The Love Knot (61 page)

Chicken stew bubbled gently in the cauldron, the steam enriched by the scent of cider and herbs. Outside the alehouse, a rainy April dusk was settling over the land. Inside it was cosy, the main room glowing with warm red light from the lantern and the fire.

Catrin gave a small sigh of contentment. 'It is good to be back in England,' she told Edith, and cast her glance around the cosy room. 'And I always feel at home here.'

'So you should,' Edith replied. 'You know there's always a welcome for you and Lord Oliver at our hearth.' Her hands were floury as she rolled herb dumplings to add to the stew.

Catrin smiled her gratitude and for a while just sat and gazed into the fire, absorbing the warmth and comfort. Outside Oliver, Godard and the children were looking at a mare and her new-born foal. Catrin savoured her moment of peace. Not that she would be without Rosamund and the boys, but it was pleasant to have a respite.

Edith plopped the dumplings into the stew and wiped her hands on a linen cloth. 'So, where have you been?' she asked with genuine curiosity. She had no desire to travel beyond her own backyard, but she had a lively interest in the experiences of those daring enough to venture further afield.

Catrin clasped her hands around her raised knees. 'You know that the twins were born at the fight for Devizes?'

Edith clucked her tongue. 'Aye, in a ditch, so Godard heard when he went to Bristol for news.'

Catrin laughed. 'Not quite - on the outer palisade with Oliver acting as midwife, the houses burning and rain pelting down.'

Edith folded her arms and hitched her vast bosom. 'The wonder is that you all survived,' she said, with a shake of her head. 'You'd never think to look at those two little lads that they had such a start in life.'

'A start that made Prince Henry their godfather and brought them more christening gifts than we could stow in our baggage. They've become a sort of talisman - proof of success against the odds. It's an ill wind, Edith.'

'Aye, I suppose it is.' Edith sucked her teeth and nodded as she absorbed the words. Then she cast a bright glance at Catrin. 'Well, where did you go after Devizes?'

Catrin frowned in thought. 'As I remember, they were less than three weeks old when we crossed the Narrow Sea to Normandy. Henry needed more resources. We were too small in number to have a hope of defeating Stephen.' She gave a little shiver of remembrance and hugged herself. 'It was the middle of winter, freezing, raining and rough. The sea crossing alone made what happened in Devizes seem like a summer picnic'

'And you only three weeks out of childbed? Girl, you must have been mad,' Edith snorted.

Catrin smiled. 'I thought that myself by the time we reached dry land.' She slipped another piece of split wood beneath the cauldron and watched the flames explore its sides. 'I was so sick that I would have paid a fortune to anyone willing to throw me overboard.'

Edith clucked her tongue, tut-tutting at the detail whilst relishing it all the same. 'I suppose you lived in Rouen like before?'

Catrin shrugged. 'For a time. Mostly we followed the court through Normandy and Anjou.' Her eyes gleamed. 'I saw Henry's father, the man they called Geoffrey le Bel because of his great beauty.'

'And was he beautiful?'

'As an angel,' Catrin sighed. 'Not that he acted like one. He had a cutting wit and he used it without mercy, but that was part of his glamour. He died of a chill after bathing in the river Seine on his way back from Paris.'

'You went to Paris too?' Edith's eyes widened.

Catrin nodded. 'We went with Henry and his father to the court of King Louis.' She pulled a face. 'I would not like to live there.'

'Why not?'

Catrin pursed her lips and considered. 'At first it took your breath - all the colour and richness,' she said, exploring her reasons as she spoke. 'King Louis had a book and the cover was inlaid with jewels as big as pigeon eggs and his tunic was embroidered all over with clusters of pearl. But after a while, it became stifling. We had to stand on ceremony all the time, and what lay under the silks and jewels was not so fine. With Henry there is no show, no sham. He can face the world in an old hunting tunic; he doesn't need a silk robe to make him royal.'

'Did you see Eleanor of Aquitaine?' Edith's voice was eager.

Catrin smiled. 'Yes, I saw her.' 'Don't tease, what is she like?'

Eleanor of Aquitaine had until recently been the Queen of France. King Louis had divorced her because she had given him two daughters when he was desperate for a son. He was serious of demeanour with no leavening of humour to brighten his nature. Eleanor, a great heiress, was his opposite. Glamour, scandal and mystery followed her like an exotic perfume. Prince Henry had seized his opportunity and married the newly divorced Eleanor, thus acquiring for himself vast areas of south-west France. He was nineteen years old and she was thirty. Everyone knew about the match. It was the stuff of rumours and ballads and the news had filtered to every corner of the realm.

'Well,' Catrin pursed her lips in consideration. 'She has black hair and greenish-brown eyes set on a slant. She's tall and slim and she has a voice that sounds as if she's been inhaling smoke for a week.'

Edith sniffed. 'That doesn't sound promising. I'd heard that she was the most beautiful woman in Christendom.'

'Not if you are judging beauty by silky yellow hair, blue eyes and rosebud lips,' Catrin said bluntly. 'But she has something more enduring than beauty - a sort of allure that will still be with her when she's an old, old woman and all the ordinary "beauties" have long since lost their attraction. You would have to see her to understand it. All the men are besotted with her, and the women try to copy her mannerisms and style of dress.'

'Is Oliver smitten then?' Edith asked mischievously.

Catrin laughed. 'He won't go near enough to find out. He watches her from a distance the way he would watch a lioness. And I think he's right. She can snarl as well as purr.'

Edith gently stirred the dumplings in the stew. 'Like you then,' she said.

'Oh, no, I don't have her glamour,' Catrin denied. 'And no desire to wrap any man around my little finger.'

'Not even Oliver?' Edith gave her a sceptical look.

Catrin frowned. 'I hope that whatever Oliver does is of his own free will. To manipulate him would be dishonest.'

'So you think Eleanor's dishonest?'

'No. But what suits her, does not suit me.'

Silence fell again while Edith continued to gently stir the dumplings and prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the cauldron.

'All this travelling hither and yon,' she said after a while. 'Do you not wish that you could stop and settle?'

'With all my heart,' Catrin said wistfully. 'It is true that I could live in Bristol or Rouen, but how often would I see Oliver then? His sons would grow up hardly knowing their father. I know it is the way that many women live, but it would not do for me.'

'Yes, I can understand that,' Edith murmured. 'Godard and I work side by side and share all our tasks. I ran this alehouse alone for five years after my first husband died, but I cannot imagine being without Godard now.'

Catrin pursed her lips. 'If Henry prevails, then Oliver might regain his lands, but nothing is certain. We live each day as it comes.'

'You think Henry will prevail this time, on his third attempt?'

'I think that neither will prevail unless they come to a truce,' Catrin said thoughtfully. 'Stephen's barons cleave to him out of friendship and loyalty, but they do not cleave to Eustace in the same way. They want Henry to be our next king, so it is my guess that they will keep from outright confrontation. There will be little fights and skirmishes - grapples for position -but in the end the barons will decide, and they will decide for Henry.'

'Then I pray sooner rather than later,' Edith said.

Catrin crossed herself. 'Amen to that.'

The women's moment of peace was ended by the sound of excited voices. The door flung open and two small boys burst into the room like dervishes, Rosamund chasing close behind. In their wake, Godard and Oliver strolled together, talking.

'Mama, we seed the foal!' announced Henry, and climbed on to Catrin, forcing her to lower her knees and pull him into her lap. Not only did he possess his royal godfather's name, he also seemed to have more than his share of the Prince's ebullient personality. His hair was a light copper-blond and his eyes were Catrin's hazel.

'Did you, sweetheart?'

Henry nodded vigorously and launched into a spate of description which his vocabulary could not quite encompass. Simon, black-haired and grey-eyed, tried to help him. The little voices rose in a crescendo. Rosamund grimaced and stuck her fingers in her ears.

'Quiet!' Oliver bellowed, his own voice rising above all others.

A deathly silence fell, but it was a telling one. The boys neither cried nor cowered but looked at their father with round, reproachful eyes.

'Better,' Oliver said with a stern look and a stiff nod, although a twitch of his lips almost betrayed him. 'What will our hosts think of your manners?'

Edith's eyes crinkled as she smiled. 'Oh, we're accustomed to it,' she said, 'although our clients have usually consumed a jug of ale before they become as loud. Don't come down on the mites too hard. It's good to hear them.'

'Mites about sums them up,' Oliver said, but tugged Rosamund's braid to show that he was jesting and swept Simon up in his arms. 'Noisy mites.'

'Would you rather be without them and have silence?' Edith said.

Oliver kissed his son. 'Even at their loudest they hold me to sanity. I would rather they sat as good as gold for more than one minute, but when you're three years old that is just too much to expect.'

They all sat down to dine on Edith's chicken stew. Henry and Simon tucked in with a will and did not make too much mess. They were robust children, large for their age and taking after Oliver in bone and build. Rosamund, dainty and dark, mopped up what mess they did make and behaved with a ladylike grace that filled Catrin with pride - and Oliver too. She could see it in his grey glance. Despite the conflict life was good, she told herself, and in time it would be better yet.

That night she and Oliver bedded down in the room where they had lain before, in the days when the dormitory had been a barn. The boys slept entwined on a heap of straw, protected from its prickle by a sheepskin fleece. Rosamund slumbered beside them, the sound of her breathing mingling in soft counterpoint with theirs.

'Bristol on the morrow,' Oliver murmured against Catrin's hair.

She smiled and snuggled against him. 'Eel stew,' she answered, and felt the silent laughter in his chest. He wrapped her in his arms and they pressed hip to hip, mouth to mouth. Since the children had grown, they had become experts at making love in silence and taking opportunities when they arose.

It was ironic, Catrin thought as Oliver pushed into her and she clasped her legs around him, that Louis had demanded she cry and moan for him, and that now she was constrained to utter silence. She clutched Oliver and bucked, her teeth clenched, her throat tight and her loins dissolving. It had been too long between opportunities. His mouth covered hers in a frantic kiss and they shuddered together, each absorbing the other's pleasure with every surge until they were spent.

He raised on his elbows and nibbled the salt sweat from the hollow of her throat. Catrin closed her eyes and arched her neck. The feel of him still within her sent small after-quivers of pleasure through her flesh.

'Bristol tomorrow,' Oliver repeated.

'Eel stew,' she said, stifling a giggle.

'Henry will not be there above a week, but he'll be using it as one of his bases. I want you and the children to stay there while I'm gone.'

Catrin opened her eyes and studied his face in the strip of moonlight filtering through the window space. 'For safety's sake?' she said neutrally.

'Until we are sure that Stephen is well and truly muzzled by his barons. I would not want another Devizes to happen.'

She rubbed her leg along his and adopted the purring tone that she had heard Eleanor of Aquitaine use when flirting with men. 'Fortunate then that you are bribing me with old haunts, else I might not stay.'

His teeth closed gently on the skin of her throat. 'I know that you're safe there - that nothing can happen.'

'So you would rather that I had the worry than you?'

'If there is fighting, I won't be involved,' he said, a trifle impatiently. 'I'll be with the baggage carts. If Stephen gets that far in a battle, we're all lost anyway.'

'Is that supposed to reassure me?'

'Of course it is.' His lips returned to hers, silky and persuasive. 'I won't be in any danger, I just don't know how quickly Henry might need to move. We cannot afford a large baggage train.'

'Ah, then you don't want me.'

'Catrin!' he whispered with exasperation.

Laughing, she curled her arms around his neck. 'First you have your will, then you have your way.'

He pinched her. She stifled a yelp. Rosamund made a little sound in her sleep and turned over with a sigh.