The Running Vixen (24 page)

‘Then wear it for him.’ He leaned round to kiss her, but did not linger, and crossed the room to the onerous duty of parchment and quill. She listened to him setting out the materials, heard the wine splash into a cup and the soft sound of tearing bread. The brooch took on warmth from her hand and the garnet eyes seemed to flicker with a life of their own in the candlelight. She thought of Ralf. Charming, irresponsible Ralf, who would have long since bolted for the safety of another woman’s arms rather than face such an emotionally charged passage as this. Then she thought of Warrin, who would have comforted her with a superficial show of concern and then expected her to rally. Behind her a quill snapped and Adam cursed through a mouthful of bread; more wine trickled into the cup.

He had withdrawn to a discreet distance, giving her space to think and recuperate: there if she needed him, but not intruding. She looked round to where he was laboriously toiling on the letter to her father. Already there were ink stains on his fingers and when he rubbed his hand over his face in perplexed thought he left black streaks upon forehead and cheekbone and nose. A wild tenderness stirred within her, as different to her feelings for Ralf as a caterpillar was to a butterfly: an awakening, an acceptance of wings. She rose and, going behind him, put her arms around his neck and rubbed her cheek against his. ‘Adam, thank you,’ she said softly.

Her words were greeted not with a smile or an acknowledgement, but with an oath as the second quill split, splattering ink everywhere. He hurled it down in disgust and in so doing, sent the inkhorn flying. A spreading puddle of ink rapidly obliterated the few words that had straggled onto the parchment. His profan ities caused Heulwen to gasp and giggle. She had thought she was aware of every last soldier’s curse this side of Jerusalem, but this was an education. She scrambled for one of the bath towels and used a corner to blot up the ink. It was too late, the parchment was ruined. She bit her lip and looked at him. ‘Shall I do it? I know that you and quills have a mutual enmity.’

‘Would you?’ A look of abject relief crossed his face. ‘I didn’t want to burden you more . . .’

The feeling increased, soaring aloft, unfettered. She smiled up at him and he caught his breath at the expression in her eyes, dazzled by it. ‘I was going to say earlier, before we were interrupted, that it was not my grandfather I was afraid of losing - it was you.’ She slipped her hand inside his shirt and traced the livid bruise above the scar. ‘And if our bed has been haunted by Ralf ’s ghost, I do not believe it is haunted any more.’ She rested her palm lightly on his flesh, but went no further. The next move had to come from him. ‘Ralf used to mouth words of undying love to me at the same time as he was mounting another woman. Empty words - anyone can say them. Actions speak the louder.’

Adam’s eyes were stinging. He swallowed hard, and knowing that his voice would not serve him, set his arm around her waist and bent his mouth to hers. The first kiss was long and gentle, as was the second. The third was deeper and its impetus carried them towards the bed, but without undue haste, for this time there was no wish on Heulwen’s part to force the pace, or on Adam’s to possess elusive quarry.

He left her mouth, to investigate the hitherto unknown delight of her eyelids, her earlobes and the soft, tender hollow in her collarbone. He unwound her braids and played with her hair, a cool, streaming river of fire, drew off her gown and undertunic, discovering the white nape of her neck that gleamed between a parting in the rich copper-gold strands. Heulwen gasped at that, her throat arching.

Adam swallowed again, this time against a different primal emotion, and sought to distract his mind. He concentrated on the lacings, which were difficult enough to make him swear beneath his breath, but when they were undone and the tunic removed, there was only her short shift and the light shining through it, outlining the contours of her body. She turned in his arms and put her own around his neck, and those contours were fitted intimately against his own, two halves of a puzzle becoming a whole.

For a moment he almost yielded to the surging greatness of his need. He thought about tilting at the quintain. If you went at it too soon, all the power was wasted and you ended flat on your back on the tilt yard floor. It was all a matter of balance and timing - of controlling your lance. That thought, so irreverently appropriate, made him shake with silent laughter and the tension eased. An image of the tilt yard in his mind, he took her to the bed.

‘That was wonderful,’ Heulwen murmured breathlessly, and slanted him a rich green-blue glance, replete and provocative at one and the same time. Adam kissed the tip of her nose and nibbled her throat, loath to relinquish the moment’s triumph and tenderness for what lay beyond. ‘Only wonderful?’ he teased, finding it enjoyable now to touch her body without having the urgency of desire to contend against.

‘I would not want your head to swell out of all proportion to the rest of you,’ she retorted.

‘I wasn’t thinking of my head,’ he gave back promptly, laughter in his voice, then yelped and was out of her and off her quicker than a pickpocket at a fair as she dug her fingernails into his buttocks. He looked at her reproachfully. ‘Vixen,’ he complained, but marred his protest with a grin, and then a kiss. She responded. Her hands slid down over his shoulders, tangled in the sparse golden hair on his chest, and it was with a sigh of genuine regret that she broke away. ‘This is not getting your letter written is it?’ She looked round for her shift.

‘You had better use the tub before you go to your grandfather,’ he said, still grinning, eyes raking her from head to toe. ‘I may not be any use at writing letters, but I seem to have written my love all over you.’

Heulwen followed his gaze down. Breasts and belly, ribs and thighs were haphazardly smeared and streaked with ink transferred by sweat from his fingertips. She giggled mischievously at him. ‘Knowing your talent with a quill, I suppose this is the only love letter I shall ever receive. It seems a pity to wash it away.’

He slapped her rump. ‘Baggage! And it’s not a love letter.’ He stretched out his arm for his half-finished wine.

‘No? What is it then?’

‘A receipt for dues paid.’

She made her eyes round and wide. ‘But I thought you kept that kind of account with a tally stick?’

He choked. Laughing, she ruffled his hair and went past him to the cooling tub.

Silent, keeping vigil by candlelight, Heulwen sat at her grandfather’s bedside, holding his hand and watching his last moments slip away. The letter to her father had been written and dispatched and the dead victims of the Welsh raid had been composed, their bodies now waiting in the chapel for the dying to join them.

She glanced across to Adam. He was sitting on a stool, his back propped against the wall, his head nodding as he dozed. She had said he should sleep, but he had refused, insisting on keeping this vigil with her; but as the hours passed in silence, so had the strength of his will to remain awake.

The hand beneath hers stirred, and the eyelids strove like moths beating at a window to reach light.

‘Grandpa?’ She leaned over him.

Her voice, soft but frightened, woke Adam. He jerked upright with a start, saw her leaning over the bed, and was immediately on his feet, cursing himself for having fallen asleep. Quickly he went to her, expecting to see a corpse; instead he looked down into lucid, knowing eyes. The faintest suggestion of a smile was upon Miles’s livid lips.

‘The brooch,’ he mouthed, for there was no strength in his breath to make a sound. His eyes were upon the gleaming circle pinned to Heulwen’s gown. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded approval.

Adam set his hand on Heulwen’s shoulder. ‘The brooch,’ he confirmed. ‘I can’t promise not to go chasing my own tail, but I’ll try.’

Miles made a sound that might have been a chuckle but was never completed, as his last breath sighed into silence.

‘Grandpa?’ Heulwen said again.

Adam leaned in front of her and gently used forefinger and thumb to close the half-open eyes which in their youth had been the same glorious colour as Heulwen’s. ‘He’s gone,’ he said gently, and making the sign of the cross stood back. Then he looked at Heulwen, and drew her into his arms. She pressed her face against his breast and clung to him, but only for a moment, Damp-eyed yet composed, she released him and looked up into his face. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I can accept it now. It was my own fear that would not let him go.’ She drew a deep, steadying breath. ‘I will do whatever needs to be done. This is women’s work now. I’d rather you sent in Elswith and Gytha to me and went to bed. I’ll join you when I’ve finished.’

He studied her intently, then gave a brief nod, recognising her need to be alone with her thoughts, upon which the maids would not intrude but his own continued presence might. ‘Don’t be too long,’ was all he said as he headed for the curtain, ‘the living need you too.’

17

A scowl blackening his brow, mouth set in a thin line, Adam strode across Milnham’s moon-washed bailey, oblivious of his destination, only knowing that if he had stayed in the great hall for one moment more he would have committed the act of murder on at least one if not more of the gathered funeral guests.
Guests
, hah! They were a flock of kites descending to eat, drink, mouth empty regrets and platitudes, and declaim fulsome eulogies that were naught but hot air.

Slowing his pace, he breathed out hard. No, that was an injustice born of his own foul temper. Most had attended out of genuine respect and affection for Miles and it was only men like Ranulf de Gernons, who had never really known him, who came out of curiosity and the desire to make mischief. De Gernons was heir to the vast earldom of Chester whose borders blended into Ravenstow’s, and could hardly be turned away.

A fire burned in the ward; guards stamping beside it while they warmed their hands and talked about the torchlit feasting within. Cold began to seep through Adam’s tunic and shirt. He wished he had stopped to pick up his cloak, but there had been no time for rational thought, only the need to escape before he leaped on de Gernons and violated the laws of hospitality. He paused by the welcome heat of the flames. The soldiers acknowledged and withdrew a little, their expressions curious. He held out his hands, rubbed them together, blew on them and shivered.

‘Here,’ rumbled John’s rich deep voice, ‘you forgot this.’

Adam turned to his brother-in-law and took the cloak he was holding out to him. ‘Thank you.’

‘Pay no heed to Lord Ranulf, he does it apurpose,’ John said. ‘Papa’s just given him the bladed edge of his tongue and Gloucester backed him to the hilt. I don’t think he’ll open his mouth again - at least not this side of the curtain wall.’ He gave a cynical shrug.

Adam swung his cloak across his shoulders and fumbled with the pin.

Frowning, John rubbed one finger over the bald, slightly prickly skin of his tonsure. ‘You don’t believe what he said, do you?’ he asked sharply. ‘Oh come on, Adam, he was winding you up like a rope on a mangonel just to watch you let fly. Everyone knows that Grandfather’s death wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have prevented it.’

‘Yes I could,’ Adam said woodenly. ‘I could have hanged Rhodri ap Tewdr higher than the man in the moon long before it happened. I could have left him in the road to die on that first encounter. I could have given Miles a larger escort or made him take a different road home.’

‘Hindsight is a wondrous thing,’ John said with more than a hint of his mother’s asperity, ‘and de Gernons certainly knows how to turn it into a weapon in your case. If you had left Rhodri ap Tewdr lying in the road, Heulwen would now be Lady de Mortimer, wedded to her own husband’s murderer.’

Adam’s head jerked up.

‘Yes,’ said John with an emphatic nod. ‘Think about it. God’s will is oft-times strange.’

Adam snorted and looked away into the flames. Greedy tongues of fire wrapped around the wood and scorched his face.

‘Are you going to go after the boy?’

Adam sighed and shook his head. ‘If it was left up to me, no. Davydd ap Tewdr’s dead and Miles wouldn’t have wanted it. He liked the lad, had high hopes for him. Your father understands that. It is men like de Gernons who worry me. They have the scent of war in their nostrils and they’re doing their utmost to flush it into the open.’

John lowered his arm. ‘De Gernons might be trailing the scent of war with our Welsh, but that is as far as he will get. When Papa stands his ground, there’s no moving him.’

‘I hope not,’ Adam replied, ‘because I think de Gernons is testing our strength for the times to come. If I were your father, I’d look to strengthen Caermoel and Oxley against future assault, and I don’t mean from the Welsh.’

John gave a bark of startled laughter. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Adam! De Gernons might not be everyone’s view of a
preux chevalier
, but he’s hardly going to start a war with his neighbours!’

‘Not in the present situation, no,’ Adam conceded. ‘But what if the King died tomorrow?’

‘All the barons have sworn for Matilda,’ John said, but the laughter left his face.

‘And how many would hold to their oath - de Gernons? de Briquessart? Bigod? de Mandeville? Leicester? You tell me. With William le Clito to look to and his father still alive, not to mention the claim of the Blois clan, Henry’s dominions would explode into war like so many barrels of hot pitch!’

John crossed himself and shivered with more than just the damp cold of the February evening. ‘Then I must pray wholeheartedly for the King’s continued good health,’ he said, and looked round with relief as Renard emerged from the forebuilding ushering their youngest brother before him together with a half-grown brown-and-white hound.

Renard was laughing so hard that his face was suffused and tears were streaming down his cheeks. ‘Sorry,’ he spluttered. ‘I know it’s no occasion for mirth, but Will’s dog just did to Ranulf de Gernons what we’re all desperate to do but dare not!’

‘He bit him?’ guessed John, beginning to grin with an unholy delight.