The Running Vixen

Chapter 20

The chosen site for Geoffrey’s mêlée was a broad green field just outside the city walls, and it was here, shortly after dawn, that the court assembled either to watch the sport, or prepare to partake. The early March morning was mild with the promise of warm sunshine, and although furred cloaks were much in evidence, there was no real discomfort from cold. If people gathered around braziers, it was because they served as a focal point over which to discuss and anticipate the fighting to come.

Heulwen listened to the bright chatter surrounding her and was aware of an overpowering feeling of dread and isolation. She tried to smile and respond to the tide of enthusiasm, agreeing with a baron’s wife that yes, the weather was fine and that the sport should be well worth watching. She bought ribbons from a huckster to tie around Adam’s lance, clapped and laughed emptily at the antics of a dancing bear, and pretended to listen with attentive enjoyment to the ballad of an itinerant lute-player. Her mouth ached with the strain of forced merriment and her head with the strain of the pretence, when all she wanted to do was run away, dragging her husband with her, and not stop until she reached the haven of her own Welsh marches.

She looked for Adam across the wide expanse of virgin grass which was soon to be despoiled. He was over at Geoffrey’s pavilion with the Count. Austin was outside keeping a half-hearted eye on Vaillantif, his main interest reserved for a dancing girl who was playing a tambour and flashing her ankles at him. A ragamuffin child with the girl was feeding a wrinkled apple to the stallion.

Adam ducked out of the tent, talking to Geoffrey of Anjou. He pointed to the helm tucked under the young man’s arm and made a comment. Geoffrey laughed and replied, and both of them paused to examine and admire the powerful sorrel stallion. The child made himself scarce, as did the dancing girl. Adam playfully cuffed Austin into awareness, took his leave of Geoffrey and, unhitching Vaillantif, walked him across the field towards Heulwen.

Man and horse were all prepared for the mêlée. Adam was accoutred in his hauberk and a fine new surcoat of blue silk, stitched with a gold lozenge on the breast to match that on his shield. Vaillantif was also trapped out in blue and gold, and both man and horse were bursting with such exuberance that Heulwen’s heart turned to ice.

Halting the stallion, hand held close to the decorated bit-chains, Adam gave her a slow, measuring look that took full note of her pallor and the false curve of her lips. ‘Listen,’ he said gently, ‘Fulke has promised to give me his written reply by tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll be able to start home before the week’s out, I promise.’

He was doing his best to allay her fears, she thought, but he had not a hope in hell of succeeding. No point in tarnishing the shine. Instead of saying that tomorrow might be too late, she patted Vaillantif’s glossy neck and brought out the ribbons.

‘I chose them to match your surcoat,’ she said, and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry if I’m being a wet fish, Adam. I will make it up to you, I promise.’

He arched one brow and the corresponding mouth corner tilted up. ‘I can think of several ways,’ he said, ‘and I am sure you can think of several more.’

‘At least a dozen…I wish today was already over.’

Adam ran the fairing ribbons through his fingers and looked over his shoulder. Men were warming up with short practice charges and courtesy raps of lance on a companion’s shield. Hoarse, joyful cries floated across the field. The leathery smell of harness and horses pervaded the air.

Heulwen gave him a gentle push, the most difficult thing she had ever done in her life. ‘Go. If you linger here with me you won’t be ready. Just don’t take too many risks.’

He hesitated, aware of her pretence, but not knowing how to reassure her any more than he already had. It was the element of danger in this kind of sport that made it so exhilarating. He took her face in his hands and set his lips upon hers. Vaillantif snorted and butted his muzzle into the centre of Adam’s spine, jarring him forwards. Their mouths jolted apart. He turned to the horse. ‘It seems I have my orders,’ he laughed, and set his foot in the stirrup.

Heulwen stared up at him astride the destrier: tensile strength and agility coupled to smooth power. Try as she might, she could not prevent the misgivings that clouded the pride she felt in the picture they made. Despite the increasing warmth of the spring sun, she was shivering. Brusquely she told Elswith to go and buy some hot broth from one of the hucksters, knowing in her heart that it would do nothing to melt the block of ice at her core, for it was fashioned of fear.

Vaillantif danced with eagerness as Adam adjusted his stirrup-leather and made himself comfortable in the high saddle while Austin handed up helm, shield and the blunted jousting lance festooned with blue silk ribbons. Adam rode out on to the field and trotted Vaillantif over it, testing the feel of the ground and examining it for any obvious pot-holes or snags of stone that could bring a horse down in mid-charge.

On his right, Geoffrey of Anjou was cantering and turning his own destrier — a lively Spanish grey, well-sprung in the ribs but a little short of bone in Adam’s estimation. Still, the lad was handling him exceptionally well, and although his constant laughter revealed his underlying excitement, he seemed otherwise steady enough.

Adam came round past Heulwen and the other women. He dipped his lance to salute her and she smiled at him, one hand leaving the bowl of broth she held to wave back. She was trying hard, he thought, his sense of joy dampening slightly. In childhood she had got them both into some dreadful scrapes, had egged him on to all kinds of folly and resultant punishment, always snapping her fingers in the face of danger. But then in childhood it had all been a game. It was frightening to realise, when you grew up, that the game was a reality you could not stop when it grew dark.

He slowed Vaillantif to a walk as they passed the assembling knights of William le Clito. Warrin was among them, leaning against the piebald stallion whose price had never been paid, arms outspread upon withers and rump, looking for all the world like a blasphemous crucifix effigy. He was talking lazily to le Clito, but broke off what he was saying to stare at Adam with a contemptuous smile.

Le Clito spoke and Warrin ceased slouching and turned his back on Adam to check and hitch the piebald’s girth. Adam swung Vaillantif away and trotted him back to his own end of the field where his men were warming up.

Gradually, the opposing lines of knights began to assemble. Horses snapped at each other and were reined back hard, or sent round in a circle to attempt a place in the line again. Men jostled, struggling to position their shields and lances as well as control the reins. It was disorganised chaos out of which, after much bellowing, cursing and energetic waving of arms, Geoffrey finally succeeded in bringing about a reasonable battle formation.

There were several seconds of silent, strung tension: all down the line, men fretted their destriers for the charge. Adam tucked himself down behind his shield, rested the weight of his lance upon his thigh, and stared across the expanse of field at the opposing lines. The pied horse stood out boldly among the bays and browns and chestnuts, an easy target either to attack or avoid. He glanced briefly at Heulwen. Whereas all around her people were craning on tiptoe or bending sideways to obtain a better view of the proceedings, her stance was rigid. He wanted to shout a reassurance to her, but it was impossible, and in the same moment as his thought, the attack horn sounded along the line and all his attention was swept back to the charge.

‘Hah!’ he cried, and slapped the reins down hard on Vaillantif’s neck and used his spurs. The stallion lunged at the bit and spurted into a gallop. Grass tore up in great moist clods. Sun flashed on armour and blunted spear tips and gleamed on straining horsehide. Adam singled out his man — a solid knight upon a squat dun, and guided Vaillantif with the pressure of his knees, his lance held loosely and his body relaxed as he counted down the strides of space.

Timing his move to the last inch of ground, he adjusted his aim, gripped the lance and thrust forward. The strike was true. The knight’s lance wavered awry. He had closed his eyes against the impact and gone a fraction too high; Adam’s lance, striking true centre on his shield, sent him sailing over the crupper to crash in a heap on the muddy ground.

Adam caught the dun’s bridle. The knight’s squire had dismounted and was helping his dazed lord to his feet. Adam asked if he was all right, received a grudging assent, and with a curt nod of his own told the defeated man where to pay his debt, before wheeling Vaillantif in pursuit of another opponent.

He and a knight with a bronze-decorated helm traded several sword blows until they were separated by another group of four knights hacking desperately at each other. Adam recognised Geoffrey’s grey stallion; blood was trickling from a minor wound on its near forequarter and its nostrils were flared wide. Geoffrey was holding his own, but making no real impression on his opponent, an older thickset man who was obviously trying to wear him down. Adam gathered his reins and prepared to join and turn the balance.

‘My lord, to your right!’ warned Sweyn, warding his shield and sidling his bay nearer. Instead of spurring forwards, Adam pulled his right rein and turned Vaillantif to face a group of five young men, working as a team and obviously determined to take a prize like Vaillantif for their own.

Adam grinned wolfishly, twisted the reins again, and charged Vaillantif at the centremost knight, leaving Sweyn and Jerold to deal with those on his left, and Alun and Thierry with those on his right. The sorrel was sluggish to respond to his command and he had to use the reminder of spurs to bring his head up.

The two horses snapped together. Adam’s opponent struck and his blade rebounded off Adam’s shield. Adam’s powerful backhand stroke slammed the young knight’s shield inwards, clouting him in the mouth with its rim. Adam followed through immediately giving no respite, and the shield gave way again to a howl of pain. The man groped for his reins and missed them as he tried frantically to disengage. His horse plunged, went back on its haunches, and fouled the mount of the knight who was engaging Sweyn. The latter took immediate advantage and redoubled his efforts to belabour the opposition.

Detached from Adam by the pressure of battle, Thierry and Alun were too far away to prevent what happened next and Jerold, although he tried, was unable to fight clear of his own encounter and come to Adam’s aid. ‘Ware arms, my lord!’ he bellowed at the full pitch of his lungs, ‘in the name of Sweet Christ, ware!’

In the crowd, Heulwen screamed her husband’s name and started to run towards him but was caught back by one of Adam’s serjeants who had the presence of mind to know that if she ran on to the field among the milling and trampling of the great warhorses and the swinging weapons, she would be killed. She fought him like a wildcat, but he held on grimly, begging her to stop, and at last she did so because she could not break his grip and all her strength had gone. Sobbing, tear-streaked and panting, she turned in his hold to face the field, and by that time it was all over.

Adam, his sword lifted to strike at his struggling adversary, commanded Vaillantif with his thighs to meet the new challenge. The sorrel pivoted and staggered badly just as Adam’s raised right forearm took a vicious blow from a morning star flail. His sword became snared in the ricocheting chain and was jerked from his fingers, while some of the steel points in the weighted ball at the end of the chain caught in the mail rivets of his hauberk sleeve and the gambeson beneath, splaying iron and shredding fabric. The impetus of the blow tore him sideways and down from the saddle.

He landed hard, but rolled as he fell, and presented his shield to his enemy’s next assault. Enemy, not opponent, for the man cursing at Vaillantif and striking him out of the way with his shield was mounted on a foam-spattered piebald stallion. The morning star flail was certainly not a weapon of courtesy, nor was the manner of Warrin’s attack: slamming in from the side while Adam was still engaged and omitting to utter the obligatory warning of challenge.

Gasping, with black stars fluctuating before his eyes, Adam strove to his feet. His right arm was numb, he could not feel his fingers and his shield was about as much protection as a flimsy sheet of parchment against the man who was about to ride him down.

Cursing, Sweyn fought to disengage. Jerold had succeeded, but could see that it was futile — he was going to be too late.

With the flail swinging suggestively on its chain, gathering impetus, Warrin sent the pied stallion into a dancing rear. Adam watched death tower over him, mane rippling against the sky, the shod hooves showing two bright arcs that were the gates to the underworld. The rear blazed to its zenith, and Warrin de Mortimer prepared to strike.

The horse came down but twisted, crashing sideways, barged by the blood-streaked shoulder of a grey Spanish stallion. A descending forehoof clipped Adam’s shield. He staggered but kept his feet, and Warrin in turn was torn down from his horse and flung to the ground as Jerold reached him and held a blade at his throat.

Vaillantif was trembling and sweating, head hanging, tail limp. Moving gingerly, Adam went to examine him. The destrier was as wobbly as a newborn foal. Adam’s face was chalk white with fury as he stalked back to de Mortimer. ‘What have you done to my horse?’ he snarled, seizing the sword from Jerold.

‘I haven’t been near the spavined beast!’ Warrin stared up the blade and Adam stared down it, a muscle ticking in his cheek. ‘Belike he took a blow on the head in the fighting!’

‘Do you know why this groove in a sword blade is called the blood gutter?’ Adam said through his teeth. He began to lean on the hilt.

‘Enough!’ commanded Geoffrey of Anjou, dismounting to thrust Adam aside from his purpose. ‘This mêlée is an affair to prove valour, not an extension of your trial by combat. You both shame yourselves!’

‘Shame?’ Adam cried incredulously. ‘Look at the way this whoreson came at me, choosing his moment and full intending to do murder. The shame is not mine!’

‘Do you know for certain that he has interfered with your stallion?’ Geoffrey demanded. His face was flushed, translucent with his own anger.

‘God’s blood, it’s obvious!’ Adam snapped. Geoffrey stared. Adam fished for control, netted a semblance, and setting his jaw returned the sword to Jerold. ‘Seek for proof and you’ll find it, sire,’ he said on a quieter but still vehement note. ‘I know when I have been set up like a quintain dummy.’

‘What’s the matter here?’

They all turned to face William le Clito who was leaning down from his champing black destrier. Pink runnels of sweat streaked his face and he wiped at them with the leather edge of his gauntlet.

‘A breach of honour from one of your side,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Best if you withdraw him and keep him confined until we decide how serious the breach is.’

Le Clito shrugged. ‘Personal grudges are bound to make this kind of sport more dangerous, and in the heat of the moment men tend to forget their manners,’ he said with complacence.

‘Is this the result of impulse?’ Adam gestured at Vaillantif. Austin had appeared and was very gently trying to coax the wobbling horse towards the edge of the field. ‘Is this the kind of weapon used in courtesy?’ He nudged the flail with his toe.

Le Clito took in the evidence and looked down at Warrin who was now sitting up, his helm on the grass beside him. His face was ashen, and against it a pink scar high on his cheekbone stood out like a brand. ‘What have you to say?’ le Clito asked with a raised brow.

‘I never touched his precious horse. I wanted to tumble de Lacey in the dust and bloody his pride as he did mine, and I took it too far.’

‘Horseshit!’ Adam rasped.

Geoffrey looked around. The mêlée was winding to a halt as men drifted over to listen to the altercation. ‘My lord?’ he said to le Clito.

Le Clito saw that he had no choice and gestured to the knight beside him. ‘Etienne, escort Warrin from the field and keep him confined in my quarters until I come.’

Geoffrey nodded curtly and remounted the grey. To Adam he said in a low, furious voice, ‘Is this a sample of the kind of behaviour I can expect from English barons?’

Adam made no reply, which was the best he could manage in his present mood. He stared at a thick streak of mud on his surcoat, and forced his limbs into rigid quiescence.

‘I suggest you go to your lodgings and have yourself and your horse tended.’ Geoffrey wrestled his horse around.

Adam watched him ride away, le Clito beside him, and became aware of the pain thundering through his arm. Warrin de Mortimer did not look at Adam as he straddled the piebald and departed from the field with le Clito’s knight. The flail hung down from his saddle, catching glints from the sun.

‘Will he be all right?’ The straw crackled.

Adam turned to regard his wife in the swinging light of the horn lantern. She was carrying his fur-lined mantle over her arm and also the morning’s abandoned picnic basket. ‘I thought you were abed?’

‘I was, but I couldn’t sleep knowing you were down here alone. How is he?’ She knelt beside him and laid a gentle hand on Vaillantif’s stretched red-gold neck. The horse was spread out in the straw, his breathing regular but noisy, his limbs twitching now and again in strange muscular spasms.

‘No real change, but if he was going to die he would have done so by now, I think.’ He compressed his lips and looked at her from the corner of his eye. ‘You warned me, didn’t you?’

‘It is no comfort that I was right.’ She took her hand from the horse’s neck to set it over his. ‘When I saw you go down this afternoon. ’ She swallowed. ‘Oh Dear Jesu!’

He felt her shudder and, a little awkward because of his bruised arm, drew her against him and kissed her. She began to cry then, burying her face in his chest, her fingers clutching his tunic and shirt.

Adam was taken aback by this sudden outburst of emotion. Saving an incident with one of his serjeants, who now sported a badly scratched face and the beginnings of a black eye in recompense for his efforts to prevent her from hurtling herself into the midst of the mêlée, she had been as remote as an effigy. When he had walked off the field she had neither cast herself hysterically into his arms nor turned the termagant, but had greeted him with about as much warmth as a stone. She had seen efficiently to his injuries, which consisted mainly of heavy bruising. That he had no broken ribs or fingers was a miracle, and she had said so a trifle tartly, but there had been no more reprimand than that. She had treated him with the dutiful courtesy she might yield to a stranger.

‘Come, sweeting,’ he said tenderly, ‘it’s over now. There’s no need for tears.’

Sniffing, she drew away to wipe her face on her cloak. ‘Blame my stepmother,’ she said, and suddenly there was an undercurrent of laughter in her voice. She busied herself finding a wine costrel and two cups from the depths of the basket.

He looked at her in puzzlement.

‘She trained me — drilled it into my head that in times of crisis the worst thing you can do is panic. When that crisis is past, then you can weep and turn into a jibbering half-wit if that is your need.’ She sniffed again and handed him the wine and a hunk of bread topped with a slice of roast beef.

He looked wry. ‘That sounds like the lady Judith,’ he said, and took a hungry bite of food. He had not eaten since the breaking of fast that dawn, indeed had not realised until now that he was ravenous.

‘I’ve never been so near to a blind rage as I was this morning,’ he said as he ate. ‘If Geoffrey of Anjou had not prevented me, I’d have killed Warrin there and then. Jesu God, all those high words about not jeopardising my errand, and then I go and lean on my blade.’ He shook his head in self-disgust and took a swallow of the cold, sharp wine. ‘Austin says one of the city’s beggar children fed Vaillantif a couple of wrinkled apples. He saw no harm in it, and I don’t suppose I would have done either — only in hindsight. A beggar child would not feed apples to a warhorse unless paid to do it. He’d eat them himself.’

‘You think that was what brought Vaillantif to this?’

‘Assuredly. What better way of evening the odds than to have Vaillantif founder at the wrong moment? All Warrin had to do was watch for the coming opportunity.’

‘What will happen to him?’

‘Not a great deal, I suspect. For the sake of political diplomacy the whole thing will be forgotten as quickly as possible. Le Clito will go back to France with his retinue, and we’ll return to England and the ripples in the pool will drift to the bank and disappear.’ He made a face. ‘Christ’s blood,’ he said softly as he put the empty goblet down, ‘I wish we were home now.’

She leaned her head upon his shoulder. A shiver of foreboding rippled down her spine. ‘So do I,’ she said in a heartfelt whisper. ‘Adam, so do I.’

‘How could you be such an idiot?’ snapped William le Clito and glared at the man stretched out on the bed. ‘All right, Adam de Lacey owes you a debt that can only be paid with his life, but what’s your hurry? Surely you could have arranged something a little less obvious? It is no wonder my cousin reached England in safety if this is the level of your ability!’

‘It was not supposed to be obvious,’ Warrin said, sulkily, and folded his arms behind his head, revealing armpits tufted with wiry blond hair. ‘There was nothing wrong with the idea. It was just pure mischance that the whelp interfered at the wrong moment. If he hadn’t, the world would now be rid of Adam de Lacey and no one any the wiser.’

‘You think no one would notice his horse staggering about like a drunkard!’ Le Clito scraped an exasperated hand through his thinning hair. ‘You think no one would notice the hoofprints all over your victim’s corpse, or not recognise that piebald you were riding? God’s balls, you truly are an idiot!’

‘Accidents happen in tourneys all the time. His horse was struck on the head. I could not prevent mine from trampling him. I got carried away in the heat of battle. It frequently happens, and I had a witness to corroborate my version of the truth, one of de Lacey’s own men, the little Angevin with the red boots who likes the dice more than he should.’

Le Clito snorted contemptuously. ‘Be that as it may, you are more than fortunate to be lying on that bed and not on the straw of a cell floor. I had the devil of a task persuading Count Fulke not to throw you in his oubli ette. Indeed, the only thing that saved you was the fact that we’re returning immediately to France.’

Warrin jerked up on his elbows. ‘France?’ he repeated, startled.

‘You weren’t there in the hall to hear it, were you? A messenger arrived from my father-in-law. Charles of Flanders has been murdered at his prayers, and mine have been answered.’ A grin split le Clito’s round face. ‘I’ve been offered the vacancy — William, by the grace of an opportune knife, the Count of Flanders. How do you fancy settling down to a Flemish fief and a broad-beamed wife with yellow plaits?’

‘You have been offered Flanders?’ Astonishment increased, verging upon incredulity.

‘By Louis of France as the overlord of the Duchy. But there are others who have a claim, and that’s why we have to go back straight away. There’s some hard fighting ahead, but when I come through it, I’m not just going to be a thorn in my uncle Henry’s side, I’m going to be an enormous barbed spear.’

Warrin closed his eyes and lay back again. A fief in Flanders. A Flemish wife. Earning his bread by the sword. His eyelids tensed in pained response to the particular barbed spear in his own side. ‘It is wonderful news, my lord,’ he said, meaning it, but not having the enthusiasm to colour the words.

Le Clito looked at him speculatively and grunted. ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said in Warrin’s tone. He picked up a dried fig from the dish on the low trestle and bit into it. ‘What I do wonder is what my uncle Henry wants with Count Fulke. Nothing he desires the world to know, that much is certain.’

‘The Count has given you no hint?’

Le Clito chewed and swallowed. ‘Not a word. Even when delicately pressed he changed the subject, so it’s obviously to his advantage and not ours.’ He eyed the bitter-mouthed knight on the bed. ‘You could of course make amends for your behaviour today and do yourself a great benefit at the same time.’

Warrin eyed his benefactor warily. ‘My lord?’

‘I want you to find out why my uncle has seen fit to send a messenger here to Anjou and I want you to find out before de Lacey and his wife leave for England. They’re bound to have some communication with Fulke, even if it’s a verbal one. I want to know what it is, and as long as I’m not implicated I don’t care how you go about getting it.’

Behind the bitterness, something else uncoiled in Warrin’s eyes, exultant and savage. ‘Money, my lord,’ he began. ‘I will need—’

‘You will be given what you require, and more by way of appreciation when you bring me some proof of your success.’ Le Clito rose smoothly to his feet and went to wash his hands and face in the laver. ‘The details are yours to command. I trust you not to fail — this time.’ He stretched for the towel and dried his hands thoroughly, the gesture almost symbolic.

‘I won’t,’ said Warrin, and then softly on a breath that scarcely stirred the air, ‘by Christ on the cross, this time I won’t.’