Gwener tossed her head. ‘He wasn’t there last night, was he?’ she said spitefully. ‘I’ve never seen you come home in such a temper before.’
‘And is it any wonder when I find you writhing on the floor with one of your foul clients and yonder drunken sot lying across the door in a pool of vomit!’ Olwen smacked down the pot of red paste so hard that it cracked in half. ‘He wasn’t there last night because he had company — some relative from England.’
‘Ah, he’s English then.’
Olwen tightened her lips and turned her back.
Gwener stretched like a cat. Her eyes were sleepy and feline, blue like Olwen’s, but lacking their size and clarity. ‘Nobility?’ She fondled the knife in a suggestive fashion. ‘What’s he like between the sheets?’
Olwen snatched the weapon from her sister, and seizing a fistful of her straggling hair, jerked back Gwener’s head and let the blade glide against her jaw. ‘Are you really so desperate to know?’
Gwener screeched and struggled. Gwylim’s snores ceased in a stertorous series of grunts and he sat up, blinking, disorientated like a day-wakened owl.
Gwener’s wild threshing caused the knife to slip. It was only a shallow cut, but there was enough blood to drip on to the gown, staining the silk. Gwener flapped like a half-wrung chicken. Gwylim staggered to his feet with some vague thought of separating the girls, tripped over the piss pot that no one had bothered to empty last night, and pitched headlong. A pungent, stink filled the room.
An elderly, inquisitive neighbour poked her head around the door to see what all the noise was about.
‘She tried to kill me!’ Gwener howled, pointing a dramatic finger at Olwen. ‘Look, she’s still got the knife! I’m bleeding! Oh, God’s love, someone help me!’
Olwen threw a rag at her sister. ‘Staunch it yourself, you stupid slut. I wish I’d cut your throat!’
Their neighbour started to jabber her own advice and condemnation. Other curious faces clustered the doorway as Gwylim struggled to sit up, his clothes stinking of stale urine.
Olwen stared round the squalor of the room where she had been born and raised, first in poor decency then in hand to mouth desperation. She detached herself from it in a single stroke, like a knife severing an umbilical cord, and stalked past Gwylim. He cowered away from the dagger. Ignoring him, she took her best silk gown and another of good linen from her clothing pole and also the black wool robe that she wore when she went out at night to dance.
Gwener howled and dabbed at the nick on her jaw. The neighbour snatched a half-loaf from the table and tucked it away inside her shawl. Olwen saw but made no comment. It was not her concern now, nor ever would be again. She had other battles to fight.
Without a backward glance or even a word of farewell, she went out of the door, and the onlookers made way for her like a crowd parting before a queen. She had that air about her as she took the first steps of a decision made two days ago in the bed of a man she had known for the space of a single night.
Stripped to the waist, Renard curried Gorvenal, a task he could have left to his groom, but the rhythmic motion of his arm working the comb over the glossy black hide and the rich, warm stallion smell were comforting.
Adam had gone to Jerusalem and he had begun to make his own preparations for leaving Antioch. An Italian galley was anchored at St Simeon, bound for Brindisi once she had been refitted for the voyage, and her master had been willing to take him, Adam and their retinues providing they could be ready within five weeks.
A chapter of his life was ending with the same scrambled haste in which it had begun. It was an interlude, already almost a dream. He put down the comb and wiped his brow on his forearm. Outside, the light was hot and somnolent. Gorvenal whickered and nudged him imperatively. Renard fondled the stallion’s plush muzzle and smiled, knowing full well that the horse was snuffling around him for the dates he adored.
‘It is a taste you will have to forget,’ he told the stallion with a hint of wistfulness as he threw the embroidered saddlecloth over the glossy back.
Ancelin arrived in search of a halter he had earlier been mending. ‘You’re not going out in this heat, surely?’ he asked in amazement.
Renard shrugged. ‘I’ve a sort of pilgrimage to make.’
‘Oh yes?’ Ancelin gave a knowing grin.
‘Not that kind!’
‘You’ll fry your brains.’ Shaking his head, the knight departed with the halter.
Renard finished saddling Gorvenal and picked his tunic off a pile of straw. It was made of the finest white cotton, stained now with the marks of the stable and sweat, but it was only an undergarment to the dark Arab robe that he donned on top of it to quench the sun’s rays. For further protection, he wound a turban round his head in true eastern fashion.
When he rode out into the city, he more resembled a native of the land than a Norman lord. Foreigners who stayed beyond the length of a pilgrimage were wise to adapt their ways to suit the climate. Those who did not, frequently died.
Following the line of the high city wall, Renard rode past St George’s Gate and the Tower of the Two Sisters until he reached the lower slopes of Mount Silipus, its summit crowned by Antioch’s vast citadel. His destination was the grotto of St Peter, a cave shrine frequented by pilgrims in droves, but quiet now and cool in the scorching midday heat. The priests there knew him and did not intrude as he dismounted, flipped a coin to one of the regular horse boys, and entered the dim, candlelit cave.
Genuflecting, Renard knelt to pray. He had come to worship in this tiny chapel on the evening of his first arrival in Antioch, the stars like spangled embroidery on a royal gown, the citadel a crown thrusting to meet them. The grotto had been silent then too, steeped in ancient tranquillity and aglow with the pinprick candles of a thousand hopes and prayers. He often came here in the quiet times, drawing on that tranquillity as if it was cold water from a well in the desert.
Renard was not of a particularly pious nature but he had always found himself genuinely moved by this little mountainside chapel where St Peter and his disciples had met and prayed in persecuted secret and where the word ‘Christian’ had been coined. It gave him a sense of continuity, breathed life into the dry words of sermons that usually sent him to sleep and brought him much closer to God than he was ever aware of feeling on other, more grandiose occasions.
He emerged from the grotto refreshed and filled with a sense of well-being and peace. The sun made him blink, but it was not as fierce as before and the light had mellowed from white to pale gold. He walked down the slope to where Gorvenal was tethered in the shade, spoke briefly to the lad and, without mounting, led the stallion by a goat track further up the mountainside.
Wild thyme, crushed by his boots, scented the air. A goatherd passed him, urging his small flock downwards, and their pungent ammoniac aroma added evocatively to the smell of the herb.
Renard found a small, rock-shaded overhang. A lizard darted away into a crevice as he released the bridle to let Gorvenal crop the scrubby grass. He unslung his water-skin from the saddle, took half a sun-warmed loaf and some grapes from his saddlebag, and sat down to eat, drink and contemplate the vast city spread out before him.
A warm wind gusted into his face, forcing him to half close his eyes. Behind him Gorvenal champed and snorted. Renard looked at the document he had pulled from his saddlebag along with the food. After a moment’s hesitation, he wiped his hands on his robe and reached for his knife to slit the seal. A curved Saracen dagger came to his grip instead. He swore on a smile. His body tingled, responding like an adolescent’s to the mere stimulus of thought. Olwen, as golden as a lioness, Olwen tumbling beneath him or riding triumphantly aloft. The biting, scratching, melting pleasure. Grinning, he shook his head, took several swallows from the waterskin, and cut open the package containing Elene’s letter.
Her handwriting was clear and precise and had developed a firm character of its own since the first childishly executed smudged offerings had arrived haphazardly to discomfort him during their four years apart. The content, however, was much the same. The usual domestic chatter. A travelling huckster had got one of the maids with child. One of the serfs had murdered his mother-in-law. The steward’s wife at Ravenstow had produced twins — a rambling description of the infants. Renard skimmed over that part impatiently and spat a grape pip into the dust.
There were regrets and a genuine concern for his father’s ill health. Elene, as he recalled, had a heart as soft as warm butter. He doubted from what he knew of her that a single calculating thought had ever entered her
