nodded that he would do it. By the time they walked into Henry’s presence his barber would have trimmed his beard and hair, he would be washed and scented with oils and pomades and wearing one of the new gowns he had no doubt ordered already to be waiting for him when he returned to London. He would look the picture of reliable and loyal manhood.
There was only one way to be rid of him now that she could see. She had to leave Fotheringhay, run back to Wales with the children and hide in the mountains. He would never find her there. She would lose everything: her income, her property, her status, but she would be free and never again would she have to suffer the endless nightmares thinking about what Robert was going to do to her, or what, in a drunken frenzy, he might do to his own daughters. She closed her eyes, breathing in the sweet night air.
In the doorway to the guesthouse Robert watched his wife as she moved steadily away from him into the darkness. His arms were folded and he was swaying slightly. Pushing himself away from the doorpost he walked around the side of the building and relieved himself against the wall, then he turned to follow her.
He made no effort to walk quietly but she didn’t hear him as he trod unsteadily through the long grasses, feeling them cold and wet at the hem of his mantle. Deep in thought, she wandered more and more slowly, seeing, not the velvet Yorkshire sky, but the ice-covered peaks of Yr Wyddfa, where she would live with Owain’s and Llywelyn’s help in one of the mountain castles her father had built and where her daughters could grow up free and unafraid.
When she turned and saw him, only feet away from her, his hands on his hips and a disarmingly pleasant smile on his face, it was too late to run.
‘At last.’ He spoke slowly and distinctly. ‘Some privacy. I don’t like taking my wife before an audience.’ He put his hand around her wrist. ‘I find it inhibiting. It spoils the fun.’
She broke his grip. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Why not? You are my wife. Before God and the law you belong to me.’
‘No.’ She backed away, keeping just out of reach. ‘I belong to no one, no one at all.’
‘Now that your Scots king has abandoned you.’ He lunged and managed to catch her cloak. She pulled away, but she was off balance and he had sobered during the walk through the icy grass. This time he pulled her into his arms and sought her mouth with his own. ‘We need to tie your hands to make you obedient, don’t we?’ he murmured as he sucked at her face, his lips wet and hot, his breath stinking of stale wine. ‘Remind my beautiful wife who is her master. I have something. I have a rope especially for you, to keep you still. So we can enjoy ourselves.’
He held her with one hand and fumbled at his girdle as she kicked and struggled with grim fury. Her nails connected with his face, then he was pulling a loop of cord around her wrist, drawing it tight, forcing her arm behind her, groping for her other hand.
The swirl of ice-cold wind in the stillness of the night sent them both reeling. Robert staggered off balance, staring into the darkness; there was something there, something between him and Eleyne. A figure. He screamed and lashed out at it, but he missed. His fist passed straight through it; there was nothing there but the shadows from the starlight. He was stunned, then recovering himself he lunged after her, catching the rope which trailed from her wrist and giving it a vicious tug. It was the accursed drink which had fuddled his wits and made him imagine things.
‘Robert!’
Roger de Quincy’s voice was shockingly loud against the sound of his brother’s laboured breathing. So was the smack of bone on flesh as his fist caught Robert full in the face. Robert crumpled and lay still.
Eleyne was too shocked to move, then she looked up and stared round. Roger de Quincy’s arrival had rescued her. But before that, in the icy darkness. Her mind grappled with the implications of what she had seen. Who or what had attacked her husband out of the shadows? Whatever it was, it had saved her.
Her brother-in-law’s gentle hand on her shoulder brought her back to reality.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him shakily as he unknotted the cord from her wrist.
Roger’s mouth had set in a hard line. ‘I’m sorry, I gave the king my word that in future Robert would behave as a knight should.’
Gathering her cloak round her Eleyne groped for the phoenix. She stared down at her husband’s crumpled form. ‘If only you could.’ Her voice was husky with shock.
Roger smiled. His sister-in-law’s beauty and dignity touched him every time he saw her, but on this occasion there was something there he had never seen before, something wild and untouchable as she gazed past him into the night. It reminded him of an untrained falcon.
‘He will live as a knight, madam,’ he assured her. ‘Men all over Christendom are taking the cross in response to the King of France’s call. King Henry has decided that your husband will be one of those who goes to the Holy Land.’
Her green eyes were huge in her pale face. ‘The Holy Land?’ she echoed.
He nodded. ‘Your husband will not bother you or your family again for a very long time, my dear. He is to ride to Jerusalem.’
Behind them, on the lonely moors, the wind warmed a little and the air was suddenly clear.
BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I
The soft morning air was still sparkling with dew as Eleyne drew the colt gently to a walk and smiled across at her companion. ‘He’ll do. You can start training him tomorrow.’
‘It’ll be a pleasure to ride him, my lady.’ Narrowing his eyes in the sunlight, Michael watched the two great wolfhounds gambolling at the colt’s heels. The animal was used to the dogs; he had known them since he was foaled. She was never without her dogs; they followed her everywhere, as did her two little girls.
Sliding from his horse, he ducked under its head to help her dismount, but as always she beat him to it, slipping off as gracefully as a dancer, laughing at the crestfallen face of her marshal of horses.
Since her husband had sailed for France at the beginning of his trip to the Holy Land Eleyne had moved her base from Fotheringhay to this dower house in the Malvern Hills which her father had given to her on her marriage to John. Behind them the old manor house which she now called home sprawled in the early sunshine, its soft peach-coloured stone walls nestling between the orchards, parks and fields of the home farm. She ran the place like a kingdom. The manor farms, the stud, the outlying tenants all spoke of prosperity and peace.
Twice there had been letters from Robert, the last two years ago, then silence. Michael had reason to remember de Quincy well. In one of his drunken rages he had beaten the quiet stable boy who was now in charge
