The Leopard Unleashed (27 page)

‘I didn’t see Henry when I arrived,’ he remarked, and when she did not reply, lowered the cloth and looked at her piercingly. ‘Gave himself away, did he? I thought he might.’

Elene paused in her ministrations to lean back and return his stare. ‘You knew?’

‘I’ve known since our wedding day.’ And then, defensively, ‘Well, what was I supposed to do? Swell into a jealous rage and swathe you up in black cloth like an infidel would do to his wife? Throw Henry half-dead with wound fever out of the keep?’ The bath water churned. Somewhat grimly he set about the motions of a wash. ‘What happened?’

Elene said hoarsely, ‘He was struggling to undo his sword-belt. I went to help him and he … he told me how he felt.’ She shook her head. ‘He came to apologise later, and then he left.’ There was no point in telling Renard the full story.

Renard sighed heavily and shook his head.

‘What are you going to do?’

He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting of the stavesacre lotion. ‘Nothing. Certainly I’m not going to chase after him rubbing salt into a bleeding wound. Let him heal a little first.’

Elene took the cloth from him to wash his back, positioning herself so that without a violent contortion of his body he would not be able to see her face. ‘I never dreamed for one moment that Henry felt more than brotherly towards me,’ she said.

‘He always was shy with women,’ Renard replied, feeling his way towards understanding. ‘I suppose he has known you since childhood and therein lies the difference. He has long been familiar with you in a family atmosphere. My father should have betrothed him years ago before the mould became too firmly set.’

‘But he betrothed you instead – to me.’

Renard tried to swivel and look at her, unsure of her slightly breathless tone, but found that with his injured toes propped over the far edge of the tub, it was not physically possible. ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘he did.’

‘That is not all I have to tell you,’ she said hesitantly when Renard was finally deloused, dry, and dressed for comfort in a loose robe, his injured foot smeared with salve and bandaged.

‘Ranulf of Chester hasn’t …?’

‘No,’ she reassured him quickly. ‘There has been some minor raiding, but more opportune than of any grand design. You’ll have all the reports as soon as you’re ready for them.’

‘Then what else?’

Elene looked down at her clasped hands. ‘I’m with child.’

He stared at her, his surprise reserved not for the fact of her pregnancy – sooner or later it was bound to happen – but because he read more apprehension than excitement in her expression and the tone of her voice. ‘That’s excellent news,’ he pronounced with guarded enthusiasm. ‘When?’

‘Mid-autumn, I think.’

Renard continued to study her. He remembered that her mother had died in childbirth when she was very small. Even women who longed for children and had a strong maternal instinct could be terrified by the prospect of giving birth, for it was also the prospect of death if anything went wrong. ‘Come here, Nell,’ he said gently.

Obediently she came, and sat down as he indicated, but when he put his arm around her, he could feel the violent vibration of her body. ‘What’s the matter? Are you afraid?’

She buried her head against his shoulder and breast.
He felt her lips against his throat and the flutter of her eyelashes like small moth wings. ‘Only of losing you. A ram takes little interest in a ewe save to keep other rams away once she is in lamb.’

‘You think that of me?’ he asked, stricken.

‘I
fear
that of you. It is foolish and jealous I know, but I cannot stop myself.’

He tightened his embrace. ‘If you were ever a duty, Nell, you’re much more than that now. If I call you love, or sweetheart, it is because I mean it.’ He sought her lips and kissed her, tenderly at first, but with a growing tension that was interspersed with murmured endearments and then breathless entreaties. Elene yielded herself to the sweeping needs of her body and his, and thought with a pang that the difference was that while he called her sweetheart, she called him her soul.

‘Here.’ Renard presented Elene with a key and indicated the iron-bound donkey-skin chest that a puffing servant had just set down on the rushes.

‘What’s in it?’

‘Plunder.’ He grinned and gestured. ‘Some of Nigel of Ely’s ill-gotten gains. Mine now. Mostly it’s silver which I’ll use at Caermoel, but you can have the geegaws. Wear them or melt them down. The necklace for you from Stephen is in there too.’

Elene knelt by the chest. Clasp, hinges and keyhole were all rusty from the damp fenland spring and it took a strong effort from the cushion of her thumb before the lock gratingly yielded. Within, protected by a waxed cloth, lay bag upon bag of silver pennies, innocuous lumpy rows of coarse leather, and riding upon them, like gemstoned ships on a
grey ocean, were two decorated cups, a flagon, odds and ends of jewellery, and a collar of ostentatious gold squares, each one the size of a small griddle cake and adorned by rough-cut red stones.

Renard’s grin became an outright guffaw at the look on her face as she raised the collar to the light. ‘I don’t know which is the more priceless!’ he japed. ‘That thing, or your expression!’

Elene wrinkled her nose at him. She turned the object this way and that and a thoughtful look entered her eyes. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I can find a use for it.’

‘As long as it’s not embroidering it into one of my tunics, I don’t care what you do with it.’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘I have something else for you too, but it’s down in the bailey, a personal gift this time.’

‘In the bailey?’ Locking the chest, she clambered to her feet. Her stomach churned and for a moment she compressed her lips, waiting for the nausea to subside.

‘What’s the matter?’ He looked at her with sudden anxiety.

She managed a wan smile. ‘Just the sickness of the early days. I should not have risen so quickly. It will pass.’ The smile warmed. ‘I’ll race you if you like.’

Renard looked from her white complexion to his damaged foot and laughed.

The bailey was a morass of churned mud, dung and greenish puddles after the previous day’s downpour. Planks had been bridged across the filthiest parts. A flooded storeshed was being swept out by two chattering women, forearms bare, besoms working in rapid, long strokes.

Elene raised her skirts to her shins and splashed in her pattens beside Renard. He had borrowed a quarterstaff
from one of the soldiers, and with its aid was managing to limp along at a commendable pace.

Rounding a corner near the swept-out mulch from the stables, he halted before the pen that usually held stray animals waiting to be reclaimed by their owners on payment of a quarter-penny fine. Today, instead of old Edward’s cow which was almost a permanent fixture due to her propensity for wandering and his reluctance to pay, the pen was occupied by a score of sheep. Ten ewes all with lambs at foot, and a handsome shell-horned young ram.

‘Longwools.’ Renard gestured at their full, curling fleeces, colloped with mud after yesterday’s rain. ‘I thought you might find a use for them on that low land at Woolcot where the Alyn floods every spring. They’re marsh-bred and not susceptible to hoof rot, or so I was informed.’

Elene looked at the animals and swallowed the lump that came to her throat. Any man could have offered his wife jewellery – the more decent probably did – but Renard seemed to have an intuition that ran much deeper, touching the quick. He brought his mother bulbs from Antioch that flowered bravely in the face of winter. He brought her sheep and craftsmen, making light of it, but to her it meant more to her than a hundred ostentatious gold collars.

‘They’re from the Bishop’s own personal herd. Some of Stephen’s less disciplined and hungrier troops had a prefer -ence to slaughter them, but I persuaded them otherwise.’

‘They’re in excellent condition.’ She looked beneath the caking of mud at the bright eyes, sturdy legs and solid bodies. The lambs were frisky and inquisitive.

‘Better than me and the men,’ he continued. ‘They seem to thrive in the wet with the joy of mushrooms!’

A ewe bleated at him as if in thorough agreement and
Renard laughed. Elene turned into his arms and impulsively kissed him.

His balance wobbled. He grabbed her around the waist to steady himself and then kept hold of her, bending his head to seek her lips.

‘You crazy half-Welsh whoreson, let go of me!’ screamed a high-pitched, panicking voice. The sheep bunched ner -vously together. Renard jerked up his head and stared at the two boys wrestling in the mud, dung and straw on the edge of the stable midden.

A tawny head came uppermost, narrow arms flailing, an obscenity in Welsh snarling from curled-back lips. His adversary warded the blows with pudgy, raised forearms and threshed his feet with the frantic incompetence of a corpse on a gibbet.

Elene started towards the boys. Renard bellowed a command at them and was ignored, the antagonists being locked in their own private battle and deaf to all else.

‘Owain, Guy, stop it now!’ Elene cried, circling them in search of an opening to try to drag them apart.

Renard limped across the path of a kitchen maid yoked with two buckets of well water, unhooked one of them from the rope and, returning to the brawl, hurled an icy deluge into its midst.

The boys broke apart, spluttering and breathless with shock. Renard put himself between them and regarded both without favour. It was useless to ask what had happened or who had started it. Boys of their age had usually perfected the art of lying, or at least of seeing the truth from a totally different angle to that of the harassed adult.

‘You’re Guy d’Alberin, aren’t you?’

The pudgy boy twitched his soaking shoulders. ‘Yes, my
lord,’ he said through chattering teeth. A fresh breeze swooped around the open spaces of the ward, punishing those who were not wearing cloaks.

‘And you are?’

‘Owain ap Siorl, sire.’ The other boy jutted his chin proudly at Renard. Blood was trickling from his nose, but he was pretending not to notice.

‘It was his fault, he started the fight!’ accused Guy d’Alberin. ‘He can’t take the tiniest joke without going wild!’

Which told Renard everything he wanted to know, particu larly when the Welsh lad tightened his lips, eyes dark with fury. ‘Suffice it that you both have the time and energy to indulge your tempers,’ he said coldly. ‘It will not happen again. I know that for a certainty because I am going to see to it myself. Guy, go and find your father and send him to me. After that, do the same with Sir Ancelin.’ He turned to fully peruse the slighter youth. ‘Owain ap Siorl, get yourself cleaned up and changed, then saddle up your own mount and the blue roan for me.’

The boys, frightened by the quality of Renard’s presence rather than the strength of anything he had said, sheepishly vanished on their separate errands.

Elene sighed and shook her head. ‘Guy d’Alberin’s a bully,’ she said. ‘The older boys just laugh at his airs and ignore him, so he takes his revenge on the newest member of the household. Owain’s so sensitive about his Welsh blood and his mother’s remarriage that he’s his own worst enemy. Also, I think that Guy’s jealous that Owain is to be your squire.’

‘Fancies himself in that role, does he?’ Renard thoughtfully stirred the end of the quarterstaff in the mud as if mixing porridge.

‘Unfortunately so.’

‘Might do him good.’

‘But not you.’ Elene pulled a face.

‘Oh, undoubtedly not in the beginning, but he’s the heir to Farnden. If he isn’t tempered before he inherits, he’s going to be about as much use to me as a sword made of raw dough! The other lad requires tempering too, but in a different way. Guy d’Alberin has to acquire a cutting edge; Owain already has one but needs the nicks of misuse honing out.’

‘And you see all that from one small encounter?’ Elene eyed him sceptically.

‘I see the probability.’ He went to lean across the top of the sheep pen and said in a voice so low that she hardly heard him, ‘Perhaps I too have been recently tempered.’

Matille watched Ranulf and his half-brother, William de Roumare, cradling their wine and their sour, power-hungry hatreds, and with an impatient click of her tongue retreated behind the leather curtain into the sleeping chamber.

She knew how it would go, round in a vicious circle, ever decreasing as the drink took effect. The earldom of Carlisle and how it should be theirs by right of birth instead of belonging to David of Huntingdon, son of Scotland’s king. Then various curses would be aimed in the latter’s direction, degenerating to all Scots in general and the Welsh too for good measure. Plots and plans to regain Carlisle and plant King David in the ground would follow.

Sighing, Matille bid her maid fetch her jewellery casket, and opening it up, sought a brooch to wear to the King’s feast at court. Ranulf would expect her to drip with jewels tonight, would expect her to outdo the Queen. In some ways Matille was not averse to that expectation; she disliked the Queen, but she preferred to be less blatant than her husband. And these days Ranulf was blatant in all things
– his contempt for Stephen, his contempt for his fellow barons, and the flaunting of his blond, foreign whore who went by the improbable name of Olwen and whom he had set up handsomely in a house on the Southwark side for the duration of their stay in London.