by Sarah Bower
“Odo,” she says sleepily and smiles, and closes her eyes, her cheek resting against his chest. He lets her stay that way for a moment, cradling her carefully in his arms, afraid, suddenly, that she has lost her mind, not wanting to wake her in case it is true. But he must. Lanfranc’s gown rustles as he shifts his footing. The oblong of muddy light afforded by the grating blurs and wanes. He cannot let her spend another night like this. He must persuade her to speak, so Lanfranc can hear it from her own lips.
“Why did it have to be Freya?” he asks, his voice still soft, but with an insistent edge.
It seems an age before she replies. Holding her gaze, he tries to prompt her by the force of his will. He dare not say more in case Lanfranc accuses him of putting words in her mouth. Then all of a sudden it is as though she has come back into focus.
“I was afraid for…” She darts a scared look at Lanfranc and falls silent.
“But more afraid for her than for our baby?”
“I didn’t think…”
“You convinced yourself the child would die, didn’t you, the way the others did? So you thought to save…the girl rather than yourself.”
She nods miserably. He is careful to shift his weight so Lanfranc can see her.
“But he won’t die, darling. He’ll grow like John, you’ll see. He’ll be bigger than me one day.”
With a curious smile, both loving and vexed, she says, “She, Odo. The wise woman said the child would be a girl, that she would be born under the sign of Gemini and her stone would be pearl.” Her eyes hold some inner light, like phosphorescence on the sea.
“A daughter.” His voice is full of wonder. Raising his right hand, he makes the sign of the cross with his thumb on her forehead. “God be praised. She will be as precious to me as Our Lady to Saint Anne. You hear that, Lanfranc?” he asks, rising to his feet. “Now, my love,” raising her also, his hands beneath her arms, feeling how close her bones cleave to her skin, “I’m going to take you home.”
“Wait.” Lanfranc steps into the doorway, raising his hand as though bestowing a blessing. “What the woman says is hardly proof. She must be properly examined.”
Odo feels Gytha shudder against him.
“And how can we know the child is yours…?”
“What?” He laughs in disbelief.
“…and not some trick of Beelzebub,” finishes Lanfranc.
“If she were the Devil’s handmaid, don’t you think she would have escaped your clutches by now, old man? Or at least made sure she kept herself clean and well fed, as Lucifer tempted Our Lord in the wilderness?”
“If she does not flinch at the Cross, she has the power to resist miracles. This is her means.” Lanfranc is imperturbable “You are her instrument.”
She senses his withdrawal in a slight tensing of his muscles, the opening of a little space between their bodies as he straightens up. The fear he dispelled begins to trickle back like a cold sweat between the shoulder blades, a sickness, the nagging whine of a wheel that needs oiling. He has fallen for Lanfranc’s plausible logic. He doubts, he does not love her, he too believes their daughter will die. Though her throat does not contract to form sobs, tears begin to spill out of her eyes, catching on her lashes, at the corners of her mouth, on the sharp edge of her jaw. Her nose runs. She should make some effort to wipe her face, but she is so tired, so desperate for peace and order and freedom from dreams.
He understands. He is drawing his knife now for her, to put her to rest like the little roan mare on the beach at Rochester. Yet he is not looking in her direction but at Lanfranc. He takes a step toward the Archbishop, pulling her with him then, in a whirl of movement too complicated for her to follow, and suddenly he has his free arm braced across Lanfranc’s chest and his knife at the old man’s throat.
“And you are my instrument,” he hisses between his teeth.
The guard who let them in makes a half-hearted attempt to rescue his lord, but he has only to adjust his grip on his pike for Odo to jerk the knife up under Lanfranc’s chin, the blade pressed against his windpipe, well enough honed to shave a few hairs from his beard.
“Stand aside,” says Lanfranc, sounding like a strangled cat, “he will not harm me.”
“Keys,” says Odo to the guard. He hesitates, and Odo gives the knife another jerk; the guard holds out the keys. “Take them,” says Odo to Gytha. “Lock him in. Get inside,” he orders the guard, and Gytha locks the door behind him, dropping the keys on the ground. Odo kicks them down the passage. “Walk,” he tells Lanfranc, “to the main courtyard.”
His luck is with him. The service of None is still in progress, and they see no one as they make their way through the maze of stairs and passages, the Archbishop frequently stumbling because Odo has forced his head up at such an angle he cannot see where he is putting his feet, Gytha almost running to keep up with her lover’s long stride. Coming to a side door which leads into the great court, Odo kicks it open with the flat of his foot and pushes Lanfranc out into hazy evening sunlight lying like spilt honey in the ruts and puddles. A couple of link boys hurry past with their torches, going to light the lamps in the refectory, but the group approaching Odo’s two men at arms and the three horses is just a tarry mirage to them, veiled by heat haze from their flambeaux, and they carry on chatting together as they do every evening.
Odo’s men approach, leading his horse between them. Eyebrows are briefly raised, but they know better than to ask questions and the elder of the two, who has been in Odo’s service for twenty years or more, remembers he once had the duke’s uncle, Archbishop Mauger, at knifepoint over a disputed game of chequers.
“Help Mistress Gytha to mount,” Odo orders the man, “and be careful with her.” The guard dismounts, takes Gytha around the waist and lifts her bodily onto Odo’s horse, then remounts and the three animals walk toward the gate, the two soldiers bunched protectively either side of Gytha, who clings to the pommel of Odo’s saddle. The horse is the tallest she has ever ridden, and a sudden, irrational notion enters her head that this must be what riding a camel feels like, and she thinks, When we get home, I shall tell him.
Seeing Bishop Odo and the Archbishop enter the court, the porter comes out of his lodge to open the gates. Then looks again, and hesitates, his hands braced under the bar, his mouth agape like a baby bird’s.
“Open it,” Odo tells him. The porter’s eyes fly to the Archbishop’s face. Lanfranc nods as well as he is able with Odo’s dagger wedged under his jaw and the porter lifts the bar. Once the gate is fully open, Odo releases Lanfranc, sheaths his knife and mounts his horse behind Gytha.
“Good day, Lanfranc.” His smile, as he turns the horse and spurs it through the gate, is very broad and full of mischief.
Only much later, when Gytha has washed and eaten, and he sits watching her sleep, her hair tangled around her heart-shaped face, her lashes casting long, blue shadows across her pale cheeks, her body so frail and infinitely precious beneath the lavender-scented sheets and the fox fur coverlet, does he begin to wonder what he has done. What act of love began the work of creation going on inside her? Some long night of lazy passion, or one of those intense encounters that glitter like jewels in his memory, on beds of leafmould or in the dark turns of deserted stairs?
And what sort of world will this daughter be born into, now that he has made an enemy of Lanfranc, his brother’s most loyal friend? He has ordered the castle guard doubled. No one is to go in or out except on his personal authority. Even now they are bringing up crates of swords, bows, and halberds from the armoury to be kept in readiness in the hall, and the fletcher and his boys are hard at work increasing stocks of arrows. He has told Agatha to dismantle her workshop and dispatched men to carry the chests containing the embroidery and all Agatha’s plans up to the keep also. When his love awakens, he will have to tell her it is not safe for her to leave the tower, that she has simply exchanged one prison for another, albeit one with fine food and a feather mattress. But the air here is pois
oned by his guilt; it cannot do his child any good.
He creeps out of his apartments, instructing Freya not to stir from her mistress’ side, and goes in search of his confessor. Compline has been sung, and by rights his household should be settling itself for the night, but everywhere is bustle and restlessness, the hall packed with soldiers and the women from the atelier who would normally return to their homes in the town at night, light spilling from the forge, the armoury, and the fletcher’s workshop, torches snaking up and down the motte. It is as though the entire castle is infected by a fever.
He finds his confessor at the horse lines with Countess Marie; they are trying to persuade one of her daughters there is no need to take her pony up to the hall. Prising the man away from the distraught child and the countess, who has a mutinous, volcanic look about her, he goes with him to the chapel, where he tells him, without sparing either of them, how, incensed by Lanfranc’s accusations against his mistress, he drew a knife on the Archbishop and held him hostage for her safety.
“I did wonder what all this was for,” he says, with the familiarity born of his peculiar intimacy with his lord’s soul, when he has pronounced absolution. He’s stalling, thinks Odo; he can’t decide what penance I deserve. But repentance was not the true purpose of this confession. What he wanted was to clear his mind; by confessing his actions he has put them in order and stacked them up outside himself, like a housewife clearing her rooms for spring cleaning. And knows exactly what he must do. He must go to William, get to him before Lanfranc does, and tell his side of the story. There can be no question of Lanfranc presiding over a fair trial, since he has clearly already made his mind up that Gytha is a witch. There might as well be no trial at all until the child is delivered, since no corporal sentence may be carried out on a pregnant woman, and by then, he will have spirited her away somewhere safe.
“What you have done is grievously sinful, my lord,” the priest continues when Odo makes no response, “but as no harm came to the Archbishop, other than a stiff neck, perhaps, which is not exactly an injury, I see no need for a physical penance. On the other hand…a pilgrimage. A long one. To Compostela, or even Jerusalem.”
Odo gives an absent-minded nod of concurrence. A pilgrimage to Westminster first, he thinks, shouting for Osbern over the hubbub in the courts.
***
When Odo arrives at the king’s palace, the hall is full of people. A court is in noisy session just inside the great door, before a judge unknown to Odo, drowsing fitfully over a dispute as to milling rights on one of the city’s many rivers. A merchant, surrounded by rolls of carpet, awaits an audience with the king. Odo recognises William, Bishop of London, who breaks off from conversation with a group of other priests to greet him, but responds with no more than a curt nod as he makes his way toward his brother, seated at a long table on a dais with a number of plans spread before him. Standing looking over his shoulder is a man whose dusty hair and leather apron proclaim him to be a mason.
Odo steps onto the dais and kneels on one knee, head bowed. The curious eyes of everyone else in the room burn the back of his neck; he feels the sweat break and prickle his skin. But everything must be done properly. He has taken care to leave his men at arms outside the palace gates, and his swordbelt in Osbern’s custody at the entrance to the hall, though he is still wearing the shirt of light mail he thought it prudent to put on for the journey.
“Odo,” says William, dismissing the mason with a nod of his head. He does not sound surprised. Surely no messenger from Lanfranc can have reached him already, though one of his own spies possibly…
“Your Grace.” He kisses William’s proffered hand.
“Get up, man, no need to stand on ceremony. I’ve been expecting you. Drink?”
Both men rise and embrace, exchanging the kiss of peace. William dispatches a servant to bring wine and clear the hall, though the crowd is slow to disperse. Carrion crows, thinks Odo savagely. They sit with the wine jug between them, William in his high-backed chair at the head of the table, Odo across its corner from him, on the end of a padded bench. The lamps smoke, logs settle in the fire, a sudden flurry of wingbeats draws their attention briefly, away from one another and toward a knot of sparrows roosting in the beams.
“Well?” says William eventually.
Odo pours wine for them both. “It seems you know why I’m here.”
William drinks. “It has to do with the woman, I suppose.”
He doesn’t know, no word has come from Lanfranc. Odo feels almost more shaken by relief than by the prospect that William was already familiar with the facts as Lanfranc wished to present them. “Something new has come to light,” he says. The wine beckons, but he dare not lift his cup for fear William should see his hands trembling.
“Oh yes?”
“She is pregnant, William; she is expecting my child.” He pauses. Best not to divulge Gytha’s conviction she already knows the sex of the child. “Your niece or nephew.” He watches William absorb the news. A brief flicker of pride lights his lonely eyes, marooned among the folds of fat developing around his cheeks and brows, before their look of old ice or glass pebbles returns and his mouth turns thin and mean.
“How do you know? It could be a trick.”
“She would not lie about such a thing, you must take my word for that.”
“Your word, Odo?” He gives a harsh laugh. “Show me proof, and I will listen.”
Clinging to the thought of that brief, arctic glow in William’s eyes, he says coolly, with just the right note of masculine camaraderie in his voice, “Proof, brother? Diagnosing pregnancy is hardly an exact science. If I tell you she is sick, bursts into tears over foolish songs or finches in cages, has a yearning for lambs’ liver with honey and has missed two courses, will you call that proof?” He leans toward William and glares at him. “Or perhaps you must have some quack poke and prod her till she miscarries and you can see the foetus for yourself.” He waits, a fervent prayer repeating itself in his head. That the symptoms he has described, remembered from Adeliza’s pregnancy with John, will come true. That he has sowed enough doubt in William’s mind to make him hesitate.
“You wish me to order Lanfranc to postpone the trial?”
“Yes.”
“But what guarantees can you offer me that the woman will not miraculously disappear before she comes to term, she and my niece or nephew?”
“William, I implore you. I have seen how Lanfranc keeps her; it is as though he has already tried and convicted her in his own mind. She will die if she is left there, she and the child, and I could not live without her. My heart would be dead. So you would lose us both, brother and nephew.”
William stretches his legs, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head. “It’s a funny thing, dying,” he says reflectively. “I remember a letter I received from King Edward, when he was in his last illness, in which he wrote that he was dying piecemeal. His feet were dead for he could no longer feel them, and his bladder, he was certain, was already in paradise because his piss smelt of honey.”
“The feet and the bladder are one thing, the heart quite another.”
“That I grant you, but I do not think it is your heart that will die of her death. Unless your heart is in your prick and not your chest.”
“I am born in Scorpio. It’s possible, I suppose.”
“An inconvenient affliction for a churchman.”
“Perhaps you should have consulted your astrologers more carefully before making me one.”
“Perhaps you should meditate more upon the love of God than of this woman. I tell you, Odo, though you cannot see it, she has bewitched you. Everything points to it.”
“I am in love with her, William. Were you never in love?”
William purses his lips. “I do not call this monstrous, puffed up thing consuming you love. Possession, more like.”
Possessio mea. What he says is true, merely their construction of the words differs.
William leans across and gives Odo’s thigh a hearty pat. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll send her to Matilda in Rouen. She’ll have her taken care of until the child’s born, and then we’ll see what’s to be done. Perhaps she can be made to repent, then she could go into the Abbaye aux Dames at Caen and atone for…everything.” William smiles, the smile he wears on the rare occasions he beats Odo at chess.
Rome, thinks Odo, Rome, where figs and lemons grow in his garden, and the stone is warm, and the worldly ambitions of priests are understood. He will take her to Rome.
“That is my decision, Odo, and I think it is more than you deserve. I suggest, if you love her as much as you say you do, you persuade her to acquiesce. If she is inclined to listen. Listening is not her strong point by all accounts.” He stands up, signalling an end to the audience. “Splendour of God, Odo, how did we ever come to this?”
Odo rises also and looks at his brother, measuring the fractional difference in their height. “We gambled, William,” he says softly. “One can never anticipate all the consequences.”
***
“You’re back so soon,” she says, greeting him at the door to the private apartments. Her smile, the way it seems to spread over half her thin face and warm her grave eyes, almost breaks his heart. Without waiting for the door to close behind them, she winds her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him, giving little moans of pleasure as his mail shirt grazes her tender breasts.
She has missed him, but in the poignant serenity of knowing he would return with William’s blessing, that they are together again, that Lanfranc may have tarnished the magic of their shared life a little but now it is bright again, brighter than ever, shiny as a silver spoon for their daughter’s baptism. Feeling him stiffen, she kisses him, thinking to herself she must disabuse him of this notion he has that lovemaking is dangerous for the child. There is an irrational sentimentality in men which is, in its way, as cruel as violence. Now, already, he is pulling back from her, licking her kiss from his lips, unwinding her arms from his neck.
