William hesitated. At last, reluctantly, he muttered: “Thank you.”
Spring was cold and dismal that year, and on the morning of Whitsunday it was raining. Aliena had woken up in the night with a backache, and it was still troubling her with a stabbing pain every now and again. She sat in the cold kitchen, plaiting Martha’s hair before going to church, while Alfred ate a large breakfast of white bread, soft cheese and strong beer. A particularly sharp twinge in her back made her stop and stand upright for a moment, wincing. Martha noticed and said: “What’s the matter?”
“Backache,” Aliena said shortly. She did not want to discuss it, for the cause was surely sleeping on the floor in the drafty back room, and nobody knew about that, not even Martha.
Martha stood up and took a hot stone from the fire. Aliena sat down. Martha wrapped the stone in an old scorched piece of leather, and held it against Aliena’s back. It gave her immediate relief. Martha started to plait Aliena’s hair, which had grown again after being burned away and was once again an undisciplined mass of dark curls. Aliena felt soothed.
She and Martha had become quite close since Ellen left. Poor Martha: she had lost her mother and then her stepmother. Aliena felt herself to be a poor substitute for a mother. Besides, she was only ten years older than Martha. She played the role of older sister, really. Oddly enough, the person Martha missed most was her stepbrother, Jack.
But then, everyone missed Jack.
Aliena wondered where he was. He might be quite close, working on a cathedral in Gloucester or Salisbury. More likely he had gone to Normandy. But he could be much farther afield: Paris, Rome, Jerusalem, or Egypt. Recalling the stories that pilgrims told about such faraway places, she visualized Jack in a sandy desert, carving stones for a Saracen fortress in the blinding sunlight. Was he thinking of her now?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a noise of hooves outside, and a moment later her brother, Richard, walked in, leading his horse. He and the horse were soaking wet and covered with mud. Aliena took some hot water from the fire for him to wash his hands and face, and Martha led the horse out to the backyard. Aliena put bread and cold beef on the kitchen table and poured him a cup of beer.
Alfred said: “What’s the news of the war?”
Richard dried his face on a rag and sat down to his breakfast. “We were defeated at Wilton,” he said.
“Was Stephen taken?”
“No, he escaped, just as Maud escaped from Oxford. Now Stephen is at Winchester and Maud is at Bristol, and they’re both licking their wounds and consolidating their hold on the areas they control.”
The news always seemed to be the same, Aliena thought. One side or both had won some small victory or suffered some small loss, but there was never any prospect of the end of the war.
Richard looked at her and said: “You’re getting fat.”
She nodded and said nothing. She was eight months pregnant, but nobody knew. It was lucky that the weather had been cold, so that she had been able to continue to wear layers of loose winter clothing which concealed her shape. In a few weeks’ time the baby would be born, and the truth would come out. She still had no idea what she was going to do then.
The bell rang to summon the townspeople to mass. Alfred pulled on his boots and looked expectantly at Aliena.
“I don’t think I can go,” she said. “I feel terrible.”
He shrugged indifferently and turned to her brother. “You should come, Richard. Everyone will be there today—it’s the first service in the new church.”
Richard was surprised. “You’ve got the ceiling up already? I thought that was going to take the rest of the year.”
“We rushed it. Prior Philip offered the men an extra week’s wages if they could finish by today. It’s amazing how much faster they worked. Even so, we only just made it—we took the falsework down this morning.”
“I must see this,” Richard said. He stuffed the last of the bread and beef into his mouth and stood up.
Martha said to Aliena: “Do you want me to stay with you?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine. You go. I’ll just lie down.”
The three of them put on their cloaks and went out. Aliena went into the back room, taking with her the hot stone in its leather wrapping. She lay down on Alfred’s bed with the stone under her back. She had become terribly lethargic since her marriage. Previously, she had run a householdandbeen the busiest wool merchant in the county; now, she had trouble keeping house for Alfred even though she had nothing else to do.
She lay there feeling sorry for herself for a while, wishing she could fall asleep. Suddenly she felt a trickle of warm water on her inner thigh. She was shocked. It was almost as if she was urinating, but she wasn’t, and a moment later the trickle turned into a flood. She sat bolt upright. She knew what it meant. Her waters had broken. The baby was coming.
She felt scared. She needed help. She called to her neighbor at the top of her voice: “Mildred! Mildred, come here!” Then she remembered that nobody was at home—they had all gone to church.
The flow of water slowed, but Alfred’s bed was soaked. He was going to be furious, she thought fearfully; and then she remembered that he was going to be furious anyway, for he would know that the baby was not his child, and she thought: Oh, God, what am I going to do?
The back pain came again, and she realized that this must be what they called labor pains. She forgot about Alfred. She was about to give birth. She was too frightened to go through with it alone. She wanted someone to help her. She decided to go to the church.
She swung her legs off the bed. Another spasm took her, and she paused, her face screwed up in pain, until it went away. Then she got off the bed and left the house.
Her mind was in a whirl as she staggered along the muddy street. When she was at the priory gate the pain came again, and she had to lean against the wall and grit her teeth until it passed. Then she went into the priory close.
