The Winter Mantle (25 page)

He peered nervously into the cradle at the side of the bed, but it was empty. Indeed, it had never been used, the linen coverings smooth and unrumpled. A slight sound in the doorway caused him to turn.

Sybille was standing on the threshold, a bundle in her arms. Laying her finger to her lips, she beckoned him from the room.

'If she cries, it will disturb her mother,' she whispered.

Waltheof stepped out into the antechamber, his arms already held out to receive the child.

Sybille did not have to tell him how to hold his tiny daughter; he had a natural instinct. His large hand supported her tiny fragile skull and her body lay along the length of his powerful forearm. Tears filled Waltheof's eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He had never set eyes on anything as beautiful, or as moving. A part of himself, a part of Judith, mingled in this perfect, tiny creature. The baby's eyes had been closed, but now they opened and studied him with such owlish solemnity that he laughed brokenly through his tears.

Sybille sniffed too and wiped the back of her hand across her lids. 'She's been christened Matilda in honour of the Queen,' she said.

Waltheof stroked a tender forefinger upon the incredibly soft little cheek. 'The King and Queen are to be her godparents,' he murmured.

Sybille hesitated. Waltheof looked at her. 'What is it?'

'Naught, my lord. Perhaps it is better that you know that my lady was disappointed not to bear you a son. Countess Adelaide has appointed me as a wet nurse for the moment.'

Waltheof glanced through the crack of the door into the room where his wife slept. 'She will come around,' he murmured. He knew how much store Judith had set on bearing a boy. But how could she fail not to fall in love with the enchanting daughter they had made between them?

The baby snuffled. Waltheof nestled her more securely in the crook of his arm and set off towards the outer chamber door.

'Where are you going?' Sybille's voice rose on a worried note.

Waltheof paused and swung round. 'To show her off to her people,' he said with an exalted smile. 'I want everyone to sec her, from the steward to the stable boy.'

'Will the Countess Adelaide approve?' Sybille looked anxiously around as if expecting to see Judith's mother materialise out of the wall.

The relaxed muscles in Waltheof's face suddenly tightened. 'I do not give a fourthing whether the Countess approves or not,' he growled. 'For the moment, this child is my heir, and I want my people to see her, and all the pride and love I have for her.' With determined tread, tear streaks shining on his face, he carried his newborn daughter into the public domain of the great hall.

Abbot Ulfcytel leaned over the cradle and studied the small baby gurgling on the coverlet of soft lambskin. She waved her arms at him and kicked her legs.

'My wife says that she should be swaddled to make her limbs grow straight, but it seems a pity to me not to let her feel the joy of using them,' Waltheof said. 'I cannot see that an hour's freedom will ruin her for life.'

Ulfcytel smiled. 'Nor I,' he said, 'but women are ever protective of their offspring, especially the firstborn.' He prodded the infant with a gentle forefinger and was rewarded by a crow of response and an animated flail of limbs.

Waltheof suspected that Judith's protectiveness stemmed from a desire to order the world as she chose rather than from maternal devotion. His motherin-law had departed to her own lands in the south a week ago and Waltheof had quietly thanked God for that particular mercy. Judith was always worse when Adelaide was at hand to aid and abet.

He and Ulfcytel were standing in the garden at Northampton. A last flourish of summer had swept the herb beds with sunshine and pointed the sundial to the hour of sext. Nearby the gardeners were harvesting marigold seeds and tidying the straggle of herbs that were tiring as a hot summer wilted towards autumn. On the morrow he was to take his troops and ride north to join King William on the campaign against Malcolm of Scotland.

Waltheof felt apprehensive. Edgar Atheling was sheltering at the Scots court and he had no desire to meet his former ally and companion on the battlefield.

Ulfcytel wrapped his gnarled brown hands around his staff of polished ivory. 'I am pleased to see you settled with lands and a family, my son,' he said. 'I feared for you when you joined the Danes in the North and King William took his revenge.'

Waltheof smiled uneasily and looked away. 'I am going to the North as a Norman now,' he replied, and thrust his fingers through his short, coppery hair as if hoping to discover that its former abundance had grown back. 'It will be hard, but as Judith tells me… it is my duty and I have no other choice.'

Judith was polite to Abbot Ulfcytel but vexed by his presence at their table. He spoke very little French, and Judith had no intention of learning the coarse, guttural tongue of the English. There was soil beneath his fingers from tending his garden; the cuffs of his alb were patched and the only possession that reflected his rank was the beautiful staff of yellowed ivory.

Waltheof, however, was so fond of him that he treated the rotund, coarse little abbot as one of his family. Ulfcytel dined at their table more frequently than any other guest, much to Judith's irritation. When she was not enduring Ulfcytel's presence she had to suffer the company of the Breton Rait de Gael, Earl of Norfolk, whose smooth, bland manner and sly ways she disliked intensely. She could not understand why Waltheof favoured the man other than their shared capacity for drink. Her husband's judgement of others was unsound and a cause for worry.

Making her excuses to Waltheof and Ulfcytel, Judith retired to her chamber. She yearned for the refinement of the Norman court, just as once she had yearned to escape from its stultifying confines. To hear French spoken as a matter of course, rather than mangled haltingly through an English accent. To be accorded the full deference due to her rank. Here she was aware that people bowed to her face and gave her resentful looks behind her back. She was their beloved earl's Norman wife, an intruder, a burden they had to shoulder for their lord's sake. She knew that without her presence in the hall men would be slackening their belts and reaching anew for the ale. The laughter would grow raucous and bawdy, Waltheof's retainers gladly abandoning the notion that they were constrained by Norman rule.

Tomorrow Waltheof would leave for the North and she would become responsible in his absence for the welfare of the earldom. The notion was almost pleasing. She would have work to keep her occupied, she thought, even if it was an uphill struggle to deal with the recalcitrant English. She found that she enjoyed the duties of administration and dealing justice. Waltheof was not so fond of such toil and left much of it to his officials, but Judith would often linger in the hall to observe them at work and provide the necessary overseeing of authority.

Sybille sat in a curule chair near the brazier, suckling baby Matilda at her breast. Judith thanked God that her maid had sufficient milk to feed two infants, for the notion of a baby-mouthing her own breast was vaguely repulsive. Some folk said that a child should only drink of its natural mother's milk, that giving a nobly born baby sustenance from a baser source would coarsen the child. Others said that, providing the wet nurse was of good character with abundant milk, it made no difference. Sybille's character had occasionally given cause for concern, but since her handfasting to Toki she had settled down and there was no denying the quality of her milk. Little Matilda was thriving and growing plump.

'She's a greedy one,' Sybille laughed at her mistress. 'I think she is going to be as big as her father when she's full grown.'

Judith winced at the notion of a woman the size of Waltheof. Certainly, Matilda had his hair. The fine wisps on the baby's skull were like threads of gold caught in the light of the setting sun, her complexion the pink and white of dog roses. Folk cooed over her daughter and said that she was beautiful, but to Judith she looked like any other baby. Sometimes she would stand over her and try to find some spark of maternal devotion, but it was as if there was a barrier between her and the child. She felt nothing. It might have been different if Matilda was a son. At least then she would have had pride.

Waltheof doted on the baby and would often fetch her from her cradle and carry her around in the crook of his arm, talking softly to her, showing her the world. Judith had felt emotions then, but none of which she was proud. Indeed, she had prayed on her knees in the chapel for them to be expunged.

Sybille gently prised the baby's jaws off her nipple. 'Asleep,' she said softly, a tender smile on her face that made Judith feel mean and unworthy. She watched the maid expertly change the baby's wet linens then place her snug and replete at the head of the fleece-lined cradle. Little Helisende, Sybille's own daughter, occupied the foot. 'They won't waken again much before the second matins bell — prime if fortune smiles,' Sybille said. Rocking the cradle with a tap of her foot, she removed her wimple and began loosening her thick brown braids.

Judith looked at her askance.

'You have to send your man away to war with a fond farewell,' Sybille said knowingly. 'I don't want Toki getting randy with some red-haired Scottish wench.' Taking her cloak down from a peg set in the wall, she went to the door. 'Besides, you'll be wanting some time alone with your lord.' Winking, not waiting upon a dismissal, the maid left the room, her step light and swift.

Judith flushed. She and Waltheof had not bedded together since Matilda's birth. Her body had needed time to heal, and a man was not supposed to he with a woman within forty days of childbed, the Church said so; indeed, some Church teachings went further than that. It was six weeks since Matilda's birth. Two and forty days. She went to look down at the sleeping children. The next one would be a boy. That's what everyone told her - as they had told her that Matilda would be a male. And before a child could be born, it had to be begotten, and then forced into the world through a travail of pain.

Shivering, Judith turned away from the cradle and went beyond the curtains into the chamber that she and Waltheof shared. The large bed was the centrepiece of the room, its sides carved with a strange interlacing design of serpents chasing and swallowing each other. It had belonged to Waltheof's father, the legendary Earl Siward, and to his father before him. The hints of pagan religion in the carving filled Judith with distaste and unease. Waltheof, however, had grown intractable when she suggested they be rid of it, and had sworn that while he lived it would remain.

Piled around the room were items of baggage that on the morrow would be loaded onto pack ponies. His mail hauberk, neatly wrapped in a waxed bundle and greased with pig fat to prevent it from rusting; his round shield, which he still preferred over the Norman kite design, the terrible rune-engraved axe, again handed down from his father. She shuddered as she looked at the edge, shining in the candlelight like rippled water. He had killed Normans with that weapon. She was seldom fanciful, but she thought that if she peered too closely in the reflection of the steel she might see scenes from its bloody past flowing across the mirrored surface.