Shadows and Strongholds (69 page)

'Why should any of us care about that, except to say that you deserve it?' He made to move on, but she shot out her hand and grabbed his sleeve with thin, bird-like fingers.

'Please… Lord Joscelin once offered me safe haven in a nunnery. I thought that you might… that you might find it in you to speak for me.'

Brunin shrugged her off in disgust. 'He would not listen,' he said. 'And why should I speak for you?'

'I thought that at one time… that you cared… that you—'

A horse clopped around the corner of the building.

Marion looked up at the sound of hooves and gasped as Ernalt de Lysle advanced on them on his stallion.

'Please…' Marion grabbed Brunin's arm again, her fingernails digging through fabric into flesh.

De Lysle dismounted. 'Marion, come here.' He extended his left hand in a peremptory gesture. His right was already reaching to his sword.

'Why?' she sniffled. 'You don't want me.'

'I didn't say that.'

'No, you are very fond of "not" saving things.'

'I said come here.' His nostrils flared with temper. Watching him, Brunin tried to read the flicker of his eyes, the motion of his body. He couldn't reach his own sword because Marion was trembling against him, barring his way.

'Leave her alone,' he said.

De Lysle took two paces forward. 'Still playing the preux chevalier, FitzWarin?' he sneered. 'I remember you at Shrewsbury Fair, a puling coward with piss running down your leg.

'You seem to have strange notions of what is and is not yours for the taking,' Brunin replied evenly, although his heart was pounding in swift, hard strokes. 'And of the difference between courage and cowardice. It takes no courage to terrify a child into pissing himself or to beat a woman into submission. That is the coward's way.'

Drawing his sword, de Lysle strode forward and wrenched Marion away from Brunin, flinging her aside so hard that she fell. And then he lunged. Brunin had watched the hand, not the eye, and ducked under the flash of the blade. The site of his healing wound burned with pain but the instinct to survive kept him moving. He came up, reached for de Lysle's wrist with his right hand, forced it back and struck with his left.

De Lysle reeled, blood blossoming from his split lip and dribbling down his chin, and Brunin drew his own sword.

'No!' Marion screamed. 'No!' She went unheeded. A crowd began to gather, drawn to the fight like hounds to the scent of meat. De Lysle recovered and aimed a slashing blow at Brunin's left arm. Without a shield, Brunin had to parry with his sword and the shriek of steel on steel was agonising. Fine splinters of metal sparked from the blow and the impact ran up Brunin's arm, leaving tingling fire in its wake. He knew he had to end it quickly. He was weak from his wound and had been unable to train De Lysle was strong and swift and it did not take vast intelligence to see how this fight was going to end.

He ducked beneath another blow and as he straightened and recovered, felt a trickling heat in his side. Again de Lysle came at him. Brunin parried and felt the blades sliding against each other. He pushed and twisted, flicked his wrist, cast de Lysle off with a heave that brought the wetness of blood through shirt and tunic, and then cut hard with the back edge of the blade.

De Lysle cried out and involuntarily heeled on to his back foot. Blood poured from the knuckle joint of his forefinger which had been curved over the hilt guard. Now half the finger was gone. Brunin followed through, whipping off his cloak, casting it over de Lysle's head and swiping the knight off his feet. De Lysle flurried his way out of the heavy cloth by which time Brunin had a sword edge at his throat. He allowed the blade to bite and watched the thin line fill and overflow with red.

'Stop it!' Marion shrieked. 'Stop it!' She threw herself against Brunin, and her weight struck him on his damaged side. Agony whitened his vision and he grunted and gave ground. De Lysle raged to his feet and prepared to attack again, but his hilt was slippery with blood and, as Brunin parried, de Lysle lost his grip and his weapon sailed from his hand and landed in the street with a metallic clatter.

'God's sweet life, enough!' bellowed Gilbert de Lacy, forcing his stallion through the crowd to the drama at its centre. 'What goes forth here?' There was a dangerous light in his eyes. The knights of his entourage, mounted up and ready to leave, formed a phalanx, mail-clad and grim-faced.

Brunin knew that de Lacy was fully expecting to hear the word 'Ludlow' on his lips, and to act accordingly. 'Honour.' he gasped through bared teeth. 'And cowardice.'

'What?' Nonplussed, de Lacy glowered at him.

'They was fighting over the wench, sir,' piped up one of the spectators, pointing a grimy forefinger at the weeping Marion.

De Lacy's scowl deepened. Uncoordinated with pain and exertion, Brunin staggered to Marion, hauled her to her feet and thrust her towards de Lacy.

"In Gods name,' he said, "see her safely into a convent, my lord.'

De Lacy's mouth twisted in distaste. 'I doubt any house of nuns worth its reputation would harbour her.'

'Give her to me,' de Lysle said hoarsely. 'She is mine.' He held out his undamaged hand towards Marion and beckoned.

She stared at his outstretched fingers and slowly, with measured tread like a sleepwalker, went to him.

Nausea coiled in Brunin's belly. He wondered what he had just been fighting for. Behind him the sound of rapid hoofbeats announced the arrival of his own men and Joscelin's. Hawise rode at their head on Jester, her grey eyes aglitter like her father's when he went into battle. Brunin could see the potential for renewed bloodshed.

Sword hilts rattled against scabbard mountings, spear hafts clacked upon mail as de Lacy's knights presented their weapons.

De Lacy spoke sharply to his men. Brunin held out his hand to stay his own and looked at Marion.

'Well?' he said. 'What is it to be?'

She stared at him from within the pinion of de Lysle's arm, her eyes wide and blank like empty mirror cases. Then she lowered her lids and turned inwards towards her lover, laying her palm on his mail-clad breast. He covered it with his mutilated, bleeding hand and gripped.

'You see how it is to be,' de Lysle snarled with raw triumph. 'She comes with me.' He signalled a squire to bring up his stallion and, once mounted, pulled Marion up behind him. She clung to him, burying her face against his spine, hiding herself from the world.

De Lacy mounted his stallion. 'Keep your distance from Ludlow,' he said. 'You and all of your kin.'

'All claims are quit,' Brunin answered stiffly. De Lysle was having difficulty controlling the sidling dun. Already the reins were slippery with blood. Still Marion would not look up.

Brunin watched de Lacy and his entourage clatter off down the road and as the tension left his body the pain struck with a crimson vengeance. He staggered and gasped, and Hawise was immediately at his side.

'You stupid, purblind fool!' Her voice was pitched low so as not to carry, but it was filled with vehemence, rage and a tremble of tears. 'What do you think you were you doing?'

As you say, being a stupid, purblind fool,' he answered and swayed. She unlatched his swordbelt, jerked his tunic and shirt out of the way and looked at the damage wrought by his exertions. With tight lips, she beckoned two of the soldiers forward and somehow, between their brawn and
Brunin's fading strength, they managed to get him across
Jester's back.

'God help me,' she said. 'I want you alive for the rest of my days, not for the few that you seem to be making of yours!'

He tried to smile. 'Are you sure about that?'

She gave him a look swimming with tears. 'If you have to ask then you are indeed a fool.'

In a small side chamber off Gloucester's great hall, Brunin watched the candle burn on the pricket and wondered what hour of the night it was. He was wakeful now that the effects of the soporific wine had worn off. Hawise and Sybilla had cleaned his reopened wound with stinging salt water and astringent herbs, Sybilla informing him without sympathy that he should stop arching like a scalded cat and it was a good thing that men didn't have to undergo the ordeal of childbirth, or God's earth would be without a population. The women had packed the hole with soft linen bandages, given him wine infused with more herbs including white poppy, and left him to sleep. Now he was wide awake and thirsty. His side was pulsing and sore, but he was not in agony.

A flagon stood on a stool at the bedside, with a cup, but to reach it he would have to lean across his sleeping wife. He studied the candlelit shine of her hair: dark red as garnets, strong as wire and soft as moss. He remembered its abundance in his hands on their wedding night: the clean, sweet aroma; the erotic sensation of it trailing over his skin. Thought transferred itself to flesh and, despite the distractions of thirst and pain, he was suddenly hard.

Stealthily he raised himself up on one elbow and reached towards the flagon. A drink would settle his thirst and the other matter would go away if he didn't think about it. He had just succeeded in hooking the flagon in his fingers when she turned over with a sleepy murmur. Gingerly he lifted his arm to avoid spilling wine on her.

'What are you doing?' she mumbled, opening her eyes.

'I needed a drink, and I didn't want to disturb you… but plainly I've failed.'

She made an irritated sound. 'You should have woken me. You don't want to open your wound again.' She reached for the cup and turned to him, then eyed what the disturbed covers had revealed.

'I was thinking of your hair,' he explained.

She bit back a smile. 'Just my hair?'

'That was enough.'

'Do you want me to put more poppy syrup in this?'

'No.'

She removed the flagon from him and poured wine into the cup. His eyes never left her face as he drank it down. She watched the movement of his throat, and the soft glow and shadow of candle flame on his body.

'More?'

He shook his head and she replaced the flagon on the stool. When she turned back, he reached for her.

'Your wound!' she protested, her eyes flickering between his groin and the bandaging at his hip.

'… is in less need of succour than other parts for the nonce,' he said, his hands busy with the lace of her chemise.

'But we can't, you—'

'You don't want to?' He transferred his attention to the hem of her shift, bunching it upwards, and she shivered as she felt the palm of his hand against her skin.

Hawise swallowed, and felt her body grow liquid with lust. 'I don't want to hurt you.'

'You won't.' He fastened his other hand in her hair and brought her mouth down to his; as they kissed, his fingers were very busy beneath her shift, banishing her misgivings. Brought to a pitch where modesty was forgotten, Hawise broke the kiss to remove the chemise. And then, because she was uppermost, and because it seemed to her the best way of preventing him from putting strain on his wound, she straddled his thighs and, after a moment's fumbling, succeeding in sheathing him. She did the latter slowly and watched his face. The expression in his eyes, the sharp hiss of breath through his teeth told her everything that she wanted to know and sent a ripple of pleasure arrowing through her loins. She knew that the Church would view such carnality as a sin and that penance would be due, but she was willing to be sorry on the morrow, not now.

'Am I hurting you?' She raised up and sank back down, the movement leisurely and calculated. The tips of her hair trailed lightly over his body.

A grimace crossed his face and he placed his hands on her hips, holding them still. 'I would call what you are doing more like torture,' he gasped. 'And of an injured man too.'

'Hah, shall I stop and let you be?' Although she had been hesitant at Brunin's first approach, Hawise was enjoying herself now. There had been little opportunity for such play in their marriage bed, but with each new encounter she was learning—and recent abstinence had sharpened her appetite… as it had obviously done her husband's. She could tell from his breathing and the fine dew of sweat on his body that he was riding a knife-edge.

'Do that and I will never, ever forgive you.'

Hawise laughed and let herself rise and fall, rise and fall, while beneath her Brunin gasped and clung to control by a thread, every muscle in his body knotted with tension. The sight, the feel of him, to the novelty of the position flooded through her and, added to that abstinence, brought her to a knife-edge of her own and, almost without warning, her climax struck like a stone hurled into a pool and the ripples cascaded through her body in flexing rings of sensation. She heard his breathing catch across his larynx, felt him let go and shudder with the pleasure of his own release, and then by slow degrees relax. His clenched fists fell open. He looked at her through heavy lids, his eyes glazed.

'And how is your need now?' she asked, gently leaning over to kiss him.

'Comfortably buried,' he said against her lips and she felt him smile.

Later, the wine drunk down to the lees, she curled against him and ran her forefinger over his bicep, following the line of a vein running down the muscle. 'What will happen to Marion?' she asked and felt his flesh tighten beneath her touch.

'I hope that de Lacy will put her in a convent.'

'And if he doesn't?'

He turned awkwardly to face her and ran a strand of her hair through his fingers. 'That is his concern,' he said softly 'Whatever I might have done for her was finished today when she turned back to de Lysle.' He made a face, as if he were lying on tree roots instead of a soft feather mattress.

'I don't hate her,' Hawise said. 'But she haunts me…'

'That is how I feel too.'

Silence fell between them; Hawise was slowly drowsing back to sleep when he spoke again. 'As soon as I can ride any distance, we'll go to Lambourn and to Alberbury and begin anew.'

She nuzzled against his shoulder and murmured agreement.

'There is still Whittington to recover,' he said. 'There are writs to be sought and pleas to be made, but that is a way forward, not back.' His hand closed on her hair and he pulled her against him. Soon his breathing was even and steady. Hawise watched the measured rise and fall of his chest, and if she was pensive about their future, she also knew that it held nothing they could not overcome together.