The Running Vixen

Chapter 15

Miles felt the grey’s pace falter for the third time in as many minutes, and with a worried glance at the encroaching clouds, drew rein and stiffly dismounted, the pain in his joints a gnawing ache. He removed his gauntlets, to run his hand carefully down the stallion’s suspect near foreleg and, as he felt the hot, swollen cannon joint, knew the worst.

‘Trouble, my lord?’

He faced the knight in command of his escort who was himself dismounting, and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘It’s an old strain. I thought he’d rested up enough after these weeks at Thornford, but obviously I’ve misjudged it. You’d best fetch the remount from the back of the wain and hitch him there instead. He’ll not bear my weight for the distance we’ve to cover before dark.’

‘Yes, my lord — are you all right?’

Miles smiled at the young face, so earnest behind the helmet’s broad nasal. ‘Naught that a warm fire and cup of hot wine won’t cure, Gervase. My blood’s running as sluggish today as the Dee in midwinter.’ He struggled to pull his gauntlets back on and clapped his hands together to try and revive the feeling. There was pain today, a thin knife wedging itself between his joints and grating them apart. The biting damp and cold shredded his lungs as he breathed it in, and sent a chill shuddering through his body. He wondered briefly if it was the homing instinct of a dying animal that had filled him with the urge to travel down the march to his main holding, denying the weather and the exhortations of his granddaughter and her new husband that he remain with them at least until Candlemas. He went slowly towards the wain where Gervase’s squire was saddling up the brown remount.

‘You could always sit within, my lord,’ the young knight said, indicating the cart with its load of travelling chests and supplies pressed on him by Adam and Heulwen.

‘The day I cannot straddle a horse and take to one of those contraptions will be the day of my funeral,’ Miles said grumpily. Yes, he was feeling his years, but was not yet prepared to admit defeat.

He set his foot in the long stirrup and allowed the squire to boost him into the saddle; suppressing a grimace of pain, he gathered up the reins. Expression blank, Gervase signalled to the wain driver and turned to remount his own destrier, but paused half-way into the saddle, his eyes widening in shock.

‘Ware arms, the Welsh!’ he cried, his voice whiplashing the cold air.

Miles’s escort closed around him. He fumbled with his shield strap, swearing at the clumsiness of his gnarled, frozen fingers.

The Welsh wasted no time on the niceties of battle. Arrows were the means of destruction, arrows aimed at the Norman destriers to bring them down. A shaft struck one of the geldings harnessed to the wain, but obliquely in the rump, causing pain but little serious damage. The horse threw up its head and, with a shrill whinny, tried to bolt. The driver cursed and strove to control its panic, but the horse was insensible to all save the instinct to escape from danger and the pain. Another arrow hit the driver, pinning his arm to the structure of the wain. He shrieked, and the reins were torn from his grip by the jerking of the injured horse. It shied into its companion, which, terrified by the lack of a guiding hand and the stench of fear and blood, skittered sideways and tried to bolt.

Miles saw it coming, but could do nothing about it. He was aware from the corner of his eye of Gervase’s squire leaping to try and grab the reins, a warning shout tearing hoarsely from his throat, his eyes wide and appalled. As if in slow motion the baggage wain swayed and rocked like a drunkard caught out after curfew, and as the horses plunged and strained and kicked, it lurched and tipped over on its side, smashing its wooden-base frame into jagged spars, wantonly hurling its contents forth like tossed rags.

The horses threshed free and with harnesses trailing bolted into the midst of the panic. A flying sliver of wood shot into the eye of Miles’s stallion, and with a scream of agony it reared, forehooves pawing the sky. Miles tried to cling on to the reins and pommel, but a lifetime separated his reflexes from Renard’s and he was flung from the saddle, landing hard against the shattered carcass of the wain.

Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, it was quickly and bloodily over for the Normans. The Welsh leader, big and broad, with the legacy of the Irish Norse revealed in his sturdy bones and bright blue eyes, nudged his horse around a mailed corpse and drew rein before the smashed ruins of the wain where a dead youth, his neck broken, sprawled close to the stallion’s hooves. He pressed his knees and let the horse pick its way delicately around the body to the other side of the wain. For a moment he was filled with a sickening disappointment, thinking that his scheme had come to nothing, but then the man on the ground moved feebly and groaned.

Davydd ap Tewdr dismounted and bent beside the old man to examine him with the swift thoroughness of one accustomed to doing battle on the run and dealing with its casualties. ‘Naught save cracked ribs and bruising,’ he announced with relief in which excitement trembled, ‘but he’s bruised and badly shaken. Twm, bring a blanket. We’ve got to coddle him as tenderly as one of our own until we can exchange him for Rhodri.’

Adam couched the lance beneath his arm, held the shield well in to his left side leaving no gap, clapped his heels into the stallion’s belly and shouted, ‘Hah!’

Vaillantif leaped from his hocks like an arrow from an arbalester’s wound bow and sped down the tilt yard. Adam’s lance struck the quintain a solid blow. He ducked as the sandbag flung round and parted the air over his crouched frame. He turned Vaillantif in a compact swirl of hooves and repeated the move with an effortless liquidity that had the spectators envying him his accomplished grace, and the young Welsh hostage viewing his own imminent attempt at the quintain with trepidation.

Adam lit down from the saddle with only the slightest hint of stiffness to mar his movement and suggest a recently healed wound. Walking Vaillantif over to the youth, he handed the lance up to him. ‘Remember to keep your head down, your shield in tight, and don’t sit up too soon afterwards or you’ll get your skull well and truly rattled.’

‘And I aim for that red triangle in the centre?’ Rhodri sighted down the tilt, voice matter-of-fact, mouth nonchalant, eyes dubious in the extreme.

‘That’s right.’ The corners of Adam’s eyes crinkled for a moment before he schooled his expression to a teacher’s benign neutrality. ‘Not just the red triangle, but the dead centre of it, your enemy’s heart. Good fortune.’ He slapped the borrowed black destrier’s glossy shoulder and stepped back.

Beside Adam, Heulwen paused on her way back from the somewhat neglected plesaunce where she had been planning some new herb beds. Linking her arm through his, she felt the small, unseen ripple of laughter make his body tremble.

‘What’s amusing you?’ she demanded.

The fact that she had spoken to him gave him the excuse he needed to break into an open grin. ‘I know what’s coming next.’

‘What?’ She watched the young man’s throat move as he brought up the lance.

‘It takes months and months of practice at the quintain to avoid that sandbag. The beginners can’t divide their attention between aiming and ducking. They can’t co-ordinate it all. He’s in for a bruised back at the very least. Most likely he’ll end up on the ground.’

‘But I was watching you. It looked so easy!’

He chuckled. ‘It is when you know how, but you learn the hard way, believe me.’

‘As in all things,’ she said with a small, almost sad sigh, and fell silent to watch Rhodri ap Tewdr gallop down the tilt to a rendezvous with his inevitable fate.

More by luck than judgement, he almost succeeded in being one of the elite few to cheat the sandbag on their first occasion — nearly, but not near enough. The spear tipped the target just slightly off centre, its impact unbalancing him, so he was a fraction too slow when he ducked and the sandbag fetched him a buffet across the back of the neck that swiped him out of the saddle and jarred him to the ground.

The black destrier jogged to a halt, and after one curious look over its shoulder, bent to nose at a tuft of grass. A grinning Austin ran out to catch the bridle.

‘Not bad,’ Adam admitted judiciously as he bent over the groaning, bruised young man. ‘We’ll have you jousting in Paris yet.’ He took the reins from Austin and enquired with the faintest hint of challenge, ‘Want to try again?’

The Welsh youth threw him a burning glance, then turned aside to spit out a mouthful of bloody saliva. ‘Go to hell!’ he snarled, but struggled unsteadily to his feet. He caught his horse and pulled himself into the saddle, and prepared to attack the quintain once more.

‘Bravo, lad,’ Adam murmured, watching with calculating eyes the strike, the mistimed duck and the way he strove to stay aboard his mount before finally conceding defeat and sprawling on the tilt yard floor, the last of the wind driven from his lungs.

Adam collected horse and spear and brought them back to him. Rhodri braced himself on his elbows, retching and fighting for air, wasted some of it on cursing Adam, but nevertheless got doggedly back on the horse as soon as his body was capable of obeying his will.

Rhodri turned the stallion in a quarter-circle and galloped not at the quintain, but straight at Adam, the lance levelled and deadly. Heulwen screamed. Adam’s whole body tensed to move faster than he had ever done in his life if he had misjudged his man. At the last moment, the spear tip changed direction and the horse swerved. A string of foam globbed Adam’s gambeson. He smelt the strong odour of stallion sweat and was swept by hot breath as the destrier passed within a fraction of trampling him down.

‘Jesu God!’ Heulwen cried furiously. ‘He might have killed you!’

‘I don’t think so.’ Adam turned to where two of the watching knights had seized Rhodri’s horse and were dragging him out of the saddle, pinning his arms and ramming them behind his back.

‘All right, Alun, leave him be.’ Adam gestured.

They let him go, but almost as roughly as they had seized him. The young man shook himself like a dog and rubbed one of his bruised arms. Blood smeared and stained his chin. His lower lip was swollen and dark. ‘How did you know I would stop?’ he demanded belligerently.

Adam smiled briefly. ‘A gamble on your nature and a guess that you wanted to live beyond a brief moment of glory.’

Rhodri spat blood at Adam’s feet. ‘Rumour says that if my brother does not come, you are going to hang me from the highest tree on the demesne.’

‘Does it?’ Adam gave the youth a bland look, and taking Vaillantif ’s reins from Austin, swung smoothly into his own saddle.

‘He won’t swallow it, you know. He’d rather see me swing.’

‘Then you’ll have to hope the rumours aren’t true, won’t you?’ Adam took up a lance and turned from his hostage to canter with negligent grace down the tilt and lightly rap the shield in the dead centre, avoiding the sandbag with insouciant ease and swerving to an elegant halt at the end of the run. Rhodri scowled at him and touched his swollen, tender mouth.

‘Why did you bait him? I thought you were dead for sure.’

Adam threw down the balled-up wisp of hay he had been using to rub the horse down, wiped his hands on his tunic, and looked round at Heulwen. ‘I wanted to test his mettle. I was curious to see if he would get up and try again after that first humbling in the dust.’

‘Your life would have been a high price to pay for finding out!’ she snapped. ‘Did the King know how rash you truly were when he sent you to fetch his daughter?’ Fear gave her voice a shrewish timbre, and hearing it, she clamped her mouth shut and glared at him.

Adam slapped Vaillantif ’s ruddy satin hide. ‘Never buy a chestnut horse or have truck with a red-haired woman,’ he quoted with a grin. ‘They’re both nags. I appear to have committed both crimes, don’t I?’

‘Adam. ’

He looked at the brimming temper in her eyes, their colour dazzling and sea-tinged against her flushed, furious face, and set his arm across her shoulders. ‘Oh Heulwen, don’t be such a scold for so small a crotchet.’ He kissed her cheek.

She wrenched free of him. ‘You’re just as irresponsible as Ralf,’ she snapped. ‘And when I complain, you make light of it, put me at fault!’

Adam opened his mouth to defend himself, saw how rigidly she was standing and realised that in a moment she was going to run from him and they would reach another impasse. Before she could bolt, he grabbed her resisting hand and drew her around the stallion and into the empty stall next door, where he dumped her down on a mound of dusty hay, evocative of the scent of summer and the memory of thundery sunshine.

‘Look,’ he said, throwing himself down beside her, ‘I did not know for certain that he was going to ride at me. If I had turned and run, it might have tipped the balance and made him drive that lance straight between my shoulder blades.’

Her anger was unassuaged. ‘You should not have goaded him into that state in the first place.’

‘I was testing his character. If he had remained down that first time, I’d have considered him short on guts — no staying power. The fact that he kept on getting up tells me he’s got courage and a stubborn streak,’ and then wryly, ‘and the fact that he rode at me is proof that he’s foolhardy.’

Heulwen sniffed. ‘That sounds like a pot calling a cauldron black!’

He conceded a shrug. ‘It was a calculated risk. A man is always wise to study the temper of a weapon before he puts it to use.’

She frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’

A groom led another horse into the stables, peered over the partition and, clearing his throat, apologised and went out again.

‘Miles and I had several discussions before he left — about replacing Davydd ap Tewdr with his younger brother.’

‘So what will you do, kill him when he comes to ransom the boy?’ she enquired, her lip curling.

‘It’s a nice thought,’ he admitted, ‘but it wouldn’t work. Rhodri would turn on us as you saw him turn just now, and he wouldn’t stay his hand. Even if I killed him, it wouldn’t be the end of it. We’d just have all the other big fish crowding the pool to feed on the small fry. No, if Davydd comes, I drive a hard bargain, as close to the bone as I can get. If he doesn’t, I foster the doubts in Rhodri’s mind and start needling my way into Davydd’s territory.’ He stopped speaking and studied her almost desolate expression. ‘What’s wrong? What have I said now?’

Heulwen shook her head. His eyes had lost their ruthless gleam and were filled with nothing more dangerous than anxiety. She could not say that she had just seen his father’s legacy in him and that it frightened her far more than his rashness to hear him plan like this, his gaze as bright and impersonal as that of Renard’s hawk. It was still bright now as he looked at her, but far from impersonal. Lowering her lids, she was aware of the rapid rise and fall of his chest and knew that it was not just an anxiety of the mind that awaited her response.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It is a side of you I have not seen before.’ She gave him a guarded look. ‘Although we grew up together, I don’t really know you, do I?’

‘You could learn,’ he said hoarsely, and touched her cheek, then before it was too late, withdrew his hand and started to get up. That particular avenue was fraught with pitfalls. They had made love several times since the first night of their homecoming, and while the experiences had not been disasters, neither had they spoken of overwhelming success.

Heulwen was a willing enough partner — willing but not involved — happy to pleasure him, but reticent with her own responses. Part of it, he suspected, was that after Ralf she was wary of giving too much of herself away unless surprised into it. Certainly she seemed relieved rather than frustrated by his faster, more open response, but it did nothing for his pride. Give her time, Miles had said to him, but Adam did not know how long he could be patient.

As he reached Vaillantif ’s headstall, her arms suddenly came around his waist from behind, and he felt her cheek press hard against his back. ‘I could try,’ she murmured so quietly that he had to strain to hear, ‘but Adam, I’m frightened.’

He turned around, reversing the embrace, and tipped up her face to study it. ‘Surely not of me?’ His heart lurched.

‘I don’t know.’ A small shudder ran her length. She could not say to him that with Ralf the learning had led her out of love and into misery, and she was terrified of it happening again. ‘No…but of what the future holds.’ She tightened her grip on him and stood on tiptoe to reach his lips.

‘Sire, come quickly!’ Austin tore into the stables, his eyes so wide that the hazel iris was completely ringed by white.

Adam and Heulwen jolted apart and started at the squire. ‘The carrier’s here and he’s got a wounded man with him — sore wounded.’

Adam released Heulwen and set his hand on the youth’s quivering shoulders. ‘Take your time, lad.’

Austin swallowed, gulped more air, and added, ‘The wounded man’s the driver of Lord Miles’s baggage wain. They were hit by the Welsh, so he says, stripped and massacred, saving Lord Miles whom they took away with them.’

‘No!’ cried Heulwen. ‘No, oh no!’

‘All right, Austin,’ Adam said evenly. ‘Fetch Father Thomas, then tell Sweyn to get the men mounted up. Tell him also that we’ll need pack ponies and ropes.’

‘Yes, sire.’ Austin ran. So did Adam, but in the direction of the gatehouse, not the keep, with Heulwen struggling behind him and cursing her skirts as they hindered her.

The injured man had been brought in slumped across one of the carrier’s ponies like a half-filled sack of cabbages. Now he lay on an oxhide stretcher, his face the colour of grey clay and his breathing rapid and shallow.

‘He’s done for, poor bugger,’ muttered the carrier from the side of his mouth. ‘That wound in his arm’s mortal nasty.’

Heulwen knelt beside the stretcher, gently raised the covering blanket, then winced. The man’s right arm was bare to the shoulder, the sleeve ripped away and nothing to see of the muscle below it but a shredded, clotted mess, inflamed and swollen. Torn between anger and sick pity, Heulwen bit her lip. ‘Couldn’t you have washed and bound it better than this?’ She shot an accusing look at the itinerant merchant.

The carrier sucked the few yellow stumps in his mouth that passed for teeth and shrugged. ‘I did me best. I worn’t going to linger in case any o’ them Welsh bastards came back. Poor sod was pinned straight through to the wood behind. It were the devil of a job to free him and if it worn’t for me happenin’ by, he’d still be there.’

‘Everyone was dead apart from him?’ Adam demanded.

‘Far as I know. I didn’t stop to look too closely. Leastways nobody groaned, and the ones I saw had arrows and sword cuts that no man could survive. Proper mess. They must have ridden straight into an ambush.’ He stopped to cough and lick his lips.

Adam snapped his fingers at a goggling servant. ‘Where was this?’

‘Heading down Ledworth way, close on Nant Bychan near that border stone that’s always being disputed. Even going at full lick, you’ll not make it there much before prime.’

The man on the stretcher groaned again, this time with more awareness. Heulwen laid her hand on his brow and his lids fluttered open. ‘Mistress Heulwen,’ he croaked weakly, then coughed. Adam took the ale that the servant had been about to give to the carrier and handed it down instead to his wife. Carefully she tilted up the injured man’s head so that he could drink. He did so, after a fashion, the golden liquid spilling into his beard and staining his rough tunic.

‘It was so sudden,’ he gasped. ‘We could do nothing. They slaughtered us like spearing fish in a barrel. Lord Miles they took alive — it was him they wanted. The rest of us didn’t really matter save as practice targets for their bows.’

Adam swore. Heulwen looked up at him with brimming eyes.

‘What else do you do but find a bargaining counter of equal worth to barter?’ he said flatly.

Surreptitiously the carrier reached down to the half-full cup of ale that Heulwen had put down beside the wain driver, then stepped back with it clutched triumphantly in his hand. Father Thomas arrived at a trot and, kneeling beside the stretcher, began to prepare the wounded man for confession.

Heulwen rose unsteadily to her feet. The sound of the destriers being saddled up drifted across the ward from the stable enclosure and mingled with the words of the priest and the hesitant replies of the wain driver. Adam swung towards the more distant noise, his face taut like a hound anticipating the hunt. Involuntarily, Heulwen put her hand on his sleeve as if she would leash him.

Adam looked down. ‘Come and help me arm,’ he said, turning her with him towards the keep. ‘I want Rhodri ap Tewdr confined to the hall. No need to lock him up, but keep a close eye on him.’

‘His brother is responsible for this, isn’t he?’ she demanded.

They had to separate to negotiate the twisting stairs to the upper floor and their bedchamber. ‘I’d wager all the silver in Thornford’s strongbox on it,’ Adam said grimly. ‘He’s taken your grandsire for ransom.’ On reaching their chamber, he lifted his hauberk from its pole.

‘If you hadn’t taken the boy prisoner in the first place—’ she began, then clamped her mouth on the rest of the sentence.

Adam eyed her sharply and said nothing, but his anger showed in the bunching and release of a muscle in his jaw.

‘Adam, I’m sorry.’ She touched his shoulder. ‘Oh, curse me for being a shrew. I know it’s not your fault. It’s just that. ’

‘You know I’ll stand there and take it,’ he finished for her. ‘Just be careful how far you go. Do you think I do not care? Do you think the thought has not crossed my own mind?’

Her chin wobbled. She struggled with tears and, losing, began to weep. He swore and drew her down on to his lap and kissed her. ‘Heulwen, don’t.’

‘He’s not well!’ she sobbed. ‘He’s old and sick. I’ve seen how he struggles to mount the stairs and climb on a horse. It will kill him!’

Adam did not seek to deny her fears. What she said was true. He had noticed the change in Miles himself, as if everything was going forward to meet the spring, leaving Heulwen’s grandfather in a winter limbo. He pressed his lips to her temple and held her tightly until he felt her shuddering abate, then he drew away to look at her. ‘Come on, love, help me arm up. I’ve got to go to the scene and see for myself what has happened.’

She sniffed, wiped her eyes and got off his knee. Ralf would have laughed at her and ruffled her hair, or else would have wanted to bed her for the novelty of watching her tears as he took her. Warrin would have blustered and fussed and flexed his muscles. Adam was full of a checked restlessness, eager to be gone, but for her sake containing it with admirable fortitude.

She lifted the hauberk from the bed and helped him to don it. Since its last wearing it had been scoured in a sack full of vinegar-dampened sand to remove all the dirt and rust, and had then been dried, carefully oiled, and hung on its pole to await further use. The rivets made a whispering, silvery noise as the hauberk slid down over his body, and when he stood up in it he looked twice as broad as he actually was. As he buckled on his swordbelt she stepped back to look at the whole of him. A cold shiver ran down her spine. The man who had merely played at being the warrior was transformed into the warrior in truth.

‘Adam, be careful,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I don’t want to lose you too.’

He stooped to take his helmet from where it lay at the foot of the hauberk pole. ‘I’ll send word by messenger ahead of me,’ he said. ‘I know it is as hard to wait as to be doing.’ Coming to her, he curved his free arm around her waist, holding her carefully so that she would not be bruised upon the rivets. His kiss was fierce and hard, speaking all that his grip could not, and then he left her for the bailey and the men assembled there.