of that, for Athan had to work in the fields or coppices from dawn to dusk, as he had done for the past ten years, ever since he was a little lad of seven. And when he was free in the evenings, Elena was waiting on Lady Anne and could only steal away from her chamber for long enough to fetch a dish from the kitchen.
So the fragments of precious time she and Athan had been able to spend together had been snatched in barns and byres or in the dark corners behind the manor. They clung to each other, drinking in the smell of each other's skins and the heat of their bodies, alternating fierce kisses with whispered conversations. But all the time they were constantly on the alert for the sound of approaching feet and the ribald taunts of the other servants that would follow if they were discovered alone together.
When they did meet, they spoke mostly of the baby. To hear Athan talk you'd think no man had ever accomplished such a miracle before. It was all Elena could do to stop him crowing his prowess to everyone in the village.
'It's only been four months. Wait just a few more weeks,' Elena had begged him, 'till we've a bit more put by.'
The tiring maid she replaced had been sent packing the moment Lady Anne discovered she was with child. Elena had no illusions about being kept on once the news got out and she had no wish to return to the fields in her condition, not in the winter freeze.
'Besides, there's your mam to think of,' Elena had reminded him.
Athan had flushed to the roots of his sandy hair. 'She's always wanted a grand-bairn . . . She'll be happy as a fishmonger's cat when it's born,' he added, though it sounded more like a desperate prayer than a certain belief.
'Aye, she'll want the bairn all right,' Elena said, 'but not with me as its mam.'
The whole village knew that Joan regarded any woman under the age of seventy who so much as looked at her son as a wicked temptress hell-bent on snatching her boy's affections from her, and any girl who did succeed in ensnaring him would earn Joan's undying enmity.
Athan grimaced. 'I know Mam's tongue is a mite on the sharp side, but she doesn't mean it, and when she sees you with our bairn in your arms ...' He trailed off — even he couldn't finish that lie. 'Anyway, who cares what Mam wants?' He pulled Elena close to him. 'I want you, that's all that matters.'
Elena wriggled her thin body closer against his chest and felt the same shiver of bubbles run up her spine as it always did when he held her. The muscles on his shoulders and arms were as strong as an ox's from his work in the fields, but she had never known anything except gentleness in his arms. Some girls might giggle about his coarse, sandy hair that constantly stuck up like the feathers of a hedge sparrow after a fight, and some might think that his nose was far too flat and squat to make him handsome, but Elena saw none of these imperfections. She wanted nothing more than the bairn she carried to be a miniature of Athan in every way.
Athan had seen the sense in keeping the pregnancy quiet in the end, but even so he'd come close to blurting it out to the other lads more than once, and as soon as the twelve days of Christmas were upon them and Athan was doing the rounds of the village with all the other mummers, swilling down cider, mulled ale and wassail at every croft, Elena had no doubt that the secret would soon be out. Besides, how many more months could she keep her swelling belly concealed?
She saw again the baby in her dream, the baby that would not keep quiet. Suddenly she shivered. She felt cold now, bitterly cold.
Although it was late afternoon, patches of frost from the night before still rimmed the corners of the courtyard and the water on the horse trough was beginning to freeze over again. A young scullion ambled towards the bakehouse, dragging a basket of turfs behind him. He started violently as a voice roared out from a doorway.
'Pick it up, you lazy little toe rag; don't drag it. If you rip the bottom out of that basket, I'll flay the skin off your arse to