She walks towards the two men. She approaches her father first and receives his kiss and his loving embrace. Smiling up at him, she whispers, ‘I’m glad you’re home!’ Then her father gently disentangles himself and, twisting her round, says, ‘Helewise, you must greet our guest.’ Turning to the tall man, he says, ‘Benedict, may I present my elder daughter Helewise. Sweetheart, this is Sir Benedict Warin.’
Helewise turns to him and makes a low and graceful curtsy, one hand laid on her breast as she bends low and modestly casts down her eyes. She feels his strong fingers take hold of her other hand and he raises her up. She lifts her head and meets his blue eyes. He is smiling at her as delightedly as if her presence has just made the sun come out, and she cannot help but respond.
‘You and Emma have produced a beauty,’ he says to Ralf. ‘Why did you not warn me that, before ever I entered your hall, I should put a guard on my heart?’
He is joking, she knows full well; she is used to this kind of light talk. She laughs and he turns back to look at her again. ‘You think I speak in jest?’ he murmurs and, at this sudden low tone, something seems to stir deep within her, something that she has half-felt in her dreams and which she knows, without being quite sure why, is something dark and secret …
Ralf is apparently unaware of this subtle exchange but his wife is not; Emma Swansford has been watching from the doorway and now she comes gliding across the shiny flagstones of the hall floor, moving with her trademark grace, her arms extended in greeting as she says, with apparently unmitigated delight, ‘Benedict, my dear! How very good it is to see you again!’
Good manners demand that Benedict withdraw his fascinated eyes from young Helewise’s breasts and turn them upon his hostess. Graciously he embraces Emma, kissing her on both cheeks and exclaiming that, for all that it is a year or more since he has seen her, she does not look one single day older. Helewise, watching the ease with which this fascinating man turns his charm from her to her mother, feels a quick stab of resentment but soon it passes. Once out of the beam of his eyes she can see that he is in fact quite elderly and she wonders what the attraction was.
In that brief time she has learned a valuable lesson about a man’s powers of seduction. And, indeed, about how quickly a man who loves women can flit from one to the next.
In due course Emma leads them all to the meal table. They are joined by Aeleis, face and hair still damp and cheeks still red from Elena’s vigorous washing, laced into a gown at which she keeps pulling, as if it does not feel comfortable. The conversation ranges over many subjects and Helewise and her sister are regularly invited to join in. Benedict, seated opposite to Helewise, frequently glances her way although she tries not to meet his eyes. He is, she thinks, rather like a hot-blooded horse: exciting but potentially rather dangerous.
The meal ends. The girls are dismissed and Aeleis hurries to take off her gown and dress herself in her old house gown (Elena will not permit her to wear her usual boys’ clothes when there is a guest in the house) and she returns to whatever she was doing in the stables. Helewise wanders off and goes up to her room. She is thinking.
Some time later her mother comes to find her. She sits down beside Helewise on the long wooden bench and takes her daughter’s hand in both of hers.
‘Benedict Warin,’ Emma says without preamble, ‘is what is known as a womaniser. Do you know what that means, Helewise?’
‘I can guess,’ she replies.
Emma smiles. When she does so, Helewise thinks she is still the most beautiful woman in the land. ‘What did he say to you?’ she asks.
‘That he should have put a guard on his heart before he met me.’
Emma nods sagely as if this were no more that she had expected. ‘I see.’ She studies her daughter. ‘And you were flattered, of course?’
‘I was while he held my eyes,’ Helewise admits. ‘But then you came over and he looked exactly the same when he gazed at you, and I realised that it was just something he does, rather as Father would slap a good friend on the back or make a specially deep bow to a woman he respected.’
Emma squeezes Helewise’s hand. ‘Good girl,’ she says approvingly. ‘You are wise beyond your years, daughter.’ She studies her, taking in the grey eyes, the smile, the strong shoulders and the deepening bosom. ‘Although in truth,’ she adds, half to herself, ‘the sum of your years is adding up almost without my noticing it.’
But Helewise wants to hear more about Benedict Warin. ‘He likes women, Mother? Sir Benedict?’
Emma hesitates as if she is pondering the wisdom of discussing with her young daughter the ways of such a man. But then, perhaps reasoning that Helewise is on the cusp of womanhood and ought to know what the world is really like, she starts to speak. ‘He does, Helewise. And women like him too, for he is a well-favoured man, despite his limp; did you remark it, daughter?’
‘His limp? Er-’ Helewise thinks back. ‘No, I do not believe that I did, but in truth I did not see him move more than a few paces. How did he come by it?’
‘He fell from his horse’s saddle but one foot remained lodged in the stirrup so that he was dragged when the horse bolted. They say that it was only the swift intervention of his companion that saved Benedict’s life. But that is beside the present point.’ Emma tightens her grip on her daughter’s hand and, eyes fixed to Helewise’s, says urgently, ‘Helewise, Benedict likes women too well for his own good. He was married to a fine woman whose name was Blanche. She was lovely, talented and skilled in the womanly arts. Most men would have been more than satisfied and, moreover, considered themselves lucky to have won such a goodly soul to be their wife, particularly when Blanche gave birth to a son. But there were troubles in that household.’ Emma shakes her head sadly and slowly. ‘It is said that Benedict did not lose his — er, his adventurous spirit. He travelled widely as a youth and fought for his King in faraway places where many knights, I am afraid to say, consider that bedding as many women as they possibly can is as much a part of their task as slaughtering the King’s enemies.’ She sighs. ‘Marriage calmed Benedict for perhaps five or six years or, at least, if he was engaging in — er, in his philandering ways, then he hid it from his wife. Then when his son was still a babe in arms, he took off on his travels. There was always an excuse — to see this man or that, to seek out some man of influence who would advance the Warins, to visit some former comrade who had fallen on bad times. But always, always, there was a woman at the bottom of it and invariably she ended up in Benedict’s bed.’
Helewise, thinking of her own father and of his devotion to his home, hearth and family, says, ‘But what of his children? Did he not want to be with them?’
‘Child, not children. Blanche gave him but the one son. It was rumoured that she became barren after that.’
‘Became barren?’ Helewise does not understand. ‘I have heard of women being barren, but not of becoming so. How can that be?’
Again Emma hesitates. But this daughter of hers is ripe for marriage and there is no reason to keep such things from her. ‘As you say, Helewise, it is quite common for a wife to be unable to produce children and that would seem to be God’s will and there is little point in demanding to know why.’ She looks sad for a moment, then, perhaps thinking of the ease with which she has conceived and borne her own four children, a sort of thankfulness fills her lovely face. ‘But sometimes a woman gives birth to one child and then it is as if her womb sours and will not bear fruit again. Perhaps the experience of the first birth has been traumatic; perhaps there has been damage to the woman’s fruitful parts. Sometimes it happens for no apparent reason. But, believe me, daughter, it does happen.’