Medieval Brides. Anne Herries

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СКАЧАТЬ gave her a lop-sided smile, and this time it did reach his eyes. ‘Cecily, I can work that one out for myself.’

      ‘I can’t think what Godwin’s about—’

      ‘Godwin?’

      ‘The reeve—at least he was reeve four years ago. He was old then. Perhaps he’s ill.’ She scowled meaningfully at him. ‘Or maybe he’s dead too.’

      His smile fell away. ‘Who lives in that cottage?’

      ‘The one that’s lost most of its thatch? Oswin and May.’

      ‘And that one?’

      ‘Alfred. Poor Alfred lost his wife when his son Wat was born. Wat is my age.’ And Wat is simple, she thought, damaged at birth. She said nothing of this to Adam. Alfred’s cottage looked abandoned. What had happened to him? As a farmer, Alfred had not been one of her father’s housecarls, but perhaps he had formed part of the local levy, and had been drummed up to go to Hastings with billhook or pitchfork. If something had happened to Alfred, who was caring for Wat?

      They drew level with the mill. Its wheel was larger than a tall man. Water gushed noisily into the channel, machinery clanked and banged, wooden cogs creaked and rattled. The hoist shutters on the upper floor were closed to keep out the November chill, and no one came to the door to watch their passing—but then the sound of their horse’s hooves was no doubt muffled by the mill workings.

      ‘How do you call this in English?’

      ‘It’s a mill.’

      ‘Mill,’ Adam said carefully, trying the word out. ‘Mill.’

      Did he really intend to learn English? Covertly, hungrily, Cecily examined his profile, baffled by a most powerful need to lock every last detail of him safely in her mind—from the precise colour of his dark hair, so like the wing of a blackbird, to the perfect straightness of his nose. She was gazing with something that felt oddly like longing at the compelling curve of his lips when he glanced across at her. Hurriedly, she dropped her gaze and lurched into speech.

      ‘The miller’s name is Gilbert. He’s married to Bertha, and when I left they had a girl called Matty, and two boys, Harold and Carl. Matty should be about fourteen and the boys would be eleven and twelve by my reckoning.’

      Adam nodded. ‘Mill,’ he repeated.

      They rode on. The noise of the mill diminished as the village church, a simple thatched building with a cross on the roof ridge, rose up in front of them.

      ‘And this building? What is the English word?’

      ‘The word is church.’

      ‘Church,’ Adam murmured. ‘Church.’ He reverted to Norman French. ‘It’s wooden, like the cottages and the mill. There are no stone buildings in Fulford. At my home in Brittany it is the same; in the main only great lords’ castles and cathedrals are built in stone.’

      Absently, Cecily nodded. Her eyes were drawn to the glebeland next to the church, to the graveyard. And there, through the split-rail fence, she found what she was looking for—a wreath of evergreens someone had placed on some freshly turned earth. Her mother’s grave?

      Her hands jerked on the reins; her eyes filled. Quickly averting her head, she forced her gaze past the cemetery, on to the priest’s house and Fulford Hall, which stood facing each other on opposite sides of the village green.

      Tears ran hot down her cheeks once again, and the sheep-nibbled grass of the village green, trampled and muddied as it was by many horses’ hoofs, blurred and wavered like a field of green barley in a March wind. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Cecily tried to speak normally. ‘As you may guess, the cottage next to the glebeland belongs to the priest. He lives off the tithes everyone brings him. Father Aelfric—’

      Adam gave a snort of laughter. ‘I’ve met Father Aelfric. And his wife.’

      Forgetful of the tears drying on her cheeks, Cecily whipped her head round. ‘I…I did not know that Father Aelfric had taken a wife.’

      As Adam’s green eyes met hers his expression sobered. ‘Ah, Cecily, what a fool I am.’ He reached across and gently traced a tear-track with his finger. ‘Your mother…my apologies.’

      Fiercely Cecily shook her head and batted away his hand. ‘Don’t. Please. Not here. Not now.’ She would break down if he offered sympathy, and she would not be so shamed—not in front of his men and the whole village. She was her mother’s daughter.

      Adam took up the reins again, and perhaps he understood her need for distraction, for he went on conversationally, ‘Father Aelfric has two small children.’

      Cecily dashed away her tears with her sleeve. ‘Oh?’

      ‘Is it common in England for priests to have wives?’ Adam asked, and she realised that, yes, he was giving her time to compose herself before they reached the Hall. He was not a complete boor.

      ‘Sometimes they do.’

      ‘Duke William does not approve of such practices.’

      Cecily shrugged. Monks, nuns and priests all took the vow of chastity, but priests, and even bishops, did sometimes make their housekeepers their ‘wives’. She wondered who Aelfric had ‘married’. He had always been fond of Sigrida, and she of him…

      Fulford Hall. Finally she was home.

      The Hall overlooked the village green. It was a long building, taller and wider than any for miles. On either side of the door unglazed windows with sliding wooden shutters stared across the green towards the church opposite. The thatch was weathered, grey in parts, mossy in others—in short it looked to be in no better condition than the thatch on many of the serfs’ cottages. Smoke made a charcoal smudge in the sky above the roof. Ordinarily, Cecily’s heart would have lifted to see it, but today…

      They drew rein by the door. Maurice and Geoffrey were leading their horses towards the stables, swapping jokes. Inside, by the fire, Sir Richard was tossing his cloak at one of the men, laughing with another. Shadowy silhouettes moving about in her father’s hall. Normans. Bretons. Conquerors.

      She could hear the murmur of conversation, the snicker of a horse, the honking of geese. Where was Philip? Where was her brother? Gripped by a sense of unreality, Cecily focused on the wooden carvings around the doorframe of the Hall, on the snake winding up its length, at the trailing vine, the flowers and twisting patterns she had traced with her fingers so many times, and she felt…she felt nothing. Her father’s hall was in the hands of a stranger from Brittany and she felt empty, scoured of emotion.

      The stranger was looking her village over with a proprietorial eye. In the middle of the green, under the branches of an oak that had been ancient when her father had been born, stood the village stocks and the pillory post. The stranger, the invader, frowned and pointed at the stocks. ‘We have these in Quimperlé. What are they called in English?’

      ‘The stocks.’

      ‘And the other? Is it the whipping post?’

      ‘That is a pillory. Sometimes my father used it as a whipping post.’

      He СКАЧАТЬ