Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

Renard laughed humourlessly. ‘I doubt that Elene or my mother will be any match for Olwen. If I was wise, I’d bring her to England, make sure she was safely delivered, and then pay her to keep her distance. The problem is, I don’t know if I’m capable of keeping mine.’

The Welsh Marches, Autumn 1139

Judith, Lady of Ravenstow, genuflected to the small altar and stood up. Her knees were stiff from kneeling too long, although the discomfort began to ease as she walked slowly to the chapel door. She was fortunate and as yet did not suffer from the severe aches and pains of encroaching years unless the weather was particularly damp, and it had been a dry autumn thus far, praise God.

In the ward some women were dipping rush wands into a vat of warm tallow to make lights for the dark months ahead. Another group from the kitchens was organising to go out berrying on the common grazing. Judith listened to the chatter of the women and wished that she could share their high spirits. Berries were a late harvest gift, excellent preserved or stewed with apples and spices, or served tart with the roasts. They were also a reminder of how swiftly the year was advancing; how fast time was running out.

Two children came skipping across the ward towards her with their nurse puffing in pursuit. Judith regarded her twin seven-year-old granddaughters. Juditta, her namesake and the older by half an hour, was the taller of the two, with her mother’s red-gold hair and her father’s tawny eyes. Rhosyn was more daintily made with fine features drawn in shades of olive and brown.

‘May we go berrying with Hilda and the others, Belmere?’ Juditta pleaded breathlessly. ‘We’ll wear our oldest gowns, I promise.’

Judith considered the two upturned smiling faces and then the beet-red countenance of their gasping nurse. ‘Berrying?’ She had to hide her smile. ‘When I see you have been bedevilling poor Adela into a state of collapse?’

Juditta looked at the rumpled, dusty hem of her gown and shuffled her feet.

‘We didn’t mean to, Belmere,’ said Rhosyn, giving her an incorrigible grin.

‘I said that they weren’t to disturb you, madam, that you were at your prayers,’ Adela panted, and pressed her hand to the stitch in her side.

‘But we saw you across the bailey so we knew you must have finished,’ Rhosyn said triumphantly and smiled at her nurse before looking again at her grandmother. ‘Please may we go?’

Judith eyed the kitchen women with their baskets. ‘I suppose so,’ she said after deliberation. ‘But don’t wander away from the main party. Stay near Adela or Hilda and do not even think of going near the river!’ She wagged her index finger in warning.

‘Yes, Belmere!’ they chorused in unison and whirled.

‘Walk, don’t run!’ cried Judith, and bit her lip, torn between pain and laughter as she watched them cross the bailey to one of the towers, dragging their poor nurse along as though they were a couple of hound puppies on a leash. She could remember how it felt to be scolded for running when she should walk, could remember sneaking off to the stables or hiding in the guardroom where she had cozened de Bec, the constable, into teaching her how to use a dagger. So near and yet so far away. It was the same riverbed but different water. She was in her fifty-sixth year and Guyon would be sixty-nine in the spring. Only sometimes spring did not come.

The girls returned with Adela and, clad in their oldest gowns, joined the berry-pickers. Their laughter was as clear and careless as the light chime of bridle bells. Rhosyn waved to her as they walked towards the outer bailey. Judith smiled and waved in reply and followed them at a slower pace until she reached the castle garden.

Guyon was there, sitting on his favourite turf seat beside the rose hedge, playing a game of tables with the girls’ older brother, Miles. The boy heard her first with the quick ears of the young. He was almost eleven now, his voice starting to deepen, although it would be some time yet before it broke. He gave her Adam’s tilted smile and a look from beneath his brows.

Judith sat down next to her husband. ‘Who’s winning?’

‘Grandpa, he always does,’ Miles said without rancour.

A skein of geese arrowed the sky. Judith followed their flight until they were specks on the horizon, then looked at her husband, only to find that he was already watching her.

‘Bearing south.’ His voice was husky, a legacy of his near-drowning last year.

‘Your throw, Beausire,’ said Miles.

Judith looked away over the late summer bursts of colour lingering in the herb beds. Marigold, chamomile, yellow hawkweed and purple devil’s bit.

Guyon threw the dice, studied the board and made his move. Then he looked at his wife. ‘Stop fretting,’ he said. ‘Renard will come.’ He closed his hand over hers and squeezed.

She sighed ruefully. They knew each other too well to hide anything for long, or even to want to hide anything. ‘Yes, I know. It just seems an age since his last letter reached us from Brindisi, and it is such a long and dangerous road.’

‘No more dangerous than England.’

Judith watched his mouth tighten and set. He had put on flesh during the dry, hot summer, but she knew that as soon as the damp weather returned, the harsh, racking cough would burn it away within weeks, stripping him down to the bone. Every time he even cleared his throat she was afraid. She had brewed up horehound and feverfew syrup, had all the ingredients for hot poultices and plasters ready. Sometimes they eased the worst of the symptoms, but they did nothing to cure them.

‘I wish my father hadn’t had such a passion for lamprey stew!’ she declared with sudden vehemence.

Guyon looked at her and laughed, then coughed.

‘I hate lamprey stew!’ Miles pulled a disgusted face.

‘So do I,’ said Judith, thinking of the dish that had sent King Henry untimely to his grave, and would probably kill Guyon too. If only they had been given a few more years of his iron-handed rule while his young grandson and namesake grew to maturity, then there would have been none of this wrangling over a crown that neither Stephen nor Matilda were fit to wear, in her opinion.

Guyon coughed again. She was desperate to leap to her feet and run to fetch her medicines. Past knowledge prevented her from doing so. If he thought she was fussing he would baulk, and probably out of sheer pig-headedness would push himself to prove her wrong and make himself very sick indeed. She had learned to be either extremely circumspect or teasing about it these days, never maternal. Even so, she could not bear to sit here on a knife edge waiting for the next cough.

‘I must go and write to your mother and Elene,’ she told Miles, and with that excuse, rose to summon a maid, but in the event, it was the shrieking, excited maid who summoned her.

On the common grazing Rhosyn sat down on the grass and sucked at a blackberry thorn that was embedded in one of her purple-stained fingers. Her mouth was purple too, and there were splotches on her gown, fortunately an old homespun. She had dragged its encumbering length through her belt like the other women, and her legs were bare to mid-calf. If Adela saw, Rhosyn knew she would be in trouble, but the nurse had twisted her ankle on a half-buried stone and was sitting guard over two full baskets of the fruit on the low bridge over the brook that further down fed into the Dee.

Juditta yelped as a nettle pricked her exposed skin and swore an oath she had once overheard her father use to one of the grooms.

‘You’re not allowed to say that,’ Rhosyn scolded.

Juditta scowled. ‘I can say what I like.’

‘I’ll tell Belmere.’

‘You’re always telling tales. She won’t listen.’

‘I didn’t tell when you—’

‘What’s the matter, my young mistresses?’

Both girls turned and stared guiltily up at Hilda, the senior kitchen maid. She was neck-craningly tall to a child’s eye, as broad in the beam as a merchant galley, gave respect where respect was due, but was not in the least intimidated by differences of rank. Juditta and Rhosyn had watched her knead dough at the huge, scrubbed trestle near the bread oven and knew the power in the muscular pink forearms and thick hands.

‘I’ve got a thorn in my finger,’ said Rhosyn, drooping her lip and fishing for sympathy.

‘Look how many berries I’ve picked.’ Juditta quickly held up her basket, determined that her sister was not going to get all the attention. ‘And a nettle stung me.’

‘Rub it with a dock leaf, over there, look, and then pull your gown down a bit; that way it won’t happen so easy.’ Hilda tucked a stray wisp of greying hair back into her wimple and stooped rather breathlessly to examine Rhosyn’s finger. ‘It’s not in deep. Belike your grandmother will be able to get it out and put some salve on it when we go back.’

Juditta discarded the screwed-up dock leaf, a juicy green stain on her rubbed leg, and stared towards the floury main road. ‘Hilda, look!’ she cried. ‘Horsemen!’

Hilda followed the child’s pointing finger to the distant but swiftly approaching riders. ‘They’re none of ours,’ she muttered with alarm, and, grasping Rhosyn’s arm, hauled her to her feet. ‘Go on, child, get you back to Ravenstow as fast as your legs will carry you. Mistress Juditta, go with your sister now!’

Juditta ignored the woman and shaded her eyes against the hot, golden beat of the sun.

‘It’s all right!’ Juditta cried. ‘It’s Papa! It’s his shield and he’s riding Lyard. I’d recognise him anywhere!’ And as if her skirts were not already raised to an indecent level, she drew them higher still and began running towards the party.