The Love Knot Read Online Free PDF Page B

discover that there was a woman who cooked and cared for him at Bristol. The way he had spoken last night at Penfoss, she had thought him still alone. The sounds, sights and smells of the city engulfed her as they rode single-file through its narrow alleys towards the castle. The last time she had visited Bristol was with Lewis in the first year of their marriage. He had bought her a brass circlet and a square of raw silk to make a veil. He had kissed her in the street, his dark eyes laughing, and she had thought herself the luckiest of women. Now she was riding down the same street, bumping along behind a man she barely knew, a basket of mud-smelling eels in her hands, her head pounding fit to burst, and her mistress's body tied in a blanket across a pack pony's withers.
    The ghost of Lewis watched her ride past and did not recognise her. Her gaze on the castle walls and the bright gonfanons flying from the battlements, Catrin thought that she did not recognise herself either - except perhaps for the scarlet hose peeping in defiance from beneath her gown.
     

    Bristol Castle was overflowing with hired soldiers. In the space of five minutes, Catrin heard as many different tongues, as Oliver led her and Richard to the keep, leaving Gawin in charge of the horses and the eels.
    There were men of every variety and rank, from half-naked footsoldiers and poor Welsh bowmen to toughened mercenaries and well-accoutred knights with swords at their hips. The gap between the ragged and the rich was not as vast as it seemed, for all soldiers, whatever their rank, wore the same expression of hungry expectation. Oliver walked among and through them with ease, now and then smiling a greeting to those he knew, but Catrin felt great discomfort at being in the midst of such checked voraciousness. Beside her, Richard grasped her hand and she saw his blue eyes darken. To reassure him that these men were allies stuck in her throat, for they looked no different from those who had torched Penfoss and murdered its occupants.
    Their presence, their stares, the sight of weapons and grinning mouths in hard faces seemed to go on for ever like the antechamber to the hall of hell. The image was clarified in Catrin's mind by the sporadic camp fires which threatened rather than comforted her.
    One soldier held two huge mastiffs on a chain and as she passed, they lunged, growling. Their owner yanked them back, laughing at her frightened eyes.
    'Got yourself a tasty one there, Pascal!' he yelled, making an obscene gesture with his free fist.
    'Go swive yourself, de Lorys!' Oliver snarled, with a gesture of his own.
    The soldier smacked his lips over his stained teeth. 'I'd rather swive what you've got!'
    Oliver's hand descended to his sword hilt and his tormentor recoiled with a show of mock terror.
    Expression grim, Oliver quickened his stride.
    'I see how safe Bristol truly is,' Catrin said with asperity. Both heart and head were thundering.
    'Wherever fighting men gather, there are always those who are all mouth and no chausses.'
    Catrin shuddered. It was not such soldiers of whom she was afraid although, God knew, they were unpleasant enough, but others of their ilk, who followed up their words with barbaric deeds of rapine and slaughter. Wherever fighting men gathered, there was always that kind too.
    She passed women in smoke-grimed dresses - soldiers' wives and followers with gaunt, lithe bodies and weathered faces. She saw one young woman suckling a baby by the fire while two older children played near her skirts. Not a dozen yards from her, a whore plied her trade, offering her own breasts to be groped and suckled. Catrin pulled Richard closer, using her body to shield him from the sight.
    Oliver appeared indifferent; all this must be commonplace to him, Catrin thought. But to her and Richard, it was a nightmare. She stumbled in a wheel rut and almost fell. Oliver grabbed her and bore her up. She felt the power in his arm, the bruising strength of his