Heulwen let herself be guided and sat down beside the Empress, feeling like a player in some monstrous show. She looked down at her bleached knuckles while the charges and counter-charges were read out and refuted, then raised her head to risk a glance at Adam as he made his denial and accusation. He was bareheaded, his hair curling and dark with hoar droplets, and like Warrin he wore no mail, only a padded tunic that ended wide-sleeved below the elbows and beneath it his ordinary robe. He had a shield, his sword and his skill, and Warrin possessed the same. Two living men had entered that arena; only one would emerge.

Adam glanced once and briefly at her, and half raised his sword in salute; the edge shivered with blue light that cut her to the heart. Behind her, her father set his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. ‘Courage fy merch fach,’ he murmured in Welsh, the language of her birth and first few years. She swallowed and put her own hand up to grasp his, as Henry nodded at the steward beside him, and the man inflated his lungs.

‘Au nom de Dieu et le Roi, fait votre bataille. Laisser-aller! ’

Adam crouched behind the shield and felt the ground delicately. Each blade of grass was a knobbled white spear, slippery with potential death. Warrin sidled, sword and shield extended like pincers. On his cheek, the scabbed-over deep scratch was a remnant and reminder of the brawl in the bedchamber.

He attacked. Adam parried the blow with a swift, economical move and twisted out of range. Someone jeered, but he was oblivious, his whole being taken up in the concentration of battle. This was no tilt yard session where their tutor would separate them before damage was done, no courtesy match where the victor would accept the yielding of the vanquished with good humour. This was kill or be killed, simple and conclusive.

Warrin had a negligible advantage of height, although Adam had the leg length whereas Warrin’s was in the body. Warrin was more powerfully developed, but not quite so fast, and both men were skilled fighters.

Warrin came on again and Adam parried. The blade bit his shield and rebounded with a dull, metallic thud. Adam struck his first blow and Warrin’s shield was immediately there to catch it. The shock rippled along Adam’s arm, jarring it to the shoulder socket. Warrin pushed and Adam leaped backwards, half turned and, shield presented, swiped backhanded and low at Warrin’s unguarded right knee. Warrin jumped and skidded on the frozen grass. The crowd roared and surged and were forced back by the Marshal’s men. Adam followed through, but Warrin took the blow on his shield and behind its protection regained his balance and attacked, driving Adam back towards the stakes in a savage flurry of hacking blows.

The men fought each other forwards and back across the arena. Their swords crashed and thudded on the shields, biting gouges in the wood. Occasionally the grating sound of steel upon steel rang out as they parried blade to blade. They began to breathe harshly and hard. First blood went to Warrin, and second too, both of them minor cuts but signs that Adam was losing the edge of his speed.

Heulwen half turned her head, her soul shrinking, her body constrained to remain and witness. Beside her, Matilda was tense, her blue eyes gleaming. She resembled some ancient goddess presiding over a rite of sacrifice and appeared to be enjoying every moment.

‘Ah,’ she breathed softly and leaned forward a little. ‘He has him now, I think.’

Heulwen swallowed and willed herself to look at what her incautious tongue and body had wrought. There was another wound bloodying Adam’s gambeson, more serious she judged from the way he was holding himself, scarcely managing to parry the blows raining down on him, and the more enfeebled his defence, the more vigorous and confident grew Warrin’s attack. His left arm dropped another degree, and without awareness, Heulwen cried out.

‘God’s death Adam, be careful,’ Guyon muttered, his hand tightening on Heulwen’s shoulder.

Warrin’s sword flashed and bit down again. Adam gave ground, staggered, and slipped to one knee, his shield splaying wide in an invitation that the other man could not resist. The crowd roared.

Guyon’s grip became a vice on his daughter’s shoulder as she made to jerk to her feet. ‘Be still,’ he commanded against her ear, ‘can’t you see he did that apurpose?’

Warrin drew back his arm for the death blow, and in that split second Adam launched himself in a move so fast that Warrin had not time to recover and guard. His surprised grunt became a shriek of agony as Adam’s sword took him across the ribs and abdomen and brought him down.

Gasping, bleeding, his stance as unsteady as his swirling vision, Adam laid the point of his blade at Warrin’s throat, knowing that all he had to do was lean on it to cleanse away in blood the years of abuse he had suffered as a squire, the resentment, the insult to Heulwen. For Ralf ’s murder, or for himself? He squinted at the dais and through a blur saw Hugh de Mortimer gesticulating in agitation at the battleground and speaking rapidly to Henry. The King was listening, his expression impassive.

Adam forced himself beyond fatigue and pain to think with the speed of necessity. He had Warrin de Mortimer at his mercy, a single, short sword-thrust from death. Already his case was proven. To kill Warrin as he deserved was to gratify himself and end one small feud at the expense of beginning a far greater one that Heulwen’s father could not afford.

Henry’s eyes were inscrutable as slate while Hugh de Mortimer pleaded for his son’s life, but his right hand started to move as if to make a command. Adam did not wait, for whatever it was would have to be obeyed. He stepped quickly away from his fallen opponent and moved unsteadily to the stand.

‘My claim is proven,’ he panted. ‘Let him live with his dishonour.’ He sheathed his sword.

Henry gave Adam a calculating look before dipping his head the briefest fraction and turning to the man beside him. ‘My lord, your son has seven days’ grace to quit my lands. After that his life is forfeit.’ He looked at Adam again and said in a tone as frosty as the weather, ‘Adam de Lacey, your cause is upheld; God has found in your favour. You have leave to depart and seek attention for your wounds.’

Adam opened his mouth to give the formal, customary reply, but his tongue refused to serve him as his vision darkened, and his last awareness was of Heulwen’s cry of consternation, and the ground rushing up to strike him.

Chapter 14

‘It isn’t far now.’ Heulwen laid her hand on Adam’s sleeve, her eyes anxious, for she could tell from the awkward way he sat in the saddle that his wounds were paining him.

‘I’m all right.’ He tossed her the semblance of a smile. ‘Sore and tired. Nothing that Thornford’s hospitality cannot cure.’

‘You should not have set out so soon,’ she remonstrated, not in the least reassured, for although his main injury was not mortal, it was too serious to be treated with the lack of respect he was affording it. The wind was bitter, stinging their faces, the sky the colour of a dusty mussel shell and full of fitful rain, and he had been forcing the pace. ‘It was Warrin who was given seven days to leave the country, not us.’

‘I have explained why it was necessary Heulwen, stop fussing.’ He pressed his knees to Vaillantif ’s sides. She bit her tongue and threw an exasperated glance at his back. In her ignored opinion they should still be in London, allowing time for his flesh to knit properly and his strength to return. But Adam, as stubborn as ever, and a querulous patient, declared that he was surfeited with the city and the whole damned circus of the court; that he had cauldrons simmering in the marches that he could not afford to let boil over — his Welsh hostage for one, his Welsh hostage’s brother for another, his new wife’s lands for a third — and nothing his new wife had been able to say or do had shifted his resolve.

They forded the river and clopped through the village, the dwellings huddled together beneath the lowering sky. An urchin with a sling at his waist lifted a stone and contemplated folly until noticed and clipped around the ear by his horrified father, whose back was bent under a load of kindling for their croft fire. They passed the carrier with his train of pack ponies making for Shrewsbury via a night’s lodging in Oswestry, and greeted the reeve astride his sturdy black cob descending from the keep. The news had gone ahead of them with their messenger, and they were congratulated upon their marriage.

Heulwen smiled and thanked the men whose eyes were frankly curious. Adam said nothing, but stiffly inclined his head. As they rode on up the low slope, her gaze remained anxious as she thought back to their wedding four days ago on the morning that they had departed Windsor. As in all her dealings thus far with Adam, convention had been thrown to the winds. They had made their vows at the convent of St Anne’s-in-the-Field, whose abbess was her father’s widowed half-sister Emma. The ceremony, performed by John, was witnessed by immediate family and thirty nuns. Following a hastily organised wedding feast, they had left their guests to finish the celebration, if such it could be called, and set out at Adam’s stubborn insistence on the road home.

It had taken them four nights, and their marriage had yet to be consummated. Adam was too sore and saddle-weary to take advantage of his altered state, and there had been no privacy on their nightly stops. They had bedded down among his men in the halls and guest houses where they had been given hospitality, rolled in their cloaks around the hearth for warmth.