then looked along the foxfur collar of his cloak to his companion. ‘Is that a means of introducing what you wanted to talk about?’
‘In a way, I suppose.’
Adam laughed. ‘I can just see the Empress astride a destrier, she likes to have firm control of the male. What sort of way, my lord?’
Gloucester tugged gently at a short stalk of straw that had become tangled in his stallion’s mane. ‘The King wants you to take letters of enquiry to the father of the prospective bridegroom.’ The words bore a slightly pompous ring, as though he had been rehearsing them.
Adam watched the pheasant feathers in the Earl’s cap begin to droop in the fine water vapour from the falls. The news was not unexpected, but even so, he felt queasy. ‘What makes you think I am the man to be the King’s herald in this matter?’
‘You know how to keep a close mouth. You’ve done this kind of work before and know its dangers and pitfalls.’
Adam shook his head. ‘I have the Welsh to deal with, my lord, and I am an English baron. I witnessed the King’s oath to us all that he would not seek a foreign husband for his daughter, and Geoffrey of Anjou is not only foreign, he’s Angevin — an enemy.’
Gloucester blinked rapidly. ‘How did you.?’
‘I overheard the King and the Bishop of Salisbury talking about it last autumn.’
‘And you said nothing to anyone?’
‘They were only discussing the possibilities at the time and, as you say, I know how to keep a close mouth.’ He turned his head towards the falls.
‘Geoffrey of Anjou is an excellent choice.’
‘Is he?’ Adam felt the cold beginning to seep beneath his cloak, chilling him. ‘Convince me.’
‘He’s young and strong. ’
‘He is fifteen years old,’ Adam pointed out.
‘With his life before him,’ Robert argued, ‘and likely to be a sight more potent than her last husband who apparently had, er, difficulties.’
‘You surprise me,’ Adam said sarcastically. ‘She would shrivel any snake to the size of a worm with the way she has of looking.’
Robert’s face reddened. ‘You will keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of my sister.’
Adam gave him a look and gathered the reins. ‘Why? She never extended that courtesy to me.’ He clicked his tongue to the horse.
Gloucester caught at his bridle. ‘Wait, my lord, at least allow me to finish what I have to say. It avails us nothing if we each ride away in anger.’
Vaillantif started to plunge and sidle. The Earl took his hand off the bridle. Adam checked the stallion and in so doing, mastered his own anger. Robert of Gloucester had always had a blind spot where his sister the Empress was concerned, and Adam liked the Earl who, despite his royal blood and high status, still managed to be as genuine and honest as a plain rye loaf. He slapped Vaillantif ’s neck, and said, ‘You are right, it avails us nothing. I apologise.’
Earl Robert removed his hat and looked dismally at the dripping feathers. ‘I leap to her defence because no one else ever does,’ he said wearily. ‘Like you, everyone sees a bad-tempered bitch who needs a whip taking to her hide to teach her humility, but that’s just a facade. If you knew her as I did, you would be more charitable.’
Adam raised a sceptical eyebrow but forbore in the interests of peace to comment.
The Earl sighed, cast him a doubtful look from beneath hoary brows and said, ‘Geoffrey of Anjou is far more than a champing young stallion bought to prove his worth at stud. I grant you that he’s tall and handsome to look upon, but he’s also well-educated, and certainly no political innocent. His father has taught him well and he has the makings of a fine warrior and general. If we make Geoffrey Matilda’s consort, then Fulke, as his father, won’t be as eager to stir up the mud using William le Clito as his stick.’
‘Ah,’ said Adam, beginning to understand. Henry’s obsession. ‘It has to do with le Clito again.’
‘It has to do with a very dangerous thorn in our side,’ the Earl corrected him. ‘Pluck out the root from which it draws sustenance, and it will wither and die.’
‘You are gambling for very high stakes.’ Adam leaned down to adjust his stirrup. ‘If you succeed and your father can hold the reins until he has grandsons old enough, then it will be a gamble well repaid. If it fails. ’ He straightened and looked bleakly at the cascading water without finishing the sentence.
‘It won’t fail,’ Gloucester said forcefully. ‘Can I give my father your yea-say that you’ll go herald in payment of your forty days’ service this year?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Adam said neutrally.
‘I need to know within the week.’
Adam inclined his head, but refused to give more response than that.
‘My lady.’ The Earl inclined his head to Heulwen as she guided her grey mare carefully down to join them.
‘Sire.’ She slackened the reins to let Gemini crop at the grass and looked at the Earl. ‘Mama wants a word with you — something about getting Henry to learn English. She thinks it will stand him in good stead when Papa gives him Oxley, and she also wants to ask you the name of that stone carver from Bristol you mentioned yesterday.’
The Earl smiled at her, but in a distant way, his mind obviously not on such day-to-day trivia. He looked hard at Adam. ‘Within the week,’ he repeated, setting his cap back on his head at a rakish angle. ‘Is de Gernons still at the keep?’ he asked Heulwen.
Her lip curled. ‘Just preparing to leave. His temper’s about as vile as the headache he’s nursing; I shouldn’t go near him.’
‘I won’t. I think I’ll take the long way back. The horse needs a good workout, anyway.’
They watched him leave. The hoofbeats and the voices of his escort faded through the trees. The falls roared. Adam’s face felt stiff. He slid his fingers along the reins and applied gentle pressure.
‘Trouble?’ Heulwen followed him back to where Austin and Sweyn were waiting.
He turned his mouth down. ‘Only to my conscience. I have known this has been coming for a long time. I should have been better prepared, but I’m not.’
Vaillantif’s hind legs slithered on mud, but he lunged powerfully with forequarters and neck and recovered. The woods enclosed them, smelling of damp and fungus. Dormant bramble bushes snagged at their cloaks as they rode through the forest in silence. Heulwen let the reins hang slack, for Gemini was placidly following the stallion’s lead. She stared anxiously at Adam’s back, knowing that she could not force him to tell her what was on his mind.
The trees thinned and they came suddenly upon a clearing and the mossed-over remains of a once-proud building, now reduced to chunks of tumbled stone. Some white edges only just beginning to rethread with green gave evidence of pieces having been recently cut.
Adam dismounted and tethered Vaillantif to a young tree. A weasel leaped over his boot and streaked away through the damp grass. The sunlight broke through the clouds and trees to stroke weak fingers over the ruins. Heulwen jumped down from the mare and tied her beside the destrier.
‘Why have we stopped?’ Shivering, she stooped under a low hanging branch. Twigs stretched like fingers. She felt as if hidden eyes were watching her every movement.
Adam caught her hand in his. ‘Whimsy,’ he smiled. ‘I used to come here sometimes as a boy when we visited Milnham-on-Wye with your father.’
‘You never brought me!’ she said half indignantly, for in childhood she had thought to share every secret and experience of Adam’s — the still, clear backwater of the Wye so wonderful for summer swimming, the haunted well at the farmstead where the Welsh had raided, the rock upon Caermoel ridge with its strange carvings.
He tightened his fingers around hers and raised them briefly to his lips. ‘It was in the days when you did nothing but dream about Ralf and scheme how to get him,’ he said without rancour, and drew her around an outcrop of masonry and between some broken stumps of rock. ‘I wasn’t good company myself, then. I think it’s Roman. Look, you can see where they’ve taken pieces recently for that new section of curtain wall.’ He rubbed his
