The Running Vixen

Chapter 8

‘Do you believe that I should have approved the match between Heulwen and Warrin?’ Guyon asked his wife.

Judith ceased grooming her hair, put down her comb and turned to her husband. He was sitting before the hearth, looking indolently at ease with a cup of wine in his hand and his feet stretched out resting comfortably against Gwen’s firelit rump, but she had been married to him for too long now to be deceived.

‘What reason could you have had to refuse?’ She rose and came to him. Placing her hand on his shoulder she felt the tension there, and began to work on the knotted muscles. ‘Both of them seem eager for the match. She’s not a child any more, Guy; she’s long been a woman grown.’

He closed his eyes and gave a low-pitched sigh of pleasure at her ministrations, but his mind remained sharp. ‘I know that, love. I also know it hasn’t been easy for you having her here at Ravenstow.’

‘And you wonder if you have given in too easily in the hopes of having a return to peace in your household? ’ she said archly.

‘Most assuredly that is part of it,’ Guyon acknowledged with a laugh, then sobered. ‘I just wonder why Warrin should be so keen to wed her. Men of high estate do not marry for love. Well and good if love grows from a match, but it is not the foremost reason for tying a knot. There have to be others.’

‘Heulwen married for love the first time,’ Judith pointed out.

Guyon snorted. ‘What she thought was love. Moonstruck lust in reality, and I was dotingly led by the nose to arrange a disaster.’

‘Tush, it was a sound business arrangement,’ she objected, leaning round to kiss the corner of his mouth. ‘Ralf ’s skills and our horses. It wasn’t just Heulwen’s pleading that caused you to make the offer.’

‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But it has given me cause for doubt. Am I doing the right thing this time? Where Heulwen is concerned, I stand too close to see clearly.’

For a time, Judith continued kneading his shoulders in silence while she considered. ‘The blood bond with you and her dowry are reason enough for him to seek her in marriage,’ she said at length. ‘He’s known her for a long time, and he did offer for her before.’

‘Perhaps,’ Guyon said without conviction. ‘But there are other heiresses of similar, if not greater value.’

‘Then mayhap part of her value to him does lie in personal attraction, and that is all to the good. After the way Ralf treated her, Warrin’s pride will be like balm on an open wound.’

Guyon was silent. Judith eyed the back of his neck with exasperation, recognising this mood of old. He would sit on his doubts like a broody hen on a clutch of eggs, and nothing would move him until they either hatched or went stale. How to send them stale? She pursed her lips: after twenty-eight years of marriage, she had several diversions in her armoury — short-term at least. She slid her hands down over his collarbone and chest, leaned round to kiss him again on throat and mouth, let her hair swing down around them, bit him gently.

‘It was snowing on our wedding night, do you remember?’

Guyon’s lids twitched but did not open. He caressed Judith’s hair with a languid hand. ‘Yes, I remember,’ he said, with a smile. ‘You were scared to death.’

She propped her chin on one hand and traced her index finger lightly over his chest. ‘I was too young and badly used to know better,’ she said softly. ‘You gave me the time I needed and for that I’ll always be grateful.’

‘Just grateful?’

‘What do you think?’ She sought teasingly lower and giggled to hear him groan.

‘Jesu, Judith, I’m not young enough to game all night any more!’

‘What would you wager?’

‘Doubtless my life if I made the attempt!’ He laughed, and half lifted his lids to study her. The rich tawny hair was stranded with silver now, and fine lines webbed her eye-corners and spidered around her lips. But she was still attractive, her body trim despite the bearing of five sons and two miscarriages between. Theirs had been a political match, forced upon them both, and begun with mistrust and resentment on both sides; but out of the seeds of potential disaster had grown a deep and abiding love. His pleasure in her was still as keen as it had been in the early days, for Judith had an extensive store of devices and surprises to keep him interested, and he was essentially of a faithful nature, seeing no point in going out to dine on pottage when there was a feast at home.

‘The trouble with Ralf was that he enjoyed pottage,’ he murmured.

‘What?’ Bewildered, Judith stared at him.

‘Nothing. Foolish thoughts aloud. I told you, you’re flogging a dead horse.’ Laughing, he pushed her hand away.

‘Speaking of which, Renard will need another mount before we go to Windsor.’ She kissed his jaw and laid her head on his shoulder. ‘He bids fair to outstrip you in height and he’s not sixteen until Candlemas.’

‘So I’d noticed,’ Guyon said with rueful pride. ‘Starlight can go for use as a remount. There must be at least another five years left in him. He was only a youngster when Miles first had him.’

Judith felt the familiar pang strike her heart as he spoke the name of their eldest son; her firstborn, drowned with his cousin Prince William when the White Ship went down. How long ago was it? Six years, and still as if it were only yesterday she could see Guyon riding into Ravenstow’s bailey with the disastrous news received in Southampton, and she eight months pregnant with William, the wind raw on her face, turning her cheeks as numb as her mind. No grave at which to mourn, just a wide expanse of grey, sullen water.

She nuzzled her cheek against Guyon’s bicep seeking to blot out the pain, and thought of her father the King, whose every hope and scheme had foundered in that vessel. Not only the loss of a son, but the loss of a dynasty in male tail. Miles could never be replaced, but at least she and Guyon had the grace of four surviving sons.

‘I haven’t seen Matilda since she left to become an empress,’ she remarked, thoughts of Henry leading her to thoughts of the small, truculent half-sister whom she had last seen at the age of seven, stamping her foot at Queen Edith and shrieking in a tantrum that she was not going to Germany, that no one could make her.

‘Apparently you are fortunate,’ Guyon said drily. ‘Adam was not impressed.’

‘I feel sorry for her.’ Judith defended Matilda. ‘There cannot have been much joy in her life. A little girl adrift in a strange country, forced into different customs and language, and cut off from her family. I know her husband was kind to her, but to a child of her age he must have seemed ancient.’

‘A replacement for her father then,’ Guyon said sleepily, and yawned.

‘Probably,’ Judith agreed. ‘So when he died, and her real father started making demands on her to come home when it was he who had packed her off in the first place, is it any wonder that she should turn mulish and difficult? After all, he hasn’t recalled her out of loving concern, has he? I’ll wager he rubbed his hands with glee when her poor husband died! She knows very well that if her brother were still alive, or if Queen Adeliza had proved a competent brood mare, she’d still be in Germany, the Dowager Empress and highly respected by people whom she knows and suits. As it is, all the barons are eyeing her with suspicion and muttering into their wine. A mark to a penny there’s another husband being chosen for her, strictly of her father’s choosing.’

She paused to draw breath, aware that her indignation on Matilda’s behalf had carried her too far. Her words, by association, might lead back to the niggling treadmill of the match between Heulwen and Warrin de Mortimer, the very thing she had sought to distract Guyon from in the first place.

‘Anyway,’ she said, adroitly changing the subject, ‘it will be a pleasure to see Henry and discover how he’s progressing in Robert of Gloucester’s charge, and it’s a long time since I’ve had a good gossip with Rob’s wife.’ Her tone warmed with anticipation. ‘That little booth’s always there at Christmas, you know, the one that sells attar of roses, and I need to buy some more thread-of-gold for that altar cloth in the chapel, and we’ve almost finished the saffron. ’

‘Enough!’ her husband groaned, laughing. ‘You will clean me out of silver!’

‘But in a good cause.’ She nibbled his ear. Her hand strayed downwards again, teasing, knowledgeable.

‘Wanton,’ he murmured, shifting to accommodate her further.

‘For a dead horse, you’re remarkably lively,’ she retorted.

‘…A dead horse,’ said the serjeant as Guyon gestured him to his feet. ‘A dun stallion with an arrow in his belly and his throat slit wide. Our patrol came across him in the middle of the drovers’ road; he was crusted in a night’s fall of snow.’

‘Any other signs of a skirmish?’ asked Warrin de Mortimer, speaking around a mouthful of bread and honey.

‘I couldn’t rightly tell, my lord. The snow had blown and drifted. At first we did not realise there was a horse there at all, until one of the dogs found him.’

‘A dun.’ Heulwen put her cup down, her colour fading. ‘Adam had a dun with him yesterday, and it was the road he would have taken to Thornford.’

Warrin gave her a sharp glance, a hint of irritation in his ice-blue eyes, then dropped his gaze and took a gulp of cider to wash down his bread, hoping that the Welsh had done to Adam what they had done to Ralf. It would stop Heulwen agitating over the witless sod, and he would be able to comfort her as only a husband could.

‘And Renard went with him,’ Judith said, one hand at her throat, the other gripping the trestle.

‘He was riding a dun; I saw him leave,’ said William. He had been sitting quietly at the end of the dais, a wooden soldier in one hand and a heel of bread in the other, only half understanding what was being said, but alerted enough by the fear in the adult voices to be frightened himself. ‘It was Sir Adam’s remount. He had a black mane and tail and a blaze.’

The serjeant swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes, that’s the one.’

‘Holy Christ. ’ Judith closed her eyes.

‘Mama, Renard’s all right, isn’t he?’

Judith turned a blind, terrified gaze on her youngest son, changing it swiftly, but not swiftly enough, and gave him a meaningless smile. ‘Yes, of course he is, sweetheart. ’ After all, there were no corpses saving that of a slaughtered horse. William came to her and she drew him close, holding on to his small, warm body.

‘Eric, get the men saddled up,’ Guyon snapped at his grizzled constable. ‘I want to see this for myself. We’ll ride on to Thornford along the drovers’ road.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ offered Warrin, gulping down the last of his cider and standing up. ‘You can use my men to swell the ranks of your own. Safety in numbers, I think.’

Guyon nodded brusquely and left the trestle to go and arm, beckoning the serjeant to come with him so that he could be further questioned as to what he had seen.

Judith bent over her youngest son, reassuring him, her heart clogged by dread. The November sacrifice, she thought: two sons paid, three still to lose. She shuddered.

‘Take care,’ Heulwen said to Warrin, grasping his sleeve.

‘Don’t worry,’ he answered with a tight smile and bright eyes. ‘I’m not going to be cheated out of what is rightfully mine.’

She frowned.

‘Look,’ he said with heavy patience, ‘Adam de Lacey is too experienced a fighter to fall prey to a piddling band of Welsh — more’s the pity — and if Renard’s with him, then Renard will be all right. Trust me, sweeting.’ He silenced her intention to speak with a hard kiss that took away her breath, released her, and went after Guyon, pausing only to squeeze Judith’s shoulder reassuringly as he passed.

Heulwen watched him stride across the hall and from her sight, his pace assured and arrogant. A shard of ice lodged in her heart. She remembered a soft summer day and the dismayed cries of the servants as Warrin rode into her bailey, Ralf ’s blood-soaked body draped like a dead deer across Vaillantif ’s back. She remembered the dull, sightless eyes, the wounds that had bled him white, and the void expression death had set on his face. Warrin telling her then not to worry; telling her again now, like a foretaste of doom. With a small cry she gathered her skirts and fled the hall for the sanctuary of the chapel and cast herself down on her knees before the altar, and there entreated God to keep Renard and Adam safe, and to forgive her sins.

Adam paused, hands on hips, breath steaming into the clear, frosty air, and watched the men from Ravenstow ride into his bailey. A snort rippled from him when he saw Warrin de Mortimer astride the piebald stallion. ‘That’s two marks you owe me,’ he said to Jerold.

The knight squinted against the cold glare of the sun. ‘That’s two marks more than he’s paid out over that horse,’ he said acidly. ‘But then what need when it’s part of his future bride’s dowry and you are fool enough to have trained him for love, not money?’

Adam gave Jerold a hard stare, but the knight was not for retreat and returned it full measure and Adam was the first to disengage. ‘What need indeed?’ he said, and turned to crunch across the snow and greet the horsemen.

‘Adam, thank Christ!’ Guyon said sharply as he dismounted. ‘What in hell’s name happened?’

Adam shrugged his shoulders. ‘What you would expect. The Welsh must have had their scouts out yesterday morning and seen me pass on the road to Ravenstow. We weren’t laden with travelling baggage, so it wouldn’t take a great intellect to deduce we’d probably be returning soon that same way.’ Gingerly he touched the clotted slash on his jaw. ‘They bit off more than they could chew, but we didn’t have it all our own way. I lost three good men and sixty marks’ worth of destrier, not to mention those wounded.’

‘Where’s Renard?’ Guyon stared anxiously round the bailey for his son. ‘Was he injured?’

‘No more than grazes,’ Adam reassured him as they turned towards the hall. ‘He danced too close for comfort with a Welsh spear, but Sweyn got to him in time. He’s still abed, but only because I sent him there last night with a flagon of the strongest cider we had, and a girl from the village. I don’t expect to see him this side of noon.’

‘You did what?’ De Mortimer looked at him in disgust.

‘Oh don’t go all pious on me, Warrin!’ Adam snapped. ‘The lad fought well — accounted for two of the bastards on his own and got himself clear of a gut-shot horse in the middle of a pitched battle — but it’s a violent baptism for a youngster raw from the tilt yard. He took sick afterwards. In the circumstances, I thought it best that he drown his dreams in drink and the comfort of a woman’s body, and Christ alone knows why I am justifying myself to you!’

‘Calm down, Adam.’ Guyon touched his rigid arm. ‘I’d probably have done the same with him. Just thank God you’re both safe. When I saw that horse in the road. ’

‘I was going to send to you this morning, but I’ve not long risen myself.’

‘Did you take to drink and dalliance too?’ de Mortimer needled him.

Adam’s jaw tightened, making his wound hurt. He thought of several sarcastic replies but decided that to utter them was to play into Mortimer’s hands. ‘We took a prisoner,’ he said to Guyon, half turning his shoulder on the other’s galling presence. ‘He’s got a nasty head wound and a slashed thigh, and he’s still out of his wits. The village herb-wife had a look at him and says he’ll mend, but doesn’t know how long it will be before he recovers his senses.’

‘You had reason to make of him a prisoner then?’ Guyon prowled forward to the hearth. The snow on his boots became transparent and slowly melted into the rushes. A dog came to sniff at the cold air on his cloak.

‘He was wearing gilded boots and there were jewels in his sword-hilt. Someone of note among his people, I would say. If we had left him in the road he would have died.’

‘What’s one less Welshman except a blessing?’ de Mortimer said moodily and kicked at the dog as it came to snuffle him.

‘Not in this instance. It may be that we can barter him for peace.’

‘And we all know a Welshman’s notion of peace!’ de Mortimer scoffed. ‘If it had been me, I’d have left the whoreson to die!’

‘I know,’ Adam said tightly. ‘Either that, or helped him on his way. You’re good at that.’

It had been an insult flung like a wild blow in battle, but it certainly hit its mark. De Mortimer whitened and recoiled as if he had been physically struck. ‘You stand need to speak so when your own father. ’

‘Christ on the cross let be!’ Guyon said sharply. ‘You’re like a pair of infants. For all the heed you’ve taken of the manners drilled into you at Ravenstow, I might as well have saved my breath!’

There was a difficult silence while the two antagonists glared at each other. Then Adam broke eye contact and cleared his throat. ‘Do you want to see my Welshman?’ he asked. ‘It may be that you will know him.’

Guyon inclined his head, noting wearily that neither man was prepared to apologise.

He lay on a pallet in one of the upper wall chambers, a maidservant tending him and a footsoldier posted outside the curtained doorway. ‘Although God knows, with that leg, he’s not going far,’ Adam said as the woman curtsied and withdrew a little. A brazier had taken the chill from the room and was positioned near the pallet to afford the stricken man the best of the warmth. The room had no access to daylight, and the constant use of rush dips and candles had streaked the walls with soot.

Guyon stared down at the captive on the bed. The youth’s face was blue with bruises and hollow in the cheekbones. The black curls had been cropped away from a nasty contusion the size of a gull’s egg high on his forehead. His cheeks were oily with the bloom of late adolescence. ‘He’s only a youngster,’ he said, surprised into compassion. ‘No, I don’t know him. What about you, Warrin?’

De Mortimer shrugged. ‘They all look the same to me. I haven’t been much on the borders these last three years, and by the looks of him, three years ago he would still have been taking suck!’

‘Someone’s bound to claim him,’ Guyon said. ‘The Welsh kinship bond is sacred, and he’s well-bred, you say, perhaps even the leader of this escapade?’

‘Could well be,’ Adam nodded, ‘the Welsh blood their young men early.’

‘How bad is the leg wound?’

‘He’s stitched up like a piece of Bishop Odo’s embroidery and likely to take the wound fever, but Dame Agatha is doing her best for him.’

Guyon started to turn away. Warrin made to follow him, but his cloak pin had worked loose and the brooch dropped to the floor with a soft clink. Muttering an oath, he stooped to retrieve it, and at that moment the patient stirred with a groan and opened his eyes.

Immediately Guyon and Adam turned to him, but de Mortimer was the nearest, his square, strong bones illuminated in the light of the rush dips, and it was upon these that the young Welshman focused. A look of sheer horror crossed his face and he shrank back into the pillows, crying out in Welsh.

‘It’s all right,’ Guyon said quickly in that same language. ‘No one is going to harm you. You are here to be healed and returned to your family.’

The youth shook his head, panting hard, his eyes on de Mortimer.

‘You say you do not know him, but he certainly seems to know you, and well enough to be afraid,’ Adam said, drawing Warrin away from the bed while Guyon continued to soothe the patient.

‘I’ve never seen the whelp before in my life!’ Warrin snapped. ‘It’s obvious. He’s taken a blow to the head and his wits have gone wool-gathering. Anyone who looks even remotely Norman is fodder for his nightmares.’

‘Perhaps,’ Adam said noncommittally and eyed the prisoner who had subsided against the pillows, his eyes once more closed. He was either exhausted, or too frightened to look upon Warrin de Mortimer again.

‘What are you going to do about him?’ Guyon asked as they returned to the hall. ‘You’re due to leave for Windsor within the fortnight.’

Adam pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps ask your father to come here. He’s acquainted with most of the Welsh families of the region — related to half of them come to that. He’s competent to deal with whatever arises, and I can leave Jerold here with him. If the lad’s family come to negotiate, they can take the first steps without me, and I should be home by January’s end to conclude them.’

Guyon nodded agreement, eyes thoughtful.

‘What was all that gibberish he was babbling?’ asked Warrin as the men gathered to warm themselves at the hearth.

Guyon’s tone was neutral. ‘He said he never meant to eavesdrop and that if you let him live, he would not tell a living soul.’

‘Tell a living soul what?’ Warrin looked blank. ‘What does he mean?’ A pulse throbbed hard in the base of his throat.

‘I suppose we’ll find out in good time,’ Adam said evenly, then turned away to view another black-haired young man in shirt and chausses who had just collapsed on to a trestle bench at the side of the hall dais and now sat groaning and rumpled, his head clutched between his hands.

‘Your heir, my lord,’ Adam grinned to Guyon, ‘safe and sound.’

Despite the sables lining her travelling cloak, Heulwen shivered as she stood beneath an overhang and waited for the grooms to lead her saddled palfrey out from the stables. The snow had become sleet, needling silver and white from a sky the colour of a dirty hauberk — and hauberks were in evidence everywhere as the final preparations were made for the journey to Windsor — and from the look of the weather, a wet, uncomfortable journey it was going to be.

Renard squelched across the bailey, furred cloak already mired at the hem, armour glinting as he strode. She was about to call out to him, but a young woman came running out of one of the bailey buildings and accosted him. Renard glanced round, set his free arm about the girl’s willowy waist, and whisked her into the darkness of a doorway, where Heulwen saw his cloak swirl around her to enclose, and his head bend to her offered lips. The falconer’s daughter, she thought with the glimmer of a smile. Amazing what prowess in war did for a man’s standing with women. Renard’s pretence at manhood was swift becoming reality.

Heulwen had been hysterical with relief at his safe return, but only a portion of it had been on Renard’s account. The thought of Adam sprawled somewhere in a frozen puddle of his own blood, like Ralf a victim of the Welsh, had terrified her beyond all coherent thought. Nothing had been the same since. She was still reeling and uncertain, balanced on a see-saw of want and denial. She clenched her fists and fixed her gaze upon Warrin’s broad, solid frame as he stepped out into the sleet, his face twisting into a grimace of discomfort. He was her betrothed in all but the pledge now that she had consented. All that prevented their union was the formality of the royal yea-say and there was no reason for that to be denied.

He came towards her, blowing on his hands, caught her gaze and smiled. She managed a wan response.

‘Chin up, doucette, you look as dismal as this godforsaken weather!’ He stooped and kissed her cold lips, then stood back to look at her.

‘This journey is hardly going to be a jaunt to a fair,’ she responded, trying to draw some inner glow of feeling from his presence, but the only warmth that came was because he was shielding her from the wind.

‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he said with a smile and placed a small drawstring bag in her hand. ‘It won’t ease the misery of this weather, but it might lighten your heart, and it will certainly gladden mine to see you wear it. Call it your betrothal gift.’

Heulwen loosened the string with fumbling, frozen fingers and slid a circular cloak pin on to her palm. It was an ornate, spectacular piece, wrought in gold and inset with glowing jewels of sapphire, ruby and rock crystal.

‘Thank you, it’s beautiful!’ She turned it over, thinking to herself that it was also ostentatious and indicative of her future husband’s attitudes and tastes.

‘Here, let me pin it on for you.’ He reached eagerly to pluck loose the pin that already held her cloak. It was a simple thing by the standards of the gorgeous object she now held, a braided silver circlet given to her by her father on her seventh year day. It made her feel uneasy to see it so summarily dismissed. Carefully, tenderly, she dropped it in the empty leather bag.

‘Is it not a risk to display such wealth as this on a long journey?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘Surely it would be more sensible for me to wear it when we reach Windsor — perhaps when you ask the King for me?’

Warrin snorted with patronising indulgence, making her feel in truth no more than seven years old. ‘You worry too much over trifles,’ he said, as he forced the new brooch through the thick Flemish cloth. ‘We are armed to fight off any chance attacks on the road. We could even deal with a horde of Welsh if they came at us. No, beloved, it pleases me that men should see the high value I set upon my prize.’

‘Not your prize yet,’ she reminded him, nettled at his superior tone.

‘Well then, my future prize.’ He finished securing the pin and lowered his hand, as if by accident brushing the curve of her breast. ‘My future wife.’ His voice thickened and his mouth fastened on hers, demanding. Feeling like a whore who had been paid in advance to show gratitude, Heulwen responded with the unthinking expertise taught to her by Ralf, her heart numb and her fingers frozen as she linked them around Warrin’s neck.