Shadows and Strongholds (32 page)

Brunin was out riding with Ralf. In the past he would not have chosen to go anywhere with his brother, but he was making a concerted effort to bridge the chasm between them. They might never want to dwell in each other's bosoms, but setting aside the petty quarrels of childhood and wiping the slate seemed a sensible and mature thing to do. If Henry had been able to make peace with Stephen, then Brunin reasoned that he and Ralf could at least come to an understanding.

Early morning mist wreathed between the trees. At their backs, Whittington was a castle besieged in the ghostly vapour rising from the marshy ground surrounding its walls. The bridles jingled and the horses' hoofbeats thudded on the woodland path, the sound made dull and solid by a carpet of early fallen leaves, moist and mulched from recent rain. Both youths carried bows, and wore hunting knives at their belts. Their cloaks were short in the manner that King Henry had made fashionable, and they were wearing tough calfhide boots.

Ralf eyed Jester with disapproval. 'Have you no pride?'

he asked. 'What will folk think of you, riding about on a nag like that?'

Brunin swallowed his irritation. 'He will walk all day and still be fresh enough to run a straight, fast tilt at the end of it,' he said. 'He doesn't snap or cause disruption among the other horses. There is more in the world than appearance.' Leaning forward, he tugged on Jester's long, furry ears.

Ralf drew in the reins on his dappled half-Spanish courser, making the horse arch its neck and champ the bit. 'Yes, there is respect, and you won't receive it riding that thing.'

'Respect has to be earned,' Brunin retorted. 'You can obtain it by the way you look, it is true, but it is like limewash. There had better be solid foundations beneath the paint, because in time it will flake away.'

His brother grunted and for a moment looked as if he might argue the point, but then made his own concession to brotherly relations by keeping his mouth shut.

They rode on through the woods, their breath clouding outwards to join the mist. Cobwebs netted the brambles with grey droplets, and the smell of damp forest was almost powerful enough to be seen. Each youth was intensely aware of his brother but, for a while, neither spoke, for they were not at ease with each other, and at a loss for words.

Ralf should still have been at his training with the Earl of Derby but the latter had fled the country, accused of the murder of Ranulf, Earl of Chester, and his lands had been seized by the Crown. Ralf had returned to Whittington to finish his education at home and Brunin did not know if Ralf was pleased or embittered by the fact. Indeed, he did not know anything about Ralf, except that in their childhood and early adolescence there had been resentment, bordering on hatred, on both sides.

It was Ralf who finally broke the silence. 'You're going to marry the de Dinan girl,' he said.

'That depends on whether she and her family accept the offer. It is more to my benefit than theirs, after all.'

'They'll accept,' Ralf said. 'Whatever else you were born lacking, you've always had the luck.'

Brunin bit the inside of his mouth, seeking the control not to retort in kind.

'Not that I'd want to marry the wench,' Ralf sneered. 'She needs teaching some manners, and you cannot do that when you're under her father's roof. That red hair's a bad omen. Like as not she'll give it to your children.'

Brunin looked at the trees, at the turning leaves in all their burnished beauty, and he smiled. 'Good,' he said.

'Do you think she's red between the thighs too?'

'Most likely' Brunin said evenly determined not to give Ralf the indignant response he was seeking.

'And as hot as furnace.' Ralf's eyes gleamed salaciously.

'You take a keen interest to say that you'd not wed her.'

Ralf shrugged his broad shoulders. 'Aye, but I might bed her,' he said with a grin. 'I warrant she'll be hot to handle.'

Brunin said nothing. If he lost his temper, he would have failed.

'Surely you've thought about what it will be like to lie between her thighs?'

'She is my mentor's daughter. I cannot afford to.'

'But you can if he accepts your offer.' Ralf looked at him curiously. 'You must have done. Or don't women interest you?'

Brunin could see the way this was going: a verbal sparring match about sexual prowess and aimed at displaying Ralf's broad experience. Brunin had no doubt that his brother had fluttered his way around half the serving girls in Derby's household. If he hadn't done similar at Whittington it was because their grandmother kept a sharp eye on the wenches and disapproved of fornication outside wedlock because it might result in bastard offspring.

'Of course they interest me,' he said with an indifferent shrug, hoping that Ralf would grow bored and abandon the subject.

'Ever fucked one?'

Brunin clenched his jaw. 'That's my business.'

'I'll bet you haven't.' There was a gloating note in Ralf's voice.

And you have had…" Brunin raised one eyebrow. '… let me guess: at least a dozen, and all panting to get their hands up the leg of your braies.'

Ralf grinned. 'More than their hands,' he said. 'I had one and she sat over me. Straight up.' He took his hands off the reins and held them out in front of his chest, cupped as if to hold overflowing bounty. 'There was another, you should have seen the size of her—' He broke off as they heard the cracking of branches and rustle of undergrowth to their left. Jester threw up his head and whinnied. Ralf's grey canted sideways and Ralf had to grab swiftly for the reins. He unslung his bow.

'Perhaps it's a boar,' he said, his voice pitched high with tension.

'There haven't been boar in these woods since our grandfather's time,' Brunin answered. 'Probably just the swineherd with his pigs.' He narrowed his eyes to peer into the smoky mist. Ahead of them lay one of the many forest tracks used by charcoal burners, villagers and woodsmen. Here the trees did not grow as densely and the trunks were younger.

Brunin could make out the dim shapes of animals trotting along the path and, as he and Ralf rode closer, realised that they were indeed the demesne swine. But they were being driven not by Hob the swineherd with his red hood and his two spotted terriers, but by barelegged men mounted on ponies; men with spears and knives and bows. Brunin inhaled, but it was as if his lungs had no strength. He drew rein and felt the familiar, devastating flood of fear. Everything inside him tightened, including his bladder, which he held under conscious command. But he could not control the saw of his breathing or the galloping of his heart which was running as he was not.

The Welsh,' Ralf whistled through his teeth. 'It's the Welsh and they're stealing our pigs, the sons of whores!' He set an arrow to the nock, aimed and released. The shaft went wide and thrummed into a tree beyond the man he had intended to hit. The latter gave a yell of consternation and warning and unslung his own bow. His companions turned about.

There were at least a dozen of them and it wasn't only swine they had raided. Brunin recognised some of the ponies as pack beasts belonging to the castle, and there was a cow as well. Four of the Welsh drew swords. Arrows flew in retaliation, flashing out of the mist like deadly rain. Brunin's stomach wallowed. Ralf was reaching to the dagger at his hip. Brunin batted his hand away.

'No!' he cried. 'We cannot fight them. We have to ride back and alert the guard!'

'I'm not a coward!' Ralf spat, with flushed face and glittering eyes. 'I won't run from them!'

'Christ, then you'll die!' Brunin reined Jester around and dug in his heels. The gelding gave an indignant grunt at the sudden rude treatment, but sprang from his hocks into a gallop. Brunin risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that Ralf had turned his own horse about and was pounding in his wake, his expression purple with fury. The four Welshmen had broken from their companions and were giving chase. Brunin swallowed and swallowed again, feeling sick to his stomach. The ground flashed beneath Jester's hoofs in a swirling pattern of brown and gold. Brunin could feel muscle, sinew and tendon reaching for the next stride and the next. The stiff black mane whipped his mouth and cheeks. He could hear the grey galloping at his heels, or at least he hoped it was the grey. The trees closed in and then opened out; they became sparse and the rutted village track was suddenly underfoot. Feeling Jester stumble, Brunin cased up on the reins and again turned in the saddle. Ralf overshot him on the sweating grey, and slewed the beast round to a violent halt that must have hurt its mouth. There was no sign of their pursuers.

'You stinking coward!' Ralf bellowed. 'You're not fit to be the heir to… to… a dungheap!'

'They would have killed us and flung our corpses in the undergrowth. We're alive to raise the alarm and that's what matters—not the glory!' Brunin snarled in retort, his chest heaving. 'And until you realise that, you're a hindrance at anyone's side! We're wasting time.' Reining Jester around Ralf's agitated mount, he galloped on towards the castle. Ralf came after him, drawing level.

'You haven't heard the last of this,' he bellowed above the thunder of hoofbeats. 'I'll show you up for the craven you are!'

Brunin and Ralf raised the alarm and their father immediately assembled his knights and Serjeants and set out after the raiders. Ralf loudly demanded to accompany them; Brunin grimly collected a lance, donned a gambeson and joined the soldiers.

They found the Welsh trail, but the Welsh themselves had a good head start, even herding recalcitrant swine. The border was only four miles away and soon the men of Whittington were trespassing into Powys. By this time, the raiders had melted away into the autumn mists with their prize and there was nothing FitzWarin could do but turn for home in a foul mood.

If FitzWarin's temper was frayed at the edges, Lady Mellette's was bound in place by her will, held down, stitched over, given greater strength and danger by the fact that it was contained.

'You should have ridden faster and harder,' she told FitzWarin. 'You'd have caught them then.'

'I doubt it, Mother.' FitzWarin gulped the wine that Eve had unobtrusively handed to him. 'The Welsh know how to slip away like wraiths. They do not take the beaten tracks where our horses can follow with ease.'

'It is the same every autumn. They come to steal our fattened animals for their winter supplies. You should have been better prepared.'

FitzWarin's jaw muscles tightened. 'Hindsight is wondrous, Mother. I do my best.'

'Hah, not good enough.'

'Nothing ever is.' He drained the wine and stalked away to unarm.

Mellette stared after him, lips thin, eyes narrow.

'I wanted to fight them until help came, but he ran away,' Ralf said with an accusing look at Brunin.

Brunin felt the hair rise at his nape. He had been about to follow his father out of harm's way, but there was no help for it now. Ralf had cast the glowing coal into the dry tinder. 'They were a dozen to our two,' he said curtly. 'There is a difference between courage and foolhardiness.'

'We could have held them.' Ralf bared his teeth. 'They were only Welsh rabble and you were on a warhorse… or so you insist on calling that nag. Christ, King Henry was less than our age when he led an army'

'Yes,' Brunin snapped, 'he led an army. He didn't go skirmishing in the woods with his brother at odds of a dozen to two. And with what would we have fought them?' He made a casting motion with his fist as if physically throwing Ralf's words aside. 'Bows are no use at close range and they had swords and spears. All we had were hunting knives and no bodily protection—neither shield nor gambeson. What a coup it would have been for the men of Powys. Not only the demesne swine, but the heads of the two eldest sons of Fulke FitzWarin.'

'Enough.' Mellette thumped her walking stick twice on the floor, a token blow for each grandson. 'You spar like two pups in a litter and yet you would think of yourselves as grown men.' She fixed her gaze on Ralf and leaned forward in her chair. 'You eat too much fire, and it burns up your common sense,' she told him. although there was a gleam of approbation in her eyes. 'But at least I cannot call you wanting in courage. If my grandsire had lacked for such, then his fleet would never have left the Norman shoreline. As for you…' She turned her stare on Brunin who was ashen as he strove to show her nothing. Beneath the weight of her disapproval he was a child again, and all the years between then and now might as well not have been. 'Your father should have done as I said and given you to the Church. You will never make a leader of men when the only target your enemy sees is your back.'

He wanted to heel around and leave, but her words pinned him to the spot. If he turned away, he would only confirm her image of him. He was aware of the smirk edging Ralf's lips. He could have protested; could have said that he had been into battle with Joscelin de Dinan, that he would rather use his head to think with, than as a target, but knew that it would only prolong her assault. So he faced her like a statue, saying nothing, his teeth clenched so tightly that his jaw muscles ached.

'Oh, away with both of you,' she snapped with an impatient wave of her hand. 'The sight of you wearies me.'

They bowed from her presence. Ralf shook off the experience like a drake scattering water from its oiled feathers, but Brunin was trembling. Fury and shame rolled over him in deep, nauseating waves. Ralf's smirk was open now and to stop himself from punching it off his face, Brunin turned aside from his brother and headed rapidly towards the stables.

'Going off to cry in the hay?' Ralf taunted.

Brunin swallowed and clenched his fists. He told himself that a good battle commander had control and restraint. If he responded, it meant that Ralf's words had the power to wound, and he would not give his brother that satisfaction. Brunin knew he had been right to do as he did. There would have been no chance against a dozen. He continued walking and ignored the taunts that followed him like flung clods. It was telling, though, that Ralf seemed to know just how far he could push and made no attempt to follow with more than his voice.