Her morning’s work lay ahead and if she wanted to eat, she had better get to it. Releasing Henri, she set about unpinning her veil and kilting up her skirts. Since daybreak, she had been dreading this moment, but there was no escaping it. Today was her turn in the river at the washing stones. No matter that the spring sunlight had little heat in it, no matter that the Itchen was colder than melt-water from an ice-field, it was her turn at the washing stones.
Aediva was already in the river up to her knees, energetically bashing a twist of linen against the stones.
‘Good morning, Aediva,’ Emma said, tugging off her boots and setting them down by a twiggy hawthorn.
“Morning, Emma.”
‘Mama, may I play with my boat?’ Henri waved a crudely shaped wooden off-cut under Emma’s nose.
‘Yes, but not until I come down to the water. Wait there.’ She pointed at the hawthorn bush. It had not yet unfurled its leaves. ‘I have to see Bertha first.’
‘Oh, Henri’s all right.’ Aediva looked up with a smile. ‘I will keep an eye on him while you collect your washing.’
At Emma’s nod, Henri skipped towards the washing stones, blond hair—just like his father’s—shining in the sun. Where was his father? Emma wondered, unable to suppress a shiver of fear. Shortly after the arrival of the Normans, Judhael had told her that he was going to take refuge in the North. Anything, Judhael had said, rather than submit to a foreign invader. Had Judhael gone north? Had he been involved in the recent fighting? Emma bit her lip. Had Judhael been killed? Emma’s love for Judhael was entirely gone; he had destroyed it in the days after the Conquest and Emma hoped—indeed, she prayed—never to see him again. But she did not wish him dead.
She smiled at the son she and Judhael had made when a Saxon king had sat on the English throne. Illegitimate or not, Henri was the light of Emma’s life. He would soon be three. She forced herself to sound cheerful. ‘Mind you stay clear of the water.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
The Winchester wash-house was a three-sided wattle-and-daub barn, open on the river side. That morning, three of the fires inside had been lit, and steam billowed out from several kettles. Bertha, who ran the wash-house, was supervising a girl stirring a frothing cauldron with a wooden paddle and a boy was lifting wood from a stack to feed the fires.
The moment Emma set eyes on Bertha, her blood ran cold. Bertha’s face, normally red from the steam and the heat of the fires, was as white as snow and the skin round her mouth was pinched and tight.
‘Bertha, are you all right—what’s happened?’
Bertha caught her breath. Her round brown eyes were small with worry and when she made a point of stepping sharply backwards, away from Emma, cold fingers touched Emma’s neck. Something terrible must have happened for Bertha to look at her like that. ‘Bertha?’
Bertha swallowed. ‘I…I am sorry, Emma. There’s no work for you today.’
‘No work?’ Several willow baskets were stacked up round the side of the wash-house, as they were every morning. A number of them were quite clearly overflowing with dirty laundry. ‘What’s that, then?’
Bertha moved behind one of the cauldrons and, ridiculous though it might be, Emma could not shake off the idea that Bertha was afraid of her. But why on earth would Bertha look at her like that?
Deep furrows appeared on Bertha’s brow. ‘I am sorry. Truly. But I have no work for you.’
Emma blinked, unable to believe what she was hearing. Bertha was a good friend, one who always made certain to save her plenty of work. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is quite simple. I have no work for you, not any more.’
Emma looked pointedly at the laundry baskets. ‘No?’
‘No.’ Bertha took a small step towards her. It was then that Emma noticed the bruising on Bertha’s wrist. Lord, on both her wrists. ‘I am sorry, Emma. Some old friends have returned to Winchester. I…I only have so much work to offer and they are desperate. Desperate.’ Bertha almost spat out the last word, but for the life of her, Emma could not grasp what she was being told.
Emma frowned, her eyes kept returning to those bruises. ‘Your friends have demanded work?’
‘N-no, not exactly.’ For a moment Bertha would not meet her eyes, then she looked Emma straight in the face. ‘I mean, yes, yes, they do need work.’
Bertha was hiding something. Those bruises had not been there yesterday and they were in some way connected with Bertha’s ominous change of heart. No work? She must keep calm. ‘Bertha, I need the laundry you give me. How else can I earn food for Henri and myself? I also need to pay Gytha for our lodgings at the mill.’
Bertha spread her hands. ‘There is nothing I can do. You will have to find work elsewhere.’
Emma blinked. ‘I shall come back tomorrow. Perhaps then—’
‘Don’t do that. No point.’ Colour flared on Bertha’s cheeks. ‘I won’t have work for you tomorrow, either.’
A cold fist gripped Emma’s insides. ‘No work—Bertha, you are saying…never?’
Bertha nodded. ‘That’s it, never. You will have to go elsewhere.’
Dazed, Emma walked blindly into the March sunlight and came to a dead halt just outside the wash-house. No work. Saint Swithun help her, what could she do?
Henri was jumping about on the riverbank, screaming with laughter as Aediva pulled faces at him, but their laughter seemed a long way off. Overhead, some rooks were cawing as they flew over the city walls towards the castle and the woods beyond; they, too, seemed very distant. What will become of us?
Moving as in a dream, Emma forced her legs to move. She made it as far as the riverbank, and sat down next to the hawthorn where she had left her boots and her veil. Drawing up her legs, she leaned her head on her knees.
Bertha had no work for her. What else could she do?
Minutes ago Emma had been dreading her turn in the river. She wiggled her toes; they were already blue even though she hadn’t been in the water and wasn’t likely to enter it, not today. Right now she would kill to be in the Itchen alongside Aediva. What was she going to do? However was she going to pay Gytha?
Lifting her head, Emma looked back over her shoulder. Through a gap between two cottages, a couple of ploughboys were visible, hard at work in one of the field strips. One was pulling on the ox’s halter, while his companion steadied the plough. In their wake seagulls dived and mewed. And there, past the field strips, on the road beyond was Sir Richard of Asculf, the most powerful man in the district, riding back to his garrison at the head of his squadron. A couple of wolfhounds were loping alongside him, and a small white dog she was unable to identify.
The most powerful man in the district.
They were almost back in Winchester. Richard’s conroi had crested the rise overlooking Eastgate when his shoulder gave another twinge and his fingers tightened involuntarily on Roland’s reins. It was a mere twitch, but nonetheless it had Roland tossing his head. Richard suppressed a smile. For all that Roland was such a big-boned piece of horseflesh, these years in England had seen him become highly sensitised to Richard’s slightest movement.
‘Is your shoulder paining you, sir?’ his squire, Geoffrey, asked. ‘You rode like a demon back there. We almost lost the hounds.’
‘What, are you worried you might have to re-stitch me?’ Richard said, with a grin. There had been no surgeon handy when they had removed the arrow and his squire had proved to be a little squeamish when it had come to sewing him up.
‘It seems quite possible, you ought to take more care.’
‘Geoffrey,