Rosamund was petted and given sweetmeats from the Countess's own supply, which the little girl considered far more appetising than the basket of eels that her mother had left in the kitchens with one of the cooks. There were other children in the bower too — two boys slightly older than Rosamund and three fair-haired little girls in stepped heights of about a year's difference. All of them proved to be Edon's.

'And my belly's big again, Edon said later, when Catrin had emptied her budget of news and the excitement of her arrival had calmed down. The women returned to their embroidery and the harp music rippled softly through the room.

Catrin looked at Edon's swollen stomach which made a nothing of her own thickening waistline.

'It will be my seventh, Edon said. 'I lost one a year and a half ago in my third month. She gave a little grimace. 'Geoffrey and I try our best, but you can't go without all the time unless you're a monk or a nun. She looked sidelong. 'How do you and Oliver manage?

Catrin patted her belly. 'As it happens, I too am with child, although less further along than you, she confided. 'Oliver would have left me in Rouen if he had known, so it's going to be a surprise when he sees me. There was sudden apprehension in her voice.

'You mean a shock, Edon said shrewdly.

'Yes, that too. But as soon as he knows, he will start to fret. The longer I can keep it from him, the better for his well-being, no matter that he will be hurt that I did not tell him before.

'You know best, Edon said dubiously, as if she thought the opposite.

Catrin tightened her lips but did not argue because she had a sneaking suspicion Edon was right. 'How many months of carrying have you left?

'The child is due at Michaelmas, Edon said.

Catrin stared, unable to equate Edon's words with the evidence of her eyes. Edon was already enormous. Successive pregnancies had slackened her muscles and laid pads of fat upon what had once been the toned, slender body of a girl. Edon could be no more than eight-and-twenty now, but she looked ten years older. There were puffy shadows beneath her eyes and her fingers were so swollen that her rings were half-buried in flesh. Catrin had come across such signs before and knew that the labour often went hard for women who displayed them.

'I'm pleased you're here. Edon pressed Catrin's arm. 'You'll stay for my confinement, won't you? I will never forget how you and Ethel saved my first one's life.

Catrin gave a warm smile of response, although her heart dropped. 'If I can, I will, she said.

Rosamund had settled in a corner with the other three children to play a puzzle game with a loop of wool. Catrin looked at the bent heads, the absorbed faces, the dextrous little hands.

'You should drink plenty of raspberry leaf tea and rest with your feet above the level of your body to adjust the balance of your humours, she told Edon. 'The birth will go easier then.

'You are saying it will not be an easy birth?

'No, no, Catrin said quickly, knowing Edon's propensity for panic. 'What I mean is that whatever the church says about women bringing forth children in pain to pay for Eve's sin, the less pain involved the better. I suggest these remedies to all women once they have quickened. Indeed, I shall take my own advice. She was aware of how rapidly she was speaking, rushing with words to make her defence more plausible.

Edon gave her a level stare, then chose to believe her and relaxed with a little sigh. 'I shall tell you the easiest way of all, she said, 'and that is to be a man. You plant the seed and then go on your way.

Catrin nodded. 'But men have their own set of dangers too, she murmured, thinking of Oliver and wondering where he was.

Chapter 30

Oliver too was wondering where he was. Certainly not York, as had been the grand plan. That remained securely in King Stephen's hand. News of Henry's approach from Lancaster had flown ahead and the citizens of York had sent for aid. It had arrived far more rapidly than anyone had anticipated, in the form of Stephen himself at the head of a large band of mercenaries.

Faced with a pitched battle which he was not yet ready to fight, Henry had chosen discretion over valour and retreated. At sixteen years old he had all the time that the fifty-three-year-old Stephen did not. He dispersed his army. King David returned to Carlisle, Rannulf of Chester retreated into his marcher heartlands and Henry headed for the Angevin strongholds in the south-west; for Gloucester, Bristol and Devizes.

The journey was a game of catch-as-catch-can, for Stephen had sent out patrols to intercept Henry's troops. Although the ride was not desperate, it still gave Oliver uncomfortable memories of the retreat from Winchester eight years before. He had a recurring nightmare of being apprehended on the road by a smirking, dark-eyed faun of a man wearing the blood-crimson tunic of a noble. In his dream, instead of surrendering Oliver drew his sword and attacked Louis de Grosmont. But at the moment when he struck, the face became Catrin's, her expression bewildered and accusing, and he jerked out of the imagining with thudding heart and clammy palms.

They rode in the dark, kindling their way with pine pitch flares. When it rained, they rested until daylight within a wood, the rain dripping from the leaves of the great elms and rolling down their necks. Chain-mail shone, slick and silver, patterned with streaks of rust-red. Horse-hide gleamed with damp. The smell of the forest was heavy and green with a combined aroma of growth and rot.

Bearing down the marches, they took the lesser roads, some of them no more than sheep trails, although once they found a stretch of road which Henry said had been built by the Romans and which, even now, was more sound and solid than recently shod surfaces. They swam rivers rather than risk the bridges where Stephen's troops might be waiting, and until they were in the south-west did not attempt to spend the night at any destination more conspicuous than a hamlet or barn.

They took a day's respite at Hereford, which was loyal to the Prince, and then moved on towards Bristol. Henry still had to exercise caution for Stephen's heir, Eustace, had swept into Gloucestershire with an army of Middlesex men, intent on crushing Henry's challenge before it could begin.

Within a day's march of Bristol, Henry stopped to spend the night at Dursley Castle near Stroud. He was red-eyed from lack of sleep, but there was very little evidence that the setbacks had sapped his seemingly bottomless reserve of vitality. All Oliver wanted to do was curl up in a corner and sleep without dreaming for a year at least. His left arm was aching from constantly gripping a bridle, his collar-bone too from the weight of his shield strap.

'My head feels like a gambeson, he said, as Richard cheerfully thrust a cup of hot wine beneath his nose. 'So stuffed with wool that whatever strikes it is just absorbed without result.

Richard grinned. 'At least we'll reach Bristol tomorrow, he said cheerfully.

Oliver took a sip of the steaming wine. It was sour but he didn't care as long as it revived him. 'Then what? He glanced at Henry who was prowling confidently around the room talking to his commanders, his short, stubby hands gesturing eloquently as he spoke. Even now, at the end of a long, harrowing day, he was still on his feet with a bounce in his stride. In a moment Oliver knew with awful certainty that the Prince was going to ask him a preposterous question about their supplies and expect him to have the answer.

Richard shrugged. 'Then we eat an enormous meal safe behind huge walls where Stephen cannot reach us, and in the morning we start planning again.

Oliver groaned. Actually the planning did not bother him too much. He was quick and efficient at working out logistics, and supplies were always easier to come by in the summer months. What he disliked were the fits and starts of campaigning, the furtive hiding, sleeping in full mail, a horse beneath him. Although still very young, Henry was a competent commander, but Stephen was competent too and also battle-wise. To best him, Henry needed the luck of the devil, who was said to be his ancestor, and thus far it had not been forthcoming.

'Very soon I will have spent half my life on the battlefield. My bones, including the broken ones, are too weary to do anything now but lie down.

Richard tilted his head on one side. 'Catrin and Rosamund are in Bristol, he said. 'We'll reach them tomorrow too, and Geoff FitzMar.

Oliver nodded to humour the young man and wondered if Richard's resilience was the result of being a full fifteen years younger or whether it was a derangement of the royal bloodline. While Oliver was indeed looking forward to seeing Catrin and Rosamund, he was too bone-weary to make the effort of conversation. The last decent night's sleep he remembered was in Carlisle before setting out for Lancaster, and even that had been marred by Henry's propensity for rising three hours before the lark. He had never known anyone need so little rest.

Giving up on Oliver's tepid response, Richard drifted away to join Thomas FitzRainald who was spreading his saddle-roll near the hearth to air out the damp. With a quick glance in Henry's direction, Oliver took his own saddle-roll outside, deciding to find a quiet, sheltered spot in the bailey where he could sleep in peace. The Prince needed to know nothing from him at the moment. Let him bedevil some other poor individual for his intellectual stimulation.

It was a quiet night, thick with stars. Sentries paced the wall-walks, their boots scraping softly on the wooden planks. Sheep bleated to each other in the fields beyond the walls and danger seemed so far away that it had no meaning. Oliver found an animal shelter supported on two strong ash poles. It smelt faintly of goat, but there was no sign of an occupant and the straw on the floor was clean and dry. He spread his cloak, lay down upon it and wrapped it over like a blanket. Within moments he was sound asleep.

It seemed only seconds later, but was more than three hours judging from the position of the stars, when he was woken by the sound of someone crying for admittance at the keep gates. There was urgency in the voice and as Oliver threw off his cloak and sat up, he saw guards hastening by torchlight to raise the bar and admit a rider. As the horse clattered into the bailey, Oliver recognised one of Henry's Welsh scouts.

The man tethered his blowing mount to a ring in the wall and headed towards the darkened keep. Starlight glittered, casting blue light beyond the red of the guards' torches.

'Math? Oliver called.

The Welshman turned, his hand by instinct already on his dagger, then he relaxed. 'Oh, it's you, the pet Saeson, he said in his broad, sing-song accent. 'What are you doing out here?

'Trying to sleep without being disturbed, Oliver said with a shrug. 'I should have known it was a lost cause.

'Aye, well, the entire cause of yon lad will be lost if you don't put spurs to your mounts and ride for Bristol, Math said. 'Eustace has an army not twenty miles away and he's headed straight here. He knows that Henry's inside. Math gazed around at the walls, his mouth turned down at the corners. 'Not fit for a siege, this one. I'd sooner be attacking it from without than hiding within, see.

Oliver followed Math into the keep to raise the alarm and bade farewell to sleep.

The next hour was complete hell as men were roused from their slumber and forced to don armour and weapons which they had but recently removed. The horses were tired. Some just hung their heads and patiently allowed themselves to be saddled — which did not bode well for swiftness on the road. Others, with more spirit, kicked and snapped as the harassed grooms and squires tried to harness them by the poor light of guttering pitch flares.

The Prince was one of the first to leave Dursley, riding on a fresh horse borrowed from the castellan. His capture could not be risked with Eustace and his army so close. Stephen's eldest son was neither generous nor amenable and Henry was his bitter rival.

' Oliver rode out with Henry's rearguard. Hero was seventeen years old and beginning to show his age. He did not have the kick or spark of the younger mounts, nor their stamina any more. Still, he responded gamely to Oliver's urgency and broke into a trot. Only a madman or someone completely desperate would have galloped his mount in the dark, and so Oliver was able to keep pace with the rest of the troop.