The Running Vixen (11 page)

‘You did what?’ De Mortimer looked at him in disgust.

‘Oh don’t go all pious on me, Warrin!’ Adam snapped. ‘The lad fought well - accounted for two of the bastards on his own and got himself clear of a gut-shot horse in the middle of a pitched battle - but it’s a violent baptism for a youngster raw from the tilt yard. He took sick afterwards. In the circumstances, I thought it best that he drown his dreams in drink and the comfort of a woman’s body, and Christ alone knows why I am justifying myself to you!’

‘Calm down, Adam.’ Guyon touched his rigid arm. ‘I’d probably have done the same with him. Just thank God you’re both safe. When I saw that horse in the road . . .’

‘I was going to send to you this morning, but I’ve not long risen myself.’

‘Did you take to drink and dalliance too?’ de Mortimer needled him.

Adam’s jaw tightened, making his wound hurt. He thought of several sarcastic replies but decided that to utter them was to play into Mortimer’s hands. ‘We took a prisoner,’ he said to Guyon, half turning his shoulder on the other’s galling presence. ‘He’s got a nasty head wound and a slashed thigh, and he’s still out of his wits. The village herb-wife had a look at him and says he’ll mend, but doesn’t know how long it will be before he recovers his senses.’

‘You had reason to make of him a prisoner then?’ Guyon prowled forward to the hearth. The snow on his boots became transparent and slowly melted into the rushes. A dog came to sniff at the cold air on his cloak.

‘He was wearing gilded boots and there were jewels in his sword-hilt. Someone of note among his people, I would say. If we had left him in the road he would have died.’

‘What’s one less Welshman except a blessing?’ de Mortimer said moodily and kicked at the dog as it came to snuffle him.

‘Not in this instance. It may be that we can barter him for peace.’

‘And we all know a Welshman’s notion of peace!’ de Mortimer scoffed. ‘If it had been me, I’d have left the whoreson to die!’

‘I know,’ Adam said tightly. ‘Either that, or helped him on his way. You’re good at that.’

It had been an insult flung like a wild blow in battle, but it certainly hit its mark. De Mortimer whitened and recoiled as if he had been physically struck. ‘You stand need to speak so when your own father . . .’

‘Christ on the cross let be!’ Guyon said sharply. ‘You’re like a pair of infants. For all the heed you’ve taken of the manners drilled into you at Ravenstow, I might as well have saved my breath!’

There was a difficult silence while the two antagonists glared at each other. Then Adam broke eye contact and cleared his throat. ‘Do you want to see my Welshman?’ he asked. ‘It may be that you will know him.’

Guyon inclined his head, noting wearily that neither man was prepared to apologise.

He lay on a pallet in one of the upper wall chambers, a maidservant tending him and a footsoldier posted outside the curtained doorway. ‘Although God knows, with that leg, he’s not going far,’ Adam said as the woman curtsied and withdrew a little. A brazier had taken the chill from the room and was positioned near the pallet to afford the stricken man the best of the warmth. The room had no access to daylight, and the constant use of rush dips and candles had streaked the walls with soot.

Guyon stared down at the captive on the bed. The youth’s face was blue with bruises and hollow in the cheekbones. The black curls had been cropped away from a nasty contusion the size of a gull’s egg high on his forehead. His cheeks were oily with the bloom of late adolescence. ‘He’s only a youngster,’ he said, surprised into compassion. ‘No, I don’t know him. What about you, Warrin?’

De Mortimer shrugged. ‘They all look the same to me. I haven’t been much on the borders these last three years, and by the looks of him, three years ago he would still have been taking suck!’

‘Someone’s bound to claim him,’ Guyon said. ‘The Welsh kinship bond is sacred, and he’s well-bred, you say, perhaps even the leader of this escapade?’

‘Could well be,’ Adam nodded, ‘the Welsh blood their young men early.’

‘How bad is the leg wound?’

‘He’s stitched up like a piece of Bishop Odo’s embroidery and likely to take the wound fever, but Dame Agatha is doing her best for him.’

Guyon started to turn away. Warrin made to follow him, but his cloak pin had worked loose and the brooch dropped to the floor with a soft clink. Muttering an oath, he stooped to retrieve it, and at that moment the patient stirred with a groan and opened his eyes.

Immediately Guyon and Adam turned to him, but de Mortimer was the nearest, his square, strong bones illuminated in the light of the rush dips, and it was upon these that the young Welshman focused. A look of sheer horror crossed his face and he shrank back into the pillows, crying out in Welsh.

‘It’s all right,’ Guyon said quickly in that same language. ‘No one is going to harm you. You are here to be healed and returned to your family.’

The youth shook his head, panting hard, his eyes on de Mortimer.

‘You say you do not know him, but he certainly seems to know you, and well enough to be afraid,’ Adam said, drawing Warrin away from the bed while Guyon continued to soothe the patient.

‘I’ve never seen the whelp before in my life!’ Warrin snapped. ‘It’s obvious. He’s taken a blow to the head and his wits have gone wool-gathering. Anyone who looks even remotely Norman is fodder for his nightmares.’

‘Perhaps,’ Adam said noncommittally and eyed the prisoner who had subsided against the pillows, his eyes once more closed. He was either exhausted, or too frightened to look upon Warrin de Mortimer again.

‘What are you going to do about him?’ Guyon asked as they returned to the hall. ‘You’re due to leave for Windsor within the fortnight.’

Adam pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps ask your father to come here. He’s acquainted with most of the Welsh families of the region - related to half of them come to that. He’s competent to deal with whatever arises, and I can leave Jerold here with him. If the lad’s family come to negotiate, they can take the first steps without me, and I should be home by January’s end to conclude them.’

Guyon nodded agreement, eyes thoughtful.

‘What was all that gibberish he was babbling?’ asked Warrin as the men gathered to warm themselves at the hearth.

Guyon’s tone was neutral. ‘He said he never meant to eavesdrop and that if you let him live, he would not tell a living soul.’

‘Tell a living soul what?’ Warrin looked blank. ‘What does he mean?’ A pulse throbbed hard in the base of his throat.

‘I suppose we’ll find out in good time,’ Adam said evenly, then turned away to view another black-haired young man in shirt and chausses who had just collapsed on to a trestle bench at the side of the hall dais and now sat groaning and rumpled, his head clutched between his hands.

‘Your heir, my lord,’ Adam grinned to Guyon, ‘safe and sound.’

Despite the sables lining her travelling cloak, Heulwen shivered as she stood beneath an overhang and waited for the grooms to lead her saddled palfrey out from the stables. The snow had become sleet, needling silver and white from a sky the colour of a dirty hauberk - and hauberks were in evidence everywhere as the final preparations were made for the journey to Windsor - and from the look of the weather, a wet, uncomfortable journey it was going to be.

Renard squelched across the bailey, furred cloak already mired at the hem, armour glinting as he strode. She was about to call out to him, but a young woman came running out of one of the bailey buildings and accosted him. Renard glanced round, set his free arm about the girl’s willowy waist, and whisked her into the darkness of a doorway, where Heulwen saw his cloak swirl around her to enclose, and his head bend to her offered lips. The falconer’s daughter, she thought with the glimmer of a smile. Amazing what prowess in war did for a man’s standing with women. Renard’s pretence at manhood was swift becoming reality.

Heulwen had been hysterical with relief at his safe return, but only a portion of it had been on Renard’s account. The thought of Adam sprawled somewhere in a frozen puddle of his own blood, like Ralf a victim of the Welsh, had terrified her beyond all coherent thought. Nothing had been the same since. She was still reeling and uncertain, balanced on a see-saw of want and denial. She clenched her fists and fixed her gaze upon Warrin’s broad, solid frame as he stepped out into the sleet, his face twisting into a grimace of discomfort. He was her betrothed in all but the pledge now that she had consented. All that prevented their union was the formality of the royal yea-say and there was no reason for that to be denied.

He came towards her, blowing on his hands, caught her gaze and smiled. She managed a wan response.

‘Chin up, doucette, you look as dismal as this godforsaken weather!’ He stooped and kissed her cold lips, then stood back to look at her.

‘This journey is hardly going to be a jaunt to a fair,’ she responded, trying to draw some inner glow of feeling from his presence, but the only warmth that came was because he was shielding her from the wind.

‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he said with a smile and placed a small drawstring bag in her hand. ‘It won’t ease the misery of this weather, but it might lighten your heart, and it will certainly gladden mine to see you wear it. Call it your betrothal gift.’

Heulwen loosened the string with fumbling, frozen fingers and slid a circular cloak pin on to her palm. It was an ornate, spectacular piece, wrought in gold and inset with glowing jewels of sapphire, ruby and rock crystal.

‘Thank you, it’s beautiful!’ She turned it over, thinking to herself that it was also ostentatious and indicative of her future husband’s attitudes and tastes.

‘Here, let me pin it on for you.’ He reached eagerly to pluck loose the pin that already held her cloak. It was a simple thing by the standards of the gorgeous object she now held, a braided silver circlet given to her by her father on her seventh year day. It made her feel uneasy to see it so summarily dismissed. Carefully, tenderly, she dropped it in the empty leather bag.

‘Is it not a risk to display such wealth as this on a long journey?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘Surely it would be more sensible for me to wear it when we reach Windsor - perhaps when you ask the King for me?’

Warrin snorted with patronising indulgence, making her feel in truth no more than seven years old. ‘You worry too much over trifles,’ he said, as he forced the new brooch through the thick Flemish cloth. ‘We are armed to fight off any chance attacks on the road. We could even deal with a horde of Welsh if they came at us. No, beloved, it pleases me that men should see the high value I set upon my prize.’

‘Not your prize yet,’ she reminded him, nettled at his superior tone.

‘Well then, my future prize.’ He finished securing the pin and lowered his hand, as if by accident brushing the curve of her breast. ‘My future wife.’ His voice thickened and his mouth fastened on hers, demanding. Feeling like a whore who had been paid in advance to show gratitude, Heulwen responded with the unthinking expertise taught to her by Ralf, her heart numb and her fingers frozen as she linked them around Warrin’s neck.

9

The Welsh prisoner opened his eyes to full consciousness and stared in bewilderment at the limed white chamber walls surrounding him. Rushlight flickered. Beneath his fingers he could feel the grainy texture of a linen garment, and under that, the rapid beat of his fevered body. His throat was as dry as scoured parchment and when he tried to speak, no words emerged.

‘He’s awake,’ Adam said softly, and touched his companion’s knee.

Miles grunted and his head jerked up from his chest. Rubbing his eyes, he turned to the youth on the pallet and saw that, despite a slight fever, he was lucid and aware. Miles reassured him in Welsh that he was meant no harm. The youth’s dark eyes remained puzzled and suspicious, but he drank greedily of the watered mead that Adam set to his lips. He listened in silence while Miles introduced himself in the proper Welsh fashion, naming all his antecedents and relatives before telling him of Adam’s identity, where he was, and how seriously he had been wounded.

‘It was foolish to attack Lord Adam’s troop,’ Miles added with a shake of his head. ‘He might not speak the
Cymraeg
beyond a smattering, but that does not mean he is an idiot in matters of border warfare.’

The youth’s mouth twisted. ‘I don’t need lecturing,’ he said. His voice was hoarse and rusty from lack of use.

Miles nodded benignly. ‘Perhaps not from me, but your kin will be only too delighted to point out the error of your ways, once they know you are alive, I am sure.’

The down-turned mouth was joined by a heavy scowl.

Miles translated what had been said so far. Adam put the mead down. ‘Ask him who his kin are.’

Miles began to speak but the youth cut across him and said in halting French, ‘My brother won’t be delighted, he’ll be furious. You needn’t have gone to the trouble of saving me. He’ll murder me with his own hands when he finds out.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Davydd ap Tewdr.’ He looked down again. ‘I’m Rhodri, and younger than him by ten years. We’re born of different mothers.’

A slow, beatific smile lit up Adam’s face. ‘Worth your weight in Welsh gold then.’

‘Or a peace treaty,’ Miles said. ‘He’s ap Tewdr’s heir as matters stand.’

‘Yes, gloat,’ said the youth miserably. He shifted angrily in the bed and his body jerked taut, his breath locking in his throat.

‘You’ve made a regular mess of that leg, lad,’ Miles pronounced. ‘You’re lucky it’s not festering.’

‘I’ll send to your brother.’ Adam offered him the mead again. ‘There’s a Welsh carrier plies his trade through here once a month. He’s due next week and he’ll know where to take word. And I’d be an innocent if I did not know that your brother has his own ways and means of discovering your whereabouts.’

The youth drank and said nothing, but colour crept up into his face.

Adam frowned, eyeing his captive. ‘Tell me how you come to know Warrin de Mortimer.’

The colour vanished from the youth’s complexion. ‘He was really here then?’ he said hoarsely. ‘I thought perhaps it was just part of a bad dream.’