'Because I do.'
Judith lifted her head from Alicia's shoulder, her eyes filled with shock and anxiety. 'Is there something wrong? Something that I or Guyon can do?'
Alicia stroked Judith's shining tawny hair.
'Understand when the time comes,' she said pensively, 'and do not judge me too harshly.'
'Mama?' Judith looked up at her, beginning to feel worried. Her mother would not meet her gaze and her lids were red-rimmed as they so often were these days.
Beside the fire, Melyn gave a leisurely stretch, then stalked past the two women to the door.
Alicia sniffed and gained control of her precarious emotions. Mother and child. She could sense the reversal.
Judith was staring at the cat and the entrance, her tension palpable.
'What's the matter?' Alicia said.
The curtain parted and Guyon entered the room.
'Mother of God!' exclaimed Alicia because water was dripping from every portion of him and puddling in the rushes. Leaving her daughter to deal with him, she hastened from the room to see that the fire was built up in the hall and dry blankets provided for the men.
Guyon squelched to the fire. His gait was far from its customary lithe prowl, Judith noticed. Indeed, he was limping badly.
'What's wrong with your leg?' Judith hurried to his side.
He unfastened his sodden cloak and handed it to her. 'A sword arm that was too slow,' he answered wearily.
'You were attacked?' she said, her eyes flicking over his soaked chausses and the rain-washed streaks of blood channelling down them.
'Clever girl.' His tone was sarcastic. 'Have you any wine?'
Judith fetched the flagon, a small vial of aqua vitae and two cups. 'Do you want a bath?' she asked cautiously.
'Does it look like it? God's death, we nearly drowned at Elmford. Our mounts were in the river belly-deep and the current was like a wild horse.'
He took the wine from her and swallowed it down, coughing a little at the strength of the aqua vitae.
His face was grey.
She put her own cup down, fetched a linen towel and knelt to unbuckle his swordbelt. 'What happened?'
The weight of the belt slid from his hips into her hands and he sighed with relief. Flatly he told her of their encounter with the Flemings, its reasons and its likely consequences.
'It is true then. I thought it was just rumour that de Lacey was going to marry Mabel.' Judith disposed of the belt and returned to help him off with the hauberk. 'Mama says that she's not really mad. Her mouth's deformed and what she says comes out as gibberish unless you know her well .'
'I doubt it will trouble her new husband for long.'
Guyon put down his cup so that she could draw the hauberk over his head.
Judith frowned, for he was shivering violently.
Her knuckles touched his throat as she drew the garment over his head. His skin was cold and clammy to the touch. 'I'd better look at your leg,' she said and began to unlace his gambeson.
'One of the men bound it for me,' he said with a shrug. 'Let be, Judith. I'm so tired I could fall asleep on my feet. The last thing I need is you poking at me with your tortures and nostrums.'
'Nevertheless you will drink what I give you.' She threw him a stern look from beneath her brows.
The faintest twist of humour curled his mouth.
'Oh God,' he said. 'What have I ever done to deserve this?'
'You married me,' she retorted, her own lips curving for an instant from their severity before she took the wet gambeson from him and the clinging damp linen shirt he wore beneath it.
Guyon eyed Judith, his vision throbbing to the lead weight pressing down on top of his head, sensing a change in her but unable to fathom what or where. She returned with a sheepskin bed covering and flung it around his shoulders then turned away to mix a brew composed of poppy and feverfew in wine.
'So I did,' he said softly and bent to remove his boots. The room swam before his eyes. He reached to brace himself against the clothing chest and missed.
Judith spun round and, with a cry of consternation, ran to him. She saw a brighter red stain spreading on his chausses and his breath was coming in harsh, effortful gasps. He was on his knees. She knelt down and unlaced his chausses.
'Lie down,' she commanded.
'I don't--'
'Lie down!' she snarled and pushed him. Guyon subsided as though she had struck him with a mace and not the flat of her hand.
Efficiently she stripped him, her lips tightening at sight of the ineptly bound linen strip, newly wet and red. 'How long have you been riding with this?'
'Five ... six hours,' he muttered from between clenched teeth.
'You fool!' She left him to fetch a wad of clean linen which she folded into a pad and pressed hard to the leaking edges of the wound.
'No choice, not with Walter de Lacey and his cohorts howling for my blood.'
'It looks as if they got it!' she snapped, 'and perhaps your life with it.'
'I've taken worse.' He tried to smile and failed.
'I doubt it.' She leaned on the pad. 'You've lost more blood than a stuck pig, to look at you.'
'I knew it would come back to boars in the end,' he said and lapsed into semi-consciousness.
Judith was almost panicked into running for her mother.
Almost, but not quite. There was nothing Alicia could do that she could not and he was her charge. 'So much for subtlety,' she said shakily, looking down at her wet, bloodied bedrobe and smeared hands. Seeing that the bleeding had eased she left him in order to fetch the powdered comfrey root and fresh bandages, and sent her maid Helgund for a bowl of mouldy bread.
Returning to him, she shook the comfrey root into the wound, wondering with grim laughter how the fair Alais de Clare would have coped with such a situation. And the humour died as she wondered what Rhosyn ferch Madoc, mother of his child, would have done.
The maid returned with the bread and was told to fetch sheets and blankets. Judith braided her hair, pinned it out of the way and set to work with needle and thread. The Fleming's sword had caught Guyon's inner thigh where the hauberk was slit to allow for riding and there was no mail to protect his flesh. It was not a long wound, but it had pierced deep and, had it been two inches higher, she would not have needed to worry about the matter of subtlety, and neither would he.
Indeed, as she worked, the hysterical urge to giggle almost overcame her again, for kneeling between his legs she had a very intimate eyeful of what had previously so terrified her. Not so daunting now for the simple reason that she had control. If she wanted, she could leave him to bleed to death. It was a sobering thought. She swallowed her sense of the ridiculous and attended single-mindedly to her purpose.
Having dressed the main wound as best she could, for it was in a difficult position to bind properly, she examined him for signs of other injury.
Surprisingly, for a man so dark, Guyon was not hirsute; there was just a ridge of hair running from the centre of his breastbone down into the thick bush at his groin and she was able to scrutinise his flesh closely. It was something she had never done before, preferring to dwell in deliberate ignorance and he, sensing her fear and awkwardness, had seldom stripped naked in front of her.
It had never occurred to her to think of a man's body being attractive. A source of pain and brutalisation, so her previous experience said.
Now, almost in wonder, she traced with light fingers a thin white line scoring one muscular pectoral and one higher up, just grazing his jawbone.
Guyon groaned and opened his eyes. Judith sucked a sharp breath between her teeth and quickly withdrew
