The Wild Hunt by Elizabeth Chadwick

Author:Elizabeth Chadwick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

LONDON

WHITSUNTIDE 1100

The cry of a boatman floated up from the river.

Judith set her sewing aside and went to the casement. Blossom was drifting down from the apple trees in the garth, as green-tinted through the glass as the bright feathers of the popinjay regarding her beadily from its perch. Being momentarily high in the King's favour, Emma's husband could afford to waste silver on such rare frivolities as green glass windows and exotic foreign birds.

She and Guyon were in London to attend the Whitsuntide gathering of the court, held this year at the newly completed Palace of Westminster designed by Rannulf Flambard, who took men's money and spent it in the name of the crown. The city was crowded, as packed to bursting as a thrifty housewife's jar of dried beans, and only the highest magnates in the land were granted sleeping space within Westminster and its immediate environs. The rest had to manage as best they could. Conveniently for them, Richard, Guyon's brother-in-law, owned a house on the Strand but a few minutes' walk from the new palace and was able, with a bit of a squeeze and a great deal of organising from Emma, to house Judith and Guyon and their immediate servants for the length of their sojourn. They were uncomfortable and cramped, but more fortunate than most .. fortunate being a relative term, Judith thought and scowled over her shoulder at the bed in the corner of the curtain-partitioned room.

It was Richard and Emma's and they had insisted on giving it up to herself and Guyon during their stay. A kindness that was a cruelty in disguise. Last night Guyon had sat up until the early hours talking to Richard and used the excuse of not disturbing Judith and the other sleepers across whose pallets he must step in order to reach his own bed as a reason to roll himself in his cloak among the other men in the hall .

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