'Your mother will soon be safe and warm,' Benedict reassured Julitta, as behind them the boatman clambered into his craft and sculled out into the black water, heading at last for home.
Julitta nodded and continued to chew her lip.
'Do you remember me?'
Julitta blinked through the rain. How could she ever forget? 'Yes, I remember. I was a princess then.' Suddenly it was hard to set one foot in front of the other, as if all her will had trickled out through the worn soles of her shoes. Her mind kept filling with the vision of the fat gold merchant turning blue on the floor at her feet. She could still feel the pressure of his body on top of hers, crushing out her life. But it was he who had died. She looked sidelong at Benedict. Once, in another world, he had saved her from being pecked to death by a goose. 'What were you doing in Southwark?'
He checked his long stride to accommodate hers which was slow with exhaustion and hampered by her wet gown. 'Visiting a bathhouse,' he said after a moment and avoided her eyes. 'I've never been to the Southwark side of London before.'
'I work in a bathhouse.' Julitta cast the words at him like a sharpened spear. 'Or I did until tonight.' The vision of the merchant hit her again, full force, and the weapon she had flung at Benedict rebounded and sank into her own breast. She would have run from the look on his face, but she stepped awkwardly on a stone in the road, wrenched her ankle, and fell with a cry.
He stooped over her. Julitta squeezed her lids tight and hung her head so that she would not have to meet his gaze. Besides, her twisted foot was agony. She heard him shout out to Mauger to wait. Gentle hands removed her clutching one and carefully examined.
'I don't think it's broken,' he said, 'but certainly you cannot walk on it. The flesh is puffing up faster than a batter pudding. I'll have to carry you.'
Julitta was dazed and exhausted, unable to reason any more, unable even to think. Risking a glance at his face, she saw that his recoil at her words had been replaced with an equally dangerous expression of pity. She tightened her lids again and bowed her head, holding her breath on tears. When he lifted her in his arms, she had to link her own about his neck to support herself. The smell of rain-wet wool filled her nostrils, and underlying it, rising directly from his smooth, olive skin, the herbal scent which came from long soaking in a bathtub.
CHAPTER 39
Julitta sat in Aubert's chair before a blazing hearth. A stool supported her swollen ankle and a cup of strong, hot wine comforted her hands. Her mother had been given the great bed in the sleeping loft and was now being tended by Felice de Remy. Mauger had been sent back out into the wet night to fetch a priest —just a precaution, Aubert de Remy had said, but Julitta knew better. She sipped the wine. Its colour was as rich and dark as the tendrils of hair drying in a frizzy cloud around her wan face.
'Do you want to eat?' asked Aubert. He had been sitting at her side in silent vigil, but now seemed to think that since she displayed no inclination to speak, he should take matters into his own hands.
Julitta shook her head. Her stomach was a clenched fist of misery and fear. Even to swallow the wine was an effort. She stared at the logs in the firepit, their undersides a translucent orange edged with flaky grey. Her eyes began to burn and then to fill.
The man sighed heavily. 'I wish that your mother had come to us before… such a waste.'
Julitta looked dully at the merchant, at his fur-trimmed tunic and small, smug paunch. How often had she seen such family men queuing outside Merielle's door? 'We did come here once, but the house was locked up and we heard that you were in Rouen. Mama never tried again.'
'So where were you bound tonight?'
'Mama said that after what happened, the only thing we could do was seek my father's protection. We were going to the convent at St Aethelburga's.'
'What do you mean, after what happened?'
The outside door banged shut and Benedict advanced to the hearth, raindrops beading his cloak and sparkling in his hair. In his right hand he carried the pig's bladder which he taken out to fill with cold water from the well in the yard. Now he knelt at Julitta's feet and arranged the bladder around her ankle with gentle skill. 'It always works on the horses,' he said cheerfully. The curve faded from his lips as he looked between his father and Julitta. 'What's wrong?'
Julitta scarcely felt the soothing relief of the cold compress and the competent touch of Benedict's hands. All her attention was focused upon Aubert, as if he was the predator and she the prey.
Aubert too ignored his son. 'Julitta, what happened?' the merchant repeated in a gentler voice. 'You can tell me, you need not be afraid.'
'I had to stop him,' she whispered. 'He pounced on me like a dog on a bone. I didn't mean to kill him.'
Aubert blinked rapidly. 'Kill who?'
Benedict sat back on his heels and stared at her, his hand resting forgotten on the pig bladder and his dark brown eyes full of appalled comprehension. 'Dame Agatha's,' he said. 'Is that where you worked?'
'Yes, but not as a whore. Mama was Dame Agatha's housekeeper, and we helped out when she was busy. He tried to rape me, so I hit him in the cods, and then he had a seizure.' She shuddered at the memory.
'Hit who?' Aubert demanded, beginning to sound impatient. 'What do you know about all this, Ben? Who's Dame Agatha?'
Benedict reddened. 'She owns a bathhouse on the Southwark side. Mauger and I heard tonight that one of her clients had died there – Wulfstan the Goldsmith.'
'What?' Aubert jerked upright in his chair.
'That was his name,' Julitta nodded. 'Dame Agatha said he was a very important man and that if Mama and I did not leave immediately, we would finish on a gibbet. I didn't mean to kill him,' she repeated with a pleading look at Aubert. 'But he was hurting me.'
Benedict resumed his ministrations, turning the bladder over and smoothing its colder side around her ankle. 'You might hurt a man beyond your imagination by kicking him in the bollocks,' he said sensibly, 'but it would take a mighty blow to render him dead. There's no more meat on you than a sparrow. Even a full-grown man would have difficulty in felling Wulfstan. It was his own lust that brought on his death I would wager.'
'But still, whatever the cause, he is dead.' Aubert cupped his chin and thoughtfully appraised her. 'I do not believe that anyone will come looking for you or your mother. Wulfstan being so prominent a figure among the city merchants, it is likely that the circumstances and whereabouts of his demise will be kept as quiet as possible and all rumours denied.' He clucked his tongue. 'A bathhouse,' he said softly to himself. 'What was Ailith thinking of?' He looked with heavy perplexity at the slender, auburn-haired child. One of Felice's old gowns clothed her like a sack, drawn in at the waist by a braid tie. She was an eldritch waif, but he could see that one day she was going to be more beautiful than the Queen of Faery herself. A premonition of danger raised the bristly hairs at Aubert's nape.
'Tomorrow,' he said to Benedict, his voice abrupt with urgency, 'tomorrow you will go to Ulverton and bring Rolf here.'
Felice threw the shutters wide to admit a stream of bright spring sunshine into the room. It flooded across the greenish-gold rushes lining the floor and spilled upon the counterpane of the bed where Ailith lay propped upon several pillows. Warmth danced across Felice's face and illuminated the fine lines etched upon her olive skin. She was eight and thirty, the same age as her dying friend, but she could pass for a younger woman, while Ailith had aged to resemble a crone.