Judith looked doubtful. 'Will it not cause trouble?'

Rhosyn shook her head. 'Prys knows my past. You will be most welcome.'

Judith inclined her head. 'Then gladly we will come, circumstances permitting.' She watched the drawbridge being drawn up for the night. One of the men on watch shouted a cheerful insult across to the guards at the winch and was answered in kind.

'I hope Guyon will still see her on occasion,'

Rhosyn added. 'She is his daughter.

'She will always be his firstborn,' Judith agreed with a judicious nod. 'It would be wrong to try and prevent him. That far I will permit you to tread on my territory because I cannot change it, but seek further at your peril.'

From the inner bailey, the dinner horn sounded and someone cheered with irony.

Rhosyn stared at Judith. The challenge was there in Judith's strange, stone-coloured eyes, but leavened by a twinkle of humour. 'I do not think you will see me at Ravenstow again,' she replied.

* * *

Rhosyn rode out the next morning on to a sun-polished road with an escort of eight serjeants and her manservant, Twm. The pony hooves echoed on the dusty drawbridge planks. She looked beyond the rise and fall of their loaded backs to where Judith stood between the bridge and portcullis, one arm shading her eyes, the other raised in farewell . Rhosyn returned the salute briefly and turned in the saddle so that, like her mount, she faced Wales.

At noon they stopped to water the horses and eat a cold repast of bread, cheese and roasted fowl. Heulwen, as usual, ate the cheese, spat out the bread and made a thorough mess. Eluned in contrast, nibbling as daintily as a deer, considered her mother, swallowed and said, 'He was forced to marry her, wasn't he, Mam?'

Rhosyn looked at her daughter in concern.

Eluned had been very quiet since yestereve's rudeness, a brooding kind of quiet that would not yield to cozening. 'At the outset, yes,' she answered cautiously.

'He does not love her.' Eluned fingered her amber necklace.

Rhosyn bit her lip. The child's eyes were her own - hazel green-gold and full of pain. You grew up and learned to hide it, that was the only difference. 'You cannot say that, Eluned,' she said. 'It is what you would like to be true, not truth itself. You should wish them joy in each other, not strife.'

'She's ugly!' Eluned thrust out her lower lip.

'Eluned!'

Heulwen choked and Rhosyn unthinkingly rescued the half-chewed piece of chicken wing from the back of the infant's throat, her attention all focused on her elder daughter.

'I hate her, she's a Norman slut. Guyon belongs to us, not her!'

Rhosyn's hand shot out and cracked across Eluned's cheek. Eluned gasped. The men of the escort looked round from their oatcakes and ale.

Eluned put her hand to her face, stared at her mother with aghast, brimming eyes as the mark of the slap began to redden. Whirling round, she fled beyond the startled men into the thickness of the brambles and trees.

'No, Mam, let her go.' Rhys caught Rhosyn's arm as she made to pursue. 'She's leaving a trail a blind man could follow. I don't think she'll go very far.'

Rhosyn subsided with a sigh. 'It is my fault. I did not realise it ran so deeply. She used to say that she was going to marry Guyon. I thought it was a child's game.'

'So did she,' Rhys said with a wisdom beyond his years.

Rhosyn reseated herself upon the spread skins to finish her meal, but her eyes kept flickering towards the trees.

Rhys considered her for a moment and then gave an adolescent sigh, heavy with impatience, and hitched his belt.

'All right, Mam, I'll go and find her.' Rhosyn gave him a grateful smile. She wondered how to go about dealing with Eluned when she returned. Diplomatic silence as if it had never happened? Detailed, careful explanations? A scolding? Sympathetic affection?

Heulwen was rubbing her eyes and whining.

Rhosyn bent her mind away from the problem of her elder daughter to persuade her younger one to take a nap beneath one of the skins.

Two greenfinches dated across the clearing, their song a chitter of alarm. A horse snorted and, throwing up its head, nickered towards the trees, ears pricked. One of the men put down his drink and went to the restless beast.

Sounds of something crashing blindly through the under-growth came clearly to their ears, and then a cry. Rhosyn sprang to her feet, her heart thudding against her ribs. She stooped and covered Heulwen, by now asleep, with another of the skins, concealing her as best she could.

Her escort drew their swords. Shields were reached for and slipped on to men's arms. One of the escort turned to give Rhosyn a command but she ignored him, transfixed by horror as she watched her son stagger towards them, hugging the trees for support, his tunic saturated with blood.

'Rhys!' she screamed. Lifting her skirts, she started to run towards him. A young serjeant, Eric's brother, caught her back.

The boy looked in the direction of her voice, but his eyes were blind, his mouth working, pouring blood. 'Mam!' he gasped frothily and then, choking, 'The Cwmni Annwn!'

'Rhys!' she screamed again and tore free of her captor to run stumbling to where he had fall en face down in the turning crisp leaves. He was dead. She could see the rents in his clothing where a blade had been plunged and his blood was hot and dark on her hands.

Bent over her son, she did not hear the horrified warning yelled by her escort, nor see the riders of the wild hunt advancing through the trees, the wild hunt advancing through the trees, following the trail of lifeblood to their victim.

CHAPTER 25

Soon after Rhosyn had left, Judith fetched her cloak and departed Ravenstow with her own escort, her destination one of Ravenstow's fiefs.

The lord of the small , beholden keep at Farnden had recently died and she had promised his son, the inheritor of the holding and its military obligations, that she would attend a mass in the church there for the soul of his father before he rode out to rejoin Guyon. Also, there were the customs and rights of the new tenancy to be confirmed and the oath of fealty to be sworn.

Thomas of Farnden was a pleasant, not particularly bright young man, but he knew his feudal duties and was capable of performing them stoically and well . He lacked imagination and ambition but that was no reason to neglect him. A horseshoe nail was just as important as the horse and Judith gave him her sincere attention for the duration of the visit.

The mass was performed in the tiny Saxon church and attended by all members of the keep and the villagers of most senior authority. Alms were distributed, and bread. Dinner was eaten outside in the orchard, the trestles spread beneath the lush summer green of the trees. It was so pleasant and a poignant far cry from the war in the south that it brought tears to Judith's eyes, and she had to set about reassuring a worried Sir Thomas that she was really all right.

Shortly before mid-afternoon, her business completed, she made her farewell s to Sir Thomas and set out for home.

With his eye on the dwindling height of the sun, de Bec took the short cut across the drovers' road and through the forest to reach the main track.

The day had been hot and the green forest air was humid, catching earthily in the throat and nostrils as it was breathed. Judith's chemise clung to her body. Beneath her veil her head itched as if it harboured a thicket of fleas. Now and then a rivulet of sweat trickled down between her breasts or tickled her spine, and her thighs were chafed by the constant rubbing of the saddle. She thought with longing of a refreshing, tepid tub, of a clean light robe and a goblet of wine, chill from the keep well .

Such thoughts set her to bitter-sweet rememberings of a raw November night, of drinking wine in a bathtub, of Guyon's eyes luminous with laughter and desire. Her longing abruptly changed direction. Heat moistened her loins. She shifted in the saddle and tears returned to prickle her eyes. It had been so long since there had been the time or opportunity for that kind of dalliance. The inclination had been swamped - or so she thought - by a combination of worry and sheer physical exhaustion. There had been odd occasions together, but snatched and unsatisfactory because there was no real enjoyment in assuaging a need that intruded inconveniently upon other needs and was tainted with fear.

Two pigeons clapped past them and a blackbird scolded. When a spotted woodpecker followed, crying alarm, de Bec ceased lounging at ease to reach for his shield. These were not birds immediately startled by their approach, but already alarmed and winging from some earlier disturbance. This band of woodland was within Guyon's jurisdiction but at the north-western edge lay a boggy ditch marking the Welsh border and the standing stones on the south-western side were the boundary between Ravenstow and Thornford. It was for the latter reason in particular that de Bec muttered soft imprecations as he drew his sword and ordered his men to surround Judith.

A horse flashed through the trees in front of them. Both Judith and de Bec recognised the striking red sorrel immediately, for it was one of Guyon's own crossbreeds, belonging to Eric's younger brother Godric who had been in command of Rhosyn's escort. A cold hand squeezed Judith's heart, for although Godric was in the saddle, he was hunched over, clutching the pommel and did not answer their hail. The horse, however, threw up its white-blazed head and, nickering at sight of its own kind, picked its way towards them.