With dragging feet he returned to the bed and sat down in the box chair that had become his prison and his prop during two lonely nights of vigil, or was it three? Time had lost all meaning as he watched the contagion invade and consume.
Father Gregory had visited mother and child, and used the opportunity to shrive them. A precaution and a comfort, he had said, but it had been no reassurance to Joscelin. To shrive them was to acknowledge that they might not recover.
His eyes felt raw with lack of sleep but he knew that if he closed them, if he relaxed his vigil for one moment, death would come with swift stealth and take Robert and Linnet from him as it had taken Juhel. And even if death did stay away, he knew the dreams would not.
He stared at them both sleeping together in the great bed. Perhaps Robert was breathing more easily since the last dose of feverfew or perhaps it was just the fancy of his aching mind. Linnet tossed and moaned, her hair darkly damp, her face and throat marked with the red blotches of the fever. She pushed at the covers and began to mutter. Her body arched and bucked and she licked her dry, pale lips.
Joscelin leaned over her, grasping her hot hand in his, stroking her forehead.
Her glazed eyes flew open and she stared directly at him, but he knew she could not see him. ‘Raymond,’ she panted. ‘Raymond, someone will come, please don’t.’
‘It’s all right, Raymond’s not here,’ he soothed and turned briefly away to wring out a cloth in cold water and then lay it across her brow. ‘You are but dreaming.’
‘No.’ She frowned, weakly fighting him. ‘Not a dream.’ Her body moved beneath the damp linen sheet, arching sinuously as if receiving a lover. ‘No, please, it is too dangerous. I . . . ah!’ A spasm caught her, leaving him in no doubt that her imaginary lover had entered her body. Prickles of cold shivered down Joscelin’s spine. His gut churned as she twisted and cried out, for the sounds, despite the torment of fever, were of pleasure, not pain. Raymond de Montsorrel. He was being cuckolded by a phantom in his own bed.
‘Linnet, in God’s name, he’s dead!’ Joscelin cried, striving to hold her thrashing body. ‘Christ, wake up!’
She fought him, her muscles rigid, her lips drawn back from her teeth in something that was part snarl, part sob, then she gasped and went limp.
Almost weeping himself, Joscelin slowly released her. ‘Oh God,’ he said, and put his head in his hands.
‘It will be safer if you let me pleasure you in the other way,’ she said in a hoarse, pleading whisper, her gaze darting upon the ceiling as if she could see moving pictures there. ‘If Giles were to find out, he’d kill us both. I know you like it when I do this.’
The urge to crush his hand over her mouth and silence her almost overpowered him. He sprang to his feet and strode into the antechamber while he still retained the control to do so. Pressing his temple against the cold stone wall, he fought his gorge. He remembered the bawdy barrack-room gossip in Nottingham. Raymond de Montsorrel’s appetite for sexual congress had been legend. The man himself had been nothing to look upon - balding, raddle-featured and with bowed legs from a life spent in the saddle - but that had never spoiled his attraction as far as women were concerned. His talents were all tucked inside his braies, so the gossip went. One of the garrison whores had boasted that Montsorrel had taken her up against the wall of St Mary’s Church on Ascension Day and that the size of his manhood would have put a bull to shame. And Linnet had let him—Joscelin ground his fist against the wall, not feeling the pain, and tried to think with his head, not his lurching gut.
It was no different from himself and Breaca, he told his recoiling instincts. She had been twice his age, amused and experienced in the ways of lust, and he had had no sense of guilt or sin at the time. He had no right to cast stones but he was deeply chagrined to find them lying at his feet anyway. Filled with self-disgust, he turned round to go back to the bed and saw his father standing in the doorway.
‘Conan told me,’ Ironheart said and stepped over the threshold. ‘For once he was right to open his stupid big mouth. Stand aside and stop glowering. Where are they - through here?’
Joscelin nodded. His head felt muzzy and he knew one of his incapacitating headaches was waiting on the periphery to attack. Damn Conan, he thought, and at the same time felt a tight swelling of relief in his throat and behind his eyes. Unsteadily he followed his father into the bedchamber.
Ironheart stood at the bedside. Joscelin heard the low mutter of Linnet’s voice.
‘What is she saying?’ He hastened to his father’s side, alarmed at what she might reveal in front of him.
Ironheart looked sidelong at Joscelin, his eyes bright with speculation. ‘That you cannot lie with her any more because she is with child.’
‘What?’
‘Is it true?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. She didn’t say anything before the fever struck.’ Joscelin sat down on the chair at the bedside and clasped his hands. ‘It is too soon, I think, and there have been very few opportunities.’ How many opportunities had there been with Raymond de Montsorrel? His eyes flickered to the little boy. The fever flush had faded from his brow and he appeared to be sleeping deeply and calmly. He resembled his mother, scarcely any Montsorrel traits to be seen lest it be in the slant of cheekbone and jaw. Did it really matter which Montsorrel? An exquisite pain was beginning to throb through his skull, making rational thought impossible. Behind his closed lids, small specks of colour performed a wayward dance and he groaned softly.
‘You need to sleep,’ Ironheart said, giving him a sharp look. ‘There is nothing you can do that a maidservant cannot. Go to.’
Joscelin was horrified. The thought of what Linnet might gasp out to a maid or his father in her fever was enough to make him shake his head in vehement denial. And there was the memory of how he had lost Juhel and Breaca, one in the flesh, the other in spirit. ‘I cannot!’ he said hoarsely.
‘You must.’ Ironheart laid his hand on Joscelin’s shoulder and stared him in the eye. ‘I do not know how loyal your men are but, if necessary, I will give the order for you to be taken and bound. Milo and Conan for certain will not hesitate.’
‘You would not dare!’ Nauseous with exhaustion and pain, Joscelin returned his father’s glare. For reply, Ironheart removed his hand from Joscelin’s shoulder and headed towards the door, his breath indrawn to bellow.
‘For Jesu’s sake, you do not understand!’ Joscelin cried after him, his voice breaking. The effort of forcing his shout through the tightness in his throat squeezed the band of pain across his forehead until he thought his skull was going to shatter. ‘I had a woman and child once before and I lost them. I wasn’t there when it mattered!’
Ironheart winced as if the raw anguish in Joscelin’s voice was a physical blow. Turning, he took two paces back towards his son, then stopped. His fists opened and closed and his throat worked. When the words came they were heaved out with effort as if they were enormous stones. ‘I wasn’t there to protect your mother,’ he said. ‘When I arrived from their summons she was dead but still warm enough for me to believe she was yet alive - only sleeping.’ He gave a choked laugh. ‘They said I tried to kill myself for love of her but it wasn’t true. It was for hatred of myself.’ Clamping his hands around his belt, he drew a shaken breath. ‘The woman and child you mentioned, this happened during those missing seven years?’