick, fur-lined cloak against the winter cold, and a hood of charcoal-coloured wool. The pommel of a sword shone with a dull steel light at his belt.

She felt Simon tense against her, and looking into his face saw that he was gazing at the newcomer with recognition in his eyes.

'Beric?' he said. 'What brings you here to Elstow? Is there news?' His right arm departed the embrace to extend towards the man; his left remained on her waist and turned her to face the intrusion. 'A king's messenger,' Simon muttered out of the side of his mouth for her benefit.

The man dismounted with a little jump, for his horse was tall and he was not. lie was powerfully built, though, and looked as if he knew how to use the weapon at his belt.

'Not so much news, my lord, as a summons.' He reached into the satchel slung from left shoulder to right hip and produced a vellum packet from which dangled the royal seal of King William Rufus. 'He wants you in Normandy. They told me at Northampton's gates that you had come here.'

Simon took the packet from the outstretched hand. Matilda watched the gesture and was transported back to small childhood with such a vivid jolt that she almost gasped. She saw Ralf de Gael riding into the courtyard and felt her father's arms slacken around her as his attention diverted to his friend. She remembered the fury and pain she had felt — and the anguish of being punished for her tantrum while her papa rode off to hunt with his friend. And after that everything had changed.

The power of the feeling, coupled with lack of food and sleep and the long, draining vigil at her mother's deathbed, buckled her knees and she sagged against Simon in a half-swoon. He bore her up with an exclamation of concern and she heard him call out across the courtyard. Moments later she found herself being borne away by the porteress and her novice assistant, who murmured over her in concern. To her protests that she was all right and her feeble struggles to be free of them they paid no heed, but brought her to the infirmary and sat her in a cushioned curule chair near the fire; and it seemed to her that the wheel had turned full circle.

A bowl of hot oat gruel and two cups of sweet mead later, she began to feel slightly better and insisted to the nuns tending her that she did not want to lie down and rest. 'I need to be busy,' she said.

'Aye, it must be a shock, losing your poor lady mother,' clucked the infirmaress, a plump hen of a woman with comfortable, pleated features and shrewd blue eyes. 'Best if your hands and mind are occupied until you're ready to think about matters.'

'Indeed,' Matilda said, but it was not the shock of her mother's death that had felled her.

Leaving the infirmary, she went to the chapel and found that preparations were already afoot to transport her mother's body from her chamber to lie in state before the altar. She spoke to the Mother Abbess about prayers, accepted condolences with appropriate murmurs and downcast lids, and then sped in search of Simon, filled with an irrational fear that he might already have left.

He was in the stables, arranging to have a loose shoe on his horse's off-hind hoof reshod. When he saw her he left his conversation with the groom and she saw the apprehension fill his eyes.

'You are feeling better?' He took her hands in his.

'Enough to do what I must,' she said with a half-smile that was brave rather than possessed of any humour. She gestured to the horse, which the groom was preparing to lead out into the yard. 'You do not need to tell me. I know that you will ride out of here before the bells ring the hour of nones.'

He sighed and released one of her hands so that he could push his hair off his forehead. 'The King desires me to act as one of his commanders in the field and the summons is urgent. I've already sent a rider out to Huntingdon with an order of muster. Now I have to return to Northampton and do the same. Matilda, I…"

Quickly she raised her palm and laid it against his lips. 'Do not seek to sweeten the potion,' she said. 'You too are bound to do as you must.'

A look of relief flickered in his eyes. Obviously he had expected her to weep and cling. The part of her that was the child had every intention of doing so, but the woman held that part in check with grim determination. 'Promise only that you will send word to me of where you are and what you are doing.' She managed to keep her voice on an even keel. 'It is the silences that are the hardest to bear.'

The groom clopped the horse into the yard, swung astride, and turned it towards the gates.

'Smith'!! have him shod in a cat's whisker, rn'lord,' he said.

Simon nodded and flipped the man a silver coin from his pouch. 'I'll be at prayer in the chapel.'

Saluting, the groom rode out.

Simon turned to Matilda and drew her into the knee-deep hay of the stable just vacated by his horse. 'I promise.' He pulled her into his arms, and ignoring the toing and froing of servants and grooms kissed her until she was hot and melting and breathless. 'Wherever we are in the field, I promise.' Through her gown and his chausses and tunic she could feel how hard he was, and she rubbed against him with a small gasp. To be doing this while her mother was being prepared to lie in state in the chapel might indicate a lack of decorum, but the need to confirm the life force coursing through her own veins was just as strong… and abetted by the knowledge of Simon's imminent departure. If they did not make their private farewells now, there would be no other time.

Although it was he who had instigated their lovemaking, it was Matilda who took control. She broke the embrace, but only to draw him into the stables, to the farthest stall, which was full of clean, fresh hay.

'My mother would be shocked,' she whispered as she pulled him down to her, 'but I will do my penance later.'

'No,' Simon said as he cupped her face in his hands and paused on the threshold of wild lust for a moment of tenderness. 'Deep in her heart, your mother would have been envious. Do no penance, but rejoice.'