doubtfully. While they could come to 6erms with a Norman lord in their midst, they were perturbed hat he should bring a stranger of their own race into his household. Although the word 'traitor was not uttered, it hovered in he air as clearly as the word 'whore'.
And yet she had to take charge of these people, command their obedience and respect if she was to succeed in the duties Rolf had proposed that she carry out.
Ailith set her jaw and resolutely followed Rolf across the bailey to the long wooden hall standing close to the eastern palisade.
'They will soon grow accustomed to you,' he said over his shoulder. 'They looked at me like that for the first month or so until they realised I was no ogre come to eat their children.'
'You are not English,' Ailith answered in a subdued tone.
'Would you rather have yoked yourself to that bullying goldsmith?'
'You know I would not.'
Rolf paused on the threshold of the hall and turning, took her by the shoulders. 'I know it is hard,' he said. 'But time will make it easier, trust me.'
She removed his hands and shook her head. 'When you touch me in front of everyone, when you look into my eyes and laugh and make private jests, the people here are going to construe far more than friendship and obligation. 'Ah yes,' they will say. 'Lord Rolf and his Saxon whore. Why should we do as she bids us?' You swore that my position in your household would be an honourable one. Well in Jesu's name, I pray you set about establishing it now before it is too late!'
His face darkened. Ailith stared him out. She had never seen him angry before, but she knew that her own anger and fear were any match for his.
'You insult me,' he said huskily.
'By showing you the truth?'
'You want to live like a nun?' he bit out. 'Then so be it. I'll have your cell prepared.'
Ailith nodded vigorously. 'With a bar on the inside of the door. And I want one of the village women to sleep with me at night, so that everyone will know that I am virtuous. Until then, I will sleep in the main hall with everyone else.'
'God's death, you're as stubborn as a mule, and you know-how to kick like one — straight in the teeth!' Rolf growled, but reluctant humour began to gleam in his eyes.
Ailith stared him out without responding to his humour. This point of principle was very important to her.
Clearing his throat, Rolf shouldered past her into the hall. 'Well then, Abbess Ailith,' he declared with a sarcastic flourish, 'let me show you around your new convent.'
Driven by a boisterous wind, sunshine and shadow chased each other recklessly across Ulverton's beach. Gulls wheeled and screamed above the limestone cliff, or foraged along the shoreline where the tide had flung up a bounty of dark seaweed. A donkey stood in the lee of a cliff and munched hay from its nosebag, while two women culled mussels from the beds exposed by the retreating sea.
Muddy sand squished between Ailith's bare toes. She had drawn her gown between her legs and looped it through her belt as the fisherwomen did, and because a full wimple would have hampered her, she had pinned her braids in a coronet and covered them with a simple triangular kerchief. Her knife cut through the threads securing a clump of mussels to a rock and she dropped them in the basket beside her. Her hands and feet were numb with cold, but nevertheless she was enjoying herself.
She had been nervous of the sea at first, but in the five months since coming to Ulverton, she had learned to appreciate its moods, both fierce and calm. Sometimes she would take her spinning and stand in the high tower of the keep with the soldiers on guard to watch the waves roll into the bay. On other occasions she would use the excuse of gathering driftwood to walk along the beach with the donkey harnessed to a small cart. Today she had decided that as it was Friday, they would observe the fish-only rule by dining on mussels. During her days in London, Felice had taught her a way of cooking them in a stock of garlic and wine, and she knew that it was one of Rolf's favourite dishes.
She already knew many of his likes and dislikes from his sojourn in London, and in truth he was easily accommodated. He enjoyed food, had a voracious appetite that showed not at all on his lean, active frame, and he liked his meals to be served in good quantity with the minimum of fuss. In that respect, he was so much like Goldwin, that despite her determination to remain aloof, Ailith found herself looking forward to the dinner hour each day, to the conversation and the pleasure of watching Rolf devour everything that she prepared.
There was a proper bakehouse now in the lower compound with a magnificent brick bread oven, the rival of any in London. The villagers, if they wished, could bring their dough to be baked, providing that they paid for the service with a portion of that dough. Ailith often supervised this particular duty herself, for it gave her an opportunity to speak to the village women and disabuse them of any notions they might have concerning herself and the Norman lord. She had also given Wulfhild free rein to gossip and make friends with the women, for Ailith knew they would believe far more of her maid at this stage than they would of her. She had ensured too, that the village wife who was paid to sleep across her bolted chamber door at night was a talkative biddy who would delight in telling everyone in Ulverton how matters were ordered up at the castle, that its English chatelaine was a woman of stout moral fibre.
This guardian of her virtue was with her now, helping her to cut mussels from the sand. Edgith was at least threescore years. According to hearsay, mostly her own, she had been a great beauty in her youth, and having lived so long, there were few folk remaining who could contradict her. Her wizened face did indeed possess regular features, although they were somewhat marred by the decayed state of her remaining, worn-out teeth. Still, her eyes were bright with a zest for life. She had been married to a fisherman, but he had been lost in stormy seas some eight years ago. Four brawny sons she had borne, and they were all fishermen too.
Edgith dropped another bunch of mussels into the basket and pressed her hands to the small of her back. She unstoppered the water bottle hanging from the tie at her waist and took a drink.
'Did your husband fight in the great battle against the Normans, Mistress Ailith?' she asked curiously as she dug around in her pouch and brought out a small, flat griddle cake saved from the breaking of fast.
Ailith shook her head as the old woman offered to share, but she too stopped work for a moment. She licked her wind-dried lips and tasted salt. 'No, he was badly wounded fighting the Norse in the north. On the day of the great battle he was lying in his bed raving with fever. I had two brothers though, and their bones lie bleaching on Hastings field. They were members of King Harold's bodyguard. Lyulph was only in his nineteenth year.' Her voice started to tremble. Abandoning the muddy sand, she went to rinse her feet in a shallow channel of running water that was carving a path to the sea.
Edgith chewed carefully on her griddle cake and drank her water, her old eyes fixed shrewdly upon Ailith. 'So, if you had so much grief from the Normans, what be you doing with this one?'
Ailith turned sharply.
'Oh aye,' Edgith nodded sagely. 'I know that you are a respectable woman — and so does the village. Most of 'em are sick to the back teeth with being told that you and the lord do not bed together. But you be friends with him and you speak the Norman tongue uncommonly well for an English woman. How came this to happen when your own kin died for King Harold? Doesn't it disturb you to sit down at his table and see those two great battle axes on the long wall? Don't you ever wonder about who he killed to get them?'
Briefly, with a hint of defensive irritation, Ailith told Edgith about her friendship with Felice and Aubert, and how she had come to know Rolf. 'I do not allow myself to wonder,' she concluded. 'I do not look at those axes — to me they do not exist.'
Edgith made a non-commital sound and returned to harvesting mussels.
'Do you think I am wrong?'
'It is not for me to say, Mistress Ailith.'
'No, I want to know. Do you think I am wrong?'
Edgith straightened once more. 'They do exist,' she said. 'So does his hunger for you and yours for him. You can pretend all you want, but neither will go away just because you have buried yourself in the sand. One day you will be dug out of your hole.'
'I do not hunger for Rolf de Brize!'
'The defences you have built say that you do, that you fear him, and rightly so I think.' Before Ailith could
