Outside the door, a dog barked loudly in warning, and as Rolf and Aubert reached instinctively for their weapons, Rolf's watchman entered the house, followed by a young man dressed in a plain tunic and cloak. He proved to be a lay worker from St Aethelburga's whom the abbess had sent with a message for Aubert.
'Your lady wife has begun her labour. The Abbess asks that you come with all haste.'
'Is there something wrong?' Aubert sheathed his knife and reached for his cloak.
'I do not know, sir. The Abbess just said I was to fetch you.' The young man sniffed, sniffed again, and drew his cuff across his nose. His hands were red with cold.
'God grant you a healthy wife and child,' Rolf said as Aubert took his sword and went to the door which showed a narrow rectangle of late afternoon dusk. 'It would be auspicious if Felice were to be delivered on the day of our Duke's crowning.'
Aubert smiled, but the gesture was no more than a meaningless expansion of his lips as he ducked out into the cold.
Rolf thought that he had never seen the merchant look so worried. He tried to recall if he had been similarly distressed over Arlette when she had borne their first child, a stillborn son. He thought not, but then he had been able to immerse himself in the stud. He realised guiltily that since leaving Normandy, Arlette and Gisele had scarcely crossed his mind. Sometimes when he had been cold and wet and hungry on the circuitous six-week march from Hastings to London, he had remembered the roaring fire in the hearth at Brize-sur-Risle, the dainty glazed cups full of mulled cider, Arlette's little curd cakes that were gone in one bite and tasted like heaven, the minstrel plucking his crwth and singing of glory. On those occasions, he had been seized by nostalgia, but never homesickness, and his feelings were for Brize-sur-Risle in its entirety, not his slender, silver-haired wife.
When he returned to Normandy, he would take her an English tapestry for their chamber wall and some new tableware for the dais. That was sure to please her. Having dealt with his guilt to his own satisfaction, Rolf put Arlette from his thoughts.
CHAPTER 15
For nine months, sleeping and waking, Felice had lived with fear. Sometimes it affected her but mildly, a nagging anxiety she could almost forget. On other occasions it became pure terror that winkled her out from every crevice in which she tried to hide. Now, with each contraction it pounced on her, mauled her until she screamed with terror and pain, then let her go. But she knew that in the end, she would be devoured.
'Make it go away!' she wept to the nuns and frantically clutched her eaglestone. 'Oh please make it go away! Holy Mary, Blessed Virgin, help me!'
The nuns did their utmost to soothe her. They rubbed her swollen belly with herbal oils, they loosened her hair so that no knots would bind the babe in her womb. They gave her a calming tisane to drink, but she was so tense that it had no visible effect. The Abbess, a woman who was as pragmatic as she was compassionate, sent for Aubert and took Felice to task.
'You must calm yourself,' she said sternly. 'The bag of water has not yet broken, and when it does, you will need your strength to push.'
'Ave Maria, gratia plenia,' Felice whispered. Her brown gaze sought the aumbry and pleaded with the plaster statue of the Virgin presiding over her ordeal. Beneath her thighs the thick layer of bedstraw chafed her skin. The nuns had put it there the previous night when she had complained of low back ache. They said that it was to absorb the blood and fluids which would leak from her body as labour progressed. Ever since then, a vision of her life drip-dripping away had whetted the teeth of the predatory fear. She was going to die, she knew it. And when she was dead, one of the nuns would take a knife and rip open her belly to see if they could save her child.
Aubert arrived and was ushered into the birthing chamber. Usually men were allowed nowhere near such a sanctum, but the nuns were becoming desperate. Felice's screams had been heard throughout the convent until she had lost her voice.
'Aubert!' Felice pushed herself up on the mound of pillows. 'Aubert, I'm dying, aren't I? That's why they've sent for you!'
Removing his cloak and cap, Aubert sat on the bed and took her in his arms. 'If you were dying, they would have sent for a priest first,' he reassured. 'They summoned me because the Abbess thought it was the only way to calm you down.'
'But it hurts so! I don't like it, and it's getting worse!' Felice quivered in his embrace. The fierceness of another contraction tore through her loins and she gripped him, digging her nails into the soft wool of his tunic. 'I'm so frightened!' she gasped.
Aubert pulled a face. 'So am I when I see you like this. Felice, beloved, you cannot go into a battle believing that you will lose it. How would we have fared if Duke William had given up at Hastings? You must fight. Do as the nuns tell you, they are wise. I'll be here, I promise – if not beside you, then right outside the door.' He kissed her temple and her cheek, the trembling corner of her mouth.
As if from a great distance Felice heard his words. The strength of his arms around her gave them emphasis and a little of the darkness cleared from her mind. 'Help me, Aubert,' she whispered. 'Dear Jesu, help me.'
With Harold cradled in one arm, a pitcher of mead in the other, Ailith went down to the forge. She was worried about the baby. Although his eyes were open, they were dull, and every time he expelled air from his lungs, it was with a wheezy little grunt. Nor had he fed that morning and her breasts were bulging with the discomfort of excess milk. Hulda had promised to come and look at him, but not until later in the day because she was attending a birth.
Ailith heard the sound of Goldwin's gruff laughter. She pushed open the forge door with her shoulder and her husband turned his head when he saw her enter. So did the tall, red-haired Norman Rolf de Brize. Ailith felt a stab of irritation, and a queasy sensation only just short of fear turned within her stomach. De Brize inclined his head. He was leaning against Goldwin's workbench, watching Goldwin fashion mail rivets from coils of iron wire.
'Look, Aili, I've acquired a new apprentice,' Goldwin jerked his head at Rolf.
She wondered how the Norman had succeeded in worming his way into Goldwin's good auspices so rapidly. The man did not even speak English, and Goldwin's French was atrocious. She inclined her head stiffly to de Brize and set the pitcher of ale down on the workbench. 'I am sorry, we have no wine,' she said without really meaning it.
'No matter, I'm learning to like ale,' the Norman replied with a smile. 'Your husband has sold me a mail coif and promised me a new helm.'
Here, in the small, cramped forge, the Norman's vigour was almost indecent. Ailith moved closer to Goldwin, seeking sanctuary. 'Norman business?' she said a trifle sarcastically to her husband. 'A coif and a helm?'
Goldwin cleared his throat and his complexion darkened. 'I would have been stupid not to accept what he offered me for my services. I made the coif for a Saxon thegn who never returned from Stamford Bridge. It's been lying in the workshop for two months now; the Norman is welcome to it. I thought that you wanted me to collaborate?'