Elizabeth Chadwick - The Conquest

Ailith had wished upon a shooting star at the Yuletide feast. Now another star, trailing a line of fire, had blazed in the April sky for almost a week and she knew for a certainty that her wish had been granted.

'I believe I am with child,' she confided in Felice as she pinned her cloak and prepared to go to market with her neighbour.

Felice widened her eyes. 'Ailith, I am pleased for you! How soon, tell me when!'

'Between November's end and Yule, I think.' Complexion pink and radiant, she told Felice about making her wish. 'Goldwin said that the strange star bodes us ill, but I know he is wrong,' she added, laying her hand upon her belly which was flat, revealing nothing of the new life it contained.

'Have you told him yet?'

'No, but I'm going to roast a hare tonight and ply him with our best mead – make it a proper occasion to celebrate.' Ailith spoke brightly, but anxiety lurked beneath her sparkle. Goldwin had been dour and taciturn of late. He spent far too much time at his forge. Every day he was up before dawn, working until well after dusk, squinting by candlelight to complete death-bladed axe-heads, seax's and swords. He no longer saw beauty in the world, only the killing brightness of edged steel.

'I too have had a gift from the star.' Felice leaned close to Ailith lest the accompanying maids should hear. 'Four years Aubert and I have been married. I thought I must surely be barren, but this week I have missed my second flux.'

'Truly?' Ailith's face kindled with delight and she gave Felice a hug. 'Then we'll be outgrowing our girdles together, and neither will be able to bore the other with talk of breeding and babies. Do you know what I did this morning?'

Felice shook her head.

Ailith giggled. 'I stuffed an unwoven fleece beneath my robe to see how I will look in six months' time. You should try it too!'

Felice smiled, but Ailith received the impression that it was a trifle forced.

'How long will Aubert be away?'

Felice's expression became wary and the lustre left her eyes. 'He never knows with these wine-buying forays. Sometimes he is home within two weeks, sometimes it can be as long as two months.'

Ailith pulled a face. Despite Goldwin's current sour humour, he was always there, solid and steady, his bulk warm and comforting in the bed beside her at night. 'I would hate that.'

Felice gave a little shrug. 'You become accustomed… only sometimes it is harder than others.'

'Do you miss Normandy?'

'A little. I loved our house in Rouen, and I was safe there. Here, if I open my mouth, people hear my accent and look at me with hatred because of our Duke and your King. I think that when Aubert returns, he will take me back to Normandy until peace is made.'

Ailith nodded and agreed that it was the most sensible course to take, but knew that if Felice did leave, she would miss her dreadfully. After the inauspicious beginning to their relationship, she and Felice had rapidly become good friends. And now, the fact that they were both pregnant only served to draw them closer. She did not want to see it sundered by the politics of power-hungry men.

Despite, or perhaps because of the portentous star in the sky, the market stalls of the Chepe were louder and busier than ever. Ailith purchased plump silver sardines and a cheese wrapped in cabbage leaves. She laughed with Felice at the sight of a small dog fleeing from a butcher's stall, its jaws strained by a beef rib fully half its size.

Together the women bought lengths of linen to stitch swaddling bands, and visited the apothecary's booth to pore over childbirth remedies.

'An eaglestone, that's what you need,' Felice declared, holding up an egg-shaped brown stone threaded on a ribbon while the apothecary looked on, contemplating his profit. 'It will ease the pain of travail, or so I've been told.'

Ailith eyed the stone dubiously, and wondered how. The price the apothecary had suggested was extortionate. She knew that she could walk down by the river's strand and pick up stones that looked suspiciously similar. 'Later perhaps.' She shook her head. 'There is time aplenty to think of such trinkets.'

Felice, however, was not to be dissuaded, and purchased the eaglestone for a price that horrified Ailith. Her friend went on to buy nearly every remedy that the gleeful apothecary suggested. Ailith watched the packages mount on the counter and seeing the hectic colour in Felice's cheeks, the unnatural sparkle in her dark eyes, began to feel disconcerted.

'Have you gone mad?' she demanded as they returned to the bustle of the streets. 'What do you want all those for?'

'Security,' Felice said and gave a brittle laugh. 'I can bear anything but pain.'

Before Felice looked away, Ailith saw the terror in her wide stare. 'It will be all right,' she tried to comfort, taking her friend's stiff arm. 'The pain doesn't last for ever, and you'll 'forget it the moment you have your new baby in your arms.'

'My mother died in childbirth,' Felice said woodenly, 'bearing me, her first. I am told by my family that I am very like her.'

'But not exactly the same.'

'Oh, it's all right for you!' Felice snapped, shaking her arm free. 'You're built like a barn. All you have to do is open your doors and the child will just walk out!'

Ailith recoiled as if Felice had slapped her across the face. Although she knew that Felice was striking out from the depth of her fear, it did not make the words hurt any less. She tightened her lips and quickened her pace, feeling a small, desolate spurt of gratification as Felice had to run to keep up.

'Ailith, wait, slow down. Oh curse me for a shrew, I didn't mean it!' Felice panted, clutching at Ailith's cloak. 'It's just that I'm so envious of you!'

Ailith stopped. 'Of my size, you mean? You would like to be built like a barn too?'

'I wish I had your hips,' Felice admitted, 'but it's more than that. I wish I had your honest joy, a taste for the simple pleasures.'

'So I am a peasant too?' Ailith arched her brows.

'No, no, I implied no such thing… you know I didn't!'

'I am not so sure,' Ailith retorted. 'After all, our first meeting was between lady and servant, wasn't it? Me sitting on the dung heap and you on your dainty mare. Is that how you see us, Norman and Saxon?' She began to walk again, her heart thumping painfully against her ribs. Whatever had made her say that? Jesu, she had not realised how deeply the resentment had bitten. Felice was her friend, but a few more exchanges like that and the relationship would be totally destroyed.

Ailith turned round, intending in her own turn to apologise, and saw to her horror that two rough-looking men from a nearby rag-and-bone booth had approached Felice and were haranguing her. Obviously they had both heard enough of the argument to deduce that the slim, dark-eyed woman was Norman.

'Why don't you go home?' One of them pushed Felice's shoulder with the heel of his hand so that she staggered and almost fell. 'We don't want Normans on English soil, not unless they're sewn up in shrouds.'

Felice's warm complexion was as sallow as vellum. She clutched her cloak to her throat and licked her lips. 'Let me go about my business,' she said unsteadily. 'You have no right to block my path.'

'No right, hah! Do you hear that, Edwin! The Norman bitch says we have no right!' The trader looked at his fellow in mock-astonishment. 'There's no end to their insolence, is there? What do you reckon we should do with her?'

The other man leered at Felice and tugged his earlobe. 'By rights we ought to take her down to the docks and throw her off English soil,' he said, 'but I reckon as she ought to be given a message to take back to the Norman Duke.' Advancing on her, he seized her roughly round the waist and tried to kiss her. Felice struggled, jerking her head from side to side, her eyes wide with terror and revulsion.

'Leave her alone!' Ailith waded in. 'Do you truly think Harold Godwinson would be proud to call you supporters of his cause?'

'Know him personally, do you?' enquired the first trader, looking her insultingly up and down.

'Yes, my husband is commissioned to him,' Ailith answered coldly. Inside she was seething with terror, but she faced down the traders with an outward display of calm. 'And the Godwinson family are acquainted with the husband of this lady you have laid hands upon.' She was conscious that a crowd was gathering to watch the spectacle, and knew that if sides were taken, she and Felice would fare badly. 'Let her be.' Reaching out, she plucked Felice away from the trader. His eyes narrowed; his whole face was pinched and puckered with anger, but she had sown enough doubt to make him hesitate.

'Quickly!' Ailith drew Felice away towards the broader thoroughfares of Chepeside. 'They may yet change their minds.' Even as she spoke, a cabbage struck Felice in the back, causing her to stagger against Ailith with a frightened cry.

'Norman whore!' came the bellow. 'Norman bitch, go home!' A clod of filth from the gutter followed the cabbage, flattening in a starburst of hostility upon Felice's lovely soft cloak, spattering her wimple and cheek.

Felice uttered one short scream of terror, then bit it off behind compressed lips.

'Hurry!' Ailith drew her urgently onwards. 'They won't start a riot among the mercers' booths.'

Hampered by their skirts, the women ran, Ailith dragging the daintier Felice with ungentle haste. She did not stop until they reached the safety of the cloth sellers' quarter, where many of the stalls were owned by Flemings who had certain alliances with Normandy. Duke William's own wife Matilda was Flemish. Surrounded by opulent bolts of richly dyed wool, linen and silk, listening to the foreign accents conducting their mundane business, Ailith felt secure enough to pause for breath, Felice clinging to her side like a wilting flower to a rock.

A mercer who knew Ailith gave them the shelter of his booth and offered to lend them his senior apprentice to see them home.

'It isn't safe to go about the streets unescorted these days,' he advised Felice as he sat her upon a stool inside the house that adjoined the shop, and gave her a small wooden cup of sweet, strong mead. 'Best thing to do if you are Norman is go home until the trouble is over one way or another.' He had a kindly face and was genuinely concerned, but there was a hint of irritation in his tone that let Ailith and Felice know that he thought them out of their wits for venturing abroad in the first instant.