The guest at her elbow made a remark and she turned to speak to him. Hugh Bardolf was, like herself, a vassal of King John and holder of much land in the area, some of it from her own fiefdom, most of it directly from the crown. He was a tall rangily built man with sharp clean features and a shock of light brown hair now liberally sprinkled with grey. About her own age, he had once been suggested, before her marriage to Gerard, as a candidate for her husband. She liked him, but was glad that in the end an alliance between the Hayes and Bardolfs had not been forthcoming. They were too much alike, she and Hugh, with a similar need for order and control. They would have battled constantly over the smallest decisions. Gerard she had never loved, or even liked very much, but he left her to run the Haye demesne as she wished, purely because he was too lazy to do so himself, preferring his hawks and hounds to the trivial details involved in the management of their lands.
And, she suspected, Hugh would have been more of a demanding partner in the marriage bed. He had five sons, as well as two daughters, and his wife was expecting another, the last baby she would have, Nicolaa surmised, before she became too old for childbearing. Hugh’s need to control his surroundings would extend to ensuring his own blood would benefit from his industry, while Gerard, once their only child, Richard, had been born and was seen to thrive, had never again come to her bedchamber. She had never been sorry that this was so, although she would have liked more children. She supposed that it might be different to bed a man for whom you felt some affection but, for all that she and Gerard managed to maintain some degree of amiability on the rare occasions it was necessary to be in one another’s company, it had been very apparent that neither of them had enjoyed the brief liaison that producing an heir had required. She did not think Gerard was a lusty man, for she had never heard of any leman or female servant that had attracted his attention, and thought rather that he expended all his energies on his enjoyment of the hunt and his duties as sheriff. Even though her husband had not liked King Richard, she reflected, they had been very much alike, both preferring the challenge of bloody conflict to the embrace of a woman.
“You haven’t answered me, Nicolaa,” Hugh complained softly, but without offence, beside her.
“I’m sorry, Hugh. My mind, I am afraid, is on other matters. Please forgive me and repeat your question for, truly, I did not hear it.”
High gave her a mildly admonishing smile and leaned closer. “I am, as usual, asking if you have come to any decision about my Matilda and your Richard. It would be a good alliance, Nicolaa. One that should have been made between you and I, and was not. Now we should remedy it by uniting our lands through our children.”
Nicolaa smiled in return and gave her usual reply. “As I told you, Hugh, Gerard wishes to give it more thought. And we would need to consult with the king. He may not relish such a union, especially now while he is trying to bring his vassals on the continent under control. I am sure he would not happily consider two such vast fiefdoms as ours being joined together. He has not a liking for his barons to have too much power in their own hands.”
“He knows you would never betray him, Nicolaa. He has often spoken, not only to me but to others, of your father’s loyalty, and your own.” Hugh was being his most genial and persuasive but Nicolaa had known him too long for such tactics to work.
“He has no reason to doubt mine, Hugh, but every reason to doubt Gerard’s. And Richard is Gerard’s son. John is not a king to overlook past histories, or future possibilities. He has switched sides himself too often to be unaware of the propensities of others for doing the same. The question of marriage between my son and your daughter will have to wait. Neither Gerard or I will be offended if you should look elsewhere for a match for Matilda.”
Hugh sat back, rebuffed, his smile disappearing. Nicolaa motioned for a server to refill his goblet. Her mind was too full of tiredness, the thought of the energy that would be required for tomorrow’s festivities at the opening of the fair, and of the strange murders in the alehouse as well as Father Anselm’s dire state, to be overly concerned about Bardolf’s hurt feelings. There was not a lack of marriageable heiresses for her son, as Hugh well knew.
Her glance strayed down the table to where the eldest of Hugh’s two daughters, Matilda, sat with her mother and younger sister. She was not an unpleasant girl to look at, moderately round with the promise of a pleasingly plump frame when she reached maturity, medium brown hair and a demure manner. However, Nicolaa suspected that her modesty was often a pose put on for the benefit of her elders. There had been a day, when Matilda had thought herself unobserved and was with people her own age, that Nicolaa had overheard her conversation with the others. Matilda’s speech had been quick and racy, bordering on the lewd. From that moment Nicolaa had dismissed her as a possible wife for Richard, not because of her bawdiness, but because she hid her inclination for it so well. When she was finally presented with a grandchild, Nicolaa wanted it to be from her son’s loins, not those of some carefully concealed lover.
Matilda’s younger sister, Alaine, on the other hand, was far more to Nicolaa’s taste, for she had an open merry face, with a ready laugh and quick wit. However, she was only eleven, some five years younger than her sister, and it was possible she would change as she grew older. The onset of womanhood was a difficult time for any girl and could often bring about radical changes in temperament. Her own sister, Ermingard, had become an entirely different person after the advent of her menses.
Nicolaa looked down the table to where Ermingard now sat, flanked by her husband, William de Rollos, on one side, and their dour-faced son, Ivo, on the other. De Rollos was a stolid Norman knight and had ostensibly brought his family from Normandy to attend the fair and to visit Ermingard’s family, but in reality he was looking for support from Nicolaa and Gerard in regard to his claim over some disputed land in Normandy. Ermingard sat as though imprisoned between her husband and her son, her red gold hair dimmed with grey, as was Nicolaa’s own, and her small heart-shaped face prematurely showing lines of age.
The placement between her two menfolk was not without reason on William’s part, for his wife could, without warning, be subject to wild changes of mood, one moment unspeaking and the next spilling with laughter at some jest apparent to no one but herself. She had been subject to these startling lapses from lucidity ever since the day she had come running to Nicolaa in a state of fright, her clothing dishevelled, holding a bloodstained rag in her hand and screaming in fright at the gush of bright redness that had suddenly appeared between her legs. No explanations from Nicolaa or from the next eldest of the Haye daughters, Petronille, could alleviate Ermingard’s distress and she stayed in a state of shock for days until her cycle had ended, only to get into a similar condition a month later when it happened all over again. Never since the day their mother died had Nicolaa felt her loss so heavily.
Her gaze strayed over to her other sister, Petronille, a plump motherly figure who had inherited the dark hair and eyes of their mother. She was sitting at the far end of the long table on the dais, between an elderly priest and another vassal of King John’s, Philip de Kyme. De Kyme was a grizzled and truculent baron about the same age as Gerard. He had rheumy dark eyes, a sallow expression and could be extremely argumentative when he had taken too much wine. Seating Petronille beside him had been a diplomatic decision on Nicolaa’s part. Her middle sister had a very calm nature, capable of listening to another’s speech without showing impatience or the need to thrust her own conversation forward. She was at ease with her table companions even though the old cleric was mumbling almost constantly as he ate meat from the trencher in front of him, and Philip de Kyme, as usual, was complaining about his son-by-marriage and lamenting the lack of an heir from his own seed. Petronille, deftly passing more food to the priest and murmuring an assent to his disjointed phrases, still managed to be able to listen to de Kyme and give the correct response in the right place.