Needle in the Blood (19 page)

“You’ve seen one?”

“I was once a waiting woman in a household whose lord received a gift of a camel from the Holy Land.” She pauses to see if he shows any sign of recognition, but sees only his curiosity, hungry and insistent. “The poor thing was very mangy. Its fur was peeling off like plaster off a damp wall. It died.”

He is full of wonder; he feels like weeping with gratitude for his sister’s miraculous gift. A woman who has seen a camel, who can describe a camel with the same casual precision with which she might give instructions to the gardener or place an order for a bolt of cloth.

“It sounds as though you have had a much more interesting life than I have. Will you tell me more?”

“Surely you mock me, my lord?”

“No.” But the tone was patronising, ill considered. All this soldiering, he’s losing his touch. “I assure you, my interest is genuine.” He summons his most charming smile, though even that fails to work its usual magic and she remains unmoved, her lovely lips set in a bitter line.

“Then I shall disappoint you.” Disappointment handed on, the only legacy of her life. And will it also end in disappointment, failure, because she is so easily distracted? Keep it brief, just the bare essentials. “My father was a free man with a fish salting business in Colchester. I married when I was sixteen. My husband was a cooper. Now I’m a widow.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have no need. It wasn’t your fault. My husband died of a flux the year Earl Harold killed King Gryfudd, before you came here.” She remembers the year because of her mother being Welsh.

“I had no intention of accepting the blame for your husband’s death. Whatever the circumstances.”

His shirt is open at the neck. A pulse beats rapidly beneath the skin at the base of his throat. Tender skin, easy to pierce, just above the curious glass ornament he wears, shaped like a tear whose apex marks the entry point.

“I’m surprised you have not married again,” he continues.

“My husband left a great many debts.”

“And have you no children?”

“None living, my lord.” None living. Such simple words, ordinary as barley porridge or a spinning wheel. Easy words to say, as long as you don’t think about what they mean, because, if you do, the pain will rob you of the power of speech.

“Will you snap my head off again if I say I’m sorry? Really. My own son is a great consolation to me, although I see him far less often than I should like. It seems to me we are never so blest in this life as by the love of children.”

His son? He has a child? Suddenly she is back on top of the West Gate tower in Winchester, her eyes fixed in horror on the small boy darting out between the soldiers to grasp the bishop’s shiny harness. Once again she sees Odo slip his feet from his stirrups ready to throw himself from the saddle, then hears the Bastard’s thin, harsh command.
Non, Odo! A moi!
As clear as if he had been standing next to her on the tower. She wonders that she has never remembered it before. “What is his name, my lord?” she asks. Not that she cares, of course.

“John.” His son’s name fills him with nostalgia. John. “My sister, your mistress, is his godmother. He is fourteen. He is at school in Liege, although I haven’t yet decided if he will take orders.”

His wistful indulgence makes her wince. Seven years now since her last confinement, yet the pain never lessens. Feeling the tears well up from that deep scarred place inside her, she bites her lip, hard enough, temporarily, to supersede one pain with another.

She glances out of the window, which gives onto a neat square of grass bounded by the crumbling west wall of the cloister. The Archbishop’s house casts long, dense shadows across the lawn and under the cloister arches, where the brothers, like shadows themselves in their black habits, are gathering to go into church.
Vespers
, she thinks, listening to the bell, and realises that this day of short hours has almost disappeared.

Yet she has made no move: the bishop’s white skinned throat remains as unblemished as when she entered the room, his heart still beats with the love of a living son. A tall boy, probably, ungainly, with legs like a stork and curly hair, and a voice that cracks uncontrollably, like a donkey braying. Matthew would have been about that age by now. Matthew. Her firstborn.

“Please look at the drawing, my lord,” she says, with a break in her voice that makes him glance at her with concern. She stares at her hands, at her knife hanging uselessly at her side, his compassion battering down her exhausted defences. She blinks furiously to keep the tears from her eyes.

“All right,” he says gently, and finishes unfolding it. In the waning light, he sees a single figure, a slender, long-legged knight sporting a lavish moustache. His shield is stuck full of arrows. In his shield hand he also holds a javelin, but his sword arm is raised to his face, the great fist clenched around another arrow which appears to have entered his right eye. His arms and armour, the knee-length mail shirt and pointed helmet with its nose guard, proclaim him to be a Norman, but the moustache identifies him. And his height. These are the details Agatha has remembered, impatient with the technical variations between Norman and Saxon military paraphernalia because she could not see the need to understand them. She has also remembered the curious manner of his death. Except, of course, that she has not. She has merely remembered what Odo chose to tell her.

“The death of Godwinson,” he says. “You may tell my sister I am content.” He holds out the drawing to Gytha, who takes it from him quickly, almost eagerly. He releases it with a small, sad smile that does not reach his eyes. Had it been anything else, she would not have bothered to look at it. But the death of Harold touches her, so she looks.

“Christ’s blood!”

He glances up in astonishment from sorting through his letters. Has she not recently told him she was lady-in-waiting in some great house? This is not generally the way Saxon women of good breeding express themselves. A furious flush suffuses her cheeks. She breathes hard, her hand shakes, holding the parchment at arm’s length as though it is contaminated.

“I beg your pardon, mistress?” He tries to sound like an affronted churchman, but it is impossible to keep the amusement out of his voice. Her eyes, he decides, are the deep, translucent blue of a summer night, and just now they are full of shooting stars. He wonders if he might compose a verse or two, an elegy, after Ovid. “My sister should not have sent you here with this,” he says, giving up the pretence at outrage. “I suppose there were men who fought at Hastings who were known to you.”

“There were men fought at Hastings known to every woman in England. Not a household but didn’t lose someone. I am not so full of my own importance as to let that distress me.”

“And you think it was any different for the women of Normandy?” He is stung by her self-righteousness. How many homes has he visited in his own diocese, ducking under the low lintels of cottage doorways or served rye bread and new wine in farmers’ halls? How many easy lies has he told to grieving mothers about the inexpressible courage of their terrified sons? No, he did not suffer. Yes, he had plenty of time to make his confession. Naturally he was honoured to die in the duke’s service.

“Yes,” she snaps back without hesitation, “it was your choice, not ours. And now this…” Taking a step toward him she waves the drawing savagely in his face. “This…travesty.”

Summoning all his self-control to stop himself flinching, he asks, “What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean.” The Devil’s beguiling scales have fallen from her eyes now. If he looks like an angel, it is just a trick of the firelight. So what if he has a son? The Bastard himself has sons. They are still butchers, carving up her country and tossing it to their dogs of vassals just as they carved up the body of her king and kicked the pieces off a cliff edge to be picked over by gulls.

“I assure you, mistress, I do not,” he says, mild as you please. “Have some wine, calm down, and then perhaps you can explain yourself.” He attempts to stand, to go for the wine jug on the night table. He could call Osbern, but he is enjoying himself too much.

But as he puts his hands to the arms of his chair to push himself out of it, she lunges forward, slamming her hands over his, the parchment crumpled under her palm, pressed into the back of his hand. She has a mermaid smell, of salt and fish, wind and wet rocks.

She has acted without thinking. Her knife is useless, still knotted to her girdle. But she has teeth and nails, feet, fists, a whole body she can use to kill him, since it is no use for giving life.

Then she notices the jewelled hilt of the dagger he wears in his belt, in a little leather scabbard, not even tied. Balling the parchment in her fist she flings it in his face. Before he can recover himself she lunges for the dagger with her other hand, her fingers curling hard around its hilt, whipping it from its sheath, pressing the point against his throat. As light and thrilling as a caress. He isn’t afraid, not for a moment. He has only to call out for Osbern and his guards to come running. Even without them he is more than a match for her, so small a woman, despite the ferocity of her temper. It is not her sudden fury that throws him off balance, but the force of his desire for her, slamming into him like a blow.

But first, the dagger. He grasps her wrist and twists until she is forced to drop it. Catching it in his free hand, he flings it across the room out of reach, then pushes her aside. As she stumbles he springs to his feet and, gripping her by the shoulders, grinding her flesh against the bone, pulls her up to face him, holding her so close their breath mingles in the tense space between them, and he knows she must feel his arousal. She struggles, tries to twist her arms free, but it is useless; her sleeves chafe and burn against her skin, and she has no doubt he will break her arms if need be.

“So I am not worth an honourable death either,” she spits at him.

“What are you talking about?” He intensifies his grip on her shoulders to make her understand he has tired of the game and wants an answer this time. She does not even wince, just stares at him with contempt, then suddenly smiles, a second before bringing her knee up sharply into his groin.

He drops to the floor, his face grey, sweat breaking from his forehead, a delta of pain flowing out from his groin, spreading through his bowels and belly, washing the bile into the back of his throat. He swallows, determined not to give her the satisfaction of vomiting. The dog creeps out from under the bed and dances around him, barking, butting her long snout into his shoulders, trying to entice him to play.

Gytha makes a dash for the dagger, but as she stoops to pick it up, Odo recovers sufficiently to make a lunge across the floor, his body stretched full length, grabbing her ankle and pulling it out from under her. She falls heavily, ribs and knees crashing against packed earth, and lies winded, helpless, as Odo crawls toward her, pinions her with one knee in the small of her back and reaches for his knife, which he then holds against her neck, just above the nape, its point tracing the wave of a tendril of dark hair escaped from her coif. Turning her head sideways she comes face to face with the dog, jowls spread over her paws, eyebrows quizzically arched. Gytha sneezes. As she tries to raise her arm to wipe her nose, Odo twists it up her back until she can almost feel the tearing of sinew, the ball of her shoulder popping out of its socket.

“Enough? Or a little more?” He gives her arm another wrench.

She cries out, giving voice to her screaming muscles. “Enough!”

As he releases her arm and lifts his knee from her back, she feels suddenly cold. Shock, she tells herself, sitting up, flexing her fingers, prodding her shoulder to make sure everything is still where it should be. Her body, as she watches him sheath his dagger, then rock back on his heels and get to his feet, tells her something different, but she refuses to listen to it. She tries to rise but stumbles over the hem of her gown. He lifts her, his hand beneath her elbow. She fancies she can feel every whorl of his fingerprints through the fabric of her sleeve. As soon as she has regained her balance, she shakes him off as if he were made of fire.

“What’s going on, my lord?…Oh.” The commotion has brought Osbern running from the room next door, but seeing his lord and the woman standing close, flushed and panting, he grins and withdraws. Osbern, Odo teases him, guards his lord’s morals so fiercely even he cannot always gain access to them.

“Now,” says Odo calmly, though he remains pale and somewhat breathless, “tell me what this is all about.”

“I saw the king’s body,” she says, her veins full of ice now, the spark of his flesh against hers doused. “I know he didn’t die of a shot in the eye. You have lied. There, I have said it. Send for your soldiers, I’m ready.”

“How do you know?” he asks, sounding almost fearful.

“The household I spoke of, with the camel? It was Edith Swan Neck’s. I accompanied her when she came to ask for his body.”

Silence. Now he will do it, send for his men, or perhaps just break her neck himself with those broad, muscular hands. She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut until she sees tiny, dancing points of light in the darkness. Her children’s souls, beckoning her. A weight lifts from her shoulders. She is floating. She opens her eyes.

He has not moved. He stands very still, his arms hanging at his sides. His stillness has an air of impending catastrophe about it, as though he is suspended over nothingness by a frayed rope that will break if he moves.