Their bodies pumping like huge wings took them higher and higher on a flight into cataclysmic air and then folded into the long, pulsing drop to a truckle bed in a dark, cold room.
When the earth stopped rocking and settled, she wriggled from underneath him and sat up.
“I knew you were nearby,” she said. “Somehow, I knew.”
He grunted.
She was energized, as if he had been a marvelous infusion bringing her body back to life.
She wondered if there would be another baby, and the thought made her happy.
Her lover had relapsed into postcoital inertia. She jabbed a finger into his back. “Where’s Allie? Where are Gyltha and Mansur?”
“I sent them to the kitchens, the servants are having a revel.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
So that she could look at him, she got up and stumbled for the table, felt around, pinched some tinder out of its box, struck a flint, and lit a taper at its flame.
He was thin, oh, bless him, but beautiful. In trousers-now down around his hocks-like a peasant, his face smeared with what looked like tree bark.
“A wren hunter,” she said, delighted. “You came in with the wren hunters. Has Henry come?”
“Had to get in somehow. Thank God it’s Saint Stephen’s Day, or I’d have had to climb the bloody wall.”
“How did you know we’d be at Godstow?”
“With the river freezing? Where else would you be?”
He wasn’t responding properly. “We could be dead,” she pointed out. “We nearly were.”
He sat up. “I was in the trees,” he said, “watched you skating. Very graceful, a little shaky on the turns, perhaps…By the saints, that’s a bonny baby, isn’t she?”
Our baby, Adelia thought. She’s our bonny baby.
She punched his shoulder, not altogether playfully. “Damn you, Rowley. I suffered, I thought you were dead.”
“I knew that bit of the Thames,” he said, “that’s why I got off, belongs to Henry, part of Woodstock forest; there’s a river keeper close by-I’d baptized his child for him. I made for his cottage, wasn’t easy but I got there.” He sat up, suddenly. “Now then…what’s to do here?”
“Rowley, I suffered.”
“No need. The keeper took me to Oxford-we used snow shoes. Bloody place was teeming with rebels, every bastard that had fought for Stephen and suffered for it was in arms and flying Eleanor’s standard or Young Henry’s. We had to bypass the town and make for Wallingford instead. Always a royal stronghold, Wallingford. The FitzCounts held it for the empress during the war. I knew the king’d go there first.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Jesus save me, but it was hard going.”
“Serve you right,” she said. “Did you find the king? Is he here?”
“More that he found me, really. I was laid up at Wallingford with a rheum in the chest, I damn near died. What I needed was a doctor.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t attend,” she said tartly.
“Yes, well, at least I could keep an eye on the river from there. And sure enough, he came, and a fleet of boats with him.” Rowley shook his head in wonder. “He was in Touraine, putting down Young Henry’s rebellion, when he heard about Rosamund. God punish that boy, now he’s joined with Louis of France against his own father. Louis, I ask you.” Rowley’s fists went to the sides of his head in disbelief. “We all knew he was an idiot, but who’d have dreamed the treacherous little whelp would go to his father’s greatest enemy for aid?”
He leaned forward. “And Eleanor had urged him to do it. Do you know that? Our spies told us. Urged their son against his father.”
“I don’t care,” she told him. “I don’t care what they do. What is happening now?”
But she couldn’t shift him. He was still with Henry Plantagenet, who had captured two Touranian castles from the Young King’s supporters before making tracks for England with a small army in the heaviest winter in years.
“How he did it I don’t know. But here he comes, up the Thames, trailing boats full of men behind him. Did I tell you he was rowing? The barge crew weren’t going fast enough for the bugger, and there he was, pulling at an oar like a pirate and swearing the sky black.”
“Where is he now?”
“On his way.” There was a pause. “He wants to see you.”
“Does he?”
“Sent me to fetch you. Wants to know if it was Eleanor that did for Rosamund. I said you’d be able to tell him yea or nay.”
“Great God,” she said. “Is that why you’ve come?”
“I’d have come anyway. I was worried about leaving you…but I should’ve known you were safe enough.” He cocked his head, sucking his teeth as if in admiration at her capacity for survival. “God kept you in His hand. I asked Him to.”
“‘Safe enough’?” It was a screech. “You left me to die in an open boat.” He had to hush her. She went on more quietly. “‘Safe enough’? We’ve been cooped up with killers, your daughter, all of us. There’s been murder done here, betrayal…weeks, weeks I’ve been afraid…for Allie, for all of us…weeks.” She scrubbed the tears off her cheeks with her fists.
“Ten days, it was,” he said gently. “I left you ten days ago.” He was on his feet, pulling up his trousers, adjusting his shirt. “Get dressed and we’ll go.”
“Go where?”
“To Henry. I said he wants to see you.”
“Without Allie? Without Gyltha and Mansur?”
“We can hardly take them with us; I’ve found a path through the snow, but it’ll be rough traveling, even on horses, and I only brought two.”
“No.”
“Yes.” It was a sigh. “I was afraid of this. I told the king. ‘She won’t come without the child,’ I said.” He made it sound like a whim.
She’d had enough. “Will you tell me? Where is Henry?”
“Oxford, at least that’s where he was heading.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
“Look,” he said, reasonably, “Godstow’s a side issue. The important thing is Oxford. Henry’s sending young Geoffrey Fitzroy up here with a small force, it shouldn’t need more-Mansur says Wolvercote and Schwyz have few men. Henry’s not arriving in person…” She saw the flash of a grin. “I don’t think our goodking trusts himself to meet Eleanor face-to-face; he might run her through. Anyway, it’s somewhat embarrassing to arrest one’s own wife.”
“When? When will this Geoffrey come?”
“Tomorrow. That’s if I can get back to guide him and tell him the placements here-make sure he doesn’t kill the wrong people.”
He will do it, she thought. He will track back through this dreadful countryside, disgruntled because I won’t leave our daughter behind but assured that she and I will be safe enough. He is all maleness and bravery, like his damn king, and we understand each other not at all.
Well, she thought, he is what he is, and I love him.
But a chill was growing; there was new strangeness; she’d thought it was the old Rowley back-and for a while, gloriously, it had been, but there was constraint. He talked with the remembered insouciance yet didn’t look at her. He’d put out a hand to wipe the tears from her face, then withdrawn it.
She said, because she was impelled to, “Do you love me?”
“Too much, God help me,” he said. “Too much for my soul. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Done what?”
“Almighty God forgive me. I promised, I swore an oath that if He kept you safe, I would abstain from you, I would not lead you to sin again. It was touching you that did it. I want you too much. Feeling you was…too much.”