Warin’s success with York lasses and his tales of escapades in Norway and Iceland had excited her and had more than made up for his lack of sophistication and finesse. He had been eager and impulsive, and she had been swept into his big lovemaking arms with hardly time to savour the chase, such as it was. Her father had approved, and neither he nor Rhoese had seen any weakness in the man that could not be put down to the ignorance of youth.
Ketti, her Danish stepmother, had also encouraged the relationship, having taken quite a fancy to the young merchant whose affability towards her as Gamal’s young wife could not be faulted. She was, after all, only a few years older than Warin, and to take on the role as future mother-in-law to a twenty-four-year-old man did not come naturally to her.
It was only a few months before Warin persuaded Rhoese to become intimate with him, since they intended to be betrothed as soon as he came back from the next trip to Iceland. Rhoese had truly believed that nothing could go wrong with her plans, even going as far as to clear out her father’s merchandise from her property on Toft Green ready for their eventual occupation as a married couple. She had given herself to him here, in this very hall, just before he went off with her father on their voyage north to buy furs. Having no experience with which to compare the event, she assumed with a kind of contentment that Warin was probably better than most, if women’s looks at him were anything to go by. But although the boat returned three months later with walrus ivory, unicorn’s horn, furs and Warin, her father had been lost overboard in the icy waters of the North Sea and, by November of last year, 1087, Rhoese and Eric knew themselves to be orphans. And she was pregnant, having just passed her twenty-second birthday.
‘You all right, love?’ Eric said, holding her arm.
‘Yes. Just remembering, that’s all.’
‘Don’t.’
‘I must.’
‘Was it that woman with the howling bairn this morning?’
‘No, I think not.’
‘Then what?’
A squall of rain hit the thatch and burst through the door, flinging it hard against the wall and bending the flames over the logs with a sudden ferocity. ‘Shut the door!’ Hilda yelled as more men entered, unsure of the kind of welcome they were getting.
The effect of her father’s death was worse than anything Rhoese had personally suffered until then, her mother Eve having died when Eric was born. Without her adored father, she saw her world turn slowly upside down, for she had awaited his return before telling anyone her secret. He was to have been the first. But the shock of losing him so abruptly and with no very plausible explanation made her ill, and she lost the foetus one terrible night with no one to help except Hilda and Els, the only ones except the chaplain to be told the truth. Eric had discovered it for himself.
Warin’s sympathy over her grief was correct but barely adequate, and nowhere near enough for her to be able to tell him about the second cause of her anguish, especially when his attentions had already begun to veer noticeably towards Ketti on the pretext that she had lost most by Gamal’s death.
Hurt, unwell and desperately unhappy, Rhoese began to spend more and more of her time here at Toft Green, in the hope that Warin would come and help to prepare it for their joint occupation. But that had no effect. Then one day she found him and Ketti lying together. Warin’s defence—that he was merely offering Ketti some comfort—was unconvincing, and the outrage of his betrayal so soon after the other tragedies broke Rhoese’s heart. There was no blazing row, no confrontation, simply a silent and hopeless withdrawal to her own house on Toft Green, the energy to fight for what had almost been hers having gone the same way as her happiness, her well-being, and her aspirations.
Hardly had she and Eric removed the remainder of their belongings than Warin moved in with Ketti, taking his aged father to join Ketti’s cantankerous mother and the twelve-year-old son Thorn by her first marriage. The change-over was complete, and Rhoese redirected rents and dues from her Yorkshire properties to herself and Eric for the maintenance of an independent household.
Immediately, Ketti’s hopes for a comfortable widowhood diminished at this withdrawal of supplies, and she protested. But Rhoese saw no reason to contribute her profits when Warin had taken over Lord Gamal’s mercantile business, his large warehouses along the Ouse wharf, his two ships, his wife and the house on Bootham next to the expanding new abbey of St Mary.
In the ten hectic months since her father’s death, Rhoese had erected a protective shell of ice around her damaged heart, keeping it cold with thoughts of revenge that, as yet, had done nothing to salve the deep wounds of rejection. Now, there was no man she could trust with her love except her brother, whose blindness from birth seemed not to matter when he had so many other rare qualities. He had already expressed a wish to join the monks at St Mary’s, and Rhoese had sent a hefty donation for the new buildings, the foundation-stone of which was to be laid by the new king himself on the morrow. They now awaited a message from Abbot Stephen to say whether he would accept Eric as a handicapped novice.
He squeezed her arm gently. ‘Go and prepare, love. We have guests to supper, and I’ll play the harp for you afterwards, if you wish it.’
‘And are you going to sup naked?’ she replied. ‘As an extra entertainment?’
‘Neal!’ he called across the fire. ‘The lady has a suggestion.’
Judhael de Brionne’s desire to know more about Rhoese had not even begun to be satisfied by his friend Ranulf’s disclosure concerning the stepmother’s tenancy problems. It was about the woman herself that he needed to know, and in characteristic style had soon decided that he could find out for himself, in private, more than he could be told by well-meaning friends eager to win wagers.
Alone, an hour after curfew, he rode through York’s puddled streets to where the south-west corner of the high city wall enclosed Toft Green, where dark outlines of thatched huts within a stockade clustered around the great hall, with the scent of wood smoke carried on the blustering wind. Under cover of darkness he waited in the hope that, sooner or later, someone would show themselves and tell him more about how a Yorkshire noblewoman ruled the roost.
He did not have long to wait for a door at the back of the hall to open, emitting the soft glow of firelight, the strains of a harpist’s song, and a woman’s figure silhouetted against the interior. Jude urged his stallion forward a few paces so that he could watch her cross to one of the smaller buildings and, now that the rain had ceased, to leave the door ajar, presumably to shed some light on the inside.
In a few moments she had emerged again, this time carrying something beneath one arm and closing the door stealthily behind her before slipping along the side of the hut towards the trees at the end of the croft, diving into their deep cover like a stoat sure of its direction. Jude’s heels touched the stallion’s flanks to direct him along the track until a gap in the wooden stockade allowed them through. Heading for the same trees, they picked a way silently over damp leaves, showering both man and horse with droplets from the branches.
The horse snorted indignantly, and the noise resounded through the quiet woodland, sending the pursued woman skittering aside with a yelp of alarm, then with a burst of speed that Jude was trained to anticipate. The shadows were black and unhelpful, but Jude’s eyes were keen and used to seeking in the dark, nor did the stallion have any difficulty in following the fleeing woman’s crashing leaps that more than once brought her down by clothes caught on tangles of undergrowth and low branches.
With wildly fumbling fingers she tore herself free at last, only to find her path blocked by the huge snorting horse
