Elizabeth Chadwick - The Running Vixen

She dropped her gaze to the coin and folded her fingers over it. ‘I’ll come back in the morning — sooner if you need me,’ she said, made her obeisance and left.

Adam eyed the thick curtain separating him from the bedchamber. He did not need to master his feelings, for just now he did not have any. He was numb. At last, he forced his limbs to move and drew aside the heavy wool. Elswith was in the bedchamber, folding up some strips of absorbent linen. She darted him a quick, frightened look and her industry increased.

‘Did you know?’ he demanded.

Elswith blushed and fumbled. ‘My lady said naught to me,’ she answered defensively. ‘I suspected a month since, but it weren’t my place to speak. ’

Adam went to the bed. Heulwen was sleeping deeply, her breathing natural and even, as if nothing had ever troubled her life before. Still numb, disbelieving, he wondered what he was going to say to her when the effects of the tisane wore off and she woke up. He sat down on the stool beside the bed and unpinned his light summer mantle. ‘Elswith, go below and tell them not to wait the dinner hour for me. You can bring some bread and pottage up later.’

He watched her curtsy and leave, then leaned his chin on his laced fingers and stared at Heulwen.

Heulwen opened her eyes and gazed vaguely around the bedchamber. Her feet were propped up on a swaddled brick and the blankets were tucked up to her chin. The light in the room was dim and grey: morning or evening she could not tell, nor understand what she was doing in bed. And then her stomach churned queasily as it had done for the past several weeks, causing her to remember, and turning her head in discomfort on the pillow she looked straight into Adam’s eyes and flinched with a small cry like a wounded animal.

Adam flinched too, then with a soft oath leaned quickly over the bed and gathered her to him. ‘Heulwen, don’t.’

Tears filled her eyes and overflowed. Through them she saw that Adam wept too. He swore again, dashed his sleeve across his face and left her to fetch the flask of aqua vitae. Heulwen watched him tremble a measure into a cup, watched as the fine russet hairs upon his wrist became in her mind’s eye blond and wiry. The smell of the drink was evocative and more than her stomach could bear, and she lunged from the bed, scrabbled for the chamber pot and was violently sick.

Adam flung down the cup and flask and hastened to her, but he was floundering in quicksand, did not know what to do. ‘Shall I send Elswith for Dame Agatha?’ he said anxiously.

Heulwen shook her head. ‘It’s not because of that,’ she panted weakly, ‘it’s the aqua vitae…Warrin forced me to drink it before he. ’ She broke off, retching uncontrollably.

‘Christ Jesu!’ Adam held her shuddering body, bracing her up until the spasms had ceased, and spent, she leaned wearily against him.

‘I set fire to the ship with it too,’ she gulped. ‘I threw the flask on the brazier when I saw my chance. ’

‘Hush, love.’ He squeezed her shoulders, kissed her bright hair.

‘You asked me about Angers. ’

‘It doesn’t matter, truly it does not.’

She heard the hint of panic in his voice and wondered if it was for her or for himself. ‘But it does,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve been trying to deny it ever happened, but I can’t now, can I?’ She laid her palm against her belly. Haltingly, pausing for respite when the narrative became too painful, she told him everything.

Listening, Adam was scalded by pity and love and a rage too still and deep to express. It held him immobile, his cry of anguish jailed inside his head. When she finished, there was an absolute, frightening silence.

‘I do not expect you to acknowledge the child,’ she whispered when he said nothing, just sat staring at the hanging on the far wall as though it were of vital importance.

Slowly he dragged his eyes from it and focused them on her. ‘It could as easily be mine as Warrin’s,’ he said. ‘We lay together several times in Angers — and beyond.’ He grimaced, remembering.

‘Yes.’ Heulwen turned her head aside. ‘It is the not knowing that tears at me. Dame Agatha says I must not ride a horse or run up and down stairs if I want to keep this child. All I need do is disobey her instructions and I’ll miscarry.’

‘No!’ he said clenching his knuckles. Taking hold of himself he said on a calmer note, ‘No, Heulwen. Mine or Warrin’s, the child at least is innocent. What would have happened to me if your father had deemed me accountable for my father’s sins? If you deliberately lose this babe, you exchange one burden for another much heavier to bear.’ He dug his fingers through his hair and gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘God, I’m sorry, I sound like a priest!’

‘You have the right,’ she said and her lips curved into the travesty of a smile, ‘and the right of it too. I could not bring myself to ride a horse over rough ground or dash about the keep like a maid at Martinmas. It is just seeing a way out and knowing I cannot take it. Oh, it is such a mess!’ She clutched at him in misery and frustration.

He held her, tried to gentle her, but was too unsettled himself to succeed. ‘All those years with Ralf you were barren,’ he said against her hair. ‘And now this. God in heaven, we pay for what we want, don’t we?’

Heulwen dropped her head against him. ‘I was barren of my own choosing,’ she said, her voice so low that he had to strain to hear it.

‘What do you mean?’ He held her away so that he could look into her face.

Heulwen met his gaze and then slid hers away. ‘In the early months of my marriage to Ralf I quickened and miscarried. I was in my third month like now, but I lost so much blood that Judith said another child too soon would kill me. She knows as much lore as any herb-wife. If I did not conceive, it was by the artifice of sponges soaked in vinegar and daily portions of gromwell in wine.’

Adam gaped at her. He stood on the threshold of a room that very few men were permitted to enter and suddenly he did not want to be numbered among the privileged. ‘If Ralf had known. ’ he began uncertainly.

‘He would have beaten me witless. I don’t think Judith ever told my father. Safest not to, and besides, it doesn’t always work, or else my brother William would not be here.’

Adam struggled to set reason over his instinctive masculine reaction. ‘Did you…I mean, have you ever.?’

‘Practised that deceit on you?’ she finished starkly for him. ‘No, Adam. That was an easy choice to make — or so I thought.’ She laid her hand upon her belly, and a sob caught suddenly in her throat. ‘Jesu, I wish I had done that night. ’

‘Heulwen, no. ’

There was a discreet cough outside the curtain and Elswith came in with a wooden platter of bread and a dish of pottage. Behind her a younger maid carried a fresh pitcher of wine and some new candles. The women hesitated, obviously discomfited by his presence. A woman’s domain; he was trespassing. He looked at Heulwen, saw that she was shivering, and picking her up, tucked her back into bed.

Elswith removed the chamber pot. ‘Still sick?’ she muttered to him, looking worried.

Adam shook his head and indicated the flask. ‘It was the smell of the aqua vitae.’

‘My sister was like that with cheese,’ volunteered the other maid, and subsided with a blush as Elswith threw her a look.

‘Don’t go!’ Heulwen implored him in a frightened voice as he moved away and the women closed around her.

‘I’m not,’ he half turned to reassure her, ‘but it might be as well if I eat over here where it won’t disturb your stomach any more.’

She lay back against the pillows and stared at the candle flame flickering as the new life flickered within her body, and watched her husband by its light, feeling so wretched she would have been glad to die.

Wales, December 1127

‘Try this,’ said Renard, handing a pasty to Adam, who took it and sniffed suspiciously.

‘Leeks again? Jesu I’m starting to feel like one of the things!’ He took a bite and discovered he was not wrong. There was curd-cheese in it too and a lethal dose of sage.

‘When in Wales,’ Renard reminded him with a grin and held out his cup so that it could be replenished with mead. ‘You must admit, this is excellent.’

‘Until it kicks you in the skull tomorrow morning,’ Adam qualified. ‘That girl over there keeps looking at you.’

‘I know. Do you think she’s available, or would I be offending the laws of hospitality if I tried to find out? I’m supposed to be on my best behaviour. No fondling forbidden fruit to test how ripe it is.’ His eyes sparkled with self-mockery. He would never be handsome in the classical sense like his father. His maturing features were plain in repose, but he had striking quartz-grey eyes and possessed charisma by the barrel-load.

Renard was here in Wales at the hall of Rhodri ap Tewdr, representing his father at Rhodri’s wedding to a neighbouring Welsh lord’s daughter. The truce had to be seen to be functioning; the reason Adam himself was present. Were it not for the political necessity of attending, he would have remained at Thornford with Heulwen. She was very near her time — ‘as huge as a beached whale’, she had said ruefully to him on the morning that he left. Judith was with her to attend the lying-in, and Dame Agatha. She would have the best possible care, but Adam was anxious.

From somewhere, during the past six months, he had found the fortitude to stand against the storm, but sometimes in the stillness of the night, listening to Heulwen toss and moan, or holding her while she wept, he would stare into the darkness and find himself filled with fear. She thought him strong, was leaning upon that strength, drawing from it, and it frightened him. If the child was born with blond hair and blue eyes — which was possible even without Warrin’s paternity — then he did not know if he would have strength enough, and if he broke…he took a jerky gulp of his mead, spilled some down the front of his tunic and swore.