Belaset's Daughter - By Feona J Hamilton Page 0,118

at her, their eagerness to be alone struggling with the embarrassment of knowing that Belaset was contriving this for them.

"Thank you, Mother," said Judith, her blush mounting.

She led Aaron to her own bedroom and now, as he closed the door softly behind him, she turned to face him.

"At last," she thought. "I am alone with Aaron but how strange that it should be here, in my own room."

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He came towards her, smiling, and holding out his arms. It was the most natural thing in the world to walk into them.

As they kissed, she felt an overwhelming relief that this time there would be more than just a kiss. She was curious, fearful, and suffused with a glow of exultation at the same time. Her awareness of Aaron’s nearness was almost painful. Where he led she followed, wondering, but gladly. It seemed as if they whirled through a rainbow of colour, while the beating of their two hearts filled her head, until there was a sudden breathless pause.

Everything stopped, held for a long moment, and then she felt herself tip over from a great height and slid down into languor and peace.

Afterwards, she remembered that first time always as a climbing, spinning feeling, in which she knew they climbed together, and that it had somehow seemed imperative to her for the two of them to somehow mould themselves into one, new person, and that they had, indeed, achieved this.

Now she turned her head and looked at Aaron as he lay beside her. The dark eyes, for once slightly anxious, looked back at her.

"Are you ?" he began, but she hushed him and gently stroked his cheek, smiling all the while.

He gave a sigh and turned his face so that his lips lay in the warm hollow between her neck and shoulder. She held his arm, where it lay across her, and they drifted into sleep.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

In the shadow of the Tower, groups of men sat or stood around, talking together eagerly. They held a strange assortment of articles and implements, which were brandished about with gusto, as their owners demonstrated their usefulness as weapons.

A group of stonemasons, still covered with the dust of their trade, arrived from Westminster, eager to join in the fray. They brought with them their heavy mallets and sharp chisels, and were given a hearty welcome by the edge of the crowd, which opened to include them. They joined carpenters with their chisels and wooden mallets, carters carrying long whips, and a few shopkeepers who had willingly entrusted the running of their shop to their wives, so that they might be part of the excitement. Apprentices and clerks had joined the throng, knowing that their masters were unlikely to send them back to their work, as they would not so happily trust an apprentice to work alone.

In a separate part of the field, kept apart by the disgust of others at the odour which constantly clung to them, the dyers and fullers had brought the long poles used for dipping the hides of animals in vats of urine and the sharp-edged scrapers used to clean the leather of every vestige of animal flesh which might remain after skinning.

A smaller, and more distinguished group stood almost in the centre of the field. This time the space around them was left out of respect for their standing. The leaders of the Folkmoot, including fitzThomas, Bukerel and Puleston, stood in a group with their closest allies, and studied the numbers around them with satisfaction.

The hum of many voices sounded like a swarm of angry bees, loosed on the King s Green in the early morning. Now and then a hoarse laugh, or a shout rose above the steady sound of men boasting of their prowess as fighters, and their plans to finish off the army that would face them in a few days. If anyone there had doubts, or felt a shiver of fear at what might happen to them, they did not dare say anything, for fear of their fellow Londoners laughter was greater. Most had no experience of battle at all; most had never raised arms against an enemy in more than a drunken brawl. Most were there because they wanted to be; a few because they felt they ought to be seen there, although they had no wish to fight themselves. In some cases, their womenfolk had urged them to go, but any wife who truly loved her husband had prayed that her