too, caught her arm and spun her off her feet, a knife flashing in his other hand.
Heulwen saw the blade descending and screamed out all the breath that remained in her body before the world darkened beyond darkness.
‘Steady now,’ Adam said softly to the horse, and eased him forward again. Sweyn and Austin joined him, and they rode at a jog trot towards a group of moored merchant cogs. Austin rose in his stirrups and pointed. ‘God’s bones, look, one of them’s on fire!’
Adam followed Austin’s finger towards the deck of a merchant cog that was well ablaze. They could hear the roar of the flames fanned by the wind and the cries of men who were frantically trying to bail them out with buckets. Reflected fire danced on the water. ‘It’s the
As they watched, momentarily frozen with shock, a figure half rolled, half dragged itself out of the river on to the wharf, thrashed blindly to its feet and started towards them at a stumbling run: a woman, for the streaming hair was as long as the tunic she wore. Adam stared, and the disbelief gave way to a heart-stopping jolt as he recognised his wife, and saw behind her Warrin de Mortimer in hard pursuit, drawing a knife from his belt.
‘Hah!’ Adam cried to Vaillantif, and once again risked spurring him. The stallion’s hooves struck blue-white sparks from the cobbles. Adam drove him straight at his enemy. Warrin was as preoccupied with Heulwen as a spider with a trapped fly as knelt over her, the knife at her throat.
Adam did not hesitate. He drove the burning brand, lance-fashion, straight into Warrin’s shocked, upturned face. Warrin screamed and reared up and back, the knife clattering to the ground. His shrieks rent the air and he fell to his knees, arms over his face, then rolled over, writhing in mindless agony. Adam dismounted and dropped the torch into a puddle, where it sputtered out. With the same deliberate purpose that had carried him through thus far, he followed Warrin’s contortions, drew his sword, and applied the
Round-eyed, Austin gaped. Sweyn, of a more practical mind, dismounted. ‘Come on, lad,’ he jerked his head at the ground, ‘help me throw this fish back whence it came. We can’t leave him in the middle of the street.’
Adam knelt beside his wife. ‘Heulwen?’ he said tentatively and examined her quickly for signs of injury. His mouth tightened as he saw the blue and red fingerprint bruises lacing her throat. Lower down on her thigh there were marks too. He swallowed bile and lifted her up against him, and knew that he would never be able to see Warrin’s death as a confessable sin.
‘Sweyn, get me a blanket,’ he commanded over his shoulder.
Heulwen’s throat moved. Her eyelids shuddered and half opened. She felt a strong arm supporting her head and another gently around her shoulder blades, but then Warrin had been gentle and violent by turns, and she remembered that he had been about to kill her. She stiffened and struggled.
‘Lie still, love, you’re safe,’ she heard Adam’s voice say, easy and calm and familiar.
‘Adam?’ She drew back to look into his face to make sure it was not her imagination playing tricks. Torchlight marked out golden-hazel eyes and thick, bronze-brown hair. She touched his face and, bewildered, looked around. ‘Where’s Warrin?’
His hand tightened across her back. ‘Dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead,’ he repeated, dropping the word like a weighted body into the river, and taking the blanket Sweyn had managed to find, he wrapped her in it and then in his own fur-lined cloak.
Heulwen closed her eyes and shuddered. ‘He wanted to know why we were in Angers,’ she said faintly as he mounted Vaillantif and she was handed into the saddle before him. ‘I didn’t tell him.’ Her teeth were chattering. She turned her face into his tunic and clung tightly to him like a child beset by a nightmare. Adam kissed the top of her head and blinked hard, then pressed Vaillantif to a gentle walk.
Chapter 23
Adam curled his fingers around his belt and contemplated the mosaic that the two craftsmen were so painstakingly working on. It was a copy of the ruined Roman one in the forest beyond Rhaeadr Cyfnos with a few adaptations of his own, and when finished it would transform Thornford’s plesaunce from a merely functional herb garden into a delightful place to sit on warm summer evenings.
He sat down on the turf seat and studied the mosaic from a different angle. The colours were autumnal — cream and bronze, russet, gold and brown. His attention wandered towards his wife, who was discussing the siting of the new mint and sage beds with the gardener and whether they had room for another patch of stavesacre to combat the current epidemic of lice.
Busy, he thought with a twist of his mouth. In the two months since their return from Anjou she had not stopped. She was not just busy but frantic, and she would not talk to him — at least not beyond any trivial, meaningless chatter masking God knew what. He could not get close enough to find out. He watched the tilt of her head as she listened to what the gardener was saying and the gesture of her arm as she pointed to the soil-bed at their feet. Superficially there was no difference, but it was like skimming the surface froth off a bubbling stew and never reaching the meal itself.
She had not spoken of her time as Warrin’s prisoner on board the
He had opted for time and gentleness to bring her round, but they seemed to be having the opposite effect. Heulwen retreated further into her shell with each day that passed, and nothing that he said or did seemed able to draw her forth. The nights were difficult too. It was not that she rejected him: on the contrary, she frequently demanded more of him than he was capable of, and with such desperation that there was no real pleasure in it for either of them.
He looked at the wolves that made up the centrepiece of the mosaic. Black wolves chasing their tails surrounded by a ring of red vixens. The men were working on the huntsmen now. The gardener had gone. Adam rose and strolled across the plesaunce to join his wife. She was pressing her hand to her stomach and her complexion was the unhealthy shade of whey.
‘Heulwen?’ He put an anxious arm around her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ She gave him that vapid, closed look that he was learning to hate, and smiled brightly. ‘It’s those salted herrings we bought last month. They’ve been disagreeing with me. Cuthbrit says the mint should go here and the tansy over there, but I don’t know. There’s more sun. ’
He tightened his hold, silencing her. ‘Heulwen, for God’s love, I cannot bear any more of this hoodman’s blind! We have to talk about Angers. When I look at you, I feel as though I’m looking across the Styx at a being from the underworld.’
‘Angers?’ She drew a deep breath, let it out again shakily and looked around the plesaunce, which was taking graceful shape from the silver of Henry’s gratitude. A king’s price. Cheap. She felt laughter rising in her throat, and then the nausea. ‘It is with me every waking moment without having to talk about it as well,’ she said stiffly. ‘I…I don’t feel well. I’m going to lie down.’ She pushed herself out of his concerned embrace and ran from him.
Adam stared vacantly down at the prepared herb bed. He wondered if he ought to go after her, but the thought daunted him. He was still wary of rejection even when he knew it was not personally intended. He chose the coward’s way, and deferring the confrontation went to tell Austin to saddle up Vaillantif.
He took the men out on a wide-sweeping patrol. After a few miles he paused in a village to speak to the reeve and accept a cup of new ale from the beaming, flustered ale-wife, and then rode on. The open spaces and
