‘Nonsense!’ Judith said brusquely.
‘I know, but it does not make the fear go away.’
Judith allowed her man-at-arms to boost her into the saddle of her waiting mare. The frown remained on her face. Heulwen might be more than half Welsh, but her nature was essentially practical, without the eerie sense of premonition with which so many of her race were gifted. If she was having brooding foresights, it was because she felt like a condemned prisoner who sees the moment of execution approaching, and is impatient for that moment to have come and gone and have the peace of darkness.
She and Guyon might not have pushed her into this marriage, Judith thought grimly, but neither had they done anything to stop her, and if you let a boat drift with the tide, frequently it smashes to pieces on the rocks. Perhaps the betrothal should indeed be cancelled until Heulwen had had more time to settle down. After all, there was no rush.
‘Your father and I were forced to marry,’ she said as she shook the reins. ‘I was unhappy and terrified and there was nothing I could do short of killing myself to prevent it from happening. It took a long time and a great deal of patience on your father’s behalf before I learned to trust, even longer before love grew out of it — for both of us.’ She looked across at her stepdaughter. Heulwen’s mouth was stubbornly set now, but whether to resist Judith or tears was uncertain.
‘It was different for you and Ralf,’ she continued. ‘You wanted him from the beginning, and he wanted you — but I think it was your dowry and the thought of having a nubile fifteen-year-old in his bed whenever he chose to sleep there that decided him, not love.’
‘Mama, what are you trying to tell me?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps that you should not let your experience with Ralf sour your future expectations.’
‘It hasn’t.’ Heulwen grimaced. ‘Not soured, but lowered. I no longer think that the stars will fall down into my hands just because I reach for them. Was that how my mother felt about Papa?’
Judith reined back her mare as a laden cart splashed past them. She had never concealed the past from Heulwen, but it was seldom the girl asked, and some parts were too painful for Judith to broach without direct demand. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was. Your mother knew it was impossible for them to wed — a Welsh merchant’s daughter and a marcher lord — so she guarded her heart from him. I met her only once, on the day before she was killed. She came to tell Guyon that she was severing the old ties and getting married; it was a business arrangement like your own.’
Helwen was momentarily diverted from her troubles. ‘Weren’t you jealous of her? When I found out about one of Ralf ’s women, I was ready to take a dagger to her throat — and geld him!’
Judith’s lips twitched. ‘Jealous?’ She urged the mare forward again. ‘Oh yes, so jealous that until I met her it gnawed at me like poison, but I could not hate her. Besides, although your father occasionally visited her, he did not lie with her after we were wed.’ The twitch became an open, rueful smile. ‘Oh, not for reasons of moral nicety or to salve my feelings I am sure, but she was heavily pregnant with you, and by the time you were born, he was beginning to notice that he had a wife for that kind of comfort.’ The corners of her eyes crinkled. ‘I did once take a knife to one of the women at court though when she presumed too far on their old acquaintance — Alais de Clare. She’s bound to be at court tonight. It’s a long time since we met on that kind of battlefield — I wonder if she still remembers.’ Her mischievous laugh lightened Heulwen’s mood and she responded with the first genuine smile of the morning.
When they rode into the courtyard of their town house, the grooms were already busy tending several fine blood-horses. A squire was fondling a strawberry roan trapped out in expensive, gilded harness. The stallion’s superb pinkish coat was as glossy as satin, revealing that its owner could afford to keep it stable-fed during the long winter months. The squire glanced round and a delighted grin flashed across his round face. Having swiftly handed the roan’s bridle to another boy, he ran across the courtyard, to help Judith and Heulwen from their mounts.
‘Henry!’ Judith kissed her fourth child joyfully. He squirmed away, concealing a grimace, and smoothed down the sandy hair she had just tousled, a red flush mantling his freckled face. He was of his royal grandfather’s build, stocky and compact, promising bull-like strength rather than the feline grace of his brothers, and he was the only one with his mother’s tawny-hazel colouring, the others all being dark like Guyon.
Warned by his reaction to Judith’s embrace, Heulwen confined herself to a swift peck on his cheek and an admiring remark about the new dagger at his belt.
Smiling proudly, he showed it to her. ‘Earl Robert gave it to me last night for serving so well at table,’ he said, his head high.
‘You’ve learned something then,’ Judith said, looking him over with brisk approval. Henry had been something of a scarecrow before leaving them to squire in Robert of Gloucester’s household, but he had acquired a certain polish since then to judge from his spruce, outward appearance and the smooth alacrity with which he had helped her down from the mare.
‘He was dining with the Empress. She smiled at me. She’s very pretty and not as. ’ He left the rest of the sentence in midair and looked at Heulwen, who was staring at a particularly handsome dark bay stallion tethered among the others.
‘He’s a beauty, isn’t he?’ Henry said enthusiastically.
‘Henry, what’s he doing here?’
The boy blinked at the sharpness of her tone. ‘Lord Robert’s just been over at the horse fair. He took a fancy to this one, and it was Adam of Thornford selling and he’s got a good reputation. My lord said that the price was high, but probably fair for what he was getting.’ Puzzled, he looked from his mother to his half-sister. ‘What’s wrong? What have I said that’s so funny?’
Heulwen shook her head. ‘He was one of Ralf ’s stallions — Adam was selling him for me. What did Earl Robert pay?’
‘Seventy marks in the end. What do you mean, Adam was selling him for you?’
Heulwen touched his arm. ‘I’ll tell you all about it later.’ Biting her lip, she followed her stepmother into the house.
Before a smoky central hearth, Earl Robert of Gloucester, senior child among the cluster of illegitimate offspring King Henry had sired, was warming his feet at the fire, cup of hippocras in hand, high forehead ribbed with pleading sincerity as he addressed the dubious Lord of Ravenstow.
‘We need your support. I know you have your doubts about swearing for Matilda, God knows, she’d tempt a saint to commit murder sometimes, but she’s capable of ruling, I swear it.’
Guyon gave him a pained smile. ‘I do not doubt her capabilities. I’m married to such a one myself.’ His eyes darted with wry amusement to the threshold where his wife was handing her cloak to a maid. ‘But men look to be ruled by a man, not a woman.’
‘Do you?’
‘By preference, yes — well, in some ways anyway,’ he added with another amused look at his wife, but then he sobered. ‘What worries me is that she will wed someone who is going to try the crown on for size and in consequence break us all.’
‘My father is wiser than that. He will look and choose most carefully,’ Gloucester objected, bristling. ‘And Matilda’s no meek maid to give up what is hers by right.’
Frowning, Guyon stared into the middle distance, and finally back at the earnest face of his brother-by- marriage.
‘It is not enough to say your father will choose carefully. He will choose to his own dictates unless he is made to swear that he will not go about the purpose of arranging Matilda’s marriage without the agreement of his tenants-in-chief.’
‘You have been talking to Henry of Blois, haven’t you?’
‘No, I haven’t. It is what any sensible man would say.’ Guyon’s nostrils flared with impatience. ‘I’ve only seen Henry of Blois from a distance thus far. The only man to whom I have spoken is the Earl of Leicester, and that’s because my son’s a chaplain in his household — and Leicester is not happy about swearing an oath to Matilda, with or without a husband.’
Robert of Gloucester scraped his hands rapidly through his receding dark hair. Mustering support for his sister’s cause was like ploughing a stony field; every few paces he met solid opposition, even from such
