The Running Vixen

‘You know the strength of my sword-arm.’

Rhodri’s face was unreadable. The smirk, however, had gone. ‘You Normans,’ he said contemptuously, ‘always conspiring in corners against each other.’ He looked round at his war band. ‘Fe fynn y gwir ei le eh?’

Adam’s colour remained high. The truth will out: he knew enough Welsh to understand that simple saying. He was aware of Heulwen watching him and that he could not deny Rhodri’s words. ‘That’s rich coming from a Welshman,’ he retorted, and added shortly over his shoulder, ‘Austin, stop gawping like a turnip-wit and get our horses. We’re returning to Milnham.’

Heulwen picked up her sewing, grimaced at it with extreme disfavour, and uttering a sigh started to push the needle through the fabric. It was a shirt for Adam, a basic, simple garment within her scope, but a genuine and literal labour of love since needlework of any kind was to her a form of purgatory, and it was a mark of her desperation that she was tackling it beyond her daily allotted stint.

There was nothing else to do. Father Thomas, Adam’s chaplain, had said he would give her a copy of Tristan to read, but the howling storm outside had kept him the night at the monastery five miles away. A visiting itinerant lute-player had left them at dawn before the weather took a turn for the worse, hoping to make Ledworth by nightfall. The carrier was not due for at least another week with his budget of news and gossip, and Adam’s mood was fouler than the weather that kept them huddled so close to the hearth. She darted a glance to the trestle near the fire where he sat, flagon and goblet close to hand. The last three days he had scarcely been sober, drinking as if to exorcise some demon. He was not drunk now, but the evening was still young, only just past dusk and the flagon full. By the time they retired it would be down to the lees.

She jabbed the needle angrily into the linen, pricked her finger and swore. He looked up at her exclamation and half raised one eyebrow. Heulwen sucked her finger and regarded him gravely. ‘Why are you brooding like a moulting hen?’ she demanded.

He did not deny it, but lifted the flagon and, pouring the wine, took three long swallows. Then, carefully, he set the cup back down at arm’s length and sighed. ‘I’ve a decision to make. I’ve been trying to drown my conscience in my cup, but it keeps surfacing to preach at me, or else it mocks me from the dregs and I have to fill up and start again.’

‘What sort of decision?’ Without regret she put her sewing aside. ‘Certainly you cannot think straight sitting in a fog of wine fumes.’

He tilted his head slightly to avoid the scorching heat that came from sitting so close to the fire. ‘I’ve been trying not to think,’ he said wryly.

‘Is it about Rhodri? The Welsh?’

‘Hardly.’ He rubbed his forehead and winced. ‘Since we all agreed a truce at Milnham and I’ve seen to my part of the bargain, there’s been no trouble from that quarter and I don’t expect any. Rhodri’s got enough ado keeping his own people together without bothering mine and your father’s — for the nonce at least…Christ Jesu, Heulwen, do you have a remedy for a megrim? My head feels as though it’s going to explode.’

‘Your own fault,’ she said without sympathy. ‘What do you expect when you drink for three days solid?’

He gave her a sour glance. ‘I asked for the remedy, not the cause.’

‘Remedy? Leave the wine alone.’ She stood up and brushed some cut ends of thread from her gown.

‘If my head is aching, it is for reasons far more complex than the downing of too much Anjou,’ he snapped.

Heulwen gave him a single look more eloquent than words, and stalked away down the hall. He followed her with brooding eyes as she went, then swore and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, feeling as though a lead weight were crushing him from existence. Ralf might have thrived upon intrigue, but Adam found the conflict of loyalties almost more than he could bear. What was he supposed to do? Follow Henry’s desires and have the barons all call him traitor, or tell his peers and face banishment, perhaps even death? The King had clandestine ways of dealing with men against whom he could not openly move.

Adam groaned. His responsibility was not only to himself. He had Heulwen to consider and her family — his too by foster-bond and marriage. Tell Guyon and risk being condemned by the King; or not tell him and be slighted. Somewhere, amid the wine fumes, the shadow of his long-dead father mocked his honour with brimstone laughter.

‘Here.’ Heulwen bent over to hand him a cup of some cloudy substance that smelt revolting and tasted on the first, tentative sip even worse.

‘Faugh!’ He pulled such a face that she laughed.

‘Drink it,’ she commanded, and added in a barbed tone, ‘pretend it’s wine.’

Adam glared at her, but held his peace and gulped the concoction down. Shuddering, he plonked the cup upon the trestle. ‘Torturer,’ he complained, and struggled not to retch.

From behind her back, Heulwen brought forth a small comfit dish. ‘Honeyed plums,’ she said, her eyes sparkling. ‘Do you remember? It was the way Mama used to bribe us to swallow her potions when we were little.’

Adam scowled at her but was unable to maintain the expression and with a reluctant grin, took one. She put the dish on the trestle and sitting down again, picked up one of the glistening, sticky fruits herself and bit slowly into it. Adam regarded her through narrowed eyes. She returned his scrutiny and licked crystals of honey-sugar delicately from her fingers. His crotch grew warm. ‘It was sweets of another nature I had in mind,’ he said softly.

Heulwen leaned over her husband and pinched out the night candle. Before the light was extinguished she saw that Adam was already asleep and that the frown lines between his brows were for the moment but vague marks of habit rather than present distress. It was one of the few positive lessons she had learned from Ralf — how to ease the tension from a man’s body and leave him in a state of physical, if not mental well-being. As to what was troubling his mind to the point of him drowning it in drink, only he could resolve that one.

She gave a soft, irritated sigh and lay down beside him. He had ever been one to stopper things up inside, silently simmering like a barrel of pitch too close to a cauldron, giving no real indication of how volatile the mixture was until it exploded.

She pressed her cheek against his warm back, closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She must have succeeded, for when she opened her eyes again it was to hear the bell tolling for first Mass and to find the bedside candle lit, with Adam watching her by its flame. Sleepily she stretched her limbs and smiled at him.

He leaned across to kiss her tousled, inviting warmth, but it was a brief gesture, not a prelude to further play. ‘Heulwen, if I asked you to come to Anjou with me, would you?’

‘Anjou?’ she repeated, eyes and wits still misty with sleep. ‘Why do you want to go to Anjou?’ She yawned.

He traced small circles upon her upper arm and shoulder with a gentle forefinger. ‘I don’t want to go to Anjou,’ he qualified ruefully. ‘I wish the damned place did not even exist. Henry wants me to go there as a messenger.’

Heulwen was silent, digesting this surface information and wondering what nasty currents flowed swift beneath it. Three days of heavy drinking for one. She looked at his downcast lashes and waited for them to lift so that she could see the expression in his eyes. ‘Yes, of course I’d go with you.’

‘Without even knowing the kind of message I was bearing?’

Thoughts of Ralf scurried through her mind. She banished them and sat up, tossing back her hair. Adam’s character was totally different. To break his honour you would have to break the man. Perhaps that was the deepest, most dangerous current of all. ‘Yes, even without knowing.’ She cocked her head. ‘Was Anjou the reason the Earl of Gloucester wanted to speak to you so privately?’

Silence. ‘Yes,’ then more silence. He drew a slow, considering breath. ‘The King is breaking a promise he made to us all, and I am to carry the message breaking it.’

‘Oh Adam, no!’ Heulwen cried with indignant sympathy, and her eyes grew angry as she understood his dilemma. ‘Why couldn’t he have sent Gloucester himself?’

Adam shook his head. ‘And have everyone wondering what the King’s eldest bastard was doing in Anjou? I will be considerably less conspicuous.’ He turned his head on the pillow. ‘I keep thinking of Ralf and Warrin and