the house in repair, Gytha took in laundry from the merchants farther down the row and there was often a tub full of linens and steaming lye suds in the backyard.
From the doorway, Linnet watched the pungent steam billowing skyward and felt queasy. Inside the house it was no better, the air being humid with the odour of boiled cabbages and onions from the cauldron that bubbled over the fire pit in the main room. These last three days her stomach had been unsettled. Indeed, only this morning before they set out she had almost been sick when Stephen had placed a dish of smoked herrings in front of her. Usually she enjoyed such fare but she had scarcely been able to swallow a morsel of bread without retching.
She had begun to toy with the suspicion that she was with child but, since it was indeed no more than a suspicion, she had said nothing to Joscelin. Her flux was scarcely more than a week late and in her previous marriage she had been slow to conceive. She smiled through the nausea, thinking of their new bed with its coverings of plain linen, sheepskin and blankets of plaid. All ostentation had been consigned to the pyre in the bailey where together she and Joscelin had watched the burning of the Montsorrel family bed until it was naught but ashes, blowing away in the wind.
Joscelin was up at the castle visiting acquaintances from his garrison days and she did not expect him home until late afternoon. Robert had fretted at not being allowed to go with his hero, but Joscelin’s promise to take him round the market booths on the morrow had mollified him a little. He was playing in a corner of the yard with a young tabby cat that Gytha had bought at the Weekday market to deal with the local rat and mouse problem.
Linnet watched her son and felt a deep tenderness well up within her. She still feared for his future as a natural part of her maternal instinct, but there was hope now too - bright and steady as a clean-burning candle. She could dare to believe that all would be well. Now she had Joscelin, she could dare to believe anything.
She had just turned to go back inside the house when Ironheart arrived back from his errand to a wool factor who lived close by the city wall.
‘Daughter,’ he greeted her with a gruff nod.
Linnet inclined her head in response and going into the house, dutifully offered him wine. Since her illness in the autumn, their relationship had subtly altered. She knew that Ironheart had been present at the crisis of her fever for Joscelin’s sake and that he had remained at Rushcliffe until it was certain that she would recover, his support silent but solid as rock. She no longer thought of him as a threat, nor did she have to stiffen her spine in his presence to control her fear. Yes, he had his flaws, some of them deep and ugly, but beyond them was the rock and to that she trusted.
For his part, Joscelin’s father had tempered his aggression towards her and in rare moments displayed a clumsy tenderness in his dealings. He had ceased speaking darkly to Joscelin of beating and bedding, and while she and Ironheart seldom held prolonged conversations at least they could communicate with each other without bristling up like cat and dog.
‘Joscelin not back yet?’ Ironheart asked. His long nose wrinkled in the direction of the cauldron. ‘You can never tell whether it’s her washing or the dinner you can smell when you come in the door,’ he commented.
‘No, he said he might be late.’
‘Gossiping with his old cronies, I daresay.’
‘Yes.’ She gave him a wan smile.
Ironheart eyed her from beneath his brows. ‘You’re as green as a new cheese,’ he said abruptly. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘No, Father.’ Linnet moved away from the bubbling cauldron. ‘A mild stomach upset, nothing more.’
‘Hah!’ He continued to eye her, not in the face but up and down. Linnet blushed and quickly put her hand to her belly, the gesture giving her away. Ironheart, however, did not press the point. ‘You need to go and rest, then,’ he said mildly. ‘Dry bread and sweet wine are good for such an ailment.’ He jerked his head. ‘Go on, get you to the loft for an hour. I’ll watch the boy.’
Linnet hesitated for a moment, but another pungent waft of steam from the cooking pot caused her stomach to lurch and she accepted the offer with a grateful smile.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Ranulf FitzRanulf, garrison commander of Nottingham, as he stared out of the high tower window. Spread before his view was Nottingham’s immediate southern hinterland: the rivers Leen and Trent holding between them the broad green floodplain of the Meadows and beyond them the villages of Briggford, Wilford and Cliftun. ‘There are too many of Ferrers’s men in the city and they are bent upon mischief.’
Standing beside his former paymaster, Joscelin, too, looked out on the scene of pastoral tranquillity. The trees lining the riverbank wore new mantles of tender green and the meadowland was a lush carpet of flower- starred grass dotted by grazing cattle. Smoke twirled from the roofs of the tanneries on the banks of the Leen and a supply barge was wending its way upriver towards the castle’s wharf. ‘I noticed a lot of Ferrers’ soldiers when I was here in the autumn,’ he said.
‘Around the time of the battle of Fornham?’ FitzRanulf turned to look at Joscelin out of watery, light-blue eyes. The left one had a slight cast so that FitzRanulf never seemed to be looking directly, even when he was. It was an illusion for FitzRanulf was the most direct of men. ‘They were vultures waiting their moment to strike but it never came. When news of Leicester’s defeat arrived, they melted away.’
‘And now they are back.’
‘The winter truces are at an end. I have men enough to defend the castle but not the town. Ferrers has too much influence there. If there is trouble, the citizens will have to fend for themselves. How long are you staying?’
‘We’re only here to buy supplies. Two, three days at the most, although my father will probably leave guards at his house since it’s so close to Ferrers’.’
‘Your father’s here, too?’
‘On different errands and likely to be here a couple of days more than myself. I know he intends calling on you.’
FitzRanulf nodded, then he gave a humour-filled scowl. ‘It was the worst turn the justiciar ever did me when he gave you Linnet de Montsorrel to wife,’ he grumbled. ‘I lost the best men in my pay. Still, at least I can rely on Rushcliffe’s loyalty now. When the Montsorrels had possession, getting them to cooperate on anything was like trying to turn water into wine. Old Raymond could be as difficult as they come.’
‘Yes, I know.’
FitzRanulf cocked his head, his expression curious, but Joscelin had no intention of divulging the particular ‘difficulties’ that Raymond de Montsorrel had bequeathed to him. ‘I have to return to Rushcliffe,’ he diverted, ‘but I can leave some of my men here if you want - trained up and in full battle kit.’
‘At whose expense?’ enquired FitzRanulf, revealing that he was as shrewd about money as he was about everything else.
‘They have a contract with me until midsummer. All you need do is feed and house them and see that they receive a fair share of the booty, should the situation arise.’
‘Fair enough.’ FitzRanulf nodded. ‘I know a golden goose when it waddles over my foot. If there’s anything I can do for you in the future, let me know.’
Following his visit to FitzRanulf, Joscelin repaired to the guardroom to pay his respects there and was furnished with a piggin of the castle’s justly famous ale and some bread and new cheese. One of the guards, Odinel le Gros, so named because of his enormous gut, nudged Joscelin, his eyes gleaming with relish. ‘Josce, is it all really true about Raymond de Montsorrel, then?’
Joselin’s mouthful of bread and cheese suddenly seemed too enormous to swallow. He chewed, took a drink of ale and shrugged, affecting indifference.
‘Come on, stop teasing. You know what I mean. They say he tupped every woman on the estate between the ages of thirteen and fifty. I bet everywhere you ride, you see little bastards made in the old man’s image!’ Odinel chuckled. ‘Do you remember that wench we had who claimed he futtered her against St Mary’s wall? She said his pizzle were the biggest she’d ever seen! I reckon it should’ve been preserved when he died, just like they do with saints’ bones.’
Joscelin heard the laughter of the other soldiers but it was fuzzy, as if it were coming from a far distance. A red mist was before his eyes and sweat sprang on his body. However, he did not leap at Odinel and rip his voice from his throat, for to have done so would be to acknowledge that Raymond’s ghost still had a hold on him. As far
