'I'll find custom without his help,' Goldwin muttered through his teeth as Wulfhild served them with bacon pottage and Ailith unlaced her bodice to feed the baby. 'He lied to us, betrayed our trust. God's eyes, I'd rather do business with that red-haired horse-warrior than I would with Aubert de Remy. Wine-merchant, hah! To think of all the occasions he sat at our board listening to our conversation, and all the time he was gleaning information for William of Normandy. And then he has the gall to expect me to remain his friend!'

'I believe he is sorry,' Ailith murmured, trying to be fair. 'Perhaps he had no choice.' Harold did not want to wake up. She blew gently on his face. He grimaced, half-opened his eyes, took one attempt at her nipple, enough to make her milk drip, then returned to sleep. He had scarcely fed all day, indeed had scarcely woken up. She laid the palm of her hand against his little body, but he did not appear to have a fever. Perhaps in the morning she would ask Hulda to have a look at him.

'He can be as sorry as he likes,' Goldwin grunted. 'I have called him nithing and nithing he will remain. And from now on, you will have no more ado with that wife of his either.'

Ailith bit her lip in dismay. 'Aubert used you once,' she said. 'Now it is your turn to use him. He can find clients for you, rich Normans. Surely it is foolish to turn your back on what he can offer.'

'No!' Goldwin snapped. 'I will hear no more on the subject. Let that be an end to it!'

Ailith bowed her head over the baby and swallowed her exasperation. She knew Goldwin could be a stubborn ass when the mood was upon him, and trying to make him change his mind would only cause him to dig in his heels as hard as he could to the detriment of all common sense. She would hold her tongue today in the interests of using it tomorrow.

'I did not expect to find him so altered.' Aubert hunched over the desultory fire burning in the central hearth and rubbed his hands together. 'So bitter and angry when before he was so good-humoured and steady.'

'There have been a few changes since then,' Rolf observed wryly, glancing up from the piece of harness he was repairing. 'And he must have his pride. Don't worry about it, I'll bring him round.'

Aubert threw a kindling twig at him. 'How, by letting your destrier trample his garden?' he said acidly.

'The garden is his wife's domain, and her temper calmed when I spoke her fair and sweetened my words with a recompense of silver.' Rolf chuckled. 'If you thought her husband was angry, you should have seen her when I arrived in their garth. Dear Jesu, she was chasing Sleipnir with a besom, and she looked magnificent! I thought for a moment she was going to set about me as well. I half-wish she had,' he added wistfully.

Aubert glanced at him sharply. 'Duke William says that he will hang any soldier caught molesting the Londoners' women, and he will make no exception for rank.'

'Peace, Aubert, I did but jest,' Rolf said with amused irritation. 'I thought she was handsome, but I was admiring her the way I would admire a horse.'

'You mean you wondered what she was like to ride?' Aubert said archly.

Rolf shrugged. 'It went no further than a mild curiosity. I've no desire to fetch up a gelding. There are mares aplenty to mount in London without me chasing one that is not for sale.' Finished with the harness, he set it to one side. Not that he intended scouring London for a woman. He would happen on one soon enough, as he had happened on Gifu in Dover and Milburga in Winchester. He poured wine from the nearby pitcher into his cup. Although his face betrayed nothing to Aubert, the thought of Ailith was still on his mind. He was remembering her assaulting Sleipnir with the besom. The way her eyes had flashed, the gleam of her blond braids, the thrust of her jaw. Thinking back now, she reminded him of the huscarl who had died beside him on Senlac field. The warrior's axe lay among his baggage. Rolf had slicked it with oil and wrapped it in waxed linen to prevent the head from rusting. When the time came to claim his lands, he would hang the weapon on the wall of his new home as a trophy and a talisman.

Outside the door, a dog barked loudly in warning, and as Rolf and Aubert reached instinctively for their weapons, Rolf's watchman entered the house, followed by a young man dressed in a plain tunic and cloak. He proved to be a lay worker from St Aethelburga's whom the abbess had sent with a message for Aubert.

'Your lady wife has begun her labour. The Abbess asks that you come with all haste.'

'Is there something wrong?' Aubert sheathed his knife and reached for his cloak.

'I do not know, sir. The Abbess just said I was to fetch you.' The young man sniffed, sniffed again, and drew his cuff across his nose. His hands were red with cold.

'God grant you a healthy wife and child,' Rolf said as Aubert took his sword and went to the door which showed a narrow rectangle of late afternoon dusk. 'It would be auspicious if Felice were to be delivered on the day of our Duke's crowning.'

Aubert smiled, but the gesture was no more than a meaningless expansion of his lips as he ducked out into the cold.

Rolf thought that he had never seen the merchant look so worried. He tried to recall if he had been similarly distressed over Arlette when she had borne their first child, a stillborn son. He thought not, but then he had been able to immerse himself in the stud. He realised guiltily that since leaving Normandy, Arlette and Gisele had scarcely crossed his mind. Sometimes when he had been cold and wet and hungry on the circuitous six-week march from Hastings to London, he had remembered the roaring fire in the hearth at Brize-sur-Risle, the dainty glazed cups full of mulled cider, Arlette's little curd cakes that were gone in one bite and tasted like heaven, the minstrel plucking his crwth and singing of glory. On those occasions, he had been seized by nostalgia, but never homesickness, and his feelings were for Brize-sur-Risle in its entirety, not his slender, silver-haired wife.

When he returned to Normandy, he would take her an English tapestry for their chamber wall and some new tableware for the dais. That was sure to please her. Having dealt with his guilt to his own satisfaction, Rolf put Arlette from his thoughts.

CHAPTER 15

For nine months, sleeping and waking, Felice had lived with fear. Sometimes it affected her but mildly, a nagging anxiety she could almost forget. On other occasions it became pure terror that winkled her out from every crevice in which she tried to hide. Now, with each contraction it pounced on her, mauled her until she screamed with terror and pain, then let her go. But she knew that in the end, she would be devoured.

'Make it go away!' she wept to the nuns and frantically clutched her eaglestone. 'Oh please make it go away! Holy Mary, Blessed Virgin, help me!'

The nuns did their utmost to soothe her. They rubbed her swollen belly with herbal oils, they loosened her hair so that no knots would bind the babe in her womb. They gave her a calming tisane to drink, but she was so tense that it had no visible effect. The Abbess, a woman who was as pragmatic as she was compassionate, sent for Aubert and took Felice to task.

'You must calm yourself,' she said sternly. 'The bag of water has not yet broken, and when it does, you will need your strength to push.'

'Ave Maria, gratia plenia,' Felice whispered. Her brown gaze sought the aumbry and pleaded with the plaster statue of the Virgin presiding over her ordeal. Beneath her thighs the thick layer of bedstraw chafed her skin. The nuns had put it there the previous night when she had complained of low back ache. They said that it was to absorb the blood and fluids which would leak from her body as labour progressed. Ever since then, a vision of her life drip-dripping away had whetted the teeth of the predatory fear. She was going to die, she knew it. And when she was dead, one of the nuns would take a knife and rip open her belly to see if they could save her child.

Aubert arrived and was ushered into the birthing chamber. Usually men were allowed nowhere near such a sanctum, but the nuns were becoming desperate. Felice's screams had been heard throughout the convent until she had lost her voice.

'Aubert!' Felice pushed herself up on the mound of pillows. 'Aubert, I'm dying, aren't I? That's why they've sent for you!'

Removing his cloak and cap, Aubert sat on the bed and took her in his arms. 'If you were dying, they would have sent for a priest first,' he reassured. 'They summoned me because the Abbess thought it was the only way to calm you down.'

'But it hurts so! I don't like it, and it's getting worse!' Felice quivered in his embrace. The fierceness of another contraction tore through her loins and she gripped him, digging her nails into the soft wool of his tunic. 'I'm so frightened!' she gasped.

Aubert pulled a face. 'So am I when I see you like this. Felice, beloved, you cannot go into a battle believing that you will lose it. How would we have fared if Duke William had given up at Hastings? You must fight. Do as the nuns tell you, they are wise. I'll be here, I promise – if not beside you, then right outside the door.' He kissed her temple and her cheek, the trembling corner of her mouth.

As if from a great distance Felice heard his words. The strength of his arms around her gave them emphasis and a little of the darkness cleared from her mind. 'Help me, Aubert,' she whispered. 'Dear Jesu, help me.'

With Harold cradled in one arm, a pitcher of mead in the other, Ailith went down to the forge. She was worried about the baby. Although his eyes were open, they were dull, and every time he expelled air from his lungs, it was with a wheezy little grunt. Nor had he fed that morning and her breasts were bulging with the discomfort of excess milk. Hulda had promised to come and look at him, but not until later in the day because she was attending a birth.