Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

The boys, frightened by the quality of Renard’s presence rather than the strength of anything he had said, sheepishly vanished on their separate errands.

Elene sighed and shook her head. ‘Guy d’Alberin’s a bully,’ she said. ‘The older boys just laugh at his airs and ignore him, so he takes his revenge on the newest member of the household. Owain’s so sensitive about his Welsh blood and his mother’s remarriage that he’s his own worst enemy. Also, I think that Guy’s jealous that Owain is to be your squire.’

‘Fancies himself in that role, does he?’ Renard thoughtfully stirred the end of the quarterstaff in the mud as if mixing porridge.

‘Unfortunately so.’

‘Might do him good.’

‘But not you.’ Elene pulled a face.

‘Oh, undoubtedly not in the beginning, but he’s the heir to Farnden. If he isn’t tempered before he inherits, he’s going to be about as much use to me as a sword made of raw dough! The other lad requires tempering too, but in a different way. Guy d’Alberin has to acquire a cutting edge; Owain already has one but needs the nicks of misuse honing out.’

‘And you see all that from one small encounter?’ Elene eyed him sceptically.

‘I see the probability.’ He went to lean across the top of the sheep pen and said in a voice so low that she hardly heard him, ‘Perhaps I too have been recently tempered.’

Westminster, Pentecost 1140

Matille watched Ranulf and his half-brother, William de Roumare, cradling their wine and their sour, power-hungry hatreds, and with an impatient click of her tongue retreated behind the leather curtain into the sleeping chamber.

She knew how it would go, round in a vicious circle, ever decreasing as the drink took effect. The earldom of Carlisle and how it should be theirs by right of birth instead of belonging to David of Huntingdon, son of Scotland’s king. Then various curses would be aimed in the latter’s direction, degenerating to all Scots in general and the Welsh too for good measure. Plots and plans to regain Carlisle and plant King David in the ground would follow.

Sighing, Matille bid her maid fetch her jewellery casket, and opening it up, sought a brooch to wear to the King’s feast at court. Ranulf would expect her to drip with jewels tonight, would expect her to outdo the Queen. In some ways Matille was not averse to that expectation; she disliked the Queen, but she preferred to be less blatant than her husband. And these days Ranulf was blatant in all things — his contempt for Stephen, his contempt for his fellow barons, and the flaunting of his blond, foreign whore who went by the improbable name of Olwen and whom he had set up handsomely in a house on the Southwark side for the duration of their stay in London.

Matille held up a round gold brooch set with garnets and sapphires. It had been a betrothal gift from Ranulf and was one of her favourite items. There were other, newer jewels in her casket, payments to keep her sweet and salve Ranulf ’s tardy conscience while he dallied with his dancing girl. Matille was slightly piqued at his fascination, but it went no deeper than that, indeed she was even grateful to the slut for taking the edge from his sexual appetite. Accommodating Ranulf had always been one of the less pleasant marital duties.

Apparently the girl was now pregnant and claiming that Ranulf was the father of her child. It was possible of course, but Matille was sceptical. Ranulf, for all his eagerness between the sheets, had never got any of his previous mistresses with child, and on her he had only fathered the two girls, and female children were a sign of the strength of the woman’s seed, not the man’s. If the whore from Outremer was pregnant, then for Ranulf it was swift work, and probably to be repented at leisure.

Matille had not approached him on that matter directly lest he see it as jealous carping, but nevertheless, with a word here and there in the right quarters, she had ensured that doubts were sown in his mind, growing as did his leman’s belly. While Matille was indifferent to raising Ranulf ’s bastard among their vast household, she drew the line at raising some ditch-begotten pedlar’s brat with no blood claim whatsoever. If the babe came early then Ranulf would doubt his paternity. Even if it didn’t, knowing him, he would still be suspicious, and that suited Matille perfectly.

She confirmed her selection of the brooch to the maid, and signalled her to remove the casket.

‘Very well,’ said William de Roumare to his half-brother and with one eye to the edge of the curtain that was blowing in a draught, lowered his voice. ‘We’ll deal with Henry of Huntingdon as you suggest and use him as a lever to wrest Carlisle from his father.’

Ranulf nodded and rolled the goblet between his palms. ‘We can arrange the details tomorrow. I know several useful men who love money as much as they hate the Scots.’

Roumare grunted and leaned back in the chair. It creaked against his solid weight. ‘Carlisle,’ he said, caressing the word.

Ranulf smiled. ‘Then Lincoln and Ravenstow,’ he added, as if listing the delicacies of an anticipated feast.

Olwen sat near the open shutters, listening to the night sounds of the Southwark streets. Behind the houses the afterlight was a luminous teal-green pinpricked by the first stars. She could smell the closeness of the river and the vinegary odour of cheap ale and wine from the bathhouse next door. Laughter emanated too, loud and high-pitched. The Southwark stews. The other side of the river where men kept their mistresses and appointments with the seamier side of life. Not hidden, but separate, and the chasm was far deeper than that carved by the muscular grey river flowing between the two.

She pressed her hand to the slight mound of her belly where the baby was kicking vigorously — far too vigorously for a child begotten at Christmastide. The superb tone of her dancer’s muscles made her look less pregnant than she actually was — four months instead of the six she knew to be fact.

Sometimes the potions and the preventatives did not work. That last time in November with Renard they hadn’t and by the time she had realised her dilemma it had been too late, she was already established in Ranulf of Chester’s bed. Now she had to pray the child would come late and that Ranulf could be led to believe that it was his. The small size of her abdomen thus far and the fact that she was still being sick had worked in her favour. The detail that she had announced her pregnancy within weeks of the Christmas feast had not.

She had thought about returning to Renard but could not bear the thought of mouldering in that draughty little manor house, knowing that not five miles away at Ravenstow he was there and that he would fight his will to exhaustion rather than visit her. He had said at the outset that it would destroy one of them and now she understood what he meant. At the Christmas court she had wanted him to fight for her, take a knife to any man who dared to lay hands on her, and had almost had her wish fulfilled. But his wife had stepped in his way and Olwen had realised the way of it. Renard’s wife was slender and black-haired with the eyes of a forest nymph and a sweet face. Wholesome as new bread.

She rose abruptly from her seat and turned to pace the room like a caged animal. It was a well-appointed cage with hangings on the walls and a clothing pole and laver. There were thick, scented rushes on the floor and animal pelts either side of the bed. She flounced down again on the latter and in self-mockery adopted a sultry pose. Picking up an exquisite silver-backed small mirror, she regarded herself, decked out as Ranulf preferred in her dancing clothes, her face painted. She knew all about his preferences now. For all his power he was subject to his lust, and her own power lay in her ability to both feed and satisfy it.

Amid the sound of sporadic, loud laughter from the bathhouse, other approaching voices intruded upon her consciousness. Ranulf ’s wine-thickened growl and his brother’s slurred reply. Ranulf and Roumare liked to share. Suddenly Olwen could not bear to look at her face any more. She put the mirror face down on the coffer, locking herself within it, and it was the reflection that went with a smile on its face, brittle as glass, to open the door.

Renard stood in the tilt yard at Caermoel, squinting against the bright June sunshine and watching his two squires sparring with sword and shield. Owain was as nimble as a flea but guarded so wide that all his speed was channelled into extrication, not attack. Guy d’Alberin was much slower, but he learned the lessons surprisingly well. Literally battered into his body, the knowledge was becoming ingrained for life. He would never carry off prizes in a tourney, but he would be solidly capable of holding his own. He and Owain were easier with each other now, bonded by a mutual dislike of Ancelin who worked them so hard that they had no time to quarrel except like this in a tilt yard, spare time being reserved for precious sleep.

Turning his attention away from the boys, Renard stared at his youngest brother who had just announced that Ranulf of Chester and William de Roumare had tried to force Stephen’s hand in the matter of Carlisle by attempting the kidnap of Henry of Huntingdon on his journey home from Westminster to his father’s court in Scotland.

‘You’re jesting!’

‘I wish I was.’ William let a groom take his sweating horse to the trough where a handful of Milnham men were already clustered with their mounts. Distantly from the area where the new well was being dug, came the clink of hammer on stone.