The Wild Hunt

CHAPTER 13

It was fortunate for Guyon that the journey into Wales proved uneventful, for he felt as though his brains had swollen to twice their size and were thumping the cage of his skull in a vigorous attempt to escape. It was a long, long time since he had fall en victim to an overindulgence of wine.

Since quitting the court, he had held to sobriety and his capacity to drink had thus diminished.

He knew he had not been considerate of Judith, but her sulky expression, her frown as he mounted up to ride out and his own malaise had not lent him the inclination to tug her braid or smile and bear with her. The guilt and the knowledge that he would have to make amends and somehow smooth their differences when he returned only made his headache worse, while his stomach churned like a dyer's vat.

By the time they reached the hafod it was full noon, the sun shimmering the men's mail to fish scales of light, dazzling the eye. Madoc, in his heavy wool en gown with coney trim was as red as clay, sweat dribbling down his face so that he looked as if he were melting.

Guyon tethered his grey to a post in the yard and then, his skull feeling as if it would split asunder, removed his helm and followed Madoc over the threshold.

Eluned ran to her grandfather and embraced him with enthusiasm. Tossing back her silky black hair, she saw Guyon and went to him. 'Mam's had the baby,' she announced. Her eyes, bright hazel like Rhosyn's, were anxious. 'It's a girl.' She clung tightly to his arm.

'I know, anwylyd.' He kissed the top of her head.

The midwife paused in ladling a cup of broth into a wooden bowl and looked at Guyon. 'Birth went easy enough,' she said to him with a curt nod. 'Babe's small , but she'll thrive.'

'May I see them?' he asked in Welsh, his tone deferential, for one did not trifle with the great respect in which these women were held. Other than the will of God, it was upon their skill that the life of a mother and child often depended.

'Take this in to her, lord,' she said, giving him the cup of broth. 'But do not be too long; she is tired.'

Eluned made to follow, but her grandfather caught her back and asked her to find him a drink.

Guyon pushed aside the curtain that screened Rhosyn's bed from the main room, and put down the bowl of broth on the coffer beside it. His movement stirred the air and Rhosyn raised her lids. For a moment she thought she was dreaming or that she had contracted the deadly childbed fever and was hallucinating. Then she rallied herself because Guyon was too travel worn and sweat-streaked to be an illusion. He was watching her with dark, pensive eyes as if he did not know how she would receive him. She sat up and softly spoke his name.

'Beloved.' He knelt beside her and took her hands in his.

He was wearing his mail shirt, the rivets glistening a sullen grey in the dim light. His business over the border this time was official.

'I am glad you have come,' she said and was annoyed by the betraying wobble in her voice.

'Did you doubt I would?'

'There was no obligation on you to do so.'

'No obligation?'

She watched his gaze turn to the wooden crib at the bedside and the swaddled scrap of life it contained and she bit her lip, afraid, knowing she did not have the strength to fight him if he chose to make of his daughter a battleground.

Oblivious, the baby slept, a fluff of red-gold hair peeping from beneath its swaddling cap.

'There will always be an obligation, cariad. '

'Guy ...'

'No,' he said softly, touching the baby's fledging fuzz before giving Rhosyn a look filled with pain. 'I am as leashed to your bidding as that hound out there ... Just don't kick me out of the door without giving me a chance. Does the little one have a name?'

Rhosyn shook her head.

'Permit me?'

'I ... I do not know.'

He took her hand. 'Why do I receive the impression that you do not trust me?'

'Because I don't. Naming is a kind of possession for life.'

'What else am I ever likely to have of her, Rhos?

A distant glimpse from a tower top. A snatched meeting here and there. From babe to child to woman in the blink of an eye. She is yours. I accept that, but at least grant me the grace of her naming.'

'Your way with words has always been your deadliest weapon,' Rhosyn accused him, shaking her head, her eyes brilliant with unshed tears.

'Very well , I grant you that grace. Do not abuse it.'

'Not Hegelina or Aiglentine then,' he agreed incorrigibly, but kissed her tenderly, almost but not quite with reverence, before he leaned over the cradle again to look at his sleeping daughter.

'Have you told your wife?' Rhosyn wiped her eyes on her shift.

'Judith knows,' he said without inflection.

'And is not best pleased?'

He rubbed his aching forehead. 'She's developing a sense of possession,' he said ruefully, 'and sometimes it is uncomfortable.'

'I read her letter to Huw's wife. They were not the words of a child. Children grow up, especially at that age. It may be that suddenly you have a woman on your hands.'

His mouth twisted. 'It would still be rape,' he said laconically. 'Not that much of a woman.'

'Even so, bear it in mind, Guy,' she said and then was silent, drinking her broth before it went cold.

'Heulwen,' he said after a time. 'What do you think?'

She put down the cup, looking surprised.

'Heulwen?'

'I promised no Norman monstrosities.'

'I thought you would choose Christen, for your mother.'

'I already have a flighty niece to bear that name.

No, let her be called for my Welsh grandmother, Heulwen uerch Owain. Besides, she has the colouring to suit the name.'

Rhosyn cocked her head, considered, and then slowly smiled. 'Yes,' she said softly, 'I approve, Guy. I approve very much.'

The midwife appeared to shoo him out of the room and Madoc was waiting to usher him to the table, still short of wind but a better colour and full of self-satisfied bonhomie. Eluned clamoured for his attention and he gave it with half a mind and smiled at Madoc with another portion, locking away what was left until it could be reviewed without tearing the fabric of his soul. Heulwen.

Sunshine. Clouds across his vision.

Travelling home, he would have been at Ravenstow's gates by compline had not Arian cast a shoe and begun to limp. The fine weather had broken up, the innocent, fluffy clouds of early morning displaced by a seething mass of charcoal grey, laden with rain.

'Best rest up for the night, my lord,' said Eric.

'There's a village not far and there's bound to be a farrier.'

Guyon blinked through the downpour. The ground beneath his feet was a brown tapestry of mud and puddles and his boots and chausses had long since become saturated. Despite it being summer, he felt chilled to the bone. Beyond the lush June-green of the trees and against the lowering sky, a church tower reared through the rain. Further away, dominating its knoll , crouched the timber keep formerly belonging to Ralph of Serigny, but now the property by marriage of Walter de Lacey.

'You reckon it safe?' Guyon said wryly to his captain and slid the wet reins through his fingers, eyes half closed against the rain.

'No, we'll bide at the alehouse if they have one while the farrier sees to Arian, then we'll be on our way. I'd rather ride whole into Ravenstow than carved into joints and stuffed into my saddlebags.'

Eric grimaced. The Chester road at night in this deluge was not a heartening prospect, but his lord was right. They were too close to the Serigny keep at Thornford for comfort and Walter de Lacey, if he discovered their proximity, would not baulk at murder.

The village proved substantial enough to own not only a smithy, but a good-sized alehouse and while Arian was shod, Guyon and his men repaired to the latter to fortify themselves for the damp miles remaining.

The floor of the main room was covered in a thick layer of rushes upon which were set two well -scrubbed long trestles. Rush dips gave light of a kind and a fire burned cleanly in the hearth.

The ale-wife was a florid, handsome woman of middle years whose voice bore a strong Gwynedd lilt. Her husband, bluffly English by contrast, sent their son outside to tend the horses.

The only other customers were a young couple seated unobtrusively in the darkest corner of the room, quietly attending their meal. The girl raised her head at their entrance and stared at the armed men with wide, frightened eyes. She had fragile bones and delicate gauzy colouring. Her husband was a plain, wide-shouldered young man, somewhere between twenty and Guyon's own age. He looked warily at the newcomers and put his left hand protectively on top of the girl's.

His right stayed loose, within easy reach of the long knife at his belt.

Guyon, after one startled glance at the girl's luminous beauty, ignored the couple and sat down. Water dripped from his garments and soaked into the rushes. Eric gingerly eased himself down beside his lord and rubbed his aching knees.

The woman brought them bowls of mutton stew, fairly fresh wheaten loaves and pitchers of cider and ale, her manner deferential but briskly efficient. 'Foul night to be travelling, sire,' she addressed Guyon. 'You can bed down here if you've a mind to stay.'

He thanked her and shook his head. 'You've a new lord over at Thornford and I'd as lief not encounter him.'

'Worse for business than the plague!' complained the landlord, adding a bowl of honey cakes to the table. 'Started already it has and Sir Ralph barely in his grave. He could be a bastard, but he was so mean that it was good for business. Folks would come here rather than claim a night of hospitality up at the keep, what with him and mad Mabell for hosts.'

'Now folk don't come at all ,' his wife sniffed. 'Or if they do, they're like yourselves, here and gone for fear of Lord Walter and his routiers.' She hitched her bosom and stalked away.

Guyon and Eric exchanged glances. The couple in the corner finished eating and went out into the deluge, the man's arm curved around the girl's narrow shoulders.

One of Guyon's men gave an appreciative whistle. 'Pretty lass,' he said.

'Her father's one of the grooms at the keep,' the landlord volunteered, helping himself to a mug of cider, one eye cocked for the reappearance of his wife. 'The lad's a huntsman there, or he was.

Had an argument with the new lord and didn't see fit to stay beyond packing his belongings. He's a proud 'un, young Brand, and his wife's a rare beauty as you all saw. Sir Ralph was never one for the women. Too old and not enough steel in his sword to bother getting it out of the scabbard, but Lord Walter ...' He paused for effect and a gulp of cider and wiped his hand across his mouth. 'Nothing in skirts is safe from his pursuit.

Best game-keeper he'd got, that young man. New lord's an idiot if you ask me to throw away talent like that for lust. Mind you, I can see why he was tempted. I'd ...' He stopped, hastily put down his mug beside Eric's arm and stepped away from the trestle, pretending bustle as his wife returned, her mouth puckered, although not for a kiss.

Eric chuckled into his moustache. Guyon pushed his bowl aside and finished his ale, hiding his own smile behind his mug. 'I'm away to the smithy,' he announced, biting his lip to keep a straight face as their host grimaced like a goblin behind his wife's back. 'The farrier should have finished with Arian by now.'

'I'll come with you,' said Eric. 'There's safety in numbers in this neck of the woods.'

Guyon threw him an amused look, saw that his shield-bearer was grimly serious, and stopped smiling.

'We're in need of a huntsman at Ravenstow,' Guyon said thoughtfully as they crossed the street, which was deserted in the rainy evening. 'I haven't properly replaced Rannulf yet. Perhaps I should go after the lad and offer him employment.'

He flicked a mischievous glance at Eric and was not disappointed.

'You are courting danger if you do, my lord,' Eric warned. 'You heard what the landlord said. Sir Walter won't let them go, you know that. Don't you think you've chanced enough just lately?'

'And not so much as a boar in sight,' Guyon teased as they reached the smithy.

Eric inhaled to remonstrate, but stopped before t h e damage was done. Having been Guyon's marshal for fifteen years, he was all too aware that his lord could be a devil incarnate when the mood was upon him: witness that escapade with the sheep and the silver. Arguing with him only made him the more determined to follow his course. Hold to silence, and sense might just prevail.

Guyon glanced along his shoulder at Eric, almost laughing to see the poor man choking on words he was longing to utter. 'Surely I am not so unamenable to reason,' he jested and picked up Arian's forehoof to examine the new shoe.

'My lord, you know you are not,' Eric said, not in the least mollified.

The stall ion's coat steamed gently as it dried in the heat from the forge, the dapple reddened to a flickering roan. Guyon put down the hoof and, with a nod to the farrier, paid him the halfpenny fee. In the act of putting the coin in his pouch, the man stopped, his gaze darting into the gathering twilight.

Eric swung round, right hand going to his hilt.

Hand on the bridle, Guyon stiffened. Hooves thudded on the dirt road and harnesses jingled. A man swore bawdily in Flemish and a woman cried out. Guyon spoke quickly to the farrier and, taking the reins, led Arian out of the enclosure and into the village street. At the crossroads twenty yards away a group of mounted, mailed Flemings had surrounded the young couple from the alehouse and were refusing to let them pass.

'I'm a free man,' Guyon heard the young huntsman say hotly in accented French. 'You've no right to bar my path.'

'Go on then, you're free!' laughed one of the men, teeth flashing. 'We've no quarrel with you that your little wife won't be able to mend. Lord Walter wants her back.'

'On her back!' corrected someone with a snigger.

'He has no right,' the young man replied, guarding his wife with his body. 'We are free to leave as we choose.'

'You're free to die,' replied the spokesman.

Suddenly a blade sparkled. The girl screamed as a Fleming groped for her bridle. Her husband felt for the dagger at his belt, but subsided in mid-motion to duck beneath the murderous sweep of the drawn sword.

'Let them pass,' commanded Guyon, his own sword free and confidently held, his knees commanding Arian to thrust forward between the couple and their tormentors.

The Fleming measured Guyon and the older man behind. Two of them to their nine and only the foremost mounted, but the grey was solidly boned, the man astride exuded the confidence of ability and they were probably not alone. 'Don't meddle in what's not your business,' he growled.

'Sound advice,' Guyon retorted. 'Apply it to yourselves and let them pass.' A swift glance revealed that the mercenaries were spreading out to encircle himself and Eric. Strained ears caught the sound of a shout from the alehouse end of the street.

The Fleming wasted no more time on words, but lunged at Guyon, whose arm was jarred to the shoulder as he warded the vicious blow, not with the safety of his shield but the blade of his own sword. Bluish-white the sparks glanced off, and he realised grimly that his assailant was left-handed. A man was taught from the cradle to crouch behind the shield worn on his left arm, to let it take the blows and to counter-strike with his sword in his right. Sword to sword was a nightmare. You parried and risked snapping the blade, or you missed the parry and you died.

Behind him, Eric gasped as a blow caught him beneath his guard, splitting his mail but not cutting through the thick quilting of his gambeson. The girl was crying. Someone snatched the dagger from her husband's hand and pinioned his struggling arms like a coney prepared for the table.

Guyon thrust his shield against a sword blow on his left and felt the blade score and slide off the toughened lime-wood. With his knees he commanded the stall ion to pivot and lunge against the mount of the left-handed Fleming, their leader, and brought his sword across, unexpectedly hard and low. It almost worked, but the mercenary was too experienced and at the last moment intercepted the move with a slicing sidelong slash. Guyon twisted and parried. Pain seared his thigh as the Fleming's blade bit flesh.

He locked his wrist against the pommel, sweeping the other sword sideways, changed his grip, and slashed. The Fleming grunted, lost his grip on the reins, and hunched over his saddle.

Guyon swung Arian. The end of a flail grazed his hair. He slammed his shield into the backswing, kneed Arian forward, and was rewarded by the shriek of someone unexpectedly unhorsed.

' Ledworth!'

Guyon heard with relief the rallying cry of his own men.

' A moi! ' he bellowed, hacking about him. Arian lashed out, and another horse neighed high and shrill with pain. The leader of the Flemings toppled from his saddle, hit the churned mud, shuddered and was still . His second in command looked around, saw that they were now outnumbered and, with panic in his voice, yelled the order to retreat.

A rearguard attempt to bring the huntsman and his wife away with them was aborted as Guyon spurred Arian between their horse and that of the Fleming tugging on its bridle. The sword chopped downwards, cleaving leather, flesh and bone. The mercenary shrieked as he was parted from three of his fingers. Guyon grasped the gelding's broken reins and pulled the horse hard about.

One of his men took the bridle from him and passed the couple through to safety.

Guyon turned Arian around. The horse was bleeding freely from several slashes on his neck and forequarters and was jittery, still spoiling for battle, so that Guyon was forced to stay in the saddle. There was blood running down his leg. It would have to wait. Undoubtedly reinforcements would be summoned from Thornford and set on their trail.

The young huntsman had taken control of their mount and was busily knotting the reins to make them whole again. 'There is no way we can thank you enough, my lord,' he said to Guyon. 'We owe you our lives.'

Guyon smiled bleakly. 'Walter de Lacey is no friend of mine. You owe me nothing. It was a pleasure. I'd advise you to be on your way as soon as you can, though. He tends to nurture grudges.'

'You do not need to tell me that, sire!' the young man snorted. 'I'm a free man and I'll not work for the likes of him. Lord Ralph was mean and sour, but he'd not lay about him with a whip for the pure pleasure of it, nor take a girl to his bed if she were not willing!'

Guyon shifted his gaze to the delicate blonde young woman watching them anxiously. Probably she was about Judith's age but she looked no more than twelve, just the kind that de Lacey enjoyed. 'Where are you and your wife bound?'

'I have relatives in Chester, my lord. They will take us in while I find work. I thought I would seek employment with Earl Hugh.'

'There is work nearer to hand at Ravenstow if you desire it. I've been a huntsman short since last winter. Make up your mind as we ride,' Guyon offered. 'Ravenstow is on your road anyway and you would do well to take advantage of an armed escort off Serigny lands. If you decide against staying, I'll recommend you to Earl Hugh. He's a personal friend.'

The young man considered him from beneath a tumble of wet brown curls. Guyon FitzMiles was a huntsman short because Sir Walter had almost beheaded the man in a fit of fury during a hunt to honour the marriage of Ravenstow's heiress, or so the rumour went. Something about the theft of a horse and a broken boar spear. 'Thank you, my lord,' he replied, turning to his horse. 'We are grateful.'