Free The Sword and The Swan by Roberta Gellis

Through honor a man may lose his children's livelihood. See that the lands are still there to benefit your little ones."
    Lady Warwick's mouth twisted, and the bitterness of her voice showed that she was not merely offering impersonal advice. "A pox take all kings," she added, then smiled. "But that is at a distance. A closer matter is that Rannulf is not the sweetest-tempered man in the world. I said he would not harm you, and he would not do so with intention, but he might well make a life of misery for you. A woman needs a refuge. When your father's vassals come to London, make a way to speak with them in private. Perhaps you can come to terms with them so that—" Her hand closed warningly over Catherine's. "Come to my house, if you have your husband's leave. I have a stitch to show you that makes all embroidery light work."
    Catherine was not surprised at the sudden change of subject because she too had been conscious of an alteration in the rhythm of the men's talk. Hereford laughed and Rannulf growled, not unpleasantly but as if he were being teased about something that amused him.
    Lady Warwick moved away, but others came, and although Catherine was tired out with tension and civility, she was happy to mouth platitudes about which she did not have to think. Her father's vassals! She had never given them a thought during the period in which she was frozen with grief, but they had loved her father and it was possible that they would not stand idly by and see her harmed.
    Whether they would risk their lives and property for her was impossible to guess, nor would she ask them to take that risk if there were any chance that she could find safety by other means. Lady Warwick seemed so sure that the master of Sleaford was worthy of trust. Catherine stole a glance at the face of the man who stood beside her. His face was hard and his mouth was grim, but he did not look cruel and the attitude of the men who came to speak to him betokened trust and sometimes affection.
    The stream of well-wishers was curtailed at last by the summons to dinner, and both bride and groom were grateful, although for different reasons. Catherine wanted peace to follow her own thoughts; Rannulf was bored by so much small talk for which he had no taste, and was pleased by the knowledge that in a few hours more he would have Catherine to himself.
    He thrust away a dish of eels, telling his bride to pass them along to Stephen who adored them, but he allowed his gaze to drift down from her face to her throat, as round as and whiter than any marble column. He responded to her polite attempts at conversation largely with monosyllabic grunts, but he was by no means ill-pleased with them and Catherine, who was keenly alive to his mood, was not discouraged by his lack of response.
    The meal, by the standards of the participants, did not last long. All Maud's efforts could not make eating a real pleasure during Lent. No quantity of salt, herbs, and pepper could change fish and eggs to beef and venison, even though every fresh- and salt-water fish, shelled and scaled, was provided. Roasted, baked, stewed, stuffed, or boiled—it was still fish.
    Worse than that, however, was the starvation for fresh vegetables that all men, of high station or low, suffered. It was not, of course, that the eating of vegetables was proscribed in Lent, but by March the supply of even those fruits and vegetables that could be stored was running out. What was served was woody and tasted of mold; even the fresh-baked bread was tainted with the musty odor of the dank bins in which the grain had been stored for months.
    The one advantage to the brevity of the meal was that it allowed less time for drinking, too. Nearly everyone was still sober when the tables were cleared and stacked against the walls, and Stephen, with a grateful heart, called for music from the minstrels so that his guests could dance.
    The king knew that a major danger of a feast at court was that the political