The Love Knot (4 page)

And in Bristol the unknown awaited in the form of his royal kin. What kind of welcome were she and Richard going to receive - if any? It was not impossible that they would be cast out to beg for their living among the camp followers and whores who serviced Gloucester's troops. She supposed that they could travel to King Stephen's camp. He was, after all, Richard's cousin, and Catrin had no strong feelings against him. It mattered little to her who ruled the country, just as long as there was peace. Her mind filled with images of yesterday's slaughter and she squeezed her lids together to make them go away. When she opened her ryes, an expanding shimmer of light obliterated the corner of her vision and, with dismay, she recognised the onset of a debilitating headache.

Ever since the first bleed of her womanhood she had been burdened by the affliction. It came upon her without warning, but usually when she was tired or upset. The headaches were so excruciating and left her so drained that she dreaded the first flickering glimmers. Sometimes in high summer, the sparkle of sun on water would leave its reflection on her eye and she would panic, believing one of her megrims was imminent. The flood of relief when she realised her mistake was enormous. But today there was no reprieve. The shimmer spread inwards, obscuring her vision, and her stomach began to lurch with each stride of the horse. Pain flickered delicately across her brows, probing for a place to settle. When she closed her eyes, the shimmer turned black with frilly, silver edges. Her heart thundered in her ears, each beat driving needles into her skull. Despite her clenched teeth, saliva filled her mouth.

'Stop!' she gulped at Oliver. 'Now!'

He drew rein and slewed round in the saddle. 'What's wr . . .' he started to ask, but Catrin had already bolted from the grey's back and was braced against a tree, retching violently.

Even after she had been sick, Catrin felt little better. Pain surged over her in great rolling waves, crushing her skull like a shell against a rock. All she could do was huddle over herself and gasp.

Frozen by shock, Oliver stared at her and wondered if she was in the grip of some contagion that would bring sickness to all who had contact with her. Spotted fever started just like this. There had been an outbreak in the crusader port of Jaffa three years ago and hundreds had died.

'What ails her?' Gawin's voice and widened eyes held the same fear that Oliver was silently entertaining.

'I don't know. If she has a contagion then it is too late to keep our distance now. Either we'll catch it or we won't, at the whim of God.' Somewhat abruptly, filled with self-irritation, he dismounted.

Richard wriggled down from his perch behind Gawin.

'It's only one of her headaches,' he said scornfully. 'There's nothing to fear.'

'One of her headaches?' Oliver repeated, and felt ashamed as the boy went to Catrin and put his arm around her.

'She gets them sometimes, and then she has to lie down in the dark to make them go away. A leech told her that if she cut open a frog while it still lived and placed its entrails on her brow, they would draw out all the evil humours, but she wouldn't do it.'

'And no blame to her either,' Oliver said with a grimace. Turning to his horse, he unfastened a deerskin bag from a thong on the saddle. The bag, stained and worn, had travelled as far as Oliver in the past four years. It contained a tourniquet cord, linen swaddling bands to make bandages and slings, a small pair of shears and needle and thread. There were also various dried herbs in small linen pouches, their identity separated by different coloured woollen strands tying the necks of the pouches.

'Make a fire,' he commanded Gawin. 'A tisane of betony and feverfew might help her. Ethel always swears by it.' Opening one of the pouches, he crumbled some dried stalks and flower-heads into a small cooking vessel fetched from the supplies on the pack pony. Then he walked a short distance into the forest and returned with the leaves and flower-heads of a wood betony plant. This too went into the pot. He covered the herbs with water from his leather flask and set the mixture to infuse over the fire that Gawin had made out of tinder and a swift collection of dry twigs.

Catrin leaned against the trunk of a young beech, her complexion made greener than ever by the reflection of the leaf canopy.

'How often is "sometimes"?' Oliver enquired, as the liquid began to steam and the water turned deep gold.

Richard shrugged. 'I don't know. Whenever there was rouble, I suppose.' 'The priest used to say that I had devils in my head,' Catrin mumbled, her eyes tightly closed. 'He said that they should be eaten out of me, but Lady Amice refused to let him try.' 'When I was in Rome, a chirurgeon told me that the best

cure for devils in the head was to shave off the victim's hair and make a hole in the skull to force the demons out,' Oliver mused. 'Loth as I am to doubt the word of a learned man, I prefer to use the betony and feverfew myself. They certainly work for me on the morning after a night with the wine.'

Catrin shuddered delicately and half opened her eyes. They were cloudy, as if she had just woken from sleep, and although she tried to focus on him her gaze slipped away. 'If you so much as go near my head, I will kill you.'

'My knife's blunt anyway,' he said cheerfully as he removed the pot from the fire with a folded wad of his cloak and poured the brew into his drinking horn. While he blew on the tisane and swirled it round to cool, Gawin stamped out the fire and went to the horses.

'Here, drink.' Oliver knelt beside Catrin.

Her nose wrinkled at the smell carried in the steam. 'You bastard,' she whimpered, but nevertheless took the cup from him and raised it shakily to her lips, almost missing them. The taste was as foul as she had expected and made her gag, but somehow she forced it down.

'I know it tastes vile, but I promise it will ease the pain,' he said with such optimism that she loathed him. 'Can you remount, or shall I pick you up?'

Catrin swallowed. Her sight was now obliterated by ripples of swimming light and whether or not the tisane would remain in her stomach hung in a very delicate balance.

'I can manage,' she said through her teeth. Forcing her will to overcome the agony, she accepted his hand to rise and staggered over to the grey. The stallion's flank seemed like the wall of a huge cliff. She watched Oliver gain the saddle in one easy motion, his foot scarcely bearing down on the stirrup iron. To one side, Gawin and Richard were already mounted and waiting.

Catrin closed her eyes, put her foot where she thought Oliver's should be, and felt the muscular tug of his arm as he hauled her up. She landed across the grey's rump like a sack of cabbages and grasped Oliver's pilgrim belt for dear life as the horse snorted in alarm and bunched his hind quarters.

Oliver soothed his mount with a murmur, then let out the reins to ease him forward. 'It isn't as far as it seems,' he said, by way of reassurance. 'We'll cross the river at the Sharpness ferry then ride on down to Bristol.'

Catrin moaned softly. Any distance was too far just now.

After crossing the Severn, it took another five hours at a gentle plod to reach the city of Bristol. Oliver could have covered the ground in half the time, but he schooled himself to patience and let the warmth of the emerging sun soak into his bones. He talked to Richard of the kin to whom he was being taken: Robert de Caen, Earl of Gloucester, and his wife, the Countess Mabile. He described their great household and the magnificent new keep that dominated the fortifications of Bristol castle. The boy said little, but now and again Oliver would see the lift of an eyebrow or a brightening half glance that told him he was not talking entirely to himself. Catrin went to sleep, leaning against his back. Occasionally she gave a soft little snore but did not awaken, even when he paused to drink from his water flask and eat an oatcake from his travelling rations. She had been sick again at the ferry but not as badly, and a little of her colour had returned.

'Will Catrin be allowed to stay with me?' Richard demanded as he washed down his portion of oatcake with a swig from Oliver's flask.

'Of course she will.'

The boy gave him such a hard stare that Oliver was moved to cross his breast and swear on his honour. 'But you have to do what they say.'

Oliver pursed his lips. 'I have sworn an oath to the Earl of Gloucester to be his man, and to the Empress Mathilda that I will uphold her as my rightful queen, but my oath to your mother to see you and Catrin safe is equally as binding on my honour.' He risked tousling the boy's dark hair as he retrieved his flask and looped it around the saddle. 'Don't fret. I promise I won't wash my hands of you the moment we reach Bristol's gates.'

The hard stare remained, and as Oliver clicked his tongue to the grey, he remembered Richard saying by firelight that promises came easily.

*

Catrin was woken by someone bellowing in her ear. 'Avon eels, mistress! Fresh caught, not an hour old!'

Her eyes flew open to be confronted by a glistening, slithering mass that filled a rush basket not a foot from her face. The raucous voice belonged to a stout woman clad in a frayed homespun gown, who was thrusting her wares at passers-by and extolling their virtues. Catrin shot upright and recoiled. Pain lanced through her skull and her stomach turned at the sight and smell of the fish.

'Avon eels, master, straight from the river!' The woman ran alongside the stallion, shoving her basket beneath Oliver's nose.

Catrin stared round, first in the dazed bewilderment of the newly awakened, and then in the dawning realisation that they had arrived in Bristol. The noise and bustle of the port and town that Robert of Gloucester had made his headquarters struck her like a physical blow. She rubbed her forehead. Her cheek was numb, and when she touched it her fingertips discovered the circular indentations left by hauberk rings.

'Find a basket to put them in and I'll have a dozen,' Oliver told the woman and glanced over his shoulder at Catrin. 'Awake I see. Did the potion work?'

'My head is like a bell tower after Easter Sunday and I could still sleep for a week,' Catrin replied, 'but at least I can think again.'

'Are you capable of holding a basket of eels?'

The woman returned in triumphant possession of a small rushwork pannier in which she deposited twelve shining, slippery bodies.

'Do I have a choice?' Catrin asked as he paid for them.

'You could refuse.'

Catrin cast her eyes heavenwards and grabbed the pannier. 'Give them to me.'

'God bless you, sir, and your lady wife. Them eels'll make a dish fit for a king!'

Oliver thanked the woman with amusement in his voice and rode on. Catrin avoided looking at his purchase and averted her head so as not to inhale its essence.

Oliver laughed darkly. 'Those traders,' he said. 'The wonder is that they ever live to tell the tale. Did you hear what she said?'

Catrin's face burned. 'Yes, but she just made a mistake.' 'A mistake?'

'About us being husband and wife.'

'Oh, that.' He gestured dismissively. 'No, I was talking about the eels. Old King Henry died after gorging himself on a plate of bad ones. They weren't just "fit for a king", they killed a king and started this entire bloody war. You could even argue that a dish of lampreys cost the Pascals their inheritance, since my brother Simon was overthrown and killed for supporting the Empress Mathilda.'

'And you still want to eat them?'

He pulled a face, acknowledging her point. 'They're a gift for a friend,' he explained. 'But yes, I'll still devour them, despite the ill-fortune visited on me and mine. Etheldreda makes the best eel stew in Christendom - there's no resisting.'

'Oh,' Catrin said. She was filled with a mixture of relief and disappointment to discover that there was a woman who cooked and cared for him at Bristol. The way he had spoken last night at Penfoss, she had thought him still alone. The sounds, sights and smells of the city engulfed her as they rode single-file through its narrow alleys towards the castle. The last time she had visited Bristol was with Lewis in the first year of their marriage. He had bought her a brass circlet and a square of raw silk to make a veil. He had kissed her in the street, his dark eyes laughing, and she had thought herself the luckiest of women. Now she was riding down the same street, bumping along behind a man she barely knew, a basket of mud-smelling eels in her hands, her head pounding fit to burst, and her mistress's body tied in a blanket across a pack pony's withers.

The ghost of Lewis watched her ride past and did not recognise her. Her gaze on the castle walls and the bright gonfanons flying from the battlements, Catrin thought that she did not recognise herself either - except perhaps for the scarlet hose peeping in defiance from beneath her gown.