Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

Side by side they rode towards the flocks and did not speak again, each burdened by heavy thoughts.

Elene was questioning a shepherd about an outbreak of sheep fly among the herd and absently fondling his good-natured dog when Heulwen exclaimed and pointed. Riders were splashing across the shallow ford of the river beyond the flocks and advancing purposefully towards them. Elene quickly gestured her groom to boost her back into the saddle, for she knew it was not one of her own Woolcot patrols.

Heulwen stared hard for a moment, then slackened her grip on the reins as she recognised the red chevrons adorning the leading rider’s shield. ‘Rest easy,’ she said. ‘It’s Henry.’

Elene’s shoulders relaxed. Kicking Bramble’s flanks, she cantered through the herds to meet the approaching men.

Henry, one of Renard’s brothers and four years the younger, slowed his destrier and brought him round. The shield by which Heulwen had recognised him was dinted and Elene saw that his horse was cut about the chest and fore quarters.

‘My lady!’ he saluted her in a light voice, quite at odds with his stolid, powerful appearance. ‘May we beg a night’s hospitality at Woolcot?’

‘You do not need to ask, you know you are welcome whenever you choose to visit!’ Elene responded. ‘But what in the name of all the saints have you been doing to yourself?’

He followed the direction of her worried gaze and screwed up his face. ‘We skirmished with a band of Earl Ranulf ’s mercenaries. They were helping themselves to some cattle from the Caermoel herds.’

‘What!’

‘Oh, it’s nothing new.’ He removed his helm and used the cuff of his gambeson to wipe sweat from his eyes. They were a round, tawny-grey, quite unlike Renard’s. His hair was straight and ginger-brown, as was his sparse moustache. ‘It saves de Gernons feeding them if they can steal their food from someone against whom he has a grudge.’ He nodded a greeting to his half-sister as she rode up to join them, and gave her a preoccupied smile.

She had heard the tail end of the conversation and asked, ‘Did Chester’s men escape then?’

He shrugged. ‘The bastards doubled back on us. I’m no good on a trail. They had to leave the cows, though. I thought I’d ride down this way and make sure your flocks weren’t being molested.’

Elene shook her head. ‘All’s been peaceful here.’

Henry rested one square, strong hand on his thigh, guiding his stallion with the other. ‘Renard has always been much better at this sort of thing than I am,’ he said glancing wistfully at Elene. ‘If he and I were dogs, I’d be short and pot-bellied, tripping over my ears while I followed a stale scent, and Renard would be hot and graceful on the trail like a lean gazehound.’

‘Henry, you shouldn’t—’

‘It’s true!’ he said.

‘At least you come when whistled for,’ Heulwen patted her brother’s shoulder. ‘No, that’s not really fair,’ she temporised. ‘Renard was going to return home two years ago and Papa stopped him because he didn’t want him used as a lever on his loyalty.’

‘But now there is no choice,’ Elene said as they turned towards the comforting solidity of Woolcot’s walls, her young face tight with resolution.

Feeling Henry watching her, she looked round at him, but he immediately dropped his gaze and made himself busy with his stirrup leather. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There isn’t.’

The Principality of Antioch

‘I said I am with child,’ Olwen repeated. ‘And it is yours.’

Renard carefully stoppered the bottle of oil and put down his sword and the rag with which he had been cleaning the blade. ‘You can’t be.’

Olwen set her hands on her hips and tossed her hair. ‘My flux is more than two weeks late. It is never late. I feel fat and sick.’ She spoke with calm finality. ‘I know.’

Renard swore and rising to his feet paced to the end of the room and stared at the crucifix nailed there. ‘You can’t be,’ he said again.

Olwen glared at his turned back and contemplated thrusting a dagger between his shoulder blades. It went no further than the mind. You did not murder your promise of wealth and security. ‘I assure you that I am,’ she said. ‘What am I to do? Soon I shall be unable to dance, or take men into my body to slake their lust and earn my living.’ She felt a twinge of triumph as she saw him flinch. ‘In two days’ time you are leaving for ever. How will I make my living when I have a huge belly? Will it disturb your conscience to know that while you lie in your marriage bed with your new wife, I am begging in the gutters of Antioch? Will it prey on your soul when you look at your heir swaddled in fine linen and rocked in a carved cradle that somewhere else a child of your siring is starving in the gutter?’

Renard seized her wrist and dragged her against him. His grip pressed the edges of her bangles painfully into her flesh. She did not fight him, but drew in close to his body instead.

‘You use words like you use a knife too!’ he snarled.

She saw the anger in his eyes, felt the tension shuddering in his body and was excited by it. She was playing with fire, caressing it, shaping it to the dreams she desired, aware that if she made a mistake she woud be burned to death. ‘Take me back to England with you,’ she whispered, stroking him gently with the downward pressure of the heel of her free hand. ‘I am carrying your child … your son.’

Renard closed his eyes and swallowed, struggling for the control he no longer seemed to possess. Her skin and hair smelt like a lemon grove in the midday sun. He was aware of the expert persuasion of her fingers and his eager response. ‘Olwen, I am not just going home to take responsibility for my father’s lands. I’ll be getting married as fast as the priest can utter the vows!’

‘But it is a business arrangement, yes?’ Her lips brushed his throat. ‘Your wife doesn’t have to know.’

‘She would soon find out,’ Renard said wryly and retained enough sense to break away before it was too late. ‘Women always do.’

‘It would be none of her concern.’

‘I could arrange to give you money now if you stayed in Antioch.’

‘I don’t want to stay here.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Here, I am a dancing girl, a high-class whore. In England I can invent my own past — a crusader’s widow, a wealthy pilgrim travelling with an armed group for safety. Why,’ she added mockingly, ‘you could even find me a rich husband if we both tell the right kind of lies.’

‘I suppose I could.’ His tone parodied hers. He wondered how Elene would react to the existence of this predatory lioness of a woman in his life if he chose to bring her with him. He needed time to think away from the disturbing closeness of her body.

‘Besides, I want to see my father’s homeland,’ she added on a less challenging note.

‘Renard, have you … oh.’

Adam de Lacey paused, and clearing his throat, made to retreat.

‘No, it’s all right. I wanted a word with you anyway.’

‘Oh?’ He gave Olwen a thoughtful look.

‘We’ll talk later about this.’ Renard kissed her again, with dismissal.

‘It is very simple,’ she said. ‘If you leave me behind, you might as well put a dagger through my body now and throw me in the Orontes.’ Turning on her heel she stalked out.

Renard stared after her. Adam uttered a low whistle. ‘Woman trouble?’ he enquired, and picked up Renard’s sword to scrutinise the oiled edges.

‘She’s with child,’ Renard said.

Adam sighted along the fuller with one eye closed. ‘She knows it for certain?’

‘So she claims.’

‘Yours?’

Renard flashed him a startled glance. ‘You think she’s foisting a cuckoo on me?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Adam put down the sword and after a pause for consideration said, ‘I think that more than likely it is yours, and more than likely it is deliberate. Women of her trade know how to avoid such trouble. Even now there are potions she could drink if she so willed.’

‘You’re very knowledgeable for one who’s lived so pure a life,’ Renard growled.

Adam gave him a rueful smile. ‘I am married to your sister and that makes up for whatever I missed in my youth.’

Renard snorted.

‘Heulwen learned the herbal arts from your mother — all of them. Why do you think we only have Miles and the twins? And not because we frequently practise continence or Onan’s sin. Mark me, that girl of yours knows all about the application of moss soaked in vinegar and beeswax plugs, else she would have fallen long before now.’

Renard stared at Adam as if he had never seen him before. ‘Dear God,’ he said softly.

‘I agree a little prayer at the same time doesn’t go amiss,’ Adam said drily. ‘What are you going to do?’

Renard scraped his fingers through his hair and sighed. ‘I wish I knew. I could leave her behind, but if I did my conscience would gall me like a hair shirt. Whatever the manner of her scheming, I cannot throw her back on to the street and leave her to face the consequences.’

‘You could buy her off.’

‘She says she wants to see her father’s country, and that once in England she can make a new life.’

‘As an acting mistress or as a brood mare to be pensioned off when she foals? You’ll have too much on your trencher already without a sour serving of domestic war in your own household.

‘I know, I know!’ Renard kicked bad-temperedly at a cracked floor tile. A chip flew off and skittered across the room. ‘How is Elene likely to take to Olwen’s presence?’

Adam rubbed his jaw. ‘I don’t know. She’s a practical lass for all her soft heart. Probably she will accept Olwen and the babe with reasonable grace providing you keep them discreetly out of the way … but I only say probably. She has been trained by your mother, who is a formidable woman.’