'We cannot keep him silent, the poor little scrap,' said the nun. 'He's that hungry, and at this time of year, there is scarcely even cow's milk to be obtained. We managed to buy a jug yesterday, 'but he just sicked most of it up.'
The grizzle became a wail and the wail a full-fledged bawl of indignation. Pain stabbed Ailith's vitals. He was so like Harold, and yet so unlike, a reality instead of a grey little shadow. Her breasts tightened and tingled. Bending over the cradle, she lifted the baby out and sat down on a low stool near the brazier. When she removed her cloak, took the neck pin out of her overgown, and began unlacing the drawstring on her shift, Aubert's eyes widened in startled comprehension.
'Yes,' she said in a voice that was low, but intense with emotion. 'I lost my son too. He was weak from the moment of his birth, and even before that inside my womb, I think. No, do not speak. There is nothing you can say that will be of comfort, and if you offer me your pity, I will hate you.'
Aubert compressed his lips, and after a single look, schooled his shocked expression to neutrality.
Ailith ignored him. The baby demanded her attention. He was dusky-red in the face with frustration and the room echoed to the sound of his screams. The drawstring unlaced, she pulled down her shift and offered the infant her exposed breast. Furiously, Felice's son rooted back and forth, seeking so frantically that several times he missed her nipple altogether. Finally, with some adroit manoeuvring by Ailith, he discovered what he desired. A blissful silence descended, punctuated only by the sucking noises of the baby. Feeling the powerful tug of the small jaws, and the warm weight of him in her arms, Ailith realised how feeble Harold had truly been. Her eyes brimmed, but her tears, although of sorrow, were tears of healing too.
Benedict emptied one breast, belched happily, and demanded to be given the other side too. Rolf was right, he did look like his mother, Ailith thought as she shrugged up one shoulder of her chemise and pulled down the other. His hair was black and he had Felice's feathery eyebrows. His eyes were going to be brown too.
'He is more handsome than you,' she jested to Aubert who had been watching the baby feed with a mixture of relief and apprehension.
'That is not difficult,' Aubert answered with a pained smile. 'Ailith, I know you do not want me to say anything, but I am forever in your debt.'
She shook her head. 'I do not want to talk of debts. It is too complicated to decide what is owed and what is owing.'
The door opened and Rolf strode in. Immediately the size of the room seemed to diminish. 'Has she…" he started to say, then his eyes fell on Ailith and the greedily sucking child. 'Yes she has,' he finished for himself with a satisfied nod.
Ailith felt uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny. The only man to have seen her naked breasts before today was Goldwin. With Aubert it had not seemed so awkward because all his attention had been on watching his son take sustenance. The look in Rolf de Brize's eyes was rather more predatory, and lingered a little too long before he raised it to her face. His colour heightened as he saw the contemptuous awareness in her expression.
'He has taken to it well,' he said.
Ailith nodded stiffly in response. For the moment, because of what had happened at the forge, because of his gaze just now, she could not bring herself to speak to the Norman. He half-turned so that the swollen globe of her breast was no longer in his direct line of vision, and began talking to Aubert.
The baby finished feeding and drowsed in sated, milky pleasure. Ailith gently prised him from her nipple and covered herself, but the act did little to diminish her feeling of vulnerability.
CHAPTER 17
It was a raw day at January's end when Rolf rode into Ulverton at the head of his troop, and was tendered submission by a group of sullen, resentful villagers. Their lord had died fighting the Normans on Hastings field, and with him had perished a third of the young men from the seventy-strong community. Others had returned injured and heartsick. They had no mind to accept a Norman lord, but were forced by their circumstances to do so.
Rolf discovered that the hall had been abandoned after the great battle, and that it had been stripped to a shell. Not so much as a cooking pot or trestle table remained. The English lord had been a widower, with no children to grieve his passing. All that greeted Rolf was the musty smell of a place several months dead. The floor rushes were dank and mouldy, and near the hearth where the lord's seat should have proclaimed its owner's status, there were bits of bone and fruit stones from feasts long gone. On the wall, outlined in white against the grey of old limewash, was the space where a battle axe had hung until recently. Rolf imagined his own weapon sitting there, and snorted at the irony of placing an English war axe amidst such squalor.
Yet, despite the shortcomings, he was pleased with his new estates, of which Ulverton was the main settlement. They were easily as large as Brize-sur-Risle and had just as much, if not more potential. The lands were situated on the south coast of England, five days' ride from London, and included several fishing villages and a fine, ocean-going harbour along the shingle shoreline. There was excellent grazing for his horses, as well as for the large population of sheep which the rich downland supported. Rolf recognised the value of the limestone soil for producing sound bones in the animals he intended to breed here.
In the time of King Edward, Ulverton had been wealthy, and the difficulties that Rolf encountered were only recent and certainly reversible. He threw himself into the task with determination. The hall was patched up to make it habitable while he set about finding a site on which to build his keep. He soon chose a fine slope overlooking the village and backed by high sea cliffs. The villagers were none too happy at having to dig the mounds and ditches of the castle, but had little choice except to comply. Besides, they frequently heard tales from other communities about the harshness of the new Norman masters, and could only be thankful that their own, while not being Saxon and therefore of considerably less calibre than the former lord, was neither unfair nor tyrannical in his dealings with them. Indeed, he permitted them to retain their old laws and customs with very little interference.
Ulverton settled down to a state of truce. The castle mound continued to grow, and with it grew the relationship between the people and their new lord. He looked more Norse than French, they said, and unlike the other Normans over the hill, he spoke some English and strove to learn more at every opportunity.
Rolf treated his new peasants in much the same manner as he treated those on his Norman lands. He was of the opinion that to obtain the best from any tool, be it a spade, a piece of harness, a horse or a man, you had to treat it well. Oil and polish, kind words and discipline, a listening ear. It was not altruism, but self-interest that motivated him.
In March, King William announced his intention of returning to Normandy to parade his English victory throughout his duchy, and Rolf felt secure enough in his position at Ulverton to leave the lands in the charge of a deputy and make the journey too. But first he travelled to London, to the house of Aubert the wine merchant in order to pay his respects to the family: to Felice who had only just been rising from a protracted childbed when he went to claim his lands, to the thriving, rosy-cheeked baby to whom he had the serious honour of being Godfather, and to Benedict's wet nurse… Ailith.
Ailith sat in a puddle of sunshine, carding the last of the previous year's fleece ready for spinning. The day was so mild that she was beginning to believe that spring was actually on the threshold. There were often black days in her existence when she felt so full of grief and anger that she did not care about the weather or any other circumstance of her life, but today was a good one. She could feel the sun's warmth in her bones, and appreciate the comfort with which she was surrounded.