grimaced ruefully. 'I do not suppose that the sight of my face will be welcome at their door, but I'll do my best to heal the breach.'
'I'll be glad if you can.' She looked tentatively at her husband. 'I don't want to return to the house yet, I'll feel much safer here until our son is born. The nuns know healing and midwifery.'
'Of course, I would expect you to do no other. Besides, the house is likely to be bursting at the seams with billeted knights for a few weeks at least. Do you remember Rolf de Brize?'
Felice laughed with something of her old humour. 'How can any woman not remember Rolf? I have never met a man so beautiful, or so dangerous!'
'A good thing I am a trusting, unjealous husband!' Aubert chuckled. 'He's going to stable his horses at the house and live there awhile. William is going to grant him the lands of a dead thegn on England's south coast, but he cannot take them up until the Duke has been anointed and officially pronounced rightful king. Rolf almost fell prey to looters on Hastings field, but he's recovering well.'
'Were you involved in the battle?'
The humour in Aubert's face abruptly died, and Felice realised that she had made a bad mistake in asking him. 'No,' he said after a moment. 'But I saw it from the baggage lines on Telham Hill, and it will stay with me until my dying day. I have never seen such waste, so many good men. I watched the English shield wall smash our cavalry in the first hours, and in turn I watched our cavalry smash their shield wall.' He drew his hand down over his face. 'Do you know, when we left Hastings, there were piles of bodies rotting where they lay, and the looters were so fat with plunder that they ceased combing the battlefield. Flocks of carrion birds arrived every morning at dawn and stayed feeding until dusk. Even the Duke was moved to pity by the sight of so many dead men.'
Felice's stomach churned. She compressed her lips, her colour fading. 'Aubert, no more,' she begged.
His gaze refocused, and he quickly sat her down on the spartan convent bed. 'I won't speak of it again,' he promised. 'Indeed, I did not mean to say as much. Are you all right?'
Felice swallowed and managed a valiant nod. She did not think that she was going to be sick, but her stomach was still queasy when she thought of Aubert being involved in such an undertaking.
'Now then,' he said, changing the subject somewhat jerkily, but with firmness of purpose. 'Have you thought of a name for our offspring while you've been waiting for me?'
CHAPTER 14
Ailith looked down at her son in exasperation. He had fallen asleep at her breast scarcely before he had drawn any sustenance, and now both of her nipples were dripping with milk of which she seemed to possess an over-abundance. Hulda had shown her how to express the surplus, and frequently she had to, feeling like a prize milch cow.
Little Harold, as Goldwin had insisted he be christened, was almost two weeks old. Ailith had recovered magnificently from the birth, and despite being scolded by Wulfhild, who was of the opinion that no woman should rise from childbed for at least a month, she was picking up the threads of her household activities. If she had stayed abed any longer, Ailith knew that she would have died of boredom. Harold was such a quiet baby and spent so much of his time asleep that she was scarcely aware of his existence. Sometimes she worried about his lack of response, about how tiny and frail he was. Even the act of feeding at her breast exhausted him. Hulda had been taciturn in her responses to Ailith's anxious queries, merely saying that it took some infants longer than others to recover from the ordeal of being born.
Goldwin adored his son and would sit by the cradle, a doting look on his face as Harold closed a tiny fist around his scarred blacksmith's forefinger. During the brief occasions when Harold was wide awake, Goldwin would carry him down to the forge and show him everything that would one day be his.
Sighing deeply, Ailith checked the baby's swaddling. It was still clean and she put him down while she bound up her heavy breasts with a linen band and shrugged up her chemise and undergown.
Below the sleeping loft, the hall was silent. Sigrid had gone to visit her old mother in the town with instructions to buy a bundle of kindling on her way home, and Goldwin was absent purchasing supplies for the forge. Harold's birth had jolted him out of his depression. Now that the Londoners had accepted William of Normandy for their king — he was to be crowned at Yule — Goldwin anticipated a return to stability. Even his battle wound seemed to be healing at last.
Ailith left Harold with Wulfhild, who was sewing in a corner by the light of two horn lanterns, and went outside to visit the privy. Ten paces later she stopped and stared, her eyes widening.
A large, dappled-grey horse was trampling her carefully tended winter cabbages. Now and then it lowered its head and snatched at an outer leaf with powerful yellow teeth. Where on earth had it come from? It was wearing a leather headstall from which trailed a frayed length of rope, and there were faint saddle marks on its back. Iron shoes glinted as it pawed the soil, deliberately trying to uproot one of her cabbages. Then it paused from its endeavours to urinate. Ailith's stare was drawn in reluctant fascination to its elongated penis, and the equipment behind. It was a stallion, entire in every way. In her knowledge, the only male horses that kept their testicles were either for breeding or for war. None of her neighbours owned such a beast, therefore it must belong to a stranger, and the only strangers in the city were Normans.
The grey ripped one of her plants out of the ground and tossed it up and down in its mouth. Ailith's temper sparked, replacing astonishment. Norman-owned or not, she was not about to stand here like a ninny and watch the beast destroy her winter vegetables. Marching into the storeroom, she grabbed Sigrid's birch besom from the corner and stalked back outside to do battle.
'Shoo, go away!' Waving the broom, she advanced on the stallion. It regarded her with pricked ears and its jaws circled, loudly crunching her cabbage leaves.
'Shoo!' Ailith waved the broom more vigorously. The horse skittered sideways and trampled two of her young leeks. Its hind hooves sank into the soft earth and clods of soil flew everywhere as it gouged itself free and friskily bucked.
Ailith was on the verge of abandoning the besom in favour of a Dane axe from Goldwin's forge when a piercing whistle and a masculine shout caused the horse to abandon its frolics. Nickering joyfully, it trotted away down the garth, its crest arched and its tail foaming high.
Ailith stared at the ruin of her garden, at a full year's work gone to waste. She felt like crying, but when her eyes did fill, the tears were of blazing fury. Tightening her grasp on the broom, she marched down the garth, determined that she would have reparation even if the culprit was the Norman Duke himself.
In her orchard, a man had caught the stallion's rope and while tethering him to a pear tree, was remonstrating with the animal in French. Ailith had learned a smattering of the language from Felice, but the Norman was speaking too quickly for her to understand most of what he said. He was long-limbed and auburn- haired with clean, strong bones. There was a sword at his hip and a knife in his belt. He wore a quilted gambeson over his tunic, but that was probably as much for warmth as military protection. Blue trousers, grey leg-bindings and ankle-high boots fastened with a strap and leather toggle kept his lower limbs warm.
As if sensing her scrutiny, he suddenly raised his head and she in her turn was rapidly appraised by a pair of shrewd eyes the striated green of moss-agates.
'Your horse,' Ailith said in laborious French. 'He has destroyed my garden.' She gestured over her shoulder. His reply was too rapid and she shook her head. 'Speak more slowly, I do not understand.'
'I am sorry. He has learned how to untie his rope.' He spread his hands in a disarming gesture. There was an apologetic half-smile on his lips, but she was determined not to let it sway her unless it was accompanied by hard proof.
'And he likes cabbages,' she said, returning his stare unflinchingly.
'Cabbages?' The man's eyebrows rose in alarm. 'He has been eating cabbages? How many?' His glance flickered to the horse with concern and he set one hand on its flank. The stallion swung his head and gave his master a loving nudge.
Ailith shrugged. It was beyond her French to say that the horse seemed to have sampled indiscriminately without recourse to any one plant. 'Come and see for yourself,' she invited.
He followed her through the garth to her desecrated vegetable plot. His left hand rested lightly on the
