The Winter Mantle (48 page)

Judith rose to her feet and walked away from the conversation, distancing herself. Matilda remained and faced her grandmother, determined to hold her ground.

'He was executed for treason,' Adelaide snapped. 'For plotting against the King and attempting to set a Danish pirate on the throne.'

'The men who instigated the plot were not executed,' Matilda pointed out. 'One still rides free, and the other languishes in prison, but they both have their lives. What about the barons who are in rebellion against William Rufus? Will they face beheading if they are defeated? I think not.' She spoke in the deliberate knowledge that her grandmother's half-brother Robert of Mortain was one of the rebels, and that it was only by the slimmest of decisions that Adelaide's husband and son had opted to support William Rufus.

Two spots of colour like badly applied rouge blossomed on Adelaide's cheeks. 'You were a small child when your father turned traitor, you could not know.' Raising her walking stick, Adelaide pointed it at Matilda. 'He ruined your mother's life with his drinking and his irresponsible ways. He could no more rule his lands than could an infant in tail clouts,'

'That was still no reason for him to die.'

'Reason enough,' Adelaide said harshly, 'fie did not deserve to live, and I made sure he did not.'

There was something so chilling in her tone that it raised the wisps of hair at Matilda's nape. A creeping silence grew, and with it a terrible sense of foreboding.

Judith turned from the embrasure and paced back across the room, the hem of her charcoal-coloured gown swishing the rushes. 'Mother, what did you do?' Her voice was quiet but its cadence could have sliced stone.

'Nothing of which I am ashamed.' Adelaide glared and clutched her stick like an unsheathed sword. 'When that wastrel husband of yours was arrested, you came to court and said that you disowned him because he was a traitor. Your uncle was disposed to be lenient for your sake and merely banish him, but I knew that could not be allowed to happen. Banishment would not have meant banishment for such as him. Come a year, or two, he would have returned - likely in the company of Danish pirates to judge from his previous behaviour.' She paused to draw a breath, her bosom heaving, the gold cross she wore around her neck flashing erratically. 'I persuaded my brother that where there was leniency, there would be regret.'

'You signed his death warrant,' Judith whispered. Her complexion had turned the unhealthy hue of parchment.

Matilda stared between her mother and her grandmother and felt icy prickles run up and down her spine. The atmosphere in the room was leaden with tension.

'Don't be so foolish!' Adelaide snapped, her light brown eyes glittering. 'Your uncle would never have changed his mind on my word alone. Those of whom he sought counsel were all agreed. Your uncles Odo and Robert for certain, and Roger de Montgomery.'

'All who had their axes to grind,' Judith said harshly.

'You had your own axe to grind as well, daughter. Or perhaps sealed up in your nunnery you forget how desperate you were to be rid of your husband. You begged me to help you, and you were content when I said I would see what could be done.'

'I wanted him banished, not dead. Jesu God, Mother!' The oath burst from her and she clapped her hand to her mouth too late.

'Hah! For ten years you dwelled as mistress of his earldom. Not until your uncle died did you relinquish your grip - and only then out of your own folly.' Adelaide's face was pinched with malice. 'Does not the Bible say that a man should not remove the mote of sawdust from his neighbour's eye until he has removed the plank of wood from his own? You are as guilty as I am, daughter - more so because you could not bind Waltheof to your side and prevent him from folly. He was weak, you should have moulded him. When you could not it was left to me to do the only thing possible and make sure we were rid of him for good!'

'No, Mother, you did it for yourself,' Judith cried. 'For your precious son, because you wanted to see him Earl of Huntingdon!'

'And you complied, daughter… do not missay me, for you are only looking at your own reflection.'

The cold prickles down Matilda's spine worked inwards to her belly. Suddenly she felt so sick that there was scarcely time to leap to her feet and reach the corner where she retched violently into the rushes. Her vision turned speckled black at the edges and her knees buckled.

'Now see what you have done!' she heard her mother snap. 'If she miscarries, you can add another murder to your tally.'

Dimly Matilda felt her mother's arms fold around her, and she tried to thrust her away. 'Do not touch me!' she gasped. 'I want none of you.'

Judith avoided Matilda's half-fainting efforts at rejection and gripped the harder. 'Whether you do or not, you have no choice,' she said grimly. 'Now calm yourself. You do not want to harm the child.'

The last words sank into Matilda's mind and anchored her by a thin thread to reason. For the sake of the baby she managed to draw a steadying breath. Through her struggle for composure, Matilda realised that Judith too was fighting for a degree of balance as if she was teetering on the edge of a high drop. Her mother's breathing was as shaky and uncertain as her own, and she could feel the tremors pass through her flesh as if they were one body, as once they had been when Judith had carried her in her womb.

Behind them there was a rustle of straw as Adelaide pushed herself to her feet and, leaning heavily on her stick, limped from the room without another word. Judith started to pull away but Matilda would not let her go and clung to her fiercely. Digging her fingers into the dark wool of her mother's sleeve, she forced her to meet her gaze. 'Swear to me that you had no part in my father's death,' she whispered. 'Swear to me.'

Her mother's throat worked. 'That I cannot do,' she whispered, 'although I wish to God that I could.' She closed her eyes. 'You were so young, and you adored him as much as he adored you. You never knew the other side of him - the feckless fool who would drink himself into a stupor at the slightest excuse and had less than a child's grasp of the business of governance.'

'So you ended his life for that?'

Judith's eyes flashed opened. 'I did not know that my uncle would execute him. I thought that he would be banished. The guilt torments me. No matter how long I pray on my knees to God, the burden does not ease. Yes, I wanted him gone from my life, but not at the cost of his life… If I had known what was to happen, I would have begged my uncle to spare him.'

Matilda released her grip on Judith and sat back, tears streaming down her face. Cold, proud, unyielding as granite her mother might be, but an accounting of the truth had always been essential to her, no matter how bitter the fruit.

Judith rose to her feet and stepped away from Matilda, gathering her own composure around her like a cloak. A swift brush of her hand across her lids, a slight sniff was as much as she yielded. 'I tried,' she said, 'but it was not enough. You might as well have mated fire and ice and expected one to survive.'

'And what of me, Mother?' Matilda demanded in a choked voice. 'If I am a mingling of your blood and my father's, how am
I
to survive?'

Judith's face assumed its customary expression of frozen composure. 'Perhaps, out of all the women in this family, you will emerge the most unscathed because you have the ability to bend rather than break. That at least your father has given you to your advantage. Besides, whatever differences I have with your husband, he is a man of ambition, familiar with the ways of the court. And he is Norman. The challenges of your marriage will not be the same as mine.'

'Then what will they be?' Matilda whispered.

Judith shrugged. 'Simon de Senlis is like a tomcat,' she said. 'He seeks a warm hearth at which to curl up in the winter and all the comforts that home provides. But come the spring, when there is prey to pursue and territory to explore, you will not keep him. That is why I am glad that you have the ability to bend.'

Matilda knuckled her eyes again and rose clumsily to her feet. Clucking her tongue, her mother advanced to beat stalks of straw from her daughter's gown and smooth the fine tawny wool.

'I could have had him for my husband,' Judith said. 'The babe growing in your belly could now be growing in mine. Remember that. He wed you out of no more than ambition and necessity. You accepted his offer because it was convenient, because you were attracted to him as you are to all waifs and underdogs, and most of all because he was wearing your father's cloak.' She looked at Matilda, her brown eyes hard but not hostile. 'I say these things for your own good. Bear them in mind and do not let yourself become carried away on a surfeit of minstrel's tales of love. That is the way to survive.'

Hooves clattered in the guesthouse courtyard alongside the sound of male voices. Smearing away her tears, Matilda went to look out of the double-arched window slit and saw her husband dismounting with an escort of knights and Serjeants. They were all wearing either mail or quilted tunics and the horses were sweating as if they had been ridden hard. She saw her grandmother hobble over to Simon and speak to him, using her stick for emphasis as usual. Simon smiled, bowed and answered her, but Matilda knew him well enough to see that the courtesy he gave to Adelaide was of polished duty not genuine pleasure.

Her mother's words had made Matilda feel wretchedly queasy because they struck at the core of her fear. They had been cruel too, even if they did have an element of truth. Despite, or perhaps because of them, her heart turned over. She needed Simon. Needed the strength of his arms, his reassuring words, and most of all she needed him to take her away from here. Spinning from the window, she hurried to the door, flung it open and ran down to the courtyard.

Simon turned, a broad grin spread across his face, and he opened his arms. Matilda flung herself into them like a desperate fugitive grasping a sanctuary knocker. Adelaide sniffed scornfully and stumped away in the direction of the church.

'Tears?' Simon brushed his thumb across her cheek. 'What's all this?'

'Naught.' Matilda gulped, although it was a great deal more than naught. 'I will tell you later.' She squeezed him fiercely. 'It is so good to see you. When can we go home?' Her voice shook.

He held her gently at arm's length and looked her up and down. 'It is too late in the day to ride for Northampton,' he said, 'but there is naught to stop us from spending the night at Oakley… if that is your wish.'

Matilda rested her forehead against the cool, metal rivets of his hauberk. 'I would like that,' she said. 'If you are not too tired from the road.'

'Nothing that a cup of wine and some food will not refresh,' he said as a couple of squires led the horses away to the trough in the yard. 'We have ridden hard, but not so much that a few more miles will make any difference.'

Matilda nodded, and sensed that he had no more desire than she did to rest tonight beneath her mother's roof.

Moonlight spilled through the open shutters and cast its bluish silver light on the bed and the naked flesh of the entwined man and woman. In the aftermath of lovemaking, Simon had been telling Matilda about the fighting in the south. Bishop Odo and the Montgomery family had raised rebellion against King William Rufus, declaring that the Conqueror's first son, Robert, should be king. Rufus had mustered his supporters and hastened to deal with the insurgents. Montgomery had surrendered, but Odo had had to be prised out of Rochester like a winkle hooked out of its shell with a silver pin, only instead of a silver pin Rufus had used thirst and starvation, his endeavours aided by a plague of maggot flies.

'The garrison had to take it in turns to eat while their comrades brushed the insects from around them,' Simon had said with a grimace. 'We could smell the city rotting from our positions outside the walls. Men, horses, dogs… Once you have experienced such a stench, you never forget it. That and the stink of burning are the "perfumes" of war.'

Matilda, whose own knowledge of bad smells was confined to memories of the days when the gong farmers emptied out the cess pits, shuddered at his words. Yet, she did not try to stem them. She understood his need to speak to her rather than have the memories fester within him.

'Montgomery went to negotiate with them. At first they wanted their liberty and their lands in exchange for their surrender and oath of homage, but Rufus could see that he had them in a cleft stick and he refused. He said that they might have their lives and their weapons. Those who still had horses could keep them and ride out.' Simon was silent for a moment, remembering, threading his fingers through her hair.

They came in double file, holding on to their dignity despite the fact that they stank of the midden and their lips were cracked and their skins erupting in sores. Rufus had the victory trumpets sounded from our ranks, as loudly as the heralds could blow. The common Englishmen who had been drawn from their fields to serve in Rufus' ranks jeered and poured scorn on them, crying out that they should be hanged.'

'What did Rufus do?' Matilda asked.

'He stood back and let them give tongue with a smile on his face,' Simon said. 'What more proof did he need that he was King of the English than to let the English scream his name in approbation and bay for his enemy's blood? I think that he is a cunning general and a very shrewd politician.' He stated the assessment without admiration.

'So the danger is over now that Bishop Odo and the Montgomerys have been brought to heel.' She moved closer to him.

'For the moment. Odo may continue to scheme, but he is growing too old to involve himself in the strain of battle. When he rode out of Rochester on the surrender he was carrying his years as if they were a heavy sack on his shoulders. I do not believe that he will return to England - unless in the aftermath of an invasion if Robert prevails - which I doubt will happen. As to the Montgomery faction, they surrendered and survived by a whisker this time, but their powers in England will be checked by the likes of Hugh Lupus and Fitzhaimo of Gloucester… and me.' He gave a humourless smile. 'Now there's a task to relish.'