Free The Love Knot by Elizabeth Chadwick Page B

to them. Catrin noted that she moved slowly with a slight limp on the left side, and she was still panting as she sat on the bench beside the two young women.
    'When you pass three score years and ten, you shouldn't go climbing twice that number of stairs in one attempt.' She placed her hand to her breast as if the motion would calm her heart.
    'Did you bring it, did you bring my eagle stone?' Edon demanded like a greedy child.
    Catrin could have kicked her for such lack of consideration. 'Would you like some wine?' she offered. It was perhaps not her place to do so, being the newest addition to the Countess's women, but Catrin had no time for such conventions.
    'Bless you, child.' The woman smiled, exposing her worn teeth. The lines on her face deepened and crinkled, revealing humour and endurance.
    Catrin went to a vast oak sideboard where stood a flagon of wine and several pottery cups. As she poured, she was aware that the other women were watching her action. Let them judge, Catrin thought, affecting not to notice their disapproving looks.
    When she returned with the drink, Edon was enthusing over a smooth, egg-shaped stone the colour of dried blood. There was a gold mounting at the apex of the oval and a ribbon had been threaded through it.
    'Look at my eagle stone!' Edon said, dangling it in front of Catrin. 'It's to protect me during my labour. I have to tie it round my thigh and pray to Saint Margaret.'
    Catrin gave the cup of wine to the old woman and duly admired the object. 'Do they really work?'
    'Of course they do.' The midwife had been about to take a sip of the wine, but she lowered the cup and gave Catrin a warning glance. 'I've been using them at childbeds for more years than you've lived, young woman. Give any wife an eagle stone to hold and she will have an easier labour. Lady Edon will have no difficulties, I promise.' She smiled again, including Edon in the gesture, and raised her cup in a toast before taking a long drink.
    'I haven't seen you in my lady's solar before.' She smacked her lips in appreciation of the Countess's best wine. 'Although I hope you'll be here next time.'
    'Catrin's home was raided by mercenaries,' Edon said before Catrin could speak for herself. 'She had nowhere to go, so Countess Mabile took her in. There's a little boy too, the Earl's half-brother. He kept us awake all last night with his bad dreams, but I feel sorry for him.' Edon jumped to her feet. 'I'm going to show Alais my eagle stone. She's getting married soon. Perhaps she'll want one for her trousseau.' Edon wrapped the ribbon round her fingers and took her treasure across the room to a plump young woman seated at a small weaving loom.
    The midwife shook her head and her eyes twinkled. 'There is no malice in her,' she said. 'Young and giddy, that's all.'
    'Did you truly mean what you said about the eagle stone?'
    'Of course I did. Belief is the strongest power we have. Tell a wench that one of those things will ease her travail, and sure enough her pangs diminish.'
    'And what if the birth goes wrong?'
    The woman finished the wine in the cup and pinched her lips to wipe them. 'I sell hope, not miracles,' she said. 'Sometimes a skilled midwife can rescue a mother and babe in difficulty, but if not, then it is God's will, and all the belief in the world will not change matters.' She nodded sagely as she spoke, then gave Catrin a shrewd look. 'I thought you must be Lord Oliver's lass the moment I set eyes on you. "Forthright and sharp of wit," he says to me, "looks so dainty, you'd never believe she was as stubborn as an ox." '
    Catrin's face flamed as she was assailed by several emotions at once, not least among them embarrassment and anger that Oliver had seen fit to discuss her with another. She was bewildered too. 'I'm not his "lass",' she said frostily, 'and he has no right to talk about me behind my back.'
    'Oh, don't take on so.' Etheldreda gave her a reproving look. 'You turned him upside-down and he had to talk to