Julitta some new gowns, but for the moment she only has the clothes in which she came to us, and a dress of my mother's that has been cobbled to fit. Do not think too badly of her. Perhaps you surprised her and she was hurrying to make herself presentable.'
Rolf's mouth tightened. He continued to glower, but Benedict sensed that the disapproval was more self- directed than aimed at him. He took Rolf's bridle and made to lead their two horses into the stables.
Rolf grimaced. 'Ah God,' he said, 'why should it take a lad of eighteen to show me the road when I have been on it so much longer?'
Benedict paused, half-expecting a reprimand, but Rolf sighed heavily. 'You are right. At five years old Julitta was not capable of sitting still for a moment. I used to call her Squirrel because she was so quick and inquisitive.' A painful half-smile curved his lips. 'A different scrape every day, and I never had the heart to punish her because she was so independent and funny. I should have looked beyond the straw and tattered gown to recognise her.'
Perhaps he had known it was her, Benedict thought, but had not wanted to believe it. The sight of Julitta running around like a hoyden in rags was all too close to Arlette's expectations of what he would find— a Southwark 'bath girl'. 'I think you should go and find her, sir,' he said with respectful neutrality.
Rolf eyed him. 'So do I,' he said. 'You've a wise head on your shoulders, Ben.'
Benedict looked modestly down, feeling a not unnatural glow of pride. He was quickly brought to earth by the sight of Mauger descending from the hay loft, a pitchfork in his hand and his sweat-soiled shirt slung around his bull-strong neck. The glow of hard work oiled his well-muscled body, and bits of chaff clung to his damp skin. His chausses had slipped down and hung on his hips, exposing a border of crisp pubic hair. Stalks of straw were snagged in the fabric. Mauger and Julitta in the loft together? It was a preposterous notion, but that did not prevent it from occurring to both Benedict and Rolf. A flush broke across Mauger's cheekbones at their scrutiny.
'I did not remove my shirt until the lass had gone,' he said with dignity before Rolf could challenge him. 'I had no idea she was in the loft until I went to fork some hay.'
'I do not doubt your honour,' Rolf rectified quickly. Mauger said nothing, but his grey eyes revealed that he was not deceived. With dignity, he shouldered the pitchfork and walked on.
Rolf pushed his fingers through his hair. ' 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap',' he quoted wryly to Benedict. 'What worries me is that not every man would have the honour to leave his chausses on, let alone his shirt.'
Felice wiped Julitta's tear-swollen face with a cloth wrung out in herb-scented water. 'Come now, come now,' she murmured. 'You can't greet your father like this. Dry your eyes and sit up, there's a good girl.'
'I don't want to see him!' Julitta flung. 'And he doesn't want me. I'm a burden, that's all!' Her lower lip jutted mutinously, but she obeyed Felice and raised herself from the bed.
'Oh, that isn't true! He searched high and low for you and your mother all those years ago. Of course he wants you. You're his daughter!' She smoothed the wavy masses of hair with a gentle hand and wondered what had brought Julitta bolting into the hall like a terrified horse. It had taken all Felice's persuasion and not a little physical struggle to make the child abandon the idea of grabbing her cloak and a loaf and running away. 'It is what your mother wished for you, did she not?'
'Only because she had no choice!' Julitta spat.
'That is not true either.' Felice fetched a bone comb and began to tidy Julitta's hair, plucking out fragments of straw and cleaning it of hayloft dust. 'She had several choices, and she judged your father to be the best of them in the end. I know that she talked about it to you before she died.'
Julitta gripped the coverlet in her fists and submitted for a moment to Felice's soothing ministrations. But in the end her fear and anger could not be contained. 'I don't want to see him!' she repeated and jumped to her feet. 'I won't go with him! It's all his fault that my mother is dead!'
'Julitta!' Felice stood up too, her dark eyes beginning to flash with anger.
'She is right,' Rolf said from the doorway, standing foursquare, banishing all Julitta's hope of escape. 'Had I heeded my conscience and had more self-discipline, Ailith would be with me yet, and none of this need ever have happened.'
Julitta's knees weakened and she sat down abruptly on the bed, her eyes lowered and her head averted.
Felice looked anxiously at Rolf. 'I do not know what to do with her,' she said.
'Leave her to me.' Rolf touched Felice's arm. 'I am indebted to you for your care…'
Felice smiled, but the gesture did not reach her eyes, which were troubled. She laid her hand over Rolf's, gave it a brief, sympathetic squeeze, and went out, leaving father and daughter alone together.
Rolf advanced two uncertain paces into the room. Julitta's head remained averted.
'I know that you want me to go away,' he said, 'but that is something I cannot do. You have haunted me for far too long. If I could change the past, I would, but since that is beyond me, I can only offer you the future.'
She was aware of him moving closer, could feel the warmth and vibration of his body now. 'You called me a hen,' she said in a low, aggrieved voice. 'You shouted at me.'
'You almost ran beneath the hooves of my horse, you could have killed us both. Besides, that is not the true reason you will not look at me.' He reached out across the last few feet of space between them and tilted her chin on his fingers, turning her to face him. 'It is because of your mother, is it not? You think I betrayed her?'
Julitta's thoughts and feelings were so tangled that there was not the slightest possibility of her being able to unravel them into coherence. All she knew was that she was angry at her mother for dying, and because the dead were inviolate, she had to take her anger and misery out on the living. And her father was a prime scapegoat.
'Didn't you?'
'Yes,' he admitted, 'I did betray her, and myself, and there is not a day that has gone by since then that I have not wished it undone. I won't betray her memory. Julitta, I want you to come with me to Ulverton. I want to do my best for you now.'
'And if I don't want to go?' She tossed her head defiantly, shaking off his touch. 'You'll make me, won't you?'
Rolf went to the window where only a few days before a jar of blue and yellow irises had blazed with brave colour. Now the top of the coffer was bare. He stood against the chest, arms folded, and looked out on the bustling yard, and beyond it, the wine wharf jutting into the Thames. 'Do you remember anything of your life before?' he asked. 'Do you remember Ulverton?'
Julitta stared at her father's turned back. His hair was unruly like her own, but maintained in cropped order, and the colour was neither as rich nor as dark, and diluted with wings of silver. Her mother had said that she resembled him as much in character as in looks. Did she remember Ulverton? Dear Jesu, if she tried, she could remember far too much. 'Not really,' she said with a sulky shrug.
'Your mother loved the sea,' he mused. 'At the slightest excuse she would take herself down to the shore in the summertime and go wading barefoot in the shallows. And in winter she would put on her cloak and watch the waves come pounding in for hours on end. She had never seen the coast until I brought her to Ulverton. I can still see her collecting driftwood with the other women, and you running between them, your hair like a banner in the wind.' His voice shook and he sucked an unsteady breath through his teeth.
Julitta bit her lip, fresh tears scalding her eyes. 'Yes, I do remember,' she whispered. 'And you came down and spoke to my mother, then you took me on your shoulders, and I could see so far that I thought the world was mine.'
'It still is if you want it.' Her father turned round and held out his hand once more, but this time he did not advance and touch. 'Princess?'
The word leaped at her and she was smothered by all its promise and heartache. His hand was quivering, perhaps just with the stress of position, but she thought not. There was a tension in his face that spoke of control on the verge of cracking. Her own composure broke beneath his gesture, his stare, and the memories he had invoked. Rising from the bed she ran to him. His arms closed about her, one hand convulsively grasping and smoothing her hair. 'Julitta!' he said hoarsely, almost weeping. 'Oh Christ, Julitta!'
Julitta pressed her cheek against the rough linen of his tunic. Hard, harder, forcing belief into her soul. She would go with him to Ulverton and piece together the shattered dream.
When they had both recovered somewhat from the emotional hammerblows, Julitta detached herself from
