Foul-tempered, all insouciance flown, Robert de Belleme demanded hoarsely to see the lord of Ledworth.

'He's still abed, m'lord,' Eric answered staunchly. 'It'll be the devil of a job to rouse him.'

'Do it!' snarled de Belleme, 'or I'll flay your hide and use it for a saddlecloth!'

From another man, the speech would merely have been picturesque. But as it was the Earl of Shrewsbury who spoke, Eric knew the threat was not idle.

'If you will wait a moment, my lord--'

'Make haste, peasant!' growled Walter de Lacey from his place at the Earl's left shoulder and wiped his hand across his bruised mouth.

Eric bowed low, mouth tightening under cover of his full brown moustache, and left the two men at the fire, a wine flagon close to hand.

It was late morning, the servants bustling. The smell of new bread wafted past the men's dust-caked nostrils as a maid laid out the dais table.

'Returning for hospitality so soon, my lords?'

De Belleme whirled to regard the icy glance of his former sister-in-law, Alicia de Montgomery. A bitch in blue silk with a milky collar of pearls at her still surprisingly young throat.

'Recovered entirely from yesterday's malady, I see,' he answered with mock pleasantry, continuing to look her up and down. 'You are remarkably well dressed for a drudge.'

'You should take a gazing-glass to yourself,' Alicia retorted, the pearls jumping hard on her collarbone. 'What can we offer you to be on your way this time?'

His right hand flashed out to grip her wrist and tighten over the knobs of bone. It was so sudden and so painful that involuntarily she cried out. A servant with a pitcher in his hand hesitated. De Belleme flashed him a red-rimmed glare that sent the man scuttling for cover.

'You always were a clapper-tongued bitch too clever for your own good!' he hissed at her. 'My brother was a fool not to silence your jabber with the blade of his knife!'

'It runs in your family,' she retorted, struggling in his grip, feeling as if her bones were about to snap beneath the grinding pressure.

'Where was Guyon FitzMiles last night?' he demanded, his face so close that she could see the small open pores pinpricking his nose and feel the flecks of spittle on her face as he spoke.

'Blind drunk in his bed!' she gasped. 'My lord, you are breaking my arm!'

'And so I will if you do not tell me the truth, you whore!'

It was no idle threat and Alicia knew it. The pain was making her feel sick. One more slight twist and her bones would snap like dry twigs. 'It is the truth. You saw him carried away yourself!'

De Lacey muttered a warning from the side of his mouth and the Earl flung her several paces away from him with a routier's oath.

Gasping, tears of pain and fury in her eyes, Alicia glared loathing at him.

De Belleme returned the look in equal measure and turned away to view the man staggering across the hall , supported on one side by the captain of the guard and on the other by his anxious wife.

De Lacey swore in dismayed surprise. The Earl stared blankly at Guyon who was stained and rumpled, ungroomed, still stinking of wine and completely without co-ordination.

'Whatever you want,' Guyon enunciated slowly, his tongue stumbling round the words, his eyes owlishly squinting and unfocused. 'I pray you be quick before I am sick all over your boots.' He swayed alarmingly. Eric propped him up. Judith bit her lip and, looking tearfully concerned, clung to her husband's wine-soiled sleeve.

De Belleme gazed round the circle of hostile faces. 'We were attacked on the road, pill aged, tied up and left for the wolves,' he snapped. 'I thought you might know something.'

Silence. Guyon's sluggish lids half lifted. 'Lost your silver too?' he said with a slow smile. It almost became a laugh but the movement of his shoulders brought on a sudden bout of nausea and he folded retching against his wife and his bodyguard.

Judith looked across at the enraged men. 'I am sorry to hear of your misfortune,' she said sweetly.

'Is there anything we can do? Horses? Food? Are there wounded among you?'

Impotent, beaten, Robert de Belleme stared into her hazel eyes with all their innocence and Eve-like deception and then flicked his gaze to the huddled man at her feet, the feline grace gone, the lank black hair grazing the rushes.

'Pray,' he snarled. 'Pray very hard that you are innocent.' He swung on his heel. De Lacey followed him, sneering over his shoulder. Alicia flinched and crossed herself.

'Oh God,' Guyon groaned, half raising his head.

'You wretched girl, I ought to kill you before you kill me.'

'Perhaps I put too large a measure of the potion in your wine, but at least your display was convincing,' Judith answered judiciously. 'Do you feel sick, or are you able to stand?'

Alicia, about to set her foot where angels feared to tread, once more found herself a baffled outsider to the understanding that existed between Judith and the green-faced man now gingerly rising to his feet.

'You'll be all right by this evening,' Judith consoled him and gestured one of the household knights to help him back to bed.

'Witch,' he muttered, but managed a wan smile over his shoulder.

'I do not suppose you are going to explain any of this to me?' Alicia asked, a line of exasperation between her brows.

'No, Mama,' Judith agreed, her smile the secretive one that was all her father's legacy.

CHAPTER 10

The shadows of the June evening had begun to lengthen. The sunlight was as golden as cider, but the wind that cut across the marches and ruffled the slate feathers of the peregrine on its eyrie was edged with cold.

Guyon stood upon Ravenstow's wall walk and inhaled the clean, meadow-scented air with appreciation. Below, the hall was hazed with the smell of the smoked fish that had been the main dish of the evening meal, it being Friday. A lingering aftermath of the deception practised upon de Belleme - a punishment and a penance — was the delicacy of his stomach where such food was concerned.

Cadi thumped her tail, eyes cocked adoringly, alert to move if he should, but he remained staring out over the demesne. The water meadows gave way to the peasants' strips sown with oats and beans, green-blowing in the wind that chased a contrast of shadows and amber sunlight over the land. A harsh land, filled with the dangers of sudden Welsh raids and the slinking shadows of wolves.

As the summer advanced, the Welsh had grown bold in their raiding. A flock of sheep here, a bull there, a woman in one of Guyon's border hamlets.

He had, of course, retaliated. An eye for an eye.

Everyone knew the rules ... except Robert de Belleme who rampaged up and down his earldom like Grendell of the marsh, destroying and torturing. Doggedly the Welsh retreated into the hill s where he could not follow, taking everything with them and letting their flimsy hafods burn. Reconstruction took only a matter of days and de Belleme was too great a lord to occupy his entire summer chasing shadows through wet Welsh woods. He left that to his vassals, men such as Walter de Lacey and Ralph de Serigny.

The latter had died last month during one such foray into Wales. He and his men had been ambushed and, while fighting his way out, he had suffered a seizure and fall en dead from his horse.

Guyon and Judith had attended the funeral as a mark of respect but, circumstances and the other mourners being what they were, had not remained beyond the ceremony.

Guyon had dealt efficiently with the raids on his own lands and kept a jaundiced, watchful eye on de Lacey's efforts to do the same. He did the rounds of his vassals and castellans, holding manor courts, advising, solving, replacing and recruiting, granting, denying, his finger firmly on the pulse.

He began to move slowly along the wall walk.

Cadi leaped to her feet, shook herself and followed, nose grazing his heels. A young guard saluted him. Guyon paused a moment to speak, remembering from long training the man's name and family circumstances. It was a little effort that never failed to repay more than double its expenditure in willingness and loyalty.

The guard paused in mid-reply to Guyon's query and saluted again, this time flushing scarlet to the tips of his ears.

Guyon turned to find his wife, pink and breathless from her climb, strands of hair escaping her braids and blowing wild. The guard's blush he attributed to the fact that women seldom came aloft and certainly not as informally as this. It never occurred to him to think the young man might find Judith attractive.

'I've found her!' Judith panted, clutching Guyon's arm, her eyes as bright as two polished agates.

'She was in one of the bailey storesheds nestled among a heap of fleeces.'

He slipped his arm absently around her waist and kissed her cheek. 'I told you she would not have gone far,' he said with a superior air.

Judith stiffened. 'You groaned the words at me from the bed because you wanted to be left in peace to sleep,' she said tartly. 'You could not have cared less!'

'Well , not at the time,' he conceded with a grin.

'But I knew she was bound to turn up. I've never known a beast with a life so charmed.'

'She's taken a lover. The same one that sired her last lot of offspring. A great black mannerless leopard of a tom that lives wild on the slope!'

Guyon smiled and leaned upon the limewashed sandstone to watch the clouds chase past on the wind. 'Well , it is spring after all ,' he said with amusement.