'So I am a peasant too?' Ailith arched her brows.
'No, no, I implied no such thing… you know I didn't!'
'I am not so sure,' Ailith retorted. 'After all, our first meeting was between lady and servant, wasn't it? Me sitting on the dung heap and you on your dainty mare. Is that how you see us, Norman and Saxon?' She began to walk again, her heart thumping painfully against her ribs. Whatever had made her say that? Jesu, she had not realised how deeply the resentment had bitten. Felice was her friend, but a few more exchanges like that and the relationship would be totally destroyed.
Ailith turned round, intending in her own turn to apologise, and saw to her horror that two rough-looking men from a nearby rag-and-bone booth had approached Felice and were haranguing her. Obviously they had both heard enough of the argument to deduce that the slim, dark-eyed woman was Norman.
'Why don't you go home?' One of them pushed Felice's shoulder with the heel of his hand so that she staggered and almost fell. 'We don't want Normans on English soil, not unless they're sewn up in shrouds.'
Felice's warm complexion was as sallow as vellum. She clutched her cloak to her throat and licked her lips. 'Let me go about my business,' she said unsteadily. 'You have no right to block my path.'
'No right, hah! Do you hear that, Edwin! The Norman bitch says we have no right!' The trader looked at his fellow in mock-astonishment. 'There's no end to their insolence, is there? What do you reckon we should do with her?'
The other man leered at Felice and tugged his earlobe. 'By rights we ought to take her down to the docks and throw her off English soil,' he said, 'but I reckon as she ought to be given a message to take back to the Norman Duke.' Advancing on her, he seized her roughly round the waist and tried to kiss her. Felice struggled, jerking her head from side to side, her eyes wide with terror and revulsion.
'Leave her alone!' Ailith waded in. 'Do you truly think Harold Godwinson would be proud to call you supporters of his cause?'
'Know him personally, do you?' enquired the first trader, looking her insultingly up and down.
'Yes, my husband is commissioned to him,' Ailith answered coldly. Inside she was seething with terror, but she faced down the traders with an outward display of calm. 'And the Godwinson family are acquainted with the husband of this lady you have laid hands upon.' She was conscious that a crowd was gathering to watch the spectacle, and knew that if sides were taken, she and Felice would fare badly. 'Let her be.' Reaching out, she plucked Felice away from the trader. His eyes narrowed; his whole face was pinched and puckered with anger, but she had sown enough doubt to make him hesitate.
'Quickly!' Ailith drew Felice away towards the broader thoroughfares of Chepeside. 'They may yet change their minds.' Even as she spoke, a cabbage struck Felice in the back, causing her to stagger against Ailith with a frightened cry.
'Norman whore!' came the bellow. 'Norman bitch, go home!' A clod of filth from the gutter followed the cabbage, flattening in a starburst of hostility upon Felice's lovely soft cloak, spattering her wimple and cheek.
Felice uttered one short scream of terror, then bit it off behind compressed lips.
'Hurry!' Ailith drew her urgently onwards. 'They won't start a riot among the mercers' booths.'
Hampered by their skirts, the women ran, Ailith dragging the daintier Felice with ungentle haste. She did not stop until they reached the safety of the cloth sellers' quarter, where many of the stalls were owned by Flemings who had certain alliances with Normandy. Duke William's own wife Matilda was Flemish. Surrounded by opulent bolts of richly dyed wool, linen and silk, listening to the foreign accents conducting their mundane business, Ailith felt secure enough to pause for breath, Felice clinging to her side like a wilting flower to a rock.
A mercer who knew Ailith gave them the shelter of his booth and offered to lend them his senior apprentice to see them home.
'It isn't safe to go about the streets unescorted these days,' he advised Felice as he sat her upon a stool inside the house that adjoined the shop, and gave her a small wooden cup of sweet, strong mead. 'Best thing to do if you are Norman is go home until the trouble is over one way or another.' He had a kindly face and was genuinely concerned, but there was a hint of irritation in his tone that let Ailith and Felice know that he thought them out of their wits for venturing abroad in the first instant.
'We did not realise that the ill-feeling was so strong,' Ailith said in a small voice. She felt cold and shaky now that the danger was past. 'They just pounced on us out of nowhere.' She turned to Felice, whose lower lip was chattering against the rim of the mead cup. 'I did not mean those words I said; I'm sorry they brought that mob down on us.'
Felice shook her head. Her complexion was the unhealthy hue of raw dough. 'My fault too,' she whispered, and began to cry. 'I wish Aubert was here.'
In the months she had known Felice, Ailith had come to admire the Norman woman and feel more than a little envious of her sylph-like figure, her graceful bearing and poise. This bright April morning, however, Ailith realised what a slim facade her friend's sophistication was. Her own plain, robust strength of character was a far better protection against the slights of the world.
It became obvious to Ailith that whether they had protection or not, Felice was incapable of walking home. The merchant, with an eye to future profit, lent them his pack pony. Perched on its back, Felice clung miserably to the rope bridle as the mercer's apprentice guided them through London's streets towards the suburbs beyond the old Roman wall.
'Ailith, I don't feel well,' Felice whimpered as the pony clopped up the dirt track. 'My stomach…" She clutched at her belly, her face screwed up in pain.
Dear Jesu, she's miscarrying, Ailith thought with a rush of panic that did not show on her face. 'A moment longer and we'll be home —just round this corner.'
Felice swayed on the pony's back, her eyelids fluttering.
'If you fall off you will kill yourself and the child for a certainty!' Ailith snapped. 'You must hold on!' She pinched Felice's thigh as hard as she could.
Felice gasped. Her fingers clutched convulsively at the reins.
Ailith grabbed the pony's rein from the apprentice. 'Here,' she said with authority. 'I'll lead the beast, you catch her if she slips.'
They rounded the corner and in the curve of the next bend, Ailith greeted the sight of the thatches of home with a thankful prayer. Her initial relief died when she saw that several horses were tied up outside the forge. The harness and trappings were expensive and in the next moment she recognised Aldred's sturdy brown cob and Lyulph's roan gelding. An extremely handsome iron-grey stallion was drinking from the rain butt against the forge wall, and a mail-clad huscarl was patting his neck. Goldwin emerged from the forge, in conversation with a broad, fair-haired man who dwarfed him. Links of rivet-mail glistened on the man's arms and torso. Beneath the mail and the quilted coat he wore under it, a tunic of gold-embroidered scarlet dazzled Ailith's eyes. He was swinging his arms to test the fit of the mail.
'God and all his angels, it is the King!' Her hand went to her mouth.
Goldwin looked up in mid-comment and she saw him lose the thread of the conversation as his eyes met hers. Making an apology to Harold, he started towards her. Felice began to slip from the pony. The apprentice managed to catch her after a fashion and lowered her to the moist grass at the verge of the muddy track. Ailith knelt at her side, feeling sick with fright.
'Ailith, what in Jesu's name has happened?' Goldwin demanded. There was a breathless quality of fear to his voice and because of it, an underlying roughness of anger.
'We were attacked by some ruffians in Chepeside. Oh Goldwin, I think she is miscarrying!' Ailith's voice broke. Her chin puckered as she fought not to cry. 'Help me take her into the house so that she can lie down… hurry!' she added as he stared at her blankly. 'Do you want her to die out here on the road?'