Elizabeth Chadwick - The Running Vixen

They had to separate to negotiate the twisting stairs to the upper floor and their bedchamber. ‘I’d wager all the silver in Thornford’s strongbox on it,’ Adam said grimly. ‘He’s taken your grandsire for ransom.’ On reaching their chamber, he lifted his hauberk from its pole.

‘If you hadn’t taken the boy prisoner in the first place—’ she began, then clamped her mouth on the rest of the sentence.

Adam eyed her sharply and said nothing, but his anger showed in the bunching and release of a muscle in his jaw.

‘Adam, I’m sorry.’ She touched his shoulder. ‘Oh, curse me for being a shrew. I know it’s not your fault. It’s just that. ’

‘You know I’ll stand there and take it,’ he finished for her. ‘Just be careful how far you go. Do you think I do not care? Do you think the thought has not crossed my own mind?’

Her chin wobbled. She struggled with tears and, losing, began to weep. He swore and drew her down on to his lap and kissed her. ‘Heulwen, don’t.’

‘He’s not well!’ she sobbed. ‘He’s old and sick. I’ve seen how he struggles to mount the stairs and climb on a horse. It will kill him!’

Adam did not seek to deny her fears. What she said was true. He had noticed the change in Miles himself, as if everything was going forward to meet the spring, leaving Heulwen’s grandfather in a winter limbo. He pressed his lips to her temple and held her tightly until he felt her shuddering abate, then he drew away to look at her. ‘Come on, love, help me arm up. I’ve got to go to the scene and see for myself what has happened.’

She sniffed, wiped her eyes and got off his knee. Ralf would have laughed at her and ruffled her hair, or else would have wanted to bed her for the novelty of watching her tears as he took her. Warrin would have blustered and fussed and flexed his muscles. Adam was full of a checked restlessness, eager to be gone, but for her sake containing it with admirable fortitude.

She lifted the hauberk from the bed and helped him to don it. Since its last wearing it had been scoured in a sack full of vinegar-dampened sand to remove all the dirt and rust, and had then been dried, carefully oiled, and hung on its pole to await further use. The rivets made a whispering, silvery noise as the hauberk slid down over his body, and when he stood up in it he looked twice as broad as he actually was. As he buckled on his swordbelt she stepped back to look at the whole of him. A cold shiver ran down her spine. The man who had merely played at being the warrior was transformed into the warrior in truth.

‘Adam, be careful,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I don’t want to lose you too.’

He stooped to take his helmet from where it lay at the foot of the hauberk pole. ‘I’ll send word by messenger ahead of me,’ he said. ‘I know it is as hard to wait as to be doing.’ Coming to her, he curved his free arm around her waist, holding her carefully so that she would not be bruised upon the rivets. His kiss was fierce and hard, speaking all that his grip could not, and then he left her for the bailey and the men assembled there.

Miles opened his eyes and stared with exhausted indifference at the black forest trunks. The pain in his chest and down his right arm was a dull, gnawing ache. Every breath drawn expanded his broken ribs and was pure agony. He was aware of the damp, cold air seeping into his marrow — or perhaps it was just the bony finger of death.

Welsh voices flitted among the trees — the language of his childhood, learned in the green forests of Powys at his Welsh grandfather’s knee so long ago, and now suddenly so close that he could almost see the shadows of men, smell the damp woodsmoke of their fire and hear their bright laughter. But of course he could; he was their hostage. He was eighty-two years old, not eight, and his body was still earth-chained to pain. The laughter ceased and one of the shadows resolved itself into the tall, broad Welshman who had led the raid and was now holding out to him a leather costrel of mead and a heel of dark bread.

Miles shook his head, feeling neither appetite nor thirst, feeling nothing save a distant sadness that he had not been permitted the indulgence of a last look at so many familiar things. ‘You are being very foolish,’ he said in Welsh.

Davydd ap Tewdr shrugged. ‘How so, old man? I bargain you for my brother. Where is the folly in that?’

‘Corpses have little value.’ Miles gave him the exhausted travesty of a smile. ‘Oh not the lad…yet. He’s in fine fettle, but what happens when you put a failing candle in a draught? I haven’t got long, and neither have you.’

The wind laboured through the bare January branches which snagged over their heads, striving westwards. Rain spattered through the sparse canopy. The Welsh prince looked down at his frail means to an end, really looked, and saw that Miles le Gallois was not lying for his own sake. Part of it was the dull forest light emphasising the grey-blue patches beneath the seamed eyes, but the rapid rise and fall of the old man’s breast owed more to a struggle for air than to any fear or anxiety.

‘God rot you in hell, you won’t die on me, not until you’ve served your purpose!’ he muttered.

‘Do not wager on it,’ Miles said, and closed his eyes, welcoming the darkness.

Heulwen, in the midst of a dutiful ave at the bier of the dead wain driver, was disturbed by FitzSimon, commander of the garrison in the absence of its other senior members.

‘My lady, a group of Welsh are approaching the keep,’ he said. ‘They have a litter with them.’

Heulwen rose from her knees and beat at the two dusty patches on her skirts. ‘There is no news from Lord Adam?’

‘Not yet, my lady,’ he said and added, with ill-concealed irritation, ‘it is too soon for that.’

Heulwen gave him a swift glance of similar irritation, but bit her tongue on her temper. ‘Very well, I’ll come aloft,’ she said, and having made her obeisance to the altar, left the small chapel and followed him out into the grey afternoon. The wind swirled around her woollen skirts and tugged at her veil; she held the former down with her right hand, the veil on her head with her left, and ascended to the gatehouse battlement.

Between twenty and thirty Welshmen had stopped just beyond arrow range, all of them decently mounted on shaggy mountain ponies. They wore the native garb of stitched fleeces and knee-length tunics, bows slung at their shoulders and the short swords they favoured at their hips. Narrowing her eyes, Heulwen could make out a blanket-shrouded form on a litter to the forefront of their array.

One of their number detached from the group and rode forward immediately below the walls of the keep to request in accented French to talk to Adam de Lacey. Heulwen peered down between the merlons. ‘Ask him who wants to talk and why,’ she told one of the keep soldiers who had been summoned aloft for the use of his deep, carrying voice. The question was relayed, there was a pause for consultation, and then the reply floated back to her.

Despite the fact that she had been half prepared to hear it, it still hit her solidly in the gut. Davydd ap Tewdr desired to exchange her grandfather for Rhodri.

‘Dear God,’ she whispered, for there was now no doubting that the form on the litter was her grandfather — and the litter meant that he was too weak to sit on a horse, the bastion of his stubborn will and pride.

‘Delay him until we can get a message to Lord Adam,’ FitzSimon said and turned to command one of the men.

‘No!’

He swivelled to gape at Heulwen in disbelief. Accustomed to taking orders from men, and by his position in the keep hierarchy to giving them too, he was possessed of an arrogant certainty that women should defer to their male superiors, and was unpleasantly astounded by her denial.

‘My lady, with all respect, this is too serious a matter to be judged by us,’ he said, recovering his dignity and twitching his shoulders within his cloak like a hawk settling ruffled feathers.

To be judged by a woman — a flighty, red-haired woman of more than half-Welsh blood. As if his head were transparent and the words written on his brain she could read his mind, and her chin rose a stubborn notch. ‘It is also too serious a matter to leave until my husband’s return!’ she answered. ‘That is my grandfather down there on that litter. Have Rhodri ap Tewdr brought up here to me now.’

He hesitated until he could hesitate no longer, then inclined his head in scant formality and left her. Heulwen swallowed, bowed her head, and leaned it for a moment against the gritty stone behind which she sheltered. ‘Holy Christ, what do I do?’ she murmured into the shadow created by her body. ‘Adam, help me, what do I do?’

Rhodri, hands corded behind his back, was thrust into her presence, his eyes anxiously wide, his mouth set in a thin, tight line. She straightened, adjusted her cloak, and faced him with a cold expression.

‘Your brother has come for you. I wish my husband had left you to die in the road.’

He returned her a measured gaze, for he had heard the news of his brother’s raid and watched Thornford react to it like a disturbed anthill. ‘My lady, I am sorry, believe me,’ he said in Welsh. ‘Even knowing that your lord intended using me for his own purposes, I could have wished myself free in different circumstances.’

‘Spare me your condolences,’ she snapped, ‘you are wasting your breath.’ She turned from him to the soldier with the voice. ‘Tell him that Lord de Lacey is not here, and that in his absence Prince Davydd will have to deal with his wife, who is of Welsh blood herself and the granddaughter of Miles le Gallois.’