The Leopard Unleashed

Chapter 24

On the Roman road to Newark, one of the wain wheels lurched into a rut for the hundredth time, tossing Renard and William about like podded peas in a housewife’s bowl. Henry, strapped to his pallet, made no sound beyond a sawing effort to breathe. Just outside Lincoln, a priest had been found to shrive him and had been given a generous donation to his church in the hope that he would hold his silence. Whether or not he would was another matter.

‘We’re travelling too slowly,’ William said with an anxious glance at Henry. ‘We need to be on horseback and cutting across country by now, not stuck on the main road for all to see and for Chester’s knights to capture as easily as a gaze-hound would seize a lame hare. And we’ll never get this great solid thing across the ford with the river as high as it is.’

Renard stared back at William with dull eyes. He knew what William wanted him to say and the responsibility dragged on his shoulders as heavily as the mud sucking at the wain wheels. Opening his mouth he obliged, for it was inevitable, and their escape was not.

‘Leave the wain at the ford,’ he said, ‘and load whatever we need on to one of the horses. Henry can ride with someone holding him in the saddle. It cannot make any difference to his condition except perhaps bring him a mercy nearer death.’

William’s shoulders relaxed and he breathed out. ‘It is the only way,’ he agreed.

Renard grimaced. ‘Have you any usquebaugh?’

William had. It was inferior stuff and as rough on the throat as a punnet of horseshoe nails, but Renard was not drinking for pleasure.

‘There’s bread and sausage too,’ William added. ‘You can soften the crust in the rain as we ride.’

Given less grim circumstances, the pragmatic remark would have made Renard laugh. For the moment his mood outmatched the weather, and besides, the usquebaugh had closed his throat. Wordlessly he handed William the flask.

William took a short gulp and choked. ‘God’s death!’ he gasped. ‘No wonder the man I bartered it from was so pleased to be rid!’

‘How did you come by that parchment to get me out?’

William lowered the flask and darted him a bright blue glance. ‘I wrote it myself.’

‘But the seal, how did you come by that?’

William reached inside his tunic, rummaged, and brought out a metal disc a little smaller than the palm of his hand. ‘This, you mean?’ He handed it to Renard. ‘I found the glimmer of gold within your dancing girl’s heart of stone.’

Renard gaped at him in astonishment. ‘Olwen got it for you?’

‘More to please herself than any favour for me. Jesu, Renard, she’s feral. I thought she was going to eat me alive!’

Renard lowered his eyes and examined the silver disc and the mounted knight, sword raised, incised upon it. ‘He will kill her if he discovers what she has done.’

‘He will have to catch her first.’ Admiration glinted in William’s voice. ‘She took to the road with Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd even as we did, although you didn’t see her, being enclosed in the wain. In the disguise of a Welsh youth, she was. Best bare legs I’ve ever seen on a boy. Cadwaladr seemed to think so too by the direction of his eyes! Mind you, she’s only playing with him. My guess is that she’ll try to hook her claws into Prince Owain himself.’

‘Did she take her child too?’

‘Yes, slung in her cloak.’

‘Then Ranulf will stop at nothing.’

William shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Apparently Matille has worked diligently to sow doubts in his mind. He’s not entirely sure the child is his.’ He took the seal back from Renard, and his eyes sparked with an irrepressible gleam. ‘Think of the havoc we can wreak with this before he’s able to put a stop to it.’

From somewhere, Renard actually found the semblance of a smile. ‘You know that you have risked your own future with that little geegaw.’ He nodded at the seal.

‘It was too high a price to have held back.’ William’s brightness faded. ‘You were fortunate in one way that you were thrown into prison. You didn’t see what Chester’s men did to the people of Lincoln for their resistance.’ He made a swift gesture as Renard tried to speak. ‘No, I’m not that green about such matters. A little plundering goes not amiss — it’s necessary if you want to keep and control your men, but to let them run wild shows no control at all. They end up believing they can do as they please.’ He took another drink from the usquebaugh flask. ‘Did you know that Robert of Leicester’s gone over to the Empress? He’s in Gloucester already, making private arrangements of his own.’

‘No, I didn’t know.’ Renard was surprised, and a little dismayed, but not outright horrified by such news. ‘Leicester might have gone courting, but I cannot believe that he intends going further than flirtation. He’s one of Stephen’s closest friends and advisers.’

‘But fonder of his own skin. There is a hair-thin line between holding firm for the sake of honour and sheer pig-headed folly.’

‘Is that an indictment?’

‘Perhaps.’

The usquebaugh was starting to burn through Renard’s veins, making him feel light-headed. ‘If Stephen’s commanders had shown more determination to “hold firm”, then the battle for Lincoln would never have gone the way that it did!’ he growled.

‘A hair-thin line,’ William repeated.

‘Thick as the goddamned River Witham!’

They glared at each other, although William’s anger was the less intense, laced as it was with relief that Renard still had enough fight left in him to argue.

The wain jolted to an abrupt halt at the approach to the ford and the small cluster of daub and wattle huts lining its banks. William broke the deadlock by leaving the wain and gazing with hands on hips at the fast-flowing murky water. A rope had been stretched across the river, secured by stout poles on either side, affording a hand grip to those either courageous or mad enough to want to cross on foot. Probably it was easy in high summer, but now, after a season of heavy rainfall, the water churned to the limit of both banks.

Inside the wain, Renard finished the usquebaugh. Henry breathed with stertorous effort, the noise all-pervading, drowning out every other sound, including the rushing of the river. Unable to bear it any longer, Renard lifted the canvas flap and followed William outside. For a moment as he stepped from platform to ground, he was so dizzy that he had to clutch the side of the wain and grip until the wood scored his hand.

Two dogs appeared from among the cluster of dwellings, and barked a loud warning at the strangers. They were followed more sedately by an old man leaning on a hickory stick and wearing a cloak made of moth-eaten sheepskins and homespun. Calling the animals to heel, he regarded the small entourage curiously.

‘You’ll not get that thing across yon water,’ he observed, fondling the dogs with the hand that was not holding the stick. ‘Deep as the height of a man in the middle, it is.’

‘We’re not taking the wain over,’ William replied and looked round at Renard who was shivering against its canvas side. ‘You can have it if you want in exchange for some hot food while we load the packhorses.’

The man sucked his motley collection of teeth and considered the group. Usually armed Normans took the direct route through Newark. Abandoning a stout wain like this rather than head for the town spoke of great haste and the need for stealth. The man propped shivering against the cart had a new wound on one cheekbone and looked exhausted.

‘Not stolen, is it?’ he asked as William gestured to his men and they started to unhitch the horses from the wain.

‘No.’ William checked the cinch on his mount’s girth. ‘It was paid for by the Earl of Chester himself — his own seal on the transaction.’

Renard was taken with a sudden fit of coughing.

‘See what I can do.’ Whistling to his dogs, the old man stamped back towards the houses.

In a short while, two women emerged from one of the dwellings to serve the men with watery soup that resembled the river in both colour and texture, and fresh but gritty maslin bread. Renard sipped dubiously, and dis — covered that the soup tasted much better than it looked, hinting of leeks and mushrooms, but then after the deprivations of Lincoln anything short of midden sweepings would have tasted like manna. He dipped the bread into it to soften it and managed tolerably well to eat it.

‘Rumour says that there has been a big battle in yonder town and the King taken prisoner,’ the peasant man remarked as Renard drank the broth.

‘Rumour speaks true.’ He was aware of the man’s shrewd stare lingering on the bruised, clotted mess of his cheekbone.

‘Fought in it, did you?’

Renard gave him a hard look, warning him off. ‘Yes,’ he said stiffly. ‘I fought in it.’ And returning the bowl, he went to untether the bay from the rear of the wain.

The peasant watched as an injured man was gently brought out of the wain and craned for a better view. There was not really a great deal to see, only that his face was waxen with approaching death, and that he was too young to be meeting it. He crossed himself as the youngster was lifted from his bed of latticed hides and straw.

‘Give him to me,’ Renard said, from his pillion position on the saddle.

‘Are you strong enough?’ William demanded.

‘For this, yes,’ Renard replied with grim determination, as Henry was manoeuvred carefully into the empty saddle where he slumped, held in place by the man seated behind.

‘Hah!’ cried Renard to the horse and kicked its flanks. Stolidly, it obeyed his command, and plunged into the rapid water. Spray surged over shoulders, belly and haunches, soaking Renard’s and Henry’s legs. The horse fought forwards against the kick of the current, muscles bunching into hillocks and ravines. Behind, Renard heard the splash of other horses entering the water. Suddenly a woman screamed. Renard turned in the saddle.

William, last to cross, was in midstream, and behind him, coming up fast, was a group of riders in pursuit, weapons drawn.

‘Help me,’ Renard snapped to the soldier at his side, and together they managed to lower Henry from the saddle to the ground. It was wet, cold and muddy, but there was no help for it. ‘Now, train that bow of yours on the ford. Don’t aim for the riders. Arrows will only bounce off helms and shields. Bring down their destriers. Is that bow on your saddle roll spare?’ He held out his hand for the weapon and rapidly strung it.

William’s horse reached the shallows at a lunging gallop, false-footed, and somersaulted mane over tail. William was pitched over the pommel, landed hard, and was knocked out of his senses. The hack threshed to its feet and wallowed on to the bank, where it stood bleeding and trembling. A Welshman shouldered his bow and hastened to catch its bridle and tug it out of the way. Renard and the man whose bow he had borrowed ran to the water and, knee deep, grabbed hold of William to pull him out before he drowned. His hauberk weighed over thirty pounds, and beneath it the quilted gambeson that protected his body from the bruises of impact and the chafe of the rivets was fast becoming waterlogged. Renard and his companion struggled. Across the ford, less than sixty yards away, the first horsemen sprayed into the water.

Renard’s fingernails ripped back to the quick, although at the time he felt nothing, all sensations of pain, all physical and mental exhaustion, extinguished by the upsurge of the survival instinct.

‘Shoot, in God’s name!’ he bellowed over his shoulder at the men on the bank who were staring hypnotised at the approaching horsemen. Aided by William’s groggily returning senses, the two men succeeded in pulling him clear and abandoned him on the bank like a piece of stranded flotsam.

Paying scant attention to the blood running down his fingers, except to be irritated that it might foul his grip, Renard wiped his hands on his water-sodden cloak, set an arrow to the nock, and trained his eye on the broad bulk of a knight astride a dun destrier.

The man’s sword cut the air with a grey glitter. His feet were thrust well down in the stirrups as his horse breasted the water with muscular power. A little to one side an arrow hit the following horse obliquely. It reared with a scream of pain and came down awry. Its rider was thrown into the mid-depths of the river and dragged under by the weight of his armour.

As the dun emerged from the water. Renard released his arrow and saw it sing into the destrier’s throat. The horse ploughed forward, knees buckling, and keeled on its side, crushing its rider and fouling the path of another horse that panicked and shied backwards into the oncoming riders.

The knights following the first onrush became sitting targets for the Welsh archers. With the range so short, only an inexperienced fool would have missed, and these men had been trained to shoot from birth. The knight in the forefront hesitated in his decision to turn back a fatal moment too long. Three arrows buckled his horse beneath him. He managed to leap clear and seize hold of the crossing rope, but without his shield was as vulnerable as a snail half out of its shell. The bravest of the rest spurred to where he clung and gave him a hand into his own saddle, then hastened out of bowshot back to the village side of the ford.

‘Where’s the next crossing point?’ Renard demanded, lowering his bow. The stave was printed and smeared with blood from his torn fingernails.

‘Newark, I think. Lord William knows.’

‘Yes, Newark,’ William groaned, sitting up. ‘Too far for them to catch up, and we can leave a couple of the lads here with their bows to dissuade them from trying this way again … God’s teeth, I feel as if I’ve been through the paddles of Elene’s fulling mill! Is the horse all right?’

‘Bruised and grazed, but still rideable.’ Renard crouched beside his brother. ‘Obviously the news of my escape is well abroad.’

‘Bound to be.’ William’s teeth chattered together. ‘There’s a new Augustinian priory at Thurgarton, no more than two hours’ ride. We can dry out and fortify ourselves for the rest of the journey … Your hands are bleeding.’

‘Have you ever tried dragging a hauberk-clad body out of a river?’ Renard said ruefully. His limbs were starting to tremble in the aftermath of effort and he forced himself to stand up before it became too easy to stay down. Holding out his hand, he pulled William to his feet too, then fetched the bay and went to Henry’s blanket. Sodden with water, William squelched over to collect his own mount from the soldier holding it.

Renard stared down at Henry, then suddenly he stooped and laid his bloodied fingers against his brother’s throat. The skin was clammy and still warm, but there was no life beat, and his face was as grey as the sky, his eyes half open and fixed on eternity.

‘Christ’s mercy, no,’ Renard said softly.

William looked round from inspecting his mount’s grazed legs. ‘What is it?’

‘It doesn’t matter the pace we set now.’ Gently Renard closed Henry’s lids and covered his face. It was not the River Trent they had crossed, but the Styx, gateway to the underworld.

William stared. His throat worked and he shook his head. To live with the imminence of death was still not to be prepared at the moment of knowledge. ‘We can put him over one of the spare horses.’ His voice was a croaked whisper.

‘Yes.’ Renard’s expression was blank as he stood up again. ‘Like a sack of grain or a dead roebuck. I suppose Henry would see no wrong in it.’ His voice cracked. ‘He’s been used to making do all his life.’ He took the bay’s bridle, but instead of mounting, he bunched his fist and crashed it into the trunk of the nearest tree in a futile protest against a futile waste.