The Running Vixen tor-2

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  She nodded. ‘He should have gone by now.’

  ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘I can give you safe escort.’ And then he looked at him curiously. ‘How did you know I would be here?’

  Rhodri smiled slyly and stroked his stallion’s shaggy neck. ‘I knew that sooner or later you would be out from the castle to exercise your horse or hunt. It was only a matter of keeping my eyes open and myself out of sight. I’ve been watching you for the past hour.’ The smile deepened into an open grin.

  Heulwen blushed. Colour darkened Adam’s face.

  ‘How much did you hear?’ he asked quietly.

  Rhodri deliberately misunderstood the question. ‘Enough to know how much you were enjoying yourselves, ’ he said, his gaze running over Heulwen with appreciation.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Rhodri opened his palms. ‘Not a great deal. The roar of the falls unfortunately concealed most of what you and that other Norman were saying. Still, I suppose from the look on your face that if I were to bellow the news abroad, you’d cancel my safe escort.’

  ‘You know the strength of my sword-arm.’

  Rhodri’s face was unreadable. The smirk, however, had gone. ‘You Normans,’ he said contemptuously, ‘always conspiring in corners against each other.’ He looked round at his war band. ‘Fe fynn y gwir ei le eh?’

  Adam’s colour remained high. The truth will out: he knew enough Welsh to understand that simple saying. He was aware of Heulwen watching him and that he could not deny Rhodri’s words. ‘That’s rich coming from a Welshman,’ he retorted, and added shortly over his shoulder, ‘Austin, stop gawping like a turnip-wit and get our horses. We’re returning to Milnham.’

  Heulwen picked up her sewing, grimaced at it with extreme disfavour, and uttering a sigh started to push the needle through the fabric. It was a shirt for Adam, a basic, simple garment within her scope, but a genuine and literal labour of love since needlework of any kind was to her a form of purgatory, and it was a mark of her desperation that she was tackling it beyond her daily allotted stint.

  There was nothing else to do. Father Thomas, Adam’s chaplain, had said he would give her a copy of Tristan to read, but the howling storm outside had kept him the night at the monastery five miles away. A visiting itinerant lute-player had left them at dawn before the weather took a turn for the worse, hoping to make Ledworth by nightfall. The carrier was not due for at least another week with his budget of news and gossip, and Adam’s mood was fouler than the weather that kept them huddled so close to the hearth. She darted a glance to the trestle near the fire where he sat, flagon and goblet close to hand. The last three days he had scarcely been sober, drinking as if to exorcise some demon. He was not drunk now, but the evening was still young, only just past dusk and the flagon full. By the time they retired it would be down to the lees.

  She jabbed the needle angrily into the linen, pricked her finger and swore. He looked up at her exclamation and half raised one eyebrow. Heulwen sucked her finger and regarded him gravely. ‘Why are you brooding like a moulting hen?’ she demanded.

  He did not deny it, but lifted the flagon and, pouring the wine, took three long swallows. Then, carefully, he set the cup back down at arm’s length and sighed. ‘I’ve a decision to make. I’ve been trying to drown my conscience in my cup, but it keeps surfacing to preach at me, or else it mocks me from the dregs and I have to fill up and start again.’

  ‘What sort of decision?’ Without regret she put her sewing aside. ‘Certainly you cannot think straight sitting in a fog of wine fumes.’

  He tilted his head slightly to avoid the scorching heat that came from sitting so close to the fire. ‘I’ve been trying not to think,’ he said wryly.

  ‘Is it about Rhodri? The Welsh?’

  ‘Hardly.’ He rubbed his forehead and winced. ‘Since we all agreed a truce at Milnham and I’ve seen to my part of the bargain, there’s been no trouble from that quarter and I don’t expect any. Rhodri’s got enough ado keeping his own people together without bothering mine and your father’s — for the nonce at least…Christ Jesu, Heulwen, do you have a remedy for a megrim? My head feels as though it’s going to explode.’

  ‘Your own fault,’ she said without sympathy. ‘What do you expect when you drink for three days solid?’

  He gave her a sour glance. ‘I asked for the remedy, not the cause.’

  ‘Remedy? Leave the wine alone.’ She stood up and brushed some cut ends of thread from her gown.

  ‘If my head is aching, it is for reasons far more complex than the downing of too much Anjou,’ he snapped.

  Heulwen gave him a single look more eloquent than words, and stalked away down the hall. He followed her with brooding eyes as she went, then swore and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, feeling as though a lead weight were crushing him from existence. Ralf might have thrived upon intrigue, but Adam found the conflict of loyalties almost more than he could bear. What was he supposed to do? Follow Henry’s desires and have the barons all call him traitor, or tell his peers and face banishment, perhaps even death? The King had clandestine ways of dealing with men against whom he could not openly move.

  Adam groaned. His responsibility was not only to himself. He had Heulwen to consider and her family — his too by foster-bond and marriage. Tell Guyon and risk being condemned by the King; or not tell him and be slighted. Somewhere, amid the wine fumes, the shadow of his long-dead father mocked his honour with brimstone laughter.

  ‘Here.’ Heulwen bent over to hand him a cup of some cloudy substance that smelt revolting and tasted on the first, tentative sip even worse.

  ‘Faugh!’ He pulled such a face that she laughed.

  ‘Drink it,’ she commanded, and added in a barbed tone, ‘pretend it’s wine.’

  Adam glared at her, but held his peace and gulped the concoction down. Shuddering, he plonked the cup upon the trestle. ‘Torturer,’ he complained, and struggled not to retch.

  From behind her back, Heulwen brought forth a small comfit dish. ‘Honeyed plums,’ she said, her eyes sparkling. ‘Do you remember? It was the way Mama used to bribe us to swallow her potions when we were little.’

  Adam scowled at her but was unable to maintain the expression and with a reluctant grin, took one. She put the dish on the trestle and sitting down again, picked up one of the glistening, sticky fruits herself and bit slowly into it. Adam regarded her through narrowed eyes. She returned his scrutiny and licked crystals of honey-sugar delicately from her fingers. His crotch grew warm. ‘It was sweets of another nature I had in mind,’ he said softly.

  Heulwen leaned over her husband and pinched out the night candle. Before the light was extinguished she saw that Adam was already asleep and that the frown lines between his brows were for the moment but vague marks of habit rather than present distress. It was one of the few positive lessons she had learned from Ralf — how to ease the tension from a man’s body and leave him in a state of physical, if not mental well-being. As to what was troubling his mind to the point of him drowning it in drink, only he could resolve that one.

  She gave a soft, irritated sigh and lay down beside him. He had ever been one to stopper things up inside, silently simmering like a barrel of pitch too close to a cauldron, giving no real indication of how volatile the mixture was until it exploded.

  She pressed her cheek against his warm back, closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She must have succeeded, for when she opened her eyes again it was to hear the bell tolling for first Mass and to find the bedside candle lit, with Adam watching her by its flame. Sleepily she stretched her limbs and smiled at him.

  He leaned across to kiss her tousled, inviting warmth, but it was a brief gesture, not a prelude to further play. ‘Heulwen, if I asked you to come to Anjou with me, would you?’

  ‘Anjou?’ she repeated, eyes and wits still misty with sleep. ‘Why do you want to go to Anjou?’ She yawned.

  He traced small circles upon her upper arm and shoulder wit
h a gentle forefinger. ‘I don’t want to go to Anjou,’ he qualified ruefully. ‘I wish the damned place did not even exist. Henry wants me to go there as a messenger.’

  Heulwen was silent, digesting this surface information and wondering what nasty currents flowed swift beneath it. Three days of heavy drinking for one. She looked at his downcast lashes and waited for them to lift so that she could see the expression in his eyes. ‘Yes, of course I’d go with you.’

  ‘Without even knowing the kind of message I was bearing?’

  Thoughts of Ralf scurried through her mind. She banished them and sat up, tossing back her hair. Adam’s character was totally different. To break his honour you would have to break the man. Perhaps that was the deepest, most dangerous current of all. ‘Yes, even without knowing.’ She cocked her head. ‘Was Anjou the reason the Earl of Gloucester wanted to speak to you so privately?’

  Silence. ‘Yes,’ then more silence. He drew a slow, considering breath. ‘The King is breaking a promise he made to us all, and I am to carry the message breaking it.’

  ‘Oh Adam, no!’ Heulwen cried with indignant sympathy, and her eyes grew angry as she understood his dilemma. ‘Why couldn’t he have sent Gloucester himself?’

  Adam shook his head. ‘And have everyone wondering what the King’s eldest bastard was doing in Anjou? I will be considerably less conspicuous.’ He turned his head on the pillow. ‘I keep thinking of Ralf and Warrin and wondering if they were so wrong. Henry uses men. Time and again I’ve heard your father say it, time and again I’ve seen him do it and been used myself. Is it any wonder that I begin to feel like a whore?’

  She leaned over him and smoothed the lines that had reappeared between his brows. He laced his fingers in her bright hair and told her the nature of the message he was to bear.

  Heulwen was momentarily surprised, but hardly shocked. Henry had attempted a marriage alliance like this before, between Geoffrey of Anjou’s sister and the son he had lost on the White Ship. ‘As I see it,’ she said, ‘it is on Henry’s conscience, not yours. It doesn’t matter what his letter says, you are only its bearer.’

  ‘So I keep telling myself,’ he said woodenly.

  ‘And if you renounced your allegiance, which would be the only honourable alternative, you’d have to sell your sword for a living, and I warrant that Henry would still have his way in the end.’

  ‘Principles do not put bread on your board. Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘I am saying there is no point going breadless for an inevitability. If your conscience troubles you, it is a sign you still have your honour. I don’t think Ralf ever suffered from either, and therein lies the difference.’ She assessed him, trying to decide whether his expression meant that he had heard her and was considering, or if he was just being obdurate. She folded her arms upon his chest. ‘You had better tell me how long I have to pack my travelling chests, and do I bring a maid, and is Geoffrey of Anjou really as handsome as they say?’

  Adam sighed and pulled her mouth down hard to his in a kiss that was as much a reprimand as a token of affection. ‘What would I do without you?’

  ‘Brood yourself head-first into the nearest firkin of wine!’ she retorted.

  It was not so far from the truth, he thought, letting her go and watching her as she picked up a comb and began to work her hair into a straight skein ready for braiding. She knew exactly how to cozen him out of a bad mood, although at the present, new as it was and so long waited for, just the sight of her was enough to raise his spirits and everything else. He glanced down at himself, but it was the need of his bladder rather than the need for his wife that was making him tumescent right now.

  He stretched, heard the familiar sinewy crack of his shield-arm and sought out the chamber pot. He felt almost cheerful now that he had made the decision to to take Heulwen with him. The notion of leaving her behind had been part of his reluctance to go on this journey he had been asked to undertake. Her reaction had been important too when he told her the reason for his going. No scorn or revulsion, just a practical acceptance and words of common sense that put his fears into their true perspective. He had been tail-chasing again.

  ‘Be sure to pack the wolf brooch,’ he said over his shoulder with a wry smile.

  Chapter 19

  Anjou, Spring 1127

  The cockerel was a jewelled image cast in living bronze, and looked as though he had just stepped down from a weather vane to strut in the dust. Alert topaz eyes swivelled to study his surroundings. His coral comb and wattles jiggled proudly on head and throat as he paraded the circle, his tail a light-catching cascade of green-tipped gold, legs cobbled in bronze and armed with deadly spurs. Here in the city of Angers he was without rival, for all his rivals were dead.

  He stretched his throat, raising a ruff of bright feathers, and crowed. Bets were laid. His owner rose from a lithe crouch, and with his hands on his exquisite gilded belt, he looked round impatiently.

  ‘He’s late,’ grumbled Geoffrey Plantagenet, heir to the Duchy of Anjou. He was almost as fine to look upon as his fighting cock, being tall with ruddy golden curls and brilliant frost-grey eyes. Thread-of-gold crusted the throat and cuffs of his tunic, and the dagger at his narrow hips blazed with gems; like his bird’s spurs it was honed to a wicked edge.

  ‘Have you ever known William le Clito not to be late?’ snorted Robert de Blou, watching the bird which had originally been his gift to the youth at his side. ‘He’d miss his own funeral, that one.’

  Geoffrey flashed a white grin, but his fingers tapped irritably against his belt. ‘He will need to shape better than this if he wants my father’s continued support against the English King.’

  ‘My lord, he’s here now!’ cried another baron, pointing towards the river. Geoffrey turned his head and with a cool gaze watched the approach of William le Clito and his small entourage of mongrels — Norman malcontents, Flemings and Frenchmen, and the tall yellow-haired English knight who had been banished from his own country for the murder of a fellow baron.

  ‘You are late,’ he addressed the would-be Duke of Normandy who had recently married the French king’s sister. Geoffrey passed an indifferent look over the women they had brought with them. Not obviously strumpets by their appearance, but strumpets nevertheless. Le Clito might be a new husband but it was no reason for continence when a diplomatic visit to Anjou offered the chance of easy sin.

  Le Clito gave Geoffrey a smile of blinding charm which, because he used it so often, had lost most of its impact. ‘My apologies. Our barge was held up. I’m not that late, am I?’ He touched the younger man’s shoulder with familiarity. Geoffrey stepped aside, nostrils flaring with controlled choler and regarded the bird that Warrin de Mortimer was holding under his arm — a handsome black, the feathers emerald-shot in the spring sunlight.

  ‘You wager that sorry object can beat my Topaze?’ he scoffed.

  ‘Name your price and we shall soon see,’ le Clito answered jauntily. ‘Warrin, put him down.’

  Someone scooped up Geoffrey’s bird so that men could look at the form and condition of the black and make their wagers. The cockerel shook its ruffled feathers and preened, and stretched on elegant tiptoe to crow defiance.

  Warrin de Mortimer leaned against the wall and rubbed his side where the thick, pink ridge of scar tissue was irritating him. He looked at the black and knew full well that Geoffrey’s bird would win because Geoffrey of Anjou always won. He had never had to beg at other men’s tables for his meat. His fingers paused directly over the scar: his own fault. He had underestimated de Lacey’s speed, forgotten to allow for the years of experience that followed squirehood. For that particular error of judgement he was now an outcast in the land where he had been his father’s heir, reduced to the status of plain household knight in the pay of a man whose own luck was about as reliable as a whore’s promise.

  ‘Are you not wagering, chéri?’ A woman linked her arm through his and admired him with melting brown eyes. ‘I say L
ord William’s bird will win — he’s bigger.’

  Which showed how much Héloïse knew about cock-fighting, or indeed about anything. All her brains were between her legs — which had not seemed such a bad thing last night. A pity she had to open her mouth as well as her thighs.

  ‘No,’ he said with a sullen half-shrug. ‘I’m not wagering.’ These days money was too important to fritter away on the fickle prowess of a fighting cock. His father haphazardly sent him funds and assurances that he would have him pardoned and reinstated in England by the time of the next Christmas feast, but neither money nor promises were reliable.

  The girl pouted and turned away. He wondered if she was worth it and decided she wasn’t — no woman was — and it was at that point that he looked up and across the thoroughfare spotted Heulwen.

  The cocks struck together in a rattling flurry of bronze and black feathers. Beaks stabbed, spurs flashed. They danced breast to breast in midair and the men danced too, yelling, exhorting; and over their heads, ignoring their noise, ignoring the birds, Warrin de Mortimer stared and stared, not believing his eyes, not wanting to believe his eyes. His heart began to pound. His breath grew shaky and the hot scar pulsed against his ribs.

  The birds parted, beaks agape, wings adrift in the dust, circling each other and clashing together again. Dark blood dripped into the ground. Warrin left his leman, and ignoring her querulous enquiry skirted the circle of raucous, intent spectators to step out into the open street.

  Adam glanced across briefly to the cockfight, drawn by the bellows of the crowd rather than by any real interest in the sport. Nobility, he realised, for the sun flashed off jewelled tunics, belts and weapon hilts.

  ‘Miles — my brother I mean, not Grandpa, used to own a fighting cock,’ Heulwen reminisced. ‘Mama never liked the sport. She used to scold him deaf the times he was home, but all the young men at court had them and he did not want to be any different.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Poor Chanticleer. He didn’t even come to a glorious end. Run over by a wain in the ward while chasing one of his wives, and his corpse consigned to the pot.’