William let out the swift breath he had drawn. ‘Aren’t you afraid that I might take note of all these new defences you’re adding and relay them all to Aunt Matilda?’
Renard’s eyes darkened, but he suppressed the urge to grab William by coif and surcoat and hurl him into the rushes. Show restraint now and it would be easier later when one or the other of them was forced to back down. ‘Are you insulting yourself or me?’ he asked, and succeeded in keeping his voice on the level.
William chewed his lip. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it. I told Adam I was going over to the Empress too. He said I was a fool and he wished he was coming with me.’
Renard snorted. ‘That sounds like Adam.’
‘There was some more news about Chester too — gossip, nothing serious.’ William leaned forward to remove his spurs. ‘His mistress is with child.’
‘Oh?’ Renard made his tone indifferent, although he felt his gut tighten and turn. He could go for weeks without thinking of Olwen, but now and again, unbidden, she would haunt his memory or his dreams with a knife and tear open the healing wounds.
‘Conceived in the winter,’ William added, pressing his thumb down on the tip of the spur. ‘From what I heard, she’s carrying it to full term this time.’
‘I suppose Ranulf ’s bragging to all who will listen.’
‘Not really. He doesn’t trust her.’
Renard laughed sourly. ‘Then he and I have found common ground at last.’ A noise behind him made him turn round to find Elene standing there. She had been resting, and her face, framed by her loose black hair, was still rosily flushed, her eyes a sleepy, luminous green-gold. Something stirred within him, as painful as thoughts of Olwen, akin to physical desire but possessing increased texture and depth.
‘William!’ Elene hugged her brother-in-law delightedly and kissed him.
Returning the embrace he stepped back to look her up and down. ‘You’re blossoming like an orchard, Nell!’
‘Why thank you!’ Laughing she laid her hand lightly on her stomach where for two weeks now she had been feeling the baby’s fluttering movements. ‘But fruiting is the more appropriate word I think!’
William grinned. ‘Still planning a huge brood? I remember you used to have some impressive ambitions of motherhood when we were little.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ She blushed at Renard.
He smiled in a preoccupied way and squeezed her thickened waistline, his mind obviously far distant from the light banter of the moment.
Elene turned to William. ‘How long are you staying?’
‘Just overnight.’
She sensed the constraint between the brothers. ‘Is there any special reason for your visit?’
‘Folly of the most serious order,’ Renard answered before William could speak.
The latter hooked his thumbs in his belt. ‘Stephen’s folly, not mine,’ he retorted. ‘You’ll discover it soon enough.’
The summer progressed in hot somnolence. A peace treaty between the opposing forces was mooted, discussed, and abandoned. War drifted across the land like August thunder, sometimes passing over, sometimes deluging an area in brief destruction and misery. Crops burned. People and livestock roasted. Storm-coloured smoke mingled with storm-coloured sky.
William went foraging and raiding with the Empress’s troops. By turns he found himself exhilarated by the joy of his abilities and the tensile strength of his young body, and sickened by the strewn aftermath of a raid and what some of his companions considered sport. He learned, he matured, and stubborn determination did the rest.
In early September Olwen was brought to bed of a son at Chester.
‘A fine boy, my lord,’ said the nurse, plucking the bawling infant from his cradle and presenting him to the Earl. ‘Born yesterday dawn.’
Ranulf declined to hold the baby, and pushing down his coif stared suspiciously at the red, unprepossessing features. There was nothing to commend or recognise, but then at one day old both his daughters had looked remarkably like wizened turnips too.
‘We did not think he would live at first, he nearly drowned in the birthing fluid. Father Barnard christened him Jordan because he had a vial of holy water from the river.’
Jordan FitzRanulf. It had a reasonable ring to it, but how did he know that FitzRanulf was the correct appellation?
‘He’s big and strong,’ added the nurse with a sly look at Ranulf. Men liked to hear things like that about their sons, and sometimes paid silver for the compliments.
Ranulf grunted at the woman and turned round to the bed. Too big and strong for a child delivered almost a month early? Olwen’s eyes were closed. Heavy smudges purpled the delicate skin beneath them. Otherwise she was waxen, her lips shockingly pale because he was so accustomed to seeing them painted scarlet. A difficult birth so the midwife had said, but she could have been lying in hopes of a higher payment.
‘Is he mine?’ he said to her.
Olwen’s eyes remained closed, but he saw the infinite — simal flutter of her lashes. Putting one knee on the bed, he braced his arms either side of her.
‘Damn you, answer me!’
The heavy lids half opened, revealing a glimpse of hazed dark blue iris. ‘Yours?’ The faintest of smiles played around the word she formed. ‘Yes, he’s yours.’
‘Hah!’ Abruptly he jerked away from the bed to look ferociously at the infant who had now settled hungrily at the wet-nurse’s ample breast.
‘Bought, but not begotten,’ she whispered, assailed by a terrible, seeping weariness. She had never dreamed in her life that such pain existed, that it could surge so relentlessly and for so long and culminate in a pushing, splitting agony beyond all her control.
Ranulf did not hear her thread-thin whisper. He was too occupied in watching the child, his expression a mingling of longing and doubt.
Olwen turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes again, but it did not stop the tears leaking from beneath her lids.
The Michaelmas fair at Ledworth went unaffected by the strife elsewhere and made an excellent profit for Renard from the tolls he was entitled to levy on all the booths and all the transport in and out of the town. Some of the proceeds he donated to the widening of the road approaching the town from Shrewsbury and also to a hostel for those seeking a night’s lodging. Laughing, he returned Elene the halfpenny fee that her own carrier had paid to bring the bales of Woolcot cloth into the fair. Woolcot and all it produced belonged to Renard, secured by the act of marriage, but he had gifted the herds and all profit from them back to Elene in the form of a ‘morgengab’ or ‘morning gift’, the ancient custom of presenting a bride with a gift should her husband be satisfied with his wedding night.
The product of Elene’s morning gift, the finely woven, soft and gorgeously dyed woollen cloths, had been sold right down to the last ell on the last bolt, for it was of comparable quality to Flanders cloth and cost much less. Elene decided to reserve at least two-thirds of her clip from the following year and begin building up the flocks at Ravenstow, Ledworth and Caermoel.
A little before the commencement of the Martinmas slaughter, Elene was delivered of her own son. Her waters broke as the bell was summoning the pious to morning mass. Shortly after prime, she pushed the baby smoothly into the world — ‘With no more effort than using the garderobe,’ Alys said later, when asked.
Hugh, named for his maternal grandfather, was a large-boned, well-developed baby and amazed everyone by how little trouble his birth had caused his smug, smiling mother. By the time of his christening feast and Elene’s churching ceremony on Twelfth Night, he possessed a respectable amount of sandy-blond hair and from between lashes that were almost white regarded the world with vivid, light blue eyes.