looked at Ethel. 'But he won't be staying for long. I don't want… Her voice betrayed her. In silence she donned a linen apron and picked up a sharp knife.
'You will not lose him, lass. The old midwife touched her breast. 'I know it in here.
'Lightning does not strike in the same place twice, you mean? She stripped the skin from an eel with a sharp, downward tug.
'I just know it. Time was when I could command the sight by scrying in a cauldron of simmering water. I ain't got the art any more, lost it when I had my first seizure, but I still have inklings at times. He'll come back to you, never you doubt.
Catrin finished preparing the eels in silence. Then she wiped her hands on the apron and looked intently at Ethel. 'Truly? You have truly seen? Her breathing was suddenly short.
Ethel made the sign of the cross. 'I swear it on the Heavenly Virgin. He was riding that grey of his in the midst of a victory procession. I could see a crown shining and there was great rejoicing. Her voice tailed off and her eyes grew dark and distant.
'What else did you see? When Ethel did not respond, Catrin gave her a little shake. 'Ethel?
The midwife came to with a start and shook her head. 'What else did I see? she repeated vaguely. 'I don't remember. It was confusing and I was tired. All I know is that you need not fear for Oliver's well-being on this march. She rummaged beneath her mantle. 'You could give him this though, as a talisman. She handed Catrin one of her famous knots, threaded on to a strip of leather. It was woven with three colours of hair — raven-black, flaxen-gold and dark, rich copper.
Catrin gave Ethel a questioning look. 'Mine and Oliver's I can see, she said, 'although I will not ask how you came by them, but whose is the red hair?
Ethel shuffled self-consciously on her stool. 'It is mine. Do you think I was always this dirty sheep colour?
'No… I…
'Time was when I could put autumn herself to shame. She leaned for her satchel and, with shaky fingers, unfastened the latch. Delving to the bottom, she drew forth a pouch of light green silk and from it produced a plait of hair, thick as a wrist and the colour of a copper beech leaf. 'I had it cut off when the first grey threads started to show. It was a hot summer and I didn't miss my hair — I had to wear a wimple anyway. Sometimes I use strands in weaving my knots, but not often. You can see how full and thick it still is. There was pride in her voice.
The sight of the plait filled Catrin with poignancy. She narrowed and blurred her eyes and tried to imagine Ethel as a young woman with glossy, auburn tresses and a spring in her step. 'You must have been beautiful.
Ethel made a preening gesture. 'I had my admirers, she said. 'I tell you something else too, something that I have never told anyone before. She lowered her voice. 'Oliver is my great-nephew.
Catrin raised her brows in startled question.
Ethel nodded. 'I am the bastard daughter of his great-grandsire. My mother conceived me at the midsummer festival in the fields beyond the bonfire. She gave me a one-sided smile. 'Old lord Osmund had the red hair but, fortunately, so did my mother. She was able to pass me off as her husband's, but I always knew that I was different to my brothers and sisters.
'So there is a family tie between you? Catrin looked down at the knot in her lap. 'Did Oliver's great-grandsire ever know?
Ethel shrugged. 'He never made a point of enquiring after me, but we never went short. Sometimes there would be gifts from the keep — a new goat when ours died, the end from a bolt of linen with enough on it to make me a chemise. He paid for my brother, Alberic, to be educated for the priesthood at Malmesbury. The bond was known but never acknowledged, and after he died it was forgotten. She stroked the plait and returned it to its pouch.
'Why tell me now? Catrin asked.
Ethel shrugged. 'Perhaps it is a secret that I don't want to take with me to the grave.
Catrin looked at her with dismay widening her eyes, and Ethel looked back serenely.
'I would be a fool not to realise how frail I have become, she said. 'I am a herb-wife. I know what can be healed and what has to be. Then she smiled and gently shook her head. 'That stew is not going to be ready before midnight.
Taking the hint, Catrin tucked the hair knot away and resumed chopping the eels. She did not want to think of Ethel dying, but she saw the truth as clearly as the old woman, and knowledge was a two-edged sword. She could not decide whether it was better to live in ignorance or know what the future held in store. Oliver was going to be all right. Ethel was going to die.
Gazing into the fire, Ethel watched the flames dance, but they did not speak to her again and she was glad. She did not have the energy to discern their meanings. They could be so ambiguous, and that troubled her. Behind the shining crown and Oliver's return, there were dark currents that threatened to ruin the future of those that Ethel loved best, and she knew that there was nothing she could do.
Chapter 15
In years to come, Oliver would always remember Lincolnshire as a flat, waterlogged land, devoid of colour in the bleak January weather. He would see again the boggy roads over which Earl Robert's army floundered and trudged, smell the mud, taste the all-pervading frozen damp that numbed the flesh and rusted mail overnight. He would also remember the anticipation and the sense of power as Robert's army united with Chester's and marched with dogged, inexorable purpose upon Stephen and Lincoln. The cold, the discomfort, were not lessened, but they were made bearable by the knowledge that the tide was no longer running in Stephen's favour but in theirs.
To reach Lincoln, the combined armies had to find places to cross the river Witham and an ancient Roman ditch called the Fossedyke, which protected the city. Their guide, a local villager, swore that there was a shallow ford on the latter, but when he led them to it, squelching and cursing across the boggy floodplain, it proved to be a swift-running channel of brown spate-water. On the other side Stephen had set a small company of guards. As Robert of Gloucester and Rannulf of Chester approached the water's edge to try and gauge its depth, they were assaulted by a barrage of stones, clods of mud and yelled insults.
Oliver drew rein and, with frozen hands, fumbled in his saddle pouch for his wine flask. Hero was caked belly-deep in stinking marsh mud and bore scarcely any resemblance to the groomed, silver-dapple stallion that had set out from Bristol less than two weeks since.
Oliver drank from his flask and as he washed the pungent red wine around his teeth, thought that he seemed to have been on the road for ever. Although it was only Candlemas now, the peace of Christmas was a distant star on a fast vanishing horizon. His glance strayed to the woven knot of hair laced to his scabbard attachments. Catrin had given it to him on their last night together as they lay in the loft above the stables, wrapped in their cloaks and each other's arms.
The thought of her added warmth to the wine as it flowed through him, and he touched the knot. It made the physical distance between them seem less. The threads of bright copper-auburn trapped his eye, causing him to shake his head in bemusement. Strange to think that Ethel was his kin in truth. He had not known her when her hair was this colour, for she had been well past her fortieth winter when he was born, her red colouring faded to a sandy-grey. He wondered if he would have treated her differently had he known she was family and was glad that he had been unaware until now. The obligation of blood was weighted with guilt, whereas the obligation to an old woman who had once lived on his family's lands was considerably more simple. He took another drink of wine and then hastily looped his flask back on his saddle as Miles of Gloucester and a companion drove their horses into the icy, swift-flowing water of the Fossedyke.
On the other side, King Stephen's men watched with growing apprehension. Their horses backed and circled. They hurled further flurries of mud and stones as Earl Robert's men plunged into the dyke. A spear flashed in the air and fell harmlessly between the horses. Before it could sink, someone leaned down from his saddle, caught it up and cast it back at Stephen's men. It landed in front of them, its tip quivering in the mud of the far
