washed and bound it better than this?’ She shot an accusing look at the itinerant merchant.
The carrier sucked the few yellow stumps in his mouth that passed for teeth and shrugged. ‘I did me best. I worn’t going to linger in case any o’ them Welsh bastards came back. Poor sod was pinned straight through to the wood behind. It were the devil of a job to free him and if it worn’t for me happenin’ by, he’d still be there.’
‘Everyone was dead apart from him?’ Adam demanded.
‘Far as I know. I didn’t stop to look too closely. Leastways nobody groaned, and the ones I saw had arrows and sword cuts that no man could survive. Proper mess. They must have ridden straight into an ambush.’ He stopped to cough and lick his lips.
Adam snapped his fingers at a goggling servant. ‘Where was this?’
‘Heading down Ledworth way, close on Nant Bychan near that border stone that’s always being disputed. Even going at full lick, you’ll not make it there much before prime.’
The man on the stretcher groaned again, this time with more awareness. Heulwen laid her hand on his brow and his lids fluttered open. ‘Mistress Heulwen,’ he croaked weakly, then coughed. Adam took the ale that the servant had been about to give to the carrier and handed it down instead to his wife. Carefully she tilted up the injured man’s head so that he could drink. He did so, after a fashion, the golden liquid spilling into his beard and staining his rough tunic.
‘It was so sudden,’ he gasped. ‘We could do nothing. They slaughtered us like spearing fish in a barrel. Lord Miles they took alive — it was him they wanted. The rest of us didn’t really matter save as practice targets for their bows.’
Adam swore. Heulwen looked up at him with brimming eyes.
‘What else do you do but find a bargaining counter of equal worth to barter?’ he said flatly.
Surreptitiously the carrier reached down to the half-full cup of ale that Heulwen had put down beside the wain driver, then stepped back with it clutched triumphantly in his hand. Father Thomas arrived at a trot and, kneeling beside the stretcher, began to prepare the wounded man for confession.
Heulwen rose unsteadily to her feet. The sound of the destriers being saddled up drifted across the ward from the stable enclosure and mingled with the words of the priest and the hesitant replies of the wain driver. Adam swung towards the more distant noise, his face taut like a hound anticipating the hunt. Involuntarily, Heulwen put her hand on his sleeve as if she would leash him.
Adam looked down. ‘Come and help me arm,’ he said, turning her with him towards the keep. ‘I want Rhodri ap Tewdr confined to the hall. No need to lock him up, but keep a close eye on him.’
‘His brother is responsible for this, isn’t he?’ she demanded.
They had to separate to negotiate the twisting stairs to the upper floor and their bedchamber. ‘I’d wager all the silver in Thornford’s strongbox on it,’ Adam said grimly. ‘He’s taken your grandsire for ransom.’ On reaching their chamber, he lifted his hauberk from its pole.
‘If you hadn’t taken the boy prisoner in the first place—’ she began, then clamped her mouth on the rest of the sentence.
Adam eyed her sharply and said nothing, but his anger showed in the bunching and release of a muscle in his jaw.
‘Adam, I’m sorry.’ She touched his shoulder. ‘Oh, curse me for being a shrew. I know it’s not your fault. It’s just that. ’
‘You know I’ll stand there and take it,’ he finished for her. ‘Just be careful how far you go. Do you think I do not care? Do you think the thought has not crossed my own mind?’
Her chin wobbled. She struggled with tears and, losing, began to weep. He swore and drew her down on to his lap and kissed her. ‘Heulwen, don’t.’
‘He’s not well!’ she sobbed. ‘He’s old and sick. I’ve seen how he struggles to mount the stairs and climb on a horse. It will kill him!’
Adam did not seek to deny her fears. What she said was true. He had noticed the change in Miles himself, as if everything was going forward to meet the spring, leaving Heulwen’s grandfather in a winter limbo. He pressed his lips to her temple and held her tightly until he felt her shuddering abate, then he drew away to look at her. ‘Come on, love, help me arm up. I’ve got to go to the scene and see for myself what has happened.’
She sniffed, wiped her eyes and got off his knee. Ralf would have laughed at her and ruffled her hair, or else would have wanted to bed her for the novelty of watching her tears as he took her. Warrin would have blustered and fussed and flexed his muscles. Adam was full of a checked restlessness, eager to be gone, but for her sake containing it with admirable fortitude.
She lifted the hauberk from the bed and helped him to don it. Since its last wearing it had been scoured in a sack full of vinegar-dampened sand to remove all the dirt and rust, and had then been dried, carefully oiled, and hung on its pole to await further use. The rivets made a whispering, silvery noise as the hauberk slid down over his body, and when he stood up in it he looked twice as broad as he actually was. As he buckled on his swordbelt she stepped back to look at the whole of him. A cold shiver ran down her spine. The man who had merely played at being the warrior was transformed into the warrior in truth.
‘Adam, be careful,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I don’t want to lose you too.’
He stooped to take his helmet from where it lay at the foot of the hauberk pole. ‘I’ll send word by messenger ahead of me,’ he said. ‘I know it is as hard to wait as to be doing.’ Coming to her, he curved his free arm around her waist, holding her carefully so that she would not be bruised upon the rivets. His kiss was fierce and hard, speaking all that his grip could not, and then he left her for the bailey and the men assembled there.
Chapter 16
Miles opened his eyes and stared with exhausted indifference at the black forest trunks. The pain in his chest and down his right arm was a dull, gnawing ache. Every breath drawn expanded his broken ribs and was pure agony. He was aware of the damp, cold air seeping into his marrow — or perhaps it was just the bony finger of death.
Welsh voices flitted among the trees — the language of his childhood, learned in the green forests of Powys at his Welsh grandfather’s knee so long ago, and now suddenly so close that he could almost see the shadows of men, smell the damp woodsmoke of their fire and hear their bright laughter. But of course he could; he was their hostage. He was eighty-two years old, not eight, and his body was still earth-chained to pain. The laughter ceased and one of the shadows resolved itself into the tall, broad Welshman who had led the raid and was now holding out to him a leather costrel of mead and a heel of dark bread.
Miles shook his head, feeling neither appetite nor thirst, feeling nothing save a distant sadness that he had not been permitted the indulgence of a last look at so many familiar things. ‘You are being very foolish,’ he said in Welsh.
Davydd ap Tewdr shrugged. ‘How so, old man? I bargain you for my brother. Where is the folly in that?’
‘Corpses have little value.’ Miles gave him the exhausted travesty of a smile. ‘Oh not the lad…yet. He’s in fine fettle, but what happens when you put a failing candle in a draught? I haven’t got long, and neither have you.’
The wind laboured through the bare January branches which snagged over their heads, striving westwards. Rain spattered through the sparse canopy. The Welsh prince looked down at his frail means to an end, really looked, and saw that Miles le Gallois was not lying for his own sake. Part of it was the dull forest light emphasising the grey-blue patches beneath the seamed eyes, but the rapid rise and fall of the old man’s breast owed more to a struggle for air than to any fear or anxiety.
‘God rot you in hell, you won’t die on me, not until you’ve served your purpose!’ he muttered.
‘Do not wager on it,’ Miles said, and closed his eyes, welcoming the darkness.
Heulwen, in the midst of a dutiful ave at the bier of the dead wain driver, was disturbed by FitzSimon, commander of the garrison in the absence of its other senior members.
