'Can't you keep that child in your sight for more than a minute!' Rolf snarled at Ailith. 'God's sweet life! First you let her wander off by the dew ponds, now I come home and find her almost killing herself and a costly warhorse into the bargain. Don't you have eyes in your head, woman?'
Ailith recoiled from the force of his anger. 'I asked her to feed the hens for me. When I looked out she was holding the empty bowl and talking to Mauger, so I judged it safe to go and put some bread to prove.' Her reply was calm, but her body trembled with the effort of remaining so. Her eyes flickered to the crowd of witnesses before whom she was being humiliated.
'Not safe enough, it seems.'
'My trust was misplaced.'
This time it was Rolf who recoiled as if she had slapped him. Ailith turned her back on him and walked with dignity towards the kitchens. Julitta perched on her mother's hip, one frightened blue eye peeping out from sanctuary at the havoc her impulsive act had wrought. The witnesses to the incident quickly melted away. Aubert took Benedict by the shoulder and tactfully withdrew.
Rolf cursed and dug his fingers through his hair in exasperation and anger, more than half of it self- directed. He ought to go after Ailith and make peace between them, but in his current state of defensiveness and tension, that was impossible. He would only bellow at her. Her remark about misplaced trust had struck at the core of his hidden guilt. If she could not trust Julitta, how much less could she trust him after what had happened earlier this morning at Inga's cottage? In his mind's eye he saw Inga lying upon her narrow bed, her body drenched in the sweat of pleasure, a frown contorting her face as she twisted and writhed. It had been a battlefield, each sound and gesture of need a blow, and neither of them willing to be merciful. Even to think of it now made him shiver.
Swallowing manfully, Mauger stood before Rolf to take his punishment. 'It was all my fault, my lord,' he owned, standing to attention. 'I should have known better than to let her ride Apollo.'
'Yes, you should.' It would have been easy for Rolf to vent his rage upon Mauger's hapless shoulders; too easy. He bit his tongue and began to examine the grey for damage.
'She… she said that you permitted her.'
'Not without a leading rein, but I do not suppose she told you that.'
'No, my lord.' Mauger cleared his throat. 'I'll know better in future.'
'We all will,' Rolf said, and left it at that.
The day continued to be fraught with near-disaster and frayed tempers. Scarcely had Rolf checked Apollo and found him none the worse for his experience than the royal representative arrived to look at the horse, and turned out to be none less than King William's eldest son Robert. He brought with him a sizeable entourage of young knights and hangers-on, all of whom had to be extended Ulverton's hospitality. They were clients and future clients, the men who put the bread on Rolf's table. That occasionally they must eat it was well understood.
Ailith, still simmering from the altercation in the yard and with Julitta underfoot, was fit to be tied. Rolf avoided her, apart from issuing curt instructions concerning the provision of a meal for their guests. She snapped at him that she was perfectly capable of preparing food without his interference, after which everything conspired against her. The milk curdled, the griddle cakes burned, the meat was as tough as saddle leather. Stony-faced, Rolf presided over a meal that had nothing to commend it apart from the mead which was served at the merciful end with fresh fruit and nuts which at least could not be ruined.
Robert of Normandy was a charming young man, light-hearted and exuberant. He treated the shortcomings of Rolf's table as a huge joke and being familiar with the superb order of the household at Brize-sur-Risle, baited his host mercilessly about the differences.
'I suppose heaven is all the sweeter when you've experienced hell,' he grinned, eyeing a charred griddle cake, and then a flustered, red-faced Ailith. 'But you're a strange one to prefer the second for ten months of the year.'
'It is not always like this,' Rolf muttered, feeling thoroughly humiliated beneath Robert's heavy-handed jesting. He glowered at Ailith. His wife would never have been caught out like this. Arlette, whatever the difficulties, would have provided a superlative meal and maintained her grace before the guests. Felice was doing her best, but her efforts only made Ailith appear all the less competent. She looked as if she belonged in a byre, and Rolf was ashamed.
By the time Robert of Normandy departed, Apollo in the care of one of his grooms, Ailith was tearful with exhaustion and Rolf was ready to explode. Instead of comforting her and trying to mend the breach that had opened between them, he saddled up a horse and rode out alone, shunning all company.
'Forget today,' Felice advised, and with her own hands prepared Ailith a calming blackberry tisane and made her drink it in the quiet of the solar. Despite Ailith's worried protest, she sent Julitta out with Benedict to play. 'You cannot cage the child,' she gently admonished. 'Rolf only shouted at you from his own fear this morning. It was unjust and he knows it.'
Ailith sipped the drink. 'Then why hasn't he come to me and told me himself?'
'He didn't have a chance. The Lord Robert arrived right on top of Julitta's prank. Neither of you were expecting so important a visitor. Tempers were bound to be frayed.' She gave Ailith a consoling pat on the shoulder. 'It will blow over like a summer squall. Tomorrow you will both laugh at yourselves.'
Ailith digested this in silence and then looked up at her friend with troubled eyes. 'Sometimes I think that he is tiring of me.'
'Ah no, Ailith, never!' Felice said quickly. 'Men have their moods just as women do. God knows, sometimes I want to kill Aubert more than he wants to kill me!'
Ailith gave her a wan smile. 'You're a true friend.'
'Who speaks the truth. Stop worrying, Ailith. Dab that rose scent I brought from London between your breasts and loosen your hair for him. You'll soon see whether or not he's tired.'
'That's what I'm afraid of,' Ailith said.
CHAPTER 33
Mauger had been drinking for more than half the day and in that respect was little different from most of the men among the company at Brize-sur-Risle who had gathered to celebrate the betrothal of Rolf's daughter Gisele to Benedict de Remy. Unlike the older men, however, Mauger, at eighteen, had not yet learned to hold his drink. The wine was yellow, the kind that was reserved for feast days and holy days in preference to the rougher red draughts of everyday usage. Its effect upon Mauger was to turn him from a taciturn, polite young man, into a loud and slightly aggressive individual. Twice he had almost begun quarrels which his irritated father had had to dampen down.
At Lady Arlette's side, Gisele sat like a votive statuette removed from a church aumbry to preside over the feast. A jewelled circlet was bound around her tightly plaited fine hair. Her blue silk gown was lavishly embroidered and decorated with braid, and on her narrow wrists there clinked a fortune in wilver and gold bracelets, some of them betrothal gifts. Mauger studied her calm, glazed facade and saw no resemblance at all to her little firespark of a half-sister who had almost got him crucified back in the autumn with that trick on Apollo.
'Nothing like Julitta, is she?' he commented over-loudly to the ten-year-old prospective bridegroom, and filtered the dregs of his final cup of wine through his teeth, Tancred having banned him from consuming any more.
Benedict smiled and looked uncertain. He was an assured child, but not confident enough to deal with Mauger's drunken meanderings. He looked round hopefully for his parents, but they were engrossed in conversation with other betrothal guests. Rolf had taken himself off to talk business to another horse-breeder, and Tancred was with him.
'Who's Julitta?' Gisele asked curiously.
'Lady Ailith's daughter.' Mauger suppressed a belch. 'A wildcat if ever there was one.'
