The Running Vixen

Chapter 6

The pied bitch yawned and scratched vigorously at a tender spot behind her ear. Four pups, bright-eyed, fat-bellied and inquisitive, tumbled and played beside her. Sunlight shafted down from an unshuttered window and bathed their fuzzy infant fur. Judith pushed the shears through the crimson wool marked out on her sewing trestle, the tip of her tongue protruding between her lips as she concentrated. It was to be a court robe for Renard and there was precious little time left to sew it, for they were well into November now, the slaughter month. The boy kept on growing; his best tunic, stitched only this midsummer, now revealed his wristbones and barely touched his knees, when it had been made to hang below them. Flanders cloth it had been, of an expensive, bright deep blue, lavishly embroidered with scarlet silk thread. It would do for Henry later on, so all was not lost, but the new garment had still to be stitched, and prayers said with the sewing that Renard would not grow again for a while at least.

The curtain clacked on its rings. Heulwen exclaimed as she tripped over a curious pup, then swore as it dug its sharp little milk teeth into the hem of her gown, intent on a growling tug-of-war. With some difficulty, she persuaded it to let go, and toed it gently sideways towards its dozing dam.

‘Have you finished?’ Judith deftly turned a corner. Crunch, crunch went the shears. She looked a brief enquiry across the richly coloured cloth.

‘For the moment.’ Heulwen picked up a small pot of scented goose-grease salve from the coffer, took a dollop and began to work it into her dry, cold-reddened hands. Several pigs had been slaughtered for salting, and the supervising had involved a certain degree of demonstration. Washing excrement from pigs’ intestines, scraping them and then packing them down in dry salt for later use as sausage skins was a form of purgatory, but then so was needlecraft and, on balance, Heulwen thought that she would rather wash sausage skins.

‘I’ve left Mary filling the bladders with lard and Gytha and Edith making a brine solution. I’ll go down and check it in a while, but they’ve done it a hundred times before and should be all right. Thomas is dealing with the hams. We’ll need more salt before Christmas.’

‘I know.’ Judith worked her way to the end and laid down the shears. ‘You can help me pin this now you’re here.’

Heulwen screwed up her face. Judith began to smile. ‘You need the practice,’ she teased gently. ‘Soon you will have a man of your own to sew for again.’

Heulwen felt heat warm her cheeks and brow. She picked up a pincushion. ‘Nothing is settled yet,’ she muttered defensively. ‘I know Papa’s had Warrin’s letter formally asking for me, but the King has yet to approve — and for that matter, so have I. Besides, Warrin’s still in Normandy.’

‘But due home any day now?’ Judith started to pin the cut edges together, working nimbly. Then she paused and looked thoughtfully at her stepdaughter. ‘In some ways the sooner the better for you, I think.’

‘And you too, Mama.’

Judith’s scrutiny sharpened, but she took no offence. Several weeks of each other’s company had begun to rub the amity a little threadbare. Much as Judith was fond of her stepdaughter, she did not possess the calm, maternal patience that would have served in her best interests. Instead she was wont to snap, or say something tart, and Heulwen would bristle and retort in kind. It was hardly surprising that there should be friction, Judith thought. Heulwen had married Ralf at fifteen, and had been a chatelaine in her own right for more than ten years. Adjusting to the codes of her former life for no matter how temporary a time must be difficult, especially when faced with an older woman who smiled, but resented the intrusion. ‘Yes,’ she laughed. ‘For me too. I will relish the peace and quiet!’ And then she sobered. ‘But daughter, you must be certain this match with Warrin is what you truly want for yourself. You know your father and I would never push you against your wishes.’

Heulwen drew breath to say that yes, it was what she truly wanted; her mind was made up, but what emerged from her mouth was different. ‘Mama, do you think Warrin is a suitable match?’

Judith pondered the matter while she set half a dozen more pins into the fabric. ‘Suitable, yes,’ she said at length. ‘But whether he is the right choice, only time will tell. You have known him since childhood. He’s ambitious, self-opinionated, and about as sensitive as a wall. He’ll expect you to decorate his bed and board as befits a man of his standing.’ She straightened up and glanced at Heulwen’s anxious face, seeking something to say that would even the balance. ‘You certainly won’t lack for anything. Warrin’s always been generous. I dare say you’ll even have maids enough to do all your sewing.’ She smiled briefly, then grew serious as she added, ‘But if you have a need to go beyond the gilded trappings, then I advise you to think again. To Warrin de Mortimer you will be a trophy, cherished for how highly others will envy him, rather than cherished for your own sake.’

‘I realise that, Mama, and it does not bother me,’ Heulwen said determinedly, ‘In fact I—’

‘Heulwen, you’ve got a visitor,’ Renard announced as he sauntered into the bower. He was eating a cinnamon and apple pasty filched from beneath the cook’s nose, and his narrow grey eyes were alight with mischief.

‘Warrin?’ She abandoned the pincushion and raised her hands to check the set of her veil and the tidiness of her braids.

‘Wrong,’ he said cheerfully, coming further into the room. Having crammed the rest of the pasty into his mouth, he stooped at the hearth to pick up one of the hound pups. It wriggled and sought to lick him with an ecstatic pink tongue. ‘Adam de Lacey.’

Her hands fell from her braids. ‘Adam?’ she repeated weakly. ‘Why does he want to see me?’

Renard gave her a mocking grin, head flung back to avoid the strivings of the pup. ‘Perhaps he wants to arrange another midnight tryst in the solar,’ he suggested.

‘Renard!’ snapped his mother, glaring at him with disfavour. ‘If you spent as much time exercising your brain as you did your tongue, you would have a wit to be feared indeed!’

‘Sorry,’ he said with the graceless joy of one who is not sorry in the least. ‘He’s brought you your horses. You did say you were going to sell them in Windsor, didn’t you? And you’ll have to face him sooner or later.’ He held the pup in the crook of his arm like a baby and wandered over to the sewing trestle to look with idle interest upon his mother’s endeavours.

Judith frowned at him, although she was secretly proud. His height dwarfed hers, although childhood was still stamped on the features of the emerging man. There were crumbs on his upper lip amidst the dark smudge of a soft moustache line. The crimson wool would suit him very well. He was tall like Guyon and dark-haired, but his eyes were the grey impenetrable ones of his grandfather the King. He also possessed his grandfather’s sleight of tongue, married to a lethal adolescent lack of tact. The future lord of Ravenstow and the responsibility, God help her, lay at her feet.

Renard kissed his mother’s cheek and looked across at his half-sister, eyes dancing. ‘Do you want to send me back down with a message and tell him you’re too busy sewing?’

The thought of what Renard might say spurred Heulwen out of one kind of panic and into another. She put the pins carefully aside, resisting the temptation to stick them in her brother instead of his new tunic. ‘No, Renard, that would be a lie, and anyway, I’d be pleased to see him. One misunderstanding does not make for a lifetime’s enmity.’ She widened her eyes sarcastically. ‘What do you imagine happened in the solar? Or perhaps, knowing your mind, I shouldn’t ask. The pup’s just pissed on you.’

‘What?’ Renard looked, swore, dumped the puppy on the floor, and dragged off his tunic to his mother’s stern reprimand about his language. Heulwen made her escape.

It was stupid to be so afraid, she thought as she twisted her way down the turret stairs and entered the great hall. Stupid to feel so tense and queasy. ‘He is my brother,’ she repeated to herself but to no avail. That part of her past was gone for ever, banished by the sight of a lean-muscled warrior in a bathtub. No, she amended, it was not stupid to fear danger or to panic when forced to greet it face to face.

Adam was in the courtyard talking to Eadric, his furred cloak thrown back from his shoulders, the cold sunlight reflecting off his hauberk and the silver pendants studding his swordbelt. The groom had custody of two fine horses — a bay and a piebald. Vaillantif ’s reins were held by Adam himself, and as he spoke to the servant, he caressed the bright sorrel neck, thick now in its full-grown winter fell.

Heulwen took a deep breath, gathered her courage in both hands, and walked across the ward to greet him.

‘You wanted to see me?’ she said to Adam. ‘Will you come within to the hall?’

He hesitated, then inclined his head. Having given Vaillantif ’s bridle to Eadric, he followed Heulwen back across the ward. A woman accosted her with a question about the pigs that were being dissected. While Adam waited, he stared around. A serjeant was drilling his men. The spear butts scraped on gravel and clacked in forested symmetry as their owners responded to bellowed commands. The woman departed with her instructions. Against the forebuilding entrance, two small boys were playing marbles. One of them raised his head and flashed a brilliant blue-green glance at his sister and the visitor.

‘Why aren’t you at your lessons?’ Heulwen demanded sharply. ‘Where’s Brother Alred?’

‘Gone into the town with Papa.’ William made a face. ‘We’ve to do our lessons this afternoon.’ His gaze lit covetously on Adam’s ornate gilded scabbard and the contrastingly austere sword-hilt protruding from it.

Heulwen said to Adam, ‘William wasn’t here last time you visited.’ She turned to the boy: ‘William, this is Adam de Lacey, my foster brother. I don’t think that you’ll remember him.’

Adam crouched down and picked up one of the round, smooth stones, his expression carefully impassive, aware that she had said ‘foster brother’ deliberately.

‘Can I look at your sword?’ William’s eyes were avid with longing. Belatedly he remembered to add ‘please’.

Adam shot the marble at a larger one near the wall. He heard the crack of stone upon stone and briefly closed his eyes, fists clenched upon his knees. Then he stood up and, smiling down at the boy, drew the weapon from its fleece-lined scabbard.

‘William, you shouldn’t be so. ’

‘He’s all right.’ Adam’s voice was relaxed, concealing the tension that gripped him. ‘I was the same at his age about your father’s blade — about any blade come to that, because they were real and mine was made of wood, or whalebone.’

William took it reverently. His small fist closed around the leather-bound grip and he held it up to the light so that the iron gleamed bluishly. Inlaid along the blade in latten was the Latin inscription O Sancta, repeated several times to make a decorative pattern. The pommel was an irregular semicircle of inlaid polished beechwood. ‘Papa says I can have a proper sword of my own next year day,’ William said eagerly.

‘With a proper blunt blade,’ Heulwen added. ‘You do enough damage with the plain wooden one you’ve got now!’

Adam chuckled. ‘I can imagine!’ Gently, with more than a hint of poignant understanding, he took the sword back from the child, slotted it home, tousled the tumbled black curls, and continued with Heulwen into the keep.

She sent a servant to fetch hot wine and offered him a chair on the dais set close to a brazier. He unfastened his cloak and draped it across the trestle; unlatching his scabbard, he placed it on top.

‘Do you want to unarm?’ Heulwen indicated his hauberk as he stretched out his legs to the warmth.

He shook his head. ‘Thank you, but no, it’s only a passing visit, I won’t keep you long.’

Heulwen looked down, wanting to apologise for the way their last encounter had ended but unsure that a reconciliation was in her own best interests. White-hot physical attraction frightened her. She had sat at its blaze before, watched it go out, and shivered over the ashes.

The servant brought the wine and a dish of the cinnamon apple pasties, and returned to his duties. Across the hall at another trestle, Adam’s men sat around a basket of loaves, bowls of salted curd-cheese, and flagons of cider. Watching them Adam said, ‘I’ve returned Ralf ’s stallions so you can decide whether you want to sell them at Windsor.’

Heulwen poured wine for them both, keeping her eyes on her task. ‘What are they worth? Have you had time to find out?’

‘The bay is almost fully trained and sufficiently well bred to fetch you around forty marks,’ he said, his tone brisk and professional. ‘The piebald’s not of the same calibre, but because of his markings you should get around twenty for him. If I continue to school him over the winter, he could fetch a top price of twenty-five.’

‘And Vaillantif?’ she matched his tone.

‘That’s really why I came.’ He transferred his gaze from contemplation of his men and fixed it on her instead. ‘I want to buy him from you, Heulwen. I’ll give you a hundred marks.’

She forgot her circumspection and stared at him in astonishment. ‘How much?’ she gasped

‘It is what he is worth.’ His eyes were bright and intense as he leaned forward in the chair.

‘Adam, no, I cannot accept such a sum from you!’

‘But you would accept it from a complete stranger at Windsor,’ he pointed out.

‘I wouldn’t feel guilty about taking a stranger’s coin.’

He set his jaw. ‘Heulwen, I’m asking you as a boon — as a favour to me. Let me have him. You’ve slapped me in the face once. In Christ’s name, leave me some small shred of pride. Do you know what it cost me to come here today?’

She opened her mouth to speak, changed her mind and drank her wine instead. ‘Yes, I do know,’ she said after a swallow. ‘The same that it cost me to come down from the bower to face you.’

Adam considered her across his own cup and eventually he smiled. ‘Pax? ’ he said gravely.

‘Vobiscum.’ She returned the smile, feeling as though a great dark cloud had been lifted from her horizon. ‘Very well. For the sake of our mutual pride, you can have Vaillantif, but I won’t accept the full price — and before you start arguing, let me say that I owe you for the training and stabling of the other two horses. Eighty marks I’ll take for him, not a penny more.’

‘And if Warrin thinks that you have undersold a part of his future property?’ he asked with an edge to his voice.

‘Then Warrin can go whistle. I’m not. ’ Her voice trailed off and she put her hand to her mouth.

‘What’s wr—’ Adam followed her gaze down the hall and saw, as if conjured from thought, Warrin de Mortimer advancing towards them in the all too solid flesh, his cloak bannering behind him with the vigour of his stride and his brows slanted down in a black scowl.

‘Adam, I will kill you myself if you start anything,’ Heulwen hissed from the side of her mouth, as she rose and prepared to greet her husband designate.

‘Me?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Why should I want to start anything? Do you think I want to be on your conscience for the rest of your life?’

Heulwen stumbled and Adam had to lunge and grab her elbow before she fell headlong down the dais steps. At their foot, Warrin de Mortimer regarded Adam with a mingling of irritation and strong dislike. Heulwen freed herself from Adam’s grasp and went to take Warrin’s cloak with a smile of greeting. As she reached for the fastening pin, he circled her waist with his hands and stooped to claim her lips. The kiss did not linger, but it signalled possession.

‘Home and unscathed from your jaunt with the Empress, I see,’ he said to Adam.

‘So it would seem.’ Adam leaned across the table for his scabbard, and without haste began to belt it on.

De Mortimer gave him a look of contemptuous amusement, as though he were watching a truculent child over whom he had a clear and confident advantage. ‘You know,’ he mused, ‘it doesn’t seem a moment since we were sparring in that tilt yard out there.’ He grinned nastily. ‘I hear you have learned from the drubbings I gave you.’

‘A great deal more than you, Warrin,’ Adam answered evenly, and turned to Heulwen as if the other man did not exist. ‘The money is in my saddlebags. I’ll have Austin bring it to you. What about the piebald?’

‘I–I don’t know,’ she stammered, floundering in the currents of hostility swirling between the two men. ‘I will have to think about it.’

Adam sent a jaundiced glance in de Mortimer’s direction. ‘I’ll leave him, then. If I’m any judge of character, you’ll not be selling him at Windsor either. As to the other matter, leave it in my hands. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.’

She nodded and raised her chin. ‘Thank you, Adam.’

‘Think nothing of it.’ His mouth was wry as he swept on his cloak and, leaving his wine, brushed past her and de Mortimer to summon his men.

‘Aren’t you going to congratulate us?’ needled de Mortimer. ‘I’ll almost be your brother-by-marriage, won’t I?’

Adam did not turn round, and he had to swallow his gorge to answer. ‘Congratulations,’ he said stiffly, and strode down the hall, away from the temptation to do something utterly stupid.

Once outside in the cold, clean air of the bailey he let go, crashing his fist into the solid forebuilding wall in lieu of Warrin de Mortimer’s handsome, contemptuous face. His skin peeled away from his knuckles in small grated strips. He looked at the thin welling of blood and welcomed the pain that blotted out thought.

‘He affects me like that too,’ Renard said strolling down the stairs to join him. ‘He’s so damned patronising — he treats me as if I were no older than William.’

‘You act that way sometimes.’

‘Are you going back to Thornford now?’

Adam examined his raw, bunched knuckles, the price of holding on to control for too long, then shot a dark glance at Renard. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, no reason.’ Renard shrugged. ‘I thought I’d ride with you. Starlight needs the exercise and I’d rather not stay here while Warrin crows and struts before Heulwen like a dunghill cock longing to tread a hen. Did you see all the rings he had on his fingers?’

Adam looked at his ally and found a brief smile. ‘He was somewhat over-endowed.’

‘He’s wearing spikenard too. I could smell it on him a mile away!’ Renard wrinkled his nose. ‘There’s not going to be much room for Heulwen in his heart. He’s madly in love with himself!’

Without comment, Adam went to Vaillantif and unlatched a saddlebag. Withdrawing a leather money pouch, he handed it to his squire. ‘Go within, Austin, and deliver it to Lady Heulwen. Tell her that the other twenty are her wedding present. She will know what you mean.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Adam watched him lope off, then turned back to the horse, and unslinging his helmet from the pommel, put it on. ‘You’ll need armour,’ he said to Renard. ‘Do you have a hauberk?’

‘I have the one that was my brother’s before he drowned. It fits me better than it used to fit him. Will you wait for me?’

Adam nodded at the dun stallion resting slack-hipped beside Vaillantif. ‘You can use my remount instead of your own horse if you like. I noticed you were outgrowing that grey when you came to Thornford.’

Renard’s dark eyes kindled. ‘Adam, you’re a friend!’ He embraced Adam in a fervent hug that almost squeezed the breath from the latter’s body.

‘What do you do to your enemies?’ Adam asked weakly.

‘What’s this for?’ Warrin de Mortimer lifted one of the bags of silver just delivered to Heulwen by the snub-nosed squire, and jinked it back down on the trestle.

Despite the offhand tone of his asking, Heulwen could tell he was irritated. ‘I sold him Vaillantif.’

Warrin flicked his forefinger against the side of the bag. ‘For a goodly sum, by the looks of things.’

‘He insisted on giving me more than was due. He was very stubborn. I didn’t want it.’

‘So stiff-necked that one day someone is going to snap it for him,’ Warrin muttered.

‘You?’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘Is it so obvious?’

‘You were like a pair of dogs circling each other, waiting for the right moment to leap at one another’s throat.’

‘I don’t like the bastard, I’ll admit that outright.’ He extended his hands to the brazier. ‘Never knew his place as a junior squire, and I doubt he does yet.’

Heulwen watched him, her stomach a mass of tiny butterflies. His hands were steady over the heat. Broad and powerful, they did not suit the various rings with which he had bedecked them. Her father very seldom wore jewellery and neither did Adam.

‘What was the other matter of which he spoke?’ he asked into her silence.

She shook her head, knowing a grievous mistake when she saw one. ‘It was trifling,’ she dissembled. ‘Ralf sold a horse and I want to buy him back.’

‘You could have asked me to do that.’ He looked at her reproachfully. ‘There was no need to involve Adam de Lacey.’

‘You were in Normandy, and besides, Adam knows the owner.’ His jaw tightened, but so did hers in determined response. ‘Warrin, don’t scowl at me like that. Adam has been my foster brother since I was two years old. If you cannot tolerate his occasional presence on mutual ground like Ravenstow, then you might as well seek a different woman to wife!’

Immediately he was contrite, turning from the brazier to take her hands in his. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I arrived here eager to greet you, and I did not expect to find Adam de Lacey sprawled in your father’s chair. ’

‘And you are accustomed to having your own way in all things,’ she agreed with an arched brow.

‘Yes, I am!’ Before she could rebel, his hands had slipped around her waist again and his breath was warm on her cheek as his head descended and he claimed her lips, imprinting them with the will of which he spoke. His arms tightened and his tongue probed. Heulwen stood passively within the embrace, neither welcoming nor resisting it, but it was sufficient for him that she was warm and pliant in his arms, and he persisted, driven by the anxiety to possess, and a more basic need.

The smell of spikenard was too powerful to be pleasant. It irritated her nose and made her want to sneeze. He was wearing his hauberk and the links began to bruise her arms where they were trapped by his. A small, inner voice asked her if she would have noticed such discomforts if Adam had been holding her. She tried to respond to Warrin, but the heaviness of his jaw grinding on hers made it impossible and she broke the kiss. ‘Warrin, you’re crushing me.’

He was breathing hard and his eyes were opaque with lust, but he had sense enough to realise where he was and what was at stake. Taking a grip on himself he released her and folded his long body into the chair that Adam had previously been occupying. ‘In Christ’s name, Heulwen, let us soon be wed,’ he said roughly. ‘I know you’re still mourning Ralf, but time doesn’t stand still — well, not unless I’m abroad talking cheeses with some stuff-witted steward on my father’s Norman lands and counting the hours until I can come home and gladden my heart with a sight such as you.’

‘Flatterer,’ she said lightly, sitting down beside him.

‘It’s true though. Heulwen, you’re driving me mad.’

His arm was resting on the trestle and she rubbed her index finger upon his wrist, stroking the wiry golden hairs the wrong way. ‘Once you and Papa have formally agreed the terms and you have asked the King for Ralf ’s lands, we can be married without further delay,’ she said.

‘It cannot come quickly enough for me,’ he said, thinking of her ripe body beneath his in the marriage bed, and of a chest full of recently minted silver.

‘Nor me,’ she said, her own tone more grim than eager, her mind upon Adam and the lessons learned from her time with Ralf.

‘No chance of a hot bath?’ he asked hopefully, his glance becoming decidedly lustful.

Heulwen stopped stroking his wrist and stood up. ‘A cold one might suit your need better,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll see what the maids can do.’

It was only when she reached the haven of the tower stairs and stood alone in the cold, musty silence, that she realised how much she was shaking.