Needle in the Blood (14 page)

Entering the building, he sends the page ahead to announce him to his sister and waits in the hall, strolling up and down its length, looking at the mass of sketches and cartoons pasted to the walls, stopping frequently to peer at a particular piece of work. Many of them he has seen before, but not all, and even those he has have been thrust to the back of his mind in the intervening years, so it is like seeing them as new. More than that, seeing them as though he himself is someone different.

Here, a little smudged and grimy with ash from the torches on the wall, is an image of himself, round cheeked and boyish looking, blessing the feast they held to celebrate their landing at Pevensey. Memory, imagination, the way events are changed by the process of translation from one person to another, all peel away to nothing like the layers of an onion. What’s real? The tables made of shields balanced on scaffolding poles, the Roman fort looming against the sky as the light drained away, the ill grace with which the men set to reinforcing it, exhausted, hungry, and still hampered by their sea legs. But where’s the sand sticking to the food or the sharp onshore wind that bit off his prayers as he uttered them? Where is the fear sucking his still nauseous stomach up against his ribs whenever he looked at William, eating heartily, cheerfully likening himself to Caesar, who had also lost his footing and fallen, when disembarking on the coast of Africa? How can Agatha ever have imagined he was smiling like that? Or that they had time to bake bread? At least she has left out William’s fall from the
Mora
, that sickening, incredible moment when everyone who witnessed it united in yearning to be able to wind back time, to erase such an omen from the record. Perhaps he never told her about it, he can’t remember.

“So, my dear lord, all these pictures and I find you studying yourself.” There is just enough humour in that dry tone to soften the blow, though not to deflect it from the target. Odo blushes.

“I wasn’t…”

“Welcome home.” Agatha kneels to kiss his ring. The wrist, as she had predicted, has healed badly, the bone now lying at an odd angle. He raises her to her feet and enfolds her little frame in his arms, then holds her away from him.

“You look well, thank God.”

“I am. Now that we are settled here, this work keeps me out of the world and out of trouble just as well as the Rule of Saint Benedict. Although the sisters are a mite more unruly.”

“Are they, indeed?”

“Nothing I can’t handle, though there’s one…But the women aren’t your concern. You’re here to see your ‘tapestry.’”

“And I’ve come to you before seeing to any other business. There’s a queue of petitioners half a league long in the hall, they tell me, and Hamo says my knights are putting up too many tents in the court so he can’t move the garrison out. I don’t know what he’s afraid of. Perhaps he thinks Archbishop Lanfranc has designs on my earldom.”

“And my servant, Leofgeat, whose husband works in the bakehouse, says your fancy Roman pastrycook is likely to get his sweetbreads battered if he can’t keep his hands to himself.”

“D’you think I could hide out here among your seamstresses till Saint Stephen’s?” Laughing together, they climb the stairs to the atelier. Despite the snow clouds and the early beginnings of the winter dusk, he is momentarily dazzled as Agatha holds back the curtain and he steps into the workshop. It is like a concussion, no, more a glimpse of heaven. He had not forgotten the windows; the slender lancets of creamy Caen stone, the fine tracery of lead, the lights flawless as diamonds conjured from fire and sand, shine in his memory. He had just forgotten the physical impact of beauty, how it makes the pulse race and the blood sing. His life at William’s court, always in the company of soldiers and politicians, has become mean and narrow. He hears nothing but dispatches and petitions for his patronage, talks of nothing but the last campaign or the next rebellion, the clearance of a road here or the construction of a fortification there; even the mystery of the sacraments has been soured for him by the thought of Lanfranc. Enthralled by the expanse of white sky reflecting the snow covered earth back at itself, he gasps, like a man in the throes of passion, making the women look up from their work.

He will not know her, Gytha reassures herself, of course he will not, after so many seasons, so many towns occupied, halls looted, women and children killed. But if she lets him see her face he will recognise her loathing, sleek and fattened on its own bile, like the serpent endlessly consuming its own tail. She busies herself with the little page, making sure he has his feet properly on the hearth where his shoes stand the best chance of drying, then returns to her stool with her head bowed and her face turned aside. He will think her modest and seemly, if he thinks of her at all.

“Attend me,” Sister Jean orders the women, coming to stand beside her brother, the top of her head reaching just below his shoulder, “here is our lord and patron, the Earl of Kent.” Gytha notices how carefully Sister Jean announces his title, as though she is not yet quite used to it, her Norman tongue struggling with the Anglo Saxon earl. Stealing a glance from the corner of her eye, Gytha sees him incline his head slightly toward the women, a gesture of teasing charm. Stools scrape along the floor, releasing the perfume of the dried lavender strewn among the rushes, as the women stand and bow. Emma almost falls; she lunges at her frame to prevent herself, but it wobbles on its trestles and would have overturned had not her sewing partner, on the other side, reached out to steady it. Bishop Odo watches this pantomime with a puzzled frown.

Briefly, he glances in Gytha’s direction, and once again she has the sense of not being seen. It is her failure to bow he notices, not her. Then he whispers something to Sister Jean, who nods and they smile at each other, the same downturned smile, the same humorous crinkling of the eyes at the corners.

“Will you inspect the embroidery, Your Grace?” Sister Jean enquires.

“That would please me very much.”

“You may sit,” she instructs the women. “Resume your work.” Then, turning to her brother, she asks, “Where will you begin?”

“Here, I think,” he decides, striding across the workshop to Emma’s frame. He stands behind Emma for several minutes, his expression shifting from relief to wonder as he observes how still she becomes once her needle is in her hand, and the excellence of her work, the faces she embroiders which have almost more life in them than the flesh and blood she emulates with needle and thread.

As Judith sees him heading in her direction, she lays down her needle, rises once again from her stool, and kneels to kiss his ring, all in a single, fluent movement.
Every inch the courtier
, thinks Gytha, bowing and scraping to some man or other from the moment she could walk.

“May I speak, madam?” Judith asks Sister Jean.

“Please,” says the bishop.

“Thank you, my lord, you are very gracious. It is the matter of my estates, my lord…”

“His grace has no time for such trifles now, Judith.”

“It’s all right, sister.” The gaze he fixes on Judith glows with sincerity. “All that I have promised will come to pass, madam, I assure you. Now…where next?”

As he turns away, Gytha sees the light extinguished, snuffed out by hard indifference.

“Here, I think,” he concludes, advancing on her and Alwys. Gytha lays down her needle across the image of Earl Harold swearing fealty to the Bastard, her hands trembling too much to continue. He is so close, neither armed nor surrounded by guards, just himself, a man like any other, with veins that can be emptied, lungs punctured, heart broken. Her wait is nearly over, all the patient hours and days and years of bones that ached with the yearning for vengeance and eyes seared by the images of his triumph have come to a halt this snowy afternoon. She folds her hands in her lap and bows her head. She thinks of Christmas; her time, like Mary’s, has almost come.

A half remembered scent of rosemary and sandalwood envelops her as he leans over her shoulder to inspect her work, his gaze coming to rest on the image of Harold, hands outstretched to touch the reliquary shrines, the city of Bayeux rising steeply behind the Bastard on his throne. The scent makes her dizzy, and her palms begin to sweat.

She has been working for many days on Earl Harold’s hands; Sister Jean often chooses her for the most intricate work. But, inexplicably, this time she has been unable to follow Sister Jean’s drawing. On the shrine closest to Duke William, the one to which the duke points and Harold’s gaze is directed, instead of the flat of his palm, he rests only two fingers, the others curled under in a fist, just as if he were pointing back at the duke, accusing him of something. Perhaps the light was poor, or the charcoal smudged. She offered to redo her work, though she knew Sister Jean would let it pass; she does not want her great design transformed into a soiled rag of unpicked stitch holes.

But he won’t. He has an eye for detail; he lets nothing pass. He will have Gytha dismissed. Her chance will have passed before even coming into being. Like the lives of her children. She picks up her needle; if she cannot have the man himself, she can at least indulge herself in the small pleasure of stabbing his image right in front of his eyes. That will not be lost on him either. And perhaps, who knows, it may work the way stabbing wax dollies or burning straw men works. There are all kinds of ways of procuring a man’s downfall.

“You have made Bayeux very pretty,” he remarks, an edge to his voice which makes it sound as though the prettification of Bayeux is some kind of misdemeanour. “Quite a fairy city.”

Gytha stares at the scene, needle suspended, eyes raking the outlines of charcoal and wool. Where is he? Surely he is there. This is his city, the shrines come from his cathedral. Surely he was present to deliver the
coup de grace
. They are such great hunters, these Normans, with their acres of forest suddenly off limits to people who have depended on its bounty for generations. Surely he must have been in for the kill.

“If I had drawn it as it is,” Sister Jean replies, “I doubt it would have impressed the eye as you would wish.”

But he is not there. No sign of him, not a smudge or a shade that might be made to resemble him. Not a ghost, not a trace. Gytha lays down her needle again with a sigh of vexation.

“You may carry on working,” says Sister Jean. “His lordship wishes it.”

“His lordship is in my light.”

Although the normal low hubbub of the workshop has already been silenced by Bishop Odo’s presence, now the silence thickens, settles over the women like a fog as their breath freezes in their chests and their hands fall motionless over their work.

The bishop stares at Gytha, disbelieving, expectant, as though waiting for her to repeat herself so he can be sure he heard her right. Sister Jean raises her eyes to heaven, her lips moving as she offers up a silent prayer. Suddenly he smiles. Perhaps her prayer has been answered.

“Forgive me,” he says to Gytha, who glares back at him as though she has failed to detect the touch of sarcasm in his tone.

As the other women sit with eyes downcast, as modesty dictates in the presence of a man who is not a relation, Gytha thinks of each of them in turn. Of Judith and her exiled grandsons, of Emma torn from her family, and of Meg and Alwys and their four dead brothers. Of herself and her skill with a needle, and how he has appropriated even that from her for his own ends. Summoning all their losses into her eyes, she gives stare for stare.

Until Bishop Odo’s smile fades, and turning smartly on his heel, he stalks out of the workshop with Sister Jean and the little page hurrying behind him.

“Well really,” says Judith once they are out of earshot, “there’ll be no chance of my talking to him about my estates now.”

“Oh, shut up, Judith,” snaps Margaret.

Alwys shakes her head in wonder. “He didn’t know what to say to you.” She looks across at Gytha, her green-flecked eyes round as platters. “You beat him, Gytha.”

Gytha shrugs. “Women have their tongues; men have everything else.” But inside she is exultant. A victory, a victory, chants her heart, though her mind tells her it is only a small one, and the real challenge will be to build on it.

***

“God forgive me, but damn, and double damn.” Agatha slams the door to her parlour and leans back, pressing her palms flat against the sturdy panels to stop her hands shaking. “I’ll get rid of her, Odo. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what she was thinking.”

He is standing with his back to her, apparently studying the drawings and wool samples on the worktable beneath her parlour window, shuffling them about beneath his fingers. Agatha is irritated by the gritty whisper of parchment against the fine coating of sand from her caster.

“No,” he says, his voice uncharacteristically hesitant.

“Well, she would be a great loss. With such small hands she is second to none when it comes to very fine stitching. If you don’t mind…”

“I thought I’d get used to it,” he interrupts, turning to face her, “the hatred in their eyes. Or that they’d come to hate us less once they realised we meant to abide by law and order. But I haven’t, and they don’t. Just some little jade of a seamstress with a sharp tongue, and look how she affects me.”

He is her little brother again, his honey brown eyes full of hurt and bewilderment.
I’m to be a priest
, he had protested, sitting beside her on the bank of the moat at Conteville, putting his hands over hers to correct her hold on her fishing rod.
William is sending me to Bec. Can’t you stop him? This is where I belong.
Sweeping out his free arm to embrace the rambling house with its tangled string of yards and gardens, its orchard and pasture, the village and its common full of tethered goats, beehives, and stiff-legged chickens, fringed with cultivated strips of green and brown and the silky silver of bean plants.
Of course not
, she had replied, casting her line again,
William is like winter. Harsh, inevitable, to be endured.