The Conquest

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  The youth folded his arms and his wide brow developed three horizontal creases. 'I don't know that I should.'

  Julitta hopped from foot to foot and never took her eyes off him. Mauger could be moody and difficult, but more often than not she could cozen him round.

  'Oh come on, quickly then,' he capitulated with a sigh, and swung her up across Apollo's broad, dappled back. The horse snorted and glanced round at her as if to ask what she thought she was doing. Julitta patted him and giggled. From the vantage point of his withers, she could see far more of the world and in turn let the world see her. Mauger obligingly untied the horse and with a click of his tongue, began to lead him on a circuit of the ward.

  'Give me the rein,' Julitta commanded. 'Let me ride on my own.'

  Mauger shook his head, I don't think that is a good idea, young mistress.'

  Just for a minute.' She tossed her head. 'Papa lets me, you know he does.'

  Mauger sighed again, 'just one circuit,' he said, 'and then you go straight back to your mother.' He handed her up the reins and Julitta took them competently, her small face filling with pleasure. Her father had introduced her to a saddle almost before she could walk. When she was two, he had bought her a tiny Hibernian pony in London and by the time she was three, she was riding the larger animals he had brought from the north with total confidence. A warhorse was still slightly out of her scope to adult opinion, but Julitta had no such reservations. Besides, she and Apollo were old friends.

  She trotted him around the palisade and reached the far side away from the gateway. Turning him, she was in time to see her father, Aubert and Benedict coming back from their ride. Julitta bounced up and down and shouted across to them, but they were too wrapped up in their own conversation to pay heed. Her high-pitched cry startled Apollo. He half-reared, and took off as if a bee had stung his rump. Julitta clung to the reins and gripped with her thighs. His bare back was slippery and her legs were short, making her seat more than precarious. She saw the ground blurring beneath his hooves, saw Mauger's white, horrified face, his mouth open in a square yell. The grey thundered past him and he was forced to jump aside or be ridden down.

  Now she had the attention of the company by the gate. Her father's expression was one of furious incredulity, Benedict's one of astonishment. Squawking hens scattered frantically. A woman flattened herself against the side of the well, her hand cupping her mouth. Someone screamed. Julitta pulled on the reins to stop the horse, leaning back, using all her weight, but she might as well have been a feather on his back. Apollo swerved to avoid a wheelbarrow of dung, struck the side of a storage shed and stumbled. Julitta was flung from the saddle to the dusty bailey floor. By a miracle the horse kept his feet, and staggered to a halt, sweating and trembling.

  Julitta lay stunned, unable to move. She had bitten her tongue, and a thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, convincing the onlookers that she was more badly hurt than was the case. In a daze she saw Benedict's worried face bending over her. She tried to smile at him and speak his name, but her wits were still numbed and all that emerged was a bloody croak. Then the boy was pushed roughly aside by her father.

  'Princess?' he said, and then she heard him swear softly under his breath. He ran his hands over her, the way he did over his horses, gently but firmly seeking for broken bones. 'Can you sit up?'

  'I… I think so, Papa.' She took his hand and pulled herself up. The world tilted up and down a few times, then settled on a level. A pile of stable sweepings had cushioned her fall; the smell of dung and urine overpowered her nostrils. 'Open your mouth.'

  She did so, and saw a look of relief cross her father's face, followed swiftly by a darkening anger. 'Little harm done to you at least,' he pronounced. 'What were you doing riding Apollo in the first place?'

  Julitta stuck her finger in her mouth, touched the bitten edge of her tongue, and then looked at the thin streak of blood. She saw Mauger's bleached face among the crowd of onlookers and knew that she had got both of them into terrible trouble. Then, beyond him, she saw her mother forcing her way forwards, her gown dusty with flour. Julitta started to sob for Ailith, knowing full well that the more she could manipulate her mother's heartstrings, the less severe the punishment was likely to be.

  Ailith snatched her daughter up in her arms and Julitta clung to her like a little limpet, burying her face in the soft haven of her mother's neck.

  'Can't you keep that child in your sight for more than a minute!' Rolf snarled at Ailith. 'God's sweet life! First you let her wander off by the dew ponds, now I come home and find her almost killing herself and a costly warhorse into the bargain. Don't you have eyes in your head, woman?'

  Ailith recoiled from the force of his anger. 'I asked her to feed the hens for me. When I looked out she was holding the empty bowl and talking to Mauger, so I judged it safe to go and put some bread to prove.' Her reply was calm, but her body trembled with the effort of remaining so. Her eyes flickered to the crowd of witnesses before whom she was being humiliated.

  'Not safe enough, it seems.'

  'My trust was misplaced.'

  This time it was Rolf who recoiled as if she had slapped him. Ailith turned her back on him and walked with dignity towards the kitchens. Julitta perched on her mother's hip, one frightened blue eye peeping out from sanctuary at the havoc her impulsive act had wrought. The witnesses to the incident quickly melted away. Aubert took Benedict by the shoulder and tactfully withdrew.

  Rolf cursed and dug his fingers through his hair in exasperation and anger, more than half of it self-directed. He ought to go after Ailith and make peace between them, but in his current state of defensiveness and tension, that was impossible. He would only bellow at her. Her remark about misplaced trust had struck at the core of his hidden guilt. If she could not trust Julitta, how much less could she trust him after what had happened earlier this morning at Inga's cottage? In his mind's eye he saw Inga lying upon her narrow bed, her body drenched in the sweat of pleasure, a frown contorting her face as she twisted and writhed. It had been a battlefield, each sound and gesture of need a blow, and neither of them willing to be merciful. Even to think of it now made him shiver.

  Swallowing manfully, Mauger stood before Rolf to take his punishment. 'It was all my fault, my lord,' he owned, standing to attention. 'I should have known better than to let her ride Apollo.'

  'Yes, you should.' It would have been easy for Rolf to vent his rage upon Mauger's hapless shoulders; too easy. He bit his tongue and began to examine the grey for damage.

  'She… she said that you permitted her.'

  'Not without a leading rein, but I do not suppose she told you that.'

  'No, my lord.' Mauger cleared his throat. 'I'll know better in future.'

  'We all will,' Rolf said, and left it at that.

  The day continued to be fraught with near-disaster and frayed tempers. Scarcely had Rolf checked Apollo and found him none the worse for his experience than the royal representative arrived to look at the horse, and turned out to be none less than King William's eldest son Robert. He brought with him a sizeable entourage of young knights and hangers-on, all of whom had to be extended Ulverton's hospitality. They were clients and future clients, the men who put the bread on Rolf's table. That occasionally they must eat it was well understood.

  Ailith, still simmering from the altercation in the yard and with Julitta underfoot, was fit to be tied. Rolf avoided her, apart from issuing curt instructions concerning the provision of a meal for their guests. She snapped at him that she was perfectly capable of preparing food without his interference, after which everything conspired against her. The milk curdled, the griddle cakes burned, the meat was as tough as saddle leather. Stony-faced, Rolf presided over a meal that had nothing to commend it apart from the mead which was served at the merciful end with fresh fruit and nuts which at least could not be ruined.

  Robert of Normandy was a charming young man, light-hearted and exuberant. He treated the shortco
mings of Rolf's table as a huge joke and being familiar with the superb order of the household at Brize-sur-Risle, baited his host mercilessly about the differences.

  'I suppose heaven is all the sweeter when you've experienced hell,' he grinned, eyeing a charred griddle cake, and then a flustered, red-faced Ailith. 'But you're a strange one to prefer the second for ten months of the year.'

  'It is not always like this,' Rolf muttered, feeling thoroughly humiliated beneath Robert's heavy-handed jesting. He glowered at Ailith. His wife would never have been caught out like this. Arlette, whatever the difficulties, would have provided a superlative meal and maintained her grace before the guests. Felice was doing her best, but her efforts only made Ailith appear all the less competent. She looked as if she belonged in a byre, and Rolf was ashamed.

  By the time Robert of Normandy departed, Apollo in the care of one of his grooms, Ailith was tearful with exhaustion and Rolf was ready to explode. Instead of comforting her and trying to mend the breach that had opened between them, he saddled up a horse and rode out alone, shunning all company.

  'Forget today,' Felice advised, and with her own hands prepared Ailith a calming blackberry tisane and made her drink it in the quiet of the solar. Despite Ailith's worried protest, she sent Julitta out with Benedict to play. 'You cannot cage the child,' she gently admonished. 'Rolf only shouted at you from his own fear this morning. It was unjust and he knows it.'

  Ailith sipped the drink. 'Then why hasn't he come to me and told me himself?'

  'He didn't have a chance. The Lord Robert arrived right on top of Julitta's prank. Neither of you were expecting so important a visitor. Tempers were bound to be frayed.' She gave Ailith a consoling pat on the shoulder. 'It will blow over like a summer squall. Tomorrow you will both laugh at yourselves.'

  Ailith digested this in silence and then looked up at her friend with troubled eyes. 'Sometimes I think that he is tiring of me.'

  'Ah no, Ailith, never!' Felice said quickly. 'Men have their moods just as women do. God knows, sometimes I want to kill Aubert more than he wants to kill me!'

  Ailith gave her a wan smile. 'You're a true friend.'

  'Who speaks the truth. Stop worrying, Ailith. Dab that rose scent I brought from London between your breasts and loosen your hair for him. You'll soon see whether or not he's tired.'

  'That's what I'm afraid of,' Ailith said.

  CHAPTER 33

  SPRING 1076

  Mauger had been drinking for more than half the day and in that respect was little different from most of the men among the company at Brize-sur-Risle who had gathered to celebrate the betrothal of Rolf's daughter Gisele to Benedict de Remy. Unlike the older men, however, Mauger, at eighteen, had not yet learned to hold his drink. The wine was yellow, the kind that was reserved for feast days and holy days in preference to the rougher red draughts of everyday usage. Its effect upon Mauger was to turn him from a taciturn, polite young man, into a loud and slightly aggressive individual. Twice he had almost begun quarrels which his irritated father had had to dampen down.

  At Lady Arlette's side, Gisele sat like a votive statuette removed from a church aumbry to preside over the feast. A jewelled circlet was bound around her tightly plaited fine hair. Her blue silk gown was lavishly embroidered and decorated with braid, and on her narrow wrists there clinked a fortune in wilver and gold bracelets, some of them betrothal gifts. Mauger studied her calm, glazed facade and saw no resemblance at all to her little firespark of a half-sister who had almost got him crucified back in the autumn with that trick on Apollo.

  'Nothing like Julitta, is she?' he commented over-loudly to the ten-year-old prospective bridegroom, and filtered the dregs of his final cup of wine through his teeth, Tancred having banned him from consuming any more.

  Benedict smiled and looked uncertain. He was an assured child, but not confident enough to deal with Mauger's drunken meanderings. He looked round hopefully for his parents, but they were engrossed in conversation with other betrothal guests. Rolf had taken himself off to talk business to another horse-breeder, and Tancred was with him.

  'Who's Julitta?' Gisele asked curiously.

  'Lady Ailith's daughter.' Mauger suppressed a belch. 'A wildcat if ever there was one.'

  'She doesn't mean it,' Benedict said uneasily. He had been primed by his parents before this visit to Brize, to say as little as possible concerning the domestic situation at Ulverton.

  'Oh I think she does,' Mauger retorted. 'Mark me, Lady Ailith has lost the battle with that one. If her father does not deal with her now as she deserves, he'll reap trouble later.'

  At this point, the volume of his voice alerted Aubert to the indiscretions being spouted, and with consummate diplomacy, he excused himself from his conversation and took command of Mauger, persuading the young man that it was time to visit the latrines and ease his bladder. But the damage had already been done.

  Arlette lay in bed waiting for Rolf, listening to the sound of Gisele's soft breathing on the pallet close by and watching the flicker of the night candle create shadows on the whitewashed walls of the great bedchamber. She brooded upon Mauger's words at the betrothal feast. They had caught her awareness, but not her surprise.

  Rolf had planted unease at the back of her mind several years ago with his insistence that establishing his trade in England was just as important as nurturing his existing trade in Normandy. The crux of the matter was that Brize-sur-Risle had ceased to be Rolf's harbour and she his anchor. Even when he was here in body, she sensed that his mind and spirit were elsewhere. Arlette accepted that Rolf was unfaithful to her; his ruttings were an overspill of his restless nature, but she could no longer tolerate being ignored and taken for granted the times that he was home.

  Instead of a great marriage for Gisele, he had arranged a match to a merchant's son, albeit that the merchant was very rich, high in King William's favour, and could have bought himself titles a hundred times over if he so wished. It still went against the grain. Rolf had expected her to bow her head and acquiesce, and like a milksop she had done so. 'Yes, Rolf, you ire right, it will be a good match.' But not what she had wanted.

  And now Mauger had mentioned Lady Ailith's daughter Julitta. Arlette had heard very little about the English widow Ailith — too little in hindsight. All she knew was that the woman's husband had been an acquaintance of Aubert de Remy's and had been killed at the time of Duke William's coronation. The young widow had entered the de Remy household as a wet nurse to Benedict. Then Rolf had offered her the position of chatelaine at Ulverton to save her from the attentions of an unwanted suitor. No further information had seen forthcoming, although Arlette had deduced certain things or herself.

  Among Rolf's baggage there were garments that had been painstakingly sewn by another woman, and not just as a duty or chore. The tones suited Rolf's colouring perfectly, the stitches were skilled, and more damning than that, Arlette could feel the loving care that had gone into the making of the tunics, shirts and chausses. The Widow Ailith, whoever she might be, whatever she might look like, had cast her net and snared Rolf by the gills, of that Arlette was positive. And she had borne him a daughter, for Julitta was the name of Rolf's mother, and no Saxon woman was going to call her child by such a blatantly Norman name, unless she had good reason.

  Rolf entered the room, treading quietly so as not to disturb the sleepers in the ante chamber through which he had to pass. He glanced at Gisele's sleeping form, and then at the bed. Arlette met his look evenly. She was very tempted to confront him and demand to know the truth, but she checked herself. He was adept at skirting issues he did not wish to discuss, and if she pushed him too hard, he would only turn the fables and deposit all blame on her shoulders.

  'I expected you to be asleep,' he murmured.

  'I was thinking.'

  'About what?'

  'About today, about the future.' She watched him undress. At seven and thirty, his body was still lean and hard. The first glints of silver had appeared in hi
s hair, and the fine lines at his eye comers had deepened into permanent creases, but he remained a handsome, vital man. Aware of her scrutiny, he paused, a questioning half-smile on his lips, but she shook her head.

  'The feast went excellently,' he remarked, seeming to assume that her thoughts of today and the future consisted of thoughts about the betrothal. 'I can always trust you to rise to an occasion.'

  Smiling modestly, she thanked him, both pleased and surprised at his compliment. It was not usually within his scope to realise how hard she worked to grease the wheels of the household so that they turned seemingly without effort. 'Perhaps Gisele and I could come to England with you and see what Aubert de Remy has accomplished for himself in London,' she suggested.

  He made a non-committal sound and busied himself unwinding his cross garters.

  'I would like it very much,' she emphasised.

  'I will give it some thought,' he said, without raising his head. 'It is not something to be decided in a moment.'

  Arlette narrowed her eyes, but permitted the subject to drop, commenting instead upon how well the two children had conducted themselves during the betrothal ceremony and the feast that followed. The fact that he was quick to follow her lead, his expression relieved, compounded her suspicions and brought her to a decision of her own.

  CHAPTER 34

  Suitably dressed in an old patched gown and apron, her hair tied up in a kerchief, Ailith prepared to give Ulverton's hall a thorough scouring to remove the detritus of a hard winter and vet spring. It was early May now, the worst of the bad weather over so she hoped, and the warmth of the sun allied with the bright birdsong had filled her with a powerful energy.

  All the trestles were carried outside and stacked against the wall where the village carpenter started sorting through them and mending any damaged ones. The rank, mouldy floor rushes were broomed vigorously out of the door into the bailey and removed by the barrowload to the midden where the hens descended upon them in high delight.