The Running Vixen (23 page)

He pricked Vaillantif with his spurs and the destrier reared up against the Welshman’s mount, forehooves slashing. Adam swung his sword backhanded from shoulder height. Trained from infancy, there was so much power behind his blow that it almost severed the Welshman’s head. The body crumpled from the saddle and the Welsh pony bolted, stirrups hammering against its belly.

Breathing rapidly, Adam looked around. The Welsh were in retreat now, fleeing for the safety of the forest. ‘Where’s the lad?’ he demanded.

‘He ran for the woods, sire,’ replied Sweyn. ‘And the others with him.’

Adam scowled in the direction of the trees. Behind them, the sky was as grey as steel.

‘If the lad’s loose, and they were coming from Thornford . . .’ Sweyn began.

‘Then the exchange must have already taken place,’ Adam finished, a knowledge that had been with him since the first impact of the charge. His chest expanded on a deep breath. ‘They didn’t waste much time, did they?’

‘Do we go after them, my lord?’

Adam shook his head. ‘No. They’ll split up the moment they hit the forest and it is their own ground. We’d be picked off one by one that way. Anyone hurt? Go and find out, will you?’

‘What about the Welsh?’ asked Jerold. ‘The bodies, I mean. What shall we do with them?’

Adam glanced down. His last victim returned his look balefully from his muddy bier, blood crawling from severed flesh and sinew. ‘Leave them. They’ll be claimed when all is quiet.’ He wiped his sword on his thigh and sheathed it, looked up and said tersely to the man who had come to ask instructions of Jerold, ‘What are you staring at?’

‘My lord, that is Davydd ap Tewdr, I would swear an oath on it. I saw him at a fair in Shrewsbury last year, and quite close to. I was going into an alehouse as he was coming out with some of his people . . . He was laughing.’ His eyes flickered with unwilling fascination over the hanging jaw, the stained teeth exposed in the eternal grin of death that threatens the living with their own, inevitable fate. Shuddering, he crossed himself.

Adam gestured the man away. ‘I was wondering to Heulwen how it would be without ap Tewdr breathing down my neck,’ he said to Jerold. ‘It seems as if I’m about to find out. Go on, muster the men. There are still three miles ahead of us and it’s nearly dark.’

On first sight of her husband, Heulwen almost fainted, for as he stepped into the torchlit hall, the brownish-red colour of drying blood almost obliterated the rich blue of his torn surcoat. His face too was liberally spattered in the areas where it had not been protected by helmet and ventail.

‘Holy Christ!’ she cried, and stopped short of running into his arms. ‘Adam, what happened? How badly are you hurt?’

He followed her eyes down. ‘It’s not mine, love,’ he reassured her. ‘It’s Davydd ap Tewdr’s. He’s dead.’ His voice was matter-of-fact, as if he was discussing a mundane, everyday occurrence. He kissed her awkwardly. ‘They told me at the gatehouse that Miles is here. Where is he?’

‘I had him carried up to our bedchamber. He’s very weak - barely conscious. He took a fall and I fear that perhaps a piece of broken rib has pierced his lung.’

‘Yes, we found his horse.’ His mouth tightened as he remembered the scene they had come upon. He decided not to tell Heulwen, and plucking at his surcoat grimaced and said, ‘Do you think you could organise a bathtub?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She snapped her fingers at a waiting maid and issued a brisk command.

Adam took the cup of wine that was given to him and, drinking it thirstily, made for the stairs.

‘Sir, can you hear me? It is Adam. Davydd ap Tewdr is dead. We met his war band coming away from here and there was a battle. Rhodri took to the woods with the survivors and I let him go . . . Sir, my lord?’

Miles struggled up through a floating, weightless darkness towards a burden of light and pain. There was a hand gripping his own, and the voice, although low-pitched, was anxious, almost pleading.

‘It’s no use!’ he heard his granddaughter say on a soft sob. ‘No use, Adam, he’s too far gone. Elswith, run and fetch Father Thomas.’

Miles forced his leaden lids to open. The candles burning on the coffer were a yellow blur; everything was a blur. His granddaughter’s hair merged with the candle flame, and link mail silvered his vision with shifting discs of light.

‘Adam?’ he breathed weakly, vaguely puzzled until he remembered. A faint smile. ‘Don’t go chasing your tail lest you catch it. My will lies in the dower chest at Ashdyke . . . Guyon knows.’

‘I am going to write to him this very night. He should be here within the next few days.’

Miles moved his head from right to left on the pillow. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’d rather die without a host of weeping relatives around my bed. Guyon knows that too . . . No great tragedy for me, I’m glad to go . . . I’ve stopped fighting it . . .’

‘Grandpa, no!’ Heulwen let out the words with an involuntary cry, then pressed the back of her hand across her mouth.

‘Child, it is a blessing. You have your life before you . . . Do not grieve for me. I have lived mine to the full and beyond.’ He closed his eyes again, and seemed to sink down into the bed as if only his shell remained. His hand relaxed in Adam’s.

‘Adam?’ Heulwen’s voice was thin with fear. She clutched his mail-clad arm. ‘He’s not . . . ?’

‘No, not yet.’ Adam removed his hand from the dead-leaf texture of the old man’s. The aftermath of hard battle was in his bones, making him feel as limp as a rag. ‘But it won’t be long - certainly before your father can get here. You have to accept it; he wants to die. Let him go.’ He took hold of her shoulders, kissed her forehead and became aware again, as she stood resisting in his embrace, of the state he was in. ‘Where have you lodged us for the nonce, Heulwen? I’m reeking in blood, and in no fit state to comfort my wife or let her comfort me.’

Heulwen stood a little back from him, his words dragging her from her grief to the realisation that there were things to be done; that she had a husband who needed her attention and her ministrations.

‘The wall room that was Rhodri’s.’

Adam paused at the door to let the priest enter and spoke to him for a moment before continuing on his way. He stopped again as he caught sight of his squire whispering to one of the maids, his hand in the act of curving around her waist. ‘Austin, go and fetch me parchment, ink and quills, and bring them to the wall chamber!’ he snapped. ‘You girl, about your duties!’

She blushed, and bobbing a curtsy fled, the empty bath pail banging against her skirts. Adam shook his head. ‘That boy!’ he muttered beneath his breath, but with more irritation than anger, and shoved aside the curtain to enter their temporary bedchamber. Another maid finished emptying her pail into the tub and flitted from the room. The steam from the bath was laden with the scent of bay and rosemary.

‘Adam, I had to ransom him, I had no other choice,’ Heulwen said, beginning now to feel nervous as he reached to the buckle of his swordbelt. ‘FitzSimon wanted me to send to you first, but I was too frightened for my grandfather.’ She rubbed her hands together, watching him. ‘I think I wounded FitzSimon’s pride.’

‘You’re good at that,’ he said. ‘You find the sore spots in a man’s soul and prick them sometimes until they run with blood.’ He fetched her a look from under his brows. ‘I know all about your behaviour towards my designated constable. He was waiting in the gatehouse for me to ride in, and as full of righteous indignation as an inflated bladder. I heard him out, and then I deflated him to a manageable size.’ He clinked the swordbelt across the coffer.

Unable to discover from his tone whether he was annoyed at her or at FitzSimon, she said, ‘For my sake?’

His smile was slight and sour. ‘Not entirely. FitzSimon hides his inadequacy in arrogance and the belief that he’s always right. He’s a good soldier when directed, but he doesn’t enjoy surprises such as women who snatch his authority and make ransom deals with Welsh brigands.’

‘Adam, there was no other way. By the time I had sent for you . . .’

‘Did I say that I wholeheartedly agreed with him? You might have handled him with more tact, although I doubt that’s in your nature, but in the matter of the commands you gave you were right. My own would have been the same. No harm done, except that Rhodri is loose sooner than I expected, and I still don’t know him well enough to be sure which way he’ll jump next.’ He pulled off the torn surcoat, tossed it to one side, and waited for her to help him remove his hauberk. Half a day since she had aided him to don it. Now the once gleaming links were spotted with mud and splotches of blood where it had soaked through the surcoat. There was also on his left side a line of splayed, warped rivets, showing how close he had come to being riven himself. Heulwen stared at the discarded, ruined surcoat and suddenly her hands were icy, unable to take the hauberk’s weight so that it slithered to the rushes at her feet.

Adam had turned his back on her and was removing his gambeson and shirt. When he turned round and sat down on the bed, she stared at the comet-shaped bruise empurpling his ribs in the precise position of the damage to surcoat and hauberk. The livid mark was concealed from her as he leaned over to unwind his garters, and Heulwen gazed at his bent head, her stomach churning.

At Windsor, the trial by combat had seemed like stiff and gilded play-acting, he and Warrin just characters in some monstrous charade, real, but only half real, and herself another player watching it all through a dark mirror. Over the space of the past two months, the charade had receded as she lived with Adam and had begun to see unknown facets glinting under the surface, with herself reflected in them. Now, staring at the tear in his hauberk and the bruised flesh above the new pink scar of his fight with Warrin, the dark mirror shattered and exposed her to the reality of how much she stood to lose.

Adam glanced up. ‘Have you . . .’ The look on her face stopped him. She was so pale that her skin seemed translucent and he thought for a moment she was going to faint. ‘Heulwen?’ He dropped his leg bindings and stood up, but before he could reach her, she had reached him. One arm went hard around his neck and she fastened her mouth on his, not just offering, but wildly demanding. He tasted tear-salt, felt her shudders, and her other hand was stroking him intimately, kindling a blaze. He broke away from the kiss with a gasp like a drowning man and clamped his hand upon her working one, holding her away before his control snapped and he took her to the bed and used her in the way she was demanding.

‘No, Heulwen, not this time,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll not deny that I want you, but not like this. If you want to rage against your grandfather’s dying, do it some other way. Go and kick the wall, or slaughter a pig, ride a horse into the ground, but do not bring it into our bed. God knows that’s a haunted enough place as it is.’

Heulwen shook her head, her eyes brimming. ‘You don’t understand, Adam. It’s not my grandfather I fear to lose, it’s—’

There was a discreet cough outside and, hard upon it, Austin came into the chamber, sheets of parchment tucked under his arm, quills and an inkhorn in his hands; behind him walked a maid bearing food and wine.

Adam set Heulwen gently to one side and directed the squire to put down the writing implements and then go. While Austin did his bidding and the maid set down her tray, Adam finished undressing and set about the matter of a perfunctory bath. Heulwen lifted the flagon to pour him a cup of spiced wine, her hand shaking on the handle.

Presently, Adam put down the sponge, set the soap dish out of reach and said with quiet decision, ‘Heulwen, go to my chest and bring me the casket you’ll find at the bottom.’

She handed him the goblet and, giving him a curious look, went to do as he asked. The casket lay beneath his summer cloak and lighter linen tunics - a small, but exquisitely executed box made of cedarwood overlaid with enamelled copperwork depicting the signs of the zodiac - not a masculine possession at all.

‘It belonged to my mother, so I’m told,’ Adam said, watching her from beneath his eyelids. ‘Brought back from the east with a host of tall tales by one of her brothers. I meant to give it to you some time ago, but it slipped my mind until now. The jewels inside are yours. They were my mother’s personal ones, not bound to be passed on with the estate titles.’ He gave a deprecatory shrug. ‘There isn’t much. Apparently her first husband saw no reason to deck a woman in gauds when he could better use the money elsewhere, and my own father - well you know all about my own father.’

Heulwen sat down on the bed and after one glance at Adam, raised the casket lid. A modest collection gleamed at her from the interior. Two intricate necklaces in the Byzantine style, probably gifts from that same brother, a girdle stitched with thread of gold, and a silk purse that matched it. There was an ancient torc bracelet of woven gold, several cloak clasps, some of silver, some of bronze, and some rings, one set with three garnets. She thanked him reservedly, wondering why he had chosen to give these things to her now: a sop to her pride? A comfit to an upset child?

Adam left the tub, dried himself, donned his chemise, then sat down beside her. ‘You haven’t opened the drawer at the bottom,’ he said, nodding to the copperwork panelling the base of the casket. She narrowed her eyes to look closer and saw that what she had thought were decorative knobs were there for a purpose. When she gently pulled them, a drawer slid out. She made a small sound of surprise, and picked up the brooch that lay within.

‘Your grandfather said that I was to give it to you when I deemed the time right,’ he said, studying her pensively.

She stared at the piece. ‘Grandpa gave you this? The wolf brooch?’

‘On that first night we returned from Windsor, together with a warning to beware of futility, which we haven’t heeded very well, have we?’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug.

‘He set great store by this.’ She traced the figure of the wolf with a gentle forefinger.

‘And by you.’ He touched her braid. ‘Are you going to sit in vigil with him tonight?’

‘Yes,’ she said through a tear-constricted throat.