‘My lady, a group of Welsh are approaching the keep,’ he said. ‘They have a litter with them.’
Heulwen rose from her knees and beat at the two dusty patches on her skirts. ‘There is no news from Lord Adam?’
‘Not yet, my lady,’ he said and added, with ill-concealed irritation, ‘it is too soon for that.’
Heulwen gave him a swift glance of similar irritation, but bit her tongue on her temper. ‘Very well, I’ll come aloft,’ she said, and having made her obeisance to the altar, left the small chapel and followed him out into the grey afternoon. The wind swirled around her woollen skirts and tugged at her veil; she held the former down with her right hand, the veil on her head with her left, and ascended to the gatehouse battlement.
Between twenty and thirty Welshmen had stopped just beyond arrow range, all of them decently mounted on shaggy mountain ponies. They wore the native garb of stitched fleeces and knee-length tunics, bows slung at their shoulders and the short swords they favoured at their hips. Narrowing her eyes, Heulwen could make out a blanket-shrouded form on a litter to the forefront of their array.
One of their number detached from the group and rode forward immediately below the walls of the keep to request in accented French to talk to Adam de Lacey. Heulwen peered down between the merlons. ‘Ask him who wants to talk and why,’ she told one of the keep soldiers who had been summoned aloft for the use of his deep, carrying voice. The question was relayed, there was a pause for consultation, and then the reply floated back to her.
Despite the fact that she had been half prepared to hear it, it still hit her solidly in the gut. Davydd ap Tewdr desired to exchange her grandfather for Rhodri.
‘Dear God,’ she whispered, for there was now no doubting that the form on the litter was her grandfather — and the litter meant that he was too weak to sit on a horse, the bastion of his stubborn will and pride.
‘Delay him until we can get a message to Lord Adam,’ FitzSimon said and turned to command one of the men.
‘No!’
He swivelled to gape at Heulwen in disbelief. Accustomed to taking orders from men, and by his position in the keep hierarchy to giving them too, he was possessed of an arrogant certainty that women should defer to their male superiors, and was unpleasantly astounded by her denial.
‘My lady, with all respect, this is too serious a matter to be judged by us,’ he said, recovering his dignity and twitching his shoulders within his cloak like a hawk settling ruffled feathers.
He hesitated until he could hesitate no longer, then inclined his head in scant formality and left her. Heulwen swallowed, bowed her head, and leaned it for a moment against the gritty stone behind which she sheltered. ‘Holy Christ, what do I do?’ she murmured into the shadow created by her body. ‘Adam, help me, what do I do?’
Rhodri, hands corded behind his back, was thrust into her presence, his eyes anxiously wide, his mouth set in a thin, tight line. She straightened, adjusted her cloak, and faced him with a cold expression.
‘Your brother has come for you. I wish my husband had left you to die in the road.’
He returned her a measured gaze, for he had heard the news of his brother’s raid and watched Thornford react to it like a disturbed anthill. ‘My lady, I am sorry, believe me,’ he said in Welsh. ‘Even knowing that your lord intended using me for his own purposes, I could have wished myself free in different circumstances.’
‘Spare me your condolences,’ she snapped, ‘you are wasting your breath.’ She turned from him to the soldier with the voice. ‘Tell him that Lord de Lacey is not here, and that in his absence Prince Davydd will have to deal with his wife, who is of Welsh blood herself and the granddaughter of Miles le Gallois.’
Heulwen collected the reins and thanked the man who helped her into the saddle. Her mare, sensing her tension, jibbed and sidled, and she had to put a soothing hand on the damp neck and murmur soft words.
‘My lady, I still say you are making a mistake in going out to treat with them,’ FitzSimon muttered beside her, and curbed his own restless stallion. ‘It is much too dangerous. They might attack us.’
‘I doubt it, but if they do, I trust in the might of your sword-arm to deliver us.’ Her voice was both dulcet and biting at the same time. She set her heels into Gemini’s sides and the mare moved anxiously forwards.
Feeling belittled by her scorn, FitzSimon glared at Heulwen’s back, knowing that if she had been his to beat, her body by now would have matched the slate-blue shade of the cloak pinned across his breast. Starting after her, he dragged viciously on the hostage’s reins. Rhodri ap Tewdr sat his dun gelding in silence, his hands lashed to the pommel, his feet joined by a double loop of rope slung beneath the horse’s belly, surrounded by an escort of six serjeants.
As Gemini paced away from the safety of Thornford’s outer bailey and palisade, Heulwen felt sick with apprehension and fear. She swallowed valiantly, hoping that appearances and emotions were not one and the same. It was easier for the men, for their faces were half concealed by their helms. Hers was open, vulnerable to Welsh eyes and whatever they might read into it — her fortune and her grandfather’s. The responsibility was terrifying.
Davydd ap Tewdr watched warily as the group from the castle approached the prearranged meeting place, marked by a Welsh lance thrust point-down in the turf. ‘All right,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Bring him.’
The woman who drew rein and faced him across the wind-quivered shaft was striking — not classically so, her bones were too strong, but in an earthy, tempestuous way, appealing entirely to the senses. ‘Lady Heulwen?’ He gave her a wolfish smile and looked beyond her to Rhodri, who flushed and averted his gaze.
‘I hope we need not waste time on the formalities?’ she responded frostily. ‘Surely there is no more to be done than to make the exchange?’
Davydd ap Tewdr brushed his hand over his moustache and refused to be frozen by the ice in her gaze. He noticed that not by so much as a flicker had she acknowledged the presence of her grandfather lying on the pallet. ‘He’s still alive,’ he said, and then, provocatively, ‘and we have treated him with more courtesy than you appear to have extended towards my brother.’
‘That was my own fault,’ Rhodri said quickly. ‘I fell off a horse this morning.’
Ap Tewdr gave his youngest brother a sharp glance. ‘Last time you fell off a horse you were three years old!’ he commented, but let it rest and turned smiling to Heulwen. ‘My lady, by all means let us make this exchange. I have no desire to linger here, and I am sure you will want to take your grandfather within to warmth and comfort.’
Heulwen nodded stiffly, unable to speak, knowing that if she so much as looked at the litter, then, like a piece of ice bearing too much weight, she would shatter apart. She raised her hand and gestured to FitzSimon.
Disgust evident in his every movement, the knight drew the sharp hunting dagger from his belt, dismounted and stooped to slash the ropes that bound Rhodri to the dun, then pulled him down from the saddle.
Rhodri rubbed his wrists. FitzSimon pricked the dagger longingly through tunic and shirt. ‘Don’t try anything,’ he growled.
‘I’d have to be as mad as a
Heulwen flung herself down from her mare and rounded on FitzSimon. ‘Give me that knife!’ she cried, then snatched it from him and pitched it as far away as her strength would allow. ‘Is your pride everything that you cannot take a childish jibe without responding in similar wise?’ She made a furious gesture of dismissal. ‘Return to the keep and wait for me there.’
FitzSimon recoiled as if from the venom of a striking snake. He was aware that the anger of the Welsh had subsided and that they were watching the scene with amused curiosity, so the pride she had spoken of with such scorn must either be swallowed or choked upon. After a precarious moment, he chose the former, but with a very bad grace. Lord Adam was going to hear of this, by Christ on the cross he was! ‘My lady,’ he acknowledged, making the words sound like an insult. He went to his dagger, picked it out of the grass and wiped it meticulously before sheathing it, then mounted his horse and spurred it to a canter.
