Court of Foxes

by Christianna Brand

  Two of the men supported between them the third. His head seemed fallen forward, his whole body drooped forward, so that she caught only a glimpse of the white face; without their hold on his arms, he could hardly have stood at all. He wore a cloak clutched about him and a sort of cap, a strip of reddy-brown fox fur, with the bushy tail hanging to his shoulder, over one ear. As they moved slowly forward, the crowd as slowly turned, so that all faces constantly looked to him. When he stood, all stood motionless.

  He seemed to speak; but the effort was too much, the murmur so low that no sound intelligibly reached the listeners. One of his two supporters bent an ear, attentively; cried aloud a message in Welsh. Dio y Diawl stepped a little forward from among the men; there was a mumbled exchange. He swung back and in his turn spoke to the rest. Though she could not understand the Welsh, Gilda guessed that he told them that The Fox was pleased with their exploit; that till he was well enough to lead them again, they should continue under his, Dio’s, leadership… The men growled acceptance. As their sick leader turned to creep away again, they raised a respectful cheer and as soon as he was gone, broke out into chatter and laughter and song once more. Here and there on the ridges of the brooding mountains that ringed them in, a horse and rider, sentinel, were silhouetted against a gleam of light in the evening sky.

  Catti Jones was in ecstasies. ‘It was Gareth y Cadno himself! The Fox himself!’

  ‘What of it? This low footpad, this highwayman—’

  ‘My lady, he’s famous. Not since Twm Shon Catti—’

  ‘Twm Shon Catti?’

  ‘—the greatest of them all, milady. Two hundred years ago he rode these valleys, Twm Shon Catti, Tom, son of Catherine, “the wild wag of Wales”. And here now is Y Cadno, as famous already—’

  ‘I hope he’s famous for his hospitality at least,’ said Gilda shortly. ‘Since we have to endure it. And that it won’t be for long.’ She looked round at the girls. ‘Ask them where I am to sleep.’

  Into a rock at the far end of the hall, steps had been cut. They climbed, the two girls and Catti nipping up nimbly as cats, Gilda scrambling, putting out a hand to save herself, scuffing the cloth of her dress as she fell to one knee. The steps led to a passage, the divisions filled in between tumbled rocks, an opening here and there into smaller caves, which however they passed by. But there came at last a mat of plaited rushes hung like a curtain; and one of the two girls pushed it aside and ushered the lady in.

  A fire burned in a brazier and gave a golden glow to the tapestries which covered the walls from the low ceiling to rock floor; on which floor were thrown down fur carriage rugs that had no doubt once served to keep warm some voyager’s silk-stockinged knees. On a table, damask covered, stood a lady’s dressing case, fitted in tortoiseshell and gold, a lovely gilt mirror to one side of it. There was a stool before it and a sort of rack had been fashioned where fine clothes might be hung; on another table stood a little china basin with a tiny jug, filched from a travelling toilet set. And against the centre of one wall was a bed, hugely piled with straw, softened at the top with hay, the whole covered with the finest of linen sheets, the warmest of fleecy rugs, with an overlay of fur. No lady of quality need lie more softly, sleep more sweetly tonight than the Countess of Tregaron, should she so choose, between the sweet cool linen of the sheets in her scented nest of hay.

  And tomorrow my lord would send messengers to Castell Cothi for the ransom money and they could proceed upon their way. Would she be more content than this, she wondered, when the crimson and gold magnificence of her second home closed in upon her? Would a bed of down rest her more deeply, would light burn more brightly, could water be more soft and cool than this in which she now bathed her white hands? She said to Catti: ‘How can this be?’

  ‘It’s the room of Y Cadno’s woman, milady, they say; which she now gives up to your ladyship.’

  Willy nilly, thought her ladyship; and reflected that it was perhaps a good thing for her own comfort at the hands of Y Cadno’s woman, that by tomorrow the affair would be settled and she would be gone.

  Lord Tregaron came to her in the little room. ‘Thank heaven you’re safe! I’ve been anxious about you — but they kept me, dragged me to the presence of Y Cadno. He’s a sick man.’

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ she said; sick he might be, hardly able to stand, but could yet hold in command all these rough men and women.

  He reflected her thought. ‘Sick he may be, yet still, he drives a hard bargain. I’ve agreed of course; the sum is enormous but it must be paid, we won’t remain one hour here more than may be avoided.’ He roamed restlessly about the little room, blind to its beauties, bent only on their ultimate safety. ‘The trouble is…’ He broke off anxiously. ‘My bankers will never, upon a mere note from me, release so huge a sum; indeed I doubt if, without much complicated business, I can produce it. My mother’s abroad and so would my brother be, but that he returned early. And my brother…’ He shrugged rather hopelessly. ‘I’ve written off letters already, to my lawyers, they smuggle them somehow out of this place; but I’ve been obliged to apply also to him. I wonder…’ He stopped pacing, he faced her, gloomily. ‘I wonder if he’s capable of — refusing.’

  ‘Of course he won’t refuse,’ she said sharply.

  ‘You don’t know him,’ he said. ‘He’s a man very sweet-tempered with those he loves; but also very implacable in his hatreds.’

  ‘If he knows I’m here—’ she began.

  ‘If he knows… Ah!’ he said. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? What he wouldn’t do for his brother, he’d do for his brother’s wife — wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Your brother is a gentleman: he wouldn’t leave any woman in such a place as this.’

  ‘You know nothing about him,’ he said shortly.

  ‘One has only to look at him—’

  ‘Ay, and you have looked at him, haven’t you?’ He caught her arm roughly; the little, dandified, dancing master fellow, who could yet show cool courage in the face of dangerous men and, heaven knew, a stern face to a woman who offended against his honour. ‘And would have looked at him again and not looked only, if a servant girl hadn’t been keen-witted enough to prevent you.’ And he swore a filthy oath. ‘By g— and by God, he works fast, my little brother of Llandovery! And you too, bitch and whore that you are, with your tricksy wiles that I’ve fallen for often enough myself, poor doting fool that I was — to be half cuckolded upon the very day of my wedding and with my own brother… And now am to pay out half my fortune to get you out of the hands of these ruffians.’

  ‘Pay no ransom. I like it here,’ she said, jauntily, looking round the little room.

  ‘Like it here! Like it here! You’ll like it, I warrant you, when he gets his foxy pads upon you! — you with your flame of hair to draw any man’s eyes to you, you’ll like it when The Fox wants his prey and you’re dragged willy nilly, like a white goose fluttering, to his den…’

  ‘Poof, the man is too ill to stand upon his feet,’ she said disdainfully. ‘By the time he’s well enough to put into practice all these dire prognostications, we shall be gone from here.’

  ‘If your admirer foots the bill for you,’ he said. ‘He’ll not do it for me and the more so since I’ve apparently stolen the woman he fancies, from under his nose.’ And now he did look round the room. ‘It’s as well you’re so comfortably accommodated, my dear, for you won’t be leaving tomorrow, I fear, nor the next day nor the next. And in your prayers tonight I advise you to include one that’ll keep Master Fox in his present reduced state of health. He’s said to have a particular taste for fair-headed women as I told you; and an ugly way with all of them.’

  ‘And not the only one,’ said Gilda, looking into his face.

  He lifted the rush curtain and went out without another word. A pity, she thought, he should not evince so fine a display of temper upon more practical occasions: with those canaille outside, for example… But at least tonight it seemed likely that she might sleep alone and un
disturbed and dream such dreams as she cared to. All the same…

  All the same — if in her dreams she could go back to that night, that night at the playhouse when first Brown Eyes had brought her white roses and touched her hand with his — would he not find a very different girl from the girl she then had been? Then she had been sweet and easy, readily controlled and directed by a loving hand: having known no other. Now… If her family could see her now, she thought, turned all in an hour to a wildcat, fighting for her own interests, spitting fire and contempt, and with this welling-up in her of a sort of — courage — she had never known before (having had no need of it) would they recognise their Marigold, their little sister, their pet and pride? And she thought about life and circumstances and of what it might bring about in those who, untouched by experience, might never know it existed. What am I? she thought. Who am I? From this strange experience, this danger, this beginning of hate for the one sole being to whom I should turn in reliance and love — what sort of woman is going to emerge? Of only one thing she was certain: that woman would remain steadfast in her heart and mind, if not in the rebellious flesh, to her only one true love.

  With the morning came anxieties again, the more so as her husband deserted her — closeted in argument with the Fox, said Catti; and sent no word to her. She wandered out at last, a rabble of women and children following her, gaping at her fine clothes, exclaiming at the fair skin and shining hair. Down by the stream, girls crouched washing their linen, beating with flat wooden spatulas at the home-spun woollens; small boys were scrubbing down the strong little mountain ponies, caught and trained for the work of the hide-out here among the rocks (where no stolen, town-accustomed horse would have been sure-footed enough) and for the night work on the high toby. Now in daylight, she could catch glimpses of the sentries, one at each end of the valley on the mountain tops above them; from the forests at their lower slopes came the voices of men and the barking of dogs, out hunting; in the far away valley, old men stood patiently fishing. Above in the clear September sky kite and kestrel wheeled and hovered, lazily, effortless: from some improvised farm came the gentle lowing of dairy cows, the cluck of chickens, the grunting of pigs. Dio y Diawl sat out in the sunshine, perched upon a boulder surrounded by a small group of men, holding a large sheet of paper and all earnestly talking. Everyone seems occupied and busy, thought Gilda, as though in some perfectly normal community; but the cows had been driven off by night, no doubt, from a neighbouring farmyard by men with a nice fat hen tucked under each arm for good measure, or a squealing piglet, hurriedly hushed; and the clothes the women washed had come from plundered coaches and the sportsmen, not a doubt of it, were poaching woods and rivers, an offence punishable by long imprisonment. And the paper would be a rough, home-drawn map of some cutting or crossroads where in the near future rich cargo was due to pass by…

  A red-headed young woman approached, bobbed her a curtsey and offered: ‘Would you wish for a drink of milk, Madam? Fresh drawn it is from the cow.’

  She had to strain her ears to catch the words in their heavily inflected south Welsh accent, very different from the more familiar sing-song of the north as she had heard it mimicked upon the London stage. She accepted the milk, sat down on the moss beneath a little tree, growing up, crooked and spindly, between two rocks. The girl sat at her feet, her rough brown legs curled up under her. ‘You speak English then?’

  ‘I was in service at Lampeter, Madam, with a lady who taught me the English. But Y Cadno set about her carriage one day and she was killed by a stray ball; if the women wish to be safe, they should stay in the coaches. And so I came back with them here.’ She nodded to where a group sat with Dio the Devil. ‘My man’s over there; Tom the Scar they call him.’

  ‘Your mistress killed?’ said Gilda, horrified, ‘—and you came away with her murderers?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘What was I to do? I ran and was caught — by this same Twm, as we say the name here. And from struggling he turned to kissing and from kissing to something more; and so since he had made me his woman, I could but go with him.’ She laughed. ‘I told you — the women should stay in the coaches if they wish to be safe.’ She dismissed the subject. ‘My name is Jenny, my lady: Jenny Coch, they call me, which is to say Jenny the Red, because of my hair.’

  To learn a little Welsh would occupy her time and might yet come in useful. ‘What colour would you call my hair?’

  ‘Your hair — ah, Madam, no hair is like yours that I ever have seen. It is the true Melyn Mair, the marigold.’

  ‘And so they call me: Marigelda or Marigold. Well, and so tell me another Welsh word, Jenny—’

  ‘I will tell you the loveliest word in Welsh or in any other language, my lady. It is Cariad.’

  ‘Which means Dearest. You forget,’ said Gilda, not without some bitterness, ‘that I have a Welsh husband.’ And she wondered if he would ever call her Cariad again; and doubted it. Well, what do I care? I know him now and he knows me. Let him accept, she thought, that she was in love with his brother, let him put her aside and be done with it. He wanted my body, that was all; well, that he has had and shall have no more. For the rest, rich or poor, I don’t care; I’ve had little enough amusement out of being a titled lady of wealth…

  He came to her that afternoon as she sat down at the common table with its long centre-piece of high-piled treasures of the gang; bending over her, urgently whispering. ‘For God’s sake, Gilda — what are you doing here?’

  ‘Dining,’ she said briefly.

  ‘The women don’t eat with the men. Don’t you see how they stare at you? To flaunt yourself in this way—’

  ‘Nonsense, they’re intent upon their dinners!’

  ‘They are ugly and vicious men who’ll rape a woman as readily as they’ll kill a man. Only the fact that Gareth y Cadno may want you—’

  ‘He may have me and welcome,’ said Gilda, ‘since my own husband deserts me — and in such a place as this.’

  ‘Desert you? I’ve spent the whole morning chaffering with that creature for your safety, God damn you for the silly bitch you are! For let me inform you, dear Madam, that sick he may be but he misses nothing — do you think he didn’t spy you out last night, peering forth from the entrance while he was talking to the men? Do you think this damned hair of yours didn’t take his fancy? — why else, indeed, did the Devil drag us back here, but that you might make a nice offering for this ogre? And do you suppose it makes my bargaining any the easier? I tell you, if my precious brother doesn’t agree with the lawyers soon, some way to arrange to raise the money—’

  ‘He may take his time,’ she said negligently. ‘I’m quite happy. I spent a delightful morning, sight-seeing.’

  ‘You’d better have spent it praying,’ he said, ‘that one of your admirers finds the money before, at the hands of the other, you become not worth paying for.’

  It struck an ugly note; and yet… She thought of Gareth y Cadno as she had seen him, a man helpless in sickness, who could yet still command an absolute authority over such men and women as now surrounded her. Such a man… Love was easy, after all: she had given herself in passion, in an ecstasy of passion, to one she cared not a fig for, and while she loved another. What difference if the man be Gareth the Fox or the Earl of Tregaron? Or any other, for that matter. To Brown Eyes she would come, if ever she did come to him, pure in heart, loving no other, having loved no other. What did it matter what her body did, if her heart remained purely his? For a wicked moment she thought that it would at least relieve the tedium of waiting if the Fox indeed called up the white goose to his lair. And she shook her bright locks and cared not at all for the glances of these rough vile creatures, staring across their laden plates at her white bosom, pushed up by the busks of her corset, beneath the green cloth of her habit. She was safe from them, as long as the chance remained that their leader might want her; and Tregaron had taught her this, if nothing else, that she had the power to make any man want her.

 
The days passed. Her lessons in the colloquial Welsh progressed. Now she knew the little farm and every calf and bottle-fed lamb, every foal, every puppy and kitten; knew the girls by their names, went with the children gathering the strands of wool stripped by the hedgerows from a passing flock of sheep; smiled at the older women, tried her new Welsh words on them; laughed with the men over their triumphs in the hunting field, in the battle with a fat brown trout or sewen, even in their jubilant return one night with a sackful of silver. But from David of Llandovery no answer came, not a word. My lord’s men of business wrote that every effort should be made, but that without his own presence and his brother’s co-operation it was impossible to raise ready money on family property. He came to her at last, deeply despondent; and the thunderbolt fell. Time was passing, every day Y Cadno’s strength improved and she was in increasing danger from him. And so — ‘I am helpless but — you are rich. Could you not do something yourself, towards your own ransom?’

  She stood absolutely stricken. Tell him now? But, knowing the truth of her deceptions, might he not then simply abandon her, leave her here to her fate? What chance that the outside world would ever discover what had happened? — the marriage had been kept strictly secret, the very few who knew of it could doubtless be easily bribed — her own family, discredited, would have but an unlikely tale to put forward. She made up her mind quickly. ‘Oh, certainly! I will write for the money to be paid at once. It was stupid of me not to have thought of it before — why should you pay for me?’

  ‘I have been working day and night to arrange it,’ he said resentfully.

  ‘But so curiously unsuccessfully.’ And she scribbled off a letter addressed to ‘The Staff’ at South Audley Street, explaining her plight, begging them to apply to her men of business; full of veiled references, however, to the wolves of Rome (who might surely be relied upon to prevent her from receiving the money.) And she signed herself for the first time Countess of Tregaron; and was overwhelmed with the knowledge, all over again, that it was actually true; and with rueful amusement at the thought of how little good it had so far done to herself or any of them.