'I'm all right, sir,' Mauger said defensively and wiped his mouth. He was small for his age, but what he lacked in stature he made up for in stocky breadth which gave promise of bull-strength in later years. He had a mop of sun-streaked blond hair and eyes of a woodsmoke blue-grey. The distance between his nose and upper lip was short, and like his father, he had a wide expanse of chin.
Rolf leaned against the tall mast of the galley and felt the creak of her ropes and timbers as if they were a part of his own body. He narrowed his eyes towards the coastline, and although his stance was nonchalant, his blood was fizzing with impatience.
'Do you think we're safe?' the boy asked.
'Safe from what?' Rolf smiled and cast his eyes to the solid blue of the sky and the rapid progress of white clouds.
'That Danish fleet we were told about in Honfleur. What if their ships are here in the narrow sea?'
'They'll be headed for the north lands, for their allies in the old Danelaw,' Rolf said. 'And like as not, the King has already gone there to deal with the threat.'
'But that merchant said there were upward of two hundred warships.'
'That is not as many as we brought to Hastings, and even Swein of Denmark and the sons of Cnut are not match enough for William. Stop fretting, lad, we're almost home.'
Mauger spun to heave over the side of the galley again. As far as he was aware, they had just left home, and their destination could never aspire to that title. His apprenticeship to his father was finished. He was now to serve Rolf, and hope to prove Tancred's expectations. It was a heavy responsibility and Mauger had only just turned thirteen years old. Sick, miserable, he stared at the white churn of the wave crests three feet from his nose and longed for the familiar haven of Brize-sur-Risle and Fauville. His imagination, not usually vivid, was peppered by visions of the boat capsizing in a sudden squall, and of himself drowning in a high and murky sea. Even when the lookout perched on the mast cried landfall, the terror remained, and Mauger was taken with a fresh bout of retching.
'A baby?' Rolf stared at Ailith as if she had addressed him in old Norse. He looked her up and down, but she was wearing her loose Saxon garments again in which she could have been a full nine months round and a pregnancy would not have shown.
'I wore the white hawthorn on May Eve,' she said, 'there are two women in the village due at the same time as me. Are you not pleased?'
There was an anxious note in her voice. Rolf strove to compose himself. 'Yes, of course I am, but grant me a little space to recover from my surprise. When I left you, you were as slim as a wand.'
'Well I'll soon be as round as a pease pudding,' she retorted.
'I'm twice the size I was when I was carrying Harold, and I have quickened already.'
Her tone was hostile, as if she was blaming him for her condition when the begetting had been a mutual pleasure. Rolf slipped his arm around her waist and drew her against him. He had embraced her on the harbour side, but that had been in front of a host of villagers and castle folk, and without benefit of information, he had not noticed her increased girth. Now he ran his hand lightly over her belly and easily detected its round swell.
'February?' he repeated, mentally counting the months and feeling dismayed, for whenever Arlette was pregnant, she insisted that they must not lie together because it was against the teachings of the Church. Besides, there was always the danger that she might miscarry. And even after the child was born, the Church declared that a man might not lie with a woman until she had been out of childbed for forty days.
'Rolf, what's the matter? Why are you scowling?'
He deliberated for a moment, then told her. 'I am selfish, I know, but I cannot bear to be near you and not touch you.'
The anxiety cleared from her brow and she laughed with relief. 'Is that all?' She patted her belly. 'Well I might be growing by the day, but I'm not too huge yet, and when that time comes…' She cocked her head on one side. 'Well surely there ire other ways?'
Rolf laughed too and shook his head. Just when he thought he had her measure, she would surprise him anew. 'Do you recall in your first months at Ulverton, when I used o call you Abbess Ailith?' he chuckled. 'You would not even let me lift you down from a baggage wain without scolding my ears off!'
She had the grace to blush. 'That was before I yielded up ay common sense,' she murmured, looking at the floor.
'And found your reason,' he retorted, unpinning her wimple to nibble at her ear and her throat; and from that moment, all conversation ceased for no small time.
'Keep an eye on Mauger for me,' Rolf requested in the lazy aftermath of their lovemaking, his long body stretched at ease beside hers in the great bed, the palm and fingers of his right hand spread upon her stomach to feel the tiny, flutterings of the life she carried within her. 'He was sick all the way across the narrow sea, and he's homesick too.'
'I will do what I can,' Ailith murmured, and rolled into the warmth of his body, savouring the feel of his flesh against hers. 'But I am not his mother.'
His shoulder moved beneath the web of her hair. 'She died soon after he was born, and Tancred's never taken another wife. The lad's only ever known wet nurses and the women of the castle. He never complains, but a matronly eye would not go amiss.'
'And you think I have a matronly eye?' She snuffled at him, inhaling his scent — the sweat of love-play, the tang of woodsmoke from the hall. Her tongue came out. Her teeth playfully nipped at his bicep.
'Certainly you have a matronly figure.' The palm of his hand gently rubbed; his fingers arrowed lower with delicate precision and she caught her breath.
'Whose fault is that?'
'Mine, I suppose,' he murmured, and once more they ceased to talk.
CHAPTER 29
Julitta of Ulverton was born a little after sunrise on a bright February morning in the year 1070. Having kept her mother awake all night with severe labour pains, she shot into the midwife's spread apron and announced her presence to the world in no uncertain terms. She had a fuzz of dark red hair and a face to match, although that soon became a more healthy pink as each resounding cry cleared her airway.
'And I thought Benedict was loud,' Felice remarked as the baby was cleaned of blood and mucus and wrapped in warm swaddling. The sight of Ailith labouring had swept her on a flood of memories to her own travail, and at the moment of Julitta's birth, she had been unable to watch. Nor was she at ease until the midwife, Dame Osyth, a woman with nine children of her own, had delivered the afterbirth and pronounced that the blood Ailith had lost was 'nought but a smidgin'.
'She resembles Rolf,' Felice said, giving the howling bundle to the exhausted, but happy mother.
Ailith laughed. 'God grant that she does not act like him. Two of them is more than I could bear!'
'You do not mean that!'
'Could you imagine Rolf in female form?' She put the infant to her breast. The baby found her nipple immediately and set to with a voracious will. 'But I fear you are right,' she added wryly. 'She certainly has his appetite.'
'I'll go and fetch him,' Felice said as the midwife set about tidying the room, putting the afterbirth and bloodstained bed-straw in a basket for burning and covering them with used linens.
Ailith gazed down upon her new daughter, enchanted by the fragility of her skin and the coppery-gold lashes lining her half-closed lids. She was long of limb, and since both her parents were tall, would doubtless grow to match them. Ailith spoke softly to the baby and her eyes opened. They lacked focus and were an indeterminate horizon-blue, but they followed the sound of the voice and seemed to study Ailith curiously. She felt a pang of protective love so fierce that it brought tears to her eyes.
'Julitta,' she murmured, testing the strange, Norman name on her tongue. At Yuletide she had made a bargain with Rolf beneath a kissing bunch of mistletoe. If the baby was a boy, she had requested that he be named Lyulph in remembrance of her younger brother. Not Goldwin, for that was a name too sacred and painful to
