The Running Vixen (12 page)

Adam’s mouth twitched. ‘So did I,’ he said half under his breath. ‘No, I am sorely afraid he was here, but he said that he did not know you.’

The lad shivered. ‘It may be so.’ He looked down at his fingers and interlaced them on the sheepskin coverlet.

‘You said something about eavesdropping?’ Adam pressed. ‘That you promised not to tell a living soul?’

Rhodri dug his fingers into the springy fleece. ‘He came to visit my brother under a banner of truce. They spoke together for some time . . .’

‘And you overheard?’ Miles guessed.

‘Yes.’ Rhodri swallowed and looked at the older man. ‘Davydd never gives me any responsibility. He sends me out hunting or on petty scouting trips like a child.’

‘Sometimes it is hard to know when a fledgeling is ready to fly,’ Miles nodded sympathetically.

‘And sometimes a fledgeling’s wings are clipped!’ the boy snapped. His mouth compressed to a single narrow line.

Adam folded his arms. ‘So,’ he prompted, ‘what did you overhear?’

Rhodri continued to work on the fleece and watched his fingers in motion. ‘De Mortimer offered my brother silver to kill one of your barons - Ralf le Chevalier. He said that he had a loose tongue and had to be silenced. Davydd agreed. Le Chevalier was no friend of ours, and on more than one occasion he had trespassed with our women. I . . . Is there any more mead?’

‘Yes of course.’ Adam exchanged shocked glances with Miles as he poured a fresh measure into the cup and gave it to the lad.

Rhodri swallowed deeply and then leaned back against the pillows, his eyes closed and his hair sweat-soaked. ‘De Mortimer arranged the ambush and set le Chevalier up to be killed by us - but only Davydd knows that - and me, but I’m not supposed to. The rest of the men all thought it was sheer good fortune when we encountered them in the woods. De Mortimer was watching us, waiting until le Chevalier was down from his horse and bleeding his life into the ground before he made his move. He came down on us with his full force. If Davydd hadn’t been expecting just that kind of treachery, we’d have been dead too.
Rhaid wirth lwy hir i fwyta gyda’r diafol
.’

‘One needs a long spoon to sup with the devil,’ Miles translated grimly.

‘My brother was furiously angry about losing the chestnut stallion,’ Rhodri added. He darted a sheepish look at Adam. ‘I was going to gall him into a red rage by returning from this raid astride the very same horse he had missed, and instead he’s got to ransom me and thank his enemies for saving my life.’

‘Perhaps under the circumstances, he’d prefer to let you rot,’ Miles said drily.

Rhodri parted his lips in an expression midway between grimace and smile. ‘Brotherly love usually wins by a hair’s breadth,’ he said.

Adam paced across the solar until he reached the brazier, held his hands to the warmth and looked at Miles. ‘You know what this means?’

Miles moved his shoulders. ‘It could mean a lot of things, the main one being that my granddaughter is about to pledge her life to her husband’s murderer!’

‘Sir, she cannot be allowed to do it.’

‘Then stop her.’

‘How?’ Adam spread his hands. ‘She knows I hate even the taste of de Mortimer’s name on my tongue, and anything I try to tell her, she’ll dismiss as raving or fantasy. What do you want me to do? Abduct her over my saddle?’

‘Worth a try if all else fails,’ Miles said. ‘I’m past four score years, lad. Do I have to spoonfeed it to you? Go to the King, put the matter in his hands, and while you are about it, ask of him a boon.’

Adam eyed him suspiciously. ‘What sort of boon?’

‘Has he rewarded you for your tireless efforts to keep his delightful daughter alive? Knowing Henry, you’ve had a bagful of promises and a pocketful of nothing.’

‘And he’s unlikely to change!’ Adam growled. ‘If it’s going to hit his purse, then he’ll refuse.’

‘It is no concern of his purse,’ Miles said. ‘Ask him for Heulwen to wife.’

Adam’s tawny eyes widened. ‘Ask him for Heulwen?’ he repeated, voice rising and cracking as it had not done in ten years.

‘You hold your tenure direct from him, as did Ralf, and I shouldn’t think after the first shock Guyon will object to your suit. In a way, he may be relieved.’

Adam shook his head and walked away from the old man to stare at a hanging on the wall. It had been worked by his mother long before his birth and the moths had eaten it bare in places. His thoughts raced to the erratic thudding of his heart.

‘You need a wife,’ Miles added mischievously. ‘This place frequently resembles a midden.’

‘I can’t,’ Adam said in a flat voice. ‘I’m her foster brother.’

Miles said something very rude in Welsh, then reverting to French asked, ‘Is that how you feel?’

Adam swung round, sat down on a stool and placed his head in his hands. ‘Once, yes, when I was small, I did love her like that, but it changed a long time ago, for me, anyway. Heulwen still thinks of me as a brother.’

Miles raised a sceptical brow. ‘You know that for a fact?’

‘It was rammed down my throat when I brought her the horses.’

‘With more fear than conviction, I’ll warrant.’ Miles pursed his lips. ‘Of course, you don’t have to ask Henry at all, just tell him about Warrin and Ralf and hope he will act on it and that Heulwen will find a better mate in time. The choice is yours.’

Adam sat in self-contained silence. The candle fluttered in the sconce and light rippled suddenly on the fittings of his belt as he drew a shuddering breath and raised his head. ‘What if she turns on me with hatred?’ he said, recoiling from the thought of being rejected by her yet again.

‘Then I would call it a disguise for other feelings.’

Adam shook his head and looked away, but within him the hopes and terrors aroused by Miles’s suggestion jousted with each other for dominance. Heulwen. He could have Heulwen at his board, living day to day with him, sharing his bed in the great chamber above. Heat rose in his face. Heulwen looking at him in disgust, fighting him, derision on her tongue, and unlike Warrin de Mortimer he did not think he could find it in him to strike her silent if she baulked him, even if it were a matter of life and death.
Life and death
. He thought of what the Welsh boy had told them, its implications. Whatever the reasons, Warrin de Mortimer was guilty of murder. And likely he knew about the silver in Ralf ’s strongbox, and had set out to gain it for himself by the simple expedient of marrying his widow.

‘I’ll leave you to think about it.’ Miles pushed himself out of the hard, high-backed chair. ‘I’d like to see the lass settled before I die, so you’d best make haste.’

‘I don’t know whether to kiss or kill you!’ Adam said ruefully.

‘Save the kiss for Heulwen and the killing for where it belongs,’ Miles advised him. Legs stiff from having sat so long, he limped carefully from the room.

Adam stared at the archway through which Miles had disappeared, and slowly rose himself, a bemused expression on his face, his thoughts walking a mental tightrope. After a while, he began to realise that the rope was strung across a gorge that stretched into a distance he could not see, that behind and below snarled the demons and serpents of self-doubt and cowardice, and that the only possible way was forward. That understanding made his burden suddenly seem much lighter. He straightened and squared his shoulders, and strode from the chamber, calling for Jerold and Sweyn.

10

Down in the south, the snow had turned to freezing rain and the ground was a morass of puddles and melting, muddy slush. The court was keeping Christmas at Windsor, and almost every royal tenant-in-chief was present in answer to the summons from the King. The lesser but still important barons were here, the high clergy and the King of Scots with his retinue - all present to swear allegiance to the Dowager Empress Matilda, King Henry’s daughter and designated heir. Banners and shields adorned the balconies of the wealthy, and the evergreen bunches outside every alehouse welcomed the swollen ranks of Windsor’s temporary population

Heulwen shivered and tried to huddle deeper into the folds of her cloak as the wind flurried her garments and blustered rain into her face. She struggled to display an interest she did not feel in the bolts of cloth laid out for her inspection upon the counter of a cloth merchant’s booth. Dutifully she rubbed the fine, white linen between her fingers and agreed that it would be perfect for making shirts and shifts, trying to smile as lengths were cut and folded to one side.

‘Now,’ Judith said with a note of satisfaction, her discerning gaze on the merchant’s displayed bales of cloth, ‘your wedding gown. What about that green silk over there?’

Obligingly the merchant reached for the bolt indicated.

‘I don’t know, I had not thought.’ Heulwen shivered, her face pinched and pale.

‘Well in the name of the saints do so now!’ Judith snapped with the exasperation that came of having trailed around the market-place all morning with a limp rag in tow. ‘Heulwen, you’re to be betrothed tomorrow morning and married at Candlemas. You haven’t time for vagueness!’

‘I’m sorry, Mama. It’s just that I’m cold and out of sorts,’ Heulwen excused herself, giving again that wan, forlorn smile that made Judith want to scream. ‘The green will suit me very well.’

‘God in heaven, child, you haven’t even looked at it!’

The merchant lowered his eyes from the irate lady of Ravenstow and the woebegone young woman at her side, and busied himself unfolding the bolt and rippling the grass-green silk across the counter.

Heulwen’s lower lip trembled as she fought with tears. Fine sleet stung her face like flung shingle. Behind, two accompanying men-at-arms were stamping their feet to keep warm, and Helgund, her stepmother’s elderly maid was grimacing at the pain from her chilblains.

‘I trust in your judgement, Mama,’ she said in a subdued voice and stared at the muddy hem of her cloak.

Judith closed her eyes and swallowed. A packhorse laden with brightly coloured belts was led past, and someone else’s servant scurried by clutching a cloth-covered pie dish, the savoury steam teasing the nostrils and torturing the empty stomachs of those freezing at the draper’s booth. ‘Very well,’ Judith said with commendable calm for one who was so sorely tried. ‘The green silk, and some of that gold damask over there for an undertunic and trim. Have them brought to my lodgings and my steward will pay you.’

The merchant bowed, and started to refold the bolt of silk, his face expressionless.

As the women left the booth, Judith’s exasperation gave way to concern, for Heulwen was following her with the vapid docility of a sheep. ‘Perhaps this betrothal should be deferred until you are feeling better,’ she said with a frown.

‘No!’ That response at least was sharp and swift and so at odds with Heulwen’s mood that Judith stared at her stepdaughter with widening eyes.

‘No,’ said Heulwen in a more controlled voice. ‘I’m not ill, Mama. I need this betrothal to take place tomorrow. It is the waiting as much as anything else that is dragging me down. I cannot take an interest in my wedding gown when I have this dreadful fear that something will happen to prevent the marriage.’

‘Nonsense!’ Judith said brusquely.

‘I know, but it does not make the fear go away.’

Judith allowed her man-at-arms to boost her into the saddle of her waiting mare. The frown remained on her face. Heulwen might be more than half Welsh, but her nature was essentially practical, without the eerie sense of premonition with which so many of her race were gifted. If she was having brooding foresights, it was because she felt like a condemned prisoner who sees the moment of execution approaching, and is impatient for that moment to have come and gone and have the peace of darkness.

She and Guyon might not have pushed her into this marriage, Judith thought grimly, but neither had they done anything to stop her, and if you let a boat drift with the tide, frequently it smashes to pieces on the rocks. Perhaps the betrothal should indeed be cancelled until Heulwen had had more time to settle down. After all, there was no rush.

‘Your father and I were forced to marry,’ she said as she shook the reins. ‘I was unhappy and terrified and there was nothing I could do short of killing myself to prevent it from happening. It took a long time and a great deal of patience on your father’s behalf before I learned to trust, even longer before love grew out of it - for both of us.’ She looked across at her stepdaughter. Heulwen’s mouth was stubbornly set now, but whether to resist Judith or tears was uncertain.

‘It was different for you and Ralf,’ she continued. ‘You wanted him from the beginning, and he wanted you - but I think it was your dowry and the thought of having a nubile fifteen-year-old in his bed whenever he chose to sleep there that decided him, not love.’

‘Mama, what are you trying to tell me?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps that you should not let your experience with Ralf sour your future expectations.’

‘It hasn’t.’ Heulwen grimaced. ‘Not soured, but lowered. I no longer think that the stars will fall down into my hands just because I reach for them. Was that how my mother felt about Papa?’

Judith reined back her mare as a laden cart splashed past them. She had never concealed the past from Heulwen, but it was seldom the girl asked, and some parts were too painful for Judith to broach without direct demand. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was. Your mother knew it was impossible for them to wed - a Welsh merchant’s daughter and a marcher lord - so she guarded her heart from him. I met her only once, on the day before she was killed. She came to tell Guyon that she was severing the old ties and getting married; it was a business arrangement like your own.’

Helwen was momentarily diverted from her troubles. ‘Weren’t you jealous of her? When I found out about one of Ralf ’s women, I was ready to take a dagger to her throat - and geld him!’

Judith’s lips twitched. ‘Jealous?’ She urged the mare forward again. ‘Oh yes, so jealous that until I met her it gnawed at me like poison, but I could not hate her. Besides, although your father occasionally visited her, he did not lie with her after we were wed.’ The twitch became an open, rueful smile. ‘Oh, not for reasons of moral nicety or to salve my feelings I am sure, but she was heavily pregnant with you, and by the time you were born, he was beginning to notice that he had a wife for that kind of comfort.’ The corners of her eyes crinkled. ‘I did once take a knife to one of the women at court though when she presumed too far on their old acquaintance - Alais de Clare. She’s bound to be at court tonight. It’s a long time since we met on that kind of battlefield - I wonder if she still remembers.’ Her mischievous laugh lightened Heulwen’s mood and she responded with the first genuine smile of the morning.