The Running Vixen (16 page)

With a brief, tired smile, her father gently tugged one of her braids. It was a gesture she remembered a hundred times from childhood. It had many meanings - teasing, affectionate, conspiratorial or warning, but never anything less than love. Tears filled her eyes and she flung herself into the haven of his arms and wept against the breast of his scarlet court robe. ‘I’m sorry, Papa. If I’d known the trouble it would cause, I’d never have done it - I thought Adam was going to marry elsewhere - I thought that just once it wouldn’t matter.’

‘Hush,
cariadferch
, hush, you’ll drench my robe and shrink it,’ he said, his lips at her temple. ‘I thought you were supposed to be lying down. Judith said she had given you poppy in wine and that you were best left to sleep.’

‘I tipped it into the rushes when she wasn’t looking,’ Heulwen confessed. Sniffing, she pushed herself out of his arms and looked up into his face. ‘I didn’t want to sleep until you returned from court; I had to know what happened.’

‘You would have done better to drink the wine,’ he said, and wandered from the brazier to his shield to examine its raw, splintered surface.

‘Papa?’ She swallowed, feeling frightened.

‘What do you think happened?’ he growled. ‘Warrin’s fast, I’ll give him that. He drew first blood: accused Adam of maligning his good name by a false claim of murder, and of deceiving and dishonouring you. It shifts the onus to prove the claim from his shoulders on to Adam’s, and because Warrin brought it into the open of his own will, it diminishes the suspicion against him. The King was quite content to agree to a trial by combat and I’m a cross-eyed leper if I don’t know the reason why.’

‘Why?’ Heulwen was driven to ask, feeling sick.

‘A fight to the death is going to make excellent entertainment to follow up our swearing to Matilda. It will take men’s minds off their anger at having to swear to a woman. It’s going to ease their frustration to see spilled blood, preferably Adam’s, as he was one of the men responsible for bringing Matilda to us in the first place. Tomorrow’s the swearing, and the trial’s to take place the day after.’

‘That’s horrible,’ Heulwen whispered, appalled.

‘No, just expedient. You can’t blame Henry for using it to his advantage. This reckoning between Adam and Warrin has been coming for more than ten years.’ Guyon shrugged. ‘It’s not just over you, Heulwen, you’re only the spark that ignited the dry tinder.’ He removed the rings from his fingers and tossed them on the clothing chest.

Heulwen sat down again, her hands pressed to her mouth. Guyon looked at her with troubled eyes. He could see the imprint of himself stamped upon her features, mingled with those of her mother. Her hair grew the same way as Rhosyn’s, and the timbre of her voice was an exact, poignant reminder of the woman he had lost to the savagery of Walter de Lacey. And Adam de Lacey was Walter’s son. Guyon cast that thought from his mind. Adam was no more like Walter de Lacey than a lump of flawed glass was like a polished jewel.

‘Child . . .’ he began softly, and crouched beside her.

‘I’m all right, Papa.’ Tear-tracks streaked her bruised face as she stared beyond him into some unpleasant distance. ‘Only I think I’d like that poppy in wine now.’

13

The Empress Matilda’s slender body was encased in a tunic and gown of royal purple, trimmed with ermine tips at cuff and knotted hem. Apart from the colour, she might have been an effigy. Adam set his own hands between hers and received an icy kiss of peace in return for his oath of loyalty to her and the future heirs of her body. Unsmiling, tepid, she took his fealty as her due, her expression remote, declining to acknowledge how many times over she owed him her life. Had she permitted herself to smile, she would have been attractive. Beneath her gauze veil, her braids were a bright brown, and her eyes were of an arresting lake-water blue, challenging every man who dared to look into them. On all sides of the great hall, the high barons and bishops of the land stood as witnesses to each other’s swearing: Bigod, Ferrers, de Clare, de Blundeville, Salisbury, Winchester, Canterbury. Adam stepped back and another lord took his place and swore allegiance.

Henry was smiling in lieu of his daughter, not just a flimsy parchment smile to put a good grace on the proceedings, but one of deep and genuine satisfaction. Adam supposed that it was indeed gratifying to him that his barons had agreed to acknowledge Matilda as his successor, which was in part due to the tireless persuasion of Robert of Gloucester. But if they had been brought to swear, then so had Henry - that he would not seek a foreign husband for his daughter without the baronial consent. But then what had oaths of that kind ever meant to the King, except the buying of time to break them later? Adam thought. Henry would marry his daughter to whomsoever he chose; that smile said so.

The celebration feast commenced with the pomp and ceremony befitting such a grand occasion and the presence of so many important men. Adam, as a minor tenant-in-chief, was relegated to a place at the far end of the hall, for which he was grateful. He had no great fondness for these gatherings with their rife hypocrisy, everyone trying to outdo each other and glancing sidelong to see if they had succeeded. There was the back-stabbing, there were the sly insults and, for him also, the hostile shoulder-nudges of men who wanted to see him lose the forthcoming trial by combat. Men who supported Warrin de Mortimer for the sake of his father, who was well thought of and respected at court, and undeserving of the scandal visited upon his house by a young man whose own family reputation was considerably more tarnished. And then of course there was the gossip; the jests at his expense, the sniggers and the sly innuendoes. Adam bore them stoically, but it did not mean that inwardly he was not goaded raw.

‘I’m either going to marry you to Heulwen or officiate at your funeral, so you might as well speak to me!’ complained a rich, deep voice at his hunched left shoulder.

Adam swivelled and stared at the grinning young priest who had just squeezed his way on to the trestle beside him. He found a sudden answering grin of his own. ‘John! I hadn’t thought to see you here!’

‘The Earl of Leicester might feel in need of a confessor after swearing to an oath like that,’ laughed Guyon’s second son and namesake. To avoid confusion, he had early on been called for the saint on whose eve he had been born, and only on the most formal occasions ever went by his christened name.

‘So might we all,’ Adam said ruefully, ‘the King in particular.’ He stretched out his arm and playfully patted the bald island of scalp ringed by a thick sea of reddish-black waves. ‘You’re ordained now?’

‘Since last Martinmas.’

‘So I’ve got to call you Father and treat you with a proper respect?’

John’s dark, beautiful voice rumbled with laughter. ‘Is that so much of a trial?’ He folded his arms on the trestle. A serving girl dimpled at him as she leaned over to pour wine. He smiled back, but without noticing how pretty she was, not because he was unaffected by pretty women - indeed on occasion, celibacy had been a discipline he had failed - but because he simply could not see her clearly enough to know. Ever since early childhood when he had fallen over cradles, sewing baskets and hound puppies rather than walk around them, when he had been defeated in sword practice because he could not see the blows coming until it was too late, he had known he was destined either for the priesthood or an early death. It was an obvious choice, and he had flourished, and already had a responsible post in the Earl of Leicester’s household.

Adam glanced sidelong at the young man. ‘Aren’t you going to lecture me from your pulpit, then?’

John squinted at a dish of eels stewed in herbs and wine, and answered with a question of his own. ‘Do you know why my Lord Leicester chose me above several others to be his household chaplain?’

Adam shook his head.

‘Because he knew I wouldn’t keep lecturing the soldiers about mere peccadilloes. Men will always gamble, take the Lord’s name in vain, and fornicate where they shouldn’t with someone else’s woman, and then brawl about it. They’re unlikely to take much notice of the bleatings of a mealy-mouthed priest young enough in some instances to be their grandson. I suppose I could hurl hellfire and damnation at them, but I prefer to keep that for the sins that really matter - like murder.’

Adam looked sharply at John. A soft, myopic doe-brown his eyes might be, but they bore the clarity of knowledge. ‘You believe me then?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘No one else does.’

‘That is not true,’ John contradicted. ‘It is just that empty vessels make the most noise, and if you’ve noticed, it’s all coming from de Mortimer’s side. Don’t worry, Adam, we’re not all out to knife you in the back. That’s Warrin de Mortimer’s particular vice.’ He took a mouthful of the eel stew, swallowed, and added thoughtfully, ‘I saw Warrin de Mortimer in the early spring when I was returning from my studies in Paris. He was a member of a hawking party that included William le Clito when they crossed our path.’

‘He was what?’ Adam stared.

‘There were a lot of other young men present, mostly from the French court, I think. I do not suppose there is any harm in going hawking with William le Clito, it just depends what they were talking about, but I didn’t hear any of that.’ He reached for a piece of the fine white bread that had been baked especially for the feast. ‘I saw Ralf, too.’

‘What, with them?’

‘No, the following day just outside Les Andelys. He was kicking his heels beside a water trough, obviously waiting for someone. I would not have recognised him, my eyesight being what it is, but my horse needed to drink and Ralf was too close for me to miss. He wasn’t pleased at being discovered either, and not just because there was a woman clinging to his arm or because I’m Heulwen’s half-brother.’ He bit into the crust and moistened it with a sip of wine. ‘He asked me not to say anything, tapped his nose and told me he was about the King’s private business, and at the time I believed him. I had no reason to doubt then.’ He gave Adam a reassuring smile. ‘Don’t worry, the King knows. I told my Lord Leicester last night as soon as I realised its significance and he took it straight to Henry, so even if this trial by combat doesn’t favour your cause, it’s not a lost one. Warrin de Mortimer is marked.’

‘I thought that the victor’s arm was aided by divine intervention,’ Adam said drily, as he attempted a morsel of the fish stew himself and grimaced. A favourite dish of Henry’s it might be, but in Adam’s opinion, Henry was welcome to it.

‘That is the theory,’ John said with spurious gravity. ‘But divine intervention is a fickle force to depend upon, and I should know, I’m a priest.’ Then he sobered and fixed Adam with a troubled stare. ‘Warrin used to be able to flatten you in the tilt yard when we were children, ’ he said.

‘He’s relying on that memory now,’ Adam agreed, ‘but I was only half-grown then, and he was almost at his full strength. We’re much of a height now. I know that he is broader, but if so, then I have the edge on speed.’ His smile was wry. ‘Still, it won’t do any harm to pray for me, and for Heulwen.’ He reached for his cup and took a quick swallow of the wine. It was Rhenish, the kind he had lived on for several months of purgatory at the German court, the kind with which he had almost killed himself on the day of Heulwen’s marriage to Ralf. ‘I’ve loved her for a long time,’ he said.

‘The way she used to look at Ralf ought to have melted that ingrate’s bones,’ John reflected, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably, ‘but he ran after other women instead.’

Adam put his drink down and tugged at a loose thread on the gold embroidery at his tunic cuff. ‘I think I would call him out too if he still lived,’ he muttered, and snapping off the thread, sprinkled it from his fingers where it drifted, flickering with light, into a candle flame and was consumed in a brief, bright flaring.

The morning of the trial dawned knife-cold with a slicing wind from the east. Frost gleamed like crumbled loaf sugar on every rooftop and pinnacle, frilled the edge of the Thames in crackling silver praline and dredged the beached boats like sugared marchpane confections. The air was grainy with minute frozen particles, sharp as crushed ice to breathe.

Adam rose as the first streaks of dawn sparkled on the thick swatches of frost layering the shutters, broke the panel of ice in the bowl set on the coffer, and having sluiced his face, went to first Mass, his heart as heavy as lead within him but his mind composed for the coming ordeal. He heard Mass, he made confession, was absolved, and sat down to break his fast with Sweyn. Austin served them hot wine, bread and cheese, his manner both restless and subdued.

Sweyn rubbed one huge, calloused palm over his beard, loudly vibrated his larynx, and spat into the rushes. ‘Watch his footwork,’ he growled. ‘It was always his weakest point. If you can fault him there, then you have a chance. Do not, whatever you do, lock horns with him bull to bull because he will kill you.’

‘I do have eyes in my head!’ Adam snapped. He broke a hunk of bread from the loaf, took a bite, and without tasting it, washed it well down with a gulp of the wine.

‘What about brains?’ Sweyn enquired, unimpressed. ‘If you’re not prepared to listen to some sound advice, then you’re a fool.’

Adam inhaled to retort, saw the fear lurking behind the drawn-down bushy brows and half-lowered lids, and was silenced. ‘I am listening,’ he said instead. ‘I just become edgy before a battle. You should know that by now.’

Sweyn’s expression softened for a moment. ‘Aye well,’ he muttered, ‘that’s as may be, but you’ll need to be on an even keel before you step into that arena.’

‘Have you ever known me not so when it has mattered?’

‘No, but it has never touched you so closely before.’ Sweyn braced his hands upon the board and shoved to his feet. ‘I’ll give you a workout to warm up when you’ve done eating - I’m going for a piss.’

Adam watched him to the door, then lowered his gaze to the bread between his hands. He did not really want it, but knew he had to eat something. It might be unwise to go into a fight with a loaded stomach, but if the ordeal were to last any length of time, then an unsustained sword arm was liable to fail. He forced another piece down, took a gulp of wine, and became aware of the intent scrutiny of his squire.