The Running Vixen tor-2

by Elizabeth Chadwick

To be judged by a woman — a flighty, red-haired woman of more than half-Welsh blood. As if his head were transparent and the words written on his brain she could read his mind, and her chin rose a stubborn notch. ‘It is also too serious a matter to leave until my husband’s return!’ she answered. ‘That is my grandfather down there on that litter. Have Rhodri ap Tewdr brought up here to me now.’

  He hesitated until he could hesitate no longer, then inclined his head in scant formality and left her. Heulwen swallowed, bowed her head, and leaned it for a moment against the gritty stone behind which she sheltered. ‘Holy Christ, what do I do?’ she murmured into the shadow created by her body. ‘Adam, help me, what do I do?’

  Rhodri, hands corded behind his back, was thrust into her presence, his eyes anxiously wide, his mouth set in a thin, tight line. She straightened, adjusted her cloak, and faced him with a cold expression.

  ‘Your brother has come for you. I wish my husband had left you to die in the road.’

  He returned her a measured gaze, for he had heard the news of his brother’s raid and watched Thornford react to it like a disturbed anthill. ‘My lady, I am sorry, believe me,’ he said in Welsh. ‘Even knowing that your lord intended using me for his own purposes, I could have wished myself free in different circumstances.’

  ‘Spare me your condolences,’ she snapped, ‘you are wasting your breath.’ She turned from him to the soldier with the voice. ‘Tell him that Lord de Lacey is not here, and that in his absence Prince Davydd will have to deal with his wife, who is of Welsh blood herself and the granddaughter of Miles le Gallois.’

  Heulwen collected the reins and thanked the man who helped her into the saddle. Her mare, sensing her tension, jibbed and sidled, and she had to put a soothing hand on the damp neck and murmur soft words.

  ‘My lady, I still say you are making a mistake in going out to treat with them,’ FitzSimon muttered beside her, and curbed his own restless stallion. ‘It is much too dangerous. They might attack us.’

  ‘I doubt it, but if they do, I trust in the might of your sword-arm to deliver us.’ Her voice was both dulcet and biting at the same time. She set her heels into Gemini’s sides and the mare moved anxiously forwards.

  Feeling belittled by her scorn, FitzSimon glared at Heulwen’s back, knowing that if she had been his to beat, her body by now would have matched the slate-blue shade of the cloak pinned across his breast. Starting after her, he dragged viciously on the hostage’s reins. Rhodri ap Tewdr sat his dun gelding in silence, his hands lashed to the pommel, his feet joined by a double loop of rope slung beneath the horse’s belly, surrounded by an escort of six serjeants.

  As Gemini paced away from the safety of Thornford’s outer bailey and palisade, Heulwen felt sick with apprehension and fear. She swallowed valiantly, hoping that appearances and emotions were not one and the same. It was easier for the men, for their faces were half concealed by their helms. Hers was open, vulnerable to Welsh eyes and whatever they might read into it — her fortune and her grandfather’s. The responsibility was terrifying.

  Davydd ap Tewdr watched warily as the group from the castle approached the prearranged meeting place, marked by a Welsh lance thrust point-down in the turf. ‘All right,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Bring him.’

  The woman who drew rein and faced him across the wind-quivered shaft was striking — not classically so, her bones were too strong, but in an earthy, tempestuous way, appealing entirely to the senses. ‘Lady Heulwen?’ He gave her a wolfish smile and looked beyond her to Rhodri, who flushed and averted his gaze.

  ‘I hope we need not waste time on the formalities?’ she responded frostily. ‘Surely there is no more to be done than to make the exchange?’

  Davydd ap Tewdr brushed his hand over his moustache and refused to be frozen by the ice in her gaze. He noticed that not by so much as a flicker had she acknowledged the presence of her grandfather lying on the pallet. ‘He’s still alive,’ he said, and then, provocatively, ‘and we have treated him with more courtesy than you appear to have extended towards my brother.’

  ‘That was my own fault,’ Rhodri said quickly. ‘I fell off a horse this morning.’

  Ap Tewdr gave his youngest brother a sharp glance. ‘Last time you fell off a horse you were three years old!’ he commented, but let it rest and turned smiling to Heulwen. ‘My lady, by all means let us make this exchange. I have no desire to linger here, and I am sure you will want to take your grandfather within to warmth and comfort.’

  Heulwen nodded stiffly, unable to speak, knowing that if she so much as looked at the litter, then, like a piece of ice bearing too much weight, she would shatter apart. She raised her hand and gestured to FitzSimon.

  Disgust evident in his every movement, the knight drew the sharp hunting dagger from his belt, dismounted and stooped to slash the ropes that bound Rhodri to the dun, then pulled him down from the saddle.

  Rhodri rubbed his wrists. FitzSimon pricked the dagger longingly through tunic and shirt. ‘Don’t try anything,’ he growled.

  ‘I’d have to be as mad as a saeson to do that with freedom so close,’ Rhodri retorted, and the daggerpoint punctured his skin. The Welsh stiffened in their saddles, and hands flashed to sword-hilts.

  Heulwen flung herself down from her mare and rounded on FitzSimon. ‘Give me that knife!’ she cried, then snatched it from him and pitched it as far away as her strength would allow. ‘Is your pride everything that you cannot take a childish jibe without responding in similar wise?’ She made a furious gesture of dismissal. ‘Return to the keep and wait for me there.’

  FitzSimon recoiled as if from the venom of a striking snake. He was aware that the anger of the Welsh had subsided and that they were watching the scene with amused curiosity, so the pride she had spoken of with such scorn must either be swallowed or choked upon. After a precarious moment, he chose the former, but with a very bad grace. Lord Adam was going to hear of this, by Christ on the cross he was! ‘My lady,’ he acknowledged, making the words sound like an insult. He went to his dagger, picked it out of the grass and wiped it meticulously before sheathing it, then mounted his horse and spurred it to a canter.

  Heulwen watched him leave, then turned again to Davydd ap Tewdr. ‘I apologise for him,’ she said stiltedly, and swallowed. The rage had begun to drain from her. She wanted to burst into tears and knew she dared not, for then they would see her as just another hysterical woman rather than an authority with whom they must reckon.

  ‘Don’t,’ said ap Tewdr with a laconic shrug, ‘a Welsh arrow will put an end to him sooner or later.’

  ‘I know all I wish to know about Welsh arrows,’ she snapped. ‘Let us have this exchange over and done with.’

  ‘By all means.’ Ap Tewdr’s tone was mockingly expansive and Heulwen hated him for it. ‘Give your lord my regards and regrets that we could not deal directly.’

  ‘I will do so,’ she said through her teeth, ‘be assured of it,’ and gestured the two serjeants forward to raise the litter. Still rubbing his wrists, waiting for a mount to be brought through the Welsh ranks to him, Rhodri looked down at the man lying there, and then quickly away, but it was too late. His eyes had already fixed the image in his mind.

  ‘Be careful,’ Heulwen cautioned the men, and as the Welsh took charge of their leader’s brother, slapping him on the shoulder, crowing over him and their success, she took her own first look at her grandfather.

  He was awake and aware, watching her, and he gave her the ghost of a smile. ‘You did well, cariad,’ he whispered. ‘Proud of you.’ His hand twitched beneath the blanket, emerged after a brief struggle, and stretched towards her. She swooped down to take it, and the men stopped as she bent over him, her body racked with shudders of grieving and relief.

  ‘Come, cariad,’ Miles said hoarsely, ‘no tears, not now. ’ He stroked her braid, then, assailed by weakness, his hand dropped back on to the covers and he closed his eyes. Crying freely, distraught, but not to the point of being incapable,
Heulwen tucked her grandfather’s cold hand back within the covering of sheepskins, drew them up to his chin, and went to retrieve Gemini. Half blinded by tears, she watched the Welsh ride away in the opposite direction, their triumphant cries fluting the cold wind. One of the riders hesitated and looked round. She thought it was Rhodri, but through the distorting blur of tears could not be sure, and neither did she care.

  ‘Christ, but I really thought he was going to die on us!’ Davydd ap Tewdr laughed with the jubilation of relief. ‘If we’d left it until dawn tomorrow, it would have been too late. He’ll not last out the night.’

  Rhodri swallowed bile and said nothing. He was remembering the sunken, blue-tinged flesh and hearing the old man’s dragging fight for breath.

  ‘You didn’t have to do it this way,’ he said when he had control of himself.

  The wide shoulders twitched irritably within the encasing half-hauberk. ‘Not developing a conscience are we, Rhod?’ he scoffed. ‘Would you rather have swung from a gibbet on Candlemas eve?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have come to that. It was only a ruse to get you to come. De Lacey wanted to treat with you.’

  ‘A ruse, hmm?’ Davydd ap Tewdr chuckled with sour amusement. ‘Well, de Lacey got more than he bargained for, didn’t he?’

  ‘And sweet Christ so might we. Do you know how much outrage this will cause? We’ll have every marcher lord between Hereford and Chester down on us for this!’

  Davydd reined to a halt and slewed around to glare at his slight, dark brother. ‘You dare to lecture me, whelp!’ He fetched Rhodri a buffet that reeled him in the saddle. ‘You dare to preach at me like a belly-aching priest, when it was your idiocy that brought about this whole predicament. Christ on the cross, I should have left you to rot on a saeson gibbet!’

  The blow had opened Rhodri’s cut lip, and dark blood dripped off the end of his chin and soaked into his mount’s coarse winter fell. ‘I’m not ungrateful,’ he muttered thickly, ‘I just thought you could have gone about it in a different way. There’s enough bad blood already. We killed Lady Heulwen’s first husband, and now you’ve as good as murdered her grandfather.’

  Davydd let drop the reins he had picked up and stared hard at Rhodri. ‘What do you mean, her first husband?’

  ‘Ralf le Chevalier, don’t you remember?’

  ‘Le Chevalier? She’s his widow?’ He leaned on his pommel and stared, and suddenly surprise gave way to laughter. ‘God, she ought to be eternally grateful to us that she’s rid of him. I wish I’d known!’

  Rhodri studied his brother, a new maturity stripping the scales of childhood from his eyes. Davydd was only aware of the ground directly beneath his feet, without a thought for the looming horizon. It had been his own shortcoming until his wounding and imprisonment had taught him a different, wary discretion. He twisted his injured lip. ‘Why couldn’t you have made peace with de Lacey? All right, he’s a Norman and out for his own gain, but he’s no glutton. He’d have listened to reason, and he’s the lord of Ravenstow’s own son-in-law now.’

  Davydd spluttered at the notion. ‘I’d as soon invite a pack of wolves to kennel among my flocks!’

  ‘You probably just have. Miles le Gallois is respected on both sides of the border. His son’s wed to the English King’s own daughter, and he has Welsh connections on the distaff side with half the nobility of Gwynedd and Powys!’ This time Rhodri jerked his mount sideways, avoiding the intended blow.

  ‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing!’ Davydd roared, thoroughly beside himself, spittle flecking his moustache. ‘And fostered at my own hearth. You’ve gone soft, turned into a Norman lick-arse!’ He dug his heels into his pony’s flanks and, cursing, swept on ahead, leaving Rhodri to blink after him, unexpected tears stinging his eyes.

  Had he turned into a ‘Norman lick-arse’? He cast his mind back over that jousting episode this morning, the superior, good-humoured amusement quickly becoming rage as the pet animal rounded on its captors with a snarl. The calculating stare of Adam de Lacey and his deceptively smiling mouth. Davydd did not know what he was facing.

  Rhodri thought of the old man, Miles le Gallois: Miles ap Heulwen uerch Owain of the line of Hwyel Dda. There was Welsh blood there, as good as or better than his own. He had grown fond of the old man during the months of his confinement, perhaps more than was wise. Miles had been perceptive and tolerant, compassionate without pitying, for he understood Welsh ways having been born to them himself, and despite the plentiful opportunity had never mocked or belittled Rhodri. He deserved better than he had received. Rhodri wiped at his eyes and swore because he was moved to grief for a man by tradition his enemy. Then he touched his cut lip, and glowering at his brother’s broad back, kicked the horse and cantered to join him.

  It was late afternoon when Adam and his men came upon the remains of the Welsh raid. The jingle of their harness, the snorting of their mounts and the creak of men shifting uneasily in their saddles broke the silence of the grave, sending small animals scuttling for cover and birds winging with calls of alarm.

  One of Adam’s Angevins leaped down from his destrier and examined a soldier’s sprawled corpse. His leather hauberk had been stripped and a pale band of skin upon one of his fingers showed where a ring had recently been worn. Stony-faced, Adam nudged Vaillantif forward through the wet grass. There were no weapons beside the bodies. Swords, axes, lances, shields, all had been taken, including the harness from the dead horses.

  ‘The bastards,’ Sweyn muttered at Adam’s shoulder. ‘I wish I had been leading this escort.’

  ‘Be thankful you were not,’ Adam said shortly, and dismounted to prowl across the devastation to the overturned cart. Miles’s destrier was there, belly-up. Adam stepped over its corpse and squatted beside the stripped body of Gervase de Cadenet. He did not try to press the eyelids shut, for he could see that the body was well into the stiffening stage. A wild, dark rage against the perpetrators of this outrage filled him. He made the sign of the cross over the young knight and murmured a short prayer, then beckoned to Austin and another knight to bring a pack pony.

  They loaded the bodies on to the animals they had brought and draped them with blankets, then moved slowly back up the march.

  ‘I will write to Lord Guyon as soon as we reach Thornford,’ Adam said to Sweyn as they splashed through a shallow, swiftly running stream. His mouth tightened bleakly. ‘God knows how he will take this news.’

  ‘Lord Miles isn’t strong enough to bear rough treatment, ’ Sweyn said. ‘I saw the way you helped him on the stairs the other night. He’s failing swiftly.’

  Adam grimaced. ‘Was I as obvious as all that? I thought I did it with subtlety.’

  ‘You did, sir, but it is not your way to put your arm across a man’s shoulders in conversation, even when you are fond of him and have the right.’

  ‘Now I know why Jerold calls you my watchdog!’ Adam said with rueful humour.

  ‘And you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ Sweyn retorted, his fierceness masking deep affection. ‘I’ve had my eye on you since you were a puling babe!’

  ‘And I haven’t changed, don’t tell me!’ Adam rolled Sweyn a sarcastic look and slapped the reins across Vaillantif ’s neck, increasing the pace.

  They cut across the woodland using the carriers’ well-worn track, and with the dusk hard upon them reached the common grazing land that Thornford shared with a neighbouring village — and there encountered the Welsh, riding out of the damp twilight mist in the direction of the border.

  A mutual moment of shock held both groups immobilised, and then Adam issued several sharp commands to his own men, delegated Austin and an older knight to take care of the burdened pack ponies, and grouped the rest into a tight phalanx of iron and horse. His lance swung smoothly to the horizontal. The Welsh saw what was happening and tried to break and run, but got no further than the first splintering before the fury of the Norman charge engulfed them. Adam had singled out his man as Vaillantif galloped down upon the
Welsh, marking the place to strike as clearly as he always marked the four nailheads on the quintain shield.

  Davydd ap Tewdr’s bodyguard was carried from the saddle by the impact of the honed battle lance and died as he hit the ground. Adam pivoted Vaillantif, drew his sword and engaged the man on his right. Behind him, swearing, Sweyn hacked and manoeuvred to stay with him.

  Adam’s opponent had no shield, and the grating shriek of steel on steel as the Welshman parried made Adam’s bones shudder. The second blow shattered the inferior Welsh steel, leaving the man a broken hilt for defence. Adam swept it aside and concluded the matter, moving on like a reaper through ripe wheat.

  The shield that was butted forward in protection by his next adversary was a Norman one, raided from Miles’s escort, good and solid, but its new owner wore no armour, only an ill-fitting helm to guard his skull. In the split second before Adam struck him down to hell, he recognised the horrified young face partially concealed behind the helmet’s broad nasal, and with an explosive oath changed his grip on the hilt: with a rapid flick of the wrist he sent Rhodri’s blade spinning from his hand.

  ‘In the name of Christ’s ten fingers, what are you doing here?’ Adam roared, saw the dark eyes widen, heard Sweyn’s choked warning, instinctively crouched behind his shield and commanded Vaillantif sideways. The blow came in hard from the left, clipping the top of his shield and jarring his left arm to the bone as he strove to hold against it. He brought his right arm over in a solid retaliation and had the satisfaction of hearing his enemy grunt with pain, but the retort was fast and determined, and the short Welsh blade ripped open Adam’s surcoat and splayed a diagonal line through the rivets of his mail.

  He pricked Vaillantif with his spurs and the destrier reared up against the Welshman’s mount, forehooves slashing. Adam swung his sword backhanded from shoulder height. Trained from infancy, there was so much power behind his blow that it almost severed the Welshman’s head. The body crumpled from the saddle and the Welsh pony bolted, stirrups hammering against its belly.