The Wild Hunt

CHAPTER 24

SUMMER 1102

Rhosyn drew rein and let the leather hang slack in her capable fingers so that old Gwennoll could graze the dusty roadside grass. Beyond them, pocked and rutted, the road cut through fields and forest and past formidable fortresses - the marcher eyries of Robert de Belleme - until it reached Shrewsbury, crouched within the protection of the Severn bend. Behind her on the drovers' road lay Wales and safety, as far as anything could be termed safe these days. Guyon had been right, Robert de Belleme and his vassals had turned the marches into hell for men who had to travel them for a living. The war in the south where King Henry sought to bring his most voracious Earl to heel sent disturbing rumours scudding north. If Arundell fell to the royal forces, then the storm would burgeon here in the heart of de Belleme's honours and blight the land she rode.

She considered now the left fork and felt a surge in her solar plexus. She always did when she thought of Guyon and not just because of what had been between them. He would be furious when he realised she had risked crossing the border with only a drover and his market-bound herd of sheep for protection.

Her father had been in Flanders when his heart had finally failed his driving will and he had died in a hostel on the Bruges road. Prys had sailed from Bristol to fetch his body home for burial. They would mourn him, and then, because time did not stand still , they would marry. Rhosyn bit her lip, beginning to regret the impulse that had driven her from the hafod towards the market at Ravenstow. There were items she needed, she told herself, items for her wedding. The item she most wanted, she could not have. Better to settle for the same thing in a serviceable day-to-day mould without the gilding, but knowing what was better and sensible did not ease the pain.

'Why have we stopped, Mam?'

Rhosyn looked round at her daughter and the fine lines fanning from her eye corners deepened into a deprecatory smile. 'I am beginning to wonder if we should have come at all .'

'Too late now,' declared Twm sourly, riding up from behind, the pack ponies jingling behind him.

'Won't Guyon be pleased to see us then?' Eluned looked anxiously at her mother and then at Heulwen cradled sleeping in Twm's broad embrace.

'Probably not,' Rhosyn admitted ruefully. 'He may not even be there, not with the war down in the south.'

'What about his wife, will she?' asked Rhys, thinking of the young woman he had met on several occasions during trading visits with his grandfather. Despite himself he liked her.

Beneath her wariness dwelt a sense of humour and a genuine interest in people whatever their station.

'Perhaps.' Rhosyn's fingers twitched on the reins and Gwennoll raised her head and backed restively. Guyon's wife. How would she react to their presence at Ravenstow and what in God's name was she going to say to her if they met?

Neither child nor virgin, Guyon had said, but as vulnerable as blown glass, and there had been an expression in his eyes that she had never seen before.

'I don't want to meet her,' Eluned said with a mutinous pout. 'She's probably a haughty Norman bitch.'

Rhosyn turned to her daughter. 'Whoever we meet and whatever happens, you will remember your manners and not disgrace my name or your grandfather's. Is that understood?'

'Yes, Mam,' Eluned said with a scowl.

The market at Ravenstow was in full cry, the booths hectic despite, or perhaps because of, the unrest and warfare swirling around the county.

Men had to make a living and even with their lord absent at the siege of Arundel, the Ravenstow lands were still safer than many.

There were stall s of pies, breads and sweetmeats to tempt the hungry. Spice vendors cried their wares. One of the Ravenstow guards was having a tooth drawn, the efforts of the sweating chirurgeon observed with grisly relish by a critical crowd. A performing bear lumbered in pawing, shaggy circles to the music of an off-key set of bagpipes played by a man with a paunch that could have supported a cauldron.

There was a cacophony of livestock. Women sat with baskets full of surplus home produce to barter or sell - cherries and root vegetables, butter and cheese. The potter was there with his green-glaze wares, as was the salt chandler, the shoe-smith, the basket-weaver, and the other tradesmen of the town.

Judith did her duty by the senior merchants and towns-people, pausing to speak and smile and discuss, setting their fears at rest before making her purchases. At the bronze-smith's booth, she bought a new chappe for one of Guyon's belts and a collar for Cadi, the bitch having deposited the last one somewhere on a ten-mile stag hunt, and then she repaired to the haberdasher's stall to obtain needles and embroidery silks for the hanging she intended to warm the solar wall .

Another woman was already there, intently scrutinising a length of ribbon. A small child clutched her skirts and peeped up at Judith from a pair of round, kingfisher-blue eyes. An older, black-haired girl at the woman's other side shifted impatiently from foot to foot. Behind Judith, de Bec muttered a startled, stifled oath.

'What's wrong?' Judith asked, half turning. In that same moment, the boy Rhys stepped from the crowd and joined his mother and sisters at the stall . There was no mistaking the relationship.

They all had variations of the same blunt nose and their hair grew to a similar pattern.

' Heulwen, dewch yno,' said the mother absently as her redhaired youngest one moved from the safety of her skirts towards Judith.

Judith's stomach turned over as the child smiled at her. She put her hand to her mouth and bit on at her. She put her hand to her mouth and bit on the fleshy side of her palm. Guyon's mistress, Guyon's daughter, here in the heart of their lands.

Here, where she had thought she was inviolate.

What did one do? Fight? Back away like one cat sighting another? Brazen it out? Judith lowered her hand and drew herself up. She was no longer a child beset by unfocused emotions, bereft of weapons or defence. She had the knowledge now and the confidence to use it. All that this woman had were the ties of the past ... and the child. Involuntarily, Judith's hand went to her own flat belly before she crouched to the infant's level.

'Heulwen,' she said with uncertainty and smiled.

Rhys turned his head, dark eyes widening.

Rhosyn looked round, the ribbon twined in her neat, capable fingers, her expression first surprised, then anxious. It was a pleasant face with glossy arched brows and full -lidded autumnal eyes. Pretty, but not strikingly so and there were faint weather lines seaming her eye corners.

'I am Judith de Montgomery, Guyon's wife,' Judith introduced herself with an impassivity that gave no inkling of the seething emotions beneath.

'If you have come to see him, I am afraid you will be disappointed. He's down at Arundell with the King.'

Heulwen smiled coyly at Judith before turning to her mother and pressing her face into her skirts.

Her heart thumping, Rhosyn stared at the woman who now rose to her feet and confronted her. Were it not for her cool statement of identity, she would never have connected the imagination to the reality. Here was a striking young woman, as slender and straight as a stalk of corn in her golden wool gown and not an inch of vulnerability in her attitude.

'I am pleased to meet you, my lady,' Rhoysn responded in excellent accented French marred by the crack in her voice. 'You are not as I thought.'

The gold-grey eyes fixed on her in cool appraisal. 'Neither are you.'

Rhosyn swallowed. 'I have not come to make of Guyon a battleground,' she said, trying to defend herself against Judith's gaze which owned the properties of winter sunlight - bright but killingly cold.

'But nevertheless you are here, and I do not think that it is because you intend buying trinkets or watching the bear dance.'

'No, there is more to it than that,' Rhosyn admitted. 'Some of it is a matter of trade. I have those spices you asked my father to obtain for you last time and I needed some trimmings for a new gown ...' She drew a shaky breath. 'My father went to Flanders last month and died there. Prys has gone to bring him home. I was hoping to ask Guyon for an escort back into Wales - he did promise me one should I need it - and I thought he should know of my father's death ... and other things.' Her voice stalled into silence.

'Then you had best come up to the keep,' Judith said stiffly. 'There will be tallies to settle and you will need a place to sleep. I am sorry to hear about your father. We had become friends.' She wondered what she would do if Guyon came unexpectedly home now and lavished all his attention on Rhosyn and their small , engaging daughter. It was an area they had left well alone.

Judith had never enquired beyond the superficial and he had seldom volunteered insights, both of them avoiding what might cause them too much pain. She saw now, too late, that they had been wrong.

The tension between the two women remained palpable, although Judith relaxed her guard sufficiently to haggle prices with Rhosyn, who responded vigorously to the challenge as soon as she realised Judith's astuteness. Eluned was sulky and intractable and de Bec took her and Rhys off to the stables to show them Melyn's latest batch of kittens before the child's rudeness became inexcusable. The two women were left alone in each other's company, except for the infant.

'Eluned has lost her father and now her grandfather,' Rhosyn sighed, 'and this new babe has not made matters any easier.' She looked tenderly down at the child curled sleepily in her lap. 'I did not mean to conceive, you know - a slip-up with the nostrums that would have prevented such a thing. She is a tie with Guyon I could well do without.' Gently she touched the feathery whorls of red-blonde hair and smiled. 'She takes her colouring from Guyon's grand-sire, Renard de Rouen. He married a Welsh girl, old Lord Owain's daughter, Heulwen. My father was at their wedding, although of course he was no more than a child himself then.'

Judith was silent, not knowing what to say.

Spoken in a different tone, Rhosyn's words might have been a challenge, yet crooned softly like a lullaby to a drowsing infant, there was no threat but, Jesu, they stung all the same. A vision of Guyon's lithe, muscular body filled Judith's inner eye. She knew exactly how his skin would feel beneath her fingertips; the gliding, sensual promise of joy. So did Rhosyn, the child in her arms a visible, living reminder of the pleasure Guyon had taken on her body. And as yet she had no such reminder to comfort herself.

Glancing up from her sleepy daughter, Rhosyn glimpsed Judith's expression before it was masked to neutrality, and her stomach lurched.

Behind that controlled facade there stalked a wild beast.

'Perhaps it would be better if you gave me my escort now,' she suggested with dignity.

Judith parted her lips to snarl an agreement, caught her voice in time and, hands clenched in her lap, looked away towards the space upon the solar wall where she intended to drape the hanging. The jealous anger she felt was corrosive and damaging. She had to face it and force her will through it. Turning back to the small , dark Welsh woman, she laid her hand on her sleeve.

'No, please stay. It is too late in the day to set out for Wales. You would not reach your home before dark. Besides, we have not concluded our business. Can you obtain some more of that rich cloth for me? The last gown was ruined in London.'

'I will try. We've been swamped by demands for it since last winter, but of course you and Guyon have priority. I'll speak to Prys.' She studied Judith warily. They were navigating a deep, narrow channel and where there were not jagged rocks to be avoided, there were currents and whirlpools.

Ignorant of adult strivings, Heulwen slept, a heavy warm weight in her mother's arms, and Rhosyn was only too glad to accept Judith's invitation to put her down in the upper chamber with Helgund and Elflin.

The room was well appointed and reasonably warm, for in addition to the braziers it boasted a hearth. The maids whispered delightedly over the sleeping child. Rhosyn laid her daughter in the huge bed which dwarfed the small form to the size of a doll and, after tenderly smoothing her curls, gazed around the room. The wall s were bright with hangings that stayed the draughts and combated the seeping coldness of the stone wall s. The narrow windows were covered by slats of wafer-thin ox horn so that at least some daylight was permitted into the room, but rush dips still illuminated the corners and unseen things seemed to lurk there. She shivered and hugged her arms.

'Is there something wrong?' Judith enquired.

Rhosyn shook her head and smiled wanly. 'I hate these places.' She shuddered. 'No light, no air save that it be musty and tainted with damp. The wall s hem me in. I never sleep well when I'm lodged in one of these keeps. I need to be free.

Guy could see it, but he never understood. He loves the stones. Perhaps they grow warm under his touch as they do not under mine. It is one of the reasons I would not stay with him. In time the nightmare would have swamped the dream.' She looked round at Judith and dropped her arms to her sides. 'You are like him; content to dwell here.

You do not feel the hostility. I could no more make my home in a keep than you could live rough in Wales.'

Judith took her coney-lined cloak from the clothing pole and handed Rhosyn hers across the space separating them. 'Then you do not know me,' she responded with a glimmer of fierceness. 'Yes, I do enjoy the security of these wall s and caring for those within their bounds, but it is not all my life and, if it was, I would go mad.'

She led her out of the room and on up the twisting stairway to the battlements, her tread making nothing of the steep, winding steps.

Almost defiantly she added between breaths as they went, 'I know how to track and snare game. I can make a shelter from cloaks and branches. I speak a fair degree of Welsh and I can use a dagger as well as any man. When Guy goes on progress to his other holdings, I go with him and it is no hardship for me to sleep beneath a hedge or hayrick wrapped in my cloak. I need to feel the wind in my hair and the rain on my face. Sometimes I come up here for precisely that purpose.'

Rhosyn, her calves aching, put her hands on the stone and leaned between the merlons while she rested to gain her breath. A guard saluted the two women. Judith greeted the man by name and stood beside Rhosyn, her tawny hair wisping loose of its braids.

'You have it in you to keep him,' Rhosyn said, seeing now the promise. Not just a strikingly attractive young woman, high-bred and Norman with all the domestic and social skill s that a man of Guyon's status required, but one who beneath the cultured exterior was still only half tame, a thing of the woods, wild for to hold. Guyon was not about to grow bored with such a complex, complementary blending of traits.

A few late swallows swooped the sky, their cries poignantly sharp, like needles darting through blue cloth. Judith looked down at her hands. 'If we are granted a life together,' she said with a hint of bitterness and stared at a blemish on one of her nails until her eyes began to sting.

'Since last Martinmas, I have scarcely seen him. Either he is with the King, or about the King's business and the times he is home, he just eats and sleeps and his temper is foul ... but then I suppose it has reason to be. There is no guarantee that Henry will win this war. If he fails it won't matter whether I have the ability to hold him or not ... in this life at least. De Belleme knows whose work was behind half the charges he was summoned to answer.'

Rhosyn leaned with her and watched the swooping birds. A trickle of foreboding shivered down her spine. 'Is he in serious danger?'

'I have never known my lord when he has not been in serious danger,' Judith said with a reluctant smile. 'From his own contrary nature, if nothing else. He sets out to court trouble sometimes and I have the devil's own job to persuade him that he should be courting me instead!'

It was spoken with humour, but it was in no wise amusing, as Rhosyn well knew. Leopards did not make good hearth animals. They were liable to tear out your heart.

The watch changed, spears scraping on stone, jocularities bantered. Some sheep were driven into the bailey from the surrounding fields for slaughter the next day. Below them, the market was packing up as folk began wending their way home. Leaning over the battlements, Judith saw the guard who had been having his tooth pulled weaving this way and that over the drawbridge, clearly the worse for drink. She made a mental note to check with de Bec that he was not on duty that night.

'I was foolish to come,' said Rhosyn in a soft voice that Judith had to strain to hear. 'Only I wanted ... I wanted to see you for myself. If I am honest, that at least was the half of it.'

Taken aback, Judith stared at her. 'I would call it a very dangerous indulgence,' she said.

Rhosyn made a face. 'Do you think I have not said the same thing to myself a hundred times over?' She smiled sadly. 'But it has been like a sore tooth, nagging me and nagging me until it had to be drawn. I had to know. Well , now I do and I am glad it is over, but that is not the sole reason I am here.' She drew a deep breath, her eyes on the horizon towards which the sun was now angling. 'My second cousin Prys, who lives in Bristol and with whom we have strong business ties, has asked me to marry him and I have agreed.'

'Congratulations,' Judith said courteously. 'When is the wedding to be?'

'We don't know yet. Before Christmastide, I suppose. We have my father to mourn first and the business to sort out.' She frowned and pressed the heel of her hand into the gritty stone.

'I've known Prys since we were children and Rhys and Eluned are fond of him ... but it is Heulwen, you see. After all , she is Guyon's daughter and for the sake of what was between us, he should know my decision. Prys has no heirs. Perhaps in the fullness of time I shall bear him children, but he is willing to take Rhys, Eluned and Heulwen for his own.'

'I do not think Guyon will stand in your way,'

Judith said slowly after a pause for consideration.

'Neither do I.' Rhosyn blinked. 'It has run its course, for him at least. We never had enough in common to make of it more than a dry grass fire. I wish ...' Rhosyn shook her head and turned away, her chin wobbling.

Judith had imagined Guyon's mistress to be dark and mysterious and beautiful with all the wiles at her fingertips. Only the first was true. The reality was a straightforward practical woman with a generous, gentle spirit. She could see why Guyon had held on to the bond for more than four years and also why it must now be severed. And Rhosyn saw too, or else she would not be crying here beside her on the battlements.

Rhosyn sniffed and, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, gave Judith a watery smile. 'I am sorry, I was being foolish. Will you and Guyon come to the wedding?'

Judith looked doubtful. 'Will it not cause trouble?'

Rhosyn shook her head. 'Prys knows my past. You will be most welcome.'

Judith inclined her head. 'Then gladly we will come, circumstances permitting.' She watched the drawbridge being drawn up for the night. One of the men on watch shouted a cheerful insult across to the guards at the winch and was answered in kind.

'I hope Guyon will still see her on occasion,'

Rhosyn added. 'She is his daughter.

'She will always be his firstborn,' Judith agreed with a judicious nod. 'It would be wrong to try and prevent him. That far I will permit you to tread on my territory because I cannot change it, but seek further at your peril.'

From the inner bailey, the dinner horn sounded and someone cheered with irony.

Rhosyn stared at Judith. The challenge was there in Judith's strange, stone-coloured eyes, but leavened by a twinkle of humour. 'I do not think you will see me at Ravenstow again,' she replied.

Rhosyn rode out the next morning on to a sun-polished road with an escort of eight serjeants and her manservant, Twm. The pony hooves echoed on the dusty drawbridge planks. She looked beyond the rise and fall of their loaded backs to where Judith stood between the bridge and portcullis, one arm shading her eyes, the other raised in farewell . Rhosyn returned the salute briefly and turned in the saddle so that, like her mount, she faced Wales.

At noon they stopped to water the horses and eat a cold repast of bread, cheese and roasted fowl. Heulwen, as usual, ate the cheese, spat out the bread and made a thorough mess. Eluned in contrast, nibbling as daintily as a deer, considered her mother, swallowed and said, 'He was forced to marry her, wasn't he, Mam?'

Rhosyn looked at her daughter in concern.

Eluned had been very quiet since yestereve's rudeness, a brooding kind of quiet that would not yield to cozening. 'At the outset, yes,' she answered cautiously.

'He does not love her.' Eluned fingered her amber necklace.

Rhosyn bit her lip. The child's eyes were her own - hazel green-gold and full of pain. You grew up and learned to hide it, that was the only difference. 'You cannot say that, Eluned,' she said. 'It is what you would like to be true, not truth itself. You should wish them joy in each other, not strife.'

'She's ugly!' Eluned thrust out her lower lip.

'Eluned!'

Heulwen choked and Rhosyn unthinkingly rescued the half-chewed piece of chicken wing from the back of the infant's throat, her attention all focused on her elder daughter.

'I hate her, she's a Norman slut. Guyon belongs to us, not her!'

Rhosyn's hand shot out and cracked across Eluned's cheek. Eluned gasped. The men of the escort looked round from their oatcakes and ale.

Eluned put her hand to her face, stared at her mother with aghast, brimming eyes as the mark of the slap began to redden. Whirling round, she fled beyond the startled men into the thickness of the brambles and trees.

'No, Mam, let her go.' Rhys caught Rhosyn's arm as she made to pursue. 'She's leaving a trail a blind man could follow. I don't think she'll go very far.'

Rhosyn subsided with a sigh. 'It is my fault. I did not realise it ran so deeply. She used to say that she was going to marry Guyon. I thought it was a child's game.'

'So did she,' Rhys said with a wisdom beyond his years.

Rhosyn reseated herself upon the spread skins to finish her meal, but her eyes kept flickering towards the trees.

Rhys considered her for a moment and then gave an adolescent sigh, heavy with impatience, and hitched his belt.

'All right, Mam, I'll go and find her.' Rhosyn gave him a grateful smile. She wondered how to go about dealing with Eluned when she returned. Diplomatic silence as if it had never happened? Detailed, careful explanations? A scolding? Sympathetic affection?

Heulwen was rubbing her eyes and whining.

Rhosyn bent her mind away from the problem of her elder daughter to persuade her younger one to take a nap beneath one of the skins.

Two greenfinches dated across the clearing, their song a chitter of alarm. A horse snorted and, throwing up its head, nickered towards the trees, ears pricked. One of the men put down his drink and went to the restless beast.

Sounds of something crashing blindly through the under-growth came clearly to their ears, and then a cry. Rhosyn sprang to her feet, her heart thudding against her ribs. She stooped and covered Heulwen, by now asleep, with another of the skins, concealing her as best she could.

Her escort drew their swords. Shields were reached for and slipped on to men's arms. One of the escort turned to give Rhosyn a command but she ignored him, transfixed by horror as she watched her son stagger towards them, hugging the trees for support, his tunic saturated with blood.

'Rhys!' she screamed. Lifting her skirts, she started to run towards him. A young serjeant, Eric's brother, caught her back.

The boy looked in the direction of her voice, but his eyes were blind, his mouth working, pouring blood. 'Mam!' he gasped frothily and then, choking, 'The Cwmni Annwn!'

'Rhys!' she screamed again and tore free of her captor to run stumbling to where he had fall en face down in the turning crisp leaves. He was dead. She could see the rents in his clothing where a blade had been plunged and his blood was hot and dark on her hands.

Bent over her son, she did not hear the horrified warning yelled by her escort, nor see the riders of the wild hunt advancing through the trees, the wild hunt advancing through the trees, following the trail of lifeblood to their victim.