The Running Vixen

Chapter 16

Miles opened his eyes and stared with exhausted indifference at the black forest trunks. The pain in his chest and down his right arm was a dull, gnawing ache. Every breath drawn expanded his broken ribs and was pure agony. He was aware of the damp, cold air seeping into his marrow — or perhaps it was just the bony finger of death.

Welsh voices flitted among the trees — the language of his childhood, learned in the green forests of Powys at his Welsh grandfather’s knee so long ago, and now suddenly so close that he could almost see the shadows of men, smell the damp woodsmoke of their fire and hear their bright laughter. But of course he could; he was their hostage. He was eighty-two years old, not eight, and his body was still earth-chained to pain. The laughter ceased and one of the shadows resolved itself into the tall, broad Welshman who had led the raid and was now holding out to him a leather costrel of mead and a heel of dark bread.

Miles shook his head, feeling neither appetite nor thirst, feeling nothing save a distant sadness that he had not been permitted the indulgence of a last look at so many familiar things. ‘You are being very foolish,’ he said in Welsh.

Davydd ap Tewdr shrugged. ‘How so, old man? I bargain you for my brother. Where is the folly in that?’

‘Corpses have little value.’ Miles gave him the exhausted travesty of a smile. ‘Oh not the lad…yet. He’s in fine fettle, but what happens when you put a failing candle in a draught? I haven’t got long, and neither have you.’

The wind laboured through the bare January branches which snagged over their heads, striving westwards. Rain spattered through the sparse canopy. The Welsh prince looked down at his frail means to an end, really looked, and saw that Miles le Gallois was not lying for his own sake. Part of it was the dull forest light emphasising the grey-blue patches beneath the seamed eyes, but the rapid rise and fall of the old man’s breast owed more to a struggle for air than to any fear or anxiety.

‘God rot you in hell, you won’t die on me, not until you’ve served your purpose!’ he muttered.

‘Do not wager on it,’ Miles said, and closed his eyes, welcoming the darkness.

Heulwen, in the midst of a dutiful ave at the bier of the dead wain driver, was disturbed by FitzSimon, commander of the garrison in the absence of its other senior members.

‘My lady, a group of Welsh are approaching the keep,’ he said. ‘They have a litter with them.’

Heulwen rose from her knees and beat at the two dusty patches on her skirts. ‘There is no news from Lord Adam?’

‘Not yet, my lady,’ he said and added, with ill-concealed irritation, ‘it is too soon for that.’

Heulwen gave him a swift glance of similar irritation, but bit her tongue on her temper. ‘Very well, I’ll come aloft,’ she said, and having made her obeisance to the altar, left the small chapel and followed him out into the grey afternoon. The wind swirled around her woollen skirts and tugged at her veil; she held the former down with her right hand, the veil on her head with her left, and ascended to the gatehouse battlement.

Between twenty and thirty Welshmen had stopped just beyond arrow range, all of them decently mounted on shaggy mountain ponies. They wore the native garb of stitched fleeces and knee-length tunics, bows slung at their shoulders and the short swords they favoured at their hips. Narrowing her eyes, Heulwen could make out a blanket-shrouded form on a litter to the forefront of their array.

One of their number detached from the group and rode forward immediately below the walls of the keep to request in accented French to talk to Adam de Lacey. Heulwen peered down between the merlons. ‘Ask him who wants to talk and why,’ she told one of the keep soldiers who had been summoned aloft for the use of his deep, carrying voice. The question was relayed, there was a pause for consultation, and then the reply floated back to her.

Despite the fact that she had been half prepared to hear it, it still hit her solidly in the gut. Davydd ap Tewdr desired to exchange her grandfather for Rhodri.

‘Dear God,’ she whispered, for there was now no doubting that the form on the litter was her grandfather — and the litter meant that he was too weak to sit on a horse, the bastion of his stubborn will and pride.

‘Delay him until we can get a message to Lord Adam,’ FitzSimon said and turned to command one of the men.

‘No!’

He swivelled to gape at Heulwen in disbelief. Accustomed to taking orders from men, and by his position in the keep hierarchy to giving them too, he was possessed of an arrogant certainty that women should defer to their male superiors, and was unpleasantly astounded by her denial.

‘My lady, with all respect, this is too serious a matter to be judged by us,’ he said, recovering his dignity and twitching his shoulders within his cloak like a hawk settling ruffled feathers.

To be judged by a woman — a flighty, red-haired woman of more than half-Welsh blood. As if his head were transparent and the words written on his brain she could read his mind, and her chin rose a stubborn notch. ‘It is also too serious a matter to leave until my husband’s return!’ she answered. ‘That is my grandfather down there on that litter. Have Rhodri ap Tewdr brought up here to me now.’

He hesitated until he could hesitate no longer, then inclined his head in scant formality and left her. Heulwen swallowed, bowed her head, and leaned it for a moment against the gritty stone behind which she sheltered. ‘Holy Christ, what do I do?’ she murmured into the shadow created by her body. ‘Adam, help me, what do I do?’

Rhodri, hands corded behind his back, was thrust into her presence, his eyes anxiously wide, his mouth set in a thin, tight line. She straightened, adjusted her cloak, and faced him with a cold expression.

‘Your brother has come for you. I wish my husband had left you to die in the road.’

He returned her a measured gaze, for he had heard the news of his brother’s raid and watched Thornford react to it like a disturbed anthill. ‘My lady, I am sorry, believe me,’ he said in Welsh. ‘Even knowing that your lord intended using me for his own purposes, I could have wished myself free in different circumstances.’

‘Spare me your condolences,’ she snapped, ‘you are wasting your breath.’ She turned from him to the soldier with the voice. ‘Tell him that Lord de Lacey is not here, and that in his absence Prince Davydd will have to deal with his wife, who is of Welsh blood herself and the granddaughter of Miles le Gallois.’

Heulwen collected the reins and thanked the man who helped her into the saddle. Her mare, sensing her tension, jibbed and sidled, and she had to put a soothing hand on the damp neck and murmur soft words.

‘My lady, I still say you are making a mistake in going out to treat with them,’ FitzSimon muttered beside her, and curbed his own restless stallion. ‘It is much too dangerous. They might attack us.’

‘I doubt it, but if they do, I trust in the might of your sword-arm to deliver us.’ Her voice was both dulcet and biting at the same time. She set her heels into Gemini’s sides and the mare moved anxiously forwards.

Feeling belittled by her scorn, FitzSimon glared at Heulwen’s back, knowing that if she had been his to beat, her body by now would have matched the slate-blue shade of the cloak pinned across his breast. Starting after her, he dragged viciously on the hostage’s reins. Rhodri ap Tewdr sat his dun gelding in silence, his hands lashed to the pommel, his feet joined by a double loop of rope slung beneath the horse’s belly, surrounded by an escort of six serjeants.

As Gemini paced away from the safety of Thornford’s outer bailey and palisade, Heulwen felt sick with apprehension and fear. She swallowed valiantly, hoping that appearances and emotions were not one and the same. It was easier for the men, for their faces were half concealed by their helms. Hers was open, vulnerable to Welsh eyes and whatever they might read into it — her fortune and her grandfather’s. The responsibility was terrifying.

Davydd ap Tewdr watched warily as the group from the castle approached the prearranged meeting place, marked by a Welsh lance thrust point-down in the turf. ‘All right,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Bring him.’

The woman who drew rein and faced him across the wind-quivered shaft was striking — not classically so, her bones were too strong, but in an earthy, tempestuous way, appealing entirely to the senses. ‘Lady Heulwen?’ He gave her a wolfish smile and looked beyond her to Rhodri, who flushed and averted his gaze.

‘I hope we need not waste time on the formalities?’ she responded frostily. ‘Surely there is no more to be done than to make the exchange?’

Davydd ap Tewdr brushed his hand over his moustache and refused to be frozen by the ice in her gaze. He noticed that not by so much as a flicker had she acknowledged the presence of her grandfather lying on the pallet. ‘He’s still alive,’ he said, and then, provocatively, ‘and we have treated him with more courtesy than you appear to have extended towards my brother.’

‘That was my own fault,’ Rhodri said quickly. ‘I fell off a horse this morning.’

Ap Tewdr gave his youngest brother a sharp glance. ‘Last time you fell off a horse you were three years old!’ he commented, but let it rest and turned smiling to Heulwen. ‘My lady, by all means let us make this exchange. I have no desire to linger here, and I am sure you will want to take your grandfather within to warmth and comfort.’

Heulwen nodded stiffly, unable to speak, knowing that if she so much as looked at the litter, then, like a piece of ice bearing too much weight, she would shatter apart. She raised her hand and gestured to FitzSimon.

Disgust evident in his every movement, the knight drew the sharp hunting dagger from his belt, dismounted and stooped to slash the ropes that bound Rhodri to the dun, then pulled him down from the saddle.

Rhodri rubbed his wrists. FitzSimon pricked the dagger longingly through tunic and shirt. ‘Don’t try anything,’ he growled.

‘I’d have to be as mad as a saeson to do that with freedom so close,’ Rhodri retorted, and the daggerpoint punctured his skin. The Welsh stiffened in their saddles, and hands flashed to sword-hilts.

Heulwen flung herself down from her mare and rounded on FitzSimon. ‘Give me that knife!’ she cried, then snatched it from him and pitched it as far away as her strength would allow. ‘Is your pride everything that you cannot take a childish jibe without responding in similar wise?’ She made a furious gesture of dismissal. ‘Return to the keep and wait for me there.’

FitzSimon recoiled as if from the venom of a striking snake. He was aware that the anger of the Welsh had subsided and that they were watching the scene with amused curiosity, so the pride she had spoken of with such scorn must either be swallowed or choked upon. After a precarious moment, he chose the former, but with a very bad grace. Lord Adam was going to hear of this, by Christ on the cross he was! ‘My lady,’ he acknowledged, making the words sound like an insult. He went to his dagger, picked it out of the grass and wiped it meticulously before sheathing it, then mounted his horse and spurred it to a canter.

Heulwen watched him leave, then turned again to Davydd ap Tewdr. ‘I apologise for him,’ she said stiltedly, and swallowed. The rage had begun to drain from her. She wanted to burst into tears and knew she dared not, for then they would see her as just another hysterical woman rather than an authority with whom they must reckon.

‘Don’t,’ said ap Tewdr with a laconic shrug, ‘a Welsh arrow will put an end to him sooner or later.’

‘I know all I wish to know about Welsh arrows,’ she snapped. ‘Let us have this exchange over and done with.’

‘By all means.’ Ap Tewdr’s tone was mockingly expansive and Heulwen hated him for it. ‘Give your lord my regards and regrets that we could not deal directly.’

‘I will do so,’ she said through her teeth, ‘be assured of it,’ and gestured the two serjeants forward to raise the litter. Still rubbing his wrists, waiting for a mount to be brought through the Welsh ranks to him, Rhodri looked down at the man lying there, and then quickly away, but it was too late. His eyes had already fixed the image in his mind.

‘Be careful,’ Heulwen cautioned the men, and as the Welsh took charge of their leader’s brother, slapping him on the shoulder, crowing over him and their success, she took her own first look at her grandfather.

He was awake and aware, watching her, and he gave her the ghost of a smile. ‘You did well, cariad,’ he whispered. ‘Proud of you.’ His hand twitched beneath the blanket, emerged after a brief struggle, and stretched towards her. She swooped down to take it, and the men stopped as she bent over him, her body racked with shudders of grieving and relief.

‘Come, cariad,’ Miles said hoarsely, ‘no tears, not now. ’ He stroked her braid, then, assailed by weakness, his hand dropped back on to the covers and he closed his eyes. Crying freely, distraught, but not to the point of being incapable, Heulwen tucked her grandfather’s cold hand back within the covering of sheepskins, drew them up to his chin, and went to retrieve Gemini. Half blinded by tears, she watched the Welsh ride away in the opposite direction, their triumphant cries fluting the cold wind. One of the riders hesitated and looked round. She thought it was Rhodri, but through the distorting blur of tears could not be sure, and neither did she care.

‘Christ, but I really thought he was going to die on us!’ Davydd ap Tewdr laughed with the jubilation of relief. ‘If we’d left it until dawn tomorrow, it would have been too late. He’ll not last out the night.’

Rhodri swallowed bile and said nothing. He was remembering the sunken, blue-tinged flesh and hearing the old man’s dragging fight for breath.

‘You didn’t have to do it this way,’ he said when he had control of himself.

The wide shoulders twitched irritably within the encasing half-hauberk. ‘Not developing a conscience are we, Rhod?’ he scoffed. ‘Would you rather have swung from a gibbet on Candlemas eve?’

‘It wouldn’t have come to that. It was only a ruse to get you to come. De Lacey wanted to treat with you.’

‘A ruse, hmm?’ Davydd ap Tewdr chuckled with sour amusement. ‘Well, de Lacey got more than he bargained for, didn’t he?’

‘And sweet Christ so might we. Do you know how much outrage this will cause? We’ll have every marcher lord between Hereford and Chester down on us for this!’

Davydd reined to a halt and slewed around to glare at his slight, dark brother. ‘You dare to lecture me, whelp!’ He fetched Rhodri a buffet that reeled him in the saddle. ‘You dare to preach at me like a belly-aching priest, when it was your idiocy that brought about this whole predicament. Christ on the cross, I should have left you to rot on a saeson gibbet!’

The blow had opened Rhodri’s cut lip, and dark blood dripped off the end of his chin and soaked into his mount’s coarse winter fell. ‘I’m not ungrateful,’ he muttered thickly, ‘I just thought you could have gone about it in a different way. There’s enough bad blood already. We killed Lady Heulwen’s first husband, and now you’ve as good as murdered her grandfather.’

Davydd let drop the reins he had picked up and stared hard at Rhodri. ‘What do you mean, her first husband?’

‘Ralf le Chevalier, don’t you remember?’

‘Le Chevalier? She’s his widow?’ He leaned on his pommel and stared, and suddenly surprise gave way to laughter. ‘God, she ought to be eternally grateful to us that she’s rid of him. I wish I’d known!’

Rhodri studied his brother, a new maturity stripping the scales of childhood from his eyes. Davydd was only aware of the ground directly beneath his feet, without a thought for the looming horizon. It had been his own shortcoming until his wounding and imprisonment had taught him a different, wary discretion. He twisted his injured lip. ‘Why couldn’t you have made peace with de Lacey? All right, he’s a Norman and out for his own gain, but he’s no glutton. He’d have listened to reason, and he’s the lord of Ravenstow’s own son-in-law now.’

Davydd spluttered at the notion. ‘I’d as soon invite a pack of wolves to kennel among my flocks!’

‘You probably just have. Miles le Gallois is respected on both sides of the border. His son’s wed to the English King’s own daughter, and he has Welsh connections on the distaff side with half the nobility of Gwynedd and Powys!’ This time Rhodri jerked his mount sideways, avoiding the intended blow.

‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing!’ Davydd roared, thoroughly beside himself, spittle flecking his moustache. ‘And fostered at my own hearth. You’ve gone soft, turned into a Norman lick-arse!’ He dug his heels into his pony’s flanks and, cursing, swept on ahead, leaving Rhodri to blink after him, unexpected tears stinging his eyes.

Had he turned into a ‘Norman lick-arse’? He cast his mind back over that jousting episode this morning, the superior, good-humoured amusement quickly becoming rage as the pet animal rounded on its captors with a snarl. The calculating stare of Adam de Lacey and his deceptively smiling mouth. Davydd did not know what he was facing.

Rhodri thought of the old man, Miles le Gallois: Miles ap Heulwen uerch Owain of the line of Hwyel Dda. There was Welsh blood there, as good as or better than his own. He had grown fond of the old man during the months of his confinement, perhaps more than was wise. Miles had been perceptive and tolerant, compassionate without pitying, for he understood Welsh ways having been born to them himself, and despite the plentiful opportunity had never mocked or belittled Rhodri. He deserved better than he had received. Rhodri wiped at his eyes and swore because he was moved to grief for a man by tradition his enemy. Then he touched his cut lip, and glowering at his brother’s broad back, kicked the horse and cantered to join him.

It was late afternoon when Adam and his men came upon the remains of the Welsh raid. The jingle of their harness, the snorting of their mounts and the creak of men shifting uneasily in their saddles broke the silence of the grave, sending small animals scuttling for cover and birds winging with calls of alarm.

One of Adam’s Angevins leaped down from his destrier and examined a soldier’s sprawled corpse. His leather hauberk had been stripped and a pale band of skin upon one of his fingers showed where a ring had recently been worn. Stony-faced, Adam nudged Vaillantif forward through the wet grass. There were no weapons beside the bodies. Swords, axes, lances, shields, all had been taken, including the harness from the dead horses.

‘The bastards,’ Sweyn muttered at Adam’s shoulder. ‘I wish I had been leading this escort.’

‘Be thankful you were not,’ Adam said shortly, and dismounted to prowl across the devastation to the overturned cart. Miles’s destrier was there, belly-up. Adam stepped over its corpse and squatted beside the stripped body of Gervase de Cadenet. He did not try to press the eyelids shut, for he could see that the body was well into the stiffening stage. A wild, dark rage against the perpetrators of this outrage filled him. He made the sign of the cross over the young knight and murmured a short prayer, then beckoned to Austin and another knight to bring a pack pony.

They loaded the bodies on to the animals they had brought and draped them with blankets, then moved slowly back up the march.

‘I will write to Lord Guyon as soon as we reach Thornford,’ Adam said to Sweyn as they splashed through a shallow, swiftly running stream. His mouth tightened bleakly. ‘God knows how he will take this news.’

‘Lord Miles isn’t strong enough to bear rough treatment, ’ Sweyn said. ‘I saw the way you helped him on the stairs the other night. He’s failing swiftly.’

Adam grimaced. ‘Was I as obvious as all that? I thought I did it with subtlety.’

‘You did, sir, but it is not your way to put your arm across a man’s shoulders in conversation, even when you are fond of him and have the right.’

‘Now I know why Jerold calls you my watchdog!’ Adam said with rueful humour.

‘And you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ Sweyn retorted, his fierceness masking deep affection. ‘I’ve had my eye on you since you were a puling babe!’

‘And I haven’t changed, don’t tell me!’ Adam rolled Sweyn a sarcastic look and slapped the reins across Vaillantif ’s neck, increasing the pace.

They cut across the woodland using the carriers’ well-worn track, and with the dusk hard upon them reached the common grazing land that Thornford shared with a neighbouring village — and there encountered the Welsh, riding out of the damp twilight mist in the direction of the border.

A mutual moment of shock held both groups immobilised, and then Adam issued several sharp commands to his own men, delegated Austin and an older knight to take care of the burdened pack ponies, and grouped the rest into a tight phalanx of iron and horse. His lance swung smoothly to the horizontal. The Welsh saw what was happening and tried to break and run, but got no further than the first splintering before the fury of the Norman charge engulfed them. Adam had singled out his man as Vaillantif galloped down upon the Welsh, marking the place to strike as clearly as he always marked the four nailheads on the quintain shield.

Davydd ap Tewdr’s bodyguard was carried from the saddle by the impact of the honed battle lance and died as he hit the ground. Adam pivoted Vaillantif, drew his sword and engaged the man on his right. Behind him, swearing, Sweyn hacked and manoeuvred to stay with him.

Adam’s opponent had no shield, and the grating shriek of steel on steel as the Welshman parried made Adam’s bones shudder. The second blow shattered the inferior Welsh steel, leaving the man a broken hilt for defence. Adam swept it aside and concluded the matter, moving on like a reaper through ripe wheat.

The shield that was butted forward in protection by his next adversary was a Norman one, raided from Miles’s escort, good and solid, but its new owner wore no armour, only an ill-fitting helm to guard his skull. In the split second before Adam struck him down to hell, he recognised the horrified young face partially concealed behind the helmet’s broad nasal, and with an explosive oath changed his grip on the hilt: with a rapid flick of the wrist he sent Rhodri’s blade spinning from his hand.

‘In the name of Christ’s ten fingers, what are you doing here?’ Adam roared, saw the dark eyes widen, heard Sweyn’s choked warning, instinctively crouched behind his shield and commanded Vaillantif sideways. The blow came in hard from the left, clipping the top of his shield and jarring his left arm to the bone as he strove to hold against it. He brought his right arm over in a solid retaliation and had the satisfaction of hearing his enemy grunt with pain, but the retort was fast and determined, and the short Welsh blade ripped open Adam’s surcoat and splayed a diagonal line through the rivets of his mail.

He pricked Vaillantif with his spurs and the destrier reared up against the Welshman’s mount, forehooves slashing. Adam swung his sword backhanded from shoulder height. Trained from infancy, there was so much power behind his blow that it almost severed the Welshman’s head. The body crumpled from the saddle and the Welsh pony bolted, stirrups hammering against its belly.

Breathing rapidly, Adam looked around. The Welsh were in retreat now, fleeing for the safety of the forest. ‘Where’s the lad?’ he demanded.

‘He ran for the woods, sire,’ replied Sweyn. ‘And the others with him.’

Adam scowled in the direction of the trees. Behind them, the sky was as grey as steel.

‘If the lad’s loose, and they were coming from Thornford. ’ Sweyn began.

‘Then the exchange must have already taken place,’ Adam finished, a knowledge that had been with him since the first impact of the charge. His chest expanded on a deep breath. ‘They didn’t waste much time, did they?’

‘Do we go after them, my lord?’

Adam shook his head. ‘No. They’ll split up the moment they hit the forest and it is their own ground. We’d be picked off one by one that way. Anyone hurt? Go and find out, will you?’

‘What about the Welsh?’ asked Jerold. ‘The bodies, I mean. What shall we do with them?’

Adam glanced down. His last victim returned his look balefully from his muddy bier, blood crawling from severed flesh and sinew. ‘Leave them. They’ll be claimed when all is quiet.’ He wiped his sword on his thigh and sheathed it, looked up and said tersely to the man who had come to ask instructions of Jerold, ‘What are you staring at?’

‘My lord, that is Davydd ap Tewdr, I would swear an oath on it. I saw him at a fair in Shrewsbury last year, and quite close to. I was going into an alehouse as he was coming out with some of his people…He was laughing.’ His eyes flickered with unwilling fascination over the hanging jaw, the stained teeth exposed in the eternal grin of death that threatens the living with their own, inevitable fate. Shuddering, he crossed himself.

Adam gestured the man away. ‘I was wondering to Heulwen how it would be without ap Tewdr breathing down my neck,’ he said to Jerold. ‘It seems as if I’m about to find out. Go on, muster the men. There are still three miles ahead of us and it’s nearly dark.’

On first sight of her husband, Heulwen almost fainted, for as he stepped into the torchlit hall, the brownish-red colour of drying blood almost obliterated the rich blue of his torn surcoat. His face too was liberally spattered in the areas where it had not been protected by helmet and ventail.

‘Holy Christ!’ she cried, and stopped short of running into his arms. ‘Adam, what happened? How badly are you hurt?’

He followed her eyes down. ‘It’s not mine, love,’ he reassured her. ‘It’s Davydd ap Tewdr’s. He’s dead.’ His voice was matter-of-fact, as if he was discussing a mundane, everyday occurrence. He kissed her awkwardly. ‘They told me at the gatehouse that Miles is here. Where is he?’

‘I had him carried up to our bedchamber. He’s very weak — barely conscious. He took a fall and I fear that perhaps a piece of broken rib has pierced his lung.’

‘Yes, we found his horse.’ His mouth tightened as he remembered the scene they had come upon. He decided not to tell Heulwen, and plucking at his surcoat grimaced and said, ‘Do you think you could organise a bathtub?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She snapped her fingers at a waiting maid and issued a brisk command.

Adam took the cup of wine that was given to him and, drinking it thirstily, made for the stairs.

‘Sir, can you hear me? It is Adam. Davydd ap Tewdr is dead. We met his war band coming away from here and there was a battle. Rhodri took to the woods with the survivors and I let him go…Sir, my lord?’

Miles struggled up through a floating, weightless darkness towards a burden of light and pain. There was a hand gripping his own, and the voice, although low-pitched, was anxious, almost pleading.

‘It’s no use!’ he heard his granddaughter say on a soft sob. ‘No use, Adam, he’s too far gone. Elswith, run and fetch Father Thomas.’

Miles forced his leaden lids to open. The candles burning on the coffer were a yellow blur; everything was a blur. His granddaughter’s hair merged with the candle flame, and link mail silvered his vision with shifting discs of light.

‘Adam?’ he breathed weakly, vaguely puzzled until he remembered. A faint smile. ‘Don’t go chasing your tail lest you catch it. My will lies in the dower chest at Ashdyke…Guyon knows.’

‘I am going to write to him this very night. He should be here within the next few days.’

Miles moved his head from right to left on the pillow. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’d rather die without a host of weeping relatives around my bed. Guyon knows that too…No great tragedy for me, I’m glad to go…I’ve stopped fighting it. ’

‘Grandpa, no!’ Heulwen let out the words with an involuntary cry, then pressed the back of her hand across her mouth.

‘Child, it is a blessing. You have your life before you…Do not grieve for me. I have lived mine to the full and beyond.’ He closed his eyes again, and seemed to sink down into the bed as if only his shell remained. His hand relaxed in Adam’s.

‘Adam?’ Heulwen’s voice was thin with fear. She clutched his mail-clad arm. ‘He’s not.?’

‘No, not yet.’ Adam removed his hand from the dead-leaf texture of the old man’s. The aftermath of hard battle was in his bones, making him feel as limp as a rag. ‘But it won’t be long — certainly before your father can get here. You have to accept it; he wants to die. Let him go.’ He took hold of her shoulders, kissed her forehead and became aware again, as she stood resisting in his embrace, of the state he was in. ‘Where have you lodged us for the nonce, Heulwen? I’m reeking in blood, and in no fit state to comfort my wife or let her comfort me.’

Heulwen stood a little back from him, his words dragging her from her grief to the realisation that there were things to be done; that she had a husband who needed her attention and her ministrations.

‘The wall room that was Rhodri’s.’

Adam paused at the door to let the priest enter and spoke to him for a moment before continuing on his way. He stopped again as he caught sight of his squire whispering to one of the maids, his hand in the act of curving around her waist. ‘Austin, go and fetch me parchment, ink and quills, and bring them to the wall chamber!’ he snapped. ‘You girl, about your duties!’

She blushed, and bobbing a curtsy fled, the empty bath pail banging against her skirts. Adam shook his head. ‘That boy!’ he muttered beneath his breath, but with more irritation than anger, and shoved aside the curtain to enter their temporary bedchamber. Another maid finished emptying her pail into the tub and flitted from the room. The steam from the bath was laden with the scent of bay and rosemary.

‘Adam, I had to ransom him, I had no other choice,’ Heulwen said, beginning now to feel nervous as he reached to the buckle of his swordbelt. ‘FitzSimon wanted me to send to you first, but I was too frightened for my grandfather.’ She rubbed her hands together, watching him. ‘I think I wounded FitzSimon’s pride.’

‘You’re good at that,’ he said. ‘You find the sore spots in a man’s soul and prick them sometimes until they run with blood.’ He fetched her a look from under his brows. ‘I know all about your behaviour towards my designated constable. He was waiting in the gatehouse for me to ride in, and as full of righteous indignation as an inflated bladder. I heard him out, and then I deflated him to a manageable size.’ He clinked the swordbelt across the coffer.

Unable to discover from his tone whether he was annoyed at her or at FitzSimon, she said, ‘For my sake?’

His smile was slight and sour. ‘Not entirely. FitzSimon hides his inadequacy in arrogance and the belief that he’s always right. He’s a good soldier when directed, but he doesn’t enjoy surprises such as women who snatch his authority and make ransom deals with Welsh brigands.’

‘Adam, there was no other way. By the time I had sent for you. ’

‘Did I say that I wholeheartedly agreed with him? You might have handled him with more tact, although I doubt that’s in your nature, but in the matter of the commands you gave you were right. My own would have been the same. No harm done, except that Rhodri is loose sooner than I expected, and I still don’t know him well enough to be sure which way he’ll jump next.’ He pulled off the torn surcoat, tossed it to one side, and waited for her to help him remove his hauberk. Half a day since she had aided him to don it. Now the once gleaming links were spotted with mud and splotches of blood where it had soaked through the surcoat. There was also on his left side a line of splayed, warped rivets, showing how close he had come to being riven himself. Heulwen stared at the discarded, ruined surcoat and suddenly her hands were icy, unable to take the hauberk’s weight so that it slithered to the rushes at her feet.

Adam had turned his back on her and was removing his gambeson and shirt. When he turned round and sat down on the bed, she stared at the comet-shaped bruise empurpling his ribs in the precise position of the damage to surcoat and hauberk. The livid mark was concealed from her as he leaned over to unwind his garters, and Heulwen gazed at his bent head, her stomach churning.

At Windsor, the trial by combat had seemed like stiff and gilded play-acting, he and Warrin just characters in some monstrous charade, real, but only half real, and herself another player watching it all through a dark mirror. Over the space of the past two months, the charade had receded as she lived with Adam and had begun to see unknown facets glinting under the surface, with herself reflected in them. Now, staring at the tear in his hauberk and the bruised flesh above the new pink scar of his fight with Warrin, the dark mirror shattered and exposed her to the reality of how much she stood to lose.

Adam glanced up. ‘Have you. ’ The look on her face stopped him. She was so pale that her skin seemed translucent and he thought for a moment she was going to faint. ‘Heulwen?’ He dropped his leg bindings and stood up, but before he could reach her, she had reached him. One arm went hard around his neck and she fastened her mouth on his, not just offering, but wildly demanding. He tasted tear-salt, felt her shudders, and her other hand was stroking him intimately, kindling a blaze. He broke away from the kiss with a gasp like a drowning man and clamped his hand upon her working one, holding her away before his control snapped and he took her to the bed and used her in the way she was demanding.

‘No, Heulwen, not this time,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll not deny that I want you, but not like this. If you want to rage against your grandfather’s dying, do it some other way. Go and kick the wall, or slaughter a pig, ride a horse into the ground, but do not bring it into our bed. God knows that’s a haunted enough place as it is.’

Heulwen shook her head, her eyes brimming. ‘You don’t understand, Adam. It’s not my grandfather I fear to lose, it’s—’

There was a discreet cough outside and, hard upon it, Austin came into the chamber, sheets of parchment tucked under his arm, quills and an inkhorn in his hands; behind him walked a maid bearing food and wine.

Adam set Heulwen gently to one side and directed the squire to put down the writing implements and then go. While Austin did his bidding and the maid set down her tray, Adam finished undressing and set about the matter of a perfunctory bath. Heulwen lifted the flagon to pour him a cup of spiced wine, her hand shaking on the handle.

Presently, Adam put down the sponge, set the soap dish out of reach and said with quiet decision, ‘Heulwen, go to my chest and bring me the casket you’ll find at the bottom.’

She handed him the goblet and, giving him a curious look, went to do as he asked. The casket lay beneath his summer cloak and lighter linen tunics — a small, but exquisitely executed box made of cedarwood overlaid with enamelled copperwork depicting the signs of the zodiac — not a masculine possession at all.

‘It belonged to my mother, so I’m told,’ Adam said, watching her from beneath his eyelids. ‘Brought back from the east with a host of tall tales by one of her brothers. I meant to give it to you some time ago, but it slipped my mind until now. The jewels inside are yours. They were my mother’s personal ones, not bound to be passed on with the estate titles.’ He gave a deprecatory shrug. ‘There isn’t much. Apparently her first husband saw no reason to deck a woman in gauds when he could better use the money elsewhere, and my own father — well you know all about my own father.’

Heulwen sat down on the bed and after one glance at Adam, raised the casket lid. A modest collection gleamed at her from the interior. Two intricate necklaces in the Byzantine style, probably gifts from that same brother, a girdle stitched with thread of gold, and a silk purse that matched it. There was an ancient torc bracelet of woven gold, several cloak clasps, some of silver, some of bronze, and some rings, one set with three garnets. She thanked him reservedly, wondering why he had chosen to give these things to her now: a sop to her pride? A comfit to an upset child?

Adam left the tub, dried himself, donned his chemise, then sat down beside her. ‘You haven’t opened the drawer at the bottom,’ he said, nodding to the copperwork panelling the base of the casket. She narrowed her eyes to look closer and saw that what she had thought were decorative knobs were there for a purpose. When she gently pulled them, a drawer slid out. She made a small sound of surprise, and picked up the brooch that lay within.

‘Your grandfather said that I was to give it to you when I deemed the time right,’ he said, studying her pensively.

She stared at the piece. ‘Grandpa gave you this? The wolf brooch?’

‘On that first night we returned from Windsor, together with a warning to beware of futility, which we haven’t heeded very well, have we?’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug.

‘He set great store by this.’ She traced the figure of the wolf with a gentle forefinger.

‘And by you.’ He touched her braid. ‘Are you going to sit in vigil with him tonight?’

‘Yes,’ she said through a tear-constricted throat.

‘Then wear it for him.’ He leaned round to kiss her, but did not linger, and crossed the room to the onerous duty of parchment and quill. She listened to him setting out the materials, heard the wine splash into a cup and the soft sound of tearing bread. The brooch took on warmth from her hand and the garnet eyes seemed to flicker with a life of their own in the candlelight. She thought of Ralf. Charming, irresponsible Ralf, who would have long since bolted for the safety of another woman’s arms rather than face such an emotionally charged passage as this. Then she thought of Warrin, who would have comforted her with a superficial show of concern and then expected her to rally. Behind her a quill snapped and Adam cursed through a mouthful of bread; more wine trickled into the cup.

He had withdrawn to a discreet distance, giving her space to think and recuperate: there if she needed him, but not intruding. She looked round to where he was laboriously toiling on the letter to her father. Already there were ink stains on his fingers and when he rubbed his hand over his face in perplexed thought he left black streaks upon forehead and cheekbone and nose. A wild tenderness stirred within her, as different to her feelings for Ralf as a caterpillar was to a butterfly: an awakening, an acceptance of wings. She rose and, going behind him, put her arms around his neck and rubbed her cheek against his. ‘Adam, thank you,’ she said softly.

Her words were greeted not with a smile or an acknowledgement, but with an oath as the second quill split, splattering ink everywhere. He hurled it down in disgust and in so doing, sent the inkhorn flying. A spreading puddle of ink rapidly obliterated the few words that had straggled onto the parchment. His profan ities caused Heulwen to gasp and giggle. She had thought she was aware of every last soldier’s curse this side of Jerusalem, but this was an education. She scrambled for one of the bath towels and used a corner to blot up the ink. It was too late, the parchment was ruined. She bit her lip and looked at him. ‘Shall I do it? I know that you and quills have a mutual enmity.’

‘Would you?’ A look of abject relief crossed his face. ‘I didn’t want to burden you more. ’

The feeling increased, soaring aloft, unfettered. She smiled up at him and he caught his breath at the expression in her eyes, dazzled by it. ‘I was going to say earlier, before we were interrupted, that it was not my grandfather I was afraid of losing — it was you.’ She slipped her hand inside his shirt and traced the livid bruise above the scar. ‘And if our bed has been haunted by Ralf ’s ghost, I do not believe it is haunted any more.’ She rested her palm lightly on his flesh, but went no further. The next move had to come from him. ‘Ralf used to mouth words of undying love to me at the same time as he was mounting another woman. Empty words — anyone can say them. Actions speak the louder.’

Adam’s eyes were stinging. He swallowed hard, and knowing that his voice would not serve him, set his arm around her waist and bent his mouth to hers. The first kiss was long and gentle, as was the second. The third was deeper and its impetus carried them towards the bed, but without undue haste, for this time there was no wish on Heulwen’s part to force the pace, or on Adam’s to possess elusive quarry.

He left her mouth, to investigate the hitherto unknown delight of her eyelids, her earlobes and the soft, tender hollow in her collarbone. He unwound her braids and played with her hair, a cool, streaming river of fire, drew off her gown and undertunic, discovering the white nape of her neck that gleamed between a parting in the rich copper-gold strands. Heulwen gasped at that, her throat arching.

Adam swallowed again, this time against a different primal emotion, and sought to distract his mind. He concentrated on the lacings, which were difficult enough to make him swear beneath his breath, but when they were undone and the tunic removed, there was only her short shift and the light shining through it, outlining the contours of her body. She turned in his arms and put her own around his neck, and those contours were fitted intimately against his own, two halves of a puzzle becoming a whole.

For a moment he almost yielded to the surging greatness of his need. He thought about tilting at the quintain. If you went at it too soon, all the power was wasted and you ended flat on your back on the tilt yard floor. It was all a matter of balance and timing — of controlling your lance. That thought, so irreverently appropriate, made him shake with silent laughter and the tension eased. An image of the tilt yard in his mind, he took her to the bed.

‘That was wonderful,’ Heulwen murmured breathlessly, and slanted him a rich green-blue glance, replete and provocative at one and the same time. Adam kissed the tip of her nose and nibbled her throat, loath to relinquish the moment’s triumph and tenderness for what lay beyond. ‘Only wonderful?’ he teased, finding it enjoyable now to touch her body without having the urgency of desire to contend against.

‘I would not want your head to swell out of all proportion to the rest of you,’ she retorted.

‘I wasn’t thinking of my head,’ he gave back promptly, laughter in his voice, then yelped and was out of her and off her quicker than a pickpocket at a fair as she dug her fingernails into his buttocks. He looked at her reproachfully. ‘Vixen,’ he complained, but marred his protest with a grin, and then a kiss. She responded. Her hands slid down over his shoulders, tangled in the sparse golden hair on his chest, and it was with a sigh of genuine regret that she broke away. ‘This is not getting your letter written is it?’ She looked round for her shift.

‘You had better use the tub before you go to your grandfather,’ he said, still grinning, eyes raking her from head to toe. ‘I may not be any use at writing letters, but I seem to have written my love all over you.’

Heulwen followed his gaze down. Breasts and belly, ribs and thighs were haphazardly smeared and streaked with ink transferred by sweat from his fingertips. She giggled mischievously at him. ‘Knowing your talent with a quill, I suppose this is the only love letter I shall ever receive. It seems a pity to wash it away.’

He slapped her rump. ‘Baggage! And it’s not a love letter.’ He stretched out his arm for his half-finished wine.

‘No? What is it then?’

‘A receipt for dues paid.’

She made her eyes round and wide. ‘But I thought you kept that kind of account with a tally stick?’

He choked. Laughing, she ruffled his hair and went past him to the cooling tub.

Silent, keeping vigil by candlelight, Heulwen sat at her grandfather’s bedside, holding his hand and watching his last moments slip away. The letter to her father had been written and dispatched and the dead victims of the Welsh raid had been composed, their bodies now waiting in the chapel for the dying to join them.

She glanced across to Adam. He was sitting on a stool, his back propped against the wall, his head nodding as he dozed. She had said he should sleep, but he had refused, insisting on keeping this vigil with her; but as the hours passed in silence, so had the strength of his will to remain awake.

The hand beneath hers stirred, and the eyelids strove like moths beating at a window to reach light.

‘Grandpa?’ She leaned over him.

Her voice, soft but frightened, woke Adam. He jerked upright with a start, saw her leaning over the bed, and was immediately on his feet, cursing himself for having fallen asleep. Quickly he went to her, expecting to see a corpse; instead he looked down into lucid, knowing eyes. The faintest suggestion of a smile was upon Miles’s livid lips.

‘The brooch,’ he mouthed, for there was no strength in his breath to make a sound. His eyes were upon the gleaming circle pinned to Heulwen’s gown. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded approval.

Adam set his hand on Heulwen’s shoulder. ‘The brooch,’ he confirmed. ‘I can’t promise not to go chasing my own tail, but I’ll try.’

Miles made a sound that might have been a chuckle but was never completed, as his last breath sighed into silence.

‘Grandpa?’ Heulwen said again.

Adam leaned in front of her and gently used forefinger and thumb to close the half-open eyes which in their youth had been the same glorious colour as Heulwen’s. ‘He’s gone,’ he said gently, and making the sign of the cross stood back. Then he looked at Heulwen, and drew her into his arms. She pressed her face against his breast and clung to him, but only for a moment, Damp-eyed yet composed, she released him and looked up into his face. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I can accept it now. It was my own fear that would not let him go.’ She drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘I will do whatever needs to be done. This is women’s work now. I’d rather you sent in Elswith and Gytha to me and went to bed. I’ll join you when I’ve finished.’

He studied her intently, then gave a brief nod, recognising her need to be alone with her thoughts, upon which the maids would not intrude but his own continued presence might. ‘Don’t be too long,’ was all he said as he headed for the curtain, ‘the living need you too.’