The Leopard Unleashed tor-3

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  ‘I think they have more than doubled in size.’ Renard laughed and tweaked one of Rhosyn’s black braids.

  ‘Grandpa does that to me too,’ Rhosyn said, giving him a wary brown stare.

  ‘Does he now?’

  ‘You don’t look much like him.’

  ‘It’s probably the beard,’ he replied and turned to his other niece who was watching Olwen with the kind of fixed fascination found in young children who had yet to learn the artifice of manners. ‘As I remember, you’re Juditta?’

  Her eyes came back to him, Adam’s eyes but differently tinted by the reflection of copper hair, brows and lashes. ‘Yes.’ Her round chin came up. ‘I’m the eldest.’

  ‘So,’ sniffed Rhosyn from behind the safety of her father’s bulk. ‘You’ll get wrinkles sooner than me!’

  Renard grinned. ‘Not for the sake of half an hour,’ he chuckled.

  Adam tightened his grip on Juditta as she drew breath to do battle. ‘Is this how you have been taught to behave? Will you shame yourselves and me before family and visitors?’

  Both girls fell silent beneath the tone of his voice. ‘Sorry, Papa,’ murmured Juditta, lowering her lashes to purple-stained fingers. Rhosyn laid her cheek against his back and gave him a squeeze.

  ‘Come,’ Adam said with a rueful look at Renard who was biting back his laughter. ‘We’ll ride on to Ravenstow and let them know Renard’s on his way, shall we?’ He slapped the reins against Lyard’s neck.

  Renard shook his head, and chuckled into his beard. ‘They wrap him round their little fingers,’ he said to Olwen.

  ‘Women are born with their weapons already honed, otherwise they would be defenceless,’ she replied.

  Some of the humour left Renard’s expression. ‘You were certainly born with an abundance!’

  ‘The gift matches the need,’ she retorted. ‘Are those the Welsh hills over there?’

  He narrowed his eyes against the sun. ‘Yes. That line of trees marks the border dyke. Where was your father from?’

  ‘Near Ruthin.’

  ‘That’s north of here. Closer to Caermoel than Ledworth and Ravenstow.’

  They rode on in silence. Olwen gnawed her lip and looked at her lover’s broad, hauberk-clad shoulders. Their relationship was as volatile as a barrel of hot pitch and occasionally she had the disquieting feeling that the passions invoked were beyond all control. Had they all been on Renard’s part, it would not have mattered; it was her own responses that troubled her.

  On the road from Brindisi when her flux had come at the appointed moment, she had feigned a miscarriage. As it happened, she had indeed been mildly ill at the time with a stomach upset from eating tainted meat. The results had been convincing, particularly as she had been overtaken by a storm of grief, as if the child had been real and not a figment of her imagination. Certainly Renard had believed her dramatics, had been so gentle and tender with her that she had wanted to lash out at him from the depth of her guilt. That release had not been feasible. She wanted to keep him, not drive him away. Her anger had turned inwards against herself, but every now and then some of it would surface and she would be unable to keep from baiting him.

  When they reached the keep defences, the people were out in force to greet them. Serving maids, scullions, soldiers, hound-keepers, the blacksmith and his apprentice, the falconer, knights, squires and serjeants, all pressed forwards, cheering. There was a lanky boy who strongly resembled Adam de Lacey. There was also a young woman with fat, honey-coloured braids, a toddler balanced on one hip, another child ballooning beneath her skirts. Renard leaned over the saddle to speak to her and she blushed.

  As it came to her turn to pass the young mother, Olwen changed her grip on the reins, jibbing her mount sideways, forcing the girl to dart back out of the way. As the young woman met Olwen’s eyes her pretty colour faded. A former mistress, Olwen surmised, and busy in his absence if the child and advanced pregnancy were any indication.

  The bailey was thick with people jostling and clamouring, cries of delight and welcome on their lips. Renard felt the euphoria sing through his blood. His eyes filled and he had to blink as he slid from Gorvenal’s back.

  ‘Jesu!’ his mother said, ‘Adam has brought me home a Saracen!’

  He turned swiftly to face his mother’s scrutiny. ‘It’s a good disguise, isn’t it?’ His light tone contradicted the expression on his face. ‘Sometimes I even forget that there’s a man living behind the mask.’

  And then they were in each other’s arms, hugging hard, kissing and weeping.

  Judith, practical as ever, sniffed, and wiping her eyes stepped back to study the whole of his long, lean form. ‘Is a beard part of the mask too?’

  Renard fingered the luxuriant growth on his jaw. ‘It was more convenient to let it grow while we were on the road. If you promise not to cut my throat, I’ll let you barber it off.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ Her laugh was shaky. ‘But my eyesight is not as good as it was!’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Guyon from behind her. ‘It’s still sharp enough to pluck a needle from a haystack!’

  Renard had expected to set his eyes upon a walking skeleton or an old man, hunched and incapacitated. His father was neither. Thinner, yes. There were marked hollows under his cheekbones and his eyes were set further back in their sockets and pouched with wrinkles, but they still glowed with vitality, and there was not a great deal more grey in his hair for the sake of four years.

  Renard wondered briefly if Adam had been wrong and merely panicking, but as he embraced his father, Renard felt the roughness of the older man’s breathing against his palms, and heard a faint whistle that would only need an injudicious sprint across the bailey to turn it into a severe wheeze.

  ‘You made good time,’ Guyon said as they parted. ‘We did not expect to see you for another month at least.’

  ‘The summons was urgent. I came as fast as I could, and the good weather has been a blessing.’ He turned to face the keep.

  ‘Yes, it has,’ Guyon said, turning with him.

  Judith had not moved with her husband and son but was regarding the young woman who had dismounted unaided from a brown mare and was staring at Renard’s back with an almost hostile expression in her deep blue eyes. Adam had very briefly told her that Renard had a female travelling companion. His expression had said far more than his few words, but now Judith was wondering how to deal with the situation.

  Renard’s associations with women before he left for Outremer had been fleetingly casual. The closest he had ever come to forming a permanent bond was with Eloise, the falconer’s daughter who had borne him a little girl. The infant had died of a fever the summer before he left. Since then Eloise had married the farrier’s journeyman and settled well to the yoke. Renard, it seemed, had moved on to more exotic fare, and if he had brought her all the way from Antioch, then it was more than just casual.

  ‘Renard’s absence has certainly not taught him any manners,’ she said to the girl in a carrying voice. ‘It seems that we must introduce ourselves.’

  Renard turned. Both women were watching him expect — antly, and his face grew ruddy beneath his tan. He cleared his throat. ‘Mama, this is Olwen. She has travelled with us from Antioch. Her father was a Ruthin man who took the Cross with Duke Robert and settled there …’

  There was a drawn out pause where much went unspoken but a great deal was communicated. Eventually Guyon stepped into the space where courtesy and etiquette were unmapped.

  ‘Come within and be made welcome,’ he said formally to Olwen, giving her the kiss of peace and flickering a brief, eloquent look at his wife and his son. ‘Time later for all else. Today is a day for celebration.’

  Chapter 7

  It was not quite dawn when Judith discovered Renard seated at the huge chopping trestle in the keep kitchens. There was a beaker of milk at his right hand and he was eating a slab of rye bread topped by a thick slice of cold salt beef.

  ‘I see time has not m
oderated your appetite,’ she observed as she fetched a cup and sat down beside him. ‘You ought to be as fat as a bacon pig!’

  Renard stretched his legs and leaned back, raising his shirt to show her his flat, muscle-banded stomach. He smacked his palm on it. ‘I challenge you to find an ounce of spare flesh!’ he said indignantly. ‘We’ve been on pilgrim rations for four months and travelling so hard that we’ve hardly had time to eat them!’ Lowering the garment, he returned with gusto to demolishing his bread and meat.

  Judith poured milk from the pitcher. ‘Your companion weathered the journey well, considering she miscarried your child on the way.’ Her tone was barbed with the dis approval that had been evident ever since the rudiments of Olwen’s story had been relayed at table the previous evening.

  Renard’s mouth was too full to make answering mannerly and it gave him time to raise his defences and prepare to do battle. He had known this was coming since last night, but some things could be said in public and others were best left to the firelit darkness of an early kitchen where the only ears to overhear were English and would not follow the rapid Norman French.

  ‘Do you love her?’

  Renard sighed. ‘I do not know,’ he said when his mouth was empty. ‘It is like being in the heart of a thunderstorm. We strike sparks off each other all the time.’

  An aroma of fresh bread filled the kitchen as one of the cook’s apprentices paddled a batch of loaves out of an oven. Over at the stone sink a scullion clattered utensils together and whistled loudly. Judith watched the work go forward, noting its alacrity, doubtless the result of her presence. ‘Tell me about her,’ she said.

  Renard swished crumbs off the table with the side of his hand. ‘She’s a tavern dancer from the hovels of Antioch. Her father was Welsh, her mother native. She uses a dagger as well as any mercenary.’

  ‘Her body too, it seems,’ Judith snapped.

  ‘Mama, I’m not a monk, nor of a monk’s temperament,’ he said. ‘Done is done, and a lecture is not going to unwind any of this coil, or cause me to change my nature.’

  A dairymaid arrived with another pail of milk and was followed by an older woman swinging two necked chickens by their feet.

  Judith sighed and pressed her hands to her forehead. ‘My temper is short these days. Your father was coughing badly in the night and I have barely slept.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ Renard said, contrite now. ‘My mind has been turning like a butter churn.’ He made a wry gesture. ‘That’s more than half the reason I need Olwen. It’s impossible to think of anything else when I’m …’ He made an eloquent shrug serve for the rest.

  ‘You must decide what you are going to do with her.’ Judith warned. ‘You have seen how it is with your father. I know we haven’t had the opportunity for a full discussion yet, but you must know from Adam what de Gernons is saying and doing. Your marriage has to come soon before true winter sets in.’

  Before there is no time for weddings or celebrations … The knowledge hung between them like a heavy black cloak.

  ‘Yes I know. Don’t worry. I won’t bring Olwen to my wedding.’

  ‘But neither will you put her aside?’

  Renard contemplated his cup, picked it up and drained the milk. Then he looked at his mother. ‘I think not,’ he said with finality. ‘If you had seen Elene’s last letter to me you would understand why. I dare say she will make a superb chatelaine and mother, everything that I know Olwen will not, but I doubt she will ever be capable of firing my blood to scalding point, and sometimes I need that kind of release.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘I’d better arm up if I’m taking out the patrol.’

  Judith stared up at him: young and lithe, in the half light, the beard shaved off, he suddenly looked so much like Guyon as she had first known him that it almost broke her heart. ‘Renard, have a care.’

  ‘On the patrol, or in my dealings with women?’ he asked lightly, but she could sense the checked irritation.

  ‘Both,’ she rallied on a snap. ‘And you can count me among the women.’

  The light in the west brightened to a rosy gold as Renard took the household knights and serjeants out of the keep and on a wide-sweeping patrol of the demesne. The breeze was cold, but not unpleasant, and cleared the last vestiges of sleep from his brain. He began to enjoy the feel of the powerful horse beneath him, the slide of leather through his fingers, the musical sounds of armour and harness, and the rough jesting of the men in the early air.

  He moved up the border to visit two fortified manors, beholden to Ravenstow. Thomas d’Alberin at Farnden complained that the Welsh had been raiding.

  ‘No, not Rhodri ap Tewdr,’ he responded to Renard’s sharp query. ‘We haven’t had any trouble that way for ten years now.’ He folded his hands upon his belt-supported paunch.

  ‘Welsh levies from further north then?’ Renard finished the wine he had been served by d’Alberin’s wife, and having returned the cup to her with a preoccupied smile, he gathered up the reins. Their son, christened Guyon in honour of their overlord, was a doughy boy of nine or ten who did no justice to his namesake as he leaned against a wain in the yard, his mouth full of honey tart.

  Renard considered Sir Thomas. ‘When do your forty days’ service fall due? Remind me.’

  ‘Between Candlemas and Easter, my lord. I usually do garrison duty at Ravenstow.’

  Renard eyed the man’s paunch. ‘If the Welsh are slipping through you had better tighten your vigilance. My own patrols will visit regularly.’

  Sir Thomas was not unaware of the pointed quality of Renard’s stare and drew himself up, inhaling to tighten his stomach.

  ‘Send to Ravenstow immediately at the first sign of trouble.’ Renard shook the reins.

  ‘It is a pleasure to have you home, my lord!’ The words ended in a gasp as d’Alberin was forced to breathe out and let his spare flesh wobble on to his belt again.

  Renard glanced sharply, but the man’s face, apart from being slightly pink with effort, was as plain and honest as pottage. Probably the soft fool meant it, and Renard did not know whether to thank him or laugh and disillusion him. In the end he did neither, just nodded briskly and clicked Gorvenal to a trot.

  Renard spent the rest of the morning garnering information about the extent of the Welsh raiding, inspected a couple of barns that had been plundered and set on fire, and rode thoughtfully up the border to eat and rest the horses for an hour at Adam’s main holding of Thornford before returning through the safer heart of the earldom to Ravenstow.

  The sun in the mid-afternoon was hot and perspiration began to trickle delicately down Renard’s spine. It was a different kind of heat to Antioch, he thought. Out there the sun parched a man to the consistency of boiled leather. Here it melted him in a puddle of his own sweat.

  In the fields gleaners were out among the stubble as they picked their way across the barbered golden strips. Beyond the fields the land rose slightly and ran into a small belt of oak and beech forest that was gradually being eaten inwards by assarts as the population of Hawkfield expanded. A new area of ploughland was being cleared even as Renard and the men rode into the trees, a young peasant swinging his axe at one of the sturdy trunks. Seeing the horsemen, he paused to watch them approach and pushed the hair off his soaked brow. An older man, working beside him, groaned and pressed his hands into the aching small of his back before tugging his forelock to the soldiers.

  Renard dismounted to talk. The knights gave each other long-suffering looks, and fidgeted, gently stewing in their armour.

  The younger man tentatively offered Renard a stone cider jug and a grubby hunk of maslin loaf. Renard declined the latter, but drank thirstily from the jug. The cider was coarse, almost as rough on the throat as usquebaugh. Coughing, he passed a remark in English that caused the two peasants to grin broadly.

  He enquired about the assart. His English was accented, a little rusty from four years at the back of his mind, but he spoke it well enough to be understood and
in turn to understand what the two men replied. One particular remark made by the older man caused Renard to lift his brows and stare thoughtfully into the autumn forest beyond, a half-smile on his lips.

  ‘My lord, is it wise to rub shoulders with the serfs?’ asked one of the men when once more they were riding through the trees. ‘Will they not get ideas above their position?’

  Renard shifted his shield as its pressure began to chafe a sore spot between his shoulder blades. ‘I know what I’m about. You cannot buy loyalty either with coin or with fear. It is like mastering a horse,’ he grinned, ‘or a woman — gentle but firm, and applying the pressure in the right place at the right time.’

  The knight laughed and shook his head.

  ‘Lord Renard!’ Ancelin’s voice was terse with sudden warning.

  It was not just his shield-bearer’s tone that caused the hairs to prickle erect on Renard’s spine. He shifted his shield again, rapidly bringing it down on to his left forearm, and started to draw his sword. Then he stopped with the weapon half out of its sheath. His mind flew while his body grew roots. He could feel the tension in his men, was aware of someone behind him, swallowing loudly. Amid the tumbling, turning leaves the light angled off arrow and spear tips half concealed by foliage.

  Renard’s breathing, which had been as light and shallow as an untimely grave, deepened. His chest expanded. He slammed the sword back into its sheath, and setting his hands to his helm, struggled to pull it off.

  ‘William!’ he roared. ‘Come out now, or I swear to God I’ll thrash you to within an inch of your miserable life!’

  There was a long pause. A horse shook its head and harness jingled. From behind the cover of a smooth-trunked silver birch, a young man stepped out. He was a little above average height and as rangy as a cat. His clothes were coloured the buffs and golds of the autumn woods, and an elm bow dangled from his fingers.

  ‘Croeso,’ he said on a flourish and a bow. When he stood erect again his blue-green eyes were bright with laughter. ‘You rode straight into our trap.’