“Where have you been? By the Rood, you have no shoes on and your face is scarlet! If you’ve caught a fever—” She put an anxious hand on Maud’s forehead.
“I’m fine. Don’t chastise.” It was ridiculous how out of breath she felt.
Aldyth, looking like a suspicious pouter pigeon in her white wimple, rumpled gray gown and tunic, held open the door and Maud, with a quick glance over her shoulder at the riverbank, walked into the tent. Unprepared for the wild disorder confronting her, she looked in dismay at the feather bed lying in a heap on the floor, coverlets and linen sheets spilling out of an open oak chest, stools, a small table, silver basins, ewers, and ivory caskets scattered everywhere. Two female attendants from Germany, Truda and Gisela, were busy shaking out gowns and tunics, then hanging them on wooden hooks fastened to the tent walls. In the middle of the floor stood a large wooden tub half filled with water.
“I don’t understand why we couldn’t have gone into Rouen as planned,” Maud said. “This … backwater seems an unlikely place to meet my father.” Nor did it bode well for her reception at her father’s court, she thought.
After removing her tunic, gown, and shift, and stepping into the tub of water, Maud’s attention returned to the man she had seen rise from the reeds like some mythic god. She had almost expected to see nymphs and satyrs prancing about him. But she had immediately recognized her cousin, Stephen of Blois, whom she had not seen for fourteen years. Those unforgettable eyes, deep green flecked with gold, had reminded her of the day she left Windsor. What irony that her cousin was the first person she should encounter on the day of her return.
“The King has his reasons for meeting you here, whatever they may be,” Aldyth was saying now, interrupting her reverie. “If you want to get along with him, best not to question what he does.”
She began to scrub Maud’s body with a damp cloth, then rubbed oil scented with rose petals into the smooth skin of her slender neck, rounded arms, narrow waist, and long straight legs. The soreness and fatigue of the long journey eased under Aldyth’s skillful fingers.
“Well, I intend to question everything. After all, I’m no longer a child. The King cannot do merely as he wants with me,” Maud said, stepping out of the tub as Aldyth wrapped her in a long, thick towel.
“You’re as much a chattel now as you were at nine years of age, make no mistake about that.” Aldyth lowered her voice. “As I’ve told you, King Henry needs you, just as he did when he married you off to the Emperor, just as he needed your Saxon mother, may God rest her soul, to grease his way to the throne.” She sighed. “I always said your late husband spoiled you, Lady, in shielding you from the ways of this world. But you’ll learn.”
Maud, having heard this diatribe many times before on the long journey across Europe, knew there was no point in arguing.
“Mark my words,” Aldyth continued, “there’s another advantageous marriage to be made, a new alliance—that’s the purpose of eligible widows.”
“Not this widow.” Maud reached for a white silk bandeau that lay across a stool. Despite her defiant words, she could not dismiss Aldyth’s warnings. Why else would King Henry have brought her back but to be used again?
“Not the bandeau,” Aldyth hissed. “The Bishop of Mainz proclaimed such vanities an abomination, the devil’s handiwork!”
Gisela and Truda signed themselves, their round eyes reminding Maud of two fearful sheep.
“What nonsense!” Maud lifted her arms while Aldyth reluctantly wound the white silk bandeau over her full breasts. Uncomfortable with this abundant evidence of her womanhood, the bandeau made Maud feel less conspicuous.
Truda slipped the shift over Maud’s head while Gisela held up the black mourning gown and tunic.
“No,” Maud said, giving way to a sudden impulse. “I will no longer wear that.”
“But you’re in mourning,” Aldyth said, shocked. “You must dress in black for a year. That is the custom.”
“Let me see some other tunics and gowns,” Maud said to Truda, ignoring Aldyth.
“Sweet Saint Ethelburga, what has gotten into you?” Aldyth began to wring her hands. “What will people say?”
“They can say what they like,” Maud replied.
In truth she did not know why she felt so stubborn, so compelled to flout custom. It would certainly cause a stir, even offense. But at least she would not feel so much the hapless widow, a pawn to be moved about at her father’s whim.
She finally decided on an ivory gown and linen tunic with hanging sleeves, circled by a broad girdle of pale gold. Maud sat down on a stool and Truda and Gisela began to rub her cinnamon-colored hair with pumice which would give it greater shine.