The Leopard Unleashed (13 page)

Renard crouched beside his brother and concentrated on the drifting wisps of the campfire and the men squatting or standing around it. He signed ‘thirteen’ at William to indicate their numbers and mimed a query, for he could not immediately see Elene.

One of the Welshmen signalled to William.

‘The other side of the big oak,’ he translated on a breath to Renard. ‘There’s another man with her, eating and drinking.’

‘Fourteen to five, then. How many can you take with your bows if we move in?’

William pursed his lips and rubbed the polished elm of his bow stave. At length he held up six fingers, then increased them to eight. ‘If we’re lucky,’ he added and, delicately fingering an arrow from the half-dozen thrust through his belt, put it to the nock. ‘Alive or dead?’

‘How merciful do you feel?’

‘Alive then,’ William said softly. For practice, he flexed the bow and sighted at one of two men who had left the fire and were strolling towards the large oak tree. They disappeared from range and suddenly the imperative cry of a startled blackbird shrilled out from the Welshman nearest the oak.

‘What’s happen—’ began Renard, but whatever else he had been going to say was drowned out by Elene’s scream. ‘I hope that man of yours is a fast runner,’ he muttered instead as he drew his sword.

William used the blackbird’s cry three times to signal attack. Then he sighted again and let fly. The shaft thumped into his victim’s chest, knocking him from his feet. He
twitched, hands clawing at the feather shaft, and did not rise again. William nocked a fresh arrow and sent it in fluid pursuit of the first. The second mercenary was running so was only winged, but his sword arm was rendered useless.

Renard ran around to the opposite side of the clearing and was in time to save the young Welshman who had trilled the alarm from being broached by the blade of a bearded routier. Another man lay arrow-dead close by and a second one, bleeding hard, was struggling to remove a barbed flight from his pierced arm. The bearded one wore no hauberk, only a quilted tunic that was still rucked up around his hairy thighs. He had no shield and Renard’s blade swiftly reached his throat.

‘Yield,’ Renard panted, holding back the death thrust.

‘What for?’ Hamo laughed grimly. ‘So that you can swing me later?’ And he lunged on to the blade. Whiplash swift, Renard twisted his wrist so that the wound went only half as deep as Hamo had intended. Rapidly the cut welled with blood, but not enough to kill. Renard used on him the same tripping technique he had once used on William, and as the mercenary went down, slashed and unwound one of the bindings from the chausses hampering the man’s knees and used it to truss him as efficiently as a dead deer brought home from the hunt. Then he looked round.

Elene was watching him, her back pressed against the oak trunk, fist to mouth and her skirts in disorder around her upper thighs. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked brusquely and flicked a rapid look to the fighting beyond.

She croaked assent. Renard, took it for the former. ‘Good lass,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ Without further ado he plunged into the fray.

Elene shivered, and hugged her arms. He did not look like the Renard she remembered. His face was thinner, shed of its final puppy flesh and almost as brown as potter’s clay, and his expression was filled with battle light.

Hamo stared at her with baleful eyes, blood running into his beard, his hands and feet working to try to loosen Renard’s rapid knots. She thought she saw some slack in his bonds and a new wave of terror surged over her. She used the tree trunks to push herself upright but her legs wobbled and she went down again, grazing her knees, whimpering. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of Hamo’s dagger and swordbelt, the long knife still in its sheath. She crawled over to it, eased it free, and turned to face her dread.

Hamo’s eyes widened and he tried to roll away from her. She saw that his wrists were bleeding and that Renard’s knots were holding fast, but she did not release her grip on the dagger lest she also release her grip on sanity.

Swords clashed, scraping her eardrums. She saw Renard take a blow on his shield and counter-strike with a rapid, hard backhand at his opponent’s right knee. The man fell with a cry, the limb shorn through. Renard ducked beneath the swipe of another opponent, jabbed his shield sharply beneath the man’s chin and knocked him senseless.

Strangely detached from reality, Elene watched her future husband and thought of a ritual dance she had once seen performed at a harvest celebration. Death and fertility. Sowing the ground with blood. Virgins and sacrifices. Hysterical laughter welled up inside her. She choked it down and found it turning into a sob.

The ground began to roar, to shake. She looked blankly at the bearded captive. He returned her stare, then,
groaning, closed his eyes and pressed his forehead into the fallen leaves. Horses thundered beween the trees, heralding the arrival of Ravenstow’s knights and serjeants.

Renard leaned against a tree, drawing air in deep, harsh breaths. A dull pain throbbed in his right side where a sword hilt had butted his ribs and his arm hurt with the strain of sustained action, although these were background considerations as as he surveyed with grim satisfaction the damage wrought upon one of Ranulf de Gernons’s best mercenary contingents, probably the same group that had been harrying the Caermoel lands all spring and summer. He thought of Henry; then, belatedly, as his breathing eased, of Elene, and with an oath hastened across the clearing to find her.

There was a dagger in her hand and her eyes were wild and strange. His gut contracted and he had a momentary vision of Olwen as he had first seen her outside the Scimitar, light-footed and deadly.

‘Nell, give me the knife,’ he said softly, and held out a cautious hand as if to a wild animal.

She blinked at the sound of his voice and looked at the marks of his sword grip still imprinted upon his palm and fingers that by their tapering length should have belonged to a minstrel not a warrior, but she was learning to live with inconstancy. His hand touched her icy one with the contact of blood heat. Carefully he sought for the dagger hilt and removed it from her unresisting grasp. ‘It’s over now,’ he said and drew her against him.

She was trembling so violently that he thought her bones would tear through her flesh. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Hush, it’s all right.’ As he reassured her, he glanced at William, who
was directing their rapid preparations to leave. They had time, but none to delay.

Hamo was hauled on to a packhorse. A groan jerked from him as his breechless buttocks struck a horsehair saddlecloth. Elene gasped and turned her eyes from the sight of his nakedness. ‘He was going to rape me and then claim me as a marriage prize from Earl Ranulf.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘I thought … I thought that it was really going to happen!’ Her grip tightened

‘You’re safe,’ he said. ‘No one will hurt you.’ He held and soothed her for as long as he dared, and when he could wait no longer, cupped her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. ‘Nell, we have to leave. We’re in Earl Ranulf ’s territory and if we meet another of his patrols it will be the end of us; we haven’t enough men. Come, ride pillion with me … Yes? Good girl.’ He gave her a quick hug of encouragement and kissed her clammy forehead.

‘Don’t leave me again!’ she cried, and clutched his arm as he turned away.

‘Gorvenal’s tethered across the clearing. I’m only going to fetch him.’

‘Please, please …’ She was beyond coherence, only knew he was walking away. Renard swung her up in his arms and carried her the rest of the way to his stallion. She wrapped her arms around his neck and half throttled him. He had to prise her off before he could mount up and when he lifted her into the saddle, she locked herself to him again as if he were the only rock amidst miles of quicksand. Renard wondered bleakly if she knew that the rock was made of quicksand too.

Elene fed a strand of wool from her distaff to her spindle, twirled and let it drop, and repeated the move with an expert sleight of hand that required very little mental concentration. The motion, however, was familiar and soothing, occupying her hands and anchoring her to stability while she sat her turn of vigil at Henry’s bedside. He slept uneasily, dosed with willow bark and poppy syrup. His wound was packed with clean linen bandages smeared with honey to try and prevent the gash from festering. Judith said that it had been very difficult to dig the arrow head free. ‘Like butchering an ox in the kitchens,’ she had said in her usual forthright way, and then burst into tears. ‘I hate this time of year.’

It had seemed a strange non sequitur, until Elene remembered that Judith had lost her first son Miles in November when the White Ship went down. King Henry had died in that month too and the door had blown open to wolves such as Ranulf de Gernons.

It was too soon to know if Henry would live or die, and,
if the former, how much use he would have of his right arm. Not a great deal, she suspected, by the look of the terrible wound she had helped to dress yesterday. Everything was too badly lacerated. Everything …

She continued to feed wool from the distaff to the spindle. The first night and day of her arrival at Ravenstow were a merciful blur, and the events leading up to that arrival little more than shadowy images in her mind. The nightmare figures smirched with blood, the sound of her own weeping; Renard’s arms in comfort around her and the look in his eyes.

A hot bathtub, salve for her bruises and one of Judith’s sleeping draughts had dealt with the physical trauma of her ordeal, and despite her earlier hysterics, Elene’s nature was resilient. There were others in far worse case, she told herself, and the ending could have been so different. If Renard and William had not been so swift and decisive in their pursuit, she might be lying in a marriage bed of an entirely different making than the one to be hers in two days’ time.

As it was, those of Hamo’s men who had survived the initial fight had been hanged on the town gibbet. All of Ravenstow had turned out to witness the event. Guyon had arranged it for market day so that as many people as possible could witness and cheer. Hamo had not been among the half-dozen men entertaining the crowd with their death throes. While being granted a brief spell of daylight in the ward, he had escaped while his guard was distracted by the sight of a woman washing her legs in a trough. Having seized a horse tethered in the yard, he had ridden hell for leather out of the gates. By the time pursuit was organised, it had been too late. Hamo had escaped both net and noose.

In disgust, Renard had ridden up to Caermoel to survey the keep with an eye to strengthening it against Chester’s greedy eye. That had been four days ago and there had been no messenger as yet. The wedding guests had begun to arrive and there were only two days left.

The curtain parted and a face peered though. Somehow she managed a smile for John, Renard’s older brother and a priest in the Earl of Leicester’s household and now home at Ravenstow to officiate at their wedding. Leicester was here too, bearing blandishments and good wishes from the King to his somewhat reluctant vassals at Ravenstow and inviting them to court for the Christmas gathering of the faithful.

‘How is he?’ John approached the bed.

‘Sleeping.’ Elene stated the obvious because there was not a great deal else to say. ‘At least the wound fever hasn’t set in, but it’s still very early.’

‘It’s a pity he wasn’t born with my eyes,’ John murmured in a subdued tone.

Elene looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’ John’s eyes were his most arresting feature – a melting, deep brown, set beneath black, strongly marked brows. They were also so myopic that he was liable not to see objects in his way until it was too late to avoid them. It was a family joke that John had more scars on his shins and ankles from tripping over things than the rest of them had from all their battles put together.

‘He’d have been the priest then. You don’t go to war if you can’t see. Henry would have made a good priest too, he’s so good-natured and innocent – more innocent than I’ll ever be.’

‘He may yet take his vows,’ she said grimly and rose to
stand beside him. ‘I doubt he’ll have much use in that right shoulder even if he does make a good recovery otherwise.’ Leaning, she smoothed the coverlet with an almost maternal hand. ‘Did you come here to see Henry, or was it me you wanted?’

‘A little of both, really. I wanted to make sure you are familiar with all parts of the wedding ceremony. It’s all been rather rushed, and now this.’ He gestured at Henry. ‘If there’s anything that worries you, you only have to speak.’

He was looking at her with compassion. She raised her chin and returned his gaze with steadiness. ‘I know my part,’ she said stoutly. ‘All you need do is pull the strings and I’ll sit, kneel, stand, say what has to be said and do what has to be done.’

He looked troubled. ‘Listen Nell …

’ ‘Why don’t you go and talk to Renard when he returns from his latest jaunt?’ she said tersely. ‘I’m sure he’s in more need of advice about the ceremony than I am.’

John grimaced. ‘It would be more than my life is worth. From what I hear, Renard’s about as amiable just now as a barrel of hot pitch. I thought I might get more sense out of you, and you are the one who will be in the best pos -ition to keep him from exploding all over the rest of us.’

Elene stared at him in astonishment. ‘Me? He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t even want to know me! He thinks I’m witless, a clinging, drizzling ninny.’