The Running Vixen tor-2

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  ‘Why did you bait him? I thought you were dead for sure.’

  Adam threw down the balled-up wisp of hay he had been using to rub the horse down, wiped his hands on his tunic, and looked round at Heulwen. ‘I wanted to test his mettle. I was curious to see if he would get up and try again after that first humbling in the dust.’

  ‘Your life would have been a high price to pay for finding out!’ she snapped. ‘Did the King know how rash you truly were when he sent you to fetch his daughter?’ Fear gave her voice a shrewish timbre, and hearing it, she clamped her mouth shut and glared at him.

  Adam slapped Vaillantif ’s ruddy satin hide. ‘Never buy a chestnut horse or have truck with a red-haired woman,’ he quoted with a grin. ‘They’re both nags. I appear to have committed both crimes, don’t I?’

  ‘Adam. ’

  He looked at the brimming temper in her eyes, their colour dazzling and sea-tinged against her flushed, furious face, and set his arm across her shoulders. ‘Oh Heulwen, don’t be such a scold for so small a crotchet.’ He kissed her cheek.

  She wrenched free of him. ‘You’re just as irresponsible as Ralf,’ she snapped. ‘And when I complain, you make light of it, put me at fault!’

  Adam opened his mouth to defend himself, saw how rigidly she was standing and realised that in a moment she was going to run from him and they would reach another impasse. Before she could bolt, he grabbed her resisting hand and drew her around the stallion and into the empty stall next door, where he dumped her down on a mound of dusty hay, evocative of the scent of summer and the memory of thundery sunshine.

  ‘Look,’ he said, throwing himself down beside her, ‘I did not know for certain that he was going to ride at me. If I had turned and run, it might have tipped the balance and made him drive that lance straight between my shoulder blades.’

  Her anger was unassuaged. ‘You should not have goaded him into that state in the first place.’

  ‘I was testing his character. If he had remained down that first time, I’d have considered him short on guts — no staying power. The fact that he kept on getting up tells me he’s got courage and a stubborn streak,’ and then wryly, ‘and the fact that he rode at me is proof that he’s foolhardy.’

  Heulwen sniffed. ‘That sounds like a pot calling a cauldron black!’

  He conceded a shrug. ‘It was a calculated risk. A man is always wise to study the temper of a weapon before he puts it to use.’

  She frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  A groom led another horse into the stables, peered over the partition and, clearing his throat, apologised and went out again.

  ‘Miles and I had several discussions before he left — about replacing Davydd ap Tewdr with his younger brother.’

  ‘So what will you do, kill him when he comes to ransom the boy?’ she enquired, her lip curling.

  ‘It’s a nice thought,’ he admitted, ‘but it wouldn’t work. Rhodri would turn on us as you saw him turn just now, and he wouldn’t stay his hand. Even if I killed him, it wouldn’t be the end of it. We’d just have all the other big fish crowding the pool to feed on the small fry. No, if Davydd comes, I drive a hard bargain, as close to the bone as I can get. If he doesn’t, I foster the doubts in Rhodri’s mind and start needling my way into Davydd’s territory.’ He stopped speaking and studied her almost desolate expression. ‘What’s wrong? What have I said now?’

  Heulwen shook her head. His eyes had lost their ruthless gleam and were filled with nothing more dangerous than anxiety. She could not say that she had just seen his father’s legacy in him and that it frightened her far more than his rashness to hear him plan like this, his gaze as bright and impersonal as that of Renard’s hawk. It was still bright now as he looked at her, but far from impersonal. Lowering her lids, she was aware of the rapid rise and fall of his chest and knew that it was not just an anxiety of the mind that awaited her response.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It is a side of you I have not seen before.’ She gave him a guarded look. ‘Although we grew up together, I don’t really know you, do I?’

  ‘You could learn,’ he said hoarsely, and touched her cheek, then before it was too late, withdrew his hand and started to get up. That particular avenue was fraught with pitfalls. They had made love several times since the first night of their homecoming, and while the experiences had not been disasters, neither had they spoken of overwhelming success.

  Heulwen was a willing enough partner — willing but not involved — happy to pleasure him, but reticent with her own responses. Part of it, he suspected, was that after Ralf she was wary of giving too much of herself away unless surprised into it. Certainly she seemed relieved rather than frustrated by his faster, more open response, but it did nothing for his pride. Give her time, Miles had said to him, but Adam did not know how long he could be patient.

  As he reached Vaillantif ’s headstall, her arms suddenly came around his waist from behind, and he felt her cheek press hard against his back. ‘I could try,’ she murmured so quietly that he had to strain to hear, ‘but Adam, I’m frightened.’

  He turned around, reversing the embrace, and tipped up her face to study it. ‘Surely not of me?’ His heart lurched.

  ‘I don’t know.’ A small shudder ran her length. She could not say to him that with Ralf the learning had led her out of love and into misery, and she was terrified of it happening again. ‘No…but of what the future holds.’ She tightened her grip on him and stood on tiptoe to reach his lips.

  ‘Sire, come quickly!’ Austin tore into the stables, his eyes so wide that the hazel iris was completely ringed by white.

  Adam and Heulwen jolted apart and started at the squire. ‘The carrier’s here and he’s got a wounded man with him — sore wounded.’

  Adam released Heulwen and set his hand on the youth’s quivering shoulders. ‘Take your time, lad.’

  Austin swallowed, gulped more air, and added, ‘The wounded man’s the driver of Lord Miles’s baggage wain. They were hit by the Welsh, so he says, stripped and massacred, saving Lord Miles whom they took away with them.’

  ‘No!’ cried Heulwen. ‘No, oh no!’

  ‘All right, Austin,’ Adam said evenly. ‘Fetch Father Thomas, then tell Sweyn to get the men mounted up. Tell him also that we’ll need pack ponies and ropes.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’ Austin ran. So did Adam, but in the direction of the gatehouse, not the keep, with Heulwen struggling behind him and cursing her skirts as they hindered her.

  The injured man had been brought in slumped across one of the carrier’s ponies like a half-filled sack of cabbages. Now he lay on an oxhide stretcher, his face the colour of grey clay and his breathing rapid and shallow.

  ‘He’s done for, poor bugger,’ muttered the carrier from the side of his mouth. ‘That wound in his arm’s mortal nasty.’

  Heulwen knelt beside the stretcher, gently raised the covering blanket, then winced. The man’s right arm was bare to the shoulder, the sleeve ripped away and nothing to see of the muscle below it but a shredded, clotted mess, inflamed and swollen. Torn between anger and sick pity, Heulwen bit her lip. ‘Couldn’t you have washed and bound it better than this?’ She shot an accusing look at the itinerant merchant.

  The carrier sucked the few yellow stumps in his mouth that passed for teeth and shrugged. ‘I did me best. I worn’t going to linger in case any o’ them Welsh bastards came back. Poor sod was pinned straight through to the wood behind. It were the devil of a job to free him and if it worn’t for me happenin’ by, he’d still be there.’

  ‘Everyone was dead apart from him?’ Adam demanded.

  ‘Far as I know. I didn’t stop to look too closely. Leastways nobody groaned, and the ones I saw had arrows and sword cuts that no man could survive. Proper mess. They must have ridden straight into an ambush.’ He stopped to cough and lick his lips.

  Adam snapped his fingers at a goggling servant. ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Heading down Ledworth way, close o
n Nant Bychan near that border stone that’s always being disputed. Even going at full lick, you’ll not make it there much before prime.’

  The man on the stretcher groaned again, this time with more awareness. Heulwen laid her hand on his brow and his lids fluttered open. ‘Mistress Heulwen,’ he croaked weakly, then coughed. Adam took the ale that the servant had been about to give to the carrier and handed it down instead to his wife. Carefully she tilted up the injured man’s head so that he could drink. He did so, after a fashion, the golden liquid spilling into his beard and staining his rough tunic.

  ‘It was so sudden,’ he gasped. ‘We could do nothing. They slaughtered us like spearing fish in a barrel. Lord Miles they took alive — it was him they wanted. The rest of us didn’t really matter save as practice targets for their bows.’

  Adam swore. Heulwen looked up at him with brimming eyes.

  ‘What else do you do but find a bargaining counter of equal worth to barter?’ he said flatly.

  Surreptitiously the carrier reached down to the half-full cup of ale that Heulwen had put down beside the wain driver, then stepped back with it clutched triumphantly in his hand. Father Thomas arrived at a trot and, kneeling beside the stretcher, began to prepare the wounded man for confession.

  Heulwen rose unsteadily to her feet. The sound of the destriers being saddled up drifted across the ward from the stable enclosure and mingled with the words of the priest and the hesitant replies of the wain driver. Adam swung towards the more distant noise, his face taut like a hound anticipating the hunt. Involuntarily, Heulwen put her hand on his sleeve as if she would leash him.

  Adam looked down. ‘Come and help me arm,’ he said, turning her with him towards the keep. ‘I want Rhodri ap Tewdr confined to the hall. No need to lock him up, but keep a close eye on him.’

  ‘His brother is responsible for this, isn’t he?’ she demanded.

  They had to separate to negotiate the twisting stairs to the upper floor and their bedchamber. ‘I’d wager all the silver in Thornford’s strongbox on it,’ Adam said grimly. ‘He’s taken your grandsire for ransom.’ On reaching their chamber, he lifted his hauberk from its pole.

  ‘If you hadn’t taken the boy prisoner in the first place—’ she began, then clamped her mouth on the rest of the sentence.

  Adam eyed her sharply and said nothing, but his anger showed in the bunching and release of a muscle in his jaw.

  ‘Adam, I’m sorry.’ She touched his shoulder. ‘Oh, curse me for being a shrew. I know it’s not your fault. It’s just that. ’

  ‘You know I’ll stand there and take it,’ he finished for her. ‘Just be careful how far you go. Do you think I do not care? Do you think the thought has not crossed my own mind?’

  Her chin wobbled. She struggled with tears and, losing, began to weep. He swore and drew her down on to his lap and kissed her. ‘Heulwen, don’t.’

  ‘He’s not well!’ she sobbed. ‘He’s old and sick. I’ve seen how he struggles to mount the stairs and climb on a horse. It will kill him!’

  Adam did not seek to deny her fears. What she said was true. He had noticed the change in Miles himself, as if everything was going forward to meet the spring, leaving Heulwen’s grandfather in a winter limbo. He pressed his lips to her temple and held her tightly until he felt her shuddering abate, then he drew away to look at her. ‘Come on, love, help me arm up. I’ve got to go to the scene and see for myself what has happened.’

  She sniffed, wiped her eyes and got off his knee. Ralf would have laughed at her and ruffled her hair, or else would have wanted to bed her for the novelty of watching her tears as he took her. Warrin would have blustered and fussed and flexed his muscles. Adam was full of a checked restlessness, eager to be gone, but for her sake containing it with admirable fortitude.

  She lifted the hauberk from the bed and helped him to don it. Since its last wearing it had been scoured in a sack full of vinegar-dampened sand to remove all the dirt and rust, and had then been dried, carefully oiled, and hung on its pole to await further use. The rivets made a whispering, silvery noise as the hauberk slid down over his body, and when he stood up in it he looked twice as broad as he actually was. As he buckled on his swordbelt she stepped back to look at the whole of him. A cold shiver ran down her spine. The man who had merely played at being the warrior was transformed into the warrior in truth.

  ‘Adam, be careful,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I don’t want to lose you too.’

  He stooped to take his helmet from where it lay at the foot of the hauberk pole. ‘I’ll send word by messenger ahead of me,’ he said. ‘I know it is as hard to wait as to be doing.’ Coming to her, he curved his free arm around her waist, holding her carefully so that she would not be bruised upon the rivets. His kiss was fierce and hard, speaking all that his grip could not, and then he left her for the bailey and the men assembled there.

  Chapter 16

  Miles opened his eyes and stared with exhausted indifference at the black forest trunks. The pain in his chest and down his right arm was a dull, gnawing ache. Every breath drawn expanded his broken ribs and was pure agony. He was aware of the damp, cold air seeping into his marrow — or perhaps it was just the bony finger of death.

  Welsh voices flitted among the trees — the language of his childhood, learned in the green forests of Powys at his Welsh grandfather’s knee so long ago, and now suddenly so close that he could almost see the shadows of men, smell the damp woodsmoke of their fire and hear their bright laughter. But of course he could; he was their hostage. He was eighty-two years old, not eight, and his body was still earth-chained to pain. The laughter ceased and one of the shadows resolved itself into the tall, broad Welshman who had led the raid and was now holding out to him a leather costrel of mead and a heel of dark bread.

  Miles shook his head, feeling neither appetite nor thirst, feeling nothing save a distant sadness that he had not been permitted the indulgence of a last look at so many familiar things. ‘You are being very foolish,’ he said in Welsh.

  Davydd ap Tewdr shrugged. ‘How so, old man? I bargain you for my brother. Where is the folly in that?’

  ‘Corpses have little value.’ Miles gave him the exhausted travesty of a smile. ‘Oh not the lad…yet. He’s in fine fettle, but what happens when you put a failing candle in a draught? I haven’t got long, and neither have you.’

  The wind laboured through the bare January branches which snagged over their heads, striving westwards. Rain spattered through the sparse canopy. The Welsh prince looked down at his frail means to an end, really looked, and saw that Miles le Gallois was not lying for his own sake. Part of it was the dull forest light emphasising the grey-blue patches beneath the seamed eyes, but the rapid rise and fall of the old man’s breast owed more to a struggle for air than to any fear or anxiety.

  ‘God rot you in hell, you won’t die on me, not until you’ve served your purpose!’ he muttered.

  ‘Do not wager on it,’ Miles said, and closed his eyes, welcoming the darkness.

  Heulwen, in the midst of a dutiful ave at the bier of the dead wain driver, was disturbed by FitzSimon, commander of the garrison in the absence of its other senior members.

  ‘My lady, a group of Welsh are approaching the keep,’ he said. ‘They have a litter with them.’

  Heulwen rose from her knees and beat at the two dusty patches on her skirts. ‘There is no news from Lord Adam?’

  ‘Not yet, my lady,’ he said and added, with ill-concealed irritation, ‘it is too soon for that.’

  Heulwen gave him a swift glance of similar irritation, but bit her tongue on her temper. ‘Very well, I’ll come aloft,’ she said, and having made her obeisance to the altar, left the small chapel and followed him out into the grey afternoon. The wind swirled around her woollen skirts and tugged at her veil; she held the former down with her right hand, the veil on her head with her left, and ascended to the gatehouse battlement.

  Between twenty and thirty Welshmen had stopped just beyo
nd arrow range, all of them decently mounted on shaggy mountain ponies. They wore the native garb of stitched fleeces and knee-length tunics, bows slung at their shoulders and the short swords they favoured at their hips. Narrowing her eyes, Heulwen could make out a blanket-shrouded form on a litter to the forefront of their array.

  One of their number detached from the group and rode forward immediately below the walls of the keep to request in accented French to talk to Adam de Lacey. Heulwen peered down between the merlons. ‘Ask him who wants to talk and why,’ she told one of the keep soldiers who had been summoned aloft for the use of his deep, carrying voice. The question was relayed, there was a pause for consultation, and then the reply floated back to her.

  Despite the fact that she had been half prepared to hear it, it still hit her solidly in the gut. Davydd ap Tewdr desired to exchange her grandfather for Rhodri.

  ‘Dear God,’ she whispered, for there was now no doubting that the form on the litter was her grandfather — and the litter meant that he was too weak to sit on a horse, the bastion of his stubborn will and pride.

  ‘Delay him until we can get a message to Lord Adam,’ FitzSimon said and turned to command one of the men.

  ‘No!’

  He swivelled to gape at Heulwen in disbelief. Accustomed to taking orders from men, and by his position in the keep hierarchy to giving them too, he was possessed of an arrogant certainty that women should defer to their male superiors, and was unpleasantly astounded by her denial.

  ‘My lady, with all respect, this is too serious a matter to be judged by us,’ he said, recovering his dignity and twitching his shoulders within his cloak like a hawk settling ruffled feathers.