'A jumped-up gamekeeper and my groom's wayward daughter?' De Lacey's laugh was caustic. 'Guyon FitzMiles prevented my men from carrying out their lawful duty. Indeed, I am sorely tempted to seek compensation from him for the death of my captain.'
'Your former gamekeeper is a free man to sell his services where he desires and his wife is a free woman,' Judith said, looking at him with repugnance. 'You have no right.'
'So you refuse to turn them over to me?'
'It gives me the greatest satisfaction to deny you both them and your compensation,' she said, her chin high. 'Drink your wine and go. There is nothing for you here.'
His lids narrowed. 'I do not think that with your husband on his deathbed you can afford to annoy me. After all , who knows where these lands will be bestowed next and my wife is growing old and not in the best of health. I expect soon to be bereaved.'
'Rot in hell !' Judith hissed.
He smiled at her. 'There'll be more pleasure in taming you than that bag of bones I've got at the moment. My compensation is already assured.'
Father Jerome made a shocked exclamation.
'If you want to be a gelding, that's your own choice,' Judith retorted, her fingers itching to draw her eating knife from her belt and do the deed there and then. 'I think we have nothing to trade but threats and insults. Excuse me if I do not see you on your road. My husband needs me.'
He raised his cup to her in a mocking salute and looked her insolently up and down as if she was already a piece of his property.
In the bedchamber, Judith collapsed beside the hearth, her teeth chattering and her hands icy.
Helgund fetched a sheepskin from the foot of the bed, wrapped it around her mistress's shaking shoulders and hunted out the flask of aqua vitae.
Judith choked on the strong liquor. 'I'm all right,' she reassured the maid, finding a wan smile from somewhere. 'Lord Miles will need to know. Have you seen him?'
'Not recently, my lady. He did not come here while you were gone.'
'My lady, he was talking to your mother in the hall before Lord Walter came,' Elflin offered timidly from her corner where she sat deftly spinning the wool, her manual dexterity far in advance of her mental. 'But they had gone when you summoned me to your chamber.'
'I'll try his chamber in a moment,' Judith said and, finishing the aqua vitae, cast off the sheepskin and went to look at Guyon.
He was sleeping deeply and his temperature, although still raised was, she fancied, not as high as it had been, or perhaps it was just wishful thinking. She turned round and saw the dainty English girl watching her with a wide-eyed mingling of expectancy and fear.
'Our visitor has gone,' Judith said. 'I think it will be safe for you to seek your husband now.'
'Thank you, my lady!' Elflin dropped her work and, blushing, bobbed a deep curtsy before departing the room at a near run.
'What it is to be young and eager,' smiled Helgund, addressing Judith as if she were a staid matron beyond love's first sweet violence.
'Yes,' Judith agreed flatly and smoothed the coverlet. 'What it is.' Her chin quivered. She mastered the urge to weep and straightened up. 'I must find Lord Miles and tell him what has happened. Let me know if there is any change.'
'Yes, my lady.'
Judith left the room almost as swiftly as Elflin had done, got halfway down the stairs, stifled the familiar panicky instinct to run and continued at a more sedate pace across the great hall and up the stairs to the small chamber that was her father-in-law's when he visited.
She could hear the murmur of voices as she approached, one deep and hesitant, the other her mother's and breathless. Then the voices ceased.
At the curtain, Judith paused, warned by some sixth sense that to clear her throat and just walk into the room would not be wise.
Cautiously she drew aside the merest fold of material and peered within to assess whether she should go or stay. Set into the thickness of the wall , the room was tiny with space only for a bed, a small clothing pole and a brazier for use against the cold. Before the brazier, blocking it from view, her mother stood locked in Miles's embrace, her blue gown melding into the dark green of his tunic and chausses, his hands lean and brown against the snowiness of her wimple. Her mother's arms were locked around his neck and they were kissing as, only yesterday in the hall , she had seen Elflin and her husband kissing.
Judith dropped the curtain, stepped away and wondered why she had not realised it long ago.
There had been enough beads to make a necklace if one had the eyesight to pick them up.
The swings of her mother's moods, the looks and counter-looks cast across the hall , met and avoided. What had her mother said? Understand when the time comes and do not judge me too harshly. No more harshly than Alicia had judged herself, she thought and wondered if Guyon, less naive than herself, had known.
At the foot of the stairs, she encountered the lady Emma about to ascend and quickly blocked her way.
Emma's gaze sharpened.
'I should not bother him until later,' Judith said, her voice slightly constricted. 'He is otherwise occupied.'
Emma searched Judith's face for meaning.
'With a woman, you mean?' Judith hesitated and Emma grimaced. 'That always was his source of oblivion.' She sighed, turning with Judith to go back down to the hall . 'He's not much use at getting drunk and he's too slightly built to go out and pick a fight. I've known him ride a horse half to death, but a woman by preference is his usual form of solace. At first after my stepmother died there was scarcely a night when he slept alone ...
God knows some of the sluts Guy and I had to tolerate in the early days!'
Judith coloured. 'He is with my mother,' she said quietly, 'and they still have all their clothes on.'
Emma's eyes rounded. She stopped and turned. 'Your mother?' The thought seemed to have blocked her brain.
Judith stared her out. Emma drew a long breath between her teeth and let it out again slowly. 'Well then, I am sorry if my words gave offence but in the past it has been true.'
'The past is not now,' Judith said, not quite keeping the coldness from her tone. For all that Emma was Guyon's sister and he maintained that she had a heart of gold, Judith was hard pressed to find it beneath the layers of iron and ice.
Emma bit her lip. She and Judith were never going to be more than tepidly cordial. Their natures had too many similarities, subtle shades apart and, within this keep, like two stones in close proximity on a riverbed, they had begun to grate against each other. Emma began to think with new longing of her dower estates and how, when Guyon's crisis was resolved one way or the other, she would go there with her daughters.
Christen seemed to be cured of her affliction to flirt. No more was 'Alais says' the bane of their lives. In part she knew it was due to the seriousness of Guyon's condition. That, in itself, was sufficient to put meaningless frivolity in its true perspective, but part was also due to Judith's steadying influence. Guyon's wife might laugh and play childish games with her nieces, might have a puckish sense of humour and an impudent tongue, but attracting men appeared scarcely to interest her. Nor did she wish to gossip about them to the detriment of all else and her domestic skill s were more than competent, as was her knowledge of healing and sickbed nursing.
Christen, receiving an indifferent or bored response to most of her tattle, had steadied her own giddy attitude and begun to think a little for herself. What profit there was in that had yet to be seen. 'No,' she agreed, 'you are right. The past is not now.'
CHAPTER 15
A week came and went. So did the priest. Twice.
Guyon wavered on the narrow brink between life and death, teetered and stepped back from the edge.
