The Running Vixen (32 page)

Geoffrey paused on the stairs and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Is the Empress really as beautiful as they say?’

Adam struggled to keep pace with the fluctuating levels of Geoffrey’s mind: mirror-bright shallows, tepid mid-waters and opaque, cold depths. ‘She is handsome,’ he heard himself respond. ‘Rich-brown hair and milk-white skin.’
A mouth to make your loins ache and when she opens it, the venom to shrivel them.

‘And a temper?’

Adam smiled faintly. ‘A royal temper, my lord, but then you said yourself that you liked spirit in a woman.’

Geoffrey continued up the stairs. ‘A mare too spirited to permit a man in the saddle is a waste of time . . . is she?’

There was a hint of satisfaction in Adam’s tone as he said, ‘You called her old enough to be your grandam, but the difference in age is a double-edged blade. She is hardly going to run with enthusiasm into the arms of a boy barely out of tail clouts. Believe me, you will have to catch and saddle her before you can even think of mounting.’

Geoffrey threw him an angry stare, but eventually it dissolved into a snort of reluctant laughter. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a diplomat?’

‘I am, my lord. I did not say that the Empress was unridable. When she is not being haughty and impossible, she makes interesting company, but you will need curb and spur and God’s own patience to deal with her.’

Geoffrey made a noncommittal sound. ‘And your barons?’

‘They will hope you get a son on her, the sooner the better - those of them that do not will hope that you fall off and get trampled in the act.’

The neutrality became another smothered ripple of amusement. ‘So that the child can grow to manhood before Henry dies and your barons change their fickle minds?’

‘You have nailed the shoe to the hoof, my lord.’

‘The mare’s hoof,’ Geoffrey compounded with a mischievous twinkle as he swept aside the heavy woollen curtain and led the way into his father’s rooms. ‘You have heard I suppose that le Clito’s gone to claim his own destiny?’ He took an unlit candle from the holder on the trestle and kindled it from another wavering in a wall bracket.

‘Yes, my lord.’

Geoffrey eyed him thoughtfully now, the mockery flown. ‘William le Clito’s going to be too busy to look to England for a long time. Flanders is a bubbling stew of trouble, and it will take all the housewifely skills he does not possess to simmer it down.’ He returned the candle to its holder. ‘Mind you, your King is not going to like this promotion one small bit. He has a better claim himself through his mother. She was Count Baldwin’s daughter, and le Clito is a generation removed.’

‘Flanders depends on English wool,’ Adam said. ‘Therefore Flanders depends on King Henry’s goodwill.’ He pushed his hair back from his brow. ‘I’m glad I’m not William le Clito.’

‘We are all pawns.’ Geoffrey shrugged and picked up a sealed package from the trestle, turned it over in his hands, deliberating, then gave it to Adam. ‘Here, take it. It is my father’s reply to your King.’

Adam lowered his hand from his hair to accept the document. ‘Does the Count not wish to give it to me himself?’ he asked doubtfully.

Geoffrey gave him a twisted smile. ‘It’s more appropriate coming from the sacrificial pawn, don’t you think?’

Adam frowned.

Geoffrey forced a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not treason. My father should be here any time now. He’s busy with an envoy from the Holy Kingdom of Jerusalem and a couple of papal messengers - arranging another appointment with destiny.’ He sprawled gracefully on a chair and considered his exquisite gilded boots. ‘Have some wine, and tell me more about my delectable future bride.’

22

‘I’ll leave the fur-trimmed overgown out, shall I m’lady?’ Elswith held up the said garment for her mistress’s inspection. ‘You don’t want to catch cold on the road tomorrow, especially now it’s raining so hard.’

Heulwen considered the gown of blue Flemish wool, the hanging sleeves edged with marten fur, then glanced towards the sound of the rain on the shutters. The candles had long been lit and outside a wet, blue dusk was settling. ‘No, Elswith, pack it with the others,’ she said. ‘Last time I travelled in that it was raining and it got so waterlogged I nearly drowned. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in all my life.’

‘But my lady, what will you wear instead?’

Heulwen turned to a pile of garments on the bed. ‘These,’ she said with a smile that quickly became a splutter of laughter as she saw the maid’s horror.

‘By the Virgin, my lady, you cannot!’ Elswith squeaked. ‘It’s ungodly, it’s not decent!’

‘But a sight more comfortable and practical. Come, unlace me, I want to try them on.’

‘What will Lord Adam say?’ Elswith protested as Heulwen discarded her gown and undertunic in favour of a pair of Adam’s braies and chausses and one of his tunics. She was tall for a woman; not as tall as Adam, or as broad, but her breasts took up some of the slack and a firmly buckled belt dealt with the rest.

‘Lord Adam?’ She sat down on the bed and neatly tied the leg bindings, her eyes dancing with mischief. ‘I don’t know what he will say, Elswith. I think that his eyes might pop out of his head, but then it’s useful to keep a surprise or two up your sleeve!’ She laughed at her own weak joke and lay back on the bed, her arms folded behind her head, one knee bent sideways.

Elswith made a shocked sound and Heulwen giggled again. ‘Do you know,’ she observed, ‘men have by far the fatter end of the wedge. Could you imagine me lying like this in a skirt . . . or like this?’

‘My lady!’

Heulwen’s giggles transformed into gales of laughter. Her face suffused with colour and tears poured down her cheeks, but at last she took pity on her maid’s suffering, rolled over, and sat up on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s true, though!’ she said defensively, wiping her eyes. ‘Men’s clothes are a deal more practical to wear.’

‘My lady, tomorrow . . .’ Elswith’s eyes bulged with dread, ‘you’re not really going to . . .’ She could not bring herself to say it.

‘Yes, I am!’ Heulwen said stoutly. ‘I’ll be wearing my cloak over everything and a wimple and pilgrim’s hat to cover my braids. Don’t be such a goose. If you . . .’ She stopped and stared at the door as it shook to the violent thumping of an agitated fist.

‘My lady!’ Thierry cried, voice urgent. ‘Come quickly, it is Vaillantif. He’s down and threshing in the straw and I fear he’s dying!’

Heulwen shot to her feet, all merriment flown. ‘Jesu no!’ She grabbed her cloak. ‘All right, Thierry, I’m coming!’ She fumbled about, found and donned her shoes and struggled to tie on her pattens.

‘My lady, you cannot go out dressed like that!’ Elswith held out an imploring hand which Heulwen pushed impatiently aside. Her eyes flashed, anger making their colour vivid.

‘God’s blood, if I’d known you were going to be so prim and purse-mouthed for a trifle, I’d never have brought you to attend me!’ She tossed her braids over her shoulders and stood up, adding as she went to the door, ‘I expect you to have finished packing that trunk by the time I return, including that fur-trimmed gown!’

Elswith’s chin wobbled; she bit her lip and looked at the floor. Heulwen unbarred the door to the wet, windy night. Water dripped from the brim of Thierry’s hat which was dipped low, concealing his eyes in shadow. The rushlight made dark spangles of the raindrops on his cloak and caught the quick glint of his teeth as he spoke.

‘Quickly mistress, I beg you!’ He took hold of her arm and, drawing her out of the room, began to help her down the stairs. He did not appear to have noticed her strange attire but she felt him trembling and his face, caught for an instant in the full light before Elswith barred the door, was a tight mask. Her anxiety increased as she prepared herself for a gruesome sight. Having come to know Thierry in their weeks of travel, she had found his nature to be quick and fox-sly, with a propensity for women and dice and a devil-may-care attitude to life that left very little room for trembling distress over the death of a horse.

‘What has happened to him? When did it start?’ She shook her arm free as they reached the foot of the stairs. Her wooden pattens squelched and stuck in the mud and an unswept mulch of horse droppings, loudly sucking free as she moved.

‘About half a candle-notch since, mistress. His legs just suddenly buckled and down he went . . . I do think he ought to be put out of his pain, but I need your or Lord Adam’s yea-say.’

Heulwen looked up at the sky in supplication and received a face full of rain.

‘Perhaps I should send to the keep?’ Thierry said doubtfully and took her arm again.

‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I’m not about to take a fit of the vapours.’

His grip tightened and his teeth flashed again in a grimace. He hooked one leg neatly behind hers and brought her down hard on a pile of wet straw sweep ings outside the stable door.

Heulwen screeched and struggled, but Thierry, fifteen years the trained mercenary, adept at brawling and undisturbed by any feelings of moral nicety concerning her womanhood, efficiently set about immobilising her thrashing limbs and trussing them as though she were a hunted deer he was preparing to carry home from the forest. She succeeded in biting him, clamping her teeth into the fleshy part of his hand between the base of his little finger and wrist. His skin punctured and she tasted his blood. He gave a smothered exclamation of pain and pressed the arch of his free hand across her windpipe, until choking, she was forced to let go.

He wadded a piece of rag brought for the purpose into her mouth and bound it tightly with a length of cross-garter, then sat back on his haunches to study her and regain his breath. Blood was still trickling down his hand. He stanched the wound on a fold of his cloak. ‘Vixen,’ he panted, but without too much rancour, and his smile flashed briefly when he took his eyes from her face to admire the rest of his handiwork and realised that the reason she had given him such a hard time was that she was wearing men’s garments instead of two layers of heavy, encumbering skirts.

‘I always did wonder which of you wore the chausses!’ he chuckled maliciously. ‘Now I know.’

Heulwen writhed, frantic with anger and fear. She was trussed like a fly caught in a web, but somehow she did not believe that Thierry was the spider. His appetite was not of that kind.

He stooped over her now, grinning cheerfully at her ineffectual struggles, and laying one hand on the belt at her waist, hauled her up and over his shoulder in true huntsman’s style, setting off with her across the path and down through the dark, rain-sodden orchard.

His gait was slightly uneven, for Heulwen was no lightweight. Hanging upside down, her breath foreshortened by his shoulder butting into her mid-section, by her bruised throat and the clogging wad of fabric in her mouth, she felt consciousness recede to a dark, striving undulation. Her wet braids slapped across her cheek. Momentarily her eyes flickered upon tree trunks darker than the sky, and a crack of lantern light from a loosely fitting upstairs shutter in the house they were leaving behind.

Unbalanced by her weight, Thierry staggered and bumped against one of the trees. A deluge of fat, cold droplets struck the exposed nape of Heulwen’s neck, arousing her with a jerk from the edge of oblivion. Thierry cursed good-naturedly. She wondered hazily what he was receiving to make all this worthwhile. Adam paid all his immediate retinue two shillings a week, plus extra when they were on active duty such as now. Good wages, but a man like Thierry had his eyes set upon a sudden sunburst of gold rather than a steady trickle of daily silver - probably the reason he gambled. In many ways he was like Ralf.

He lurched again, almost missing his footing on a moss-covered step, and then they were down at the river’s edge. Heulwen heard the water lapping on stone and saw a wheeling, glittering darkness of solid water and rain-slashed sky as he swung her down off his shoulder and dumped her on the wet timbers of a merchant’s small private wharf.

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ he warned. ‘If you roll, you’ll go into the river and I’m not going swimming in the murk to fish you out.’ He stepped over her, executing a neat leap as she tried to trip him up. ‘Tut tut,’ he said, wagging his forefinger and shaking his head, ‘you ought to know better than that.’

She glared at him and fought her gag, jerking her body as he picked her up again and with an effort heaved her into a small rowing boat, where she lay at his feet wriggling like a new-caught salmon. The small craft seesawed precariously as Thierry cast off the mooring rope and sat down on the bench. Water puddled the planks on which Heulwen lay and the wood bore the ingrained stink of fish and stale riverweed.

‘It’s hardly a royal barge, my lady,’ Thierry mocked as he positioned the oars and began sculling out into the current, ‘but I can promise you a royal welcome when we get to where we are going.’ And then he laughed, but it was a strained sound, like the whinny of an anxious horse.

The journey downriver was a nightmare. The boat was leaky and every now and then Thierry had to cease rowing and bale out the water with a large leather tankard. The river was choppy and water kept slopping over the sides, drenching her. While Thierry was capable of rowing, he was not an expert oarsman.

Frozen to the marrow by shock and exposure, Heulwen shivered violently at Thierry’s feet while her fear crystallised and took human shape. Warrin had obviously not left Angers this morning with le Clito and his retinue. It had been a ruse. Somehow and somewhere he was still here and she was being taken to him. This thought paralysed her mind as surely as Thierry’s efficient binding had paralysed her limbs: bound and at Warrin’s mercy, and no one aware of her predicament. Water slapped over the boat’s bows again and Thierry had to ship oars and bail. Heulwen closed her eyes and prayed to drown. Her brother Miles had drowned. They said that it was an easy death, but perhaps that was just to comfort the living.

Thierry started rowing again. After a little while, he started to sing softly - a soldier’s ditty that Heulwen knew although she was not supposed to. She had been ten years old when caught singing ‘The Coney Catcher’s Ferret’ for a dare during Mass. Her stepmother had marched her to the laundry by the scruff of the neck and there scrubbed out her mouth with disgusting tallow soap, the near-apoplectic priest as a witness and Adam and Miles, who had put her up to it, hovering in the background, terrified that she might tell. Public penance done, she was taken in disgrace to the bower where Judith had given her a dish of sugared comfits to take away the taste of the soap, and then, lips twitching, had asked her if she knew all the words because she had never been able to discover the entire version herself!