Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  Triumvirate

  Pentecost 1072

  Left the country, you say?” The king frowns, more, it seems to Lanfranc, for the benefit of others present than due to any real puzzlement or disbelief. Nor does he appear to be angered by Lanfranc’s news; his anger rarely expresses itself merely by frowning. Or perhaps it was spent on the journey back from Scotland, where his army is in the middle of a campaign against King Malcolm. “I don’t recall him asking my permission. Do you, Mortain? My lord Archbishop? And it seems an odd thing to do if there is drought in Kent, as you say there is, Lanfranc.”

  The three men are seated at a table in an upper chamber of the king’s tower beside the Thames. It is hot and still, the sun almost directly overhead, a smell of mud and sewage and rotting fish drifting up from the river.

  “No, Your Grace, but…” says Robert. He is sweating heavily.

  “Then he must be got back. Are there many with him?”

  “It seems to be merely a private trip, Your Grace,” says Lanfranc. “Members of his household and a small personal guard only, and…the woman, of course.”

  “Ah yes, the woman.” The king scratches the back of his neck where the shaved hair gives way to greying orange stubble. A mosquito whines, disturbed from feasting on the royal blood. “D’you remember, Robert, that odd couple we had at court once? Great, tall woman. Husband said she was a fairy. He’d come across her dancing in a fairy ring in a wood at night. These English are as bad as the Bretons for their tales.”

  “If I may venture an opinion, Your Grace.”

  “You are my brother, and the only one remaining with any sense. Speak freely.”

  “Well, to start with, Mistress Aelfgytha isn’t tall. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  “Do you mock me, Robert?”

  “No, Your Grace, only the superstitions of the English. Sire, clearly my lord of Kent means no harm. As the Archbishop says, he has gone to Normandy in his private capacity, to Conteville, in fact…”

  “So you were privy to his plans, were you?”

  The sweat trickles down Robert’s temples. He smears a broad, slightly grubby hand across his face. “Insofar as he asked me for use of the house at Conteville. It is his home as much as mine. I would not have refused him.”

  “And you did not think to advise him to stay put and attend to his estates?”

  “I assumed he had your leave, Your Grace, but even so, I see no harm in his taking Mistress Aelfgytha on a private visit. He has reliable men under him in Kent. And surely you can’t imagine he intends any ill will toward you. He’s devoted to you.”

  “His devotion, even if it does exist outside the pages of that execrable flatterer, William of Poitiers, doesn’t excuse irresponsibility or disobedience to the law. Splendour of God, Robert, he wrote most of it; surely he can remember what it says about leave to go abroad. And consider this. He has made over property to that woman, who was once close to Godwinson, I understand…”

  “Really?” says Robert.

  “Some sort of waiting woman to Swan Neck, I’m told.”

  “Learnt her trade from an expert, then.”

  The Archbishop clears his throat.

  “Pardon, Your Reverence,” says Robert.

  “Now, where were we?” the king resumes. “Yes, property. And then there are the complaints from Fitzosbern about encroachments on his territory. And now my brother of Kent has left the country secretly, in the middle of a drought. I’ll tell you what I think, Robert.” He emits a grim laugh. “I think no good can come of a man with an interest in embroidery.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Robert. He takes the king’s point but is pleased by the way he is depicted in Odo’s hanging, sitting in council with his brothers at Pevensey, an eager, visionary expression on his face, his hand ready on his sword hilt as he listens to Odo expounding some scheme or other. “Anyway,” he continues, “I don’t think you can levy a charge of secrecy against Odo. You and I both know that if my lord of Kent wants to keep secrets, he usually does it more efficiently than this.

  “William, I beseech you, don’t order him home as if you were whipping in a hound. He’s done nothing to deserve such humiliation. If he’s allowed to indulge his passion for the woman, I dare say he’ll get over it the sooner and be back in his senses. You turned a blind eye to Adeliza, even after John was born; surely you can do the same again.”

  “Adeliza was a boy’s folly. And he did the right thing, married her off and stepped out of the picture as soon as the child arrived. It’s not the fact of the woman that troubles me. God aid, with an uncle like Mauger of Rouen, you might expect me to be tolerant of churchmen’s tarts, and I have allowed for the fact of his being born in Scorpio. No, it’s the obsessive nature of his attachment. What of his haring off after her in the middle of the council at Winchester? A more fanciful man than I am might almost say she had bewitched him. Eh, Lanfranc?”

  “It is possible, Your Grace.”

  “Frankly, I’m disappointed. When you were at Caen, Lanfranc, you, and Odo were good neighbours. Competitive. That worked well in the interests of the duchy. I had hoped for some of the same spark here, and all I’m getting is a damp squib, a mooning lover more suited to my minstrelsy than my council chamber. Tell me, Lanfranc, what’s to be done?”

  Lanfranc tugs at his beard, as though teasing out a solution from among the grey hairs straggling over his chest. “I believe my lord of Mortain gives good counsel, Your Grace, as always.”

  “Oh come, Lanfranc, speak plainly; what do you really think?”

  Leaning his elbows on the table, lacing his fingers together with slow deliberation, Lanfranc glances at Mortain and then at the king. William jerks his chin dismissively at his brother. “Robert, go to the mews. Make sure the birds are ready if we’re hunting this afternoon, there’s a good fellow.”

  “Your Grace, William,” pleads Robert as he prepares to leave them, “remember who we’re talking about. You know how Odo loves you.”

  “I do, Robert; I know just how he loves me.”

  “You can’t fall out with him over a woman.”

  “No,” says William thoughtfully, “of course not. Ridiculous. You’re absolutely right.”

  Mollified, Robert goes to find the falconer, William’s pale eyes and Lanfranc’s dark ones following his bow-legged progress to the door.

  “Now,” resumes William when the curtain of painted leather has swung down behind Robert’s back, “tell me what is in your mind, my friend.” He pours a cup of wine and pushes it in front of Lanfranc, who sips sparingly.

  “I think Mortain is right, though for the wrong reasons.”

  “As is so often the case. Odo, on the other hand, is frequently wrong for all the right reasons. If I had but one brother as sharp as Odo and as loyal as Robert.”

  Lanfranc shrugs, spreading his hands out to his sides so he looks like Christ Pantocrator, though older. “We must do our best with the tools God gives us. And it seems to me Odo’s harlot might just be one such.”

  “How so?”

  “Don’t order him back. Let him stay in ignorance of what is going on in Kent…”

  “Odo stays in ignorance of nothing for long. He has more spies about the place than even I do.”

  “But spies are of no use if their reports cannot get through. That can be arranged. In the meantime, perhaps a suggestion to my clergy that the drought signifies God’s disapproval of Lord Odo’s mistress, even that she has somehow bewitched him, or the weather, or both, might give the woman enough rope to hang herself.”

  “And you would have them preach such a thing to their congregations?” William thumps his fist on the table enthusiastically. “Splendour of God, old friend, I like it.” Then, leaning toward Lanfranc, fixing him with a shrewd, wary gaze, he adds, “and you would keep my name out of it? I want Odo back in the tent pissing out not outside pissing in.”

  “It would be a matter of dogma, Your Grace, a matter of reminding our flock that what so
me of them may see as an all-embracing church has become morally lax and reprehensible and is in grave need of reform.” Lanfranc gives an ironic, implacable smile. “Church and state are not one and the same, are they? When it comes to the Word of God.”

  The Fall

  Ascension to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary 1072

  In Odo’s new palace, Gytha is given apartments so spacious that she and Freya, wandering about soundlessly on thick turkey rugs, marvelling at the glazed windows with their deep, cushioned embrasures, agree neither of them has ever lived in anything to match them.

  “Most houses aren’t this big,” says Freya, gazing at the painted ceiling of the bed chamber, in which Adam and Eve sit in naked bliss beneath the shade of the tree of knowledge, oblivious of the serpent coiled around its trunk, looking cunningly like bark.

  “Most houses aren’t as big as this bed.” Gytha sits down on the edge of it, reluctant to disturb the embroidered coverlet thrown over the furs and quilts. She unpins her couvre-chef and removes the linen cap beneath it, while Freya pulls off her shoes. Tugging a strand of hair from her head, she knots it with her small, deft fingers and pushes it under the mattress. Freya, kneeling, with the mud splashed shoes in her lap, gives her a hard look. Brushing vigorously at the muddy hem of Gytha’s gown, she says, “I hope his lordship’s apartments aren’t far away, or he’ll never be able to find you in the dark.” The two women giggle, unaware that there is some truth in Freya’s apprehension.

  Odo has never lived in this house, has never spent more than three or four weeks in it at a time. It has been built since the conquest of England, an unaffordable luxury before he acquired his English estates, and he does occasionally lose his bearings among its galleries and cloisters, its lobbies and anterooms leading through gilded doors to inner chambers ornamented to impress and enchant with treasures collected from all over the world. A bishop’s palace decked out like the house of a Jew, some say. Odo is known to be a man of catholic tastes, delighted by objects of beauty and splendour, intrigued by what is rare or strange, and wealthy enough to pay handsomely for what takes his fancy. Merchants, pilgrims returning from Jerusalem or Compostela, speculative investors and ambitious thieves are never far from his door. He is buying paradise piecemeal, an ebony table here, a filigree censer there, a book of hours encased in ivory for his library, a crucifix studded with pink freshwater pearls to adorn the altar of one of his two private chapels.

  He does not plan to remain long in Bayeux on this visit either. To his clergy he explains, “I’m not really here. This is a private visit. I wish to keep business to the minimum.” And his clergy are understanding. Some of these men have served the diocese since Bishop Hugh’s time. They kept their counsel when the boy bishop was imposed upon them; at best, it was an honour to serve the duke’s brother, at worst, unwise to protest. Most were pleasantly surprised by the lad. No saint, perhaps, but quick witted and eager to learn, shrewd, but compassionate in his judgments. As Abbot Robert of Saint-Vigor, much admired for his commentary on the Song of Songs, has said of his bishop, he shows his love of God in his love for the world God made. Which includes a love of luxury, of fine wine and falconry, good horses and the art of soldiering, and, from time to time, the love of a woman.

  He takes Gytha to see his cathedral, walks with her up the nave whose arches still soar like the fingers of God into the open sky, so high that the men working above the clerestory and triforium, throwing across the roof trusses, look as though they are crawling across the blue face of heaven. Standing with their backs to the glittering slab of white marble destined to become the high altar, looking toward the west door and the rose window above it which, she thinks, empty of glass, looks like a giant pastry cutter, he bids her imagine the tapestry, stretched between the columns of the nave, lit by hundreds of candles, scented with incense, shivering a little in air vibrant with music. Complete.

  Another thought comes to him from the same treasure house of the mind in which he keeps the tapestry. That he would like to make love to her here, in this petrified forest, to the accompaniment of the builders calling to one another and the booming, rhythmic songs of the serfs treading the wheel which hoists the crane, under the unseeing eyes of cherubim and gargoyles, the stone effigies of his parents, of John and Adeliza, and Adeliza’s first husband, and the men who carried his crozier before he did. To doubly consecrate his church. To make a child dedicated to God.

  He demands she sit for his master mason. He wants her to appear as the Magdalene at the foot of the Cross in the pieta to be carved on the front of the altar. She taunts him for his lack of originality. “She is the woman most loved by Christ,” he counters, “what more do you want?”

  “I don’t think they had a relationship quite like ours, though.”

  “No two human loves are ever the same. Christ was a man. It’s only later commentators who invite us to believe in His humanity and at the same time deny that He ever laughed or drank wine or admired a pretty woman. Homo est animal rationale, mortale, risus capax.”

  “What?”

  “Man is a rational, mortal animal, capable of laughter.”

  “There’s a true blasphemer hidden under all that episcopal purple, isn’t there? Do you never worry that God is listening to you?” She plucks at his clothing with teasing fingers. “You’re tickling me,” he says, catching hold of her hands and kissing her palms.

  “D’you suppose Mary Magdalene used to tickle Jesus?”

  “I’ll set up a council to consider the question.”

  ***

  The sitting is to take place, not in the tracing house, but at the master mason’s home, an old but substantial stone house close to the city walls.

  “I have business to attend to,” he tells her on the morning she is due to go there, “so Osbern will escort you. He knows the house well.” And, curiously, Osbern smiles. She looks doubtfully from one to the other, suspicious of some joke at her expense.

  “Shall I tell her, Osbern, or will you?”

  They are sitting in the palace garden, having breakfasted outdoors in the hour before Prime. The day promises to be hot, but for now is pleasantly warm, the sun benevolent behind a haze of high cloud. Osbern has come to clear away the remains of the meal, lying between them on the stone bench in the middle of a large, triangular bed of white roses. Gytha throws a handful of breadcrumbs among the flowers, flapping her hands to ward off wood pigeons.

  “No! That’s for the little birds,” she shouts. “They’re such bullies. They all ought to be in a pie.”

  Odo laughs and pats her knee. “Always championing the underdog. Go and see about the horses, Osbern, we’ll be along shortly.”

  “What is all this mystery about the mason’s house, then?”

  “Walk with me.” He takes her arm, pressing it against his side so she can feel his heart beating against the back of her wrist, and leads her along one of the three paths crossing the rose bed, each built of thirty-three stones to represent the Trinity, across a square of camomile lawn which releases its apple-sweet scent like a gift to their nostrils as they tread over it, along the edge of the west-facing cloistered terrace where they often sit in the evenings.

  “Osbern used to be a soldier, a very good one. The year of the French invasion, he was part of my personal bodyguard.”

  “What happened? Was he hurt?”

  “No, I found out he was a skilled midwife.”

  “Now you’re talking in riddles.”

  “The mason’s house. It’s where Adeliza used to live.”

  “Oh.” She withdraws her arm from his.

  “You mustn’t mind. She hasn’t lived there for a long time. She married again, a merchant from Rouen. But…John was born there. His mother was the widow of my last master mason. I suppose that’s why I wanted you to see it.”

  “And yet you will not come with me? You send me with your servant. Who I think doesn’t like me.”

  “It is his desire.”

  �
��And since when have the wishes of servants been your concern?”

  “Osbern is different. He serves me, not out of loyalty to me or because I pay him well, but out of love for my son. He safeguards me for John’s sake. You see, it was Osbern who brought John into the world.”

  They have reached the end of the terrace. Odo takes her hand to prevent her walking on toward the stables and they stand for a moment, awkwardly. He has never told the story of John’s birth before, and he is afraid his words will be inadequate to convey the mystery of it, the mixture of fear and elation, the remembered, yet oddly unfamiliar image of himself cradling his son in his mail-clad arms.

  Gytha wishes he would not go on. She knows it is not his fault, he knows nothing about her children, the pain she knots into the hairs she tucks beneath their mattress. But somehow she expects him to understand and is irritable with him that he does not.

  “Won’t you be late?” she asks.

  “For what? I have no one to see, just accounts to go over, that sort of thing.”

  He sits down on the edge of the terrace and takes a deep breath, savouring the perfume of camomile and sun-warmed stone. “I was twenty,” he begins. “I had Henry of France encamped on my doorstep and a message from William ringing in my ears that I was to hold Bayeux at all costs. One half of me knew it would be straightforward. William had already cut a swathe through Henry’s forces, and their supply lines were stretched to breaking point. But the other half was in a spin. I hadn’t the vaguest idea how to conduct a siege; every word I had ever read on the subject had gone right out of my head, and all I could think of was Adeliza, in that house right under the city wall with her child—my child—due any day.”

  He pauses, looking up at her with that self-deprecating smile of his, then continues. “The second time I lost my place during prayers for the safety of the city, my chaplain, who was a practical man, told me to send some good men to fetch her to the palace and then put her out of my mind till we had dealt with the French.