Bond of Blood (9 page)

"Ay, ay, but there are men enough caught by it. Just because you and I are sensible men, Gilbert, do not think that others are also. You know the tourney prizes are all women's gauds now. It is the latest fashion. Once a man could win a prize that was worth risking his head for, good arms or good horses. They give the jewels to the women too. There would be some sense in it if the men kept them. Of course, there is still the horse and armor ransom to be gained. Cain and I have both made good golden coins enough by that road, and he will surely reap a rich harvest at the royal tourney. Times are changed, sadly changed. I tell you that if your girl gives my son a man-child, I will be glad enough to finish here. Of course, if she does not breed, the lands will not go through her."

Pembroke grunted and drank. Whom did Gaunt think he could fool? There was no one else, for Gaunt had been an only son and Cain was an only son. When Radnor was dead everything would go to his girl whether or not she bred. Would he have planned this marriage so carefully if there had been a chance that the lands of Gaunt could go elsewhere than to Leah?

Chapter 4

Mornings in April were still rather cold and damp. It was also dark when Lord Radnor swung his legs out of bed, pushed back his hair with his fingers, and began to put on his hose and shoes. Edwina was waiting for him in the hall and provided viands so that he could break his fast. She helped him into his hauberk and set his helm beside him on the table. Both were cleaned until they shone. His fur-lined cloak, discarded on the day he arrived and forgotten, was also cleaned and laid ready for him.

"It will be cold," Edwina said softly, "until the sun rises."

Cain, longing to ask for Leah and wondering where she was, nodded his thanks and continued to consume food. He would not eat, at least not food like this, for a long while. He was disappointed that the girl had not risen to take leave of him but was grateful at the same time. He was finding it unexpectedly hard to leave this place and did not doubt that seeing Leah again would make it harder still. Draining the wine in his goblet, he rose to go.

"I thank you for your kind care of me. Tell my father, please, that I will write as soon as I know what to say and bid your daughter … Nay, only give her my farewell. There is no need of you to come with me. I will find the courtyard easily.

"God speed you, my lord, both your going and your coming again."

Lord Radnor went out into the passage, looked briefly up in the direction of the women's quarters, and turned resolutely away.

"My lord."

He started at the whisper and half drew the sword he was carrying, then replaced it in the scabbard with a sheepish expression. "What are you doing here in the dark?"

"I thought my mother might say it was not fitting for me to come down, but I could not bear … I could not let you go …"

"I must go. Nonetheless, I am glad to see you. I forgot something very important the other day. Here is your betrothal gift." He held out a small package wrapped in soft cloth. While Leah unwrapped it, he continued, "I was going to give it to your father to give you, but I thought you might like to have it from me. I would have kept it until my return, but since I see you now … I will bring you something prettier when I come back, if you will think of me kindly when I am absent."

The girl gasped at the magnificent ruby, which glowed even in the dim light of the passage. "What is it?"

"Your betrothal ring. If the size is wrong, the castle goldsmith will mend it for you."

"Am I to wear it?"

Lord Radnor found his amusement at her question strangely painful. "Of course. What else would you do with it? On the setting are carved the arms of Gaunt." He tried for a lighter tone. "It puts my mark on you, makes you mine. You must never take it off."

"Am I truly yours, my lord?"

"Yes, truly."

"And does—does that make you—mine?"

"Yes."

"Truly?"

"As true as my life or my honor."

"You …" Her voice failed and she tried again. "You do not love any other lady?"

"No." His face was hard with memory.

"Do not be angry." Leah put out placating hands. "I came to say farewell, but also to give you this to remember me by." A slender ribbon embroidered with pearls and gold thread worked in a design of fantastic beasts was pressed into his hand. It was obviously meant for a woman's hair. "It is mine. Indeed, it is the only thing I own besides your ring. My mother gave me the pearls and I worked the design."

Cain stared at it. "I cannot take your only ornament," he said finally, although he wanted very much to have it.

"Have I been too bold?" she whispered. "I know that in the tales I read a knight must sue to his lady for a favor, but—"

"You can read?" he exclaimed with a tremendous sense of relief. Two months was a long time for a child to remember someone without a spur to memory. Now at least all contact between them need not be broken. Leah did not reply because she was frightened. Cain took her silence for assent, fortunately. "If I write to you, then, you will be able to read my letters?"

"Yes, my lord, oh yes." So he did not mind that either. Surely this was a man far different from her father. How hard it was to let him go!

As if he read her mind, Cain said, "I must go. My men wait."

Leah nodded, and he limped down the passage and disappeared in the stairwell. She ran after him, her voice catching him just as he reached the courtyard.

"Lord Radnor, wait one moment."

He stopped unwillingly, his lips white and his eyes shadowed. If he did not soon tear himself away, he felt as if he would not be able to go at all. Leah was fumbling at her neck.

"I pray you, bend to me." He obeyed mutely, so taken up with maintaining his composure that he hardly noticed as she fastened her cross around his neck.

"Let me buckle on your sword. There." Leah smiled into the rigid face. "Now you have my favor and I have buckled your sword—you are truly my knight. God speed you. God keep you safe. God bring you back to me."

He had been watching her lips, soft and full, quivering a little, and was drawn to do what he had promised himself he would not. He kissed her, and even as he was thinking, "Let Wales be damned!" he tore himself away to limp to his horse. Not until he was safe in the saddle did he dare turn to look at her and wave goodbye. He gestured the troop ahead and Leah watched them ride, hooves clattering, over the drawbridge. She ran then to the battlement and watched as the long double column of men wound away into the distance. Her mother found her there later, leaning against the stonework, dry-eyed in spite of her fears. Leah had learned her first real lesson as a wife—that tears in parting avail nothing.

Lord Radnor did not look back after his farewell wave. He made his way automatically to the head of his men and rode along the track that led from Pembroke's keep with a mind turned completely inward. It was hard for him to understand how he could have fallen so entirely under the spell of a chit of a girl whom he had not cared at all about forty-eight hours earlier. She had certainly used no arts that he recognized to charm him. She wore no magnificent jewelry, and even her best clothes were obviously made over from her larger mother's and were not particularly becoming. There were dozens of women at court who were more beautiful—a few of them he had had.

Why also was this burden of fear on him? He knew death too well to fear for himself. Death was simply not to be and to face God thereafter, and whatever his doubts he could cling to the knowledge of the infinite mercy of Christ. Life was the fearsome thing. What would become of Leah if he should die? It was the first time he had faced this personal type of responsibility; his father could care for himself and his care for his dependants was unmixed with emotion. Cain's eyes, fixed between the ears of his horse, saw nothing, but Odo, one of the newest of his recruits, gazed around with the beginnings of a great awareness in his glance.

Odo was with the troop solely because he was rather more intelligent and enterprising than most of the villein stock. Giles, Lord Radnor's master-of-arms, had heard Odo loudly protesting at the village alehouse that all masters were alike bad and that any man could fight for himself given the proper weapons. Giles, not wishing to hurt the promising young man, had proposed a bout with the quarterstaff and made his point—that all men were not created equal—by breaking Odo's head. Giles had detected, however, a real spirit and willingness to fight, and had called this to his master's attention. Odo had forthwith been removed from the farm upon which he had been born, and upon which he had expected to end his life, to the garrison of Painscastle. There he had received some basic instruction in the use of arms and was now on his way to try out the effectiveness of that instruction.

Thus far Odo had enjoyed his new position without thinking too much about it. His self-made principles had forbidden him to be grateful to Lord Radnor, and he had continued to assert that all masters were the same and all bad. Now as he looked about him, his opinions were shaken for the first time. He could still believe that all masters were bad, but obviously there were varying degrees of badness. Here, although the countryside was fruitful, the cringing peasants they passed wore the grey and hollow look of continued hunger. No man came out to greet the passing riders as was common in his own home; instead the few people out in the open ran for shelter in the miserable huts, which were surely more miserable than those to which Odo was accustomed, or dropped to the ground where they pressed themselves against the earth in the hope of being overlooked. It was clear that to these people the lord of the land meant oppression and horror.

The visits of the Earl of Gaunt or his son were not usually eagerly awaited events at home, but this was because they meant that tax-collecting time had come again. Nonetheless, no one particularly feared their coming. Those who had handsome wives and daughters hid them if they wished to avoid their lords' attention; sometimes they did not hide them, even sending them with poultry or produce to the castle, since it was rumoured that even a left-handed son would be welcome to Gaunt and because both father and son were reasonably openhanded to the women they took to their beds.

There were times too that Odo remembered when the coming of the Earl or Lord Radnor had been anxiously looked for. When there were knightly robbers in the neighborhood, when there were rumors of the mountain Welsh coming, when there was murder or a legal dispute to be settled, then look-outs were posted and the sight of the gold and black Gaunt blazon coming from the hills or through the fields brought sighs of relief and shouts of pleasure.

Odo had been hearing things in his two-day stay at Eardisley which, when he could separate his mind from his saddlesoreness, were a revelation to him. Disputes brought before Pembroke were settled by which disputant brought the larger bribe. This was unheard of at home. Both lords were strictly just, Odo knew. They were very different in their ways, Gaunt being more severe but more consistent and Lord Radnor being often more lenient but always unpredictable.

Justice, however, was always done, and Odo himself remembered a time when his village had united to complain of a bailiff who was gouging them by collecting more than was due the manor. Lord Radnor, trying that case, had listened to the complaints and the defence with a perfectly indifferent expression and had dismissed the complaint. He had descended unexpectedly upon the bailiff's home, however, a week later and had found there the evidence that had been wanting to prove that the complaints were justified. The bailiff had been publicly whipped, then drawn and quartered alive; his remains had hung in the village square until the flesh rotted from the bones as a warning that it was not healthy to tamper with the workings of the Gaunt estates.

The troop came to a division of the road and Cain turned left, the men following. Old Giles, who had been bringing up the rear, passed Odo at the gallop. He pulled up beside his master and hailed him respectfully. Radnor started.

"Do we return to Painscastle, my lord?"

"No," Radnor replied testily. "Why do you trouble me with stupidities? I told you that we go direct to Fitz Herbert's keep."

"As you say, my lord, so you told me. But nonetheless we are on the road to Painscastle."

Giles' face was totally wooden, but there was a gleam in the old eyes that brought a dark flush to Lord Radnor's complexion. He gesticulated angrily, and Giles shouted the orders that turned the men on their tracks. At the crossroads they now turned right, and, after traveling some miles further, turned more sharply right and cut across the fields.

Edwina had come upon Leah on the battlements staring blindly in the direction that Lord Radnor had gone. "Come down to the women's chambers, Leah. You waste time and gain nothing here. I thought you were still abed."

"I rose to bid my lord farewell. And I watched him go forth without weeping. And I do not weep now, Mother, but—"

The girl was mad. She knew the man but two days and she looked after him as if she had lost a precious thing. "What is between you and Lord Radnor?"

Leah looked surprised, having finally brought her eyes from the distance to her mother's face. "Why, we are betrothed," she said idiotically. "Nay, Mother, do not be angry. I do not know what you mean."

"Then you are either stupider than I think, or lying. Do you believe I cannot read you? It was I who taught you to mask your thoughts, but you cannot hide them from me. Why should you hang, blushing, over the man's clothes. For what were you weeping like a madwoman yesterday?"

Lifting her hand to shield her expression, Leah temporized. "There is nothing between us not proper to a betrothed pair."

"Where did you get that ring?"

"He gave it to me. It is my betrothal gift."

"Good God! If that is not a man! To give such a ring to a chit of a girl to lose. Take it off at once and I will put it in the strongbox."