The Wild Hunt

CHAPTER 30

'I want the Welsh put out of the reckoning, Miles.'

Miles set down the destrier's hoof he had been examining and slapped the stall ion's powerful glossy shoulder.'

'Easier said than done, sire,' he said to King Henry. 'When we make war among ourselves, it is the time of their greatest profit.' He wiped his hands on his chausses and reached for his shirt.

'Perhaps I should have said the Welsh who are allied with de Belleme. The last thing I need when we march on Shrewsbury is for Cadwgan's rabble to come hurling out of Wales and attack from the side.'

Miles donned the garment and, hands on hips, signalled the groom to lead the destrier round so that he could assess how well the strained foreleg had mended.

'You want me to go to war against the Welsh, sire?' he asked with deceptive mildness.

Henry studied the stall ion's long, fluid stride. His lips twitched. 'I want you to negotiate with them, my lord - bring them to the trestle and make them see sense.'

Miles snorted. 'Anyone who sits at a trestle with you, sire, usually ends up being the meal,' he said drily.

Henry's smile deepened with appreciation and he made no attempt to deny the remark. 'They'll be susceptible to bribery. Offer Cadwgan whatever he wants - within reason. He's not particularly intelligent, but he's greedy and astute with it. With your Welsh connections and other skill s you should be able to persuade him off my back and on to de Belleme's.'

Miles looked wry. 'And what happens to be in it for me?' he asked. 'Apart from the warm glow of knowing that I am a loyal servant of my King?'

Henry pursed his lips. 'A dispensation perhaps?' he said, raising his eyes to Alicia as she came down towards them, a packet in her hands.

Miles's mouth tightened. He nodded to the groom and the horse was led away. 'When do you want me to leave?'

'As soon as you may. I want possession of Shrewsbury before the winter frosts stop the grass growing.' He turned to Alicia with a gracious smile. Her braids were still as black as midnight and she smelled wonderfully of attar of roses. 'Worth it, isn't it?'

Miles said nothing, but the tight line of his mouth was eloquent.

Alicia lowered her eyes before Henry. Of necessity he was occasionally a visitor, but she felt awkward before him and tried to keep their contact to a minimum. There had been desperate reasons behind her adultery. Henry's own need had been a simple, adolescent lust.

Mischievously, Henry reached for her hand to kiss it, but she evaded him and placed the packet in his grasp instead.

'What's this?' he enquired.

'I do not know, sire. The messenger has only just ridden in.'

Henry looked at the seal. 'Your son,' he said to Miles as he broke open the wax and then quickly perused the contents. Alicia went to slip her arm through Miles's, seeking the reassurance of his body.

'Hah! He's taken Thornford,' Henry said with satisfaction. 'Says he'll shore up and garrison and move down to Bridgnorth via Ledworth and Oxley to gather fresh supplies.'

'What about de Lacey? Is he dead or prisoner?'

Henry shook his head 'No. Apparently he slipped out before the last assault, to Shrewsbury so one of the garrison said, but Guy cannot be sure. De Lacey's wife and son are at Thornford, both sick of the bloody flux.'

'Does he mention a Welsh girl?'

Henry shook his head and passed the letter to Miles. 'Some special concern of his? Didn't he have a Welsh mistress once?'

'De Lacey murdered her and her son and abducted her ten-year-old daughter to serve his lusts,' Miles said brusquely. 'Her other child, Guyon's daughter, is being cared for at Ravenstow. By a hair's breadth, she was spared her mother's fate.'

'I'm sorry, I did not know.' For a moment Henry's expression was stripped of its customary aplomb to show pity and complete surprise.

'Guyon would not make a parade of it, sire,'

Miles replied. 'It was too deep and personal a matter and it happened little more than a month ago.'

Henry tapped a thoughtful forefinger on his chin.

'Perhaps, in view of what you have just told me, it might be as well if you take a detour through Thornford on your way to parley with the Welsh.'

'I was going to do that anyway, sire. He is my son.'

Henry smiled. 'Well , now you have the royal sanction, don't you? It's starting to rain. Let us go within and discuss what I want of Cadwgan in more detail.'

Miles stared in consternation at the serjeant he had sent ahead to notify Guyon of his imminent arrival, for the man was spurring his courser back towards the troop, not sparing the horse or himself in the late summer heat. Even if Guyon had returned to Ravenstow or already set out for Ledworth, there was no cause for this tearing haste unless there was serious trouble.

Gasping almost as much as his labouring mount, the man gave his report. 'The keep's under attack, my lord, by the Welsh as far as I can see, and it's going hard for the defenders!'

Miles's expression, grim at first, slowly brightened into savage amusement. 'The Welsh, eh?' His lip curled. 'And in search of a little Norman hospitality. Well , why not?'

'My lord?'

Miles shook his head and rode to the front of the column, increasing the pace from a steady walk to a ground-eating lope.

The sun had moved almost an hour's position in the sky by the time they reached Thornford, and the defenders had reached a state of extremis.

Miles took in the scaling ladders clumped against the wall , the lack of men on them suggesting that most were engaged within the boundaries of the keep; took in too the broken section of the wall and heard on the breeze the sounds of desperate skirmish.

Turning his stallion, he swiftly addressed his men who were expectantly threading their shields on to their left arms and readying their weapons for a charge.

'You can see for yourselves what we're in for.

You are all experienced, you should know the ways of the Welsh. Watch your destriers' bellies, they'll slit them open if you force them to fight in close. Remember, a Welshman does not wear armour. He's vulnerable, but he's faster than you. Kill if you must to save your own skin, but if you engage in combat with any man who seems important, try to take him prisoner. Lives will be useful to barter for Cadwgan's favour and whoever takes a useful hostage will find himself handsomely rewarded. Understood?'

As they acknowledged this, Miles threaded his own shield on to his left arm, checked the secure fit of his helm, unlooped his mace from his saddle and with a yell , spurred his destrier into a gall op.

The Norman charge burst into the outer bailey creating mayhem among the attacking Welsh. A bare-legged hill man flew from the roan's shoulder and was trampled by the destrier following on behind. The mace caught a Fleming's face beneath the brow of his helm and crushed his cheekbone. He fell , screaming. The Welshman behind him tried to protect his head but was too slow and took a splintering blow to his temple. As Miles had said, very few of the Welsh wore armour and the Norman charge went through them like a hammer through a trough of ripe plums.

Miles felt a hard blow on his shield as he emerged into the daylight of the inner ward. He gasped as his left arm was jarred and in retaliation, launched a blow over his shield rim. A solid thud and a cry answered him. He reined his stall ion around and, amid the fighting and chaos, saw a bare-legged Welshman running towards a group of his comrades who were fighting furiously with someone they had surrounded. Bare-legged the warrior might be, but the pommel of his short sword was set with jewels, and his belt was tooled and gilded with gold leaf. A Norman helmet was set jauntily askew on his straggling black curls. With a yell of triumph, Miles rode him down.

The group of Welsh exploded outwards like ripples from a flung stone in a pool. One of their number rolled on the ground, clutching his ripped belly and screaming. Guyon followed through hard, iron shield-boss jabbing dangerously, sword swinging low at the enemy's unguarded legs. At his back, feet wide-planted, Eric's battleaxe hewed the air and any Welshman daring to venture within the path of the blade's glittering arc.

Miles's destrier ploughed into the Welsh and the mace narrowed the odds.

Guyon spat out a mouthful of blood from a cut lip and pressed forward. He was functioning on instinct now, not finesse, and it took him a moment to recognise his father's stall ion and even longer to realise that help, no matter how miraculously, was at hand.

Miles reined the destrier round to block the retreat of the Welsh noble he had marked. The young man's eyes darted between the plunging shod hooves threatening to brain him and the suggestively swinging mace. 'Throw down your sword and yield,' Miles commanded in Welsh. 'I promise you will not be harmed.'

Guyon cast a rapid glance around the inner bailey, saw that the advantage of the battle had swayed back in his direction, glanced further and saw that the forebuilding doors had been broached. Commanding a handful of his soldiers to follow him, he ran for the keep.

Miles looked towards his son and the Welshman thought he saw his opportunity and bolted for freedom. Miles spurred to block his path and the mace came down on the man's skewed helmet, rattling his wits round his skull and knocking him half senseless to the ground.

With a snort of disgust at the man's folly, Miles set about securing him from further attempts at escape.

Within the keep, Judith listened to the screams of men receiving a face full of scalding water, the war cries, the death cries, the thud of the ram, and felt sick to the soul with fear lest one of those screams was her husband's.

She had done all that was possible for her to do, short of joining the men on the battlements; indeed, she might have even dared that were she not so fettered by her responsibilities to the wounded and those within the core of the keep who looked to her for succour and guidance.

She knew their situation was desperate. The Welsh alone they could have fought off, but with Norman leaders the matter was not so sure.

Guyon had had to batter Thornford hard to take it and four days had not been long enough to shore it up to withstand the kind of punishment it was taking now. She could only thank Christ that she had left Heulwen at Ravenstow, for she had been in half a mind to bring her and only the doubt of what she might find here had made her leave the child behind ... perhaps to be raised an orphan.

Judith's belly heaved as she contemplated her future at the hands of Walter de Lacey should he prevail. She swallowed. What had Guyon said about panic? The room started to close in on her and the wounded man she was tending groaned and jerked. Chagrined, she apologised to him and finishing with the salve, reached for a roll of bandage. There was none and a swift investigation among the maids showed that there was very little left. She took a swaddling band from Helgund to bind the man and, relieved to have an excuse, left the hall to raid Lady Mabel's linen chest in the solar.

She was kneeling by the chest, cutting a tablecloth into strips with Guyon's knife, when she became aware of how much nearer the battle sounded to the keep. The shouting was no longer an amorphous muddle; she could distinguish actual words now and hear the blows and thuds of sword upon shield. From without there came a tremendous crash and then the screams of women and the grating screech of sword on sword. She ceased her task and rose to her feet, her breath catching in her throat. Weapons clashed together outside the curtain. She heard grunts of effort and a hissing curse, and tightened her fingers on the grip of her knife.

There was a solid thud, a grunt, and then a bubbling groan. The curtain clashed aside and she was confronted by Walter de Lacey, his mail shirt glistening like snakeskin as he breathed in heavy gasps. His sword was edged with blood and his eyes were aglow with triumph.

Her throat closed, but not before a whimper had escaped her lips. Rape and a living hell . She could see her future clearly imprinted in his voracious stare.

'You're not properly attired for a wedding, but you'll do,' he said with a smile.

'Keep away from me!' Judith snarled.

He shook his head at her. 'Is that any way for a wife to speak to her husband? It seems that I am going to have to lesson you into meeker ways.'

Sheathing his sword, he advanced.

Judith backed. Her thighs struck the chest and pressed there. She was cornered, no retreat, and he was going to do all the things to her that Maurice de Montgomery had once done to her mother. She thought of Rhosyn and Rhys and Eluned, of what had happened to them. She thought of Guyon sprawled sightless in the ward, for surely de Lacey would not be gloating here otherwise and, as he reached for her, her eyes flashed and her chin came up.

Guyon ran, not feeling the weight of his mail or weapons, only filled with a dreadful sense of foreboding. A Fleming, intent on pill age, barred his way and Guyon cut him down like swatting a fly. The maids were screaming and cowering. The wounded who had been unable to run away were all dead. A Welshman was swigging raw wine straight from the flagon. He was still clutching it to his chest when Guyon ran him through. Blood and wine soaked into the rushes. Guyon seized Helgund's arms. 'Where's your mistress?' he demanded.

'She went ... solar ... fetch more bandages!'

Helgund gulped through a mask of tears and terror as around her men skirmished, chasing each other over and around trestles, hacking and slashing, killing or being killed.

Guyon released her arm and ran the length of the hall . Prys was sprawled across the solar entrance. He stooped and turned him over, but the life had flown and Prys was as limp as a rag.

Guyon's blood froze. Standing straight, he parted the curtain and made himself enter the solar.

A shaft of sunlight slanted across the room to the wall above the prie-dieu and illuminated a splash of blood and a beadwork of sprayed drops above it. He followed the pattern up and then down to where it disappeared into the deep corner shadows beside the open linen chest, the napery it contained spilling untidily over the edge and embroidered erratically with great scarlet flowers of blood. Hesitantly he trod in the wake of his gaze until he was looking down on the body of Walter de Lacey and beneath it, the russet homespun of Judith's oldest working gown.

If his blood had run cold before, now he felt it congeal, and for a moment he was unable to move. A wet, cold nose nudged at his hand and Cadi whined. Her tail swished against his chausses and he broke eye contact with what he dreaded to face to look at the dog. She sniffed at de Lacey's hauberk and growled.

The power of movement returned to Guyon's limbs, although they seemed to belong to a total stranger. He stooped and, grasping de Lacey's shoulder, rolled him over and to one side. There was a jagged tear in his throat and his eyes were fixed in a baleful stare.

Judith was drenched in blood, but how much was her own he had no idea. Her face was unsmirched except for one small streak that only served to emphasise her pall or. Her eyes were closed and for a heart-stopping moment he did not know if she was dead or alive.

'Judith?' he said softly and, kneeling, lifted her and braced her weight against his shoulders.

'Judith?' He patted her face and she flopped against him like a child's cloth doll . Frightened, he hit her harder and then, by pure reflexive instinct, shot out his arm and grabbed her wrist before she could do to him with the knife what she had just done to Walter de Lacey.

'Guy?' Her eyes cleared. She looked at him and then at the knife and let it drop before turning into his arms with a shuddering sob.

'Judith, are you hurt, love? I cannot tell for all this blood.'

'Hurt? ... No ... It is all his. He did not know I had the knife until I struck - it was hidden under these bandages ... I thought when I saw him that you must be dead ...' Her breath caught in her throat and Guyon smoothed her hair and kissed her.

She kissed him fervently in return, then pushed him away to look at him. 'You talk of my hurt, as if your own were of no consequence!' she gasped, pointing to a bloody rent in his mail.

'It's nothing,' he answered, not entirely telling the truth. 'I've taken worse in practice. And it doesn't matter now. It is all over.'

His tone was so weary that she panicked. 'What do you mean? Surely with de Lacey dead, the Welsh will be willing to talk ransom?'

'That is what I am hoping, although at the best of times they can be contrary bastards and I'm in no state to negotiate myself.' His eyes flickered to the doorway.

Judith stared at Miles in open-mouthed astonishment as he stepped over the corpse on the threshold and entered the chamber. 'I thought you did not have the time to send for succour,' she said to Guyon in utter bewilderment.

'I didn't, love.' Guyon released her to wipe his sword on de Lacey's leggings, then wished he had not, for as he bent, his vision fluctuated and he felt as if he were on the deck of a ship in the midst of a storm. He straightened slowly and, with great care, sheathed the blade. 'It was sheer good fortune, or the will of God ...' He looked at his father. 'If you had not come when you did ...'

'The will of the King, you mean,' Miles said wryly as Guyon fumbled to remove his helm. 'And as it happens, this situation could not have profited him better.'

Guyon looked blankly at his father. 'Forgive me. I've fought my way to the gates of hell and back. I can't think.'

Miles went out into the hall , returning with a jug of wine that had miraculously survived the onslaught. 'Henry wants me to negotiate with the Welsh. Well , thanks to you and Walter de Lacey, I've a nice fat collection of caged birds to lure Cadwgan to the table ... including his own son.'

'Cadwgan's son?' Guyon gulped the wine straight from the flagon, spilling more down his mail than he actually got into his mouth. 'You mean that idiot with the jewelled sword and no notion of how to use it is Cadwgan's son?'

Miles grinned wolfishly. 'The very same. Do you think that his father values him above his loyalty to Robert de Belleme?'

Guyon shook his head in wonder. His gaze moved to the sprawled corpse of Walter de Lacey and a tremor ran through his body. He put the wine down. 'It is a pity he is dead,' he muttered. 'I would have borrowed one of de Belleme's greased stakes and let him dance on it awhile. He escaped too cleanly.' He rubbed his hand over his face and swore as his palm opened up a cut and it began to bleed again.

Concerned, still trembling herself with shock, Judith rose and went to him.

He stroked her cheek. 'Don't fret, love,' he said.

'The shoring up of Thornford will take some little while to accomplish this time. I won't be going to Bridgnorth just yet, so you can stop scheming how you're going to disguise the white poppy this time.' He tugged her braid, smiled at her and slowly slipped down the chest to the floor.