Elizabeth Chadwick (56 page)

Ranild scrutinized Clarice’s palm for some time, tracing the lines on it with a firm forefinger, narrowing her eyes now and then.

“What do you see?” Clarice demanded.

“You are like tranquil water,” Ranild muttered. “Calm and clear but deeper than you seem. People who know you take you for granted when they should not, or perhaps it is that they don’t know you at all. You are not afraid of change, but you have no desire to do so. Indeed your desires dwell in other directions.”

Clarice made to tug her hand away but Ranild tightened her grip and her eyes met her visitor’s knowingly.

“Nevertheless, I see a husband and child for you in the time to come,” she said, and frowned. “However, they lie on the other side of great danger. There is fire and envy and hatred…and it comes soon.”

Clarice did snatch her hand away then and jump to her feet.

“You are wishing that you had not come to see me,” Ranild said with a knowing nod. “Perhaps you are right, child, because in so doing you may have sealed your fate. Go home, and pray that you are in time.”

“In time for what?” With shaking hands, Clarice spilled silver onto the trestle and put the nostrums in the willow basket she had brought with her.

“The rest of your life on this earth.” Ranild swept the money into the purse at her belt, then made a shooing motion. “Go, child. Hurry.”

Bemused and agitated, Clarice emerged from the hut into the frozen light of early afternoon. It was just under two hours’ ride back to Alberbury. What could happen in that time to merit Ranild’s warning?

The sergeant boosted her into the saddle. Grasping the reins, she turned the mare on the homeward road and set a pace that caused the groom to raise his eyebrows.

“Ground’s too ’ard to run ’er like that, my lady—with respect,” he said. “You’ll make ’er lame for the morrow.”

Clarice eased the mare down from trot to walk. “I am eager to be home,” she said, “but I would not lame her.” She patted the palfrey’s neck, thick with the silver of her winter coat, and curbed her impatience. Overhead the earlier sunshine was being swallowed by hazy cloud carrying the yellow tinge of impending snow. Perhaps there would not be a journey on the morrow anyway.

Two miles later, they encountered a group of people on the road, driving an assortment of livestock. Women and children, surrounded by wicker cages of assorted squawking fowl, were perched on a cart drawn by two lumbering oxen.

To the groom’s inquiry, the peasant leading the group leaned on his quarterstaff and wafted his hand back the way they had come. “The Welsh are over the border,” he said. “You’re going to ride straight into them.”

The sergeant gave Clarice a worried look. “We can either head around to Shrewsbury, or go north to Whittington and Oswestry.”

“Which is safest?”

The man grimaced and squinted at the heavy sky. “Neither, my lady. If the Welsh are over the border, they’ll be straddling the Shrewsbury road by the time we reach it, and likely the road to Oswestry. One way or another, we’ll have to slip through.”

Clarice had a brief vision of Mother Ranild examining her palm and then bundling her out of the door. “Oswestry’s nearer,” she said. “We’ll find succor there.”

***

Snow began to fall, deceptively gentle in its slow, twirling progress. But the ground was so cold that where it landed it stayed, building in soft, powdery layers. Perhaps it was the hypnotic effect of the flakes, perhaps the reduced visibility—whatever the reason, both the serjeant riding slightly ahead of Clarice and the groom failed to see the Welsh patrol on the road until it had seen them, and by then it was too late.

***

Riding into Whittington, Gwyn FitzMorys felt uneasy, for it seemed to him a haunted place in the bitter January afternoon. The silence was of a village deserted. Neither human nor animal moved among the thatched houses and vegetable plots. Not a single wreath of smoke eddied skyward, nor was there the customary aroma of cabbage pottage wafting from cooking pots. The occupants of Whittington had left their houses to fate.

Gwyn sat astride his warhorse in the main street, his sword bare in his hand lest there were any stragglers to catch and knowing in his heart there would not be. The icy light glittered on his mail coat. His breath emerged on white puffs of vapor and his horse steamed too as if he had ridden it straight from the cauldron of hell.

“No one,
fy
arglwydd
,” said one of the bowmen whom he had sent to probe among the houses for occupants. “They have all fled before the news of our coming.”

“Then let us announce our own arrival.” Gwyn bared his teeth. “Burn them to the ground.”

He watched as a torch was passed from hand to hand and finally thrust into the thatch of the nearest cottage. No one came raging out of the keep to stop the destruction as fire spread from house to house like a contagion and the smoke that had been missing now curled in choking abundance to meet the snow clouds.

The castle was as quiet as the village. Gwyn rode through the gates into the courtyard, his sword still ice-bare in his hand and his shield held high in case the open gates should be the jaws of a trap. They were not. He stood in the courtyard where once he had stood as of right and knew that Whittington was his to claim, but not to hold. If Fulke FitzWarin had seen fit not to defend it when its possession had once been his
raison
d’être
, then it was impossible for a minor Welsh knight to do so. Once it had been enough to build in wood. Now stone was the order of the day if a man wanted to keep what he had.

Snow fluttered; black and gray smuts of woodsmoke infiltrated the stars of glittering white. Gwyn tasted the grit of ash and the purity of melt water on his tongue. Dismounting and tossing his reins to a companion, he went among the buildings of his childhood and gazed on the changes wrought by FitzWarin’s hand. The murals on the plasterwork in the hall, the partitioning of the chambers. The new kitchen building and bread oven; the improved well housing. The Normans had stripped the place to the bone before they left and there was not a single item of wealth or furniture to be plundered. Only the keep’s fabric remained, soaked in more than a hundred years of bloody conflict.

“Give me a torch,” he snapped at a foot soldier who had followed him.

He had just gripped the knotty shaft of the pine pitch brand when two men from the troop he had ordered to block the road arrived with a captive.

Gwyn found himself confronting a young woman in rich Norman garb, her blue cloak lined with coney fur. Her face was flushed with cold and fury and her gray eyes burned with the gold reflection of the torch in his hand.

“Making for Oswestry, my lord,” said one of the guards in Welsh.

“Alone?”

“No, she had a groom and a soldier escort.”

“Had?” Gwyn raised his brows.

“Yes, my lord.” A glint of vicious pleasure flashed in the soldiers eyes. “They were Fulke FitzWarin’s men, and the lady is his ward, Clarice d’Auberville.”

Gwyn looked at her through the sooty ripple of smoke from the brand. “Indeed?” He stroked the sides of his mustache. “Welcome, Lady Clarice,” he said, switching to Norman French. “Your guardian is foolish to let you ride abroad in these troubled times.”

She bared her teeth at him. “Your men killed my escort for no other reason than they served Fulke FitzWarin. I thought that the Welsh were civilized, but I was wrong!”

“We are more civilized in the matter of war than your own countrymen,” Gwyn retorted. “Be glad that you have not been raped, and that you still have your life.”

“What are you going to do with me?” She regained a degree of control, breathing hard but rapidly.

“Take you to Prince Llewelyn. You will be welcomed at his court until your ransom can be agreed.” Gwyn smiled wolfishly and looked her up and down. “Who knows, you might even find a Welsh husband to your taste.”

She stared at him with loathing. “Not on present recommendation,” she said and rubbed her hands together, shuddering as if at some deeply unpleasant notion.

Gwyn smiled. “A woman with claws is always more interesting between the sheets.”

She did not rise to the bait.

“Since you are Fulke’s ward,” Gwyn said, “you can be his proxy and witness to the burning of Whittington.”

She looked at him like a queen eyeing a peasant. “It will avail you nothing.”

“On the contrary, it will give me great pleasure and satisfaction.” He strode from her side to a heap of dry straw and kindling that his men had piled up inside the doorway of the hall. Thrusting the torch into its heart, he watched the fire blossom from its core like a hatching egg. Other piles lay at strategic points within the compound and soon Whittington was ablaze, ragged turrets of fire crenellating the dusk, staining the falling snow with red shadow-light. It was beautiful, eerie, tragic.

Clarice watched the FitzWarin pride blaze heavenward in surges of fierce heat and energy, as if the stored conflict of the years were fueling the flames. It was a release too, she thought, and tilted her head to gaze upon the highest flames leaping from the timber wall projections. Snowflakes landed on her lashes with cold delicacy, making her blink, and despite the wafts of intense heat gusting off the burning timber, she shivered. Behind her, she heard Welsh shouts of approbation and pleasure.

The man beside her studied the destruction with a strange smile playing about his lips. At last, a sigh rippled through him. Turning, he commanded their horses to be brought. Clarice’s gray mare balked and snorted in alarm at the roar of the flames. It took two men to hold her while Clarice gained the saddle. She drew the reins in tight and tried to soothe her mount, but it was not until they were clear of the burning keep and heading for the road that the mare ceased to prance. A notion to gallop off in the direction of Babbin’s Wood and lose herself among the trees was swiftly dispelled by Gwyn FitzMorys, who attached a leading rein to the gray’s bridle and wrapped it firmly around his saddle horn.

“It would be foolish to run, my lady.”

She shrugged. “I do not think so.”

He smiled bleakly and kicked his mount. “Tonight we sleep at Ellesmere. You will find a bed there more comfortable than one in the snow.” Digging his heels into his horse’s flanks, he urged the animal forward. Clarice glanced back at the keep. Through the falling snow it burned and spat like a beast consuming itself…or mayhap it was a phoenix, beating its great wings, fanning the flames of its pyre, and preparing to rise from the ashes of its own destruction.

The snow was falling swiftly now, the flakes still soft as a caress, but more of them, whirling and dancing, settling now to the depth of the horses’ hooves. Through the screen of white, riders appeared like wraiths on the road before them, blocking their path in a jingle of harness and mail.

“Fulke!” Clarice’s lips formed the name without uttering a sound. Exultation and fear coursed through her.

Gwyn FitzMorys drew his sword. “You are too late, FitzWarin,” he snarled. “Whittington is burning to the ground and by my hand.”

Clarice could not tell what expression Fulke wore behind his helm. All she could see was the grim line of his mouth, the taut jaw, but she could imagine the look in his eyes and she could feel his tension like a wall of heat. Surreptitiously she freed her feet from the stirrups.

“It is you who has misjudged your timing,” Fulke said harshly. “I care not if Whittington burns, and for all that the Welsh army is across the border in force, your troop cannot withstand mine.”

“You say you care not for Whittington,” Gwyn sneered, “but that’s a lie.”

“I said I care not if it burns,” Fulke said bluntly. “Like a tide, Llewelyn will retreat, and when he does, I will build in stone. You have cleared the ground. Indeed, perhaps I should thank you.” He inclined his head in a mocking gesture.

“And your ward, do you care for her in a similar wise?” Gwyn gestured to Clarice. “Would you see her destroyed too?”

“Do what you will; her lands are still in my keeping.” Fulke’s stallion plunged and sidled until he was forced to draw in the reins’ full measure.

In a flash of motion Clarice kicked her feet from the stirrups, flung down from the saddle and ran across the space between Gwyn’s troop and Fulke’s. The startled mare bucked and kicked out at Gwyn’s horse, which reared and skittered. She heard Gwyn’s curse, followed by the thud of hooves hard in pursuit. Fulke spurred forward and his sword cut across the downward stroke of Gwyn’s. Clarice tripped over her skirts and sprawled in the snow, losing her wimple. Strong arms scooped her up and she was hauled across Ralf Gras’s saddle.

“You’re safe, my lady,” he said, but she barely heeded him, her eyes wide and wild on the struggling, fighting men. In the gathering murk of dusk, it was difficult to pick out detail. Everything was a blur of snow and steel, whiteness and darkness blending to create spangled shadow shapes that broke and re-formed. The battle cries, the screams of the wounded, the thud of destrier hooves. Blood staining the snow. The name
“FitzWarin!”
howling out like the cry of a wolf. She clenched her fists and prayed. Fulke’s shield flashed. He was fighting like a demon hot from hell with no care or thought to his own safety. A horse galloped past, dragging its unseated rider whose spur was caught in the stirrup. He had lost his helm, and as a shod hindhoof caught his skull, she heard the sickening crack of breaking bone. Awkwardly, Ralf caught the beast’s trailing reins. A long smear of blood stained the churned new snow, leading to a black, shining puddle in Gwyn FitzMorys’s hair. His arms were spread wide, his sword lay several feet away, and his dark stare was fixed in death.

When the Welsh realized their leader was dead, they beat a hasty retreat, melting away in the direction of the woods beyond the village. Clarice bade Ralf set her down and walked the skirmish site, seeking out the wounded. Dusk was fully upon them and the wind was bitter. If any man was seriously injured, Clarice knew he would not live the night. At least, she thought grimly, she had syrup of white poppy to ease the passing of any bound from the world.