His grip tightened and his teeth flashed again in a grimace. He hooked one leg neatly behind hers and brought her down hard on a pile of wet straw sweep ings outside the stable door.

Heulwen screeched and struggled, but Thierry, fifteen years the trained mercenary, adept at brawling and undisturbed by any feelings of moral nicety concerning her womanhood, efficiently set about immobilising her thrashing limbs and trussing them as though she were a hunted deer he was preparing to carry home from the forest. She succeeded in biting him, clamping her teeth into the fleshy part of his hand between the base of his little finger and wrist. His skin punctured and she tasted his blood. He gave a smothered exclamation of pain and pressed the arch of his free hand across her windpipe, until choking, she was forced to let go.

He wadded a piece of rag brought for the purpose into her mouth and bound it tightly with a length of cross-garter, then sat back on his haunches to study her and regain his breath. Blood was still trickling down his hand. He stanched the wound on a fold of his cloak. ‘Vixen,’ he panted, but without too much rancour, and his smile flashed briefly when he took his eyes from her face to admire the rest of his handiwork and realised that the reason she had given him such a hard time was that she was wearing men’s garments instead of two layers of heavy, encumbering skirts.

‘I always did wonder which of you wore the chausses!’ he chuckled maliciously. ‘Now I know.’

Heulwen writhed, frantic with anger and fear. She was trussed like a fly caught in a web, but somehow she did not believe that Thierry was the spider. His appetite was not of that kind.

He stooped over her now, grinning cheerfully at her ineffectual struggles, and laying one hand on the belt at her waist, hauled her up and over his shoulder in true huntsman’s style, setting off with her across the path and down through the dark, rain-sodden orchard.

His gait was slightly uneven, for Heulwen was no lightweight. Hanging upside down, her breath foreshortened by his shoulder butting into her mid-section, by her bruised throat and the clogging wad of fabric in her mouth, she felt consciousness recede to a dark, striving undulation. Her wet braids slapped across her cheek. Momentarily her eyes flickered upon tree trunks darker than the sky, and a crack of lantern light from a loosely fitting upstairs shutter in the house they were leaving behind.

Unbalanced by her weight, Thierry staggered and bumped against one of the trees. A deluge of fat, cold droplets struck the exposed nape of Heulwen’s neck, arousing her with a jerk from the edge of oblivion. Thierry cursed good-naturedly. She wondered hazily what he was receiving to make all this worthwhile. Adam paid all his immediate retinue two shillings a week, plus extra when they were on active duty such as now. Good wages, but a man like Thierry had his eyes set upon a sudden sunburst of gold rather than a steady trickle of daily silver — probably the reason he gambled. In many ways he was like Ralf.

He lurched again, almost missing his footing on a moss-covered step, and then they were down at the river’s edge. Heulwen heard the water lapping on stone and saw a wheeling, glittering darkness of solid water and rain-slashed sky as he swung her down off his shoulder and dumped her on the wet timbers of a merchant’s small private wharf.

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ he warned. ‘If you roll, you’ll go into the river and I’m not going swimming in the murk to fish you out.’ He stepped over her, executing a neat leap as she tried to trip him up. ‘Tut tut,’ he said, wagging his forefinger and shaking his head, ‘you ought to know better than that.’

She glared at him and fought her gag, jerking her body as he picked her up again and with an effort heaved her into a small rowing boat, where she lay at his feet wriggling like a new-caught salmon. The small craft seesawed precariously as Thierry cast off the mooring rope and sat down on the bench. Water puddled the planks on which Heulwen lay and the wood bore the ingrained stink of fish and stale riverweed.

‘It’s hardly a royal barge, my lady,’ Thierry mocked as he positioned the oars and began sculling out into the current, ‘but I can promise you a royal welcome when we get to where we are going.’ And then he laughed, but it was a strained sound, like the whinny of an anxious horse.

The journey downriver was a nightmare. The boat was leaky and every now and then Thierry had to cease rowing and bale out the water with a large leather tankard. The river was choppy and water kept slopping over the sides, drenching her. While Thierry was capable of rowing, he was not an expert oarsman.

Frozen to the marrow by shock and exposure, Heulwen shivered violently at Thierry’s feet while her fear crystallised and took human shape. Warrin had obviously not left Angers this morning with le Clito and his retinue. It had been a ruse. Somehow and somewhere he was still here and she was being taken to him. This thought paralysed her mind as surely as Thierry’s efficient binding had paralysed her limbs: bound and at Warrin’s mercy, and no one aware of her predicament. Water slapped over the boat’s bows again and Thierry had to ship oars and bail. Heulwen closed her eyes and prayed to drown. Her brother Miles had drowned. They said that it was an easy death, but perhaps that was just to comfort the living.

Thierry started rowing again. After a little while, he started to sing softly — a soldier’s ditty that Heulwen knew although she was not supposed to. She had been ten years old when caught singing ‘The Coney Catcher’s Ferret’ for a dare during Mass. Her stepmother had marched her to the laundry by the scruff of the neck and there scrubbed out her mouth with disgusting tallow soap, the near-apoplectic priest as a witness and Adam and Miles, who had put her up to it, hovering in the background, terrified that she might tell. Public penance done, she was taken in disgrace to the bower where Judith had given her a dish of sugared comfits to take away the taste of the soap, and then, lips twitching, had asked her if she knew all the words because she had never been able to discover the entire version herself!

The memory scalded her eyes. Tears oozed from between her lids, grew cold and seeped sideways into her soaked braids. She wondered how her resourceful stepmother would deal with this situation. Her shoulders shook. She thought of Adam and her throat wrenched, making the ache there unbearable.

‘Feeling sorry for yourself?’ Thierry broke off singing to ask. ‘Aye, well I hazard you’ve got cause. It’s a pity for you I don’t have a conscience. Rather see gold than a woman’s gratitude any day.’ He winked at her, tilted the brim of his hat against the sweep of the rain, and continued to row in time to the words of his song:

‘I kissed her once, I kissed her twice


I kissed her full times three


I let her feel my ferret bold


As she sat on my knee


And when I popped him in her ho—’

The boat bumped and grated against a larger bulk, and he stopped singing to guide the fishing boat alongside a small, fat Angers cog that was anchored at one of the main wharves close on one of the wine warehouses.

‘Hola!’ A pale moon-face appeared at the side and stared down at them. ‘What’s your business?’

‘Promised cargo for Lord Warrin de Mortimer!’ Thierry called back. ‘Delivered on payment of agreed sum, of course.’ Removing his hat, he performed a brief, sarcastic flourish.

The face withdrew. There was a short pause, the sound of voices, a thumping, dragging noise, and then the face was back and a rope ladder was tossed over the side.

‘I’ll wait here for my money,’ Thierry announced, narrow-eyed and watchful. ‘It’s a mortal long way to fall, especially with a cut throat.’

There was a pause. Thierry folded his arms and sat down. The face disappeared again. More muttering, a raised impatient voice, and then two faces materialised and stared.

‘Christ on the cross!’ Thierry’s good nature began to show ragged at the edges. ‘Is this going to take all night? Perhaps I’ll just row away and barter my goods somewhere else, eh?’

‘All right, I’m coming down.’ The second man lifted himself over the ship’s side to take purchase of the swaying rope ladder. He paused on the final rung, judged carefully and stepped into the small boat, but he still caused it to wobble violently from side to side. Thierry fought to balance it and prevent it from capsizing.

‘Careful, my lord,’ he said on a rising note, ‘you’ll have us all in the water and I’ve no mind for a swim.’

‘When I want your opinion, I’ll let you know,’ growled Warrin de Mortimer and transferred his interest to the bottom of the boat and its bedraggled occupant. Heulwen turned her head aside and tightened her closed lids. ‘Why is she wearing men’s clothing?’ he demanded suspiciously.

Thierry shrugged. ‘How should I know? It hasn’t been the kind of journey for pleasant chit-chat. Ask her yourself. Perhaps she and that husband of hers like to play games.’

Warrin’s eyes snapped up again, his anger burning bright and dangerously. ‘Don’t go too far,’ he snarled.

‘Pay me what we agreed and I’ll leave you in peace.’ Thierry held out his hand.

Warrin fished beneath his cloak and brought out a leather purse, its contents promisingly musical. His lip curling with scorn, he handed it over, fastidiously ensuring that their fingers did not touch.

Thierry noticed this with a scornful amusement of his own. ‘Mind if I count it?’ he grinned, not caring if de Mortimer did or not, and tugging on the drawstring he poured the coins out into his palm. ‘Jesu, but for a man exiled you’re mortally rich,’ he observed. ‘Or you were…I congratulate you, it’s all here.’ Thierry trickled the money back into the purse and remained on his guard. He was fully aware that were it not for the precar iousness of this tiny fishing boat, de Mortimer would long since have leaped on him with dagger drawn.