Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

Gloucester gave his son-in-law a weary look. ‘What about the woman?’

Ranulf looked blank. ‘What woman?’

‘The dancing girl you persist in bedding even under your wife’s long-suffering nose. Don’t you have brains above your belt, Ranulf?’

‘Why in Christ’s name should she want my seal?’ he scoffed, thinking of the previous night when she had been all over him.

‘I’ll tell you why,’ said William de Cahagnes, a hard-bitten baron who had been listening to the conversation with more than a glint of malice at Chester’s discomfort. ‘Because she used to be Ravenstow’s mistress. He brought her home with him from Antioch.’

The words dropped like red-hot stones into a trough of cold water.

‘What?’ roared Ranulf, jerking round as if scalded.

‘One of my men served at Ravenstow last year as a mercenary, and he recognised her the moment he saw her in your retinue. Apparently she only dances to her own tune. I think you will find that she is gone, and whatever joy you had of her last night was paid for by your seal.’

Near to choking on his rage, Ranulf was incoherent.

‘You had better check your strongbox,’ Gloucester suggested wearily. ‘If your seal has gone, then God knows what other documents might be forged with its aid.’

Swallowing, Ranulf fumbled in his pouch for the key. ‘FitzGuyon’s whore!’ He gagged, thinking of how much she must have been laughing at him.

A swift investigation confirmed the worst. The seal was missing from his chest and the guards sent to apprehend Olwen returned empty-handed, their only lead a rumour that she had ridden out before first light with a departing band of North Welsh. She had taken the baby with her. Either his son, or Ravenstow’s cuckoo. While this was being reported, another detail came back having failed to find any trace of a knight by the name of William le Malin — William the cunning.

That was when the volcano erupted and men scattered for cover. Flagons, cups, two roast pigeons and an expensive and heavy carved chair were hurled indiscriminately across the room.

Gloucester, while not approving, was accustomed to his son-in-law’s excesses of temper, and waiting until Ranulf had run out of immediate objects to throw, said into the panting respite, ‘For Christ’s sake, Ranulf, and mine, control your tantrum and put it to some use before you do more damage to this keep than Stephen did in six weeks of siege! Send out men after them and a messenger to your lands, telling your constables to beware of anyone bearing parchments with your seal and in the meantime have a new one cast. God’s blood, surely I do not need to lecture you as if you were one of my squires!’

Ranulf glared at him and clenched and unclenched his fists but even while his rage ran like molten lava, its core was cooling into a reasoning anger. He managed a curt nod at his father-in-law. ‘You do well to recall me to my duty,’ he said, and swung to the door.

As he reached it, Gloucester cautioned him. ‘Remember that Renard is my nephew, and Matilda’s. Keep that temper of yours in check.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ There was more than a hint of ambiguity in Ranulf ’s reply.

On the Roman road to Newark, one of the wain wheels lurched into a rut for the hundredth time, tossing Renard and William about like podded peas in a housewife’s bowl. Henry, strapped to his pallet, made no sound beyond a sawing effort to breathe. Just outside Lincoln, a priest had been found to shrive him and had been given a generous donation to his church in the hope that he would hold his silence. Whether or not he would was another matter.

‘We’re travelling too slowly,’ William said with an anxious glance at Henry. ‘We need to be on horseback and cutting across country by now, not stuck on the main road for all to see and for Chester’s knights to capture as easily as a gaze-hound would seize a lame hare. And we’ll never get this great solid thing across the ford with the river as high as it is.’

Renard stared back at William with dull eyes. He knew what William wanted him to say and the responsibility dragged on his shoulders as heavily as the mud sucking at the wain wheels. Opening his mouth he obliged, for it was inevitable, and their escape was not.

‘Leave the wain at the ford,’ he said, ‘and load whatever we need on to one of the horses. Henry can ride with someone holding him in the saddle. It cannot make any difference to his condition except perhaps bring him a mercy nearer death.’

William’s shoulders relaxed and he breathed out. ‘It is the only way,’ he agreed.

Renard grimaced. ‘Have you any usquebaugh?’

William had. It was inferior stuff and as rough on the throat as a punnet of horseshoe nails, but Renard was not drinking for pleasure.

‘There’s bread and sausage too,’ William added. ‘You can soften the crust in the rain as we ride.’

Given less grim circumstances, the pragmatic remark would have made Renard laugh. For the moment his mood outmatched the weather, and besides, the usquebaugh had closed his throat. Wordlessly he handed William the flask.

William took a short gulp and choked. ‘God’s death!’ he gasped. ‘No wonder the man I bartered it from was so pleased to be rid!’

‘How did you come by that parchment to get me out?’

William lowered the flask and darted him a bright blue glance. ‘I wrote it myself.’

‘But the seal, how did you come by that?’

William reached inside his tunic, rummaged, and brought out a metal disc a little smaller than the palm of his hand. ‘This, you mean?’ He handed it to Renard. ‘I found the glimmer of gold within your dancing girl’s heart of stone.’

Renard gaped at him in astonishment. ‘Olwen got it for you?’

‘More to please herself than any favour for me. Jesu, Renard, she’s feral. I thought she was going to eat me alive!’

Renard lowered his eyes and examined the silver disc and the mounted knight, sword raised, incised upon it. ‘He will kill her if he discovers what she has done.’

‘He will have to catch her first.’ Admiration glinted in William’s voice. ‘She took to the road with Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd even as we did, although you didn’t see her, being enclosed in the wain. In the disguise of a Welsh youth, she was. Best bare legs I’ve ever seen on a boy. Cadwaladr seemed to think so too by the direction of his eyes! Mind you, she’s only playing with him. My guess is that she’ll try to hook her claws into Prince Owain himself.’

‘Did she take her child too?’

‘Yes, slung in her cloak.’

‘Then Ranulf will stop at nothing.’

William shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Apparently Matille has worked diligently to sow doubts in his mind. He’s not entirely sure the child is his.’ He took the seal back from Renard, and his eyes sparked with an irrepressible gleam. ‘Think of the havoc we can wreak with this before he’s able to put a stop to it.’

From somewhere, Renard actually found the semblance of a smile. ‘You know that you have risked your own future with that little geegaw.’ He nodded at the seal.

‘It was too high a price to have held back.’ William’s brightness faded. ‘You were fortunate in one way that you were thrown into prison. You didn’t see what Chester’s men did to the people of Lincoln for their resistance.’ He made a swift gesture as Renard tried to speak. ‘No, I’m not that green about such matters. A little plundering goes not amiss — it’s necessary if you want to keep and control your men, but to let them run wild shows no control at all. They end up believing they can do as they please.’ He took another drink from the usquebaugh flask. ‘Did you know that Robert of Leicester’s gone over to the Empress? He’s in Gloucester already, making private arrangements of his own.’

‘No, I didn’t know.’ Renard was surprised, and a little dismayed, but not outright horrified by such news. ‘Leicester might have gone courting, but I cannot believe that he intends going further than flirtation. He’s one of Stephen’s closest friends and advisers.’

‘But fonder of his own skin. There is a hair-thin line between holding firm for the sake of honour and sheer pig-headed folly.’

‘Is that an indictment?’

‘Perhaps.’

The usquebaugh was starting to burn through Renard’s veins, making him feel light-headed. ‘If Stephen’s commanders had shown more determination to “hold firm”, then the battle for Lincoln would never have gone the way that it did!’ he growled.

‘A hair-thin line,’ William repeated.

‘Thick as the goddamned River Witham!’

They glared at each other, although William’s anger was the less intense, laced as it was with relief that Renard still had enough fight left in him to argue.

The wain jolted to an abrupt halt at the approach to the ford and the small cluster of daub and wattle huts lining its banks. William broke the deadlock by leaving the wain and gazing with hands on hips at the fast-flowing murky water. A rope had been stretched across the river, secured by stout poles on either side, affording a hand grip to those either courageous or mad enough to want to cross on foot. Probably it was easy in high summer, but now, after a season of heavy rainfall, the water churned to the limit of both banks.

Inside the wain, Renard finished the usquebaugh. Henry breathed with stertorous effort, the noise all-pervading, drowning out every other sound, including the rushing of the river. Unable to bear it any longer, Renard lifted the canvas flap and followed William outside. For a moment as he stepped from platform to ground, he was so dizzy that he had to clutch the side of the wain and grip until the wood scored his hand.