them and then packing them down in dry salt for later use as sausage skins was a form of purgatory, but then so was needlecraft and, on balance, Heulwen thought that she would rather wash sausage skins.
‘I’ve left Mary filling the bladders with lard and Gytha and Edith making a brine solution. I’ll go down and check it in a while, but they’ve done it a hundred times before and should be all right. Thomas is dealing with the hams. We’ll need more salt before Christmas.’
‘I know.’ Judith worked her way to the end and laid down the shears. ‘You can help me pin this now you’re here.’
Heulwen screwed up her face. Judith began to smile. ‘You need the practice,’ she teased gently. ‘Soon you will have a man of your own to sew for again.’
Heulwen felt heat warm her cheeks and brow. She picked up a pincushion. ‘Nothing is settled yet,’ she muttered defensively. ‘I know Papa’s had Warrin’s letter formally asking for me, but the King has yet to approve — and for that matter, so have I. Besides, Warrin’s still in Normandy.’
‘But due home any day now?’ Judith started to pin the cut edges together, working nimbly. Then she paused and looked thoughtfully at her stepdaughter. ‘In some ways the sooner the better for you, I think.’
‘And you too, Mama.’
Judith’s scrutiny sharpened, but she took no offence. Several weeks of each other’s company had begun to rub the amity a little threadbare. Much as Judith was fond of her stepdaughter, she did not possess the calm, maternal patience that would have served in her best interests. Instead she was wont to snap, or say something tart, and Heulwen would bristle and retort in kind. It was hardly surprising that there should be friction, Judith thought. Heulwen had married Ralf at fifteen, and had been a chatelaine in her own right for more than ten years. Adjusting to the codes of her former life for no matter how temporary a time must be difficult, especially when faced with an older woman who smiled, but resented the intrusion. ‘Yes,’ she laughed. ‘For me too. I will relish the peace and quiet!’ And then she sobered. ‘But daughter, you must be certain this match with Warrin is what you truly want for yourself. You know your father and I would never push you against your wishes.’
Heulwen drew breath to say that yes, it was what she truly wanted; her mind was made up, but what emerged from her mouth was different. ‘Mama, do you think Warrin is a suitable match?’
Judith pondered the matter while she set half a dozen more pins into the fabric. ‘Suitable, yes,’ she said at length. ‘But whether he is the right choice, only time will tell. You have known him since childhood. He’s ambitious, self-opinionated, and about as sensitive as a wall. He’ll expect you to decorate his bed and board as befits a man of his standing.’ She straightened up and glanced at Heulwen’s anxious face, seeking something to say that would even the balance. ‘You certainly won’t lack for anything. Warrin’s always been generous. I dare say you’ll even have maids enough to do all your sewing.’ She smiled briefly, then grew serious as she added, ‘But if you have a need to go beyond the gilded trappings, then I advise you to think again. To Warrin de Mortimer you will be a trophy, cherished for how highly others will envy him, rather than cherished for your own sake.’
‘I realise that, Mama, and it does not bother me,’ Heulwen said determinedly, ‘In fact I—’
‘Heulwen, you’ve got a visitor,’ Renard announced as he sauntered into the bower. He was eating a cinnamon and apple pasty filched from beneath the cook’s nose, and his narrow grey eyes were alight with mischief.
‘Warrin?’ She abandoned the pincushion and raised her hands to check the set of her veil and the tidiness of her braids.
‘Wrong,’ he said cheerfully, coming further into the room. Having crammed the rest of the pasty into his mouth, he stooped at the hearth to pick up one of the hound pups. It wriggled and sought to lick him with an ecstatic pink tongue. ‘Adam de Lacey.’
Her hands fell from her braids. ‘Adam?’ she repeated weakly. ‘Why does he want to see me?’
Renard gave her a mocking grin, head flung back to avoid the strivings of the pup. ‘Perhaps he wants to arrange another midnight tryst in the solar,’ he suggested.
‘Renard!’ snapped his mother, glaring at him with disfavour. ‘If you spent as much time exercising your brain as you did your tongue, you would have a wit to be feared indeed!’
‘Sorry,’ he said with the graceless joy of one who is not sorry in the least. ‘He’s brought you your horses. You did say you were going to sell them in Windsor, didn’t you? And you’ll have to face him sooner or later.’ He held the pup in the crook of his arm like a baby and wandered over to the sewing trestle to look with idle interest upon his mother’s endeavours.
Judith frowned at him, although she was secretly proud. His height dwarfed hers, although childhood was still stamped on the features of the emerging man. There were crumbs on his upper lip amidst the dark smudge of a soft moustache line. The crimson wool would suit him very well. He was tall like Guyon and dark-haired, but his eyes were the grey impenetrable ones of his grandfather the King. He also possessed his grandfather’s sleight of tongue, married to a lethal adolescent lack of tact. The future lord of Ravenstow and the responsibility, God help her, lay at her feet.
Renard kissed his mother’s cheek and looked across at his half-sister, eyes dancing. ‘Do you want to send me back down with a message and tell him you’re too busy sewing?’
The thought of what Renard might say spurred Heulwen out of one kind of panic and into another. She put the pins carefully aside, resisting the temptation to stick them in her brother instead of his new tunic. ‘No, Renard, that would be a lie, and anyway, I’d be pleased to see him. One misunderstanding does not make for a lifetime’s enmity.’ She widened her eyes sarcastically. ‘What do you imagine happened in the solar? Or perhaps, knowing your mind, I shouldn’t ask. The pup’s just pissed on you.’
‘What?’ Renard looked, swore, dumped the puppy on the floor, and dragged off his tunic to his mother’s stern reprimand about his language. Heulwen made her escape.
It was stupid to be so afraid, she thought as she twisted her way down the turret stairs and entered the great hall. Stupid to feel so tense and queasy. ‘He is my brother,’ she repeated to herself but to no avail. That part of her past was gone for ever, banished by the sight of a lean-muscled warrior in a bathtub. No, she amended, it was not stupid to fear danger or to panic when forced to greet it face to face.
Adam was in the courtyard talking to Eadric, his furred cloak thrown back from his shoulders, the cold sunlight reflecting off his hauberk and the silver pendants studding his swordbelt. The groom had custody of two fine horses — a bay and a piebald. Vaillantif ’s reins were held by Adam himself, and as he spoke to the servant, he caressed the bright sorrel neck, thick now in its full-grown winter fell.
Heulwen took a deep breath, gathered her courage in both hands, and walked across the ward to greet him.
‘You wanted to see me?’ she said to Adam. ‘Will you come within to the hall?’
He hesitated, then inclined his head. Having given Vaillantif ’s bridle to Eadric, he followed Heulwen back across the ward. A woman accosted her with a question about the pigs that were being dissected. While Adam waited, he stared around. A serjeant was drilling his men. The spear butts scraped on gravel and clacked in forested symmetry as their owners responded to bellowed commands. The woman departed with her instructions. Against the forebuilding entrance, two small boys were playing marbles. One of them raised his head and flashed a brilliant blue-green glance at his sister and the visitor.
‘Why aren’t you at your lessons?’ Heulwen demanded sharply. ‘Where’s Brother Alred?’
‘Gone into the town with Papa.’ William made a face. ‘We’ve to do our lessons this afternoon.’ His gaze lit covetously on Adam’s ornate gilded scabbard and the contrastingly austere sword-hilt protruding from it.
Heulwen said to Adam, ‘William wasn’t here last time you visited.’ She turned to the boy: ‘William, this is Adam de Lacey, my foster brother. I don’t think that you’ll remember him.’
Adam crouched down and picked up one of the round, smooth stones, his expression carefully impassive, aware that she had said ‘foster brother’ deliberately.
‘Can I look at your sword?’ William’s eyes were avid with longing. Belatedly he remembered to add ‘please’.
Adam shot the marble at a larger one near the wall. He heard the crack of stone upon stone and briefly closed his eyes, fists clenched upon his knees. Then he stood up and, smiling down at the boy, drew the weapon from its fleece-lined scabbard.
‘William, you shouldn’t be so. ’
‘He’s all right.’ Adam’s voice was relaxed, concealing the tension that gripped him. ‘I was the same at his age about your father’s blade — about any blade come to that, because they were real and mine was made of
