The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [37]
It was too much. First their contemptuous treatment of her, then the little scene of infidelity, and now this brazen insult. Well, let them discover she could hit back. ‘If I do marry,’ she replied with a calm tone she was proud of, ‘I’m sure I shall honour my husband. And give him a child.’ It was a devastating counter-blow. She knew it and she didn’t care. She watched the other woman’s face for a reaction.
But to her surprise the Lady Maud only drew her two red lips into a bow and glanced at Walter with a small look of triumph. ‘I’m afraid you will soon get a reputation for having a vicious tongue,’ she remarked. ‘An untruthful one, too,’ she added carefully. Then she continued on her way to the door, which Walter held open for her. Adela expected him to turn his back and leave at this point, but instead he remained there, holding the door open for her too and indicating that she should walk out with him. Slightly dazed, a few moments later, she found herself walking after the Lady Maud, with Walter following, into the cold air outside. The lady was helped into the wagon and Walter prepared to mount his horse.
But before he did so, he gestured that Adela should draw close to him. ‘I think you should know’, he said in a low voice, ‘that when I arrived at Hugh de Martell’s the other day, he told me some good news. The Lady Maud has recently discovered she is expecting a child.’ He looked her bleakly in the eye. ‘You’ve just made two more enemies – her and her husband. For you can be sure she’ll speak to him against you. I should take care if I were you.’ He swung up into the saddle and they moved off.
They had passed out through the gate when the widow appeared, hurrying towards her, too late.
There was a frost that night. Adela did not sleep well. She had made a fool of herself again. She had secured the undying hatred of the Lady Maud and probably the enmity of Hugh de Martell as well. Walter must finally be sick of her. She was alone in the world without any friend. But even all these troubles might at last have faded as she passed into unconsciousness, had it not been for one stark fact, which arose, again and again, driving away the clouds of sleep before it. His wife was going to give Martell a child.
In the morning a wind from the north came down from the ridges and dusted the city with snow; and it seemed to Adela that the world had grown very cold.
Edgar usually enjoyed the winter months. They were hard of course. The grasses shrank down to tiny, pale tussocks. Frost came, and snow. The deer fed mostly on holly and ivy, and heather. In the worst conditions they would even gnaw tree bark for nutrients. The sturdy wild ponies, who would munch almost anything, would feed on the spiky gorse. By the end of January many of the animals were becoming gaunt; the ponies moved about less, conserving energy. It was nature’s testing time and some animals would not survive.
Yet many did. Even when the birds skimmed low and in vain over the bleak, snowy heath and the solitary owl flapped on his quest through the bare trees and saw no prey, still it seemed to Edgar that the peaty earth below retained its warmth. The frosts covering its surface were broken by the slotting footfalls of the delicate deer. The larks and warblers somehow found food, and foxes stole from farms. Squirrels, jays, magpies all had their own stores; the smallholders fed their cattle. And at various places in the Forest the foresters, when necessary, put out food for the deer to ensure their survival.
Once, riding across the Forest, he had seen the pale doe feeding and this had reminded him once again of Adela.
He had wanted to go and see her in Winchester. It was his father who had always stopped him. ‘Leave her alone. She wants a Norman,’ he had advised. Then Cola had told him she already had an offer of marriage. In November he had informed his son that Adela had almost no dowry and in December he had told him rather brutally: ‘No point in marrying a woman who will always look down on you