Elizabeth Chadwick (29 page)

She sat up, straddling him. There was an expression on her face he had never seen before. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her lips swollen and red from their kisses. Strands of silver-blond hair had wisped loose from her braids and clung to her brow and throat. She looked so wanton and sultry that, despite his weariness, he felt a stray spark of desire flicker anew. There was something else in her expression too. Surprise, and curiosity, he thought, as if she were assimilating a new experience.

“I hope I did not fail to live up to your expectations,” he said.

She tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear and her lips curved. “No, you didn’t fail,” she said consideringly and her nose wrinkled. “Theobald used to fall asleep too.”

Fulke shifted uncomfortably beneath her. He did not want to think of Theobald, but it was his own fault for seeking reassurance. He had not mistaken her pleasure; he should have left it at that.

Leaning forward, she kissed him softly on the mouth. “You did not fail,” she repeated. “You exceeded them, and I am not going to say anything more lest your head swells and becomes too great to put through your hauberk.”

The kiss, the words, ignited the spark; and although five minutes since Fulke had not believed himself capable of anything but flat-out sleep, he felt the urgency surge through him again. “I don’t think my head is the problem,” he declared as he stiffened inside her and cupped her haunches. “But I know the remedy.”

***

Maude woke before dawn and for a moment wondered where she was. Prompted by the weight of Fulke’s arm across her waist, she remembered and smiled. The darkness held the scent of leaves and compressed bracken, of man and woman. He was breathing slowly and deeply, still sound asleep.

She lay still to avoid disturbing him and thought about their wedding night. About the difference between what she had expected and what had happened. She knew that she should not make comparisons between Fulke and Theo, but it was impossible to avoid. In their last year together, Theo had slept with her, but they had not coupled. Even in the time before that, Theo had viewed lying with her as a routine duty, never particularly high on his list of priorities. He had always been gentle with her and a little apologetic. She had not realized that the act of procreation could be filled with irreverence and laughter and such sheer, raw lust that it left her breathless. She had not guessed at a pleasure so intense that it made her want to scream. Even the thought of it now brought a tingling warmth to the place between her legs, accompanied by a slight soreness. She smiled. Riding a horse for mile upon mile and then riding a husband for the time it took to bring about a second pleasuring were not to be recommended in the same day and night.

The languorous drift of her thoughts was rudely interrupted as their screen of blankets was flung back and William’s head appeared, illuminated like a demon’s by the flicker of a hand-held lantern. Maude stifled a shriek and shot to a sitting position. So did Fulke, already groping for his sword despite the fact that his eyes were still closed.

“Fulke, there’re horsemen in the wood. We have to leave,” William hissed urgently. “One of the outpost men saw their torches, and they’ve got dogs with them.”

Fulke swore. “All right. You know what to do.”

William nodded. “I’ve brought your hauberk,” he said, indicating a bundle on the ground, and, leaving the lantern, he went.

Fulke rapidly tied one of the lacings on his chausses that had come adrift from his braies. “Good morrow, wife,” he said, baring his teeth with savage humor. “I’m afraid our wedding breakfast must wait.”

“At least we had our wedding night,” she said. “They cannot part us on the grounds of non-consummation now.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, she kissed him. He pulled her close for a moment and she savored the rasp of his beard stubble and the strength of his arms.

“No regrets then?” he asked.

“Only that we haven’t the leisure to lie abed this morn.”

They kissed again, hard but fleetingly. Fulke broke from her embrace to go outside and don his armor. Maude bundled her hair into the confines of a silk net and covered it with her wimple. The crown of roses, slightly crushed and wilted, flickered at her in the dim lantern light. Lifting it carefully, she secured it to her hair with a couple of pins. She was not going to leave her bridal chaplet for their pursuers to find and desecrate.

By the time Fulke was ready for his hauberk, Maude was there to help him. The weight of the mail shirt almost made her stagger as she helped position the neck and sleeve holes. Once the garment was over his head, it was only a matter of tugging it down over the snug-fitting gambeson. There was no time to indulge in the palaver of donning mail chausses. Maude brought him his sword belt and watched him gird it on with nimble efficiency, no sign that only moments ago he had been deeply asleep, his arm across her breasts. Was it the result of living on a knife-edge, or was it habitual? There was so much she had to discover—if they lived.

She took her bow and quiver from the bottom of their makeshift bed where it had lain with his sword. “I am as good a shot as any man,” she said with a defensive jut of her chin when she saw his expression.

“I know you are, but I am hoping you won’t have to prove it by driving an arrow through someone’s throat.” Grasping her hand, he ran across the clearing to the tethered horses and boosted her across the gray’s back before mounting Blaze. As he adjusted his stirrup, he spoke rapidly with his brothers and the man on outpost duty who had sped back to tell the camp of the enemy’s approach. Satisfied, he nodded and turned to a knight who was waiting on the periphery, mounted on a light, slender-legged horse. He held a length of rope to which was attached the butchered head and forequarters of a decomposing roe deer.

“You know what to do, Ralf. Take them westward.”

The knight nodded and a smile flashed amid the darkness of his beard. Reining about, he set off, the decaying carcass bumping and bouncing behind.

Fulke led the rest of the troop at right angles to the north. The dawn was just beginning to break and the foliage of the trees turning from black to a heavy green. “I can see you are using Ralf as a decoy,” Maude said, “but will that be enough to put them off the scent?”

“For a time at least.” He grinned at her over his shoulder. “The dogs will latch on to the stench of the meat and Ralf’s riding one of the swiftest horses so they’re unlikely to catch up with him.”

“But surely they will notice only one set of tracks going Ralf’s way and more than two score going this?”

“I’m hoping they’ll follow the dogs at first and not think about the number of horses. Even if they do, it’s still too dark to see tracks properly. By the time they retrace their path, we will be that much further away and I took the precaution last night of having our horses’ shoes renailed back to front. They won’t find any tracks going in this direction.” He waved his hand. “You can see too how the men have spread out a little. There is not going to be a worn trail. I know there are signs such as snapped twigs, but even a skilled tracker has to stop and examine, and that again gives us more time.”

His speech drove home to Maude that this was not so much an escapade for Fulke as a way of life. Her life now also.

“How do you know it will work?”

“I don’t.” He shrugged and stared straight ahead. “It’s not too late. You can turn around and go back to Canterbury—claim you were abducted.”

She eyed the defensive set of his shoulders. He had complete confidence in himself as a commander, but not in his ability to hold on to her. Perhaps he thought that he had not so much rescued as stolen her, and the notion was jabbing at his conscience.

“I would rather walk in rags from one end of England to the other than go back now,” she said fiercely. “Before the Archbishop of Canterbury himself I pledged myself to you until death should us part. Does your own pledge mean so little that on our wedding morn you suggest I go back?”

“You are twisting my words!” he said indignantly.

“Am I?”

He did not answer immediately and his shoulders remained tense. Finally, he looked at her. “If you turned back, it would break me,” he said huskily, “but I need to know that you are here of your own free will. I never could bear to see a creature in a cage.”

“Do you think I would have any free will of my own if I went back?” she demanded. “If I was going to refuse, I would have spared you this difficulty and done so in Canterbury. Have my lips said no? Has my body? Could you not read the language of the night?” She glared at him in exasperation. “For a man of supposedly quick wits, you are being remarkably dull.”

“I made a reasonable suggestion. I did not expect your tongue to become a sword because of it.”

“You call sending me back to Canterbury a reasonable suggestion?” Maude drew herself up. A part of her was actually enjoying the exchange. Sparks had never flown between her and Theobald. The sexual tension being generated now promised a conflagration that would burn white hot in her bed with Fulke.

“More reasonable than your attitude.”

“
My
attitude!” Maude gave her mount a kick in the flanks, making it skitter and snort in surprise. “This is not the time, nor the place, but when we are free and clear of our pursuers, I will show you what reason is, Fulke FitzWarin, and then I will take it from you.” She gave him a narrow look, the strengthening dawn and the light from the trees enhancing the green of her eyes.

“I think you already have,” he said wryly.

“Not far now.” Fulke looked at Maude, who was drooping in the saddle. “We’ll be at Higford by compline.”

Immediately her spine straightened. “I am all right,” she said defensively. “The warmth of the day has made me sleepy, that’s all.”

It was a lie. She was exhausted. He only had to look at the dark shadows beneath her eyes to know that. They had been traveling hard, making sure that they had left any pursuit far behind. The weather had been kind in that it had not rained, but the heat was draining and they had been avoiding the towns which meant taking lesser-known paths through frequently rough terrain.

Maude had not complained, but Fulke knew the enforced traveling had taken its toll. When she had accompanied Theobald to Ireland, the pace had been protracted with comfortable stops in abbey guesthouses and friendly keeps along the way. She had not been forced to live on siege rations and camp out on the hard ground every night. Nor had she been hunted.

Fulke thrust his feelings of guilt aside. It was unwise to keep chewing at that particular bone. She had agreed to the marriage, had gone with him willingly, and, as she had said, going back would be like returning to a prison. But seeing her suffer filled him with remorse.

“I am not as frail as I look,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “You keep gazing at me as if I’m made of glass, but I’m not. I can stay in the saddle as long as you or any of your men. I won’t be treated differently.”

“I only said that it wasn’t far to Higford,” he replied. “I know full well that you are no fragile creature. In truth, you remind me of a hedge pig. Certainly you have the spines.”

Her eyes flashed, as he had known they would. They were indeed like glass, he thought, a green so clear and light that they gave the illusion of being translucent.

“Like always mates with like, so they say, and you have the bristles to prove it,” she retorted, touching her cheek where her skin was marked with a pink rash of stubble burn.

Fulke rubbed the heavy four days’ growth of beard on his chin. “I’ll barber this off the moment we reach Higford,” he promised. During the winter, he would have let his beard grow, but in the summer, it was too hot and prickly, especially if worn with a mail coif or closed helm.

“You think we’ll be safe at Higford?”

“For a time at least. William FitzAlan is sheriff of Shropshire and I number the sons of many of his tenants among my men. He’s sympathetic to my cause and, thus far, he’s turned a blind eye. My Wiltshire lands are accessible too since William of Salisbury is the sheriff.”

“He’s John’s half brother!” Maude exclaimed. “Are you wise to trust him?”

“He’s also my friend. If he is forced to move against me then he will give sufficient warning. I would not abuse his hospitality, but I know I could claim it if I had to and not be betrayed. He loves John, but he does not swim in the same murk.”

Maude chewed her lip and looked doubtful.

“Besides,” Fulke added, “there are barons of the northern counties who will succor us. Eustace de Vesci hates John, and there is your father too.”

“You cannot rely on him,” she warned with a shake of her head.

“I would not want to dwell in his pocket,” Fulke shrugged, “but we understand each other.”

“Do you?” Her expression was filled with distaste. “Before you arrived in Canterbury, he threatened to use his fists on me to beat me into obeying. You heard him say that he would bind my tongue with bit and bridle.”

“I said that we understood each other, not that we were the same,” he said impatiently. “I swear that he will never threaten you again.”

“Of course not. He gave that right to you at our wedding.”

“A man who beats a woman emasculates himself.” Fulke’s voice was husky with revulsion.

Maude exhaled down her nose. “My father would say that such an attitude is storing up trouble.”

“And the other way is not? I might bellow myself hoarse or burst with temper, but if ever I strike you, I grant you leave to divorce me.”

“If ever you strike me,” Maude said sweetly “you will find your dagger in your ribs instead of at your belt.”

He laughed. “You see what I mean about your spines?”

Their banter abruptly ceased as they rounded a curve in the road and saw a troop of horsemen advancing from the opposite direction. Fulke narrowed his eyes to try and focus on their banners. Then he cursed and, swinging his shield round and down on to his left arm, unlooped the spiked flail from his saddle.

“Get to the back of the line,” he commanded Maude. “Go, now! Alain, take her!”

“What is it?” Maude demanded.

“Morys FitzRoger and his sons,” Fulke snarled. “In Christ’s name, go. If he charges, you’ll be killed!”

White-faced, Maude swung her mare and dug in her heels.

Twenty yards from Fulke, Morys reined to a halt, clearly as surprised as Fulke by the encounter, but fully prepared to fight instead of avoid. With a slow flourish, he drew his sword for close-in fighting, the move copied by his men in a threatening rattle of sound. Then came the moment of silence, of held breath and building tension as both groups assessed each other and mentally selected their targets.

“FitzWarin, you’re naught but a thieving outlaw!” Morys bellowed across the space where in moments battle would fall. “Tonight the heads of you and your brothers will be paraded on spears from Shrewsbury’s walls, where they can gaze on all the land they want!”

“You’ll have to take us first!” William fretted his stallion, and the horse circled and pranced, foam churning the bit.

Morys raised his hand, but Fulke preempted him and with a roar to his troop as he dug in his spurs, gaining that important hair’s breadth of advantage.

The shock of the two lines meeting was like the ripple of a giant serpent: a shuddering undulation. Dust boiled up around the struggling combatants. Desperate to protect Maude, terrified lest Morys’s men broke the line, Fulke fought out of his skin. At some point in the frantic battle, he lost the flail around the handle of an enemy’s hand ax.

He managed to draw his sword. A flicker in his side vision warned him to duck and the blow aimed at him by FitzRoger that would have broken his collarbone clanged on the side of his helm instead. Stars dazzled in front of his eyes. He saw the heave of FitzRoger’s shield as the Baron tried to maneuver his horse in for a second strike. Gritting his teeth, Fulke responded, his aim driven by years of training and practice rather than conscious effort. The sword edge sparked upon the mail rivets of FitzRoger’s aventail and the power of the blow was only partially deadened by the padded leather beneath. Morys gave a choking grunt and folded over his saddle, gagging for breath. As the stars cleared from Fulke’s vision, he saw that his blow had crushed Morys FitzRoger’s throat.

FitzRoger lurched and toppled from his horse, striking the ground with a heavy thud. He clawed at his throat, convulsed and was still. As if the battle had been channeled through his body alone, the fighting ceased and men on both sides fell back.

“Papa!” Weren FitzMorys flung down from his horse and knelt at his father’s side. “Papa!” He shook the man in the dust, then turned him over, frantically seeking signs of life. “You’ve killed him,” he said in a tear-choked voice, raising hate-filled eyes to Fulke.

“As he would have killed me,” Fulke retorted, chest heaving with effort. “As he killed my father. It was a fair battle, and God has decided.” He gestured with his sword, the steel still clean and mirror bright. “Take him and go while you are able.”

“You will pay for this!” Gwyn snarled, joining his brother.

“Do not waste your time with threats you cannot fulfill.” Fulke’s tone was weary with distaste. “I have given you mercy to take your father’s body and go. Do it now, or let the bloodshed continue.”

The young men exchanged glances and Fulke saw their uncertainty. Their only tempering had been the skirmishes of minor border battles. They were outclassed and they knew it. “This isn’t finished,” Gwyn warned as he and Weren raised their father’s body from the dust and laid it across his horse.

“No,” Fulke said savagely. “But it will be soon.”

The FitzRoger troop rode away, taking their dead and injured with them. Fulke turned to his own men. There were no fatalities, although there were several nasty wounds, including the loss of a finger and two broken collarbones. Ivo had been hit in the ribs by a mace and was in considerable pain. Maude was busy with the victims, binding up, reassuring. Relief and weakness flooded Fulke’s limbs when he saw that she had come to no harm.

He dismounted, and she ran to him, flinging her arms around his neck.

“Jesu,” she half sobbed. “I thought you would be killed!”

“Hush, I’m all right.” He rubbed her back and suppressed the urge to crush her against the iron links of his mail. “I’ve endured hard fighting before.” The words mocked him with their shallow bravado.

“But men are dead, and do not tell me they were green to warfare. It could have been you.” She bit her lip, struggling for control.

“But it wasn’t.” He tilted her chin on his thumb. “If I was worried, it was for you, all soft and unprotected in the midst of a mêlée. You feared for me, but how much more did I fear for you.”

They kissed briefly but with fire. Mindful of his duty to his troop, Fulke broke away to talk to the injured. Shaking, but aware of her own duty, Maude tended them.

William caught Fulke’s arm. “If we ride for Whittington now, what chance is there of taking it?” he demanded with gleaming eyes.

His fierce urgency kindled a momentary response in Fulke, but he forced himself to think with his head instead of his gut. “The garrison won’t open the gates for us while his sons still live, and we can hardly sit down for a siege without becoming victims ourselves.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

Fulke glanced over his shoulder. “Get Maude and the injured men to Higford and consider from there,” he said, then lowered his voice. “It is in my mind to cross the border into Wales.”

William’s brows shot up. “Wales?”

“Morys FitzRoger was kin to Prince Gwenwynwyn of Powys. You know how seriously the Welsh pursue blood feuds.”

“You think Gwenwynwyn will come after us?”

“I think it likely. Even without the fact that I’ve killed his distant cousin, Whittington is an important border fortress and Gwenwynwyn is John’s ally on the borders. They both want to curb Llewelyn of Gwynedd.”

William frowned, and then his brow cleared in understanding. “So we are going to pay a visit to Llewelyn and offer our services to him?”

“It is the best course of action in the circumstances.”

William nodded and even looked pleased. Inwardly Fulke grimaced. His brother was amenable to the notion of going into Wales because it promised new experiences and adventures. He was also buoyed up by Morys’s death and doubtless would make others suffer his ebullience for several days. Fulke wondered if he should feel more euphoric himself. Perhaps it would come. Perhaps it would pierce the numbness of fatigue and he would manage to smile and raise a goblet in celebration—and perhaps it was the price for leading that he might not.

***

“What were you saying to William about Wales?” In the aftermath of lovemaking, Maude leaned over Fulke and studied him by the light of the candle burning on the pricket. There were few marks of the afternoon’s battle on his body, the occasional red blotch of a bruise the only evidence that he had been fighting for his life. The memory of the attack would dwell in her mind for as long as she lived. Watching a tourney was completely different to being in the thick of a kill-or-be-killed struggle. No courtesy given, no second chances or blunted blades. The metallic smell of blood mingling with the gritty taste of dust.

She had overheard only part of the muttered conversation between Fulke and William while tending the wounded, but the furtive way that Fulke glanced at her had made her suspicious. They had the great bed to themselves in Higford’s upper chamber and the rare luxury of being alone. Fulke’s aunt Emmeline had insisted that everyone but the newlyweds should bed down around the hearth in the hall below.

Fulke twined his forefinger around a silver tendril of her hair then released it and gazed at the curl he had made. “I have to visit Prince Llewelyn ap Iorwerth,” he said. “Morys FitzRoger was kin to Prince Gwenwynwyn, and Llewelyn is his rival. Llewelyn understands all about making alliances as well as war with marcher lords.”

Maude narrowed her eyes. “When were you going to tell me?” she demanded. “As you rode out of the gates? Or perhaps not at all?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I was just awaiting the right moment,” he said. “This is the first time we have been alone all day…and the subject of Llewelyn, no matter how important, was not the first thing on my mind.”

“You should have told me before.”

He shrugged. “Mayhap I should. Are you going to sulk and scold because of it?”

“Am I not entitled to do so?” Maude demanded crossly. “How would you respond if I suddenly announced that I was taking off without so much as a fare-you-well?”

“It’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you took off, it would be on a visit to your family or to a confinement of a friend or some such. Where I am going, there is mortal danger. If I did not tell you straight away, it is because I did not want to worry you.”

Maude sat up. “You think I am some frail milksop to stumble over obstacles?”

“I have never known anyone less like a milksop in my life,” Fulke said. “I thought I was being considerate.”

“Considerate be damned,” Maude snapped. “You knew that telling me was going to be difficult, so you put it off.”

“I won’t make that mistake again,” he said wryly.

She leaned over and bit him, not entirely in play and certainly not in forgiveness. He yelped, grabbed her wrists, and rolled her beneath him. They tussled back and forth, her hair tangling about them. She scratched him and he pinned her down and thrust into her. She cried out and clasped him with her thighs, but instead of the hard, fast surge that her desiring craved, he held still above her, braced on his forearms, black hair tangling at his brows. “Now,” he panted, “shall I be a considerate husband or not, my lady? It is for you to say.”