The Leopard Unleashed (31 page)

Renard had tried to speak to Henry before he went down to the river. Still full of pride, temper wearing the residue of drink, Henry had shrugged him away, his movements jerky as he buckled on his swordbelt. Renard had recognised that it was not the right moment, but with a battle looming on their threshold, there might never be another one, right or otherwise. In the end, he had embraced Henry and been forcibly rebuffed. No less than he expected, but it had still hurt.

The King’s candle sputtered in a draught from an open doorway. Stephen tilted the taper to try to make it burn better, but only succeeded in dripping the glossy, boiling wax on to his hand. Reacting instinctively, he exclaimed
and dropped the candle. It hit the flags, spat, flared and died. The King sucked his burnt flesh and stared. One of his squires bent to pick up the candle and rekindle it from his own flame, and discovered that it was impossible, because the fallen one was broken in three places.

Men exchanged looks, the more superstitious among the company already reading evil portents into the incident. Richmond, not one of them, took a pace forward and calmly presented Stephen with his own clean-burning taper, then bowed and turned away to take a fresh taper from one of Bishop Alexander’s chaplains.

Stephen inhaled deeply. The lines between nostril and mouth corner were more deeply engraved than usual, perhaps a trick of the deep shadows, but his hands were steady on the fresh taper, even if one of them did display a hot red streak, overlaid by an opalescent film of wax.

No difference could be detected in the Bishop’s expression, but as his habitual face was that of a shocked rabbit, that was no reassurance. He continued the mass smoothly enough, however, and, lulled, men began to sigh out the nervous breaths they had drawn, and to relax.

However, God had not finished with them. Whether by accident or design, and Renard very much suspected the latter, one of the silver-gilt chains suspending the pyx above the altar gave way and the whole thing came crashing down. Sacramental wine splattered the King’s face and stained the Bishop’s ornate vestments. A gilt candlestick fell over and fire suddenly licked along the embroidered edge of the altar cloth.

Renard doused his own candle and ran to beat out the flames before they could take proper hold. Already he could hear the rumours winging forth from the cathedral – of
how the pit of hell had opened up immediately beneath the King’s feet as he celebrated the mass.

The stink of singed linen overrode that of incense. The pyx was badly dented and the wafers it contained were strewn everywhere like giant flakes of snow. Had the light within the cathedral been less gloomy, Stephen’s pallor would have been obvious.

Renard righted the candlestick and stepped back from the altar. Bishop Alexander fussed over the pyx like a parent over a badly injured child.

Alan of Richmond looked sideways at Renard. ‘At least we’re in a cathedral,’ he murmured from beneath the cover of his full, russet moustache. ‘It’s as good a place as any to pray for our lives.’

‘Or to claim sanctuary?’ Renard said.

The assault by the rebels on the guarded ford was swift, brutal, and entirely effective. The men attacking were either adventurers and routiers out to line their own pockets, or the bitter dispossessed who had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Henry had been spared the watery death of the common soldiers because someone had decided that his clothes were rich enough to make him a reasonable gamble for good ransom money and because the leaders of the rebel forces wanted information. Consequently he was knocked senseless, disarmed and sent backwards through the lines.

If Henry’s skull had been splitting with a drink megrim before, when he opened his eyes now he felt as if his brains had burst through the top of his head. He felt so sick that he dared not move. To move was to retch. To retch was to increase the agony to unbearable proportions.

‘Christ’s arse, when’s he going to wake up?’ snarled a voice he thought he recognised and hoped against hope that he did not.

‘Your knight should not have hit him so hard.’ This was a woman’s voice, throaty, rich and bored.

‘When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it!’

Skirts swished and a strong, spicy scent wafted and caught in Henry’s throat. He struggled valiantly not to vomit and through narrowed lids caught a swirl of blue embroidered fabric and a woman’s hand lifting it free of a stamped mud floor. Her fingers were long and graceful with manicured sharp nails. The Empress Matilda, he thought hazily, and, despite himself, widened his gaze to see if he was correct. As usual, as in all things, he wasn’t. The woman was tall and slim like the Empress, but her curves were more pronounced and her hair was not brown, but the colour of sun-bleached corn, and flowed abundantly to her hips. Their eyes met and he had the briefest instant to see what an incredibly lush blue they were before she tossed her head and turned away. She said nothing about his conscious state to Earl Ranulf, but then she did not have to. The movement of his eyes to meet hers had been too much for Henry’s stomach. He raised himself up and spewed.

‘Welcome to my hospitality,’ The Earl said. His pleasantry had a sarcastic ring. ‘Perhaps when you have finished, you might like to tell me a few things. Drink?’ He raised a pitcher.

Henry wiped his mouth and gingerly sat up. Then he put his face in his hands, welcoming the darkness. ‘No,’ he said indistinctly through his fingers.

Ranulf studied him, knowing him from somewhere but for the moment unable to put place and name together. ‘Suit
yourself.’ He shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘We have taken the ford, you know. No casualties on our side, but all of your lot swept away like twigs on flood water. We’re going to take the castle just as easily.’ He wound a moustache strand around his forefinger. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘The devil,’ Henry croaked without taking his hands from his face.

That amused Ranulf into a brief chuckle. ‘I suppose I am to those who get on the wrong side of me. You’ll do well to co-operate if you want to be ransomed whole to your kin and not sold back by the portion.’

‘I would rather die than be ransomed.’ Henry’s voice was dull.

‘That too can be arranged. Whether there is an unpleasant interlude along the way is for you to decide. I need to know some things … numbers, morale, intentions.’

Henry raised his head. ‘I do not know, and that is the truth. Most of the time I have been too drunk to know my own name.’ He glanced across the tent to the woman. She had picked up a small baby from the pallet in the corner and put it against her shoulder. It stared at him with dark blue eyes and sucked loudly on its fist.

‘Which is?’ Ranulf studied him like a hawk.

Henry’s wits might have been displaced by the rattling they had taken, but he was still aware enough of the danger should Chester recognise him as a member of the house of Ravenstow. ‘Henry de Rouen,’ he said, using the name of the town in Normandy from which his family had originated.

It meant nothing to Ranulf. He jerked on his moustache and wondered if this was going to be a waste of his time. Some minor cog that helped to turn the main grindstone
but never actually saw it in operation. ‘Drunk most of the time is not all of the time. Tell me what you know!’

Henry swallowed. His mind darted and found nothing. No knowledge and no lies to replace knowledge. He wished he had listened to Renard instead of stoppering his ears with pent-up bitterness. The baby paused in sucking its fist to wail and bump against the curve of the woman’s cheek. He saw that its hair was an unusual shade of red, dark as beech leaves. ‘Nothing,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘I cannot think.’

With an impatient oath, Chester kicked him to the floor, then kicked him again, solidly in the ribs. ‘Perhaps this might help you!’

Henry curled up. The pain came, but he had suffered pain before and had learned to endure it. ‘I don’t know!’ he gasped. He heard the woman sigh. Chester strode to the tent flap and shouted. Two guards came at his summons and Henry felt himself grabbed and thrust roughly back against the Earl’s pallet.

‘Strip him,’ commanded Ranulf.

Henry struggled but his bones were made of wool and he flopped with the rough handling of the guards. The Earl fetched the pitcher of water used for sluicing hands and face and threw it over Henry’s naked form. ‘Remember anything now?’ he demanded, kicking him again.

Olwen had seen enough. She went to the tent entrance.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Ranulf snarled.

She raised an indifferent shoulder. ‘I am taking Jordan to his nurse; he’s hungry.’ She favoured Henry with an indifferent look. ‘It is obvious that he knows nothing. Either put him out of his misery now with a blade, or return him to the other prisoners so that he can be ransomed.’

‘You’re paid to lie on your back with your legs open and your mouth closed!’ Ranulf said angrily. ‘I could throw you out just like that!’ He snapped his fingers.

Olwen gave him a scornful look, not in the least intimi -dated, and went outside. It was still snowing, but the flakes were huge and wet and punctuated by flashing silver drops of rain. She heard the dull sound of blows from within the tent and Ranulf ’s voice rising from anger to rage. She understood that kind of impotence because she had experi -enced it herself, only hers had never led her to commit murder.

Jordan mewed on her shoulder as she stalked around the campfire and the Earl’s guards towards her own smaller tent. Their eyes hungered over her body, but she ignored them.

Two mounted soldiers squelched past her, clearing the way for the richly dressed man riding behind. Olwen recognised Robert of Gloucester. His gaze hesitated on Olwen and the baby, then slid away to his mount’s forelock as though the twist of coarse black hair was of enormous fascination. The other night he had watched her dance and she had seen the lust glitter in his eyes, followed by the denial. Apparently his marriage, although political, was also happy, and he had no intention of jeopardising it.

Olwen’s next move stemmed from irritation at being ignored as if she was something doubtful that had just crawled out from under a stone, and from anger at Ranulf for the way he had spoken to her. Turning round, her cloak sweeping the mud, she crossed in front of Gloucester’s horse, and with her free hand grasped the bridle.

‘A word, Lord Robert,’ she said in her spicily accented French.

‘Let go.’ He wrenched on the rein and his courser backed and jibbed.

‘I thought you should know that my lord of Chester is torturing one of the men taken prisoner at the ford. The man has no information. He is a knight and should be put up for ransom with the others.’

Gloucester scowled. The correct and haughty response to the presumptuous slut was that Ranulf ’s actions were his own affair, and that he had no interest whatsoever in her tale-carrying. The problem was that he did have an interest, since he wanted to question the man himself, and preferably in a reasonable state of mind and body. ‘Let go,’ he said again.

Olwen did so, and half smiled as he turned the horse aside towards Ranulf ’s tent.

In her own tent, she handed Jordan to his wet-nurse and watched him hungrily begin to feed. He was a good-natured baby, swift to smile, slow to fret, robust and mostly un -complaining, although when he did lose his temper, the resulting screams were spectacular.

Olwen was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that he was hers. Pregnancy was a hazard of her profession. She had tried to protect herself against it, a child being no part of her design, but it had happened and now she had Jordan as well as herself to think about. He bore no marked resemblance to his father except for his hair, and no one would notice that similarity unless Renard grew a permanent beard – and perhaps his build also was going to be his father’s. Whereas Ranulf was compact and powerful, his neck disappearing into his shoulders which in turn disappeared into his body, Jordan was long-boned, the kind of child who would be all gangling legs and elbows
that would develop into a fluid, cat-like grace as his body came to manhood.

Sometimes, looking at him, she felt so resentful that it frightened her, and sometimes the pang twisting her heart was of a love so deep and hard that it was truly terrifying.

Occasionally she thought of leaving him with the women and running away, but there was nowhere to flee except back over the same ground, and besides, Ranulf could not be trusted with the child. He still questioned Jordan’s pater -nity and his feelings towards him were ambivalent. Indeed, the other day he had deliberately dropped him. The baby had not been hurt beyond bruises and Ranulf had been contrite, but Olwen had seen the warning signals. It was not going to get any better. As the boy grew, so too would the doubts and the violence.

Outside she heard shouting. Ranulf, in his usual inimical style was trying to out-bellow Earl Robert and failing. Earl Robert was insisting on his right as commander-in-chief of his sister’s army to take the prisoner into his own custody before he died of a surfeit of Ranulf ’s hospitality. There was disgust amidst his rage, and a ragged edge of pity.

Olwen heard the snarl in Ranulf ’s response and knew that tonight there would be no pleasing him. Bruises, blue and yellow mottled her upper arms which were still sore to the touch where he had held her down two nights ago.

Rising, she went to the tent entrance and looked out. Ranulf, hands on hips, face puckered with temper, was glaring at the unconscious, cloak-bundled man and the two guards who were hauling him across the saddle of a handsome bay stallion. ‘The horse is mine,’ Ranulf growled, ‘and the ransom. Your nephew or not, I’ll have you acknow -ledge that before you take him anywhere!’