The fire began to crackle and Wilfrid pulled forward two high-backed, carved oak chairs. Then he excused himself, saying he would see about some refreshments, and Josse and Helewise were left alone. Josse paced slowly away down the length of the hall, touching the old stones, smoothing his fingers across the shiny surface of the table, looking everywhere.
Helewise stared into the fire …
She is in the hall and her new husband is impatient with the servants who bustle around them, telling them to hurry up and bring this meal they’ve prepared. But it is clear that there is no malice in his words for the fat woman and the slim young man who serve the food are clearly amused and trying not to laugh out loud. She has a sudden fierce hope that Elena will be happy here, that she will like the fat woman and the slim young man, for where she goes, Elena goes; but it is important to Helewise that her old nurse settles in this new place to which her young mistress has brought her. She hears the fat woman say something to the dark young man, not quite quietly enough, but although it is a ribald remark and the fat woman should not really have made it, the young bride is so glad that she did because it’s just the sort of earthy, crude, rude thing that Elena would say.
The meal is served, eaten and cleared away in record time. At last the servants melt away into their own quarters at the back of the house and Ivo takes Helewise on to his lap. She puts her arms around his neck and kisses him passion ately, gasping between kisses ‘I’ve been waiting — hours — and hours — to do that to you!’
His hand slides inside the bodice of her red tunic and his fingers cushion the warm, smooth roundness of her breast, taking the nipple in gentle fingertips and playing with it until it stands erect. ‘And I this to you,’ he says huskily.
She is sitting astride him now and she feels his hard penis push against her. A moan of desire escapes her and she whispers in his ear, ‘Is this where you mean to bed me, husband?’
He laughs. ‘Oh, aye, wife. I shall fling you on to the clean rushes and ride you like a man on a wild horse until you cry for mercy!’
‘Until I cry for more,’ she corrects him, greedy for him, hungry to have him …
‘Are you hungry, my lady?
Wilfrid was addressing her. Wilfrid, who so resembled his father whom she had just been seeing again in her mind’s eye as the slim young servant he once was.
She was not hungry at all; far from it, for her stomach felt as if it were tied in knots and she sensed the onset of a slight queasiness. But Wilfrid, or someone, had prepared a platter of cured strips of meat and bread generously buttered, and in these times of hardship she knew she must not refuse. ‘Thank you, Wilfrid’ — she was very relieved that, despite the tumult of her memories, her voice sounded perfectly calm — ‘I should like to take a little food.’
He held out the platter and she helped herself, then watched as he did the same for Josse; he, she noticed, had considerably more of an appetite. Then Wilfrid offered them some watery beer — ‘I’m sorry that it’s not better quality but, like every household, we’re not able to offer ale of our usual fine standard at present’ — and they both drank. When they had consumed all that they wanted, Wilfrid took away the leftover food and the beer jug and once more disappeared down the passage that led to the kitchen quarters.
Josse went over to the door and stood looking outside, as if by staring down the track he could somehow make Leofgar and Rohaise appear. He was, Helewise had observed, unusually quiet and she wondered if his silence might be out of respect for her and her memories. If so, she would really rather he chattered away to her on virtually any subject under the sun, her memories being almost more than she could cope with.
To encourage him to talk to her, she said, ‘How long, Sir Josse, should we give them, think you?’
He turned from the door, closed it — there was a cold wind blowing in — and came back to the hearth where she sat, throwing himself down into the other chair. ‘I have been thinking, my lady, that it may be that they travel only by night. If indeed they have a need to keep their journey a secret, then maybe they rode out from the Abbey and then, when dawn broke, found a place to hide themselves away out of sight for the hours of daylight, planning to set out again once it is dark.’
‘But why should they want to disguise the fact that they are returning here?’ she asked. It was all so strange! ‘They live here. Why be furtive about their homecoming?’
He stared at her. He looked worried. ‘I am thinking more and more as time passes that they are not coming home,’ he said neutrally.
She felt instinctively that he was right. What, indeed, was the point of a furtive flight in the middle of the night only to ride away to the one place everyone would expect to find you?
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I must agree with you. Wherever Leofgar has taken his wife and child, he is not bound for here.’
Josse was looking at her sympathetically. ‘It will be dark soon,’ he said. ‘Do you wish to set out for Hawkenlye and try to reach the Abbey before nightfall?’
She thought about it. Then: ‘No. For one thing, the journey will be easier’ — safer too, she thought but did not say, if indeed this vicious ruffian Walter Bell is abroad — ‘in the morning. For another thing, if we stay for the night then we shall be giving Leofgar a little longer to appear.’
He gave a small bow of acknowledgement. ‘It is your choice, my lady, but I think that is a wise decision,’ he observed. Standing up again, he added, ‘I’ll find that Wilfrid and request that he arranges accommodation for us.’
She and Josse were made as comfortable as it was possible for unexpected guests to be made in the midst of a hard November when nobody had much of anything to spare. Josse said he was quite happy to bed down by the fire and Wilfrid found him a straw mattress and a couple of blankets. Helewise, for reasons of her own, would greatly have preferred the same but both Josse and Wilfrid looked quite shocked when she suggested it and Wilfrid protested that he had already arranged that a bed be prepared for her in the smaller of the bedchambers on the upper floor of the solar block.
At least, Helewise thought as, later, she wearily climbed up the winding stone staircase, I have not been put in the main bedchamber. Nevertheless, she was quite sure that she would be powerless to withstand the flood of memories that would assault her the moment she lay down to sleep.
As indeed she was …
Ivo has been teasing her about taking her there and then down on the rushes, in the hall where she sat on his lap and so aroused them both, but she knows full well that he isn’t serious because he has already shown her the sleeping chamber. He led her up to the larger of the two rooms that open off the solar soon after they arrived at the Old Manor and he showed her the big marriage bed made up ready for them. Someone — perhaps the jolly fat woman whose name, she now knows, is Magda; perhaps Elena — has placed a sweet-smelling garland of lavender and rosemary on the pillows. It is because this bed is so very inviting that Ivo and his bride have been so desperately impatient to get into it.