hardly banish him from tenure of his ancestral holdings at Fauville. Mauger might be his vassal, but his bloodline was just as noble and respected as that of Brize-sur-Risle.
'I have no intention of betrothing Julitta anywhere yet,' Rolf said with caution. 'After all the upheaval in her life, it is too soon to unsettle her again. Since she has given you no encouragement, then neither can I, and I would advise you to look elsewhere for a wife if that is your need.'
Mauger nodded, his expression carefully neutral. 'I understand,' he said. 'But I had to ask, and now you see why I had to do it in person. It is between you and me. No-one else knows.'
'I understand too,' Rolf said. 'For your father, whom I loved as a friend, and for yourself, whom I value, I will take no offence.'
Mauger gnawed his lower lip, rose to leave, and then turned back. 'One of the reasons that I came to you is that I am concerned for her, my lord.'
'In what way?'
'It worries me to see her running around the keep the way she does.'
Rolf's eyelids crinkled. 'You think she should be at her distaff like all good women, eh?'
Mauger's face suffused with colour. 'I am worried that not all men are honourable, Only this morning I had to reprimand Arnaut for horseplay in the snow with Mistress Julitta. She made light of it, but young squires — ' he screwed up his face, 'they need very little encouragement.'
Rolf eyed him thoughtfully. 'I take your point,' he said, 'but you do not tame a wild thing by stifling it. Julitta will always be a little different because of her upbringing. You mention marriage. I say it will take a special man to know how to treat her, to yield at the right moment and yet maintain control.' He rose to his feet and limped stiffly in the direction of the bedchamber. 'She knows how to defend herself,' he said over his shoulder to Mauger. 'Besides, while I am the lord of Brize-sur-Risle, no man will dare to lay a finger on her unless he wants to be a gelding.'
CHAPTER 46
Julitta stood beside Mauger in the bailey, silently watching him inspect some horses that a hopeful trader had brought up from the regions far to the south. He said that he was on his way to Paris, but having heard of the fame of Brize-sur-Risle, he thought he would bring his stock here first.
In Julitta's opinion, his prices were far too high for what she considered to be very ordinary beasts. Her father or Benedict would not have entertained the thought of purchasing any of them. Mauger was being slow and deliberate as he examined each one. She knew that he would reject them too, but it would take him twice as long as the other men to make up his mind.
Julitta walked over to the horses which Mauger had rejected earlier before she emerged from the confines of Arlette's bower to watch him. For the most part they were mere nags, basic riding beasts that would serve well enough in ordinary domestic situations where excellence was not desired. The trader had brought his wares to the wrong market. Her father was no bucolic dabbler in the art, but a man who bred, bought and sold top quality horse-flesh for the high nobility. From what she could hear of the conversation between Mauger and the trader, Mauger was expressing those sentiments precisely, and not mincing his words. Lately, Mauger had been more irascible than ever, and she avoided his company unless, like now, the lure was too great. On the other side of the coin, he seemed to be doing his best these days to avoid hers.
Among the rejected horses, Julitta came across a cream-coloured mare with a filly nuzzling at her heels. The mare was nothing to look upon, although the journey she had travelled whilst carrying and then bearing the foal was a testament to her endurance. The colour of her coat was unusual, exactly mirroring the thick, yellow cream that was skimmed off the milk in the dairy each summer evening. Still, Julitta would have passed her over with only a minor second glance, were it not for the foal.
Her colouring was even more striking than her mother's, for instead of being a dappled grey, she was a dappled gold, or would be when her baby fuzz had grown into true, glossy horsehide. She had the sharp, pricked ears, the intelligent eye and the fluid lines that suggested her father at least must have come from Andaluz stock. An aristocrat, lost among the peasants, so small an aristocrat, that Mauger had overlooked her.
Julitta was not so naive as to call Mauger over and make a fuss about purchasing mother and daughter. If they were fortunate, they could obtain both for a bargain price. She sauntered back to the men. 'Are you going to buy any?' she asked Mauger.
He eyed her suspiciously. 'Why?'
Julitta pointed at a jet-black yearling which she knew Mauger had discarded as being too weak in the chest and spindly of leg. 'He's nice,' she said to the coper. 'Can you trot him up and down again?'
The coper agreed with alacrity, scarcely able to believe his luck. Mauger, full of his own disbelief, faced Julitta. 'What do you think you are doing?' he hissed furiously. 'That animal's not worth a bag of beans!'
'I know,' Julitta said calmly.
Mauger glared. 'Then why did you…'
'Oh, be quiet and listen! I asked to look at the yearling to distract the trader so that I could talk to you about that mare and foal over there without him suspecting. The mare's ordinary, but look at the foal, look at the breeding in her.'
'I've already looked,' Mauger said coldly.
'And you were not impressed?'
His eyes flickered to the trader who was trotting the black up and down. 'I won't waste your father's coin for your foolish whim,' he growled.
'It's not a whim, it is sound sense!' Julitta's eyes flashed angrily. 'There's Spanish blood in her. Do you think I cannot recognise quality when I see it?'
'You are saying that you know more after one year than I do after nine and twenty?' Mauger's nostrils flared.
'I am saying that you overlooked the foal because the mother is not what you want.'
'I overlooked nothing,' Mauger said through his teeth, clinging grimly to control. 'Even if the sire is pure- bred Andaluz, the mother's blood will bring it down. Your father entrusts me with the management of his horses, not some flighty wench who should be at her distaff.'
Julitta recoiled as if she had been punched. Mauger might have more knowledge than her, but he did not possess the vital spark of intuition. To be slapped down when she knew she was right was a blow that left her first speechless, and then hot with indignation. 'Then he entrusts a jackass!' she spat, and turning her back on him, faced the trader who had given up all pretence of showing the black's paces and was staring at the two of them in astonishment.
'How much do you want for the cream mare and her foal?' Julitta demanded, all subterfuge flown.
The coper drew breath.
'You bargain with me, or not at all,' Mauger snarled furiously. 'I am responsible for my lord's bloodstock. The girl has no authority, and furthermore no coin. And I wish to buy neither mare nor foal.'
Julitta whirled round and glared at Mauger, loathing him.
'Scowl all you want, your tantrums will not change my mind,' Mauger said brutally.
She wanted to kick him, she wanted to scream abuse in his face, but she saw that the deeper she wallowed in fury, the more he gained. Gathering the tatters of her dignity around her like a threadbare cloak, she swept out of the bailey, and only when she was out of sight did she stoop to pick up a stone and hurl it as far and as hard as she could, to the accompaniment of language purloined from Dame Agatha's bathhouse.
For the rest of the day she kept to the bower, twirling raw wool on her distaff with a vengeance while she wondered how many other opportunities Mauger had let slip through his fingers during the twenty-nine years of experience he claimed to his advantage.
In the late afternoon just as the candles were being lit, a servant hurried into the bower to inform Arlette that Benedict de Remy and the Lady Gisele had ridden in.
Arlette's face shone so brightly that they scarcely required the candles, and she leaped to her feet. So did Julitta, her heart bumping against her ribs, her stomach queasy with anticipation. She had tried to banish Benedict
