Le Clito took in the evidence and looked down at Warrin who was now sitting up, his helm on the grass beside him. His face was ashen, and against it a pink scar high on his cheekbone stood out like a brand. ‘What have you to say?’ le Clito asked with a raised brow.

‘I never touched his precious horse. I wanted to tumble de Lacey in the dust and bloody his pride as he did mine, and I took it too far.’

‘Horseshit!’ Adam rasped.

Geoffrey looked around. The mêlée was winding to a halt as men drifted over to listen to the altercation. ‘My lord?’ he said to le Clito.

Le Clito saw that he had no choice and gestured to the knight beside him. ‘Etienne, escort Warrin from the field and keep him confined in my quarters until I come.’

Geoffrey nodded curtly and remounted the grey. To Adam he said in a low, furious voice, ‘Is this a sample of the kind of behaviour I can expect from English barons?’

Adam made no reply, which was the best he could manage in his present mood. He stared at a thick streak of mud on his surcoat, and forced his limbs into rigid quiescence.

‘I suggest you go to your lodgings and have yourself and your horse tended.’ Geoffrey wrestled his horse around.

Adam watched him ride away, le Clito beside him, and became aware of the pain thundering through his arm. Warrin de Mortimer did not look at Adam as he straddled the piebald and departed from the field with le Clito’s knight. The flail hung down from his saddle, catching glints from the sun.


‘Will he be all right?’ The straw crackled.

Adam turned to regard his wife in the swinging light of the horn lantern. She was carrying his fur-lined mantle over her arm and also the morning’s abandoned picnic basket. ‘I thought you were abed?’

‘I was, but I couldn’t sleep knowing you were down here alone. How is he?’ She knelt beside him and laid a gentle hand on Vaillantif’s stretched red-gold neck. The horse was spread out in the straw, his breathing regular but noisy, his limbs twitching now and again in strange muscular spasms.

‘No real change, but if he was going to die he would have done so by now, I think.’ He compressed his lips and looked at her from the corner of his eye. ‘You warned me, didn’t you?’

‘It is no comfort that I was right.’ She took her hand from the horse’s neck to set it over his. ‘When I saw you go down this afternoon. ’ She swallowed. ‘Oh Dear Jesu!’

He felt her shudder and, a little awkward because of his bruised arm, drew her against him and kissed her. She began to cry then, burying her face in his chest, her fingers clutching his tunic and shirt.

Adam was taken aback by this sudden outburst of emotion. Saving an incident with one of his serjeants, who now sported a badly scratched face and the beginnings of a black eye in recompense for his efforts to prevent her from hurtling herself into the midst of the mêlée, she had been as remote as an effigy. When he had walked off the field she had neither cast herself hysterically into his arms nor turned the termagant, but had greeted him with about as much warmth as a stone. She had seen efficiently to his injuries, which consisted mainly of heavy bruising. That he had no broken ribs or fingers was a miracle, and she had said so a trifle tartly, but there had been no more reprimand than that. She had treated him with the dutiful courtesy she might yield to a stranger.

‘Come, sweeting,’ he said tenderly, ‘it’s over now. There’s no need for tears.’

Sniffing, she drew away to wipe her face on her cloak. ‘Blame my stepmother,’ she said, and suddenly there was an undercurrent of laughter in her voice. She busied herself finding a wine costrel and two cups from the depths of the basket.

He looked at her in puzzlement.

‘She trained me — drilled it into my head that in times of crisis the worst thing you can do is panic. When that crisis is past, then you can weep and turn into a jibbering half-wit if that is your need.’ She sniffed again and handed him the wine and a hunk of bread topped with a slice of roast beef.

He looked wry. ‘That sounds like the lady Judith,’ he said, and took a hungry bite of food. He had not eaten since the breaking of fast that dawn, indeed had not realised until now that he was ravenous.

‘I’ve never been so near to a blind rage as I was this morning,’ he said as he ate. ‘If Geoffrey of Anjou had not prevented me, I’d have killed Warrin there and then. Jesu God, all those high words about not jeopardising my errand, and then I go and lean on my blade.’ He shook his head in self-disgust and took a swallow of the cold, sharp wine. ‘Austin says one of the city’s beggar children fed Vaillantif a couple of wrinkled apples. He saw no harm in it, and I don’t suppose I would have done either — only in hindsight. A beggar child would not feed apples to a warhorse unless paid to do it. He’d eat them himself.’

‘You think that was what brought Vaillantif to this?’

‘Assuredly. What better way of evening the odds than to have Vaillantif founder at the wrong moment? All Warrin had to do was watch for the coming opportunity.’

‘What will happen to him?’

‘Not a great deal, I suspect. For the sake of political diplomacy the whole thing will be forgotten as quickly as possible. Le Clito will go back to France with his retinue, and we’ll return to England and the ripples in the pool will drift to the bank and disappear.’ He made a face. ‘Christ’s blood,’ he said softly as he put the empty goblet down, ‘I wish we were home now.’

She leaned her head upon his shoulder. A shiver of foreboding rippled down her spine. ‘So do I,’ she said in a heartfelt whisper. ‘Adam, so do I.’


‘How could you be such an idiot?’ snapped William le Clito and glared at the man stretched out on the bed. ‘All right, Adam de Lacey owes you a debt that can only be paid with his life, but what’s your hurry? Surely you could have arranged something a little less obvious? It is no wonder my cousin reached England in safety if this is the level of your ability!’

‘It was not supposed to be obvious,’ Warrin said, sulkily, and folded his arms behind his head, revealing armpits tufted with wiry blond hair. ‘There was nothing wrong with the idea. It was just pure mischance that the whelp interfered at the wrong moment. If he hadn’t, the world would now be rid of Adam de Lacey and no one any the wiser.’

‘You think no one would notice his horse staggering about like a drunkard!’ Le Clito scraped an exasperated hand through his thinning hair. ‘You think no one would notice the hoofprints all over your victim’s corpse, or not recognise that piebald you were riding? God’s balls, you truly are an idiot!’

‘Accidents happen in tourneys all the time. His horse was struck on the head. I could not prevent mine from trampling him. I got carried away in the heat of battle. It frequently happens, and I had a witness to corroborate my version of the truth, one of de Lacey’s own men, the little Angevin with the red boots who likes the dice more than he should.’

Le Clito snorted contemptuously. ‘Be that as it may, you are more than fortunate to be lying on that bed and not on the straw of a cell floor. I had the devil of a task persuading Count Fulke not to throw you in his oubli ette. Indeed, the only thing that saved you was the fact that we’re returning immediately to France.’

Warrin jerked up on his elbows. ‘France?’ he repeated, startled.

‘You weren’t there in the hall to hear it, were you? A messenger arrived from my father-in-law. Charles of Flanders has been murdered at his prayers, and mine have been answered.’ A grin split le Clito’s round face. ‘I’ve been offered the vacancy — William, by the grace of an opportune knife, the Count of Flanders. How do you fancy settling down to a Flemish fief and a broad-beamed wife with yellow plaits?’

‘You have been offered Flanders?’ Astonishment increased, verging upon incredulity.

‘By Louis of France as the overlord of the Duchy. But there are others who have a claim, and that’s why we have to go back straight away. There’s some hard fighting ahead, but when I come through it, I’m not just going to be a thorn in my uncle Henry’s side, I’m going to be an enormous barbed spear.’

Warrin closed his eyes and lay back again. A fief in Flanders. A Flemish wife. Earning his bread by the sword. His eyelids tensed in pained response to the particular barbed spear in his own side. ‘It is wonderful news, my lord,’ he said, meaning it, but not having the enthusiasm to colour the words.

Le Clito looked at him speculatively and grunted. ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said in Warrin’s tone. He picked up a dried fig from the dish on the low trestle and bit into it. ‘What I do wonder is what my uncle Henry wants with Count Fulke. Nothing he desires the world to know, that much is certain.’

‘The Count has given you no hint?’

Le Clito chewed and swallowed. ‘Not a word. Even when delicately pressed he changed the subject, so it’s obviously to his advantage and not ours.’ He eyed the bitter-mouthed knight on the bed. ‘You could of course make amends for your behaviour today and do yourself a great benefit at the same time.’

Warrin eyed his benefactor warily. ‘My lord?’

‘I want you to find out why my uncle has seen fit to send a messenger here to Anjou and I want you to find out before de Lacey and his wife leave for England. They’re bound to have some communication with Fulke, even if it’s a verbal one. I want to know what it is, and as long as I’m not implicated I don’t care how you go about getting it.’

Behind the bitterness, something else uncoiled in Warrin’s eyes, exultant and savage. ‘Money, my lord,’ he began. ‘I will need—’