Court of Foxes

by Christianna Brand

  To remove the ball! To penetrate that fair skin, probe in, search through the welling-up of the blood… ‘Dear God, I could not do it…’

  ‘I don’t know… If we leave it… I know nothing about such things; but with the jolting of the coach between here and the castle, might not the bullet shift and do further damage? — perhaps break through the skin and start a bleeding which we would then be powerless to deal with?’ Across the unconscious body, they stared into one another’s eyes. ‘If you are brave enough to hold him,’ said the girl at last, ‘I will try to be brave enough to do it.’

  The maid had a small penknife, pearl-handled; washed it in the blood-stained water, passed it, shuddering. Gilda held him in her arms, a pad of wet linen pressed hard against the major wound, the discoloured shoulder turned outward. The girl said: ‘One moment while I steady myself; my hand is shaking,’ and was still, her right hand holding the little knife, the left pressed across her eyes as though, thought Gilda, she might be praying. Then with a swift movement, giving herself no time to think, she made a shallow slash in the skin across the bulging bruise and almost before the blood could spring, had delved in with the tip of the knife and scooped the bullet out into her hand. And cried out: ‘Oh, God! — thank God!’ and fainted.

  One hand still pressed against the entrance wound, Gilda dabbed at the other with linen and water; but it was nothing; the blood gushed for a moment, trickled and soon ceased to flow at all. The woman, meanwhile bent over the swooning girl, slapping at her face with wet hands, imploring recognition. ‘Come, my lady, wake my lamb, all is well, my darling! Come, Miss Blanche—!’

  Come, Miss Blanche… Gilda sat up with the fair head cradled in her lap, her arm aching with the sustained pressure upon the bleeding. She said, ‘What was that name you spoke? Who is this lady?’

  ‘Who is she? Why, my Lady Blanche Handley, Madam, daughter of the Earl of—’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Gilda. ‘Daughter of the Earl of Trove. I know it!’ And she leaned across the unconscious body between them and slapped vigorously at the girl’s white, upturned face. ‘Come, enough of this fooling! Wake up, stand up, I have need of you!’ As the girl, bewildered, came-to and began struggling to her feet, she said: ‘I must have more cloths, I must have bandages. Off with your petticoats!’

  She stood there helpless, astonished at the sudden change, her hands still bloodied, gaping. ‘My — my petticoats? I don’t understand.’ And the woman cried out: ‘My lady’s petticoats?’

  ‘Why, certainly, I’ve given up my own, let her now contribute!’ And she leaned forward, one hand still pressed to the wound, and tossed up the girl’s skirt into the air, so that her underskirts were exposed. ‘Come, waste no more time, undress her, take off her petticoats!’

  A man, who stood holding the horses’ heads, looked back over his shoulder, laughing; called to his companion standing guard over the two coachmen. The maid stammered: ‘In front of them? Take off her petticoats in front of them?’

  ‘One moment more and I’ll call to them to come and do it for you,’ swore Gilda. ‘Come, hold up your skirts, Madam, so that she can get at your waist band…’ (The Lady Blanche Handley, forsooth, daughter of the Earl of Trove!) ‘Where is Dio?’ she called to the men. ‘Tell him to have a stretcher constructed. We’ll take this man home after all, to Cwrt y Cadno.’ The girl stood, utterly taken aback, the stuff of her outer skirt clinging forlornly to her legs as the maid heaped the white petticoats beside the wounded man. ‘Now, take the knife and you, woman, take your scissors, cut across the hems and slit all this up into decent bandages. The whole lot; where I’m taking him, I shall need all you can give me; we boast of no such refinements.’ And she took the first strips that, subdued, silently weeping, they handed to her and padded out the wounds anew, and clumsily but efficiently bandaged them. They stood by staring with all their eyes, not daring to expostulate as two men came up with an improvised stretcher and she saw him lifted on to it. ‘Now, back to the coach with you and sit there mum till it’s ready to drive off; and be thankful you go with your skins intact.’ And she gave the girl a shove that sent her flying, tripping over her own feet, stumbling towards the coach; and then called her back again. ‘Before you go — that’s a very fine ring you wear!’

  She pulled it off, silently, handed it over: a ring with great diamonds burning blue-white in the light of the newly arisen moon. Pulled off her gold chain, brooch of wrought gold and sapphires: wordlessly unhooked her ear-rings. Gilda said to the woman: ‘What’s that you conceal in the pocket of your skirt, beneath the cloak?’

  A soft leather pouch: an Aladdin’s cave indeed, emerald, sapphire, ruby, pearl… Gilda held out her hand for the pouch, balanced it: considered — flung it down, spilling its contents into the rutty road. ‘On second thoughts, no — I’ll take nothing personal from you. Pick them up and be gone!’ As Blanche hesitated, staring down through terror-filled, tear-blinded eyes, she raised her small fist again as though to strike her. ‘Come, do what I say, down on your knees and pick up your rubbish and depart with it.’ And she stood over her as the girl knelt and gathered the jewels together from the blood-stained mud and dirt of the roadway. ‘Now go; and take my advice, return for good and all to the noble Earl your father and your London home, for there is not room in Wales for thee and me. And if he asks who sent you: why tell him you had the misfortune to meet upon the road the wife of the Fox, the Vixen of Cwrt y Cadno…’

  Little Marigold Brown of Aston-sub-Edge in the county of Gloucestershire: Marigelda, Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio; her high and mighty ladyship the Countess of Tregaron… She had come a short road but an eventful one, to be the wife of a common highwayman with a price upon his head: Gilda, the Vixen of the Court of Foxes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE WALKED BESIDE HIM the whole way, slipping and slithering down the mountain side, through the leafy mould that lay beneath the scrubby trees, the two men carrying the stretcher, sure-footed beside her, others following with their own two wounded men. After a little while, Dio y Diawl came up alongside, dismounted his pony and walked with her. ‘Well, my pretty one, I must say you accept it all very well: this trick he played on you. Perhaps after all it suits you better to be Madam Vixen than to be a grand lady, so readily do you take to our ways. How you set about that poor wretch, for example!’

  ‘I had supposed she was, if I thought of it at all, some Honourable Harrington or some such name, affianced to Gereth of Tregaron. But she is Blanche, daughter of the Earl of Trove.’

  ‘What harm has she ever done to you, then, this Blanche?’

  ‘Simply, I did not care for her,’ said Gilda, briefly.

  ‘Then heaven help all poor girls you take a real dislike to! They had better look to themselves.’

  ‘Including Madam Blodwen,’ said Gilda.

  ‘Ah, poor Blod! Yet you must realise, she had been his woman for — I forget: many months, what amounts with us to a marriage — before you came into it.’

  ‘He is my husband,’ said Gilda, briefly again.

  ‘If he is your husband. But no, no,’ he said laughing, ‘you need have no doubts there. If it came to legalities, he wanted to make all things watertight — the first time ever, I think, The Fox tangled with the law. May it be the last! — considering his situation now.’

  If it had not been truly a marriage…? Her glance went to the still figure on the stretcher. ‘He married me as Earl of Tregaron.’

  He laughed again. ‘Have no fear — or no hope, which ever way you care to look at it. He took all that into consideration. I tell you, it’s watertight. If not,’ he added with that old rueful smile, ‘do you think I should be treating you as a familiar? Until Gareth comes back, I am leader once again.’

  ‘I hope you make less hash of it,’ she said, ‘than you did last time, in the affair of the drovers.’

  He went off into roars of laughter, standing bent double for a moment, helpless. ‘Oh, well done, my little Madam Spitfire! Sp
lendid! By God, there’s spirit in the wildcat! No wonder he—’ He broke off, shrugging. ‘Well, never mind that.’

  ‘No wonder — what?’ she said curiously. Not that it mattered.

  He shrugged again. ‘It’s the way he watches you. I never saw him look at a woman as he looks at you. And all this play with Blod — ay, he played it and hard, but I know him pretty well and sometimes since you have been with us, I used to think it — disgusted him.’

  ‘It disgusted me,’ she said. ‘And if he didn’t want it, why succumb to her?’

  ‘Why, to drive you away; you were settling in far too well at the Cwrt, you seemed too much contented. And while you were contented why should you expedite your ransom?’

  ‘But riding off with her each night into the forest… And then again this evening…’ Understanding began to dawn, great thudding blows of it against a mind that seemed suddenly filled with cotton-wadding, looking back over the incomprehensible past. ‘Of course! He couldn’t show himself to me — he was supposed to be my husband, the Earl of Tregaron. But when you all went out on the high toby — then he disappeared with Blodwen and left her somewhere and made his way to join you—’

  ‘So it was not after all poor Dio who made such a hash of it among the twenty rich drovers,’ said Dio, delighted.

  ‘—and that time, that first evening — it was he who appeared, supposed to be so sick, and half-carried, falling forward so that I might not too closely observe his face — made white with chalk, no doubt, the better to deceive me. But — that other time, after the matter of the drovers: my — husband — was with me while we watched Y Cadno at the council rocks.’

  ‘Any man if he be the right height and keep a good distance may wrap himself up in a blanket and fur hat and utter a few half-heard words—’

  ‘And that same night — that horrible evening of the feast, when he cried out that I was reserved for himself—’

  ‘Well, so you were,’ said Dio. ‘Weren’t you?’

  ‘But afterwards, that other one — the same — call him what you will — he’d been injured, he’d fought for me, Catti told me so—’

  ‘Why as to that, anyone may put on a pallid air and nurse his arm a little. And as for Catti — well, Catti is the word! We’ve all played cat and mouse with you, Madam fach,’ he said, laughing. ‘And had a few tricky moments. That fool Blodwen, squeaking out that he’d been her man “from the beginning”…’

  On the stretcher, the wounded man had ceased even his occasional light moaning; she bent to him and saw that his breathing was normal and he in the blessed peace of total unconsciousness. ‘But in London — oh, Dio, the fool he has made of me!’ And she couldn’t help laughing also, fell into a very paroxysm of laughter, let even the precious stretcher go on a little way without her as she clung to his arm for support, bent double with it, holding her aching ribs, peal after peal ringing through the whispering sound and movement that is part of a night forest; laughing at the grandeur of his deception, the sheer impertinence of it, the ingenuity of it — at the huge secret joke of her own impudent deception of him…

  And why not, indeed, laugh? True, her husband was gone, ridden off into heaven knew what danger, and her heart must give a small lurch at the thought of it: a little, whipper-snapper dancing-master of a fellow; with hands that were like steel, however, and a will of steel also, and a courage, a daring, a humour — and a passion — to outstrip her own… But he whom she really loved was now in her keeping; and she would bring him back to health and so weld him to her and make him hers for ever. And all this wild place should be her home until she chose to go away with him (for when the truth of her poverty was known, who would prevent her?) and, married already, she must perforce be left to the bijou house — and all that stuffy boredom of wealth and society and stodgy, staid matrimony was over for ever. My mother shall live with me, and little Jake; and Bess will be near us and my brothers all about me; and there need be no deception between us. He’ll marry, no doubt, must marry, in his position as head of the family, but let him, who cares? — since these great society folk have to do so. (Only let her keep out of my way! — nor shall it be his present beauty, my Lady Blanche Handley: some other ‘suitable match’ must be found — I’ll not have her.) But his love will be for me; and all his gaiety and all his happiness shall be found in my little white house with its frilly white bed; and all the rooms shall be filled, always filled, with white roses…

  They caught up with the stretcher but still he lay quiet, his bandages held, there was no sign of new bleeding. ‘Come, Dio, tell me all! That night he first saw me at the play? Did he come up especially to town to seek out some rich woman—’

  ‘No, no, Madam Vixen, you mustn’t think ransom a part of our usual work. No such idea was in his mind!’ She slipped on the mouldering carpet of leaves and he put out a hand to grab her, held her safe from further accident, and so they progressed, now slithering down the steep slope of the forest, now toiling up again, in the pleasant companionship of a man, admiring, respectful, with the wife of his leader; and he told her the whole story. Y Cadno was not unacquainted with the metropolis; his up-bringing had not been that of a common footpad; now and again, after an exceptional haul, he would borrow some clothes from the wardrobes of plundered travellers and ride up to try for a better price from London fences than could be obtained through their representatives down here. ‘All that we get, we need, Madam Vixen, fach, at the Court of Foxes. You won’t suppose all our lives spent in such high adventure as what ’as happened this evening? A few sovereigns, that’s our usual night’s haul, and personal trinkum-trankums — fobs, snuff-boxes and so on. And we’ve forty men and women at the Cwrt or more and children unnumbered, and these come and go: and those that go must be paid off. Some are wounded and forced to retire — Y Cadno will carry no passengers, he’s a hard man, your husband, Madam Vixen. And some won’t serve under a leader and break away to set up on their own — which they usually come to regret; some are cozened by their women, who grow sick of the hard life and the danger, expecially when they have children; and some of the men themselves grow tired of it. But all when they go must be paid, and justly according to their work while they’ve been with the gang — otherwise we’d soon have informers, and the military down upon us, knowing our secret approaches, the disposition of our sentries, the timing of our exploits.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ she said, ‘that this all takes money.’

  ‘Ay, and rich pickings or not, the jewels and gewgaws must be sold in a market that can make its own terms. But in London, as I say, prices are better; so to London, now and again, he goes, and a few weeks ago decides upon it once again, and rides off — and while there betakes himself to the playhouse, simply for his own entertainment and there observes that all eyes are turned to one particular spot; but is so placed that he can’t see the object of so much interest. And half-way through, wanders out hoping to glean information; and dodges back again, out of sight, lest he be recognised and denounced as a highwayman. For who should be standing there, on his last night in England before leaving for the Continent, but his brother, Master Dafydd of Llandovery; the gentleman who now goes with us on his way — which is somewhat ironical — to the hospitality of the Court of Foxes.’

  ‘His brother?’ cried Gilda.

  ‘Ah, yes, of course you don’t yet know all. But you must have recognised some family likeness? — and the similarity of the name. For Gareth Y Cadno made not quite so wild a claim as you’d think, when he called himself lord of Tregaron. The old Earl, their father, was no miracle of virtue it seems, where the sins of the flesh were in question: half the pretty girls in Carmarthenshire, a generation or so ago, could testify to that — and among them Gareth’s mother. He was born a week or two in advance of the legal little lordship; and, the heir being christened Gereth, the old man had the bastard the next day, and at the same font, christened Gareth — to remind him, I daresay, while his family, owned and unowned, grew up about him, that h
ere in fact was the first born of the house of Tregaron.’ He laughed out his great ho! ho! ‘I think that to play this half-real role has given Y Cadno more positive pleasure than any other part of the whole adventure.’

  The lady took leave to doubt it — but privately. They had come now to the lower edge of the forest and turned along a valley pathway made intricate, and deliberately so, by a hundred twists and turns, a dozen dividings into other paths that in fact led nowhere. ‘But that night at the playhouse—?’

  ‘He stood in concealment and heard for the first time of the wonderful lady, very rich, a widow, unfriended, alone, after whom none but servants and a few men of business would enquire; and so conceived the idea of wooing her and bringing her back here for ransom. Whether there was in this a touch of malice at the thought of going into competition with Dafydd bach, his half brother (wrong side of the blanket) who shall say? And other considerations also may have played a part: you can tell me that, better than I.’