The Winter Mantle (68 page)

'Lord Hugh,' she responded with a courteous smile. 'It is good to see you.' She was adept at the social niceties; greased wheels ran better than dry ones.

He drew her into the compound. Timber dwellings had been erected to house the population of the castle while the walls went up, and numerous tents dotted the sward like clusters of field mushrooms. She found herself anxiously scanning the banners flying from their posts to see if she could see any of Simon's, but, although there were a few she recognised, his was not among them.

As if reading her mind, Hugh Lupus touched her arm. 'Simon is out with a troop,' he said. 'We expect him back later today, or tomorrow.'

There was an odd expression in the Earl of Chester's eyes, a mingling of speculation, sympathy and grim amusement. Matilda's scalp prickled.

'There is more that you are not telling me, isn't there?'

Without reply, he led her to one of the timber buildings and waving the guard aside, pushed open the door. 'Your husband's chamber,' he said. 'We have not been dwelling in the most princely of circumstances, but I hope it will suffice.'

Matilda shrugged. 'I am not the kind to worry over lack of creature comforts,' she said. 'The peasants survive on far less.' She pinned him with her gaze. 'I hope you would tell me if there is anything amiss.'

He folded his arms across the wide bulk of his chest and looked over them to the layer of thick yellow straw covering the floor. 'It depends what you call amiss,' he said. 'As I told you, Simon is out with the troop.' He cleared his throat and rocked on his heels. 'I know your husband's abilities in the field and if I have no fears for him, neither should you.'

Matilda picked her way through what he had said. 'Then if there is no danger to my husband, why do you hesitate in your telling?' she asked.

Chester flicked her a look from beneath his brows. 'It is not every wife would follow her husband across the sea and to the edge of a battle field.' His tone was censorious rather than admiring.

Matilda lifted her chin. 'I am not every wife. I have scarcely seen my husband in two years. Even when he returned from the crusade we had no time together. My mother took ill and died, and he was called away to this war.' She flushed beneath Hugh Lupus' scrutiny. 'I have come to comfort him, and be comforted.'

The Earl's expression grew yet more wary. 'You may well achieve your goal,' he said. 'But I wonder how generous your nature is.'

It was clear from the way he spoke and his general stance that he was uncomfortable with her presence and viewed it as an irritation, like something full of little bones that had been added to his already piled trencher.

'I would appreciate it if you would tell me and be done,' she said with dignity.

Chester sighed. 'Come with me,' he said, and led her out of the building and across the sward to another, similar hall that housed his own retinue. Ducking through the doorway, he brought her to the central hearth and gestured to a woman sitting on a stool before the fire, tending a swaddled infant.

'This is Alaise, my mistress,' he said bluntly. 'Since she has milk in abundance, she has agreed to nurse your husband's child until other arrangements can be made.'

Matilda stared. 'My husband's child?' she said blankly.

'I am sorry that you should arrive to such tidings, but…" He made a shrug and a down-turned mouth serve for the rest.

'But wives who follow their husbands have to deal with the consequences,' she said in a hard voice that frighteningly reminded her of her mother.

'Yes, they do,' Chester answered, seemingly glad that she had articulated what he had not.

'How can this be his child?' she demanded with angry bewilderment. 'He has only been gone from me since the Christmas feast.'

Hugh Lupus nodded. 'And before that he was a crusader. Did you never wonder whether he took comfort along the way?'

Matilda swallowed. 'I…"

A young soldier approached the Earl and murmured that he was needed at one of the gates.

'You will excuse me,' Chester said. 'I will speak with you later. Whatever you need, just ask it of one of my attendants.' He left at a brisk walk for one so large, his relief obvious.

Matilda's body was rigid with the effort of maintaining her dignity. She looked down at the baby in the woman's arms. Its hair was jet-black, but otherwise it looked very similar to her own children when they had been newborn. Nine months ago, as Chester said, Simon had been returning from crusade. She remembered the way he had avoided her eye when he spoke of the laundress who had so neatly patched his chausses. A suspicion had crossed her mind then, but she had chosen to ignore, if not to forget it. It was in the past. But there was no ignoring this. For how long, she wondered, had this woman been his lover?

'Did you know the mother?' she demanded of Alaise. She made herself speak to the woman, even though she was the Earl of Chester's mistress and such knowledge was hard to swallow in the light of revelation.

'No, my lady. Earl Simon brought the babe here yesterday and I was asked to suckle him.' The woman's look was compassionate, but wary.

'Brought it back from where?'

'The nunnery at Evreux, my lady.'

'God's blood, his mistress is a nun?' Matilda's voice rose. She would kill him. She would take her knife and cut out his heart, but first she would slice off his balls and feed them to the hounds.

The baby gave a little start in response to the raised voice and began to wail. The woman unfastened the drawstring of her chemise to put him to her breast. 'I do not know, my lady. From the talk, I heard she hadn't taken her vows, but she wouldn't leave the nunnery.'

Matilda watched the infant nuzzle and take suck. Simon's son by another woman - a nun. Had they talked tenderly as they lay together, or had it been a transaction of mere lust?

Stumbling from the dwelling, she leaned against the doorpost and drew deep gulps of the cold spring air. She had arrived in Gisors with visions of a tender reunion between herself and Simon. Instead she had been confronted by his betrayal. Suddenly she understood her mother's feelings all to well. The bitterness, the anger, the shame. All that remained in the end was duty, and its rigorous enforcing, because it was the only thing over which she had control.

Matilda lifted the cup to her lips and was surprised to find it already down to the lees. She fumbled for the pitcher only to discover that it too was empty.

'Go and fetch more wine,' she slurred at Helisende, who was watching her with a worried expression.

'My lady, the butlery will be closed now. They won't issue any more until the morrow.'

'They will for me… I'm a guest. I'm a countess…'

Helisende curled her hand around the pitcher's handle. 'Everyone is asleep,' she said. 'It is late in the night. I will have to rouse someone from their bed.'

'Then do it!' Matilda shouted. She rose from the low table where she had been drinking steadily for several hours, tripped on the hem of her gown and sprawled in the rushes. Helisende abandoned the pitcher and rushed to help her.

Matilda tried to bat the maid away but her arms felt as if they were lengths of wet rope. She hung her head, suddenly feeling very ill. Helisende smartly tipped some apples out of the wooden bowl on the table and just in time thrust it in front of Matilda's face.

Sobbing, heaving, Matilda was violently sick. She had never drunk even half a pitcher at once before and her body was rebelling in every fibre.

'That's it, my lady, better out than in,' Helisende crooned soothingly. 'You'll be all right presently.'

'I'll never be all right,' Matilda wept. 'Never again.'

Grimacing, Helisende went to dispose of the contents of the bowl down the latrine shaft, then she helped her mistress to bed.

Matilda resisted, hanging back. 'Not there,' she said, thrusting out her lower lip. 'Don't want to sleep in his bed.'

'It is better than the floor, my lady. Why should you punish yourself for his weakness?' Helisende demanded. 'He lay with another woman, she bore a child. Such matters are not the end of the world.'

'He betrayed me,' Matilda flung.

'Mayhap, but where you sleep will not alter things.' Helisende gave her a little shake, as if the gesture were capable of imparting reason. 'Besides, he could not have lain with her here. Three seasons ago Gisors was less than a stone in Robert de Bêlleme's eye. Come now.' As if dealing with one of Matilda's children, Helisende cajoled Matilda to lie down, removed her shoes and wimple, and drew the coverlet gently up to her shoulders. 'Ail will seem better in the morning,' she murmured.

'It won't,' Matilda declared mutinously. Through a wine haze she remembered Sybille leaning over her when she was a child, soothing her with promises that her father would be home soon. Promises that had lulled her to sleep only to prove how hollow they were in the cold light of day. Her lids felt as if they had been weighted with lead seals, her tongue seemed too large for her mouth, and her limbs belonged to someone else. Tomorrow. She would deal with it when it arrived, but she would not expect anything to be better.

Matilda awoke to a headache so huge that it seemed to fill the room and leave no space for anything but the appalling, drumming pain. Groaning, she pulled the coverlet over her head, but she could not settle back into the dark cocoon of oblivion. Her bladder was bursting and shifting position made no difference to the urgent demand.

Eyes half closed, she tottered from the bed to the waste shaft, somehow lifted her gown and chemise out of the way, and squatted. Outside she could hear the shouts of men at battle practice and the creak of cartwheels as supplies rolled into the compound. The day appeared to be well under way. Matilda decided she did not want to be a part of it and wandered blearily back towards the bed.

'My lady, you are awake?' Helisende appeared from the domestic end of the hall, a steaming cup of something herbal in her hand.

Matilda winced. 'If I am dreaming, it is a nightmare,' she said and taking the cup, inhaled the aroma of chamomile. She took a tentative sip and found the astringent taste had been made just about palatable with honey. Walking slowly, she returned to the bed and sat down on the coverlet.

Helisende went away but returned moments later with a ewer of scented water for washing. 'That woman of Chester's was asking me about the babe,' she said as she laid a folded linen towel on the bed.

'What babe?' Matilda asked, and then remembered. Her lips tightened and dark misery filled her mind. 'What of it?'

'She wanted to know if you were going to come and see him today.'

Matilda took another sip of the brew and rubbed her aching forehead. Last night she had told herself that only duty remained, and against that duty had drunk herself into the worst megrim of her entire life. 'I suppose if I must,' she snapped ungraciously and glared at the maid. 'I wonder what my lord would have said to me if he had returned from crusade and found me with another man's child in my arms? Would he have accepted it into his life as I am expected to accept this one?'

'Likely not, my lady,' said Helisende, 'but then men are simple creatures. Rope them by the loins and you may lead them anywhere… and they are always too willing to be thus captured.'

'And the women pay,' Matilda said bitterly. 'Either with their reputations or their lives.'

Helisende tilted her head to one side like an inquisitive bird. 'Will you forgive him, my lady?'

'I do not know yet,' Matilda said. 'You are asking me if I will recover from a wound that is still bleeding.'

When the potion had done its work and her head no longer felt as if it was being pounded from the inside by a spiked mace she pinned her cloak at her shoulders and crossed the path to Chester's dwelling. Helisende followed at her heels until Matilda turned.

'Go and find my groom and Sir Walter. Tell them to saddle the horses and have the men ready.'

'We are leaving, my lady?' Helisende looked at her askance. 'Is that wise?'

Matilda gave a bitter laugh. 'I do not know what is wise any more and what is not. What I do know is that I will have no peace until I have been to Evreux and seen for myself.'

'My lady I…'

'Bo not argue - go!' Matilda's eyes flashed.

Helisende's lips tightened. 'Yes, my lady,' she said, and dipped her mistress a very proper curtsey to show her resentment.

Matilda responded with a glacial stare and the maid stalked off on her errand, head high and spine stiff with indignation.

Matilda closed her eyes, swallowed, and entered Chester's hall. There was no sign of the Earl, but Alaise was seated before the fire, the baby mewling in her lap as she changed his swaddling. Matilda made herself go and look at him, forced herself to pick him up and hold him along her arm. Whatever the circumstances of his begetting and birth, he was innocent. She had to accept him because he would be raised as part of Simon's household. It would be at least seven or eight years before he went away to be trained as a knight or a priest - perhaps not even then, if Simon chose to raise him at his side.

'Does he have a name?' she asked Hugh Lupus' mistress, who was watching her with wary eyes as if she expected Matilda to dash the baby against the hearthstones.

'I believe he was christened for his sire, my lady.'

Simon. The name slashed Matilda like the whetted blade of a knife. What else had she expected? A mistress was bound to name her offspring after the father, to remind him of his obligation if naught else.

The baby's skin was as soft as the new petal of a rose. Although the tiny features were immature, she could see Simon in them clearly. His chin, the set of the lips. There was no doubting his paternity. Carefully, knowing that she dared make no sudden moves without snapping her precarious control, she returned the baby to the woman's arms.

'Do you ever think of Lord Hugh's wife when you bed with him and bear his bastards?' she demanded.

The woman shrugged. 'Why should I? As long as he don't bring me under the same roof as her, she's content. My lord is a man of strong appetite and she don't have much of one herself. They bide together out of duty.'