‘Wassail!’ The traditional cry echoed round the hall in the English tongue.
‘Drink, hail!’ came the response, and cups and goblets were raised and drained and not for the first time or the last.
Elene stared round Ravenstow’s great hall at the progression of her wedding feast. Flown with wine, Rhodri ap Tewdr, Welsh prince, wedding guest and family friend, was subjecting them all to an impromptu rendition of Dingodad’s Speckled Petticoat, much to Juditta’s and Rhosyn’s delight. It was at least a child’s song and a deal less explicit than some of the others that had been requested of the professional minstrels in the gallery.
Renard grimaced as the notes quavered towards the beams. ‘If I were a maid and he serenaded me thus, I’d run for my sanity,’ he leaned over to murmur in her ear.
‘It certainly doesn’t seem to have done him any harm by his wife,’ Elene contradicted. ‘How many children do they have now? Ten in as many years?’
‘It’s probably the only way she can get him to shut up,’ Renard said, then muttered an oath under his breath and started to get up as fighting broke out between one of Rhodri’s Welsh and a knight of Leicester’s household.
Rhodri was too far in his cups to do anything except stare reproachfully at the commotion interrupting his song. William plunged into the midst of the melee to separate the combatants before fists could become armed with knives and a full-scale war developed, and hauled the Welshman away by the scruff of his leather jerkin.
John quickly set about calming the knight to a muttering simmer. Renard subsided on to his chair. Brawls were a not uncommon hazard of wedding feasts when the wine was plentiful and people were brought together who would not always choose to be in each other’s company. Stephen’s Christmas court would likely be beset by similar or worse problems.
Elene watched Renard reach to his cup and swallow. The evening was well advanced and although mellowed by the wine he was by no means drunk, staying sober with an obvious purpose in mind. She picked up her own cup and drank to try and dispel her anxiety about their wedding night, and she continued to sneak glances at Renard. The tunic suited his darkness and she had been deeply satisfied by the responses of the guests when they first saw the bride and groom together, uncloaked at the wedding mass — two halves making one whole.
Renard turned his head and caught her looking at him. Her breath quickened and shuddered. Down the hall, shouts once more rose towards a crescendo, and with difficulty were subdued, the culprits dragged out into the sleety night to literally cool off.
Renard decided that it was time to set the next act in the charade into motion, one to which he was not averse. Elene looked very fetching. The crimson and green suited her well and the tight lacing of undergown and tunic accentuated her figure. The looks she had been giving him, full of tense curiosity, along with the warmth of the wine had stirred his blood. She might not have the skills that Olwen used to such exquisite effect, but her very innocence was stimulating.
Next time she glanced at him, he trapped her with his own stare and, leaning forward, kissed her. Elene’s eyes closed. So did Henry’s where he sat propped upon cushions in a high-backed chair and his good hand dug into the plaid of the blanket covering his knees. Renard’s own eyes were open and he saw his brother’s reaction. On a surge of pity, he withdrew from the kiss, for its signal had already been recognised by the more eager of the wedding guests. A raucous cheer went up. He felt Elene stiffen and draw away from him, her pupils so widely dilated that her eyes looked black. Giving her a reassuring smile, he rose to leave. The women converged upon her, led by Judith, and bride and groom were separated for the bedding ceremony.
Henry declined to be carried upstairs by some well-meaning but drink-fuddled guests to witness the ceremony. He said that he was tired. He said that he did not want to be jostled about. He said that he would rather wait downstairs in the company of a flagon.
Elene shivered as the women stood her on a sheepskin rug near the hearth of the main bedchamber and began disrobing her. First the tunic, then the undergown, followed by soft shoes of gilded leather and the fine woollen hose and garters, and finally her chemise so that she stood naked, bathed in the fireglow, her hair crackling around her hips.
Some of the women were eyeing her dubiously and discussing whether or not her hips were wide enough for successful childbearing, their voices over-loud with the wine they had drunk. Heulwen silenced them crossly while Judith draped a bedrobe around Elene’s goose-fleshed shoulders and drew her to the bed.
Memories of her own wedding night crowded Judith’s mind. She had been a couple of years younger than Elene and terrified of the coming ordeal, never having known anything but abuse from men. It had been this very chamber and a night like tonight with snow threatening in the wind and the women around her offering advice that was meant to be practical and kind but that had only increased her dread. One of them had given her a pot of dead-nettle salve, telling her that it would soothe her abused female passage. Another had told her not to worry; the bigger the man and the more it hurt, the more likely she was to conceive a boy. By the time the men had come into the room, Guyon naked among them, she had been almost insensible with terror.
Elene’s situation was different. The girl had known since childhood that she would marry Renard. Her father had been strict with her but not brutal, and when he died she had grown to maturity among her future family at Ravenstow. The fear was bound to be less, but even so, Judith knew that at this precise point in the proceedings, it was all too easy to become overwhelmed.
Elene grimaced and wriggled on the strewn, dried flowers. The scent of lavender rose from the bolster and pillows and there was a strong herbal smell from the crushed plants beneath her. She looked at Judith and smiled ruefully but said nothing. Her throat was too tight and she felt a little sick.
‘It will be all right, I promise you,’ Judith said as she prepared the traditional cup of spiced hippocras — another aid to potency and fertility. She shook her head at the loudest of the other women. ‘Take no notice of them unless it’s to feel sorry. They’d take your place if they could.’
‘I’m not worried,’ Elene croaked. ‘I only wish that …’ She stopped speaking and clutched at the coverlet as noise sounded in the antechamber, approached the inner room, until suddenly a cluster of less than sober men, burst upon the women Renard jostled among them.
Robert of Leicester was laughing so hard that he could scarcely finish the joke he was in the midst of telling. ‘… And the squire says to the whore, “The priest told me that if I ever sinned with a woman I’d be turned to stone, and look, it’s started happening!”’
Loud guffaws and drunken bonhomie. Someone slapped Renard so hard between the shoulder blades that he winced and staggered.
‘Steady on!’ cried another man. ‘It’ll be your blood that flows, not the bride’s if you render him incapable!’
More laughter. ‘It’s a blessing that bitch yesterday didn’t bite him any higher up!’ chortled de Lorys, and then howled as Adam dug an elbow viciously into his ribs to silence him.
Naked among the throng, Renard shrugged himself free of their grasping hands. ‘The only blessing I want now,’ he said, ‘is that of a priest on this bed. Where’s John?’
‘Eager to get to business, are we?’ grinned Ancelin.
Renard looked round, both amused and irritated. ‘Not “we”, Ancelin … At least I don’t understand from the vows I took that you’re to be involved in this.’
The remark was greeted with ribald shouts of laughter and Ancelin became the recipient of the shoulder slaps.