The Running Vixen

Chapter 9

The Welsh prisoner opened his eyes to full consciousness and stared in bewilderment at the limed white chamber walls surrounding him. Rushlight flickered. Beneath his fingers he could feel the grainy texture of a linen garment, and under that, the rapid beat of his fevered body. His throat was as dry as scoured parchment and when he tried to speak, no words emerged.

‘He’s awake,’ Adam said softly, and touched his companion’s knee.

Miles grunted and his head jerked up from his chest. Rubbing his eyes, he turned to the youth on the pallet and saw that, despite a slight fever, he was lucid and aware. Miles reassured him in Welsh that he was meant no harm. The youth’s dark eyes remained puzzled and suspicious, but he drank greedily of the watered mead that Adam set to his lips. He listened in silence while Miles introduced himself in the proper Welsh fashion, naming all his antecedents and relatives before telling him of Adam’s identity, where he was, and how seriously he had been wounded.

‘It was foolish to attack Lord Adam’s troop,’ Miles added with a shake of his head. ‘He might not speak the Cymraeg beyond a smattering, but that does not mean he is an idiot in matters of border warfare.’

The youth’s mouth twisted. ‘I don’t need lecturing,’ he said. His voice was hoarse and rusty from lack of use.

Miles nodded benignly. ‘Perhaps not from me, but your kin will be only too delighted to point out the error of your ways, once they know you are alive, I am sure.’

The down-turned mouth was joined by a heavy scowl.

Miles translated what had been said so far. Adam put the mead down. ‘Ask him who his kin are.’

Miles began to speak but the youth cut across him and said in halting French, ‘My brother won’t be delighted, he’ll be furious. You needn’t have gone to the trouble of saving me. He’ll murder me with his own hands when he finds out.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Davydd ap Tewdr.’ He looked down again. ‘I’m Rhodri, and younger than him by ten years. We’re born of different mothers.’

A slow, beatific smile lit up Adam’s face. ‘Worth your weight in Welsh gold then.’

‘Or a peace treaty,’ Miles said. ‘He’s ap Tewdr’s heir as matters stand.’

‘Yes, gloat,’ said the youth miserably. He shifted angrily in the bed and his body jerked taut, his breath locking in his throat.

‘You’ve made a regular mess of that leg, lad,’ Miles pronounced. ‘You’re lucky it’s not festering.’

‘I’ll send to your brother.’ Adam offered him the mead again. ‘There’s a Welsh carrier plies his trade through here once a month. He’s due next week and he’ll know where to take word. And I’d be an innocent if I did not know that your brother has his own ways and means of discovering your whereabouts.’

The youth drank and said nothing, but colour crept up into his face.

Adam frowned, eyeing his captive. ‘Tell me how you come to know Warrin de Mortimer.’

The colour vanished from the youth’s complexion. ‘He was really here then?’ he said hoarsely. ‘I thought perhaps it was just part of a bad dream.’

Adam’s mouth twitched. ‘So did I,’ he said half under his breath. ‘No, I am sorely afraid he was here, but he said that he did not know you.’

The lad shivered. ‘It may be so.’ He looked down at his fingers and interlaced them on the sheepskin coverlet.

‘You said something about eavesdropping?’ Adam pressed. ‘That you promised not to tell a living soul?’

Rhodri dug his fingers into the springy fleece. ‘He came to visit my brother under a banner of truce. They spoke together for some time. ’

‘And you overheard?’ Miles guessed.

‘Yes.’ Rhodri swallowed and looked at the older man. ‘Davydd never gives me any responsibility. He sends me out hunting or on petty scouting trips like a child.’

‘Sometimes it is hard to know when a fledgeling is ready to fly,’ Miles nodded sympathetically.

‘And sometimes a fledgeling’s wings are clipped!’ the boy snapped. His mouth compressed to a single narrow line.

Adam folded his arms. ‘So,’ he prompted, ‘what did you overhear?’

Rhodri continued to work on the fleece and watched his fingers in motion. ‘De Mortimer offered my brother silver to kill one of your barons — Ralf le Chevalier. He said that he had a loose tongue and had to be silenced. Davydd agreed. Le Chevalier was no friend of ours, and on more than one occasion he had trespassed with our women. I…Is there any more mead?’

‘Yes of course.’ Adam exchanged shocked glances with Miles as he poured a fresh measure into the cup and gave it to the lad.

Rhodri swallowed deeply and then leaned back against the pillows, his eyes closed and his hair sweat-soaked. ‘De Mortimer arranged the ambush and set le Chevalier up to be killed by us — but only Davydd knows that — and me, but I’m not supposed to. The rest of the men all thought it was sheer good fortune when we encountered them in the woods. De Mortimer was watching us, waiting until le Chevalier was down from his horse and bleeding his life into the ground before he made his move. He came down on us with his full force. If Davydd hadn’t been expecting just that kind of treachery, we’d have been dead too. Rhaid wirth lwy hir i fwyta gyda’r diafol.’

‘One needs a long spoon to sup with the devil,’ Miles translated grimly.

‘My brother was furiously angry about losing the chestnut stallion,’ Rhodri added. He darted a sheepish look at Adam. ‘I was going to gall him into a red rage by returning from this raid astride the very same horse he had missed, and instead he’s got to ransom me and thank his enemies for saving my life.’

‘Perhaps under the circumstances, he’d prefer to let you rot,’ Miles said drily.

Rhodri parted his lips in an expression midway between grimace and smile. ‘Brotherly love usually wins by a hair’s breadth,’ he said.

Adam paced across the solar until he reached the brazier, held his hands to the warmth and looked at Miles. ‘You know what this means?’

Miles moved his shoulders. ‘It could mean a lot of things, the main one being that my granddaughter is about to pledge her life to her husband’s murderer!’

‘Sir, she cannot be allowed to do it.’

‘Then stop her.’

‘How?’ Adam spread his hands. ‘She knows I hate even the taste of de Mortimer’s name on my tongue, and anything I try to tell her, she’ll dismiss as raving or fantasy. What do you want me to do? Abduct her over my saddle?’

‘Worth a try if all else fails,’ Miles said. ‘I’m past four score years, lad. Do I have to spoonfeed it to you? Go to the King, put the matter in his hands, and while you are about it, ask of him a boon.’

Adam eyed him suspiciously. ‘What sort of boon?’

‘Has he rewarded you for your tireless efforts to keep his delightful daughter alive? Knowing Henry, you’ve had a bagful of promises and a pocketful of nothing.’

‘And he’s unlikely to change!’ Adam growled. ‘If it’s going to hit his purse, then he’ll refuse.’

‘It is no concern of his purse,’ Miles said. ‘Ask him for Heulwen to wife.’

Adam’s tawny eyes widened. ‘Ask him for Heulwen?’ he repeated, voice rising and cracking as it had not done in ten years.

‘You hold your tenure direct from him, as did Ralf, and I shouldn’t think after the first shock Guyon will object to your suit. In a way, he may be relieved.’

Adam shook his head and walked away from the old man to stare at a hanging on the wall. It had been worked by his mother long before his birth and the moths had eaten it bare in places. His thoughts raced to the erratic thudding of his heart.

‘You need a wife,’ Miles added mischievously. ‘This place frequently resembles a midden.’

‘I can’t,’ Adam said in a flat voice. ‘I’m her foster brother.’

Miles said something very rude in Welsh, then reverting to French asked, ‘Is that how you feel?’

Adam swung round, sat down on a stool and placed his head in his hands. ‘Once, yes, when I was small, I did love her like that, but it changed a long time ago, for me, anyway. Heulwen still thinks of me as a brother.’

Miles raised a sceptical brow. ‘You know that for a fact?’

‘It was rammed down my throat when I brought her the horses.’

‘With more fear than conviction, I’ll warrant.’ Miles pursed his lips. ‘Of course, you don’t have to ask Henry at all, just tell him about Warrin and Ralf and hope he will act on it and that Heulwen will find a better mate in time. The choice is yours.’

Adam sat in self-contained silence. The candle fluttered in the sconce and light rippled suddenly on the fittings of his belt as he drew a shuddering breath and raised his head. ‘What if she turns on me with hatred?’ he said, recoiling from the thought of being rejected by her yet again.

‘Then I would call it a disguise for other feelings.’

Adam shook his head and looked away, but within him the hopes and terrors aroused by Miles’s suggestion jousted with each other for dominance. Heulwen. He could have Heulwen at his board, living day to day with him, sharing his bed in the great chamber above. Heat rose in his face. Heulwen looking at him in disgust, fighting him, derision on her tongue, and unlike Warrin de Mortimer he did not think he could find it in him to strike her silent if she baulked him, even if it were a matter of life and death. Life and death. He thought of what the Welsh boy had told them, its implications. Whatever the reasons, Warrin de Mortimer was guilty of murder. And likely he knew about the silver in Ralf ’s strongbox, and had set out to gain it for himself by the simple expedient of marrying his widow.

‘I’ll leave you to think about it.’ Miles pushed himself out of the hard, high-backed chair. ‘I’d like to see the lass settled before I die, so you’d best make haste.’

‘I don’t know whether to kiss or kill you!’ Adam said ruefully.

‘Save the kiss for Heulwen and the killing for where it belongs,’ Miles advised him. Legs stiff from having sat so long, he limped carefully from the room.

Adam stared at the archway through which Miles had disappeared, and slowly rose himself, a bemused expression on his face, his thoughts walking a mental tightrope. After a while, he began to realise that the rope was strung across a gorge that stretched into a distance he could not see, that behind and below snarled the demons and serpents of self-doubt and cowardice, and that the only possible way was forward. That understanding made his burden suddenly seem much lighter. He straightened and squared his shoulders, and strode from the chamber, calling for Jerold and Sweyn.