Elizabeth Chadwick - The Conquest

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 his 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.