‘Welcome to my hospitality,’ The Earl said. His pleasantry had a sarcastic ring. ‘Perhaps when you have finished, you might like to tell me a few things. Drink?’ He raised a pitcher.

Henry wiped his mouth and gingerly sat up. Then he put his face in his hands, welcoming the darkness. ‘No,’ he said indistinctly through his fingers.

Ranulf studied him, knowing him from somewhere but for the moment unable to put place and name together. ‘Suit yourself.’ He shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘We have taken the ford, you know. No casualties on our side, but all of your lot swept away like twigs on flood water. We’re going to take the castle just as easily.’ He wound a moustache strand around his forefinger. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘The devil,’ Henry croaked without taking his hands from his face.

That amused Ranulf into a brief chuckle. ‘I suppose I am to those who get on the wrong side of me. You’ll do well to co-operate if you want to be ransomed whole to your kin and not sold back by the portion.’

‘I would rather die than be ransomed.’ Henry’s voice was dull.

‘That too can be arranged. Whether there is an unpleasant interlude along the way is for you to decide. I need to know some things … numbers, morale, intentions.’

Henry raised his head. ‘I do not know, and that is the truth. Most of the time I have been too drunk to know my own name.’ He glanced across the tent to the woman. She had picked up a small baby from the pallet in the corner and put it against her shoulder. It stared at him with dark blue eyes and sucked loudly on its fist.

‘Which is?’ Ranulf studied him like a hawk.

Henry’s wits might have been displaced by the rattling they had taken, but he was still aware enough of the danger should Chester recognise him as a member of the house of Ravenstow. ‘Henry de Rouen,’ he said, using the name of the town in Normandy from which his family had originated.

It meant nothing to Ranulf. He jerked on his moustache and wondered if this was going to be a waste of his time. Some minor cog that helped to turn the main grindstone but never actually saw it in operation. ‘Drunk most of the time is not all of the time. Tell me what you know!’

Henry swallowed. His mind darted and found nothing. No knowledge and no lies to replace knowledge. He wished he had listened to Renard instead of stoppering his ears with pent-up bitterness. The baby paused in sucking its fist to wail and bump against the curve of the woman’s cheek. He saw that its hair was an unusual shade of red, dark as beech leaves. ‘Nothing,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘I cannot think.’

With an impatient oath, Chester kicked him to the floor, then kicked him again, solidly in the ribs. ‘Perhaps this might help you!’

Henry curled up. The pain came, but he had suffered pain before and had learned to endure it. ‘I don’t know!’ he gasped. He heard the woman sigh. Chester strode to the tent flap and shouted. Two guards came at his summons and Henry felt himself grabbed and thrust roughly back against the Earl’s pallet.

‘Strip him,’ commanded Ranulf.

Henry struggled but his bones were made of wool and he flopped with the rough handling of the guards. The Earl fetched the pitcher of water used for sluicing hands and face and threw it over Henry’s naked form. ‘Remember anything now?’ he demanded, kicking him again.

Olwen had seen enough. She went to the tent entrance.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Ranulf snarled.

She raised an indifferent shoulder. ‘I am taking Jordan to his nurse; he’s hungry.’ She favoured Henry with an indifferent look. ‘It is obvious that he knows nothing. Either put him out of his misery now with a blade, or return him to the other prisoners so that he can be ransomed.’

‘You’re paid to lie on your back with your legs open and your mouth closed!’ Ranulf said angrily. ‘I could throw you out just like that!’ He snapped his fingers.

Olwen gave him a scornful look, not in the least intimi — dated, and went outside. It was still snowing, but the flakes were huge and wet and punctuated by flashing silver drops of rain. She heard the dull sound of blows from within the tent and Ranulf ’s voice rising from anger to rage. She understood that kind of impotence because she had experi — enced it herself, only hers had never led her to commit murder.

Jordan mewed on her shoulder as she stalked around the campfire and the Earl’s guards towards her own smaller tent. Their eyes hungered over her body, but she ignored them.

Two mounted soldiers squelched past her, clearing the way for the richly dressed man riding behind. Olwen recognised Robert of Gloucester. His gaze hesitated on Olwen and the baby, then slid away to his mount’s forelock as though the twist of coarse black hair was of enormous fascination. The other night he had watched her dance and she had seen the lust glitter in his eyes, followed by the denial. Apparently his marriage, although political, was also happy, and he had no intention of jeopardising it.

Olwen’s next move stemmed from irritation at being ignored as if she was something doubtful that had just crawled out from under a stone, and from anger at Ranulf for the way he had spoken to her. Turning round, her cloak sweeping the mud, she crossed in front of Gloucester’s horse, and with her free hand grasped the bridle.

‘A word, Lord Robert,’ she said in her spicily accented French.

‘Let go.’ He wrenched on the rein and his courser backed and jibbed.

‘I thought you should know that my lord of Chester is torturing one of the men taken prisoner at the ford. The man has no information. He is a knight and should be put up for ransom with the others.’

Gloucester scowled. The correct and haughty response to the presumptuous slut was that Ranulf ’s actions were his own affair, and that he had no interest whatsoever in her tale-carrying. The problem was that he did have an interest, since he wanted to question the man himself, and preferably in a reasonable state of mind and body. ‘Let go,’ he said again.

Olwen did so, and half smiled as he turned the horse aside towards Ranulf ’s tent.

In her own tent, she handed Jordan to his wet-nurse and watched him hungrily begin to feed. He was a good-natured baby, swift to smile, slow to fret, robust and mostly un — complaining, although when he did lose his temper, the resulting screams were spectacular.

Olwen was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that he was hers. Pregnancy was a hazard of her profession. She had tried to protect herself against it, a child being no part of her design, but it had happened and now she had Jordan as well as herself to think about. He bore no marked resemblance to his father except for his hair, and no one would notice that similarity unless Renard grew a permanent beard — and perhaps his build also was going to be his father’s. Whereas Ranulf was compact and powerful, his neck disappearing into his shoulders which in turn disappeared into his body, Jordan was long-boned, the kind of child who would be all gangling legs and elbows that would develop into a fluid, cat-like grace as his body came to manhood.

Sometimes, looking at him, she felt so resentful that it frightened her, and sometimes the pang twisting her heart was of a love so deep and hard that it was truly terrifying.

Occasionally she thought of leaving him with the women and running away, but there was nowhere to flee except back over the same ground, and besides, Ranulf could not be trusted with the child. He still questioned Jordan’s pater — nity and his feelings towards him were ambivalent. Indeed, the other day he had deliberately dropped him. The baby had not been hurt beyond bruises and Ranulf had been contrite, but Olwen had seen the warning signals. It was not going to get any better. As the boy grew, so too would the doubts and the violence.

Outside she heard shouting. Ranulf, in his usual inimical style was trying to out-bellow Earl Robert and failing. Earl Robert was insisting on his right as commander-in-chief of his sister’s army to take the prisoner into his own custody before he died of a surfeit of Ranulf ’s hospitality. There was disgust amidst his rage, and a ragged edge of pity.

Olwen heard the snarl in Ranulf ’s response and knew that tonight there would be no pleasing him. Bruises, blue and yellow mottled her upper arms which were still sore to the touch where he had held her down two nights ago.

Rising, she went to the tent entrance and looked out. Ranulf, hands on hips, face puckered with temper, was glaring at the unconscious, cloak-bundled man and the two guards who were hauling him across the saddle of a handsome bay stallion. ‘The horse is mine,’ Ranulf growled, ‘and the ransom. Your nephew or not, I’ll have you acknow — ledge that before you take him anywhere!’

Olwen saw Gloucester’s lips thin and tighten. ‘I should never have let you talk me into giving you Matille to wife,’ he said with gritted teeth. ‘Sometimes I think you’re capable of anything.’ He jerked on the reins and clapped his heels vigorously into his stallion’s sides. Olwen watched him leave, then fastened her gaze on the inert young man draped over the bay. Blood was clotted in his sandy hair and streaked like red rain over his features. His nephew, Gloucester had said. Renard too was Gloucester’s nephew, which meant that he and the prisoner must either be cousins … or brothers. She thought about asking Ranulf, saw the look on his face, and decided that later would do.

Across the river, the cathedral bells started to toll.

Chapter 22

The battlefield on the plain was to the west of the city. Two armies faced each other. The King, against the advice of many of his barons, had descended the hill to meet the rebels head on instead of allowing them to besiege him. His temper was up, his fighting blood hot, and he intended coming to grips with Robert of Gloucester and the treacherous Earl of Chester.