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.
For a month, before coming to live in Aubert's house, she had dwelt at St Aethelburga's while Felice slowly regained her strength; a month in which her own wounds had begun to heal. On her second day at the convent, Rolf de Brize had taken her to witness the burial of Goldwin and Harold within the same grave. Although she was but recently out of childbed and not allowed within the hallowed confines of a church, still she was permitted to stand at the graveside. That had been one of the black days. She remembered it patchily, but the most disturbing part was her vivid recall of the Norman's strong, wiry grip holding her steady at the graveside, preventing her from falling in as the labourers began shovelling earth back into the hole.
Ailith liked Rolf de Brize, but she preferred to keep her distance. There had been an incident at the end of January just before he left when she had sought him in Aubert's stables to say that food was ready, and discovered that he had not heard the dinner horn because his face was buried in the ample bosom of Gytha the Alewife from down the road. Ailith had backed away quietly before either of them saw her, and had informed the household that Rolf was busy and would eat later. A whole candle notch later as it happened, his lids heavy with satiation. His appetite had been enormous – he had devoured all the chicken stew which Ailith had set down before him, and more bread than herself, Felice and Aubert put together.
'Ailith said you were busy in the stables,' Felice had told him.
Rolf had looked sharply at Ailith, and then a slow, incorrigible smile had spread across his face as hers reddened. 'I was,' he had replied without elaboration. No, he was neither to be trusted nor encouraged.
Ailith considered the foamy pile of carded wool in the basket beside her and decided that she had enough now to begin spinning. But first she had to see to Benedict. He had been gurgling in his cradle, delighting himself by trying to grasp the motes of dust suspended in the splash of sunshine, but his voice had become more querulous by degrees and she could almost feel his growing hunger in her own stomach. Her breasts filled as they always did at the sound of his cry. She lifted him from the cradle and crooned to him, her face radiant with love, and Benedict responded with a gummy smile.
Ailith settled down to feed him, freeing one of his hands from the swaddling so that she could play with his tiny fingers. She knew that it was dangerous to love so hard, but Benedict had bridged the aching chasm left by Harold's death. Her own son lay in the soil, but it was so easy to imagine him living on in Benedict. With his brown eyes and dark hair, he could have belonged to her and Goldwin.
When the baby had finished suckling, she laid him down on a soft pile of raw fleece to change his linens. He crowed at her and kicked his legs high in delight at being freed from the tight binding of the swaddling bands and the bulk of the soiled tail clout. This led to an accidental discovery that he could suck his toes, and he undertook the new skill with great gusto.
Laughing at his antics, Ailith fetched a fresh linen napkin from where it had been warming near the firepit. It seemed a pity to cover him up when he was enjoying himself so much, and she decided to let him kick for a while in the fresh air. The fleece was unwashed as yet, and it would not matter if he stained it.
Ailith glanced up to see Felice descending from the sleeping loft where she had been napping. She had made a slow recovery from Benedict's birth and still tired very quickly. 'Are you feeling better?'
'A little.' Felice finished securing her wimple and sat down on the stool which Ailith had vacated to tend the baby. Idly she picked up a mass of carded wool and ran it through her fingers. 'Should you not cover him up? He will catch a chill lying there.'
'I thought he would like to lie and kick for a while. The sunshine is lovely and warm.'
'All the same I would rather you covered him. A small baby should be swaddled so that his limbs will grow straight later on.'
Ailith lowered her eyes and bit her tongue on the response that Hulda said such stories were so much nonsense, that no animal ever swaddled its young.
Sometimes Ailith found herself sorely tried by living with Felice and Aubert. When Goldwin had been alive and King Harold new on the throne, Ailith had held the same, if not higher social status than her neighbours. Now, with a conquering Norman King commanding their lives, her husband dead, and his business sold off to a Norman
