'That wasn't so bad, was it?' he murmured.
Wordlessly she shook her head, and the colour mantling her face darkened as she blushed.
'You can open your eyes, you know.'
Reluctantly she did so, avoiding his dark gaze as if they had done something shameful.
'Pleasure can be God-given too.' He rolled off her and lay down at her side. 'We are man and wife, we have not sinned.'
She nodded agreement, more to please him, he suspected, than from true belief. She raised the covers and looked down, checking that there was blood between her thighs and that some of it had smeared on the sheet. 'It didn't hurt,' she said in a puzzled, almost accusing voice.
'I suppose your mother told you it would?' he said neutrally.
Gisele frowned and shook her head. 'She said that it might, but not to worry, it would soon be over. But Father Hoel says that it is a woman's lot to bear pain for the sin of Eve, that anything else is lust.'
'Father Hoel is a sapless old stick,' Benedict snorted. 'I could have given you more than enough pain to satisfy your guilt, but I wanted it to be good for you.'
She bit her Up and was silent for a while. 'It was,' she said in a small, tentative voice, and pulled the bedclothes back up, covering herself from his gaze.
Benedict felt a surge of irritation. What was good was obviously not necessarily right. He drew her against him, his hand sweeping over the curve of her spine and her buttocks. He had intended going to sleep, but a different resolve grew inside him as he witnessed her reaction to his lovemaking. 'Next time,' he said a trifle grimly, as if responding to a challenge, 'will be even better.'
And as Gisele twisted and wept beneath the relentless onslaught of his tongue and fingers, Julitta lay in the bower with the other women, and twisted and wept too in anguish of her own. And alone with his hand, so did Mauger.
CHAPTER 45
Julitta stooped, formed a snowball from the thick white carpet at her feet, and hurled it at the young squire who had just struck a direct hit on her cloak. Her missile hit him on the side of the neck and showered in crystalline fragments down his tunic and shirt to find his skin and make him bellow. Julitta shrieked with delight and pressed home her attack. The youth rallied and chased her. Giggling, she fled across Brize's lower bailey for the safety of the stain, but her skirts hampered her, and the squire caught her by the arm and spun her round to face his handful of snow. Half-screaming, half-laughing, Julitta fought him off, her hair untwisting from its braid.
Mauger paused at the top of the wooden stairway linking the keep with the lower bailey and stared down on the tussling pair. His mouth tightened, and his hands clenched into fists. 'Arnaut!' he bellowed furiously. 'Arnaut, who gave you permission to leave your duties?' He thumped down the steps and strode over to Julitta and the squire. 'What do you think you are doing?'
The youth released Julitta as if she had suddenly become a scalding ingot, and looked guiltily at Mauger. 'I was on an errand for Lady Arlette,' he stammered. 'I didn't mean anything, it's only bit of fun.'
Her hair more than half undone, Julitta beat snow from her cloak and looked at Mauger through lowered lashes.
'A bit of fun?' Mauger said incredulously and cuffed the lad across the ear. 'More important than your errand, eh?'
'No, sir.'
Mauger cuffed him again. 'Then see to it, and if I catch you dallying again, I'll have you forking dung with the stable lads for the next month!'
'Yes, sir.' The youth fled.
Mauger rounded on Julitta, his hands planted authoritatively on his hips. Since the autumn she had been wilder than usual, as uncontrollable as the steep seasonal winds that came blustering off the Normandy coast scattering everything before them with a wanton disregard. She had no sense of the impropriety of wrestling in the courtyard with one of the junior squires. Good Christ, she was almost fifteen, far too old to be romping like a puppy, far too much of a woman to be a child.
'You should not encourage the lad,' he growled. 'It is not seemly.'
Julitta tossed her head. 'There was no harm in it.'
With some difficulty Mauger bit back the comment that she was no longer a street-hoyden and that she had to learn to behave with decorum. 'Does Lady Arlette know where you are?'
'Yes.'
The word was spoken with such defiant bravado that Mauger knew Julitta was lying.
'You are in her charge while your father is away in Flanders,' Mauger said sternly, 'and you should obey her will.'
'Why should I?' Julitta glowered at him defiantly. 'She only wants to sit me down with a pile of smelly fleeces and make me spin while informing me how much better Gisele would do it if she were here!'
'But you don't even try,' he said. 'I have seen the way you bait her and flout her rules. Do you think your mother would joy to hear and see you now?'
Julitta continued to glare at him, but now her eyes brimmed with tears and her jaw trembled. 'I hate you!' she spat, and whirling round, ran towards the hall, stumbling and slipping in the ankle-deep snow.
Mauger did not pursue her, except with his eyes. She needed a firm hand, he thought, more specifically, the hand of a firm man who would brook no waywardness. Not her father; he was too scarred by the past to deal with her effectively. Head bent in thought, he continued on his way to the stables.
By the time Julitta arrived at Lady Arlette's bower, she was unusually meek and silent, for Mauger's words had chastened her. What indeed would her mother think? Ailith would have laughed at the snowball fight with Arnaut and seen no harm in it, of that she was sure, but Julitta's certainty wavered when she thought of other aspects of her recent conduct. As she silently picked up her drop spindle and began to twirl the raw wool into yarn, she admitted to herself that she was often badly behaved for the sole purpose of spiting Lady Arlette and a world that had treated her ill.
It was a moment of painful revelation to Julitta, as she faced herself and realised that she did not like all that she saw. And when she sought her mother's image in her mind's eye for comfort, she discovered that she could no longer see her face. Her eyes filled and her hands trembled on the spindle, but she continued to ply the thread with determination so that Arlette would not notice and pounce upon her distress.
Arlette, however, had distractions and problems of her own, and although her gaze fell upon Julitta as she worked, in actual fact, she was less aware of the girl than usual. Her thoughts were all for her absent daughter.
She had not wanted Gisele to cross the narrow sea in November with her young husband, it was far too dangerous. A stubborn line to his mouth, a frown in his dark eyes, Benedict, however, had insisted, and Rolf had supported him.
'I cross the narrow sea all the time,' he had answered her protest. 'You have to let her go. She has to stand in her own light, not your shadow.'
It was the truth and it hurt like the cut of a sword, but even more painful was the being apart. Gisele was not only Arlette's daughter, she was her friend, confidante and ally. Not for one instant would Arlette have considered opening her mind to the child who was left for her to tend. Julitta was a cuckoo in the nest. Even to tolerate her was a chore.
Arlette had never quite forgiven Rolf for arranging the marriage to Benedict de Remy when they could have negotiated a match to a family of high Norman blood. Benedict was handsome, diligent and, according to Rolf, so talented that he could spot a good horse with his eyes blindfolded. But to Arlette's mind, he took his pleasures too seriously, and his responsibilities not seriously enough. Quite simply, he was not good enough for her daughter. He could have been a saint and still he would not have measured up to her standards.