boots became transparent and slowly melted into the rushes. A dog came to sniff at the cold air on his cloak.
‘He was wearing gilded boots and there were jewels in his sword-hilt. Someone of note among his people, I would say. If we had left him in the road he would have died.’
‘What’s one less Welshman except a blessing?’ de Mortimer said moodily and kicked at the dog as it came to snuffle him.
‘Not in this instance. It may be that we can barter him for peace.’
‘And we all know a Welshman’s notion of peace!’ de Mortimer scoffed. ‘If it had been me, I’d have left the whoreson to die!’
‘I know,’ Adam said tightly. ‘Either that, or helped him on his way. You’re good at that.’
It had been an insult flung like a wild blow in battle, but it certainly hit its mark. De Mortimer whitened and recoiled as if he had been physically struck. ‘You stand need to speak so when your own father. ’
‘Christ on the cross let be!’ Guyon said sharply. ‘You’re like a pair of infants. For all the heed you’ve taken of the manners drilled into you at Ravenstow, I might as well have saved my breath!’
There was a difficult silence while the two antagonists glared at each other. Then Adam broke eye contact and cleared his throat. ‘Do you want to see my Welshman?’ he asked. ‘It may be that you will know him.’
Guyon inclined his head, noting wearily that neither man was prepared to apologise.
He lay on a pallet in one of the upper wall chambers, a maidservant tending him and a footsoldier posted outside the curtained doorway. ‘Although God knows, with that leg, he’s not going far,’ Adam said as the woman curtsied and withdrew a little. A brazier had taken the chill from the room and was positioned near the pallet to afford the stricken man the best of the warmth. The room had no access to daylight, and the constant use of rush dips and candles had streaked the walls with soot.
Guyon stared down at the captive on the bed. The youth’s face was blue with bruises and hollow in the cheekbones. The black curls had been cropped away from a nasty contusion the size of a gull’s egg high on his forehead. His cheeks were oily with the bloom of late adolescence. ‘He’s only a youngster,’ he said, surprised into compassion. ‘No, I don’t know him. What about you, Warrin?’
De Mortimer shrugged. ‘They all look the same to me. I haven’t been much on the borders these last three years, and by the looks of him, three years ago he would still have been taking suck!’
‘Someone’s bound to claim him,’ Guyon said. ‘The Welsh kinship bond is sacred, and he’s well-bred, you say, perhaps even the leader of this escapade?’
‘Could well be,’ Adam nodded, ‘the Welsh blood their young men early.’
‘How bad is the leg wound?’
‘He’s stitched up like a piece of Bishop Odo’s embroidery and likely to take the wound fever, but Dame Agatha is doing her best for him.’
Guyon started to turn away. Warrin made to follow him, but his cloak pin had worked loose and the brooch dropped to the floor with a soft clink. Muttering an oath, he stooped to retrieve it, and at that moment the patient stirred with a groan and opened his eyes.
Immediately Guyon and Adam turned to him, but de Mortimer was the nearest, his square, strong bones illuminated in the light of the rush dips, and it was upon these that the young Welshman focused. A look of sheer horror crossed his face and he shrank back into the pillows, crying out in Welsh.
‘It’s all right,’ Guyon said quickly in that same language. ‘No one is going to harm you. You are here to be healed and returned to your family.’
The youth shook his head, panting hard, his eyes on de Mortimer.
‘You say you do not know him, but he certainly seems to know you, and well enough to be afraid,’ Adam said, drawing Warrin away from the bed while Guyon continued to soothe the patient.
‘I’ve never seen the whelp before in my life!’ Warrin snapped. ‘It’s obvious. He’s taken a blow to the head and his wits have gone wool-gathering. Anyone who looks even remotely Norman is fodder for his nightmares.’
‘Perhaps,’ Adam said noncommittally and eyed the prisoner who had subsided against the pillows, his eyes once more closed. He was either exhausted, or too frightened to look upon Warrin de Mortimer again.
‘What are you going to do about him?’ Guyon asked as they returned to the hall. ‘You’re due to leave for Windsor within the fortnight.’
Adam pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps ask your father to come here. He’s acquainted with most of the Welsh families of the region — related to half of them come to that. He’s competent to deal with whatever arises, and I can leave Jerold here with him. If the lad’s family come to negotiate, they can take the first steps without me, and I should be home by January’s end to conclude them.’
Guyon nodded agreement, eyes thoughtful.
‘What was all that gibberish he was babbling?’ asked Warrin as the men gathered to warm themselves at the hearth.
Guyon’s tone was neutral. ‘He said he never meant to eavesdrop and that if you let him live, he would not tell a living soul.’
‘Tell a living soul what?’ Warrin looked blank. ‘What does he mean?’ A pulse throbbed hard in the base of his throat.
‘I suppose we’ll find out in good time,’ Adam said evenly, then turned away to view another black-haired young man in shirt and chausses who had just collapsed on to a trestle bench at the side of the hall dais and now sat groaning and rumpled, his head clutched between his hands.
‘Your heir, my lord,’ Adam grinned to Guyon, ‘safe and sound.’
Despite the sables lining her travelling cloak, Heulwen shivered as she stood beneath an overhang and waited for the grooms to lead her saddled palfrey out from the stables. The snow had become sleet, needling silver and white from a sky the colour of a dirty hauberk — and hauberks were in evidence everywhere as the final preparations were made for the journey to Windsor — and from the look of the weather, a wet, uncomfortable journey it was going to be.
Renard squelched across the bailey, furred cloak already mired at the hem, armour glinting as he strode. She was about to call out to him, but a young woman came running out of one of the bailey buildings and accosted him. Renard glanced round, set his free arm about the girl’s willowy waist, and whisked her into the darkness of a doorway, where Heulwen saw his cloak swirl around her to enclose, and his head bend to her offered lips. The falconer’s daughter, she thought with the glimmer of a smile. Amazing what prowess in war did for a man’s standing with women. Renard’s pretence at manhood was swift becoming reality.
Heulwen had been hysterical with relief at his safe return, but only a portion of it had been on Renard’s account. The thought of Adam sprawled somewhere in a frozen puddle of his own blood, like Ralf a victim of the Welsh, had terrified her beyond all coherent thought. Nothing had been the same since. She was still reeling and uncertain, balanced on a see-saw of want and denial. She clenched her fists and fixed her gaze upon Warrin’s broad, solid frame as he stepped out into the sleet, his face twisting into a grimace of discomfort. He was her betrothed in all but the pledge now that she had consented. All that prevented their union was the formality of the royal yea-say and there was no reason for that to be denied.
He came towards her, blowing on his hands, caught her gaze and smiled. She managed a wan response.
‘Chin up, doucette, you look as dismal as this godforsaken weather!’ He stooped and kissed her cold lips, then stood back to look at her.
‘This journey is hardly going to be a jaunt to a fair,’ she responded, trying to draw some inner glow of feeling from his presence, but the only warmth that came was because he was shielding her from the wind.
‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he said with a smile and placed a small drawstring bag in her hand. ‘It won’t ease the misery of this weather, but it might lighten your heart, and it will certainly gladden mine to see you wear it. Call it your betrothal gift.’
Heulwen loosened the string with fumbling, frozen fingers and slid a circular cloak pin on to her palm. It was an ornate, spectacular piece, wrought in gold and inset with glowing jewels of sapphire, ruby and rock crystal.
‘Thank you, it’s beautiful!’ She turned it over, thinking to herself that it was also ostentatious and indicative
