'Gone to Bristol. We expect him home tomorrow or the day after. I worry about him, Guy. He is not well . He gets pains in his chest and Rhys is too young to take more than an apprentice's responsibility.'
Guyon turned his head, eyes sharpening. 'The pack routes are no place for a woman,' he warned.
She did not answer, but the line of her mouth grew mulish and she gave all her attention diligently to the distaff.
'Rhosyn, so help me, if I hear you have stirred from your hearth to go tramping about the borders in a drover's cart, I will carry you off to Oxley myself and lock you up like a caged bird, in truth!'
'You have not the right!'
'I have every right. You carry my child. I will not see you dead in a ditch like Huw ap Sior!'
'I won't ... What did you say?' Her fingers ceased their nimble twirling. Her eyes opened upon him, wide with shock. 'Huw, dead?'
'At the hand of Robert de Belleme and his gutter sweepings. Huw's pack-load of sables was brought to myself and Judith as a blood-smirched wedding gift.' Sparing her nothing, he gave her the details.
'He was my father's best friend,' she whispered jerkily when he had done. 'They were boys together ... Oh sweet Virgin!'
Their bodies closed again of necessity as Guyon grabbed hold of her, afraid that she was going to faint. She leaned her cheek against his jerkin, shivering, sick to the soul with grief and fear and shock.
'Promise me,
cariad,
' he murmured, stroking her hair.
She made a little movement against his chest.
Her fingers gripped his arms.
'Promise me.'
'What good is an oath given under duress?'
Rhosyn replied shakily. 'I could give you my word and it would be worthless.' She uttered a desolate laugh. 'Welsh oaths always are.'
'Rhosyn ...'
She pushed gently away from him and, having wiped her eyes, poured herself a cup of mead. 'I might be fickle, Guy, but I am not about to step deliberately within de Belleme's ring of fire. I will swear you this much honestly: that I will not stir from here until after the child is born and only then by necessity. And I will send to you for an escort.'
Guyon studied her through half-closed eyes but did not seek to persuade her further. He had her concessions in his grasp and was not going to jeopardise them with bitterness and anger.
'Very well ,
cariad
,' he said quietly. 'I do not suppose I would care so much were you not so cursedly independent.' He sat down beside the fire and picked up the mead that Eluned had poured for him earlier.
Rhosyn stared at him in the firelight. With his Welsh clothing and dark complexion he might have been of her own race and class - no barrier but the fire's glow between them. It was a bitter-
sweet illusion. Merchant's daughter and marcher lord, already married for the sake of convenience and dynasty. He looked tired, she thought. The shadows beneath his eyes were not all the result of the dull light.
'Does your wife know your whereabouts, Guy?'
He took a swallow of mead, swirled its golden surface and looked at her with rueful amusement.
'She may have a suspicion,' he admitted. 'For sure, if I am not over the drawbridge come dawn, I'll have to deal with a hell cat ... and not for the reason I can see on your face.' The amusement became a wry chuckle. He drank the remainder of the mead and did not offer to elucidate.
Rhosyn swallowed the temptation to ask. If Guyon was on this side of the border after dark, dressed in native garments and murmuring about scorching the devil's tail, then it was best to know nothing. 'What is she like?'
'I think she would surprise you.' He put down the cup to fondle the cold thrust of Gelert's nose at his thigh. 'God knows, she certainly surprised me ... and continues to do so.'
'Is she pretty?'
A curious, casually spoken woman's question with tension lurking beneath the surface.
'Not as you are pretty,
cariad,
but striking in her way, I suppose, or she will be when she grows into her bones. She's a child Rhos, man-shy and half wild.'
Rhosyn knelt at the hearth and felt the heat glow on her face. She had thought about him at the time of his marriage, imagined him abed with his unwanted young Norman bride and wondered if the skill s of the bedchamber and sweet grass meadow had stood him in good stead then.
'I have not bedded her,' he said into the small silence of her thoughts. 'She has the frightened eyes of a lass half her age. She knows nothing of men except what her father was and her uncle is.'
Rhosyn turned her head in surprise.
'Even if she opened to me for the sake of duty, it would be little less than rape. She is as flat as a kipper before and behind and the crown of her head scarce reaches to my armpit.'
'Jesu, Guy!'
'Wishing you had not asked?' He gave a mocking smile, then shook his head. 'The match is not entirely a disaster. Judith has abilities beyond most young women of her station.'
Rhosyn lifted her brows. Guyon laughed, this time with genuine mirth. 'It is not given to every wench to be able to handle a dagger, or hone it to perfection on a whetstone. She has a wicked sense of humour, too. I would not put it past her to grease a slope for the joy of seeing someone slide down it - probably me. I do not believe I shall grow bored - if I live. Walter de Lacey would dearly love to dance on my grave and rule in my stead and Robert de Belleme merely bides his time. Fool that I am, it offends my sensibilities to murder the pair of them in stealth as they would do to me without a qualm of conscience.'
Rhosyn considered him. He had spoken lightly, but his eyes were hard and the fine mouth was set in a straight grim line. She realised how trivial her own complaints must seem when set against his various burdens. Crossing the space between them, she laid her hand on his shoulder and her cheek to his in a wordless embrace, her black hair spilling down over his rough jerkin and hood.
His own hand reached to grip hers, long-fingered and graceful. She wished suddenly that the child she carried should inherit those hands.
They sat like that while the silence of the night settled around them. Rain thudded against the hafod wall s, rhythmic and heavy. Guyon closed his eyes, meaning only to rest them for a moment and instead fell asleep.
Rhosyn gently, stealthily, disengaged her hand from his and stared at him. Vulnerable and slack-limbed, his jaw was fuzzed with dark stubble, his eye sockets smudged with weariness.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she remembered the time she had first seen him. She had been a bride of fifteen with her proud new husband indulgently buying her trinkets in Hereford. Guy had been nineteen then, awkward with his limbs, still filling them out but even then, coltish and immature as he was, his beauty had been striking. He had not noticed her then, nor yet in the times that she visited his father's keeps with her husband and her father. Not until four years ago when, widowed, she had personally bargained with him over the price of the wool clip.
His wide brown eyes, so melting and innocent, had almost been her downfall . She had believed that innocence until realising belatedly that she was being ruthlessly manoeuvred into a corner from which the only extrication was agreement to his price.
Yr llewpart du
, they called him - the black leopard - and, like a cat, there were claws beneath the soft pads and the tuned instincts of a hunter.
She had not let him catch her; not then, nor when she went to his bed, and especially not now.
She rubbed her sleeve over her damp eyes and gave a small , self-deprecatory smile as her practical merchant's mind surfaced from the maelstrom of emotion in which it had been bogged down. She took his cloak and spread it across a stool to dry and prepared a small costrell of mead, her movements brisk but silent. In an hour, she would wake him and he would go, and their meshed worlds would slide apart like two sword blades gliding off each other in a spangle of sparks.
She sat down again when all was done and took up her distaff, and listened with pleasure to the slow, even rhythm of his breathing while she wondered idly what had brought him over the border in so clandestine a fashion.
Twenty miles away and some hours later, wondering was also the preoccupation of another who waited, vacillating between terror and rage at Guyon's continued absence. Judith's emotions were raw. The very touch of a thought agitated them to agony.
It was almost dawn. A glimpse through the arrowslit repeated several times this last hour had revealed the sinking stars and a milky glimmer to the east. The words she hissed as she peered out on the imminent morning were hot with fury and filled with guilt lest she was cursing a dead man to hell for his tardiness. The thought of him staring sightless into the dawn, his body sword-cloven caused her to whirl from the arrowslit with a gasp.
Eric and the others had ridden in through the postern shortly before midnight. She would not have known of it had not Melyn yowled to be let out, thus disturbing her from a restless sleep. The arrowslit which looked out on the postern had revealed the stealthy entry of the men and ponies.
She had expected Guyon then, but he had not come. The ponies had disappeared promptly like beasts of the Wild Hunt into the hollow hill s and when she had let Melyn out and gone down to Eric, he had been taciturn and evasive. Lord Guyon had business in Wales. He would be back soon enough. He advised that she retire.
Judith knew that when she recovered her equilibrium she would be thoroughly chagrined at losing her temper, but for the nonce, like a drunkard, she did not care. Eric had recoiled from the lash of her tongue, eyes wide in shock. When Guyon returned, she intended to do more than just make him recoil. He told her nothing, left her to worry, treated her like a child who did not have the skill to understand.
'Nor shall I if he does not give me the chance!'
she said through clenched teeth as she flounced away from the arrowslit and began to dress.
She had just pulled on her stockings and shift and was scrabbling about on all fours searching for a wayward shoe, when Guyon entered the room as silently as a cat.
'Good morning, wife,' he said, grinning at the sight of her upturned posterior.
For a long moment she was still and then she rose to her feet and faced him, her complexion flushed with anger.
'Strange moonlight,' she said sarcastically. 'I have been sick with worry! Eric rode in before midnight matins. Where have you been?'
'I went to see Rhosyn and I fell asleep,' he replied matter-of-factly and came further into the room to sit on a stool and begin unlacing his boots.
'You went to see Rhosyn?' she repeated and swallowed the urge to hurl her newly found shoe at him. 'Have you changed your mind?'
'About what? Fetch me a drink, there's a good lass.'
Judith dropped the shoe and turned away, her back as rigid as a lance, her voice choked with the effort of controlling her rage. 'You said you had no mistress.'
Guyon flashed her a glance. 'I don't. Huw ap Sior was a close friend of her family. I took her the news of his death and a warning to be on guard. I am sorry if you are vexed, but expect apology for naught else.'
'Vexed is not the word!' Judith sloshed wine into a cup with a shaking hand. 'I could kill you myself!'
'No doubt ... Pass me those clothes over there.'
'Those?' She swung to him, lids widening. 'But they stink!'
'I know.' He grimaced, took the wine she offered, drank a mouthful and then set it down.
'Spike it, will you?' he said. 'With white poppy.'
'What for?'
'To make me sufficiently difficult to rouse when Robert de Belleme hails at our drawbridge.'
'And why should he do that?' Judith had a strong inkling as to the reply, having had plenty of time to think during the long watches of the night while her absent husband enjoyed another woman's company without thought for his terrified wife. However, she wanted to hear the words from his own lips, not be treated like an imbecile who would give the game away if possessed of knowledge.
'He might think I was involved in a Welsh raid upon him and his men that took place on the Shrewsbury road yestereve,' he answered. 'I did not tell you before in case we failed. At least you could truthfully have claimed your innocence.'
'What good would that do?' Judith was not impressed. 'You know what my uncle does to
"innocents".' Her mouth tightened, but it was because he had been ensconced at another woman's hearth, perhaps even in her arms, while she paced the floor at Ledworth in a cold sweat of terror for his life.
'Look,' he said wearily, 'I do not expect you to go into the kitchen details of how you make a particular dish, but I will praise it or otherwise when it comes to table, and it is the same with certain of my doings. I told you what was needful.'
'What you thought was needful.'
Guyon swallowed and cast around for a fresh reserve of patience. A day of pretence and fencing with men he loathed, a night of clandestine work, an hour's sleep in a hard chair and some chancy riding over rough terrain in the pitch dark made it difficult to find. 'Judith, don't push me,' he said softly.
A trickle of fear ran down her spine. The gentle tone was far more frightening than a bellow to mind her business, or a raised fist. She turned abruptly away to begin preparing a draught of the poppy syrup.
Guyon continued to strip. 'What about the rest of the keep?' he asked after a moment. 'What do they think?'
She looked round at him, her expression impassive. 'Some of them believe that it is good for you to release your tension in a surfeit of drink, all young men do it. Others say they always knew you were wild and incontinent. Mama is desperate for my safety. My father used to beat us both when he was in his cups ... He split my lip once ... Mama cannot act to save her life. I dare not tell her the truth.'
He snorted with brusque amusement. 'You accuse me and then do the same to your mother!'
Judith drew breath to retort that it was not the same at all , but clenched her teeth on the words.