I ought to drown that cat of hers!'
Miles raised his brows, justifiably baffled and more than a little worried, remembering Alicia's fear of the previous evening, his own reassurances and then the look on her face this morning. If looks could kill , his son would have been a dead man and himself frozen to stone.
Guyon regaled him with the details of the morning's disaster and Miles's eyebrows disappeared into his hair.
'So there we were,' Guyon said ruefully, 'Judith with the pot of salve in her hand, not daring to look at me lest she laugh, and the sheet all bloody and my mother-in-law itching to geld me ...' He paused on a breath and turned in the saddle as the constable de Bec rode up to join them on his sturdy dun.
His manner was tangibly cool, his mouth tight within its neat grey bracket of beard. He too had witnessed Judith's struggle for composure in the hall and had been filled with a protective anger, at first so hot that he had almost enquired of Lady Alicia whether she desired to be rid of her new son-by-marriage. Almost, but not quite, for as he had been gulping down his bread and wine and preparing to leave, he could have sworn Judith had smiled at him, a sparkle of mischief in her eyes. Girls distraught to the point of tears did not do such things. Besides, he had reasoned, if Guyon died, the King would only select another man to fill the position, probably of far worse moral fibre and, when he thought about it rationally, the new lord had only had his right and seemed in public gently disposed towards the child.
'Judith tell s me that you have been teaching her to hone a blade and use it,' Guyon remarked pleasantly to the constable.
De Bec rubbed his fist over his beard. 'She asked me so I showed her, my lord. Nothing wrong in knowing a bit about weapons, especially here in the marches.'
'No,' Guyon agreed, hiding a smile at de Bec's stony expression and his father's sudden wide stare. 'Did her parents share your opinion?'
'Lord Maurice never knew. Lady Alicia wasn't keen, but she knew when to give a little and when to rein in.'
'So you have been a nursemaid as well as constable,' Guyon needled gently. 'Devotion to duty indeed.'
De Bec glinted him a look. 'Mistress Judith is the daughter I never had the opportunity to settle down and sire. Don't be deceived by what you saw yesterday. She is one of a kind.' He cleared his throat. 'Have a care, my lord, or you may wake up one morning to find yourself gelded.'
'She is maiden still ,' Guyon replied. 'I have no taste for rape. The blood on the sheets is my own and freely given.'
De Bec cleared his throat. 'It is your right,' he muttered gruffly into his chest.
'Indeed so,' Guyon answered, 'but one I exercise at my peril. I hazard that if I harmed so much as one hair of her head, I'd not wake up at all the next morning.'
Their eyes locked and held for a moment before the older man dropped his gaze to the smooth muscle of his mount's shoulder, knowing he had gone as far as he dared with a man he did not know. Guyon turned his head. Distantly the hounds gave tongue in a new key, a sustained tocsin, belling deep.
'Boar's up and running,' Miles said, jerking his courser around.
Guyon swung his own horse.
De Bec spoke abruptly. 'Keep your eyes open, my lord. You have as many enemies among your guests as you have allies and when I see men huddling in corners and glimpse the exchange of silver in the darkness, I know that no good will come of it.'
Guyon smiled thinly. By disclosing his suspicions when he could have held silent, de Bec had accepted his new master, even if the man had yet to realise the fact. 'I was not blind myself last night, but I thank you for the warning.
The sooner this mockery of a celebration is over, the better.' He set his heels to his courser's flanks and urged him in pursuit of the dogs. De Bec wrenched the dun around and followed.
Guyon bent low over his mount's neck to avoid the tangled branches that whipped at him.
Shallow snow flurried beneath the chestnut's hooves. The frozen air burned Guyon's lungs as he breathed. His eyes filled and he blinked hard to clear them, and braced himself as the horse leaped a fall en tree in their path. Ahead he could hear the loud halloos and whistlings urging the dogs on and the excited belling of the dogs themselves.
The hunters pressed further into the depths of the forest. Thorns snagged their cloaks.
Hoofbeats thudded eerily in the echo chambers created by the vaulted span of huge beeches, the daylight showing luminous grey through the fretwork of empty black branches. They galloped across a clearing, the snow fetlock deep, splashed through a swift-flowing stream, picked their way delicately round a tumble of boulders and plunged back into the tangled darkness of the winter woods. A branch snapped off and snarled in Guyon's bridle. He plucked it loose, eased the chestnut for an instant, then guided him hard right down a narrow avenue of trunks pied silver and black, following the frenzied yelping of the dogs and the excited shouts of men.
The boar at bay was a sow, a matron of prime years, weighing almost two hundredweight. She had met and tussled with man before. A Welsh poacher had lost his life to her tushes when he came hunting piglets for his pot. The huntsmen had found his bleaching bones last spring when they came to mark the game. The sow bore her own scar from the encounter in a thick ridge of hide along her left flank where the boar spear had scored sideways and turned along the bone.
She stood her ground now, backed against an overgrown jut of rock, raking clods of beech mast from the forest floor. Her huge head tossed left and right, the vicious tushes threatening to disembowel any dog or human foolish enough to come within their reach.
Guyon drew rein and dismounted. The senior huntsman tossed him a boar spear which he caught in mid-air. It was a stout weapon, broad of blade, with a crossbar set beneath to prevent the boar from running up the shaft and tearing the hunter to pieces. A dog ran in to snap at the sow's powerful black shoulder, was not swift enough to disengage and was flung howling across the path of the other dogs, a red slash opening in its side. Cadi barked and darted. She was a gazehound, bred to course hare, not boar, but her narrow-loined lightness made her too swift to be caught.
The men began cautiously to close upon the sow, their spears braced, knives loose in their belts, every muscle taut to leap, for until the moment she charged no man knew if he was her intended victim. It was exhilarating, the tension unbearable. She raked the leaves with her trotters, rolled her small black eyes and tushed the ground, smearing her bloody incisors with soil.
'Come on girl, get on with it,' muttered Hugh of Chester licking his lips. Another man whistled loudly, trying to attract her attention and waved his spear over his head. Ralph de Serigny wiped his mouth, a pulse beating hard in his neck. Walter de Lacey remained immobile, his only movement a darting glance of challenge at Guyon. Guyon returned the look with glittering eyes and crouched, the spear braced.
The sow paused, quivering; the massive head went down; the damp leaves churned. A squealing snort erupted through her nostrils and she made a sudden powerful lunge from her hams, straight at Guyon. Driven by her charging weight, the levelled spear reamed her chest.
Guyon braced the butt against the forest soil, the muscles locking in his forearms and shoulders as he strove to hold her. The barbed tip lodged in bone and the shaft shuddered. Guyon heard the wood creak, felt it begin to give as the sow pressed forward, and knew that there was nothing he could do. The spear snapped. Razored tushes slashed open his chausses and drew a bloody line down his thigh. The sow, red foam frothing her jaws and screaming mad with pain, plunged and spun to gore him, the broken stump of the spear protruding from her breast. Guyon rammed the other half of the boar spear down her throat. A fierce pain burned his arm. Miles's hunting knife found the sow's jugular at the same time that de Bec's spear found her heart.
Silence fell , broken only by the eager yelping of the dogs and the whimpers of the injured one.
Blood soaked the trampled soil and snow. The chief huntsman whipped the hounds from the dead pig, his face grey. He darted a look once at de Lacey and Pembroke behind, and then away.
They ignored him.
'Are you all right?' Anxiously Hugh of Chester laid hold of Guyon's ripped sleeve to examine the pulsing gash.
Guyon nodded and smiled for the benefit of those who would have been only too pleased to see him seriously injured or killed and wadded his cloak against the wound to stanch the blood.
