Kitabı oku: «The Bought Bride», sayfa 2
‘Lady Rhoese of York. Yes, I know who you are,’ Jude whispered in her ear. ‘And you are breaking the curfew, which is worth a night’s imprisonment, as I expect you know. Now, my lady, do I detect a change in your former manner, perhaps? Are you so dismissive now of inquisitive Normans?’
‘You!’ she snarled, twisting inside the cage of his arms. ‘What are you doing here after curfew, sir? Let me go, damn you!’
‘My, how your heart is beating.’ His hand had delved under her cloak, moving upwards over her ribcage to encircle one breast, his thumb monitoring the frantic thudding beneath her kirtle, an offence as serious as breaking the curfew.
‘No…no!’ she protested. ‘No man may hold a woman so. Let go!’
‘So tell me what you’re doing out at this time of the night and who you’re going to meet. A lover, is it?’ His hand stilled, but did not withdraw.
‘You have no right to know. My business is my own.’
‘Not at this time of the night, lady. Tell me.’
Her hands could not prise his arms away. ‘If you must know, I was on my way to St Martin’s Church,’ she said, angrily, ‘to speak to Father Leofric. His tithes are due today.’
‘And it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? The priest is hardly going to starve for want of a tenth part of your dues, is he?’
Rhoese was silent. Her visit had nothing to do with the tithes, but she could not tell this Norman the real purpose when it was his earlier snooping that had prompted it.
‘All right,’ he said, turning her round to face him, ‘if you won’t tell me more, you can explain yourself to the sheriff tomorrow, if you prefer. Curfew-breaking is serious, and you should be setting an example.’
‘Look…no…please! There’s no need for that.’ Her hands pushed against his chest, registering the soft wool of his cloak and the lower edge of the cloak-pin on his shoulder. Unable to see much of him, she could feel his breath on her eyelids as he spoke, and the withdrawal of his hand left a cool imprint below her breast. Now, all the fears and forebodings generated by his earlier interest, and in the dues she was receiving as he watched, surged back like night-demons, warning her not to antagonise him further. The Normans were a powerful force, and an appearance before the Norman sheriff could easily undo all her attempts to stay out of the public eye. The man must be appeased. ‘No?’ he said, softly. ‘Then you have another suggestion?’
‘Hospitality?’ she offered. ‘You could come into the hall and hear my brother play. He’s a fine harpist. I can offer you mead, or ale?’
‘And poison me, no doubt?’
‘No, indeed. That’s not what I meant. My chaplain himself will pour your drink, if that’s what you fear.’
‘Anything else, lady? Have you anything else to offer me?’
Rhoese froze, aware in every fibre of her being the direction his questioning was taking, and preparing herself to feel the insult and the helplessness of her situation, yet unable to prevent the sudden flare of excitement as she recalled how he had stood before her in the yard, his eyes beating hers down, challenging her attempts to dismiss him. She had felt that same excitement then, and had tried to counter it with a nonchalance that did not exist. She felt it again now and could find no sharp answer this time, not even when he moved her slowly backwards to press her against the broad trunk of an oak.
In the dark, excuses flitted across her mind like bats too fast to see. Then it was too late even for protests, and the shell of aloofness she had nurtured during the last ten months weakened under the tender-hard pressure of his body. She felt the muscles of his thighs through the fine fabric of their clothes, his soldier’s arms bending her into him, the assuredness with which he handled her. His expertise showed in the way he angled her head into his shoulder and held it there with the most careful imprisonment, signalling that there would be no hastily snatched uncultured performance, even though the setting could have been improved upon. Later, Rhoese tried to excuse her lack of resistance as being useless against such a confinement, telling herself that she could not have evaded his mouth, even though she could.
There were no thoughts, only the warm insistent pressure of his lips slanting across hers that she knew was not meant for her delight but for his alone. His arms across her shoulders tightened, his grip on the nape of her neck was merciless, forbidding her mind to wander, compelling her to heed what she was forfeiting and reminding her that his was the conquering side, not hers.
Snatching at fleeting protests and thoughts of mal-treatment, she tried to remain indignantly unresponsive, but soon realised that any reaction from her, either for or against, would have been swamped by the fierceness of his lust. Like a man starved of lovemaking, which she knew could not be the case, he explored her mouth from every angle with breathtaking skill and, when he paused, it was only to cover her throat with his kisses before returning with renewed passion to her mouth again. Warin, her only real comparison, had been eager and vigorous, but never with this man’s masterly accomplishment, and though Rhoese would have preferred to rate him as no more than a clumsy molester of helpless women, she was far too moved to label him so when her legs were already turning to water.
She felt a hardness press against her belly, her own answering leap of fear and excitement, and the keen contradictory betrayal of her shaky emotions. How had she allowed this to happen? And why? ‘Stop!’ she called to him. Her head was held back while he tasted a path towards her ear. ‘Please…no more…you must stop. You have forgotten yourself, sir. I am an English noblewoman and this has gone far beyond talk of offerings. Let me go home now.’
He was breathing heavily against her skin, his shuddering sigh barely acknowledging her protest. Yet, even now, one hand had begun its own well-informed journey on to her left breast, hurrying Rhoese even further towards a warning. Grabbing his wrist, she tried to pull him away, but her hand was ignored and, as her cries were silenced by his mouth, she understood that it would be he who called a halt, and that this had less to do with the offence of being out after curfew than with her discourtesy to him in the yard.
This time, the beguiling movement of his lips over hers was just enough to keep her mind teetering on the brink of bliss while his hand like thistledown explored her in studied disregard of her command. Far from forgetting himself, he was very much in control. ‘Must?’ he whispered. ‘Are you still telling me what I must and must not do, lady?’ The stroking continued, stealing her protests away like a wind-torn web, weakening her lungs so that she could not answer him. ‘Now I think we are beginning to understand one another at last,’ he said. ‘Would you not agree?’
His question was easy enough to answer, for he’d shown her in no uncertain terms what he wanted. That much she could hardly fail to understand. Less sure by far was her own understanding of herself, for now the unresponsiveness she had believed was hers to command had begun to desert her. She was responding, despite everything she could do to hold herself apart, to keep her mind level and cool. He would know. He was expert at this. Yes, he would surely know.
No, don’t let him know. Pull away, before it’s too late.
She pushed at him, viciously, heedless of the damage, and with the desertion of his caress and the sudden halt to her arousal, an anger took its place with a carelessness that shocked even Rhoese. ‘You mistake, sir!’ she snarled. ‘It would take more of a man than you’ll ever be to understand my contempt for your kind. I would find it easier to understand the mind of a toad. Presumably you have had your amusement at my expense, so now you can—’
His hand over her mouth cut off the rest of her tirade. ‘Do not start again, my lady, if you please. There are plenty of dark hours left for my amusement, as you put it, and your unwillingness is of no consequence to me. If you value your noble chastity so highly, you had better learn to curb your tongue. I thought I’d made that clear. Shall I show you again who is master?’
Norman cur. Low-born scum. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Leave me be. I can find my own way home. Just leave me.’ There was the parcel to retrieve from the undergrowth, and her anger boiled not least because the whole episode had apparently been engineered to chasten her and to amuse this arrogant Norman who would now laugh about it, share the experience with his friends, itemising the points of interest, enjoying her humiliation. Most of all, her anger was inwardly directed towards herself for allowing this to happen without making any attempt to fight back or to injure him. Weak, stupid woman. So much for her scorn of men. Deeply ashamed, she lashed out at him with a delayed but futile attack upon his wide shoulders, hammering at him in a burst of rage.
‘She-cat!’ he laughed. Even in the darkness he caught her wrists. ‘Come, lady. It’s time you were locked up safely for the night.’ He stepped away, still holding her securely.
‘Locked up? No!’ she cried, pulling. ‘That’s not what you agreed.’
‘Hush, woman. I know what I agreed. I’m taking you home to your bower back there. You need not be concerned; I shall trespass no further on your domain, but nor is this the last you’ll be seeing of me, so don’t think it.’ He hooked a hand beneath her armpit and led her towards the waiting stallion.
How would she know him? Chain-mailed and steel helmeted, they all looked more or less alike. Would he be in civilian dress or in war-gear? ‘Your name, sir. Who are you?’ she said.
‘You’ll discover that tomorrow, in the daylight.’
‘I doubt it. You’ll not see me tomorrow if I can help it.’
‘You think not? Well, I know different, my lady. Take it from me, we shall meet again tomorrow.’
There seemed to be nothing to say to that, for the last thing she wanted was to prolong a pointless discussion.
Without disturbing even the sharp-eared hounds, Jude returned her safely to the door of her bower, opening it for her before she could reach it, though his arm detained her until he had taken his proper leave. ‘Until tomorrow, my lady,’ he said with a slight bow. ‘Do not venture out after curfew again.’
‘No indeed,’ she snapped. ‘Who knows what ruffians one might meet?’
‘Exactly,’ he countered. ‘York is a violent city. Sleep well.’ In one fluid movement, he mounted the stallion and swung away, cantering off into the shadows in the direction they had come, leaving Rhoese shaken and puzzled, her body still tingling from his daring treatment. She was also concerned for the package she had intended for Father Leofric that would not benefit from spending a night in wet undergrowth, though she was not inclined to venture out again into the woodland that night. Turning in sudden fury, she aimed a savage kick at the innocent door, wincing with pain of a different kind as she hobbled into the dark warmth of her bower.
Dawn came ever later during those early autumn days, and the household was up and about before it was light enough for Rhoese to enter the woodland to retrieve the linen-wrapped bundle from its damp bed of leaves. To her relief, it was intact and undamaged. Last night, with the fear of a sudden interest in her ownership of an apparently thriving estate, she had felt the need to take this priceless treasure to a safer place. Father Leofric was the obvious one to understand the worth of a leather-bound, gem-studded gospel-book, its pages covered with a Celtic script and intricate patterns lovingly worked by skilled nuns in the last century. There was only one such nunnery where nuns’ scholarship rivalled that of monks. It was Barking, in Essex, many miles away from York, but no ordinary citizen ever owned such a thing meant for the glory of God and for the use exclusively of holy men and women. And royalty. If it was ever found in her possession, she would have to offer a very convincing explanation of why it was in her keeping and, more to the point, why she had not delivered it immediately to the proper authorities. The brief joy she had derived from owning such a thing had long since been drowned by the fear of its discovery. She held the bundle close to her body as if it were a child.
Stooping to examine the ground, she noted the huge hoof-prints. Footprints, too. There was the oak. There was the slippery heel-print where she had tried to keep her balance. And there, when she closed her eyes, was the shockingly intimate and unlawful pressure of him against her, his hands roaming where they should never have been and which she should be trying to forget instead of remembering. An insistent pulse beat in her throat as the memory of his mouth reached her, catching at her breath and holding it until the tremor passed. ‘Men,’ she whispered. ‘Treacherous men.’
Chapter Two
Ketti’s House, Bootham, York
T he sheriff’s man reached Gamal’s widow just before dusk at her large house in the area near St Mary’s Abbey. He would have to deliver his message with some brevity if he wanted to reach home before the city gate closed at sunset.
With water forming a large puddle on the wooden floor around his feet, he delivered his most unwelcome news, if not with enjoyment, at least with a distinct absence of sympathy. Everyone in York knew of the woman’s faithlessness. He stared the couple down with pale protruding eyes and wiped drips off the end of his nose with his wrist. ‘If I may say so,’ he replied to their protests, ‘the news cannot be much of a surprise to you when my master the sheriff warned you during the summer that the consequences of ignoring the king’s summons for knight-service would be the confiscation of property.’
‘In the summer,’ the woman called Ketti yapped, stumbling over the Norman-French, ‘I was a newly grieving widow. I had other things on my mind.’ Immediately, she wished she had a better grasp of the language when the sheriff’s man glanced sideways at the strapping young man by her side, coolly assessing his bedworthiness by a pause at the bulge below his pouch.
‘Yes,’ he said, bringing his eyes slowly back to her angry blush. ‘In scarce one month you must indeed have been grief-stricken, lady.’ He cast an eye around the fine dwelling while Ketti and the young man, who had once intended to become her son-in-law instead of her lover, faced each other like a couple of rival mastiffs, each of them thinking how best to savage the other.
‘It’s Michaelmas,’ Warin pointed out as if it would make some difference. ‘The end of Holy Month. Where are we to go? This is our home.’
‘That’s something you should have thought of earlier,’ said the sheriff’s man, omitting the respectful ‘sir’ that an older man would have warranted. ‘My lord the sheriff has instructed me to tell you that this land has been donated to the new abbey of St Mary for their extensions. The house and all the outbuildings will be demolished once the king returns to London, and you will have to find somewhere else to live. You will be sent signed confirmation of this in due course.’
Warin, bold, brawny, and not inclined to negotiate if it threatened to take longer than his limited attention span, would have liked to throw the impudent messenger out on his head, but even he could see the danger in that. He could also see, perhaps not for the first time, that he might have been a mite too hasty in his change of allegiance from daughter to stepmother, now that the latter was not as secure as he had thought.
Ketti swung her white veil over one shoulder. ‘And I’ve already told you, whatever your name is, that my husband died last winter. He was in no position to send knights for the king’s service.’
‘But no message was sent. No excuse. No fine or relief in lieu of men. As you know, lady, a thegn holds his estate from the king in return for properly equipped knights whenever the king should need them. And the king has needed them sorely in this first year of his reign. His brother and uncles defied him. He needed all the men he could get. Any thegn who fails in this duty must forfeit everything to the king. That’s always been the law and you must have known it. Now the monks need this land for their new building plan, and you will have to—’
‘Bugger the new building plan!’ Warin bellowed, unable to contain his anger any longer. It was bad enough to have made a wrong decision, but to have this pompous little toad-face telling him what they had ignored in the hope that it would go away was too much to suffer politely. The time for civilities had passed. His healthy outdoor complexion darkened with fury and his fair curls stuck wetly around his face. ‘We’ve had your building plans up to here in York,’ he blustered, levelling his fingers to his brow, ‘and we’re sick to death of them! You’ve raided our fair city and razed it to the ground, wrecked our homes and livelihoods, dammed the bloody river to make a moat for your bloody castles—’
‘Warin…stop…shh!’ Ketti warned, placing a hand on his arm.
But he shook it off. ‘We’ve had to rebuild our warehouses, relocate our businesses, give up our orchards and grazing, see our houses engulfed in your stockades, see them trampled underfoot, and you dare to tell us that we can’t live here now? We’ve built this place with hard-earned sweat on our land, and there’s nobody…nobody,’ he yelled to the man’s damp receding back, ‘going to get us out. Tell that,’ he called across the courtyard, gesturing rudely, ‘to your lord the sheriff, whatever his bloody name is.’
His return to Ketti was nothing like the hero’s welcome he thought he deserved. ‘You idiot!’ she screeched, resorting at last to English. ‘What good d’ye think that’ll do. Eh? He’ll go straight back and tell the sheriff, the sheriff will tell the abbot, the abbot will tell the king, and before you know it there’ll be a crowd of his strong-arm men here to tip us out into the street. You couldn’t have waited for the king to go back home before you shot your mouth off, could you?’ Her plain, sharp-nosed, thin-lipped face was blotchy with anger, and her fair-lashed pale eyes bulged more than ever in the stare of scalding reproof that Warin had already grown tired of.
The king, she was certain, had bided his time in this matter, waiting until he was up here in York at the end of the first difficult year of his reign. Feeling that some show of benevolence was appropriate, he had granted permission for the monks of St Mary’s to extend their new abbey next to the church of St Olaf, and had granted them properties to sustain them with tithes due four times a year. He had come all the way up here to Northumbria with an impressively inflated retinue to lay the foundation-stone and to show them how bounteous he could be, when he wanted to. And like sheep, the rest of the Norman landowners in Yorkshire had followed suit, donating land to the new abbey so that it would be said in years to come how they cared about the spiritual life as well as the temporal one. Liars. It was their own insurance they paid into, for their own quicker passage through purgatory.
Craftily, the king had let the monks have Bootham, the stretch of land beyond the minster next to the new abbey grounds where booths and stalls were set, and where the late Gamal of York’s house stood. Now he could confiscate it for the best of reasons.
Ketti’s screeching assault stopped Warin in his tracks, shocking him into a counter-attack. ‘Well, what did you expect me to do? Stand here and be spoken to like a child who’s been scrumping apples?’ he yelled back at her. ‘Don’t be so daft, woman. He’s not going to do anything before the king leaves for London.’
‘Even so, you fool, you might have thought up a better way of handling the matter than by insults. Where d’ye think that will get us? You’ll have to go to them and find out how we can get ourselves out of it.’
‘It’s no good me going to speak to anyone,’ he snapped. ‘I’m not the owner. You are. You go.’
‘What good will it do for me to go?’ said Ketti, spreading her hands so that the tips of her wide sleeves skimmed the floor. She was not minded to do her own dirty work if someone else could be found to do it for her. ‘So what are you doing here?’ She waved a hand with some drama. ‘If you want a home with me, go and fight for it. You wrestle with your mates like a prize bull; go and wrestle with the sheriff for a change.’ She turned away, glaring at the smirking face of her twelve-year-old son Thorn. ‘Get out!’ she snapped. ‘This is private.’
‘Ketti.’ Warin’s voice dropped to a wheedling pitch, warming her back. ‘Ketti, my love. We shouldn’t quarrel over this.’ He took her by the shoulders and pulled her back against him, sliding his great working hands over her breasts and kneading gently, knowing how that was guaranteed to soften her.
Her hands came up to cover his. ‘Get off,’ she whispered, pressing herself backwards into him.
Warin was careful to conceal his smile. It had worked already. ‘No,’ he said, bending to her veil-covered ear. ‘You’re so lovely, Ketti.’ Her breasts were, in fact, the only lovely part of her, and not even the self-seeking Warin could pretend that she had either a face or a nature to match. ‘There’s no problem,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll go and move in with Rhoese. She’s still your ward. She’s obliged to help.’
Her hands snatched his away and threw them aside as she whirled to look at him, her face suddenly hard with jealousy. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘To live with her. My stepdaughter. Still hankering after her, aren’t you?’
Still puzzled by his faulty timing, Warin’s blue eyes opened like a child’s, though behind his façade of innocence was a frantic attempt to backtrack. He caught at her hands, holding her still. ‘No, sweetheart. Not to live with her, of course not,’ he blustered.
‘What, then?’
‘Look, she’s got her own place at Toft Green. She moved out of your home, didn’t she? Well, what d’ye think she’d do if we said we had to move into hers because we have nowhere else? Eh?’ He shook her hands to make her reply.
But Ketti’s face was still hard. ‘You think she’d move out of Toft Green, don’t you? Rubbish. She won’t. She’s still crazy for you. She only moved away because she couldn’t bear the sight of you with me. She’d let you into her bed every time my back was turned. No, my lad. I’m not having that.’ There was a finality in her voice that Warin knew better than to challenge.
‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘we’ll try sending her to the king to see if she can negotiate another patch of land for this one. Once she sees the threat of us moving into her house, she’ll fall over herself to be helpful.’
In that one respect, he was a better judge of the situation than Ketti, though the flutter of pride and excitement he felt at her jealous suppositions was sadly misplaced. Rhoese would not have let him into her bed if he’d been the last man alive in England.
By dawn next morning, the news had been delivered to Rhoese at Toft Green that her stepmother had been deprived of everything she had inherited from the Lord Gamal. The steward who delivered the message had been with the family for as long as Rhoese could recall and was almost in tears. ‘Go and collect your things,’ she told him. ‘You can live here with us.’
The man knelt and kissed her hand. ‘My lady,’ he stammered. ‘My wife…may I…?’
‘Of course. Bring your wife.’
After he had gone, Eric voiced his doubts. ‘Was that wise?’ he said. ‘To take him so soon? Him alone?’
‘After that woman took what was mine?’ she replied. ‘It may not have been too subtle, but it was vengeful. And if they think they’re going to come and move in here, they’re mistaken. They’re not.’
Eric sought her hand and took her from the end of the hall out into the croft that was fenced with a wattle hurdle to contain pot-herbs and medicinal plants. The greenery dripped with diamonds and rustled with the sounds of recovery after the heavy rain. ‘Rosie,’ he said. ‘Whatever you think of her, she’s our kins-woman and we cannot refuse to help. You know that. She’s also your legal guardian.’
Together, they leaned on the whitewashed wall of the house beneath the steaming overhang, and Rhoese knew a sense of despair yet again at the constant negativity of the Danish woman’s influence upon her life. Ketti had been married to Lord Gamal for only five years with no apparent advantage to anyone except herself and her family. Her son Thorn was well named, and the old hag who was Ketti’s mother rivalled the yard cockerel with her cackling. They could not be allowed to disturb the peace of Toft Green.
‘Yes, I know it. And she knows it too. That’s what she’s trading on. But the problem is hers, Eric. Why doesn’t she get her Danish kin to help?’
‘She knows that you know the archbishop, love. She’s hoping you’ll go and speak to him, I suppose. You could, if you wanted to.’
‘I don’t want to. Let her go and live with the cows.’
‘Rosie!’ he laughed. ‘That’s wicked! Go and see Archbishop Thomas. He and Father were friends. He’ll be able to help, somehow.’
‘Today’s the stone-laying ceremony with the king. He’ll be busy.’
‘Afterwards, then. When the king’s gone off hunting.’
She sighed. ‘I really don’t see why I should.’
‘Yes, you do, love. I shall probably be safe at the abbey in a week or two, but you don’t want to be landed with her, of all people. Or Warin.’
‘He’ll not put a foot in my house,’ she said, angrily. ‘I’ll go.’
‘When?’
‘Later on, after the stone-laying. I may see Abbot Stephen, too.’ She linked an arm through his and snuggled against him. ‘I wish you would not leave me, love,’ she said. ‘I know you want to, but I shall miss you so sorely.’
‘I think it’s for the best. I can do no good here. I can’t inherit. I can’t protect you. I can’t seek a wife. I can’t fight for the king. I’m a liability. Best if I go and play my harp to the monks and do a bit of praying for souls. I can do that.’
‘But you’re my adviser. My counsellor. Who will I turn to?’
‘We’ve had all this out before, love. It’s been decided.’
‘Abbot Stephen may not want you, after all.’
He smiled at her teasing. ‘Then I’ll have to stay with you, won’t I? But don’t you dare go and tell him of all my bad habits, just to put him off.’
‘I will,’ she said, kissing his cheek. ‘I will. That’s what I’ll do. But this business worries me, Eric. The last thing I wanted to do while the new king was up here in York was to show myself. You know what he thinks about women who hold land. His reputation is every bit as bad as his father’s.’
‘Then find the archbishop, love. He’s a Norman, but at least he knows you and our family. He’ll listen to you.’
The crowds that packed into the city’s narrow streets were thicker than ever that day, and as Rhoese and Els pressed forward against the flow, a seething mass of bodies surged through the arch in the wall, back towards the minster. The former king, William the Bastard, had visited York only to demolish it; his son had decided to give something, for a change, and those who had come to watch this phenomenon supposed that he must therefore be of a different mould from his brutal parent.
With a growing panic at the possible consequences of any delay, Rhoese had dressed in her best linen kirtle, dyed with damsons, over which a wide-sleeved gown reached to her knees, its borders decorated with a tablet-woven braid. The ends of her long plaits had been twisted with gold threads, and a fine white linen head-rail was kept in place by a gold circlet studded with amethysts, sitting low on her brow. Her last-minute check in the bronze mirror had been perfunctory, to say the least, for she found no pleasure in the reflection nowadays, nor were there smiles of recognition that had once sent back secret messages of love. Instead, she had pulled down her kirtle sleeves well over her wrists, adjusted the leather pouch at her girdle and hustled Els out of the door.
Only a few minutes ago, the possibility of a quiet word with the Norman archbishop had seemed like a reasonable course of action, but her doubts grew into real obstacles as they approached the minster garth where the great white cathedral reared above the rooftops like a sleeping lion covered by cobwebs of scaffolding. Beyond it, the timber-and-thatch palace that was usually accessible to everyone was almost engulfed by a sea of fluttering pennants, tents, makeshift kitchens and stables, and armies of soldiers and monks who strode about or stood in groups, their gowns flapping in the breeze. Because the king was staying there, the archbishop’s palace was being heavily guarded.
Two long lances crossed in front of them. ‘Can’t go in there,’ one soldier said, looking Rhoese up and down. ‘Not unless you’ve got something to give to the monks.’ He winked at his companion.
Quickly, she seized her chance. ‘I have land,’ she said. ‘Where do I go to make my donation?’
The man hesitated. ‘You got the documents, then?’
‘Of course I have, man,’ she snapped, ‘but I’d be a fool to bring them out in a crowd like this. The clerks have records. Just tell me where they are and have done with your questions.’
The lances were withdrawn. ‘Over there, lady.’ The soldier pointed to the largest leather tent outside which stood a table covered with rolls of parchment. A tonsured cleric sat behind it and by his side stood a tall Norman soldier who pointed to something on the parchment before them. He straightened and looked directly across at Rhoese as if he was expecting her, his head easily topping the men and horses passing in between.
