Racing along the corridor, the torch guttering and the black smoke trailing in a stinking streamer behind him, De Braose smiled and wondered just how grateful a king could be.
Pembroke Castle, Wales
CHAPTER ONE
Lady Ariel de Clare bit down on the fleshy pad of her lip and separated the tightly woven lattice of branches as carefully as she dared. Her heart was pounding in her throat, her skin was cool and wet—not entirely the result of the too-hasty departure she had made from the bathing pond.
The glade was almost a mile from the castle, deep in the heart of a belt of gaming forest where the echo of a scream would not carry very far. She knew she had disobeyed standing orders by coming to the pond alone, but it was not the first time she had done so, nor, if her past history of obeying orders was anything to judge by, would it be the last.
The water in this particular pool was clear and sweet, held in a basin of sun-baked rock that kept it warm enough for wading even this late in October. She had never been interrupted by human company before. Deer, hare, even the odd waddling grouse had succumbed to their curiosity and crept to the edge of the surrounding thicket to accept the offerings of fennel and basil she left for them. For the most part, however, she had always been left alone in the verdant mists and dappling sunshine.
There had never been any reason to fear the isolation of the woods. The rolling fields and forests, as far as any man could see from the highest peak of the highest hill belonged to her uncle, the Earl Marshal, William of Pembroke. There had not been a poacher caught anywhere near Milford Haven over the past several years. Even the outlawed Welsh raiders, who often foraged south to harry the Marcher lords and protest the English presence on their land, stayed well clear of any estates brandishing the Pembroke lions.
Strangers in the vicinity would explain why Ariel had not been visited by any of her four-legged friends. Particularly missed had been the spindly legged fawn who had begun to come shyly up to where she sat to take the sprigs of tender herbs right from her hand. Both the fawn and his mother must have smelled the intruders long before Ariel had heard the heavy tramping of horses hooves scything through the thick carpet of fallen autumn leaves.
She had fled the pool at once, her body glistening in the sunlight, her hair a half-soaked tangle of long, gleaming skeins that hampered her every move as she gathered her clothing and quickly shielded her nudity. Without the benefit of a brisk toweling, her linen bluet had stuck to her wet flesh, bunching uncomfortably under her arms and down her legs, testing her patience as she tugged and pulled at the folds of her woolen overtunic. Having no time to waste on stockings, shoes, or headdress, she had snatched up all three and carried them to where her palfrey stood, head raised, ears pricked forward and twitching nervously as she followed the sounds.
“Rest easy, my Beauty,” Ariel whispered, pressing her hand, then her lips to the elongated, velvety snout. “I have heard them too. Three, perhaps four of them, would you say? And carrying much armour for all the clanking and squeaking they make.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, the motion causing a ripple to travel the full length of her hair. Out of its braids and pins, it fell almost to her knees, and while the crown was darkened to a rich auburn by the dampness it held, the ends had begun to dry and spread into a shining cloud of frothing, bright red curls.
Eyes as pure and undiluted a green as the forest pond searched the banks of pine and oak, seeking the darkest, deepest cover. She gathered up the reins of the palfrey and urged the horse into the thicker shadows, knowing there was a cavern of rock a small distance away that would afford protection from sight and sound. Beauty was fleet of foot and could outrace the wind if it was asked of her, but she was also gentle-natured and appallingly terrified of the tremendously muscled destriers most knights rode. That these interlopers were knights, there could be no mistake. The sound of much grating metal made for distinctive and accurate identification over and above the fact they were boldly mounted and not creeping through the woods on foot.
Offering several more strokes and whispers for assurance, Ariel hobbled her mare, and, as an added precaution, withdrew the shortsword that hung in a sheath on her saddle.
“As still as still can be, my Beauty,” she cautioned, then slipped back the way she had come, her head bent low and her tunic lifted high to avoid having it snagged on an errant branch.
The soil was rich and crumbly under her bare feet, cool beneath each stealthy step. She crept warily back to the verge of the glade and remained crouched behind a thicket, her gaze widening at the sight of the four mounted knights who emerged from the hazed mist of the forest and rode singly into the clearing. Unaware of any eyes watching them, they fanned out to sit abreast along the shore of the pond while their coursers lowered their heads and thrust their muzzles beneath the smooth surface of the water to drink.
The four men wore full suits of armour; hauberks of iron-link mail over thickly quilted leather gambesons. They were sworded and carried their shields slung over their backs, but only two wore gypons emblazoned with coats-of-arms. The other two were bareheaded, their mail basinets lying in loose folds around their necks, their helms hanging from hooks on their saddles. Both had full beards as black as the shaggy manes of hair that curled forward over their cheeks and foreheads; both bore the rugged, insolent look of the Welsh warlords who inhabited the wild, mountainous regions to the north.
Two Normans, two Welshmen. All four hard, seasoned veterans of the battlefield. They wore their armour like second skins, grown accustomed over the years to the hundredweight of added bulk and burden. Arms, shoulders, chests, and thighs were powerfully muscled and solid as rock. Even the steeds they rode were all steely muscle and lethal power, beasts from hell reared to respond with a unique savageness and skill to the scent of blood.
Ariel crouched lower in the bushes and hoped the slight motion of the branches lacing back together would not be detected. A woman caught out in the open, unescorted, unprotected, was fair game to any or all who might need a lusty appetite assuaged. A beautiful woman come upon in the sylvan isolation of a sun-drenched glade would stand little chance of escaping untouched—or of escaping at all if a like-minded knight took it into his head to throw her over his saddle and keep her for amusement.
She stared down at the sharp glint of the shortsword she gripped and acknowledged it to be a paltry defense against armoured knights with double-edged broadswords. She would have speed on her side if they dismounted, for a man burdened by layers of bullhide and chain mail moved like a lumbering ox. On horseback, however, a knight reigned supreme. In battle he could easily down ten, twelve, even a score of foot soldiers. In the forest or on an open plain, a mounted knight could run aground and prance merry circles around any man, beast … or woman.
Ariel tilted her face up to the clear patch of blue that showed through the gap in the otherwise unbroken latticework of soaring treetops. She had left the castle around noon and ridden without haste to the glade, stopping here and there to gather the last of the wild currants she had seen growing along the way. Bathing had taken another leisurely hour at least, for she had enjoyed the delicious privacy of floating naked in the sparkling sunlight.
“What hour do ye make it?” a gruff voice asked, startling Ariel’s attention back to the edge of the pond.
One of the English knights reached up and unbuckled the leather strap under his chin, easing the conical steel helm off his head with a sigh.
“What hour?” he asked. He pushed back the mail hood and snug woolen cap he wore, revealing a damp tousle of dark reddish-blond hair, flattened and glued to his scalp from the heat and sweat. “The eleventh, I fear, with the minutes passing faster than a man could care to guess.”
The Welshmen exchanged a wry glance. They bore identical pairs of ebony eyes in faces so alike, despite the bearding, there could be no doubt they were brothers. The grin on one mouth turned into a slight scowl when he saw the blond knight making preparations to
dismount.
“Surely we must be close to the castle,” he said. “I have been smelling the sea since we entered this part of the forest.”
“Aye well, as close as we may be,” the Norman retorted, “we are not close enough. Any further delay and you will smell naught but the foul mess in my chausses.”
The men laughed good-naturedly and Ariel rolled her eyes skyward.
“The next time, Lord Henry,” the burliest of the group advised, “mayhap ye’ll not be so quick to sample a cotter’s pies.”
“There was nothing amiss with the pie.” The unmounted knight, distracted momentarily in a search for a suitable place to squat, removed his leather gloves and set them on the decaying stump of a tree. “It was the effort of trying to swallow the king’s intentions along with the pork lard that has soured my gut.”
“Likewise has it caused you to drag your steps slower and slower with each league that passes?”
“If I do drag my steps, it is because I know the reaction our news will bring. I know it and I dread it and … merde!” —he groaned with relief, not a moment too soon after loosening his chausses and angling his bared rump over the log— “and I would sooner face a hoard of Infidels alone and unarmed.”
“Come now, my lord,” chuckled the older of the two brothers. He scratched intently in his beard, then, as an afterthought, stuck the tip of his little finger in his ear and dug ferociously after an itch. “It cannot be as bad as all that. I for one, would risk those same Infidels just to have a roof over my head and bedding that does not rustle and stir beneath me the blessed night long.”
“And a wench,” the heavyset knight grunted wistfully. “I would settle for a wench with stout thighs and a hearty need to clamp them around me. Nor would I care if she had fleas or not,” he added sincerely.
The Welshman arched his brow, bemused by the Norman’s criteria. “Just so long as she does not bleat and kick too often with her hooves? Indeed, you have mellowed over the weeks, Sedrick.”
The swarthy Sedrick bristled and curled his lips back over his teeth. “At least I know what to do with a wench when I do find one beneath me. And when they bleat, they do not bleat with laughter.”
“More likely with pain,” the younger brother chided. “You crushed the last three whores you straddled, did you not?”
Sedrick grinned slowly. “In truth, it was the last five; the fourth and fifth being yer mother and sister.”
The brothers stiffened and sent their hands to the hilts of their swords.
“For the love of Christ,” Henry muttered from his perch on the log. “Can the three of you not pass a single hour without drawing insults? Lord Rhys …? Lord Dafydd …? My belly aches enough without having to constantly run a course with your Welsh humour.”
“Neither Dafydd nor myself is smiling,” the older of the pair answered blithely. “In fact, the very notion of either our mother or our sister showing such poor taste as to choose this barrel-brained Norman for a bedmate causes even the hint of mirth to vacate our heads.”
“Mmmm. Perhaps not Gwladus,” Dafydd objected mildly. He leaned forward to see past his brother’s armoured chest and cast a slow, critical eye along Sedrick’s form. “She has been known to admire any manner of long, thick objects when her husband is absent from home. Mother, however—” He leaned back with a creak of saddle leather. “Aye. I suppose I might be prompted to slit a throat or two in her defense.”
The squatting knight started to respond, but a swift, cool slash of steel came out of the bushes beside him, the deadly edge of the falchion pressing a painful threat into the stretched underside of his chin.
“The only throat that will be slit here today, my lords,” Ariel announced, “is the one resting over the edge of my blade.”
Gold-flecked hazel eyes darted upward and widened when they saw who wielded the sword that teased his throat. The unfortunate knight opened his mouth to speak, but the blade nudged higher, forcing him to crane his neck to the limit to avoid having skin and sinews severed.
The other three men had whirled around at the sound of Ariel’s voice, their weapons half out of their sheaths before her shout stopped them.
“I would not want to be the cause of so brave and illustrious a knight losing his head in such an ignoble position,” she warned.
The Welshmen kept their fists curled around their hilts, but they made no further move to draw. Their faces hardened into angry masks; all traces of humour—mocking or real—vanished. Only the bear-like Sedrick remained stolidly impassive, although a close observer might have seen the grimace of disgust he directed at his blond, compromised companion.
“You seem to have us at a disadvantage, my lady,” said the one called Rhys. His anger waned somewhat as he took a long and insolently frank perusal of the slender wood nymph’s body. With her long red hair flaming around her shoulders and her tunic still clinging damply to shapely breasts and thighs, she made an intriguing impression on eyes unaccustomed to such delicacy—delicacy with the added pique of a sword in her hand. “Might I inquire as to how we might serve you?”
Ariel was not listening. Her gaze had fallen to the limp, flaccid body of the fawn draped carelessly over the back of Lord Rhys’s saddle. She recognized the small white diamond on the snout and knew it was her fawn, the timid, trusting creature who had begun to answer to her whistle, and for whom she had brought the fragrant sprigs of dried parsley today. A large wound in the pale brown neck was proof of the skill with which the knight wielded the enormous longbow he wore slung across his shoulder.
The surge of cold rage that shivered down her arm caused the edge of the falchion to slice into the taut surface of her captive’s neck. A curse brought his hand shooting up at once and he knocked the blade aside. His fingers grasped Ariel’s wrist and he wrenched her forward with enough force to fling her onto her back in a crush of ferns, and moss, and thrashing white limbs.
The Welsh brothers laughed and wheeled their big war-horses around. Sedrick scratched at his chin and shook his head, but did nothing more than lean an arm over the front of his saddle and observe.
The hotly flushed Norman jumped to his feet and fumbled to refasten his chausses. He dabbed at the cut on his neck, cursing anew as he saw the streaky threads of blood on his fingertips.
“By all the heavenly martyrs—! What manner of game is this? And what the devil are you doing here”—he glanced around as if searching the fringe of woods for more unexpected surprises—“alone!”
“What matter does it make?” Lord Rhys asked with a slow smile. “She is not alone now.”
Ariel saw where his black eyes were roving and scrambled to cover her bared limbs. She stood and brushed furiously at the clods of earth that clung to her tunic, and when she finished, she planted her hands on her waist and ignored the leering Welshman in favour of the knight who still tugged and yanked at his clothing.
“A more worthy question might be: Where the devil have you come from and why are you strayed so far off the main road?”
The knight glared at her. “We thought to avoid any travellers who might announce our arrival in Pembroke.”
“Why? What manner of heinous crimes have you committed that cause you to skulk from one shadow to the next like … like …” She glanced at the dead fawn and the man who had slain it. “Like the lying, thieving, cowardly vermin who infest the nether regions of Wales?”
The piercing hazel eyes narrowed. “You have a bold tongue in front of strangers, wench. Happens one day it might be pulled from your head if you do not take a care.”
She gave a derisive snort and bent over to retrieve her falchion. “I should not give warnings of anything being pulled from anywhere, my dear Lord Henry. Not if I had just been caught with my jewels hanging over the edge of a tree stump.”
The Welshmen showed surprise. “You know each other?”
Lord Sedrick chuckled—a deep, rumbling sound that brought to mind giant boulders rubbing together. “Ma lords … ye have the
pleasure of making the acquaintance of Lady Ariel de Clare, Lord Henry’s fair sister.”
“Sister?” Lord Rhys whistled under his breath. “He mentioned he had one, but not that she was as delectable a morsel as what I see before me.”
“Take heed not to say such things too loudly to be overheard,” Sedrick warned amiably. “The Lady Ariel takes poorly to compliments, regardless of who delivers them.”
“Perhaps she will accept a gift then,” the Welsh lord announced in bolder tones. “As an offering of peace for having obviously intruded on her solitude.”
He reached around and grasped the dead fawn by the slender forelegs, lifting it from the horse’s rump and dangling the soft, lifeless body for Ariel to admire. “A single arrow at two hundred paces,” he boasted. “It should provide a tender meal for a maiden of such … tender abilities.”
If the gentle mockery was meant to flatter her prowess with the ambush, it fell well short of the mark. Ariel’s gaze grew even colder and harder and she forced herself to turn away from the arrogant Welshman before she gave way to the temptation to slash his grin to bloody ribbons.
She waited for Henry to retrieve his gloves before she trusted herself to speak. “Did I hear you say you brought news from the king?”
He looked up sharply and stared at her for a moment. “I, ah … Aye. Aye, I do have news.”
“Well?”
“Well …” Henry’s stomach responded with an audible and prolonged gurgle. “Better it should wait until we reach Pembroke. Is Lady Isabella there, or has she left for Cavenham?”
“She is still here … why?” Ariel grabbed Henry’s arm and blanched a shade. “Is it Uncle Will? Have you brought news of Uncle Will? He is not—? He has not been—?”
The Robin Hood Trilogy Page 47