Benedict glanced his way. His fine dark-eyes were red-rimmed for want of sleep, and his olive skin had a greyish tinge. The natural curve of his mouth had been banished to a tight line, and it tightened further in response to Mauger's query, forbidding a reply.
'I thought Lord Rolf was going to take those chestnuts himself?'
'He changed his mind.' Benedict stepped from the mounting block to Cylu's dappled back, and gathered up the reins.
Mauger tried to remember what Benedict had been doing last night, who he had been with, but that part of his recollection was not good. He had been too interested in his own pursuits then. 'Why'd he do that?'
Benedict's fist tightened on the reins, his knuckles showing a glimmer of white, and Cylu pranced, opening his mouth against the bite of the bit curb. 'Why don't you ask him?' Benedict snapped, and dug in his heels, making the grey clatter away from the mounting block with a grunt of indignant surprise.
Hands on hips, Mauger watched Benedict leave the keep, and then, with a superior shake of his head, returned to his duties. He had not been working much above ten minutes when Rolf joined him, and dismissed the grooms with a flick of his wrist.
'Are you sober?' Rolf demanded.
'Yes, my lord.' Mauger managed to keep from sounding indignant. Had the question been asked a few hours ago, he would not have been able to answer so positively. Still, it was a strange thing for Rolf to ask.
'Good, you need your wits about you for what I'm about to say.' Rolf drew Mauger away to a wooden bench leaning against the gable end of the stable wall and bade him be seated. Feeling uneasy, Mauger did so. Rolf was not just going to question him about some mundane matter concerned with the horses.
His overlord drew a deep breath. 'Some months ago, you came to me and offered for Julitta. At the time I refused, but… matters have changed. If you still want her, she is yours.'
Mauger's eyes widened upon Rolf and the breath left his body as if he had been physically punched. He did not quite believe what he had heard. 'You are offering me Julitta?' he said in a strangled voice. 'To wife?' His eyes narrowed. 'Why?'
'Because you are the best I can do for her.' Rolf met Mauger's astonishment for a moment, then looked away. 'She is wilful and strong, Mauger, fond of her own way, and taking it without thought for the consequences — like me, some people would accuse, and say that it is only my sin coming home to roost.' He scooped back his silvering curls and gave a harsh laugh. 'I am not making sense, I know.'
Mauger thought, a chill running down his spine, that Rolf was making perfect sense. 'Has Mistress Julitta taken her own way into disgrace of some sort?' he prompted, as certain as any man could be that he already knew the reply.
'That would about sheath the sword,' Rolf said heavily. 'Last night, May Eve. She drank more than she should, and, well… enough to say that she is no longer a virgin. It was a regrettable accident. For all her wild ways, I know that she is not indiscriminately promiscuous.'
Mauger was not surprised. He had only to remember her romping in the snow with Arnaut the squire, to know that the potential had been there. And a life in a Southwark bathhouse would hardly have stiffened her moral fibre. He felt a flicker of irritation. If Rolf had not rejected his offer three months ago, this would never have happened. Now Rolf was the one making the offer, and of damaged goods. He imagined the dark red hair spread upon his pillow, Julitta's naked body at his side in the marriage bed. Julitta's naked body beneath someone else last night.
'So the man with whom she lay was known to her? She did not go with anyone at random?'
'He was known, and he regrets it too. It will not happen again, I swear it.'
Mauger dug at a soft spot on the wood with his thumbnail. He thought of Benedict saying Why don't you ask him? and he knew the identity of Julitta's lover without having to ask. And that, too, came as no surprise. He had seen the way she looked at Benedict.
'You said that you could give her a safe and steadfast home where she would be her own mistress,' Rolf added when Mauger continued to dig at the wood without answering. 'You can see how difficult it will be to keep her under the same roof as my wife and daughter. They grate upon each other as it is. Life will be made impossible for Julitta now. I have no alternative but to find her a husband, or put her in a nunnery. I know that there are many families I could approach with a view to negotiating a marriage – a good dowry will usually overcome the gravest misgivings, but you offered for her before, and I am giving you the opportunity to have her before I seek elsewhere.'
'How large a dowry?' Mauger asked.
Rolf named a sum that caused Mauger's steady nerves to lurch. It was guilt money, he thought, a sweetening of the sour. It made Rolf's suggestion impossible to refuse, and yet, he hesitated. He had taken his life in his hands three months ago to offer for Julitta, but now the stakes had changed. How much for a virgin's honour? 'What if she is with child? You would not expect me to raise it as my heir?'
'If she is with child, then Father Jerome will admit it to the Cluniac order for a career in the church.'
'So Father Jerome knows?'
'He was present when Julitta was discovered. He needs the patronage of Brize-sur-Risle for his new convent, and he's not the stuff of which holy martyrs are made. Expedience first, religious considerations second. If you take up my offer, he is willing to wed you to Julitta this very day, before he returns to Bee'
Mauger did not like thinking on his feet. He preferred to go away somewhere quiet and mull things over to himself until he was sure that he had made the right decision. But he could see from the glint in Rolf's eyes, the twitch of his fingers, that the answer was required now. Julitta, he could have Julitta. His blood thumped in his head like the tabors had thumped out the dancing rhythms last night around the Maypole. Julitta and a dowry that outstripped his imagination. Another man's leavings. Payment for sweeping embarrassing debris out of sight.
'Supposing she will not agree to the marriage?' he asked. 'You cannot force her.'
'Oh, she will agree,' Rolf said, the grim line returning to his mouth. 'And I won't have to force her. The alternatives are the convent or a life confined to Arlette's rule in the bower. Faced with those, I doubt she will baulk.'
Mauger nodded. He supposed that it was a compliment that he would be preferred above Church and father's wife, but it sailed dangerously close to an insult. He chewed his underlip, his grey eyes narrow with thought. Powdery green fragments from the bench darkened his thumbnail. Once Julitta was his, he could mould her, bring her around to his way of thinking and behaving. Rolf was not strict enough with her, half the reason for her waywardness. With a household of her own to run and a husband to keep her in order, she would not have time to play the hoyden. And perhaps, in time, as her personality matured and steadied, she would come to love him, and thank him.
'Then I agree to your offer,' he said slowly to Rolf. 'I have no family to consult on the matter, only myself to speak for.' He stood up and dusted his hands down his tunic. 'I'd best change my garments, if I'm to stand before witnesses.'
Rolf let out a deep sigh, although it was difficult for Mauger to tell if it was of relief or resignation. The older man slapped him on the shoulder. 'Tancred was always a good friend to me, as well as my vassal and overseer,' he said. 'And you have served me unstintingly. I welcome the opportunity to call you son.'
Mauger nodded stiffly and mumbled a polite reciprocation. Words did not come easily to his tongue the way they did for Rolf and Benedict. He felt clumsy and uncomfortable, nor did it make it easier that he and Rolf both knew that Rolf was trying his best to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
'Julitta isn't here,' his future father-in-law added as they set off together towards the hall. 'I sent her away before dawn -better for all concerned. She is waiting at your manor of Fauville.' He spread his hands in a gesture both wry and apologetic. 'I gambled that you would agree to the match. You can be married in the chapel there, and I will give you a month's leave from your tasks at Brize.'
A honey month, a time for settling into the married state… or a time of siege. Mauger thanked Rolf for what could either be a blessing or a curse, and went to change his garments. Rolf had asked him if he was sober. Mauger rather wished that he had been sodden drunk.
CHAPTER 49
