The Leopard Unleashed (23 page)

The acrobats were both clever and amusing with a delightful little black and white dog dressed up to look like a court fool, and she was sorry when they finally made their exit, the dog frantically wagging his stumpy tail and yapping excitedly. Two different members of the troop took their place and bowed before the royal table to the King and Queen. One was a young, slender man with a drum hung around his neck. The other, a woman, wore a full, black robe that looked as if it might have been misappropriated from a Benedictine monk. She had loose, corn-blond hair kinked from tight plaiting and bound back from her brow by a headdress of gold coins. Her sultry mouth was painted a rich, blood red.

‘An eastern dancer,’ confided Amicia of Leicester in Elene’s ear. ‘From the court of Prince Raymond in Antioch, although if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. She’s probably never been further than the Billingsgate fish wharf in her entire life.’ She yawned with cynical boredom.

Elene felt as if she had swallowed a lump of cold stone. An eastern dancing girl, one from Antioch was already for her the source of too much pain. She flashed a look at Renard but he was deep in conversation with his fellow earls, slender fingers weaving as he emphasised a point. She tried to catch his eye, seeking reassurance, but Leicester leaned forward to interrupt him and his great solid back blocked any hope of eye contact. Before the dais, the dancer had cast off the black robe and revealed a costume of a full-skirted gown and an an embroidered tightly fitted top with a low neckline. Around her hips was tied a scarf that sparkled with metallic threads. Fixing some small silver cymbals to her fingers, she waited for the youth with the drum to seat himself cross-legged on the floor to one side of the dais.

Attention started to wander from sweetmeats and conversation. Men gaped at the costume and the loose golden hair, unable to believe their eyes or their good fortune. Women stared too in censorious amazement. The girl smiled scornfully at all and sundry, with the exception of Ranulf of Chester whom she favoured with a look he could not mistake. Then she whirled in a circle, twirling the skirts up and around her long, graceful legs, and began to perform.

Biting down on her lower lip, Elene watched the girl move and realised that the words ‘eastern dancer’ were a totally inadequate way of describing her art – the hip-rolling
mimicry of copulation with its overtones of promise and undertones of contemptuous denial. The sensuous undulation. And yet there was grace and beauty in the performance too; in the way the fabric of her skirts lilted and flowed with her movements, in the artistic description of her arms and the precise positioning of her feet.

‘… And anyway,’ Leicester said to Renard. ‘When you think about it in those terms it’s obvious that … Good God!’ His mouth dropped open in perfect imitation of the earlier-served porpoise.

Renard had already seen, raising his head and losing all thread of the conversation as the first, familiar pat-pat of a tabor resonated around the trestles. In utter disbelief he watched Olwen strike lightly from one hip to the other, and rotate her way slowly in his direction.

‘Hell’s gates, but I wouldn’t mind futtering that!’ said Meulan, his voice thick with lust.

‘You and every man present, eh Renard?’ Leicester laughed and elbowed his ashen companion in the ribs. ‘Mind you, I forgot. You’re used to that kind of thing, aren’t you?’

If his life had depended on it, Renard could not have answered. His gorge rose as she continued to advance on him. Never before in his life had he felt so furious or so humiliated. He grasped his eating knife and thought about killing her.

She paused before the three of them, circling her hips, taunting. Her eyes mocked Renard, as she silently reminded him of Antioch. Her hands moved slowly down over her body, paused, teased, moved away. Leicester choked. Laughing, she danced her way along in front of the tables until she came to the place where Ranulf of Chester was
sitting, his eyes out on stalks. She did not taunt him. She blatantly invited.

Renard jerked to his feet, aware of nothing but his rage. His goblet crashed over and he upset a dish of pears in mead. Sticky, pale gold fruit glistened on the board. The thick syrup dripped into the rushes. He set one hand on the table and vaulted across, dagger brandished.

Elene blocked his way. Her face was chalk white and she was shaking with fury of her own. ‘In God’s name, if you are going to make me a widow, let it not be here and over a whore!’ she hissed, and put her hand upon his taut wrist.

He raised that wrist to swipe her aside, caught sight of the dagger he was brandishing and the world suddenly came back into focus. His breath shuddered out and with it went the blind rage. He sheathed the knife. Elene’s knees buckled with relief and she swayed, forcing him to grab hold of her and brace her up.

Behind him the drums reached crescendo and the shouts of encouragement were the ripples preceding climax. He did not look round, but all the same he was horribly aware. Elene had steadied, but she was still pale and shivering. For both their sakes, he took her outside into the courtyard.

Frost bejewelled the walls, sparkling like powdered amber and topaz in the smoky light from the torches, and the air cut like jagged crystal as it was inhaled. The sound of laughter drifted like vapour and a couple of squires hurried past on an errand. Renard looked down at his hands. His right palm was still imprinted with the grip of the dagger.

‘It was her, wasn’t it?’ Elene croaked. ‘There cannot be two such.’

There was a bitter taste in Renard’s mouth. He turned aside and spat, ‘Oh yes.’ In the aftermath of white-hot rage he felt drained and weary. ‘It was Olwen. We quarrelled before the wedding. I thought she was baiting me into a temper for her amusement, to heat her blood. I never thought for one minute that she would … Christ’s wounds!’ He broke off and struck the wall with a renewed surge of emotion, not so much anger now as shock and humiliation; the knowledge that every move of hers had been calculated since that first night in Antioch.

Elene’s teeth were chattering with cold and reaction, and her eyes were glassy with tears. ‘I want to go back to the house,’ she said, her voice quavering.

The laughter grew louder, intruding on them. One laugh detached itself from the background, rich and triumphant in response to a suggestive remark made in a throaty, feminine voice.

Ranulf of Chester emerged from the hall, his cloak across his shoulders and shielding the blond-haired woman clinging to his side. They disappeared in the direction of the stables, and obviously were not going riding unless it was of the beast with two backs.

Renard swallowed and swallowed again. There was a cold hollow where his stomach should have been.

‘Please,’ Elene said huskily, her hand gripping his sleeve.

He looked down. Olwen’s laughter rippled the air. ‘You are right,’ he said through tight lips. ‘Let us go.’

Elene lay in bed and listened to the silence. Despite the weight of the covers and the fact that she was still fully dressed she was chilled to the bone, no warmth in the bed beside her from which she could draw comfort. She stared
into the darkness which was relieved by the tiniest glimmer of light from the guttering night candle. Her eyes ached and then started to burn fiercely, the only part of her that was hot. Rolling over, she pressed her face into the bolster and sobbed, hands clenching the fur coverlet.

Her mind was filled with images of that evening, images she wanted to block out but could not. The expression on Renard’s face; the expression on Olwen’s as she took her pleasure; the knowledge of how that pleasure had been taken before in private and was now exhibited in public. At last the storm abated. The bolster was wet and un -comfortable and her throat was sore. Gulping and sniffing, Elene sat up and pressed the heels of her hands into her hot eyes. It was very late. Renard was downstairs, had not yet seen fit to come up. He had said he would not be long but that had been several hours ago. They had each needed time alone, she understood that, but her own need for solitude had come and gone a long time ago.

Still sniffing, she left the bed. One of them upstairs, one of them down and no words spoken, only a deepening chasm of silence. She looked down at her wedding dress and was tempted to take her shears to the convoluted embroidery and the lies it portrayed; tempted but unable to bring herself to do so.

The brazier had gone out. The night candle sputtered. Elene rubbed her arms and paced the room. Another piece of sewing caught her eye, the silver thread on the hem reflecting the candle’s dying flickers. It was the tunic she was currently making for Renard. Turning, she stared at it and gradually it occurred to her that a needle was capable of weaving more than one tale and of creating more than one garment – that a needle could repair and refurbish.

Fetching a kerchief from her baggage chest, she wiped her eyes, blew her nose and, setting her jaw, went down to the hall.

Renard was sitting by the fire where Matille of Chester had sat that afternoon – a lifetime ago. He was staring down at a chess piece taken from the gaming table beside him and was turning it over and over in his hand.

‘It is very late,’ she said tentatively. ‘I have been waiting for you a long time. Will you not come to bed?’

He raised his head to look at her, and after a moment sighed and put the chess piece carefully back down on the board. ‘It’s not love,’ he said with a swift gesture. ‘I never felt that for her. I wasn’t even at ease in her company unless we were in bed, and even there it was a battle.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m choking on pride, Nell, on the fact that she should have chosen to leave me for Ranulf de Gernons.’

Elene faced the warmth of the banked hearth and rubbed her icy palms together. ‘Do you think you are the only one with wounds? I watched her dance, taking her pleasure from us all, feeding on our responses. I do not believe that I will ever feel the same way about love-making again.’

Her curly hair was loose around her, screening her face from him as she fought to steady her voice.

‘There’s a world of difference between making love and siege warfare,’ he said, and rising from the chair put his hands lightly on her shoulders. ‘With you I don’t feel as if I have to guard my back in the act, nor do you turn to ice when it is over as if you hate me or have begrudged the responding. You fit well into the hollow of my shoulder, Nell.’

She stared into the fire. She did not want to fit into the hollow of his shoulder. She wanted him to look at her
the way he had looked at Olwen and forget all about control, as he had forgotten at the palace tonight.

‘Nell?’

She turned to face him, new tear tracks glistening on her cheeks. Muttering an oath, he took her in his arms. She clung to him. Against her damp face the gold thread on his court tunic was abrasive.

‘Perhaps I needed this to happen,’ he muttered into her hair. ‘Perhaps I had to learn that all you get for playing with fire is badly burned.’ Bending his head and angling hers up, he kissed her. Elene hesitated and then with a small gasp responded, her lips parting beneath his and her body yielding from its rigidity as desire melted her bones.

Renard broke the kiss and raised his head. ‘Listen.’ Releasing her he went to the window that looked out on to the street and unhooked the oxhide shutter. Elene heard the scrape of hooves on cobbles, the champing of a horse and the jingle of harness.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Edmund.’ The harshness of his voice said everything that the single word did not. He repinned the shutter with precise care and went to the door.

‘Sweet Jesu.’ Elene brought her hand to her mouth. Edmund was the youngest son of Ravenstow’s constable, his trade that of messenger when haste was required, and there could only be one message that would bring him to Salisbury’s gates in the dead of night.

‘When?’ she heard Renard ask the young man. The chill darkness blowing through the open door was frightening.

‘Two nights ago, my lord,’ Edmund’s voice rasped and he knelt at Renard’s feet, half in obeisance, half in exhaustion, his eyes dark-ringed in a face tight and pale with
strain. ‘I’ve ridden three horses into the ground reaching you.’

Renard stooped, pulled him to his feet and, bringing him into the hall, pointed to the chair by the hearth. Alys, her face puffy with sleep was poking the fire to life. ‘How did it happen? My father was in reasonable health when we left for this feast.’

Gratefully Edmund accepted the drink that Elene poured for him. ‘On the same day that you rode out, my lord, a merchant bound for Shrewsbury sought hospitality with us overnight. He brought some kind of contagious ague with him. It starts with a sore throat and shivering fever, then a tight chest and a cough capable of cracking the ribs. For those already weakened …’ He broke off and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Roslind lost her new baby and old Gamel the hafter died on the same night as your father. Half the garrison’s down with it too.’

‘What about Lady Judith?’ Elene asked, her thoughts on Judith and the state she was likely to be in already without being struck down with this sickness, whatever it was.

‘She was all right when she sent me with the tidings,’ Edmund said. ‘Shocked, yes, and as pale as a ghost, but within her senses.’

‘My mother is not lady of Ravenstow any more,’ Renard said to Elene in a dull voice. ‘You are.’ He signalled down the hall and sent the responding servant to go and rouse the rest of the household.