The Winter Mantle by Elizabeth Chadwick

Author:Elizabeth Chadwick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2012-04-28T14:55:22+00:00

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Chapter 22

The tree was heavy with apples, green flushing with pink and gold as they ripened, and the size of a strong man's clenched fist. In the thirteen years since Matilda had planted the pip it had grown into a sturdy tree, kept compact and shapely by careful pruning and loving attention. Matilda had grown with it. She towered above Sybille and Helisende and had a good handspan advantage over her sister and mother. From the latter's barbed comments, it was clear to Matilda that her mother wished her daughter was a bush to which she could apply the pruning shears.

Stooping to the water jug at her feet, Matilda poured a silver libation around the base of the tree and murmured a blessing. The water elf still dwelt in his well, but now she was old enough to draw the lid herself. She always carried a quarter penny in her pouch to pay him. Her mother would have called the custom pagan and bid her cease, but what her mother did not know could not be a source of friction.

The garden belonged to Matilda. Ever since the planting of her first apple pip in small childhood, it had been her source of pleasure and refuge. She relished the feel of the crumbly dark loam in her hands. There was nothing more satisfying than setting seeds and watching them thrust their way into the light, in nurturing them and harvesting their fruit.

Her mother would take her to task for spending so much time among her plants, but she never sought to prevent her.

The tending of the garden was a suitable task for a female, and since Judith did not enjoy the pursuit herself she was glad to leave it to her daughter. Matilda delighted in the solitude and the breathing space, much preferring the vagaries of the elements to the hencoop of the women's chamber.

She scattered the final glistening droplets around the roots of the tree and watched them soak into the ground. The garden gate squeaked, announcing Helisende's return. Matilda had sent the young woman who was both maid and companion to the solar with a basket of lavender for strewing among the rushes, thus giving each of them the excuse for a few moments alone.

'We have visitors,' Helisende announced, cheeks pink and eyes sparkling with excitement. 'A whole troop of them.'

Visitors to Northampton were frequent. Northumbria had been taken away on her father's death and given to the bishop of that diocese to administer, but Huntingdon and Northampton remained beneath her mother's vigorous rule. However, while stewards and administrators, merchants and soldiers came and went in a constant trickle, an entire troop was a different matter.

'Do you know who they are?' Matilda's first thought was that they were her grandfather Eudo's soldiers from his lands of Holderness. He brought them to Northampton several times a year, usually with his son Stephen in tow. But then Helisende would have said so.

'No,' Helisende shook her head, 'but I saw my father and their leader giving each other a handclasp and smiling as if they were old friends.

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