The Wild Hunt

CHAPTER 28

When Judith arrived at Thornford in response to an urgent summons from her husband; it was sunset of the second day and work still hard afoot to repair the worst of the miners' ravages.

In the outer ward, scene of so much previous destruction, small cooking fires burned as normal, tended by the soldiers' women and the smell s of bread and pottage wafted enticingly on the evening wind. Judith guided Euraidd between the fires. A bat swooped low overhead, casting for insects in the gloaming. Broken arrows and lances littered the ground.

A groom held Judith's mare and Guyon himself stepped from the shadows to lift her from the saddle. His lids were heavy and dust-rimmed.

Sweat and battle dirt gleamed in the creases of his skin, but the narrow semblance of a smile glinted before he stooped to give her a scratchy kiss.

'You made good speed, Cath fach,' he approved. 'I had not thought to see you until tomorrow noon at least.'

'Needs must when the devil drives,' she answered lightly, her eyes full of concern.

His smile vanished. 'Yes,' he agreed blankly and turned, his arm around her waist, to face the keep. 'Needs must.'

Judith eyed him thoughtfully. His letter had informed her of the victory and asked her to come quickly, little else, and she had hailed the messenger back from his refreshment to reassure her that Guyon was not wounded. First qualm of terror dissolved, she had set out to pump the man for the information not contained in the letter.

'I'm sorry, Guy,' she said softly and pressed his arm.

He made a rueful gesture. Faced by the thought of being unable to go on, he had felt a desperate need for the comfort of Judith's forthright, astringent presence and, despite its stilted brevity, his letter had come straight from the heart. Indeed, had he paused for rational thought at the time of writing, he would have left her at Ravenstow rather than command her here to the shambles of a recent battleground - but yesterday there had been little room for reason.

'I suppose it is for the best,' he owned as they entered the inner ward. 'When you crush a flower it fall s to pieces. God's eyes, Judith, if only I had--'

'Guyon, no!' She stood on tiptoe to press her palm against his lips. 'You must not shackle yourself with guilt. Rhosyn would have taken her chances on the drovers' roads far more recklessly were it not for your warnings. At least you sought to protect her and the children.'

'But it was not enough.'

The stubble prickled her palm as his lips moved. Judith studied him narrowly. 'When did you last eat and sleep?'

Guyon took her hand away to grasp it in his. 'You sound like my mother,' he said with a hint of weary amusement.

'Who by all accounts was a woman of sense,' she retorted. Her brow wrinkled. 'Why send for me if you did not want to be nagged?'

'Because ...' He drew a sharp breath as if to change his mind, then stopped and faced her, scraping a hand distractedly through his hair which was in sad need of cutting. 'Oh curse it, Judith, because you are the most infuriating, stubborn and capable woman it has ever been my misfortune to know!'

She burst out laughing. 'Is that a compliment or an insult?'

'To be honest, I do not know!' He set his hands on her shoulders. 'All I do know is that I need you as I've never needed anything in my life.'

Judith gasped and staggered. He was pungent with horse and sweat and smoke. His armour could have stood up of its own accord so strong were the mingled aromas.

'And why precisely should you need me?' she demanded archly. 'Apart from the obvious.'

He grinned at that, shaking his head at her tart perception, but sobered quickly as they began to walk again. 'Apart from the obvious, I need you to organise this shambles so that more than just cold pottage and dried meat graces the table.

The servants don't know their heads from their heels and Lady Mabell is in no fit state to organise them. I do not have the time.'

'Lady Mabell is here?'

'And her son.' A frown drew his brows together. 'They are both sick with the bloody flux. Look at them if you will , but I suspect it is in God's hands now.'

There was something in his tone, a harshening that made Judith regard him with sharp curiosity.

He paused at the foot of the forebuilding steps, fist gripped tightly on the hilt of his sword, as if holding it down in the scabbard.

'What is to become of them if they survive, Guy?'

He followed her gaze to his clenched fist and removed it carefully from the grip before he answered, his nonchalant shrug belied by the grim set of his jaw. 'The lands will be forfeit because de Lacey has rebelled against his King, but they were only his by right of marriage anyway. I suppose the child will inherit them when he is of an age to do so and in the meantime Henry will appoint a warden. The convent is the best place for Lady Mabel.'

'And de Lacey?' she asked.

'Is bound for hell !' he snarled. 'The reckoning is only postponed, not abandoned.'

Judith found Lady Mabell and the child in a chamber off the hall . The floor was strewn with new rushes and the bed had been made up with clean linen, but the air was still fetid with the stench of bowel sickness. Judith went to the shutters and threw them back, opening the room to an arch of smoky twilight sky. Helgund always swore that night vapours were bad for the lungs, but Judith had slept too often beneath the stars to give any credence to such superstition. Besides, night vapours were a sight more sweet-smelling than the human ones of the moment.

Sounds drifted up from the bailey; the good-natured raillery of two serjeants, the outlandish Welsh singing at the miners' fire, the neigh of a truculent destrier.

The woman on the bed thrashed and moaned.

Judith went to her and laid a gentle hand on the hot forehead. Mabell de Serigny raised sunken lids and struggled to focus. Her head rolled on the pillow and a shudder racked her wasted body.

Red stars of fever burned on the points of her cheekbones and her breath laboured in her lungs: a matter of time only, Judith thought, and short at that.

The child in the crib was awake and alert. As she approached him, his eyes locked on hers and tenaciously followed her movement. They were his father's eyes, ale-brown in colour, the tone echoed in the thick, straight hair. He drew his knees up to his chest and wailed hoarsely.

Judith bent and picked him up. He was hot to her touch, but not burning and, as far as she could see, his condition was not yet mortal.

'Poor mite,' muttered Helgund as she set down Judith's basket of medicines. 'What kind of life is he going to make with the start he's had?' She came to peer into the infant's face and crossed herself at the marked resemblance to his sire.

'Better than the life he would have had otherwise,' Judith answered as she laid him back down and set about mixing a soothing potion to ease Mabel's pain. 'A mother who cannot speak, who never wanted him and a father who has bullied, deceived and butchered and who harbours a vicious lust for young girls. What kind of example would he have had as he grew up? At least now he has a chance to learn honour and decency.'

'Mayhap you're right,' said Helgund, but she still looked dubious. 'I cannot help but think that wolves breed true.'

'He is only half wolf,' Judith said gently. 'And there is good blood on his mother's side. Come, help me lift her and then I want you to fetch the priest.'

'No hope then?'

Judith shook her head. 'There are others afflicted like this too. My guess is that the well water is to blame and that the weakest have succumbed. My lord has set the servants to cleaning out the shaft.'

'I wondered why you had left the shutters wide.'

'What do you mean?'

'To let her soul fly free, m'lady.'

Judith said nothing. Let Helgund believe that she adhered to that old custom if it would stop her from lecturing on the ill s of open shutters at night.

Mabell coughed and choked on the bitter nostrum and most of it dribbled down her chin.

The infant was dosed with more success than his mother and his soiled linens changed. Unlike Heulwen, he was slow to smile and exuded not one iota of her engaging charm. His stare was solemn, almost old ... but then, she thought, throat tightening, Heulwen had known only love and affection down the length of her short life and this child never had. Mabell had rejected him, so the maids said, and left him to the wet-nurse who had been a dim-witted slatternly girl from the village with more interest in her trencher and the attentions of one of the grooms than in the infant she was supposed to be suckling.

Judith blinked away the suspicion of tears and sat by the crib, smoothing the child's thick hair until his lids drooped and his breathing came slow and soft and then she rose and, leaving him with Helgund, went to administer similar comfort to her husband.

Guyon stepped into the tub, hissing softly through his teeth as the hot water found cuts and bruises he had forgotten he possessed until now. Slowly, he eased himself down into the herb-infused water until it lapped his shoulders and, tilting back his head, closed his eyes.

Clouded visions danced before his darkened lids. The imagined image of Eluned's death and the reality of the raw earth mound in the garth behind the churchyard. Rhosyn's mutilated body.

Heulwen asking in bewilderment for her mother.

Heulwen smiling at him through her lashes in the exact manner that had been Rhosyn's, her pudgy hand curled trustingly in his. He swore, opening his eyes, and jerked forward in the water. Judith cried out and backed away from him, almost dropping her basket of medicines.

'What's wrong?' She looked at him askance.

Guyon subsided with a shake of his head.

'Nothing,' he said, tight-lipped.

Judith set down the basket. 'Strange behaviour for a nothing,' she remonstrated. 'That's a nasty graze on your shoulder. You had better let me look at it before you dress.'

His mouth softened. 'Yes, madam.'

She bent to sort through his baggage and find him some presentable garments, clucking in irritation at the dismal state that three weeks without female attention had wrought on his clothes.

'What of Lady Mabell and the boy?' he asked far too casually as he busied himself with his wash.

Judith looked round, a pair of leg bindings dangling between her fingers. 'Lady Mabell will die,' she said bluntly, 'probably before dawn.

There is naught to be done. The child will likely survive.'

There was a long silence. Judith came over to the tub, drawn by the quality of his tone. He looked up at her, then bleakly away into the middle distance. 'Do you know, Judith, when they told me that Eluned was dead and that the boy and his mother were still here in the keep, in my power, I wanted to kill them both?' He swallowed hard. 'The little boy ... he looks so much like his father ...I actually found myself unsheathing my sword and standing over him ... and then where would be the difference between myself and Walter de Lacey?'

Judith had put her hand over her mouth. Quickly she took it away as his gaze shifted towards her.

She knelt beside the tub and gently touched his tense arm. 'You would have derived no pleasure from it, Guy, not like him.'

'You think not?'

'You did not do it, however much you desired,' she replied steadily, 'and that is the difference.'

His look was bleak. 'No,' he said. 'But I thought about it so hard that it might as well have been the deed. If Eric hadn't been in the room with me...' He broke off the sentence.

Judith was filled with burning anger - at Walter de Lacey, at Robert de Belleme, at this whole war and at how far Guyon had been pushed and pushed and pushed. Suddenly she understood his need of her and that she must not fail him.

'You were overset and there is no point in brooding upon it.' She shook his shoulder. It was his grazed one and his breath caught. 'Guy, look at me.'

He turned his head. 'You did not do it. You held back,' she said slowly and clearly.

'Yes,' he agreed in a toneless voice, gaze slipping wearily from hers and back to the middle distance.

'Oh, in the name of the Holy Virgin!' Exasperated and cross because she was frightened, Judith thrust herself to her feet. 'Go on then, wallow until you sink in your own guilt. Just do not expect me to follow you!' She flounced away towards the flagon and reached jerkily for a cup.

Guyon shut his eyes and, with a soft groan, leaned his head against the rim of the tub. 'Judith, let be. I can't argue with you, not now.'

'And that is half the problem,' she diagnosed tartly. 'You are so tired that your wits are not serving you as they should. You don't want to argue with me because you dare not. You need time to rest and recover.'

He gave a crooked smiled. 'There is need and need, Cath fach. Henry needs my report and then he needs me. My own needs can wait.'

'You will be worse than useless to him.'

'Stop pricking me, Judith. I'll manage.'

'And you have the gall to call me infuriating and stubborn!' she retorted. When he chose not to respond, she narrowed her eyes and, mouth set, reached for her vial of poppy syrup and laced his wine with it, adding a hefty splash of aqua vitae to disguise the taste. Her eyes brightened with tears at the memory of the last time she had poured him wine while he lounged in a tub and she contrasted it bitterly with the present. This time there was no brimming laughter, no electric charge of sexual tension. This time there was only fear-tinged determination and exhaustion.

Returning to the tub, she handed him the spiked wine. 'Speaking of needs,' she said, changing the course of her attack, 'the men at least will have to be released for harvest very soon.'

'Such as are necessary,' he agreed. 'I suppose I will have to hire mercenaries to replace them. I'll send to Ravenstow for the strongbox.' He took a gulp of the wine and choked on the underlying bite of the aqua vitae.

'Drink it!' she commanded, eyes fierce, cheeks flushed, terrified that he would discover the taste of the opium.

His lids flickered wide at her peremptory tone and then he smiled slowly. 'Dare I? he asked.

'Last time you shoved a cup beneath my nose and commanded me like that, you were hell -bent on torture.'

Judith felt her whole face scorch fiery red. 'I saved your life, didn't I?'

'Yes you did, Cath fach.' His look became quizzical. 'Why are you blushing?'

Judith's heart began to gall op. 'I'm not,' she croaked. 'It is the summer heat.'

Guyon gaped at her over the goblet rim with undisguised astonishment. Hot without it might be, but the keep wall s were several feet thick, the gaps filled with rubble and, even in the summer months, it was comfortable to have braziers in the private chambers.

'I'll fetch food,' she muttered breathlessly, and detached herself from his scrutiny to dive for the doorway.

Guyon shook his head and then ducked it beneath the water to wet his hair and clear his thoughts, wondering how on earth Judith had the temerity to suggest that his mind was not serving him as it should when her own was quite obviously addled. He continued his wash and, frowning, took another swallow of the wine. That remark about the heat had been a flustered idiocy, her exit rapid before he could investigate further; or at least, he thought, until she had invented a more plausible excuse for her blush.

It was after she had given him the wine. Until then she had been simmering at him like a cauldron on a blaze. After a moment, a glimmer of enlightenment caused him to taste the wine again and roll it experimentally round his mouth.

Smooth, high-quality Anjou and rough border aqua vitae and ... ! He spat it out into the bath water and swore with soft vehemence, staring with furious eyes at the curtain through which she had vanished. Anger sparkled along his nerve endings, an invigorating anger, buoying him up, subduing fatigue. Lace his wine, would she?

Judith returned with a tray of cold roast pigeon and fresh white bread, a new flagon of wine and an excuse for her previous flustered behaviour ready and credible on her tongue, for it was in part the truth. She intended saying that she had been swept by desire at the sight of him in the bath along with the association of pouring him wine, and knowing how tired he was, had not wished to burden him further. It was therefore with a mingling of vexation and relief that she discovered he had fall en fast asleep in the rapidly cooling water.

Eyes raised heavenwards, she set the tray down on a clothing chest, gave Cadi a firm, low command that flopped the bitch down on her belly at the door, eyes still cocked in distant hope on the food, and went to the tub to pick up the empty goblet from the floor.

'In Jesu's name, Guy, you might have gone to bed!' she complained with exasperation, then shrieked as Guyon surged from the water like a pike, seized her and dragged her down.

'And you might refrain from poisoning my wine!' he growled as she tried to thresh out of his hard grip.

'I wasn't, Guy, truly!'

'You deny there was poppy in that wine?'

'Only enough to give you a sound night's sleep. You need it.'

'You did it in deceit!'

'It was for your own good.'

'Ah yes, my own good,' he said silkily. 'Swaddle me up like a babe while you are at it.'

'Guyon please, you're hurting me!' Judith half sobbed, more afraid of the cadence of his voice than the grip on her arm.

'I ought to beat you witless!' he complained, but let her go. She floundered from the tub, the front of her gown drenched, the ends of her braids dark bronze and dripping. 'Don't ever try that trick on me again.'

Judith took her courage in both hands. 'I'll make sure that next time you don't know!' she retorted. 'My only fault was that in my haste I did not disguise the taste enough.'

Guyon jerked to his feet in a swish of angry water. 'Dare it at your peril.'

'Threat or promise?' she asked with a saucy confidence she was far from feeling, aware that she was playing with fire and that one step too far would ignite a totally different conflagration from the kind she was nurturing now. 'Will you unlace my gown? It's soaked and I'll catch a chill .'

'Your own fault. Call your maids.'

'I can't. Helgund's sitting with Mabell and the child and if you glare at Elflin like that, you will terrify her, not to mention what Brand will do to you if he thinks you have been making improper advances to his wife.'

'What?' Guyon spluttered. He knew by now that he was being led a merry dance, but was too interested in its destination to halt the devious steps of its progress.

'Well , if I sent for Elflin and she saw you in that condition, the Lord alone knows what she might misconstrue. You know how timid she is of all men, saving Brand.'

'What cond--' Guyon followed the direction of her amused gaze, then flicked his own back to her face. Laughter was tugging at the corners of her mouth. She raised her eyes to his. They were round and innocent and she kept them on him as she raised her arms to remove her circlet and veil.

'Shall I leave that uncomforted, too?' she enquired with spurious solicitude. 'Or would you let me close enough to rub it better?'

'Judith!' Guyon choked, laughing despite himself. Half an hour ago he had been so weary and soul-sick that he could have lain down and died. Now the energy was flowing through him like a vigorous stream in spate. 'What am I going to do with you?'

'Get me with child?' she suggested, slanting him a provocative glance. 'Women are supposed to dote and soften when they are breeding.'

Guyon snorted. 'Since when have you ever done what other women are supposed to do?'

'There is always a first time. You might be pleasantly surprised.'

'For a change,' he said with a grin.

She gave him a lazy, answering smile. 'Unlace me, Guy?' she requested again.

He reached to the side fastening of her gown and began to pluck it undone. 'You are naught but a hussy, do you know that? Summer heat indeed!'

She stepped out of the drenched garment and turned in his embrace to twine her arms about his neck and meet his lips with her own. He reached for the drawstring of her shift. 'I have practised better deceptions,' she admitted impishly against his mouth. 'It's not knotted this time.'

'I did not think it would be,' he said wryly as the garment slid down from her shoulders and pooled at her feet and her body blended itself with his.