The Winter Mantle (67 page)

She nodded as if his words had eased a burden in her mind. 'It is hard to let him go,' she whispered. 'If I seem composed now, it is because I have given myself permission to grieve when you are gone…'

'Sabina…'

'Say nothing more. Just take him and go. All will be well… and better this way.'

At the gate they waited while the porteress again slid the bolt and unlocked the door. Sabina leaned over Simon's arm and placed a final, soft kiss on the baby's brow. 'Godspeed, little one,' she whispered.

For Simon himself there was no embrace, just a single, long look that said everything. Then she turned from him and went back to the abbey. The porteress let him out of the door with the basket and swaddling. 'You take care of that child,' she said sternly. 'God will know if you do not.' The heavy oak swung shut behind him and he heard the lock shoot back into place.

His men came to attention from their positions against the wall and looked at him askance.

'It's a baby!' Simon snapped. 'Haven't any of you seen one before? Here, strap this basket to the packhorse and cover it so that it doesn't get wet.' Handing his son briefly to Turstan he mounted his horse then leaned down to take the infant back in his arms and beneath the protection of his cloak.

No one asked questions, but everyone looked at each other and not at Simon.

Despite the inclement weather, Sabina retired to a corner of the cloisters to hug her grief instead of the warm body of her child. Softly she rocked back and forth, moaning to herself, the pain too deep for tears. It was thus that the Abbess found her and with infinite compassion brought her back within the abbey.

'A baby?' Hugh of Chester reddened alarmingly. Laughter brimmed in his eyes, and he was taken with a paroxysm of choking. Hastily he reached for the wine flagon, as usual close to hand, and took several gulps without recourse to a cup. 'Not even I have fornicated with a nun, and I'm reckoned without a shred of moral fibre!' he recovered enough to wheeze.

'She was not a nun at the time,' Simon said stiffly.

Flagon in hand, Chester leaned over the basket to regard the infant. It stared back at him out of the kitten-blue eyes of a newborn. 'You're sure it is yours? You don't think she's foisting a cuckoo on you?'

'No, it's mine,' Simon said, his eyelids tightening. He grabbed the flagon from Chester and took a long drink. 'I have to find a wet nurse among the women.'

'There's Alaise,' Chester said. 'She's weaning young Geoffrey, but she's still got enough milk to float a galley. She'll be glad to feed him. Means she'll not have to worry about conceiving another babe quite yet. Women don't grow big bellies while they're still giving suck.'

'Thank you.' Simon was irritated by his friend, but he was also immensely grateful for his practicality. Chester was a profligate lecher. Alaise was one of several mistresses, but he always returned to her and they had three sons, the most recent being a little over a year old.

'What will your wife say?' Laughter was still flushing Chester's face. His shoulders continued to twitch.

Simon did not want to think about that. 'I would hope that she would be generous,' he replied. 'The child is not to blame.'

'Aye,' Chester snorted. 'She'll take him in and throw you out.'

The baby opened its mouth and gave a small, experimental squeak. Chester snapped his fingers at a squire. 'Take this child to Mistress Alaise and tell her that Lord Hugh bids her tend it as one of her own.'

'Yes, my lord.' The youth picked up the basket as if it held a tangle of writhing snakes rather than a single whimpering baby, and made his way gingerly across the hall to the private apartments.

'It's good to know that you're capable of sinning as much as the rest of us!' Chester slapped Simon on the back. 'Don't you worry. Alaise is a good mother. She'll do for the nonce.' He dismissed the subject with a flick of one large, fleshy hand. 'I'm glad you are here. I sent a foraging party out towards Chaumont and they haven't returned. I thought that…'

'Who was leading?'

'Who do you think?' Chester said, and now there was no laughter in his eyes. 'Gerard de Serigny.'

Simon swore. De Bêlleme might have flayed De Serigny, figuratively if not literally, but that had been in public. In private Simon suspected that there was a different agenda. De Serigny was, after all, De Bêlleme's man and well placed to keep his master informed about everything that Simon and
Hugh Lupus did. Of course he was to be granted leeway. 'You want me to investigate?'

Chester spread his hands. 'You have the skills as a scout as well as a commander. Serigny is no loss if he has been captured by the French - De Bêlleme can pay the bastard's ransom, but he had a full conroi with him and I want to know what has happened. If they've raided a village and got drunk, I'll build a pyre for them myself.'

Simon nodded grim agreement. 'I'll go and arm up.' He was glad to have something to do. It meant he didn't have to think on matters complicated and domestic.

Before he left he paid a visit to the women's quarters. His son was drowsing on Alaise's ample white breast, his lips anchored to her nipple and his eyes closed in bliss. Now and again his small jaws would work, but more for security than sustenance.

'Must have been hard for his mother to give this one up,' Alaise said, her arm curving maternally around the small body. 'Is she truly a nun?'

Simon could see that this was a tale that was going to follow him the rest of his days, adding to his reputation in some quarters, destroying it in others. 'Not yet,' he said, 'And not as a penance for bearing him. And yes, it was hard for her to give him up.'

He left the chamber and went down to the courtyard where Turstan was holding the reins of his grey. Sabina had done what she thought best for the child. Now all he had to do was prove her right. He hoped that he was equal to the task.

Northampton, March 1098

There was a robin on the sundial. Matilda watched it flirt its tail at her. Its breast feathers were the hue of hot embers against the soft brown wing. All around her the garden was showing the colours of spring. The apple tree even had a green suggestion of bud about the carefully pruned branches.

Its base was ringed with the glistening white milkflowers that Simon had brought her from Byzantium. To look at the small brown bulbs, she would not have guessed at the bravery and beauty of the blooms that had opened while the land was still in the grip of winter. They were past their best now, but the last ones to bud still carried their flowers. She wished wistfully that Simon could have been here to see them.

Are you ready?' Jude asked.

She turned to her sister. Jude's arms were folded against her body and huddled under her cloak. She much preferred the warmth of a brazier and the cosiness of her embroidery to the outdoors - at least until true spring had put some warmth into the season. Her dark brows, brown eyes and warm complexion gave her a strong physical resemblance to their mother and sent a small pang through Matilda.

'Yes,' she said, 'I am.' A frown clouded her brow. 'Do you think I am doing the right thing in going to Simon?'

Jude contemplated, then nodded. 'Indeed I do. If our mother had followed her heart, she would have been the happier for it.'

Matilda managed a smile, but still felt a twinge of uncertainty. The need to go to Simon had had been born out of a gradual feeling of loneliness engendered by the act of clearing her mother's coffers and distributing her garments and effects to the poor. At the bottom of one of the coffers, amid scraps of dried rose petals and lavender stems, she had found a piece of embroidery depicting a copper-haired man on a chestnut stallion and riding beside him on a black mare a woman whose dark hair was shockingly bared to the world. The sight of the token had filled Matilda's eyes with tears. It had confirmed her mother's deathbed words. She had loved Waltheof. The tragedy was that she had never been able to show it, fettered as she was by her duty, by her Norman blood, and by the steep differences of nature that had separated her from her husband. The sight of that hidden length of embroidery had filled Matilda with an overwhelming need to go to Simon. To embrace their own differences of nature and negate them. She was afraid but steadfast. Jude would have custody of the children until her return.

'It is only fitting that you should see Normandy at least once,' Jude murmured as the sisters turned towards the garden gate. 'After all, we are half Norman, and I think it would have pleased our mother.' Jude had crossed the Narrow Sea on several occasions with Ranulf, and had been quite taken with the great stone abbeys and castles that populated the landscape.

Matilda wondered. For all that their mother was proud of her birth, she had chosen to live out her life in England and had shown no inclination to return to Normandy. However she said nothing to Jude, whom she sensed was only trying to offer her reassurance and comfort.

The children were waiting in the courtyard with Sybille to bid her farewell. Blinking back tears, Matilda embraced them both tenderly, and promised that she would be home soon. Waltheof patted her shoulder, offering her grave comfort, his manner more like that of an elderly man than a boy barely nine years old. His sister started to grizzle, but was easily persuaded out of her tears by the present of a sticky piece of honeycomb that Sybille had been keeping in reserve for just such an eventuality.

Matilda accepted a boost into the saddle from the waiting groom, and reined her horse to face the gates. It gave her a strange sense of freedom and fear to be the one riding away. Part of her wanted to turn back, but it was the lesser part, and she responded to it by nudging her mount to a trot.

The new castle of Gisors was a motley conglomeration of stone and wood rising out of a scarred landscape of felled trees and bare earth. A brown and grey wound on a land of bright spring green. Builders and masons toiled on the walls, each freshly mortared slab securing William Rufus' claim to the land.

Matilda drew rein and gazed upon the industry. Recent rain had turned the track to a churned brown glue, but not so wet that the wheels of the wains and ox carts became stuck in the mud. Soldiers were everywhere, some in mail, some in quilted linen gambesons, all of them watchful as cats and armed to the teeth.

A mile earlier, Matilda had dispatched a herald to give notice of her arrival. She narrowed her eyes upon the men at the gate, but could not see anyone that she recognised. No Turstan, no Toki… no distinctive blue and white cloak. She gnawed her underlip, caught herself in the mannerism and ceased with a small cluck that was half irritation, half nervousness.

Urging her mount, gesturing to the senior knights of her escort, she rode on to the outer gates of the half-grown castle. And saw that she was expected after all. Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, came forward to greet her, huge as a bear, light of tread, dark hair combed back from his broad forehead.

'Lady Matilda, be welcome,' he said and came to her saddle to lift her down.

Clad in mail, a fur-lined cloak clasped across his shoulders, he seemed more enormous than ever. His two chins had become three since last she had seen him and his paunch strained at the rivets of his hauberk.