‘You all right, love?’ Eric said, holding her arm.
‘Yes. Just remembering, that’s all.’
‘Don’t.’
‘I must.’
‘Was it that woman with the howling bairn this morning?’
‘No, I think not.’
‘Then what?’
A squall of rain hit the thatch and burst through the door, flinging it hard against the wall and bending the flames over the logs with a sudden ferocity. ‘Shut the door!’ Hilda yelled as more men entered, unsure of the kind of welcome they were getting.
The effect of her father’s death was worse than anything Rhoese had personally suffered until then, her mother Eve having died when Eric was born. Without her adored father, she saw her world turn slowly upside down, for she had awaited his return before telling anyone her secret. He was to have been the first. But the shock of losing him so abruptly and with no very plausible explanation made her ill, and she lost the foetus one terrible night with no one to help except Hilda and Els, the only ones except the chaplain to be told the truth. Eric had discovered it for himself.
Warin’s sympathy over her grief was correct but barely adequate, and nowhere near enough for her to be able to tell him about the second cause of her anguish, especially when his attentions had already begun to veer noticeably towards Ketti on the pretext that she had lost most by Gamal’s death.
Hurt, unwell and desperately unhappy, Rhoese began to spend more and more of her time here at Toft Green, in the hope that Warin would come and help to prepare it for their joint occupation. But that had no effect. Then one day she found him and Ketti lying together. Warin’s defence—that he was merely offering Ketti some comfort—was unconvincing, and the outrage of his betrayal so soon after the other tragedies broke Rhoese’s heart. There was no blazing row, no confrontation, simply a silent and hopeless withdrawal to her own house on Toft Green, the energy to fight for what had almost been hers having gone the same way as her happiness, her well-being, and her aspirations.
Hardly had she and Eric removed the remainder of their belongings than Warin moved in with Ketti, taking his aged father to join Ketti’s cantankerous mother and the twelve-year-old son Thorn by her first marriage. The change-over was complete, and Rhoese redirected rents and dues from her Yorkshire properties to herself and Eric for the maintenance of an independent household.
Immediately, Ketti’s hopes for a comfortable widowhood diminished at this withdrawal of supplies, and she protested. But Rhoese saw no reason to contribute her profits when Warin had taken over Lord Gamal’s mercantile business, his large warehouses along the Ouse wharf, his two ships, his wife and the house on Bootham next to the expanding new abbey of St Mary.
In the ten hectic months since her father’s death, Rhoese had erected a protective shell of ice around her damaged heart, keeping it cold with thoughts of revenge that, as yet, had done nothing to salve the deep wounds of rejection. Now, there was no man she could trust with her love except her brother, whose blindness from birth seemed not to matter when he had so many other rare qualities. He had already expressed a wish to join the monks at St Mary’s, and Rhoese had sent a hefty donation for the new buildings, the foundation-stone of which was to be laid by the new king himself on the morrow. They now awaited a message from Abbot Stephen to say whether he would accept Eric as a handicapped novice.
He squeezed her arm gently. ‘Go and prepare, love. We have guests to supper, and I’ll play the harp for you afterwards, if you wish it.’
‘And are you going to sup naked?’ she replied. ‘As an extra entertainment?’
‘Neal!’ he called across the fire. ‘The lady has a suggestion.’
Judhael de Brionne’s desire to know more about Rhoese had not even begun to be satisfied by his friend Ranulf’s disclosure concerning the stepmother’s tenancy problems. It was about the woman herself that he needed to know, and in characteristic style had soon decided that he could find out for himself, in private, more than he could be told by well-meaning friends eager to win wagers.
Alone, an hour after curfew, he rode through York’s puddled streets to where the south-west corner of the high city wall enclosed Toft Green, where dark outlines of thatched huts within a stockade clustered around the great hall, with the scent of wood smoke carried on the blustering wind. Under cover of darkness he waited in the hope that, sooner or later, someone would show themselves and tell him more about how a Yorkshire noblewoman ruled the roost.
He did not have long to wait for a door at the back of the hall to open, emitting the soft glow of firelight, the strains of a harpist’s song, and a woman’s figure silhouetted against the interior. Jude urged his stallion forward a few paces so that he could watch her cross to one of the smaller buildings and, now that the rain had ceased, to leave the door ajar, presumably to shed some light on the inside.
In a few moments she had emerged again, this time carrying something beneath one arm and closing the door stealthily behind her before slipping along the side of the hut towards the trees at the end of the croft, diving into their deep cover like a stoat sure of its direction. Jude’s heels touched the stallion’s flanks to direct him along the track until a gap in the wooden stockade allowed them through. Heading for the same trees, they picked a way silently over damp leaves, showering both man and horse with droplets from the branches.
The horse snorted indignantly, and the noise resounded through the quiet woodland, sending the pursued woman skittering aside with a yelp of alarm, then with a burst of speed that Jude was trained to anticipate. The shadows were black and unhelpful, but Jude’s eyes were keen and used to seeking in the dark, nor did the stallion have any difficulty in following the fleeing woman’s crashing leaps that more than once brought her down by clothes caught on tangles of undergrowth and low branches.
With wildly fumbling fingers she tore herself free at last, only to find her path blocked by the huge snorting horse and its stamping hooves, then, as she dodged away, by its great hindquarters. A hand came out of the darkness to seize her, and at that same moment she hurled the bundle away into the undergrowth with all her strength, yelping with terror at the restraining arms that pulled her backwards and held her, squirming and protesting. There was fear in her voice, and pleading. ‘Let me go…please! I am the Lady—’
‘Lady Rhoese of York. Yes, I know who you are,’ Jude whispered in her ear. ‘And you are breaking the curfew, which is worth a night’s imprisonment, as I expect you know. Now, my lady, do I detect a change in your former manner, perhaps? Are you so dismissive now of inquisitive Normans?’
‘You!’ she snarled, twisting inside the cage of his arms. ‘What are you doing here after curfew, sir? Let me go, damn you!’
‘My, how your heart is beating.’ His hand had delved under her cloak, moving upwards over her ribcage to encircle one breast, his thumb monitoring the frantic thudding beneath her kirtle, an offence as serious as breaking the curfew.
‘No…no!’ she protested. ‘No man may hold a woman so. Let go!’
‘So tell me what you’re doing out at this time of the night and who you’re going to meet. A lover, is it?’ His hand stilled, but did not withdraw.
‘You have no right to know. My business is my own.’
‘Not at this time of the night, lady. Tell me.’
Her hands could not prise his arms away. ‘If you must know, I was on my way to St Martin’s Church,’ she said, angrily, ‘to speak to Father Leofric. His tithes are due today.’
‘And it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? The priest is hardly going to starve for want of a tenth part of your dues, is he?’
Rhoese was silent. Her visit had nothing to do with the tithes, but she could not tell this Norman the real purpose when it was his earlier snooping that had prompted