The Winter Mantle (54 page)

'I ask you to watch over Matilda and our children while I am gone,' Simon murmured, his hands clasped and his gaze fixed upon the pall with its surroundings of pilgrim offerings, both the grand and the tawdry. His jaw tightened as he spoke of his wife. Matters had been strained between them for several months, each of them avoiding confrontation. He had spent much of his time away from Northampton, raising funds for the journey, discussing the venture with others who were committed and dealing with outstanding business. Matilda had taken to her garden with a vengeance until she was as brown as a peasant woman and her hands were rough and work-worn. Advancing pregnancy had curtailed her frenetic activity, and in the two weeks before the birth she had merely sat beneath her precious apple tree with her sewing and her maids. Simon was not sure how either of them could bridge the distance without warping their natures out of true.

A cloud drifted across the sun and for a moment the light ceased to stream across the tomb. Simon decided that it was an act of nature, not an omen, but his mood was pensive as he crossed his breast and rose to his feet. 'I will see through your eyes as I promised,' he said. 'I will live each day as you asked.' He hesitated by the tomb, but the words that came so easily to him at court remained locked and tangled in his brain. 'Rest in peace,' he said with a swallow, and walked swiftly up the nave towards the daylight.

At the door Abbot Ingulf was waiting for him. 'God speed you on your journey, my lord,' he said with a deep bow. We will pray for your wellbeing daily.'

Simon returned the gesture. 'Your support is welcome,' he said graciously. 'If it is God's will that I return from this enterprise, I will not forget Crowland in my benefactions.'

Formal speeches over, the men clasped and embraced. In his way Simon had grown as fond of Ingulf as Waltheof had once been fond of Ulfcytel. He saw in the Abbot something of what he wanted for himself. Ingulf had been a courtier, a man of the world. lie had wandered far and wide, seen all that he desired and had found his inner peace.

'Have a care my son,' Ingulf said, a tear in the corner of his eye. 'Come back to us whole.'

'I will do my best.' Simon gave the coarse woollen shoulder a final squeeze and left Ingulf for the abbey guesthouse, where Matilda was waiting to make her own farewells.

The birth of their daughter a month ago had been hard, and although she had travelled to Crowland with him she was still not fully recovered. The weight she had gained during the pregnancy had melted from her bones following the birth, but she did not look well.

Holding the baby in the crook of her left arm, she came to him. Named for her mother, the infant had a fuzz of dark gold hair and eyes of kitten-blue. She was a fractious scrap, with the loudest squawl Simon had ever heard. Another one in the mould of Judith and Adelaide, he had decided. The blood of the Conqueror was at its strongest in the women bred from its line.

Simon took the baby into his own arms and, praying that she did not begin bawling, leaned over to press a kiss on her smooth, small forehead.

'This will be the last time that you see her as a babe in arms,' Matilda said, her voice cracking slightly. 'When you return she will be walking and talking… and she will not know you.'

'There will be time enough,' Simon said, his voice impassive to hide the discomfort he felt at her words. 'While she is so little, she will not miss me.'

'There is never enough time,' Matilda said, and then stopped herself by drawing a swift, shaken breath. 'I will not send you away with recriminations… I made a promise to myself. But go now, swiftly, before I break that promise.'

Simon gave his daughter to Helisende and swept Matilda into his embrace, kissing her hard. Then he stooped to his son, who was watching the proceedings with solemn deep blue eyes.

'Be a good boy for your mother,' he said, 'and a fine soldier for me.'

The little boy sucked his lower lip and nodded. 'I am good,' he said indignantly,

Simon's lips twitched. He ruffled the lad's fluffy red-gold curls and stood up. 'Then be angelic,' he said, and turned to mount the horse that Turstan was holding. Drawing the reins through his fingers, he nudged the grey with his heels, clicked his tongue and, with a final salute, rode out of the abbey gates.

Some of the children who had come as pilgrims with their parents ran alongside the cavalcade, keeping pace, cheering and waving. Matilda stood where she had bade farewell, rooted to the ground. In her mind's eye she saw herself running after him, stumbling on her gown, screaming at him not to leave her. She had a vivid recollection of fighting to prevent her father from going away with his friend. Of being torn from his arms and thrown down in a pile of straw to shriek and thresh until she was exhausted.

'My lady, are you all right?'

The gentle touch on her shoulder; Helisende's concerned voice brought her around with a shudder. 'Yes,' she said, 'I am all right.' It wasn't the truth, but she could put on a brave face. After all, she was her mother's daughter.

The last horse rode out of the abbey gates, and the procession dwindled to the occasional glint of armour on the horizon. Her eyes grew dry from staring and then began to water.

'Will Papa be home soon?' Her son looked up at her, his eyes anxious with the need for reassurance.

Matilda steeled herself. 'When he has done what he must,' she said in a soothing voice that did not reflect the savage emotions roiling within her. 'Come, we will go and pray for him at your grandfather's tomb.' She placed a gentle hand on the child's shoulder and turned away from the road towards the abbey. For the benefit of the gathered pilgrims, she inclined her head to them and smiled. She bade an attendant take a purse of silver pennies and halfpennies and distribute them among the crowd with the exhortation that they pray for her husband's success. She gave Ingulf a smaller pouch of gold for the benefit of the abbey. Serene, courteous, doing her duty. Outwardly the great and gracious lady. Inwardly screaming with grief. Was this how her mother had felt?

'I thought I was different,' she murmured to Helisende as she entered the chapel, its air spiced with incense and the scent of beeswax candles. Streamers of gilded autumn light fell across the purple pall, focusing the eye on the blaze of opulence and light. 'But I am not. Simon was right. I am my mother's daughter — how could I not be? And he has in him a streak every bit as feckless as my father… and perhaps that is why I love him and I hate him too.'

'My lady, you do not hate him!' Helisende looked shocked. In her arms the baby stirred and made a fretful little sound.

Matilda swallowed. 'I am trying not to,' she said, and knelt at the foot of the tomb, the clay floor tiles striking cold to her knees even through the heavy woollen fabric of her gown.

Port of Brindisi, Easter 1097

Under a spring sun much hotter and yellower than that of England, Simon watched the bustle on the dock-side. Brindisi's harbour jostled with all manner of craft, tethered like a herd of horses anxious to gallop across the sun-spangled plains of sea beyond the harbour mouth. Gangplanks had been run out to the vessels closest inshore, and sailors, soldiers and labourers toiled to fill the deck spaces with supplies - water barrels, firkins of wine, salt meat, weapons, dismantled tents, horses, harness, soldiers.

The Norman crusader contingent, under the banners of Robert of Normandy and Stephen of Blois, had travelled down through Italy and spent the winter months in Brindisi, assembling a fleet and making the local tavern keepers rich. While awaiting the spring and the right conditions for crossing the Adriatic Sea, many crusaders decided that they had ventured far enough from home and, ripping the crosses from their cloaks, turned back. Others, finding themselves in financial difficulties, sold their weapons and took employment wherever they could find it to earn a crust and a bed for the night.

Beset by neither a waning of enthusiasm nor lack of funds, but filled with a certain degree of impatience, Simon had spent the winter exploring his surroundings, familiarising himself with the region - the handsome dark-eyed people, the food with its warm flavours of olive and citrus. He enjoyed the strange, boiled pastries they made, bland in themselves but superb when blended with meat and spices and washed down with the robust red wine of the area.

Whilst eating and drinking in the various hostelries around the harbour he had picked up a liberal smattering of the language and daily practice had improved his accent and his understanding. Weather permitting, he had ridden out with a guide to explore the countryside and the coastline surrounding the port.

On the days when rain lashed the walls of his lodging house and a bitter wind swirled smoke around the room, guilty thoughts of England and Matilda drove him to send for a scribe and write her letters detailing his progress — or lack of it. On these days too, he would think wistfully of her warmth in his bed and the soothing gentleness of her oiled fingers on his damaged leg. It was with great righteousness and a hint of self-mockery that he wrote to her of his chastity. He had slept alone since leaving England. Not that such endurance was entirely the result of an effort to remain pure while engaged in Christ's business. Simon's oath to God was aided by the fact that the available women were less than appealing and free with their favours. He had no desire to sport where a hundred others had sported before him.

A crowd had gathered on the wharfside to watch the first soldiers and supplies embark, their destination the port of Durazzo on the Byzantine coast. A warm breeze was blowing off the sea, and the sailors were using their oars to row the galleys out of the harbour mouth. Each pull and scoop raised small puffs of white water upon the glittering blue. Simon joined the group of onlookers, among them Duke Robert of Normandy and Stephen of Aumale. The latter made room for Simon at his side and Simon found himself standing against a slender man of middle years, with gaunt features and black hair silvering at the temples. Immediately Simon stiffened. He knew that Ralf de Gael was a crusader, had even seen him from a distance, but this was the first time that their paths had directly crossed. While he recognised De Gael, the Breton lord obviously did not remember him, but then Simon had been a green youth at the time of Waltheof's death and beneath De Gael's notice. Twenty years later the boy was long into manhood and the former Earl of Norfolk was growing old.

De Gael smiled at Simon. 'I am not a good sailor,' he said. 'I will be glad when this leg of our journey is completed.'

'So will we all.' Simon forced himself to be civil. 'It has been a long wait through the winter.'

They watched the ships sculling out of the harbour. Gulls wheeled and screamed overhead. Someone made a comment to Robert of Normandy and he laughed aloud. De Gael looked at Simon through lids narrowed with the twin efforts of focusing and remembering.

'Forgive me,' he said. 'I feel that I should know you?'

Simon turned his gaze from the sea to fix it on the man who had trapped his friends in treason and escaped to Brittany to live a full and prosperous life. 'Likely you remember me from the Conqueror's court,' he replied impassively. 'I was a squire of the chamber and my father was one of King William's chamberlains.'