Henry pursed his lips. 'A dispensation perhaps?' he said, raising his eyes to Alicia as she came down towards them, a packet in her hands.
Miles's mouth tightened. He nodded to the groom and the horse was led away. 'When do you want me to leave?'
'As soon as you may. I want possession of Shrewsbury before the winter frosts stop the grass growing.' He turned to Alicia with a gracious smile. Her braids were still as black as midnight and she smelled wonderfully of attar of roses. 'Worth it, isn't it?'
Miles said nothing, but the tight line of his mouth was eloquent.
Alicia lowered her eyes before Henry. Of necessity he was occasionally a visitor, but she felt awkward before him and tried to keep their contact to a minimum. There had been desperate reasons behind her adultery. Henry's own need had been a simple, adolescent lust.
Mischievously, Henry reached for her hand to kiss it, but she evaded him and placed the packet in his grasp instead.
'What's this?' he enquired.
'I do not know, sire. The messenger has only just ridden in.'
Henry looked at the seal. 'Your son,' he said to Miles as he broke open the wax and then quickly perused the contents. Alicia went to slip her arm through Miles's, seeking the reassurance of his body.
'Hah! He's taken Thornford,' Henry said with satisfaction. 'Says he'll shore up and garrison and move down to Bridgnorth via Ledworth and Oxley to gather fresh supplies.'
'What about de Lacey? Is he dead or prisoner?'
Henry shook his head 'No. Apparently he slipped out before the last assault, to Shrewsbury so one of the garrison said, but Guy cannot be sure. De Lacey's wife and son are at Thornford, both sick of the bloody flux.'
'Does he mention a Welsh girl?'
Henry shook his head and passed the letter to Miles. 'Some special concern of his? Didn't he have a Welsh mistress once?'
'De Lacey murdered her and her son and abducted her ten-year-old daughter to serve his lusts,' Miles said brusquely. 'Her other child, Guyon's daughter, is being cared for at Ravenstow. By a hair's breadth, she was spared her mother's fate.'
'I'm sorry, I did not know.' For a moment Henry's expression was stripped of its customary aplomb to show pity and complete surprise.
'Guyon would not make a parade of it, sire,'
Miles replied. 'It was too deep and personal a matter and it happened little more than a month ago.'
Henry tapped a thoughtful forefinger on his chin.
'Perhaps, in view of what you have just told me, it might be as well if you take a detour through Thornford on your way to parley with the Welsh.'
'I was going to do that anyway, sire. He is my son.'
Henry smiled. 'Well , now you have the royal sanction, don't you? It's starting to rain. Let us go within and discuss what I want of Cadwgan in more detail.'
Miles stared in consternation at the serjeant he had sent ahead to notify Guyon of his imminent arrival, for the man was spurring his courser back towards the troop, not sparing the horse or himself in the late summer heat. Even if Guyon had returned to Ravenstow or already set out for Ledworth, there was no cause for this tearing haste unless there was serious trouble.
Gasping almost as much as his labouring mount, the man gave his report. 'The keep's under attack, my lord, by the Welsh as far as I can see, and it's going hard for the defenders!'
Miles's expression, grim at first, slowly brightened into savage amusement. 'The Welsh, eh?' His lip curled. 'And in search of a little Norman hospitality. Well , why not?'
'My lord?'
Miles shook his head and rode to the front of the column, increasing the pace from a steady walk to a ground-eating lope.
The sun had moved almost an hour's position in the sky by the time they reached Thornford, and the defenders had reached a state of
Miles took in the scaling ladders clumped against the wall , the lack of men on them suggesting that most were engaged within the boundaries of the keep; took in too the broken section of the wall and heard on the breeze the sounds of desperate skirmish.
Turning his stallion, he swiftly addressed his men who were expectantly threading their shields on to their left arms and readying their weapons for a charge.
'You can see for yourselves what we're in for.
You are all experienced, you should know the ways of the Welsh. Watch your destriers' bellies, they'll slit them open if you force them to fight in close. Remember, a Welshman does not wear armour. He's vulnerable, but he's faster than you. Kill if you must to save your own skin, but if you engage in combat with any man who seems important, try to take him prisoner. Lives will be useful to barter for Cadwgan's favour and whoever takes a useful hostage will find himself handsomely rewarded. Understood?'
As they acknowledged this, Miles threaded his own shield on to his left arm, checked the secure fit of his helm, unlooped his mace from his saddle and with a yell , spurred his destrier into a gall op.
The Norman charge burst into the outer bailey creating mayhem among the attacking Welsh. A bare-legged hill man flew from the roan's shoulder and was trampled by the destrier following on behind. The mace caught a Fleming's face beneath the brow of his helm and crushed his cheekbone. He fell , screaming. The Welshman behind him tried to protect his head but was too slow and took a splintering blow to his temple. As Miles had said, very few of the Welsh wore armour and the Norman charge went through them like a hammer through a trough of ripe plums.
Miles felt a hard blow on his shield as he emerged into the daylight of the inner ward. He gasped as his left arm was jarred and in retaliation, launched a blow over his shield rim. A solid thud and a cry answered him. He reined his stall ion around and, amid the fighting and chaos, saw a bare-legged Welshman running towards a group of his comrades who were fighting furiously with someone they had surrounded. Bare-legged the warrior might be, but the pommel of his short sword was set with jewels, and his belt was tooled and gilded with gold leaf. A Norman helmet was set jauntily askew on his straggling black curls. With a yell of triumph, Miles rode him down.
The group of Welsh exploded outwards like ripples from a flung stone in a pool. One of their number rolled on the ground, clutching his ripped belly and screaming. Guyon followed through hard, iron shield-boss jabbing dangerously, sword swinging low at the enemy's unguarded legs. At his back, feet wide-planted, Eric's battleaxe hewed the air and any Welshman daring to venture within the path of the blade's glittering arc.
Miles's destrier ploughed into the Welsh and the mace narrowed the odds.
Guyon spat out a mouthful of blood from a cut lip and pressed forward. He was functioning on instinct now, not finesse, and it took him a moment to recognise his father's stall ion and even longer to realise that help, no matter how miraculously, was at hand.
Miles reined the destrier round to block the retreat of the Welsh noble he had marked. The young man's eyes darted between the plunging shod hooves threatening to brain him and the suggestively swinging mace. 'Throw down your sword and yield,' Miles commanded in Welsh. 'I promise you will not be harmed.'
Guyon cast a rapid glance around the inner bailey, saw that the advantage of the battle had swayed back in his direction, glanced further and saw that the forebuilding doors had been broached. Commanding a handful of his soldiers to follow him, he ran for the keep.
Miles looked towards his son and the Welshman thought he saw his opportunity and bolted for freedom. Miles spurred to block his path and the mace came down on the man's skewed helmet, rattling his wits round his skull and knocking him half senseless to the ground.
With a snort of disgust at the man's folly, Miles set about securing him from further attempts at escape.
Within the keep, Judith listened to the screams of men receiving a face full of scalding water, the war cries, the death cries, the thud of the ram, and felt sick to the soul with fear lest one of those screams was her husband's.
