that since she displayed no inclination to speak, he should take matters into his own hands.
Julitta shook her head. Her stomach was a clenched fist of misery and fear. Even to swallow the wine was an effort. She stared at the logs in the firepit, their undersides a translucent orange edged with flaky grey. Her eyes began to burn and then to fill.
The man sighed heavily. 'I wish that your mother had come to us before… such a waste.'
Julitta looked dully at the merchant, at his fur-trimmed tunic and small, smug paunch. How often had she seen such family men queuing outside Merielle's door? 'We did come here once, but the house was locked up and we heard that you were in Rouen. Mama never tried again.'
'So where were you bound tonight?'
'Mama said that after what happened, the only thing we could do was seek my father's protection. We were going to the convent at St Aethelburga's.'
'What do you mean, after what happened?'
The outside door banged shut and Benedict advanced to the hearth, raindrops beading his cloak and sparkling in his hair. In his right hand he carried the pig's bladder which he taken out to fill with cold water from the well in the yard. Now he knelt at Julitta's feet and arranged the bladder around her ankle with gentle skill. 'It always works on the horses,' he said cheerfully. The curve faded from his lips as he looked between his father and Julitta. 'What's wrong?'
Julitta scarcely felt the soothing relief of the cold compress and the competent touch of Benedict's hands. All her attention was focused upon Aubert, as if he was the predator and she the prey.
Aubert too ignored his son. 'Julitta, what happened?' the merchant repeated in a gentler voice. 'You can tell me, you need not be afraid.'
'I had to stop him,' she whispered. 'He pounced on me like a dog on a bone. I didn't mean to kill him.'
Aubert blinked rapidly. 'Kill who?'
Benedict sat back on his heels and stared at her, his hand resting forgotten on the pig bladder and his dark brown eyes full of appalled comprehension. 'Dame Agatha's,' he said. 'Is that where you worked?'
'Yes, but not as a whore. Mama was Dame Agatha's housekeeper, and we helped out when she was busy. He tried to rape me, so I hit him in the cods, and then he had a seizure.' She shuddered at the memory.
'Hit who?' Aubert demanded, beginning to sound impatient. 'What do you know about all this, Ben? Who's Dame Agatha?'
Benedict reddened. 'She owns a bathhouse on the Southwark side. Mauger and I heard tonight that one of her clients had died there – Wulfstan the Goldsmith.'
'What?' Aubert jerked upright in his chair.
'That was his name,' Julitta nodded. 'Dame Agatha said he was a very important man and that if Mama and I did not leave immediately, we would finish on a gibbet. I didn't mean to kill him,' she repeated with a pleading look at Aubert. 'But he was hurting me.'
Benedict resumed his ministrations, turning the bladder over and smoothing its colder side around her ankle. 'You might hurt a man beyond your imagination by kicking him in the bollocks,' he said sensibly, 'but it would take a mighty blow to render him dead. There's no more meat on you than a sparrow. Even a full-grown man would have difficulty in felling Wulfstan. It was his own lust that brought on his death I would wager.'
'But still, whatever the cause, he is dead.' Aubert cupped his chin and thoughtfully appraised her. 'I do not believe that anyone will come looking for you or your mother. Wulfstan being so prominent a figure among the city merchants, it is likely that the circumstances and whereabouts of his demise will be kept as quiet as possible and all rumours denied.' He clucked his tongue. 'A bathhouse,' he said softly to himself. 'What was Ailith thinking of?' He looked with heavy perplexity at the slender, auburn-haired child. One of Felice's old gowns clothed her like a sack, drawn in at the waist by a braid tie. She was an eldritch waif, but he could see that one day she was going to be more beautiful than the Queen of Faery herself. A premonition of danger raised the bristly hairs at Aubert's nape.
'Tomorrow,' he said to Benedict, his voice abrupt with urgency, 'tomorrow you will go to Ulverton and bring Rolf here.'
Felice threw the shutters wide to admit a stream of bright spring sunshine into the room. It flooded across the greenish-gold rushes lining the floor and spilled upon the counterpane of the bed where Ailith lay propped upon several pillows. Warmth danced across Felice's face and illuminated the fine lines etched upon her olive skin. She was eight and thirty, the same age as her dying friend, but she could pass for a younger woman, while Ailith had aged to resemble a crone.
The fresh pink complexion had become a patchy grey; folds of skin draped loosely over gaunt bones; the fine blue eyes were sunken in their sockets and the thick blonde hair was now a sparse, dull yellow. Never would Ailith regain the smooth-fleshed bloom of earlier years. Her death was upon her, and in defiance, Felice had flung wide the shutters.
The sound of birdsong filled the room, the harsh, poignant screaming of gulls, Benedict shouting at one of the grooms as he made ready to leave.
'You are sending for Rolf, aren't you?' Ailith's voice was a weak whisper.
Felice returned to the bedside and sat down on the woven coverlet. She took Ailith's shiny, work-roughened hand in hers and felt the brutality of bone through the skin. 'Benedict is riding out this morning, but it will be more than a week before Rolf arrives.' And you cannot hold out for that long, she thought to herself. Her unspoken words must have shown in her eyes, for Ailith gave the ghost of a smile and shook her head.
'I do not want to see him, not even one last time. And if he should arrive before I am sewn in my shroud, do not show him my body.' Her throat worked and the smile became a brimming of tears. 'Let him remember me as I was… Promise me.'
Felice was torn by a surge of grief. Her own eyes filled, and it was a moment before she could find the control to speak. 'I promise.' She gripped Ailith's hand and watched her friend, the lovely, generous woman who had saved Benedict's life, turn her cloudy gaze to the bright aperture of light.
'Could you not have forgiven him?' Felice had only a vague knowledge of the circumstances in which Ailith had left Rolf, but she had been a witness to the torment that the action had caused, and was still causing.
Ailith coughed. 'I forgave him long ago,' she said wearily. 'It was not as if I did not know his nature, or that I was a snared innocent. I was deliberately blind, and when I was forced to see, I could not bear what my eyes looked upon.' Her gaze turned to Felice. 'It was easy to forgive Rolf, but I have never been able to forgive myself.'
Felice did not know what to say beyond her first, pitying exclamation of denial. Whatever Rolf had done, Ailith had taken the blame and guilt upon her own shoulders and punished herself. Not only herself, but the child downstairs too.
'I committed adultery with my brother's murderer,' Ailith said into Felice's struggling silence. 'I bore Rolf's child from the rites of the Beltane fires. The priest yesterday… he was in half a mind not to shrive me even though I swore bitterly that I had repented.'
Felice could see the tragedy as if it was laid out before her like the great embroidery recently commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux. 'Ailith stop it,' she said sharply. 'It avails you nothing. Perhaps if you had repented less bitterly and with more understanding, you would not have come to this pass now. And the same goes for Rolf,' she added half under her breath.
Ailith's stare returned to the brightness of the window. 'The path home was too hard for me to find,' she whispered. 'All the familiar places had disappeared.'
The door opened, and Julitta stood hesitantly on the threshold, a huge jug of spring herbs and flowers clutched in her hand. As the girl approached the bed, Felice saw that Benedict's cold compresses had worked wonders on the injured ankle, for Julitta was scarcely limping. Today the wild auburn hair was severely tamed in a thick plait and there was a little more colour in the pallid cheeks.
'Ben… Benedict said that it was all right for me to pick these from your garden, and that you seldom use this jug,' Julitta said hesitantly.
Felice eyed the handsome glazed pitcher. She seldom used it because it was her best one, kept for special occasions – but then was this not a special occasion? Feeling unworthy, she set aside her irritation. 'Of course it is all right, child. The flowers look beautiful, don't they, Ailith?'
'They do,' Ailith agreed, her eyes brightening on the collection of flag irises, lilies and honeysuckle with a
