'How do you intend naming him?' she asked, thinking that the sooner the babe was christened, the better.

'Goldwin desires him to be Harold, but I am not so sure. It doesn't seem to be a name that carries good fortune with it.' Ailith sighed. 'Edward perhaps. It is a good English name, but with Norman connections.'

Hulda snorted and folded her arms vigorously beneath her breasts, making it quite clear what she thought of that notion. 'And if King Edward hadn't been so fond of all things Norman, our King Harold need never ha' died.'

Ailith chewed her lip. 'Hulda, I know what you think about the Normans. God knows, the ambition of their Duke has caused much grief in this household, but I want you to do something for me.' Hulda raised her brows, and Ailith plunged on before her nerve failed her. 'Will you take a message to Felice de Remy at the convent of St Aethelburga, and tell her that I send my greetings and the news that I have been safely delivered of a son?'

Hulda eyed her darkly. 'I don't know as I should,' she muttered.

'Please, I would not ask unless it was important. It may be that we will need her goodwill in the months to come, and I want to keep our friendship fresh in her memory. I promised I would send word as soon as I was delivered, and she did the same.'

'Very well, mistress,' Hulda capitulated, still looking none too impressed. 'But it will have to wait until I'm up that way. I'll not make a special journey'

And with that Ailith had to be content.

Goldwin came home at dusk. His face was grey with fatigue and Ailith could see from a single glance that he had pushed himself too far. But there was a sparkle in his eyes that had been absent for a long, long time. He sat down heavily beside her on the bed and she presented him with the son born in his absence.

Goldwin cradled the sleeping baby gingerly in his arms and gazed into the puckered little face. 'God save us, Aili, I've never seen anything so small in all my life,' he said in a voice of wonder.

'Hulda says he'll grow.' Ailith's voice was a trifle defensive, but then she smiled. 'His eyes are going to be dark like yours, and his hair too, I think. And he has all the proper equipment to make him a fine man.'

Goldwin kissed her clumsily and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. 'My son,' he said, his throat working. 'Perhaps I can think about rebuilding our lives now.' He returned the baby to Ailith and left the bed to sit down stiffly on the stool beside it. Wulfhild approached to remove his boots, for he was unable to bend over and manage for himself. Sigrid brought him bread and ale.

'Did you hear any news?' Ailith asked as Goldwin began to eat. At first he just nibbled, but as his appetite took hold, his bites became larger and more appreciative.

'The Norman Duke is to be offered the crown and London will officially surrender to him on the morrow or the day after,' he said between rotations of his jaw. 'There is no-one of Harold's status to hold us together any more, and our best warriors are gone… as well this household knows.'

'So the Norman army is to enter London?' Ailith asked apprehensively.

Goldwin nodded. 'Resistance would be foolish, and I have heard from all quarters that the Norman Duke is a man of his word. If we surrender to him now, he promises to be lenient.' Goldwin rested his gaze on the sleeping baby in her arms. 'At least we have certainty now,' he said in a voice full of weary relief. 'It was the not knowing that was killing me.'

Two days later the Normans rode into London to claim it as the greatest spoil of the English conquest thus far.

In the convent of St Aethelburga, Felice flung her arms around Aubert's neck and greeted him with floods of tears and passionate kisses. 'Oh, Aubert, I thought I would never see you again!' she sobbed. 'Every day has been like a siege!'

'I know, I know,' he soothed, his hands stroking. 'I have lived through torments myself, wondering if you were all right and unable to reach you.'

'Just look at the gift you left me,' she sniffed, patting the enormous swell of her belly. 'I almost miscarried in the early days, and now he doesn't want to come out!'

Smiling, Aubert let her guide his hand to her belly and was rewarded by a vigorous kick. His smile broadened.

'Ailith bore a son two days ago,' she told him. 'Their midwife came to tell me this morning – and a grumpy old besom she was too.' Her expression grew pensive. 'I wish that I was Ailith and that it was all over.' A note of fear entered her voice and she checked herself, knowing that if she dwelt on thoughts of her labour, her qualms would only intensify in the direction of terror. 'Goldwin was badly wounded in the battle against the Norwegians, and Ailith lost both her brothers at Hastings. I haven't seen her for almost three months.'

'I'll make sure that Ailith and Goldwin suffer no hardship under William's rule,' Aubert promised, and then grimaced ruefully. 'I do not suppose that the sight of my face will be welcome at their door, but I'll do my best to heal the breach.'

'I'll be glad if you can.' She looked tentatively at her husband. 'I don't want to return to the house yet, I'll feel much safer here until our son is born. The nuns know healing and midwifery.'

'Of course, I would expect you to do no other. Besides, the house is likely to be bursting at the seams with billeted knights for a few weeks at least. Do you remember Rolf de Brize?'

Felice laughed with something of her old humour. 'How can any woman not remember Rolf? I have never met a man so beautiful, or so dangerous!'

'A good thing I am a trusting, unjealous husband!' Aubert chuckled. 'He's going to stable his horses at the house and live there awhile. William is going to grant him the lands of a dead thegn on England's south coast, but he cannot take them up until the Duke has been anointed and officially pronounced rightful king. Rolf almost fell prey to looters on Hastings field, but he's recovering well.'

'Were you involved in the battle?'

The humour in Aubert's face abruptly died, and Felice realised that she had made a bad mistake in asking him. 'No,' he said after a moment. 'But I saw it from the baggage lines on Telham Hill, and it will stay with me until my dying day. I have never seen such waste, so many good men. I watched the English shield wall smash our cavalry in the first hours, and in turn I watched our cavalry smash their shield wall.' He drew his hand down over his face. 'Do you know, when we left Hastings, there were piles of bodies rotting where they lay, and the looters were so fat with plunder that they ceased combing the battlefield. Flocks of carrion birds arrived every morning at dawn and stayed feeding until dusk. Even the Duke was moved to pity by the sight of so many dead men.'

Felice's stomach churned. She compressed her lips, her colour fading. 'Aubert, no more,' she begged.

His gaze refocused, and he quickly sat her down on the spartan convent bed. 'I won't speak of it again,' he promised. 'Indeed, I did not mean to say as much. Are you all right?'

Felice swallowed and managed a valiant nod. She did not think that she was going to be sick, but her stomach was still queasy when she thought of Aubert being involved in such an undertaking.

'Now then,' he said, changing the subject somewhat jerkily, but with firmness of purpose. 'Have you thought of a name for our offspring while you've been waiting for me?'

CHAPTER 14

Ailith looked down at her son in exasperation. He had fallen asleep at her breast scarcely before he had drawn any sustenance, and now both of her nipples were dripping with milk of which she seemed to possess an over-abundance. Hulda had shown her how to express the surplus, and frequently she had to, feeling like a prize milch cow.

Little Harold, as Goldwin had insisted he be christened, was almost two weeks old. Ailith had recovered magnificently from the birth, and despite being scolded by Wulfhild, who was of the opinion that no woman should rise from childbed for at least a month, she was picking up the threads of her household activities. If she had stayed abed any longer, Ailith knew that she would have died of boredom. Harold was such a quiet baby and spent so much of his time asleep that she was scarcely aware of his existence. Sometimes she worried about his lack of response, about how tiny and frail he was. Even the act of feeding at her breast exhausted him. Hulda had been taciturn in her responses to Ailith's anxious queries, merely saying that it took some infants longer than others to recover from the ordeal of being born.

Goldwin adored his son and would sit by the cradle, a doting look on his face as Harold closed a tiny fist around his scarred blacksmith's forefinger. During the brief occasions when Harold was wide awake, Goldwin would carry him down to the forge and show him everything that would one day be his.

Sighing deeply, Ailith checked the baby's swaddling. It was still clean and she put him down while she bound up her heavy breasts with a linen band and shrugged up her chemise and undergown.

Below the sleeping loft, the hall was silent. Sigrid had gone to visit her old mother in the town with instructions to buy a bundle of kindling on her way home, and Goldwin was absent purchasing supplies for the forge. Harold's birth had jolted him out of his depression. Now that the Londoners had accepted William of Normandy for their king — he was to be crowned at Yule — Goldwin anticipated a return to stability. Even his battle wound seemed to be healing at last.