Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  He does not intend to stare at her as she removes her outdoor clothes, but he cannot help himself. She has the supple grace of a seal, as she pushes the cloak back from her shoulders, then stoops to gather it up before it falls to the floor. The way her breasts rise and flatten as she lifts her arms, the slenderness of her waist and her rounded hips entrance him. She wears her chaste uniform as though she is Venus adorned in nothing but her hair and a cockleshell. His mouth goes dry, his mind blank as he tries to think about something else. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum…Words. What use are words?

  He clears his throat. “Sit,” he commands, indicating a stool facing his chair across the hearth. She sits, sweeping her skirt under her, her hands following the curve of her buttocks in a gesture of such unconscious loveliness he begins immediately to cast about in his mind for some pretext to make her rise and sit again. If he touched her hand, he wonders, would he feel what she felt, the warm flesh beneath the wool of her gown, the stretch of her sinews? Adveniat regnum tuum.

  This is not what Agatha anticipated. He knows Agatha and her cerebral games, dry as her wit, as her papery skin and the homilies she delivers to her novices. Like anyone rehearsed in the art of rhetoric, she marshals her facts selectively, and it would be Gytha’s acid, rebellious tongue, not her physical attractions, that would have persuaded her to send Gytha to him in her stead, give him his chance to get even. She expects Gytha to talk, not simply to be. “Tell me what is going on in the world,” he says, as soon as he can trust his voice. “I am so confined here I am even excused my religious observance. I keep pleading with Brother Infirmarer to let me go for a walk, but he thinks it’s too soon.”

  “Surely, my lord, you need neither my account nor the evidence of your own eyes to know what is going on in the world.” Let him talk if he wants to; she has nothing to say.

  “A picture is made of many brushstrokes, mistress, or should I say, many stitches?”

  Yet she cannot help herself. “But only one design, which is the truth at its heart.”

  “Are you sure of that? Is there no role for interpretation?”

  “You are a bishop, Your Grace. You of all people must know there is only one right way.” If God brings her safely through this, she swears she will take a vow of silence.

  “And they told me you were not religious, Gytha.”

  His tone is light, but there is a serious enquiry at the back of it, a probing bass note which makes her feel she has been found out. The situation is running away from her; she is losing touch with her purpose. “Let me tell you about the hanging, my lord,” she says, rising. “I really must not be much longer. Sister Jean was anxious to have your view of the drawing as soon as possible.” She picks it out of the pile on the table at his side and thrusts it in front of him. He takes no notice. He looks only at her, his gaze disconcerting, devouring, an angel consumed by his duty of praise and contemplation.

  A murderer, and a looter, and probably a rapist, and certainly a man for whom the right way is always the one which suits him best.

  “Then I must not rush my consideration of it, must I?” His tone is languid, teasing, which makes her feel she is being patronised. “Talk to me while I look at it. Amuse me. They tell me my favourite stallion bit the marshal. Is it true? I gather one of the grooms took quite a beating for it. Do sit down again. It tires me to have to look up at you so.”

  Eventually, she does as she is bidden, but this time fails to smooth her skirt under her, out of spite, he imagines, as though she is aware of the effect it had upon him.

  “Sister Jean stayed up half the night with the boy herself, my lord, poulticing his injuries against infection.”

  “Women are always so sentimental. I suppose she thought the boy shouldn’t have been beaten?”

  “If she did, I doubt it was due to her being sentimental.”

  “Then we must agree to differ. I can’t imagine what else urges her to these occasional forays of hers against the rule of law.”

  Gytha remembers the poacher. “She does not believe the law is always right. I respect her for it.”

  He does not reply immediately but looks at her as though trying to make up his mind about something, then gives a curt nod of his head, an approving nod, she thinks, the gesture of a man who has tested a horse’s fetlock and found it sound, or bitten a coin and found it solid. And she is pleased by his approval and yearns for a spirit less complicated, with fewer rooms whose doors remain locked against the power of the will.

  He starts to unfold the drawing. “So tell me, what’s in this drawing she’s so concerned about?”

  “I don’t know, my lord, I haven’t looked. She just asked me to note your comments for her. I am merely to be your mouthpiece.”

  Mouth. Luscious mouth, lips the colour of overripe redcurrants, when they lose their transparency and the red darkens almost to mulberry. He is gripped by an overwhelming desire to take that full, slightly sulky bottom lip gently between his teeth. What’s to stop him? He could just get up, step across the hearth, bend, and kiss her. Why not? Fiat voluntas tua.

  Look at him, holding the half folded parchment as though he has forgotten he has it in his hand. Taunting her, stringing their meeting out because he knows she wants to get away. She feels the light drag of her knife where it hangs from her girdle. “My lord? Will you look at it now?”

  “What?” He frowns and passes his hand in front of his eyes in confusion. “I’m sorry, I was distracted. You know my mind was wandering for two weeks? I sometimes think it isn’t quite ready yet to make the return journey. Yesterday I was thinking about camels.”

  “Camels, my lord?”

  “Wondering what a camel looked like.”

  “Like a sheep, my lord, a tall, brown sheep with a long neck and a hump of fat on its back.” She strokes her knife, hoping her gesture will look absent-minded, but he does not seem to notice. His eyes, fixed on her face, widen in astonishment.

  “You’ve seen one?”

  “I was once a waiting woman in a household whose lord received a gift of a camel from the Holy Land.” She pauses to see if he shows any sign of recognition, but sees only his curiosity, hungry and insistent. “The poor thing was very mangy. Its fur was peeling off like plaster off a damp wall. It died.”

  He is full of wonder; he feels like weeping with gratitude for his sister’s miraculous gift. A woman who has seen a camel, who can describe a camel with the same casual precision with which she might give instructions to the gardener or place an order for a bolt of cloth.

  “It sounds as though you have had a much more interesting life than I have. Will you tell me more?”

  “Surely you mock me, my lord?”

  “No.” But the tone was patronising, ill considered. All this soldiering, he’s losing his touch. “I assure you, my interest is genuine.” He summons his most charming smile, though even that fails to work its usual magic and she remains unmoved, her lovely lips set in a bitter line.

  “Then I shall disappoint you.” Disappointment handed on, the only legacy of her life. And will it also end in disappointment, failure, because she is so easily distracted? Keep it brief, just the bare essentials. “My father was a free man with a fish salting business in Colchester. I married when I was sixteen. My husband was a cooper. Now I’m a widow.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have no need. It wasn’t your fault. My husband died of a flux the year Earl Harold killed King Gryfudd, before you came here.” She remembers the year because of her mother being Welsh.

  “I had no intention of accepting the blame for your husband’s death. Whatever the circumstances.”

  His shirt is open at the neck. A pulse beats rapidly beneath the skin at the base of his throat. Tender skin, easy to pierce, just above the curious glass ornament he wears, shaped like a tear whose apex marks the entry point.

  “I’m surprised you have not married again,” he continues.

  “My husband left a g
reat many debts.”

  “And have you no children?”

  “None living, my lord.” None living. Such simple words, ordinary as barley porridge or a spinning wheel. Easy words to say, as long as you don’t think about what they mean, because, if you do, the pain will rob you of the power of speech.

  “Will you snap my head off again if I say I’m sorry? Really. My own son is a great consolation to me, although I see him far less often than I should like. It seems to me we are never so blest in this life as by the love of children.”

  His son? He has a child? Suddenly she is back on top of the West Gate tower in Winchester, her eyes fixed in horror on the small boy darting out between the soldiers to grasp the bishop’s shiny harness. Once again she sees Odo slip his feet from his stirrups ready to throw himself from the saddle, then hears the Bastard’s thin, harsh command. Non, Odo! A moi! As clear as if he had been standing next to her on the tower. She wonders that she has never remembered it before. “What is his name, my lord?” she asks. Not that she cares, of course.

  “John.” His son’s name fills him with nostalgia. John. “My sister, your mistress, is his godmother. He is fourteen. He is at school in Liege, although I haven’t yet decided if he will take orders.”

  His wistful indulgence makes her wince. Seven years now since her last confinement, yet the pain never lessens. Feeling the tears well up from that deep scarred place inside her, she bites her lip, hard enough, temporarily, to supersede one pain with another.

  She glances out of the window, which gives onto a neat square of grass bounded by the crumbling west wall of the cloister. The Archbishop’s house casts long, dense shadows across the lawn and under the cloister arches, where the brothers, like shadows themselves in their black habits, are gathering to go into church. Vespers, she thinks, listening to the bell, and realises that this day of short hours has almost disappeared.

  Yet she has made no move: the bishop’s white skinned throat remains as unblemished as when she entered the room, his heart still beats with the love of a living son. A tall boy, probably, ungainly, with legs like a stork and curly hair, and a voice that cracks uncontrollably, like a donkey braying. Matthew would have been about that age by now. Matthew. Her firstborn.

  “Please look at the drawing, my lord,” she says, with a break in her voice that makes him glance at her with concern. She stares at her hands, at her knife hanging uselessly at her side, his compassion battering down her exhausted defences. She blinks furiously to keep the tears from her eyes.

  “All right,” he says gently, and finishes unfolding it. In the waning light, he sees a single figure, a slender, long-legged knight sporting a lavish moustache. His shield is stuck full of arrows. In his shield hand he also holds a javelin, but his sword arm is raised to his face, the great fist clenched around another arrow which appears to have entered his right eye. His arms and armour, the knee-length mail shirt and pointed helmet with its nose guard, proclaim him to be a Norman, but the moustache identifies him. And his height. These are the details Agatha has remembered, impatient with the technical variations between Norman and Saxon military paraphernalia because she could not see the need to understand them. She has also remembered the curious manner of his death. Except, of course, that she has not. She has merely remembered what Odo chose to tell her.

  “The death of Godwinson,” he says. “You may tell my sister I am content.” He holds out the drawing to Gytha, who takes it from him quickly, almost eagerly. He releases it with a small, sad smile that does not reach his eyes. Had it been anything else, she would not have bothered to look at it. But the death of Harold touches her, so she looks.

  “Christ’s blood!”

  He glances up in astonishment from sorting through his letters. Has she not recently told him she was lady-in-waiting in some great house? This is not generally the way Saxon women of good breeding express themselves. A furious flush suffuses her cheeks. She breathes hard, her hand shakes, holding the parchment at arm’s length as though it is contaminated.

  “I beg your pardon, mistress?” He tries to sound like an affronted churchman, but it is impossible to keep the amusement out of his voice. Her eyes, he decides, are the deep, translucent blue of a summer night, and just now they are full of shooting stars. He wonders if he might compose a verse or two, an elegy, after Ovid. “My sister should not have sent you here with this,” he says, giving up the pretence at outrage. “I suppose there were men who fought at Hastings who were known to you.”

  “There were men fought at Hastings known to every woman in England. Not a household but didn’t lose someone. I am not so full of my own importance as to let that distress me.”

  “And you think it was any different for the women of Normandy?” He is stung by her self-righteousness. How many homes has he visited in his own diocese, ducking under the low lintels of cottage doorways or served rye bread and new wine in farmers’ halls? How many easy lies has he told to grieving mothers about the inexpressible courage of their terrified sons? No, he did not suffer. Yes, he had plenty of time to make his confession. Naturally he was honoured to die in the duke’s service.

  “Yes,” she snaps back without hesitation, “it was your choice, not ours. And now this…” Taking a step toward him she waves the drawing savagely in his face. “This…travesty.”

  Summoning all his self-control to stop himself flinching, he asks, “What do you mean?”

  “You know damn well what I mean.” The Devil’s beguiling scales have fallen from her eyes now. If he looks like an angel, it is just a trick of the firelight. So what if he has a son? The Bastard himself has sons. They are still butchers, carving up her country and tossing it to their dogs of vassals just as they carved up the body of her king and kicked the pieces off a cliff edge to be picked over by gulls.

  “I assure you, mistress, I do not,” he says, mild as you please. “Have some wine, calm down, and then perhaps you can explain yourself.” He attempts to stand, to go for the wine jug on the night table. He could call Osbern, but he is enjoying himself too much.

  But as he puts his hands to the arms of his chair to push himself out of it, she lunges forward, slamming her hands over his, the parchment crumpled under her palm, pressed into the back of his hand. She has a mermaid smell, of salt and fish, wind and wet rocks.

  She has acted without thinking. Her knife is useless, still knotted to her girdle. But she has teeth and nails, feet, fists, a whole body she can use to kill him, since it is no use for giving life.

  Then she notices the jewelled hilt of the dagger he wears in his belt, in a little leather scabbard, not even tied. Balling the parchment in her fist she flings it in his face. Before he can recover himself she lunges for the dagger with her other hand, her fingers curling hard around its hilt, whipping it from its sheath, pressing the point against his throat. As light and thrilling as a caress. He isn’t afraid, not for a moment. He has only to call out for Osbern and his guards to come running. Even without them he is more than a match for her, so small a woman, despite the ferocity of her temper. It is not her sudden fury that throws him off balance, but the force of his desire for her, slamming into him like a blow.

  But first, the dagger. He grasps her wrist and twists until she is forced to drop it. Catching it in his free hand, he flings it across the room out of reach, then pushes her aside. As she stumbles he springs to his feet and, gripping her by the shoulders, grinding her flesh against the bone, pulls her up to face him, holding her so close their breath mingles in the tense space between them, and he knows she must feel his arousal. She struggles, tries to twist her arms free, but it is useless; her sleeves chafe and burn against her skin, and she has no doubt he will break her arms if need be.

  “So I am not worth an honourable death either,” she spits at him.

  “What are you talking about?” He intensifies his grip on her shoulders to make her understand he has tired of the game and wants an answer this time. She does not even wince, just stares at him w
ith contempt, then suddenly smiles, a second before bringing her knee up sharply into his groin.

  He drops to the floor, his face grey, sweat breaking from his forehead, a delta of pain flowing out from his groin, spreading through his bowels and belly, washing the bile into the back of his throat. He swallows, determined not to give her the satisfaction of vomiting. The dog creeps out from under the bed and dances around him, barking, butting her long snout into his shoulders, trying to entice him to play.

  Gytha makes a dash for the dagger, but as she stoops to pick it up, Odo recovers sufficiently to make a lunge across the floor, his body stretched full length, grabbing her ankle and pulling it out from under her. She falls heavily, ribs and knees crashing against packed earth, and lies winded, helpless, as Odo crawls toward her, pinions her with one knee in the small of her back and reaches for his knife, which he then holds against her neck, just above the nape, its point tracing the wave of a tendril of dark hair escaped from her coif. Turning her head sideways she comes face to face with the dog, jowls spread over her paws, eyebrows quizzically arched. Gytha sneezes. As she tries to raise her arm to wipe her nose, Odo twists it up her back until she can almost feel the tearing of sinew, the ball of her shoulder popping out of its socket.

  “Enough? Or a little more?” He gives her arm another wrench.

  She cries out, giving voice to her screaming muscles. “Enough!”

  As he releases her arm and lifts his knee from her back, she feels suddenly cold. Shock, she tells herself, sitting up, flexing her fingers, prodding her shoulder to make sure everything is still where it should be. Her body, as she watches him sheath his dagger, then rock back on his heels and get to his feet, tells her something different, but she refuses to listen to it. She tries to rise but stumbles over the hem of her gown. He lifts her, his hand beneath her elbow. She fancies she can feel every whorl of his fingerprints through the fabric of her sleeve. As soon as she has regained her balance, she shakes him off as if he were made of fire.