The Damsel's Defiance. Meriel Fuller

      ‘He says his name is Lord Talvas of Boulogne. I’ve never heard of him, but Geoffrey seems to think I should have.’

      The comb stilled.

      ‘Maman?’ Emmeline twisted round in her seat, trying to see her mother’s face in the dim light of their cottage. Outside, the bright sunshine had been obscured by low cloud; rain seemed imminent.

      ‘God in Heaven, Emmeline, what did you say to him? Lord Talvas is kin to royalty…you know his brother-in-law—’

      ‘I know all that, maman.’ Emmeline dismissed her mother’s words with a waggle of her fingers. ‘I know that he is nephew by marriage to Henry, King of England and Duke of Normandy—’

      ‘—and could have you slung in prison for insubordination.’

      Setting her cup with studied deliberation on the scrubbed oak table, Emmeline rose swiftly, wrenching at the comb that had become snarled in her locks. Her eyes flashed an angry green at her unsettling memory of that odious man as she faced her mother. Her swift movement unbalanced her, jarring her weak ankle and causing her to grab the edge of the well-worn kitchen table in an effort to steady herself.

      ‘All I know, Mother, is that he mistook me for…for a woman of the night…’ There! She had said it.

      Her mother viewed her in horror, mouth slack with disbelief. ‘Oh, Emmeline, daughter!’ Felice moved to clasp her daughter’s rigid hands. ‘What have you done? God in Heaven, this is all my fault, I should never let you leave the house with your hair unbound!’

      Emmeline bit her lip, eyeing her mother’s pale face. She hated seeing her mother so upset, especially on her account. Felice had suffered greatly at the loss of her husband, spending long days just lying on her pallet, weeping. Emmeline’s instinct was always to protect her mother’s feelings, to guard her from reality, and now she moved away from the table to kneel on the flagstone floor, stilling her mother’s fluttering hands by clasping them within her own. ‘Don’t fret, Mother. He’ll have forgotten I even exist by now. Besides, it was all sorted by the time we parted. Geoffrey did most of the talking, smoothed things over. It’s not likely I will ever see the man again.’ She shook her hands free of her mother’s light grip and gave her a wide hug. ‘Why not continue with my hair?’ She handed the comb back to Felice and resumed her seat before the fire.

      Felice eyed her daughter warily, hesitating a moment before resuming her measured combing. With a thudding anxiety, she recognised the mute, shuttered look on Emmeline’s face; her daughter would give her no further details on the matter. It was the same expression Felice received when she asked her daughter about her marriage to Giffard de Lonnieres; she would learn nothing of that relationship, of that she was certain. To this day, Felice was certain she had made the right decision in marrying Emmeline to Giffard—he, a rich merchant, had offered for Emmeline two years after Anselm’s death. Felice had supposed her daughter to be happy in the marriage; she saw her daughter often as Giffard lived in Barfleur when he was not away on a trading voyage. But when Giffard had died in a hunting accident, Emmeline had seemed strangely unmoved.

      After plaiting her daughter’s hair into two long, fat braids that shone like golden ropes down her slender back, Felice reached into the wicker basket to draw out a heavy linen veil, anchoring it to her daughter’s head with a circlet of gold filigree. Concentrating, with pursed lips, she secured the fabric further with jewelled pins. Felice would make certain that her daughter’s hair would never be seen in public again. Oh, the shame of it!

      ‘Geoffrey also brought a message from Sylvie,’ Emmeline ventured after a while, the sweet melody of her voice breaking the amiable silence that had fallen between them. She withdrew the crackling parchment from her embroidered pouch. The rain pattered softly on the taut hides stretched over the window apertures; inside the cottage the light dimmed, evidence of the thick cloud that had gathered outside.

      Felice pursed her lips. ‘What does she say?’ she asked reluctantly. She had never forgiven her elder daughter for abandoning her child.

      ‘Matters are not good in England, maman. I would go to her.’

      ‘Why would you want to do that? Sylvie made her choice when she left Barfleur with…that man. When she left her baby.’ Felice leaned over to stab the fire violently with an iron poker. A shower of sparks rose up the thick stone chimney, making the flames leap around the cauldron of hot water suspended over the burning wood. The yeasty smell of bread baking in the side oven began to permeate the room.

      Setting her cup back on the table, Emmeline turned to look at her mother, her green eyes shining out of her pale, heart-shaped face. ‘Because she is our kith and kin? Because we have a duty to look out for her, to care for her, despite what she did?’

      ‘You have a kind heart, daughter,’ Felice replied, her expression bleak, ‘but when I remember what happened…’ she shook her head ‘…I find it hard to forgive her.’

      ‘She had no idea Rose was ill when she left—how could she? It was not her fault.’

      Felice nodded abruptly before turning to lift a warm, crusty round of bread from the oven. Emmeline’s stomach growled; she had been awake since first light, searching the white mist from her chamber window.

      ‘But how can you go, Emmeline?’ Felice raised her head suddenly as she cut thick pieces from the loaf. ‘How can you sail the ship for no return? No one will give you coin for a visit to your sister! We cannot afford it.’

      ‘I have an idea, Mother,’ Emmeline replied enigmatically, chewing a hunk of bread. Her interest had been caught by the chance remark made by Lord Talvas’s man on the quayside. ‘I have an inkling that the Empress Maud has need of a passage to England.’

      Felice let out a small shriek and clutched the windowsill. As the only daughter of King Henry I, the Empress Maud had a fearsome reputation, with a temper to match.

      ‘Emmeline, you mustn’t meddle with the likes of her…Why would she travel at this time of year…who knows what will happen?’

      Emmeline shrugged. ‘Nothing will happen, Mother. I have no need to know why she wants to journey to England. All I know is that she’ll pay handsomely for the privilege of crossing the Channel, as long as I can find a willing crew and captain.’ She knew without asking that Captain Lecherche would sail no more this year; he believed the weather to be too unpredictable, the currents too dangerous. But there were many others she could ask. With luck she could visit Sylvie within the week.

      ‘On the morrow, I will travel to Torigny,’ she uttered, her mouth full of crumbs.

      Chapter Three

      The Empress Maud sat on a low stool at the bedside of her father, King Henry I. She leaned across the furs piled high on the bed to take one of his pale, dry hands within her own, shaking her head.

      ‘I can’t understand this illness, Robert,’ she addressed her thin, gaunt half-brother who stood looking out of the narrow slit window. ‘He seemed so fit and healthy this morning, out in the forest.’

      Robert turned from his lengthy perusal of the forest below, the bare bones of the treetops frilling out in the direction of Barfleur. A couple of winters older than Maud, he shared the same chestnut hair as his sibling, wearing it very short as was the Norman fashion. As the Earl of Gloucester, his clothes befitted his high rank. Woven from the finest merino wool, his light green braies hugged his long legs, cross-gartered with leather strips from knee to ankle until they met his thick leather boots. The heat of the room had made him throw off his dark brown overtunic, and now he stood in just his fine linen shirt, glowing white against the gleaming damp grey of the stone walls. He had left his cloak and sword downstairs in the great hall, as he helped half carry, half drag his sick father up the three flights of circular stairs to the King’s chamber in the east tower.

      ‘’Tis an uncommon fever, I agree.’ Robert agreed. ‘But there’s nothing we can do, Maud. The physician said as much.’