Gwenllian bit her own lips against a smile, remembering how Thomas had wiped away tears of mirth and said, “Oh, she hated me ever after. Four babes now and married to the miller’s son, but she still hides her hands behind her back when she sees me.” And Davydd had gone from abject humiliation to laughing with the rest of them.
Almost she could like Morency, doing that simple kindness for an awkward boy. The other men might not have seen it, and Davydd did not. But she saw Morency take pity on him in that moment, and act on that pity. It was a small thing, but he was maybe not the monster the whispers would have him.
“What’s afoot?” she called to Davydd as she came to where they worked. He knelt on the ground, lashing one log to another as instructed by Vincent. Morency stood over him with a look of impatience and authority. Morency was not armed, nor was he restrained. Her squire shook his head forcefully at the lord, doubt-filled eyes straying to Gwenllian.
“Tell the boy to give me a knife,” came Morency’s cool command. He did not glance at her, but kept his look trained on Davydd.
It was an insult to his station to put him in irons, and nothing would compel Gwenllian to act so dishonorably. But the matter of arming him was entirely different. She had instructed all her men to give him nothing that could be used as a weapon.
“You’ll have no blade.”
His hands tightened around the rope he held. “For the logs, to notch and fix the rope. Or would you have me lash them together as this boy does, so that the ties slide and all is lost in the river?”
Davydd blushed. “He is right, Pennaeth Du. I forgot it, what Gwyn told me. The logs should be notched.”
Gwenllian took in the sight of her squire, turning purple under Morency’s cool and indifferent gaze. Normally she would not have hesitated a moment to give Davydd a sharp reprimand for not listening closely to orders, with no regard for his tender years or his obvious shame over so small a forgotten task. But now she perversely wanted to shield the boy from Morency’s scorn.
She was commander here, however, and though it galled her to allow her squire to be shamed by Morency, though she would rather give the boy a soft word of reproach and quick forgiveness, she must not give in to her soft heart. They needed this done quickly, so they could cross tonight and be to Windsor soon. Much longer on this journey and she would go mad. She could look at Ranulf Ombrier and see the same impatience in the set of his mouth, could feel his restless energy matched her own. She could not trust him, but neither did she wish to wait until nightfall for the bridge to be complete.
She craved haste, and in that craving she trusted at least to Morency’s ignorance of their location, his apparent resignation to captivity, and his eagerness to have the journey done. And, after all, it was only a knife. A small one, better suited to cutting meat than killing, or even threatening. And truly, even had it stayed in Davydd’s pocket, it would be short work enough to wrench it from him. It was naught but a farce, to pretend that anything other than her dozen well-armed men kept him from running.
“I must see the foundation is set and ready for these planks,” she said crisply, watching Morency as she spoke to her squire. “Davydd, you will notch the wood as he fixes the rope. Mind you do your job well. We sacrifice no more time to your negligence.”
The boy nodded, murmuring his contrition and dropping the rope he held. Gwenllian added in Welsh, “And watch him. Nor will he get far, does he try to escape, lest you fail to cry out quickly.”
She turned toward her other men further along the bank, intending to join them. But her blood itched with the wrongness of the scene at her back. Morency, the great swordsman, left with a boy of fifteen. He had a rope, and the boy had a knife. Even a fool could make mischief with such advantage. And Morency was no fool.
Knowing that she might goad him into it despite herself, she turned to them again. Davydd knelt, gouging the wood. Morency stood above him with the rope. She considered giving her dagger to the boy, long and sharp and wicked, well-suited to defense. But she knew it could too easily be turned against him, and was more dangerous than his small knife. The boy was good, else he would not have been suffered to come on such a mission as this one. But Gwenllian knew without a doubt that Morency was better. She remembered how he moved with a weapon in hand, a calculating brute strength and a skill that intimidated and thrilled her. Like his mouth on hers.
Her cheeks flamed with the memory of humiliation. She would not fall prey again to him, now that she knew. She stopped herself from drawing her sword, content that he would find the meaning in her firm grip on the hilt as she approached.
“And do you think to overcome my squire and quit this company,” she said quietly, making sure that Davydd could not understand the quickly spoken French, “know that I shall find you. You will taste my steel again, if the wolves do not taste of you first.”
He made no reaction, watching as Davydd hacked away at the wood. She waited a moment, but he gave sign he had heard her. “You understand me, my lord?”
“Aye,” he answered, just as quietly. His hands moved lightly over the rope he held as he gave her a sideways look. His eyes found her mouth, a lascivious look of heated memory that melted her confidence like snow under summer sun.
He smiled, lazy and knowing. “I understand you.”
She walked back to her men, consciously seeking balance in her step as her lips burned in the aftermath of his look, his words. She did not dare to go back to see their progress, nor even turn her eyes in his direction.
And so it was her own fault when, an hour later, her men cried out that Morency had escaped.
And may his bowels rot slowly in him before he quit this life and take his place in Hell, where the clawed demons will gnaw at his entrails, his rotted entrails, as the Devil himself feasts on the black heart of Morency til it make him sick, would make the Fiend himself sick, the rotted entrails whoreson.
Gwenllian crashed through puddles and around brambles, caring little for silence as she cursed him roundly and wildly. It was ceaseless, this summer’s rain, and she matched her brooding curses to the steady pounding of drops against her mail armour.
Her men had been anxious to join her, none more so than Davydd. He thought it his duty, a necessary task for a squire and even more necessary to prove his courage against Morency. She refused him, hotly denying him any right to accompany her. Morency had not had to exert himself much to escape. He had only pulled the knife easily from Davydd’s hand, told the boy to be silent, not to cry out. That was all it took.
Before the others, her squire would say only that Morency had escaped, ‘twas his own fault, and he would take punishment as fit the crime. But the shameful truth came when she bade the other men retreat, and she questioned Davydd alone.
“He did say that if I called for you, Pennaeth Du, and were he close enough to hear but not escape…then he said he would abandon flight and return to slice my throat.” Davydd had confessed.
Curse the words of a murderer, so sure to frighten the boy into a coward’s silence. When she made to leave and the others were so quick to accompany her, it was not because they loved her. She had looked at them and known that they did not trust her alone to find him, to bring him back. For the first time in years, she looked into the eyes of the men around her and saw real doubts that she could not do the task she set herself. For the first time, they thought her more like to fail than to succeed.
And his flesh fall from his bones and be eaten by vermin as he watches in the deepest pit of Hell, she cursed with renewed energy, his blood sucked from him in the night and his bones burned to ashes, yet may he live in a misery of pain.
Even Madog had protested her going after him alone. She had left him in command of the men, refusing to hear his warning that Morency might well attack her in the wilds, and wound her, and not be as kind as she had been to him.
“He would leave you, Pennaeth Du,” Madog had said simply, “to die. The advantage is all his. Do you take Thomas and Teg
warad, lest he overcome you.”
But she had refused it, telling him to take the men and supplies across the bridge as soon as it was complete. No men could be spared if they were to finish and cross the bridge without losing more days. Tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, she would come meet them near the main road, with their prisoner in tow. It was a decision she came to in haste, more concerned that the day not be entirely wasted in this foolishness. She made it a command, and was glad that it was followed without question; she had not lost the power to command, at least.
Well she knew, though none would ever say it, that she must now prove her worth to men who had not doubted it before this day. It would never end, the proving. It was never enough that she was more highborn, or more wealthy, or had a greater title, or had bested them all. In another group of soldiers, it would be enough for the man with noble title to be named leader. But she was not a man.
No, not a man, but a woman who knew the ways of men. As a child when it began, she had to show she was as strong as her boy cousins, for them to accept her. And then she had to show that she was stronger than them, and then that she was strongest of all – until now if she showed but the slightest hint of weakness, it was as though she had done naught in her life but sit in the solar to embroider and gossip. And then she had to show that she could fight as well as them – and then better, and then best, until now she must be unbeatable or else it were like she had never lifted a sword. And now: she had bested Morency, but she must hold him or she was not fit to lead men.
She had to be a legend, her mother had said. So she was. It had sounded a great and glorious thing, a secret that would one day be sung by the bards. But never had she guessed that it would require this endless proving of herself, always holding on to power with the very tips of her fingers. To say nothing of the mud and rain and cold. Whether she became what her mother wanted or if she remained only the simple soldier she believed herself, there would always be these hard lessons of what it meant to become a knight. A true knight. Not like Ranulf of Morency, whose knighthood had been bestowed on him in thanks of the blood he shed. In thanks of the knife in the night that killed the old king’s political rival, and killed all thought that Gwenllian might become a meek bride.
She paused in her fast march, looking around her. There had not been much thought behind the direction she took, only the sure knowledge that a village lay this way. In all other directions, there was nothing for miles, from what she knew – and she believed he would not have quit the company lest he knew the area. She had done a quick inventory of what he must carry now, and it was little: the knife, his own small purse that contained a very few personal items and a ration of food, some rope.
Unless he were more skilled in surviving the wilds than she thought, he would find the town and seek shelter. But he was clever, not foolish enough to go to the one place he was sure to be followed. Night was coming on, and she must decide which direction to search. She followed instinct across the fields and into the woods just outside of the village as the sun dropped on the horizon. The rain at last–blessedly, mercifully–stopped, and Gwenllian instinctively murmured a prayer of thanksgiving that was likely lost among her less kind thoughts of Morency.
It was humid, and muddy, and she was tired from walking and cursing… which only made her curse him more for ever coming near Wales, for ever being so rich a political prize to Ruardean, and always, most of all, for ever touching her.
Then she made a mistake, because she was so tired, and the last rays of the sun drenched the trees in magical hues. She let herself remember it. The feel of him. The taste. She allowed herself to imagine all of it happening again, but without the shame, and when she let the memory in, she was seized with hunger.
The memory sent such a shock of heat through her limbs that she paused, staring amazed at her own feet. She should not want this – the heat of him, his lips again, his lust. She should not. But for years alone in her chamber at night, she had thought these thoughts, and touched those places, had closed her eyes and seen and smelled and tasted the flesh of comely men. The priests would call it sin, if she had ever told the priests, or ever cared for their opinion of her. But she had never thought it a sin, until now. It was only a secret weakness, a stolen pleasure that no one need ever know about.
Yet he knew. He tasted it in her. If he were an ordinary man, not the man who had killed her almost-husband, not the man whispered about and feared. If he did it out of hunger for her, instead of a revenge for his lost pride. If, she thought. If he were someone else.
She set her jaw, gripped the trunk of a tree and swung herself around to where a narrow and faded dirt track led deeper into the trees. If he were another man, and not Ranulf Ombrier of Morency, it would not be different. She commanded men. She did not lust after them. But she understood now, with a knowing that burned in her loins, how her men could so easily turn to crude talk.
Many was the time she had heard them, and knew they did not soften their language for her ears. Why should they? When she was among them, she was a soldier too. Anything she had felt or wanted in the dark of night had seemed almost chaste compared to their talk. Thanks to their immodesty, she knew how men lusted for women, how they longed to mate. She knew as well that she was lacking in all the things they desired; her hair was black and eyes a dull gray, not the blond-haired and blue-eyed beauty the bards sang of. Her breasts were not plump, hips barely rounded, flesh hard and lean – not sweet and soft. It was an advantage that she was thus.
A sound came from her right, and she stilled her feet. Again she became the hunter, the soldier, banishing womanly and lustful thoughts with a simple flex of her sword arm. There was a smell of roasting meat–rabbit–and a soft murmur, a laugh.
She had not traveled deeply into the trees. They were but a few minutes’ walk to the village, which meant it could be anyone: a villager or traveler from the main road, or bandits. But no… so quiet, it must be a small party. Her hand gripped her sword and pulled it slowly from the sheath, careful not to make a sound as she listened closely and advanced until she saw a glimmer of firelight between the trees.
A woman laughed there. A soft laugh, from a soft woman who flirted with her lover, no doubt. Gwenllian saw the flash of a skirt reflected in the light from the fire and almost moved on. But sense told her that Morency might find his way here, too, and do mischief to these lovers. He would take their silver did they have any, and dinner and anything else of value. As she debated whether to stay here and watch for him or to continue her hunt, the renewed thought of how men lusted to mate, against all reason and caution, decided her.
She gripped the sword more tightly and found her silent footing between the trees, approaching the couple from behind. The man sat against the tree that separated Gwenllian from the scene. She used shadow to hide herself, balance and skill and hard will to keep her breath even and her moves unheard until the tree was in front of her. She looked around the trunk, assessing the woman on the opposite side.
She was older than Gwenllian, and looked well used to this sport. Instead of protesting like a demure maiden when a broad hand reached out to fondle her ample breast, she sighed and flushed and pressed her full hips against the lap she sat in, closing her eyes.
Gwenllian rested her free hand against the tree and slowly, silently, brought the tip of her sword around to where these lovers played at love. And she waited.
A second later, the woman opened her eyes. She blinked, and then her eyes followed up along the blade at the man’s throat until they reached the level of Gwenllian’s fist. Anticipating her shriek, Gwenllian pressed the tip of the sword more firmly against flesh, impressed in spite of herself that he made no move under so obvious and sudden a threat – unlike the woman, who had screeched and run off into the night. After a moment of silence, he spoke.
“You’ve ruined my dinner, my lady Gwenllian.”
She stepped from behind the tree, keeping her sword tip pressed firmly on Morency’s
collarbone as she pivoted and faced him. He looked bored, as though he had expected this and she disappointed him by acting as he knew she would. But the set of his mouth told her as well that he was angry, frustrated, and she took her measure of triumph in thwarting his pleasure.
She jerked her chin to indicate the spit over the fire, where the rabbit roasted. “The meat does not burn, and you dine tonight. Naught is ruined of your dinner.”
He smiled, a genuine smile of amusement that stunned her by being so fit to his features. “But the sweet has fled and you replace it with your steel. The best of it, ruined.”
No response came to her. She merely watched him, waiting for his hand to come up and knock the blade away. Or perhaps he would lunge at her legs and pull her to the ground. It was attack she was watching for, not the slow spread of his smile.
“I carry nothing but the knife you gave me, and that so dull it barely took the skin off my dinner,” he informed her. He paused expectantly, but she did not lower the sword. “Your arm will tire soon enough,” he said with a shrug.
The King's Man Page 7