The Devil's Diadem (56 page)

I did not want to listen. If I had been able to sit the damned horse without the need to grasp the rope I would have covered my ears with my hands.

We kept riding until we came to yet another small clearing in the forest.

There Madog halted us.

To listen.

Shortly after we arrived I heard the first scream. I cried out, covering my ears now that we were not moving, but even the thickness of my hands could not dull the terror and agony of those screams. They came, one after the other, barely leaving time for Gilbert to have drawn breath until I, too, screamed and screamed and screamed in company with Gilbert’s terrible dying.

Henry rode over to me, tearing a hand from an ear. ‘Where is the diadem?’ he shouted at me, and all I could do was shriek back, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!’

He still had me by the wrist and, in anger and frustration, he shoved it back at me, so unsettling my balance that I fell from the horse, hitting my head hard on the ground.

I blacked out.

When I finally blinked my eyes, and when the fog finally lifted from my mind, it was to realise three things.

One, that Gilbert had finally, gratefully, stopped screaming.

Second, that pain now regularly banded my belly like a hot iron girdle and only every few breaths. My time must finally be here, in this godforsaken wintry mountainous forest, surrounded by bears and men who hated me.

Third, Madog and Henry were engaged in a vicious argument, not fifteen feet from where I lay. They looked as if they had been arguing for some time, for they were now in full-flighted dispute.

The two men were standing face to face, spitting at each other with their words.

‘If she knew where this mythical diadem was,’ Madog was shouting, ‘she would have told us by now! I am sick unto death of chasing around after your rumours.’

‘All I need are a score of your men,’ Henry said, ‘and I can ride down to Pengraic Castle and —’

‘You think I want to send my men on a mission that will see them killed? D’Avranches will fill the lot of you with arrows from atop the castle parapets!

‘I am done with you, Henry. All I wanted was this woman to take my revenge for the slight done to me when Mevanou was stolen and she and my son murdered. I am within one knife strike of achieving that now. In regards to Pengraic Castle, I am going to use the cover of night to toss the body of the countess and Pengraic’s cold, unborn heir as close to its front gates as I can get them. I will not —’

‘You treacherous Welsh cunt,’ said Henry. ‘You will do as I want or I will hound you into Wales’ pitiful soil!’

I thought Henry particularly brave, or stunningly foolhardy, to so address Madog.

‘We had an agreement,’ Henry continued.

‘An
alliance
. You said you would help —’

Madog, in a lightning-fast move, wrapped his left arm about Henry’s neck, squeezing it tight, while at the same time he reached down with his right and grabbed Henry’s cock and balls. Then he wrenched backward with his left arm and lifted with his right, and Henry toppled over backward, a shriek coming from his mouth as Madog continued to hold onto Henry’s cock and balls as he fell.

Henry instinctively curled about his injured genitals as he hit the ground, and Madog simply knelt down, drawing his dagger at the same moment, wrenched back Henry’s head and cut his throat.

Madog stood, not even breathing deeply, his face impassive as he gazed at Henry choking his life out in gouts of blood at Madog’s feet.

‘I send a message to England’s cursed king as well,’ Madog said, ‘that my lands are poison to his kind!’ Then he looked about at Henry’s twelve or so men. ‘I have no argument with you. Leave now, and go back the way you have come.’

After hesitating briefly, the soldiers glanced at each other, then at the heavily armed Teulu about them, and then quietly mounted their horses and were gone.

Madog spoke to his Teulu, obviously giving them the order to mount up, for they all turned for their horses. Then Madog came over to me.

‘You pitiful wretch,’ Madog said softly as he knelt down by my shoulder.

‘This is a sad place for you to die, but remember that so also did Mevanou die sadly. Your husband loves you and cherishes you and will mourn you, no doubt, even if you loathe him, as you say. I hope your death sends a message to this land’s cursed Norman overlords … I will do to them as they do to me. Say a prayer, Maeb, for you have only moments to death.’

He lifted his knife, still wet with Henry’s blood, grabbed my hair with his free hand, and pulled my head back to expose my throat.

I was rigid with terror, but also somehow peaceful.

It would soon be done.

Madog hefted the knife and, just before he brought it across my throat, I saw and heard the whistling flash of the sword that took off the Welsh prince’s head.

Madog’s head flew across my body, rolling away into the undergrowth, then his corpse toppled across my chest.

My mind could make no sense of what had happened, but I was repulsed by the blood spurting from Madog’s neck and soaking into my clothes. I lifted my hands, using them to bat ineffectually at his body to try and get it off mine.

There was a knight beside me, holding a bloodied sword. Some part of my mind, still somewhat rational, realised it must have been this knight who took off Madog’s head. He stood over me, clad in gleaming maille and a rich damson-coloured surcoat and with what was possibly a golden crown about his helmet.

I assumed he would now kill me.

But instead the knight took a quick look about — I was vaguely aware there was fighting about the clearing — then sheathed his sword, wrested off his helmet and sank to his knees beside me.

‘Merciful
God
, Maeb!’ Edmond said as he pulled Madog’s corpse from my body.

‘What has become of you?’

Chapter Six

M
y mind simply would not accept that this was Edmond. Edmond was sixty or more miles north along bad roads in Hereford. He could not possibly be here, even had he heard I’d been stolen.

I turned my head slightly to look around the clearing.

Scores of knights and soldiers, all mailled, helmeted and weaponed, had either killed or driven away the Teulu.

There were silver-backed wolves sniffing about the dead bodies.

This company — knights, soldiers, horses, wolves, Edmond — could not possibly have charged
en masse
into this clearing along a track on which horses could barely manage a stumble in a single line.

This was impossible. It was a dream. I was already dead.

Another vicious band of searing heat encircled my belly, radiating into my back and hips, and I cried out.

‘Maeb!’ Edmond’s mailled hand gripped my shoulder.

‘Maeb, for sweet Jesu’s sakes, is it your time?’

I managed a nod, then cried out once more, clutching at Edmond’s hand. He muttered a curse, then tried to rise.

I gripped his hand with both mine, my despair and fright giving me abnormal strength, and would not allow him to stand.

‘Jesu, Maeb,’ Edmond muttered, then managed to turn enough to shout to one of the knights.

‘Odo! The women! Bring the damned women!’

Oh, he had brought women with him, too. This dream thought of everything.

I screwed my eyes shut with the next contraction and wished desperately for a tight, closeted warm chamber with a thick bed smothered in coverlets. Surely this dream Edmond could provide that as well?

There was a scurrying of feet and then I heard Isouda, Ella and Gytha crying at my side: ‘My lady! My lady! My lady!’

They would be dead also, and thus sharing my dream.

‘I will leave you with your —’ Edmond began, and I gripped his hand even harder, the links of his maille gauntlet pressing deep into the flesh of my fingers.

‘Don’t leave me,’ I said.

‘Don’t go …
don’t go
.’ I thought that if I let his hand go everything about me would vanish and I would be cast adrift in the blackness of death with this terrible, terrible pain.

‘My lord,’ said Isouda, ‘where is she wounded? This blood … there is so much of it …’

I could hear the horror in her voice.

‘It is not her blood,’ said Edmond, nodding to the dreadful corpse to one side, ‘but Madog’s.’

Now I gave a loud cry as the pain got immeasurably worse. I felt an unbearable urge to push, and knew the baby was only moments away.

‘We need clean cloth,’ said Gytha, who had very suddenly become quite voluble. ‘Water, if you can manage it. A clean knife. Blankets. But we
must
have clean cloth.’

Edmond just stared at her.

‘Arrange it!’ snapped Gytha and, amid all my pain, dislocation, and disbelief that any of this was actually happening, I thought that a woman who could command a king in this manner was a woman worth keeping by my side.

Edmond once again turned his head and bellowed for the hapless Odo.

I don’t know from where, but Odo did manage to find clean cloths, a single blanket and a clean knife. There was no water save for what some of the knights carried in their drinking skins, but Gytha and the other two women coped with what they had.

I gripped tight onto Edmond’s hand and, with the king by my side, the corpse of a Welsh prince by my shoulder, and half of the royal court’s knights standing about, gave birth to a son in that blood-soaked clearing.

When Isouda lifted him, wrapped in a woollen cloth, and laid him in my arms, I marvelled that both he and I had survived these past few days.

‘My lord king,’ I said to Edmond, who, now that his hand was free, had stripped off his gauntlets and was rubbing his hand which was red with welts from my terrible grip.

‘My lord king, how is it that you are here? And my women … I thought you dead and yet here you be, too.’

Edmond glanced at my women, who left it to him to answer.

‘If truth be told, Maeb,’ Edmond said, ‘I think none of us here truly know. I think it is a tale that will be told about fires for many years to come. And we will tell it to you, but not here, not now.’

Edmond had his men construct a litter for me and the baby, as well as one for Henry’s body, and we slowly made our way back through the mountains. The wolves had long gone and I thought I must have imagined them. The company who had ridden with Edmond into that clearing where Madog had been about to kill me numbered among them many nobles that I knew from court, and who had travelled with Edmond on his funeral procession from Elesberie to Hereford. Robert de Lacy, Lord of Bouland and Alianor’s husband, was here, as was Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke. Saint-Valery had come, too, and fought with the best of them.

They took turns riding by my litter, exchanging conversation, telling me how Adelaide’s funeral went, and, in Saint-Valery’s case, reciting great lengths of poetry, all of which was meant to entertain me and keep my mind from the uncomfortable jolting of the litter. They did not press me for details of what had happened to me, or to Prince Henry, and did not mind if, as often happened, I slipped into sleep.

I wanted to sleep.

Eventually, we came on the clearing where Gilbert had been tied to the stake.

The stake was still there, and the ground about soaked with blood, but his body was gone.

I thought the bears must have dragged it away to eat.

Edmond asked who had been tied here, and I told him.

‘Ghent? Are you sure?’ he said.

Was I
sure
? ‘It was Ghent!’ I said, a trifle tersely.

‘Who else?’

Edmond exchanged a look with de Lacy and Pembroke, riding close by, then just nodded to me. He sent soldiers to scour the nearby forests for any evidence of Ghent’s body, but they found nothing, and in time we moved on.

It took a day to reach the area where Madog had abandoned the carts. We stopped here for a night’s rest, Isouda, Ella and Gytha collecting what could be salvaged of our clothing and belongings. I was overjoyed to see the carts, thinking that, if nothing else, I could at least travel more comfortably with my new son from now on.

My women bedded me and the baby in the cart in which I had travelled earlier, and I luxuriated in the cushions and coverlets. Here, also, we had access to a good stream, and Isouda and Gytha heated water and washed me completely, even my hair, removing from me the sweat of fear, Madog’s blood, and that of the birthing.

Our company did not have much food with them, but from what little we did have (mostly taken from the Teulu’s supplies), Edmond made sure that I had a good meal.

As I was settling down after the meal, Isouda, who was making sure the baby and I were comfortable, looked up and suddenly grinned.

‘My lady, look what my lord king has found!’

I raised myself on an elbow and looked over the side of the cart.

Edmond was walking over to us, leading Dulcette.

I couldn’t believe it. The last I had seen of her she had been tied to one of the carts as Ghent led our company toward Bergeveny. Then we had been attacked, and I was bound and blindfolded into the cart under thick covers.

Dulcette must have travelled all this way with us and then wandered off when the Teulu abandoned the carts. I was astounded. Dulcette was a costly horse, and that no one, not even the Teulu, had made off with her was astonishing.

‘One of the soldiers found her wandering nearby,’ Edmond said.

‘He brought her in, and I remembered you riding her from the day of the hunt in the forest beyond the Tower.’

I burst into tears. Of all the things that had happened in the past day or so, the relief of seeing Dulcette safe was one of the most memorable.

Edmond tied her once more to the cart, then signalled Isouda to leave us. Once she had gone, Edmond climbed into the cart and sat by me.

‘How is the child?’ he said, making an effort to be interested.

‘He is well,’ I said, folding the cloth back from the boy’s face so Edmond could see.

‘And you?’

‘And I, too. I am tired and sore and bruised, and I have lost a tooth from being struck in the jaw, but from all of these I should recover. My lord, please tell me, how did you and this company come to find me? And my women? I do not understand.’