The Running Vixen

Heulwen watched him leave, then turned again to Davydd ap Tewdr. ‘I apologise for him,’ she said stiltedly, and swallowed. The rage had begun to drain from her. She wanted to burst into tears and knew she dared not, for then they would see her as just another hysterical woman rather than an authority with whom they must reckon.

‘Don’t,’ said ap Tewdr with a laconic shrug, ‘a Welsh arrow will put an end to him sooner or later.’

‘I know all I wish to know about Welsh arrows,’ she snapped. ‘Let us have this exchange over and done with.’

‘By all means.’ Ap Tewdr’s tone was mockingly expansive and Heulwen hated him for it. ‘Give your lord my regards and regrets that we could not deal directly.’

‘I will do so,’ she said through her teeth, ‘be assured of it,’ and gestured the two serjeants forward to raise the litter. Still rubbing his wrists, waiting for a mount to be brought through the Welsh ranks to him, Rhodri looked down at the man lying there, and then quickly away, but it was too late. His eyes had already fixed the image in his mind.

‘Be careful,’ Heulwen cautioned the men, and as the Welsh took charge of their leader’s brother, slapping him on the shoulder, crowing over him and their success, she took her own first look at her grandfather.

He was awake and aware, watching her, and he gave her the ghost of a smile. ‘You did well, cariad,’ he whispered. ‘Proud of you.’ His hand twitched beneath the blanket, emerged after a brief struggle, and stretched towards her. She swooped down to take it, and the men stopped as she bent over him, her body racked with shudders of grieving and relief.

‘Come, cariad,’ Miles said hoarsely, ‘no tears, not now. ’ He stroked her braid, then, assailed by weakness, his hand dropped back on to the covers and he closed his eyes. Crying freely, distraught, but not to the point of being incapable, Heulwen tucked her grandfather’s cold hand back within the covering of sheepskins, drew them up to his chin, and went to retrieve Gemini. Half blinded by tears, she watched the Welsh ride away in the opposite direction, their triumphant cries fluting the cold wind. One of the riders hesitated and looked round. She thought it was Rhodri, but through the distorting blur of tears could not be sure, and neither did she care.

‘Christ, but I really thought he was going to die on us!’ Davydd ap Tewdr laughed with the jubilation of relief. ‘If we’d left it until dawn tomorrow, it would have been too late. He’ll not last out the night.’

Rhodri swallowed bile and said nothing. He was remembering the sunken, blue-tinged flesh and hearing the old man’s dragging fight for breath.

‘You didn’t have to do it this way,’ he said when he had control of himself.

The wide shoulders twitched irritably within the encasing half-hauberk. ‘Not developing a conscience are we, Rhod?’ he scoffed. ‘Would you rather have swung from a gibbet on Candlemas eve?’

‘It wouldn’t have come to that. It was only a ruse to get you to come. De Lacey wanted to treat with you.’

‘A ruse, hmm?’ Davydd ap Tewdr chuckled with sour amusement. ‘Well, de Lacey got more than he bargained for, didn’t he?’

‘And sweet Christ so might we. Do you know how much outrage this will cause? We’ll have every marcher lord between Hereford and Chester down on us for this!’

Davydd reined to a halt and slewed around to glare at his slight, dark brother. ‘You dare to lecture me, whelp!’ He fetched Rhodri a buffet that reeled him in the saddle. ‘You dare to preach at me like a belly-aching priest, when it was your idiocy that brought about this whole predicament. Christ on the cross, I should have left you to rot on a saeson gibbet!’

The blow had opened Rhodri’s cut lip, and dark blood dripped off the end of his chin and soaked into his mount’s coarse winter fell. ‘I’m not ungrateful,’ he muttered thickly, ‘I just thought you could have gone about it in a different way. There’s enough bad blood already. We killed Lady Heulwen’s first husband, and now you’ve as good as murdered her grandfather.’

Davydd let drop the reins he had picked up and stared hard at Rhodri. ‘What do you mean, her first husband?’

‘Ralf le Chevalier, don’t you remember?’

‘Le Chevalier? She’s his widow?’ He leaned on his pommel and stared, and suddenly surprise gave way to laughter. ‘God, she ought to be eternally grateful to us that she’s rid of him. I wish I’d known!’

Rhodri studied his brother, a new maturity stripping the scales of childhood from his eyes. Davydd was only aware of the ground directly beneath his feet, without a thought for the looming horizon. It had been his own shortcoming until his wounding and imprisonment had taught him a different, wary discretion. He twisted his injured lip. ‘Why couldn’t you have made peace with de Lacey? All right, he’s a Norman and out for his own gain, but he’s no glutton. He’d have listened to reason, and he’s the lord of Ravenstow’s own son-in-law now.’

Davydd spluttered at the notion. ‘I’d as soon invite a pack of wolves to kennel among my flocks!’

‘You probably just have. Miles le Gallois is respected on both sides of the border. His son’s wed to the English King’s own daughter, and he has Welsh connections on the distaff side with half the nobility of Gwynedd and Powys!’ This time Rhodri jerked his mount sideways, avoiding the intended blow.

‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing!’ Davydd roared, thoroughly beside himself, spittle flecking his moustache. ‘And fostered at my own hearth. You’ve gone soft, turned into a Norman lick-arse!’ He dug his heels into his pony’s flanks and, cursing, swept on ahead, leaving Rhodri to blink after him, unexpected tears stinging his eyes.

Had he turned into a ‘Norman lick-arse’? He cast his mind back over that jousting episode this morning, the superior, good-humoured amusement quickly becoming rage as the pet animal rounded on its captors with a snarl. The calculating stare of Adam de Lacey and his deceptively smiling mouth. Davydd did not know what he was facing.

Rhodri thought of the old man, Miles le Gallois: Miles ap Heulwen uerch Owain of the line of Hwyel Dda. There was Welsh blood there, as good as or better than his own. He had grown fond of the old man during the months of his confinement, perhaps more than was wise. Miles had been perceptive and tolerant, compassionate without pitying, for he understood Welsh ways having been born to them himself, and despite the plentiful opportunity had never mocked or belittled Rhodri. He deserved better than he had received. Rhodri wiped at his eyes and swore because he was moved to grief for a man by tradition his enemy. Then he touched his cut lip, and glowering at his brother’s broad back, kicked the horse and cantered to join him.

It was late afternoon when Adam and his men came upon the remains of the Welsh raid. The jingle of their harness, the snorting of their mounts and the creak of men shifting uneasily in their saddles broke the silence of the grave, sending small animals scuttling for cover and birds winging with calls of alarm.

One of Adam’s Angevins leaped down from his destrier and examined a soldier’s sprawled corpse. His leather hauberk had been stripped and a pale band of skin upon one of his fingers showed where a ring had recently been worn. Stony-faced, Adam nudged Vaillantif forward through the wet grass. There were no weapons beside the bodies. Swords, axes, lances, shields, all had been taken, including the harness from the dead horses.

‘The bastards,’ Sweyn muttered at Adam’s shoulder. ‘I wish I had been leading this escort.’

‘Be thankful you were not,’ Adam said shortly, and dismounted to prowl across the devastation to the overturned cart. Miles’s destrier was there, belly-up. Adam stepped over its corpse and squatted beside the stripped body of Gervase de Cadenet. He did not try to press the eyelids shut, for he could see that the body was well into the stiffening stage. A wild, dark rage against the perpetrators of this outrage filled him. He made the sign of the cross over the young knight and murmured a short prayer, then beckoned to Austin and another knight to bring a pack pony.

They loaded the bodies on to the animals they had brought and draped them with blankets, then moved slowly back up the march.

‘I will write to Lord Guyon as soon as we reach Thornford,’ Adam said to Sweyn as they splashed through a shallow, swiftly running stream. His mouth tightened bleakly. ‘God knows how he will take this news.’

‘Lord Miles isn’t strong enough to bear rough treatment, ’ Sweyn said. ‘I saw the way you helped him on the stairs the other night. He’s failing swiftly.’