Needle in the Blood

by Sarah Bower

  Then suddenly, Odo starts to laugh. “Juno,” he announces, opening the door a crack to let her in, then slamming it shut hastily on the ragged autumn dawn chorus beginning outside. Fulk retreats, and they hear low conversation followed by a chuckle from Freya. Their eyes meet, and each knows how the other longs to be in the next door room, in the world of the ordinary, uncluttered by the wills of great men or the obligations of history.

  “I wish William was dead,” says Odo suddenly, bringing his fist down on the table with ferocious savagery.

  “No, you don’t. If you wished that, you wouldn’t be you. Oh, do stop prowling around like a performing bear, you make me nervous.”

  “I can’t stay still, it hurts too much.”

  Stepping into his path, she puts her arms around him again. “It’s cold. Hold me.”

  He hesitates. “I don’t know…”

  “Only hold me.” She shivers and he yields, enfolding her in his sable cloak, pushing back her hood and kissing her hair which smells of salt and apples.

  She feels him harden against her belly, thinks of their daughter, growing there between them in her watery sanctuary. She lifts her face and lets him kiss her mouth, her mouth telling him of the extent and difference of her love for him, her body bent to him, muscle and bone, while her blood flows into the life of her child. Her love is not less, but it has changed direction, reordered priorities. They have made this baby together, out of a sweetness most people never know, a blessing unsought and undeserved, but the child is hers now, her responsibility. Yet his mouth is so lovely, with its cardamom taste and its agile tongue, and the syrupy warmth in the pit of her stomach so seductive. Surely a moment of forgetfulness can do no harm.

  They kiss for a long time, holding themselves very still, almost self-contained, as though their kiss is frozen in isolation from the working of the rest of their bodies. They are like a pair of virgins on their wedding night, he thinks, uncertain how to answer the promptings of their flesh. How do you make love, in the knowledge that it will be the last time? Where do you begin?

  And suddenly he cannot bear it, the realisation that they are not one, can never be one on this Earth, hopelessly divided by what most draws them together. Pulling away from her, tenderly contemplating the slight pink rash his stubble has left on her chin, he says,

  “Please don’t make me be parted from you. How can I live?”

  She caresses his cheek with her fingertips. “Think of John. You will live for him, and our baby.” She takes his hand and lays it on her belly, but he feels, not the way it is beginning to distend, the fabric of her gown stretched across the little hard mound, but her stillness, her inwardness. “And new loves, other children.”

  What she says is so appalling he fails to hear the brittleness in her voice, like a fine layer of ice smoothed over a pool full of deep currents. He shakes his head emphatically. “No,” he says, “never. Never, as I live and breathe.”

  “Oh, nonsense. Women admire you, I see it in the way some of them have treated me. And you have wealth and power, the most effective love potions.”

  “Yet not sufficient to keep you.”

  “A new mistress would be the best way of forgetting us. There is nothing deader than an old love when a new one comes along. Find someone you can take to court. Live contentedly, Odo, stop fighting.”

  “How can I?” The question escapes him on a sob.

  Disentangling herself from his arms, she is full of pity as she considers which words to speak and which to keep to herself. His face is as wan as the autumn morning knocking at the shutters. The image of Lady Edith, dancing alone to a tune heard only in her head, twists onto the horizon of her memory. “Because…” she begins, lowering her arms to her sides.

  “Yes?”

  “When I…ran away from you, and went to Edith, I suppose I had some notion that we could simply take up where we had left off, she and I. Then when she told me about you, and I realised there was no escape, I knew.”

  “Knew?”

  “That there was no place left for me, nowhere I belonged any more. You see, Odo, I don’t belong with you, even now, I never have. Think about it. The very first time you held me, we were at odds over the representation of King Harold’s death. We fell in love in spite of ourselves, didn’t we?”

  “But my dream…”

  “If I had not been so close to the man your brother usurped, I would never have been in your dream. I don’t believe that dream shows we were meant to live together at all.”

  “And the child?”

  “Is mine. Unless you want to hand her over to William and me to the gallows.”

  “It wouldn’t come to that,” he scoffs. “The worst they’d do is send you on a pilgrimage or something. You did what you did from the best of motives.”

  “They’d kill me. That’s what they’ve intended from the beginning and you know it, or we wouldn’t be here. My time is over, Odo, but yours is just beginning. It’s an age for men like you, lawmakers, organisers, men with an eye for the perpendicular. Do you know the meaning of my name?”

  He raises his eyebrows. Now where is she going? “I believe it means elf-gift. Aelfgytha.”

  She nods and looks up at him. Looks like an elf-gift, he thinks, her eyes huge above the sharp, delicate bones of her cheeks, all light and darkness. Spirit. Sprite.

  “But where are the elves now, Odo?” she asks softly. “All imprisoned in stone crypts? If you love me, you must let me go. It is my choice.”

  Silence. Odo, the preacher, the persuader, is at a loss for words. Credo ut intelligam, the brothers at Bec used to insist, not the other way around, and after so many years of struggle, the truth of Anselm’s dictum is revealed to him by the daughter of a Saxon fishmonger. Love first, understanding second, if you’re lucky.

  Suddenly, she smiles and reaches out to him. “Come here, we haven’t long. Let’s not be miserable. Tell me, what are you going to do about the hanging now you’ve sent Sister Jean away?”

  He tells her he has no intention of finishing the hanging; he no longer has the heart for it. He will send the rest of the women back to their families and pull down the atelier; the stone can be used in the building of the new castle. “And besides,” he adds, “I’m not the man who wanted it. I no longer find it so easy to see reasons to celebrate or commemorate what we did. Perhaps I’m a relic also, whatever you say.”

  “You can’t not finish it,” she bursts out. “What a betrayal. You prised us all out of our lives to do it for you, and look at the price some of us have paid. Margaret, Alwys’ hand. Me, I suppose, though perhaps you might say I got what I paid for. And another thing: once it is finished, you look at it very carefully and then decide what you think it celebrates. It may not be as straightforward as you imagine.”

  “Oh, stop it, Gytha, please. What do I care about the bloody tapestry?”

  “You must care!”

  “Well, I don’t. At the moment I feel…as though I’m being eaten from the inside out by a manticore.”

  “Oh really,” she teases, “anyone else might come up with a wolf, or a bear. For you, a manticore. Remind me how one is made.”

  “With the body of a lion, a man’s head and a scorpion’s tale, and spines, like a porcupine.”

  “A devil’s hedgehog.”

  He laughs.

  “That’s better,” she says. “When you start work again on the hanging, have one put in it.”

  “A devil’s hedgehog. I like that. I shall remember…” Suddenly one of the horses outside whickers nervously. Odo’s right hand flies to the hilt of his sword. “Fulk? What’s out there?” He runs through to the larder and peers cautiously around the rear door, Fulk just behind him, to see the horse nose to nose with a startled looking badger, no doubt disorientated by the daylight. The two men laugh with relief. Fulk swings his daughter up in his arms and deposits her in the doorway to look at the sight, and only then does Odo realise the cloud has dispersed, and shards of sunlight are
piercing the forest from the east, casting a tangle of long blue shadows across the clearing where the lodge stands.

  “Get ready,” he says to Fulk. Gytha, standing in the arch adjoining the two rooms, raises her hands to tighten the clasp at the neck of her cloak.

  “No,” says Odo, taking her by the elbow and guiding her back into the principal room. “I mean for you to have this.” He removes her cloak, then his own, which he drapes around her shoulders, pulling it solicitously close over her chest. Its weight makes her stagger. “There are jewels sewn into the seams,” he explains. “No coin, for that would make you too easy to identify, but enough stones and pearls to keep you and…our daughter until…until…” He falters. Until what, he cannot bear to imagine. He ploughs on, clinging to what he knows and can control. “You must take the horses Fulk and Freya rode here. You ride the chestnut. I know she’s big, but she’s the most docile mare in my stable, and she will take good care of you. Freya can double up with Fulk, or you, or…”

  “Odo, my darling, I think we can manage to sort out two horses and a mule between us.”

  “Which way will you go?”

  “I’m not telling you that.”

  “No, of course not. I shouldn’t have asked. Habit. I’m sorry.” He turns away from her abruptly. “I feel so ashamed.”

  “Ashamed?” She touches his shoulder.

  “That with everything I have, I couldn’t protect you.” His head hangs, and his arms, as though the sinews have snapped, leaving him powerless over his body. He hears again the wisdom of the anchorite. In the end, you know, we are all like Saint Peter. We betray what is nearest to us and to God.

  “But you could. I never doubted it. You would have fought off everyone, William’s men, Lanfranc’s. We decided this, remember; we chose to do it this way, for the baby. Standing here, you’re ten times braver than any great lord defending a castle.” Grabbing his upper arms, she turns him to face her. His eyes are dark-ringed and swollen with tears. He looks so lost, but what can she do? “Kiss me,” she entreats him after a pause, but instead of taking her in his arms, he starts to unbuckle his sword belt. She frowns at him.

  “I’m not going to kiss you with a sword between us, only the baby, what joins, not what severs.” He lays the sword on the table, then turns and puts his arms around her, his movements slow and deliberate, as though he is under water. She lifts her face to him, eyes closed, wanting only his smell, the length of his body against hers, his erection pressing into the base of her belly. Can the baby feel it, she wonders? His curling eyelashes and shaky breath. His lovely mouth. Carrying her back to a staircase in another life, a private world caught between gossiping embroiderers and a grumbling army, a first kiss that was meant to be a camel. Hugging him close, her fingers digging in between his ribs, she yearns to be one flesh with him, indistinguishable, indivisible, then her daughter says, whispering through the cord that binds them, That’s my prerogative, if you let me live.

  Gently, she lifts her hands to his face and prises their lips apart with her fingers. Though she can still feel the pressure of his mouth the way, she thinks, Alwys must still feel her missing hand. “The sun’s up, I have to go.”

  He nods. He does not want to break the spell of their kiss by speaking. He releases her from his arms, hands lingering on the rise of her hips.

  “Odo?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s one more thing I want to say. We’re true lovers, aren’t we? So I’ll always be with you. Sleeping, waking, wherever you are and whoever else you’re with. I’ll be in your heart and soul and dreams. You can always talk to me, and I’ll always answer, and one day, when you can, you’ll find me again. It’s just that…what we have…had…it’s like the comet, a wonderful, beautiful moment of light that shoots across the sky and disappears, and then comes back, but changed. Am I making any sense?”

  He shakes his head. “Not really, but I love listening to it. I wish…”

  Putting her fingers to his lips again, she says, in a low, unsteady voice, “No more wishes.”

  “No more wishes, but…” Raising his arms, he unhooks the chain holding the Tear of the Virgin and fastens it around Gytha’s neck. “For your safety, with your journey, and the birth and everything, and for our little girl. A christening gift.”

  “What shall I call her?”

  “She’s your daughter, you choose.”

  ***

  When Gytha and her small party are mounted ready to leave, she turns to face him, standing in the doorway to the lodge. Everything falls away, birdsong, the sigh of wind in the upper branches, the horses champing their bits, Thecla grizzling with exhaustion, the soft slap of Juno’s tail slapping her master’s leather gaiters as she stands at his side, wagging hopefully. They are alone, and the look they exchange contains nothing but themselves. It is without questions or answers, without desire, despair or joy, past or future, doubts or promises, but a look present, essential and unwavering, not distracted by the tiniest curve of a lip or arch of a brow. Not a muscle moves, not a breath is drawn, neither to mist over the past or give life to a future. And after a space of time which is perfect, neither sentimentally long nor brutally short, she gathers her reins and kicks her horse forward, feeling the sun on her back.

  ***

  Odo does not immediately move from the doorway. A part of him fears she may glance back over her shoulder, and if he goes inside he will miss it. But he knows better and, roused by dew dripping from the thatch down the back of his neck, he ducks under the lintel to do what has to be done to put the next part of his plan into action. Drawing his dagger from his belt, he picks up Gytha’s discarded cloak from the table and begins to cut and tear at the fabric, disciplining himself to take no heed of the loved, perfidious scent lying in wait among its folds to ambush his heart, holding it up from time to time to inspect his effort. He becomes so absorbed in his task, the work of hand and arm as he grasps the knife, raises it, plunges it into the cloak and rips down, untangles the loose threads and begins again, that Juno’s sudden outbreak of frenzied barking makes him jump as though he has just awoken from a deep sleep.

  Boar perhaps; he noticed scrapes on their way here, shallow nests of earth surrounded by broken branches and uprooted brambles. Or an inquisitive buck. Clamping one hand over the dog’s muzzle to silence her, he creeps toward the open door, knife poised, keeping out of the wedge of sunlight that ripples over the uneven floor. Footsteps, men’s footsteps. Unmistakable, a cautious crunching of small twigs and acorn cups, then a pause, as Juno stops barking and the stranger is obviously wondering what has silenced her. William’s men already? Or Lanfranc’s? Or perhaps just one of his verderers doing his rounds. Odo wishes the steps would start up again, then he would know how many of them are out there. No horses anyway, other than his own, still tethered at the back of the building. He waits, holding his breath, feeling his body’s tension, muscles knotted between his shoulder blades and in the backs of his calves, the quivering, velvety muzzle of the dog under one hand, the smooth grip of the knife perfectly worn to the contours of the other.

  Finally the stranger starts to move again, obviously satisfied the barking dog was somewhere else in the forest, the proximity of its voice a trick of the crowding trees. Tree sprites are known to gather sounds and toss them from one to another like children playing with a ball. Odo detects only one set of footsteps and relaxes a little. Not soldiers, then, for they would not come singly. Just one of the woodsmen, or a poacher who is going to get a very nasty surprise when he comes face to face with his landlord. Odo steps out from behind the door, his dog at his heels.

  “Norman.”

  “Good God in heaven. You.”

  The cloak of white lambskins has lost the strange, inner luminosity he remembers but instead seems grubby, dirt patched, the hem stuck with twigs and dead leaves. The Saxon has a gaunt, neglected air, more common vagabond than resurrected martyr. Only his eyes, dense as moss in the oblique forest light, still have the
power to make Odo’s soul shudder in his skin. He adjusts his grip on his knife. Surely this meeting was meant; just as his love affair with Gytha was preordained, so is this encounter with its nemesis. It is so perfectly opportune his heart lifts to think of it, shaking off the mire of grief and loneliness which had threatened to engulf it. This is a sign from God, the ram caught in the thicket, the burning bush.

  Odo is quick for a big man; his agility always catches his enemies unawares because his body speaks to them of immovable solidity, of the need to besiege rather than attack first. Before Sebastian can make any move to defend himself, Odo runs at him, hooking one heel around the back of his ankle and shouldering him in the chest to knock him off balance. He intends his spur to slice through Sebastian’s Achilles’ tendon, ensuring he won’t get up again, but instead it becomes entangled in his cloak, pulling Odo down on top of him. The two men crash to the ground with a crunch of bone and the whump of air forced out of Sebastian’s lungs. Odo’s knife flies out of his hand and skitters along the ground out of his reach. His sword, he realises, furious with himself, is still lying on the table in the lodge.

  And what if Sebastian’s followers are near at hand? Though his instincts tell him the man is alone; he lacks the confident bearing of a well- supported leader, and the forest remains locked in its particular brand of rustling, sighing, chirruping silence. As likely as not his men dispersed Sebastian’s flock so effectively when they found Margaret they took fright and never reassembled. That is the way of these marginal groups, without the proper social structures to hold them together.

  Before his opponent has a chance to catch his breath, Odo clamps his hands around his neck and presses hard on his windpipe with his thumbs.