voice starting to deepen, although it would be some time yet before it broke. He gave her Adam’s tilted smile and a look from beneath his brows.
Judith sat down next to her husband. ‘Who’s winning?’
‘Grandpa, he always does,’ Miles said without rancour.
A skein of geese arrowed the sky. Judith followed their flight until they were specks on the horizon, then looked at her husband, only to find that he was already watching her.
‘Bearing south.’ His voice was husky, a legacy of his near-drowning last year.
‘Your throw, Beausire,’ said Miles.
Judith looked away over the late summer bursts of colour lingering in the herb beds. Marigold, chamomile, yellow hawkweed and purple devil’s bit.
Guyon threw the dice, studied the board and made his move. Then he looked at his wife. ‘Stop fretting,’ he said. ‘Renard will come.’ He closed his hand over hers and squeezed.
She sighed ruefully. They knew each other too well to hide anything for long, or even to want to hide anything. ‘Yes, I know. It just seems an age since his last letter reached us from Brindisi, and it is such a long and dangerous road.’
‘No more dangerous than England.’
Judith watched his mouth tighten and set. He had put on flesh during the dry, hot summer, but she knew that as soon as the damp weather returned, the harsh, racking cough would burn it away within weeks, stripping him down to the bone. Every time he even cleared his throat she was afraid. She had brewed up horehound and feverfew syrup, had all the ingredients for hot poultices and plasters ready. Sometimes they eased the worst of the symptoms, but they did nothing to cure them.
‘I wish my father hadn’t had such a passion for lamprey stew!’ she declared with sudden vehemence.
Guyon looked at her and laughed, then coughed.
‘I hate lamprey stew!’ Miles pulled a disgusted face.
‘So do I,’ said Judith, thinking of the dish that had sent King Henry untimely to his grave, and would probably kill Guyon too. If only they had been given a few more years of his iron-handed rule while his young grandson and namesake grew to maturity, then there would have been none of this wrangling over a crown that neither Stephen nor Matilda were fit to wear, in her opinion.
Guyon coughed again. She was desperate to leap to her feet and run to fetch her medicines. Past knowledge prevented her from doing so. If he thought she was fussing he would baulk, and probably out of sheer pig-headedness would push himself to prove her wrong and make himself very sick indeed. She had learned to be either extremely circumspect or teasing about it these days, never maternal. Even so, she could not bear to sit here on a knife edge waiting for the next cough.
‘I must go and write to your mother and Elene,’ she told Miles, and with that excuse, rose to summon a maid, but in the event, it was the shrieking, excited maid who summoned her.
On the common grazing Rhosyn sat down on the grass and sucked at a blackberry thorn that was embedded in one of her purple-stained fingers. Her mouth was purple too, and there were splotches on her gown, fortunately an old homespun. She had dragged its encumbering length through her belt like the other women, and her legs were bare to mid-calf. If Adela saw, Rhosyn knew she would be in trouble, but the nurse had twisted her ankle on a half-buried stone and was sitting guard over two full baskets of the fruit on the low bridge over the brook that further down fed into the Dee.
Juditta yelped as a nettle pricked her exposed skin and swore an oath she had once overheard her father use to one of the grooms.
‘You’re not allowed to say that,’ Rhosyn scolded.
Juditta scowled. ‘I can say what I like.’
‘I’ll tell Belmere.’
‘You’re always telling tales. She won’t listen.’
‘I didn’t tell when you—’
‘What’s the matter, my young mistresses?’
Both girls turned and stared guiltily up at Hilda, the senior kitchen maid. She was neck-craningly tall to a child’s eye, as broad in the beam as a merchant galley, gave respect where respect was due, but was not in the least intimidated by differences of rank. Juditta and Rhosyn had watched her knead dough at the huge, scrubbed trestle near the bread oven and knew the power in the muscular pink forearms and thick hands.
‘I’ve got a thorn in my finger,’ said Rhosyn, drooping her lip and fishing for sympathy.
‘Look how many berries I’ve picked.’ Juditta quickly held up her basket, determined that her sister was not going to get all the attention. ‘And a nettle stung me.’
‘Rub it with a dock leaf, over there, look, and then pull your gown down a bit; that way it won’t happen so easy.’ Hilda tucked a stray wisp of greying hair back into her wimple and stooped rather breathlessly to examine Rhosyn’s finger. ‘It’s not in deep. Belike your grandmother will be able to get it out and put some salve on it when we go back.’
Juditta discarded the screwed-up dock leaf, a juicy green stain on her rubbed leg, and stared towards the floury main road. ‘Hilda, look!’ she cried. ‘Horsemen!’
Hilda followed the child’s pointing finger to the distant but swiftly approaching riders. ‘They’re none of ours,’ she muttered with alarm, and, grasping Rhosyn’s arm, hauled her to her feet. ‘Go on, child, get you back to Ravenstow as fast as your legs will carry you. Mistress Juditta, go with your sister now!’
Juditta ignored the woman and shaded her eyes against the hot, golden beat of the sun.
‘It’s all right!’ Juditta cried. ‘It’s Papa! It’s his shield and he’s riding Lyard. I’d recognise him anywhere!’ And as if her skirts were not already raised to an indecent level, she drew them higher still and began running towards the party.
Hilda screeched after her but to no avail. She lumbered round to detain Rhosyn, but heels flashing, like a hare’s, she too evaded the maid and headed at a direct run for the horsemen.
Renard reined down as he saw the girls approaching. For a moment he thought that they were serfs’ children but quickly dismissed the notion. Serfs’ children would not run yelling at a strange troop of riders. To the contrary, they would run screaming in the opposite direction and warn everyone else.
Adam pulled Lyard round. ‘The hoydens!’ he growled with a mingling of anger and amusement.
‘Surely not … They can’t be!’ Renard’s eyes widened with disbelief. ‘Juditta and Rhosyn?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Adam said ruefully. Taking Lyard out of the company, he cantered the last twenty yards to reach his nearest daughter before she could reach him amidst a press of iron-shod jittery horseflesh.
‘Papa!’ She held out her arms for him to lean and sweep her up on to his saddle. Then, half-choking him, she smacked kisses on his cheek and the corner of his mouth and wriggled herself secure, by which time Rhosyn had arrived at her father’s stirrup and was clamouring to be lifted up. Adam thought it fortunate that Lyard was no longer young and full of fire or they would probably all have been thrown, but he could not bring himself to scold his daughters.
‘Mama’s not here,’ Juditta said. ‘She’s gone to visit Elene up at Woolcot, but she’ll be back before Michaelmas.’
‘Will she?’ Adam felt a small twinge of disappointment but did not let it show on his face. It was selfish and Woolcot was but a day’s ride away, not half the world as Jerusalem had been.
‘I don’t like your beard.’
‘Don’t you, puss? It was easier to grow than to shave off while we were travelling. Your Uncle Renard’s got one too.’
‘Uncle Renard?’ Rhosyn, seated behind her father, arms squeezing his waist, looked at the riders in her father’s company. A man was staring at them. His smile was very white against a skin that was almost as brown as her homespun gown, and bracketed by a full, beech-red beard.
‘Don’t you remember? No, I suppose you’d both be too small.’ Adam wheeled the sorrel and trotted him back to the line.
‘Who is the lady?’ whispered Juditta.
‘Her name’s Olwen. She’s travelling with us,’ Adam said, telling the literal truth. Time enough for revelations later. ‘Rhosyn, it’s rude to stare.’
‘But she’s very pretty, Papa. I wish I had hair like that.’
