Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

Renard put his hands down on the trestle and stared at a white scar on one of his knuckles, legacy of a skirmish with the Welsh when he was scarcely old enough to wield a war sword. The sun-brown skin would eventually fade like a dream, but the scar would remain with him for life.

‘De Gernons has also been hinting to the King that a certain betrothal might be broken and placed more profitably elsewhere,’ Adam said. ‘To his credit, Stephen has taken scant notice thus far, but he’s apt to change his mind under persuasion.’

Renard felt a burden settle on him, heavy as a black cloak with a gilded border — the responsibility for his family’s estates. ‘So,’ he said, ‘Ravenstow still stands by Stephen then?’

‘For the moment. Your father would rather have Stephen for king than the Empress for queen, but it eats at his conscience that he swore to uphold her claim while her father was still alive.’

‘Everyone swore, and under duress,’ Renard grunted. ‘What about you, where do you stand?’

Adam grimaced. ‘Precariously on the fence, like your father. Were it practicable, I would support Matilda. Her son might only be seven, but the throne is his by right, not Stephen’s. The pity is that she is not fit to be regent while he’s growing up, and his father is too occupied with matters in Normandy and Anjou to be bothered with England. As matters stand, I’m too close to Stephen’s stronghold at Shrewsbury to risk renouncing my fealty. For now I’m a crusader, beholden to neither, and it’s a relief.’

Renard made some swift mental calculations. ‘It will take about a month to make ready. That should give you time enough to reach Jerusalem and return — unless you plan to stay longer?’

‘There is not the time.’

‘No,’ Renard agreed and saw that his hands, flat a moment ago, had clenched into fists. ‘It will soon be winter, won’t it?’

Hand steady, Olwen painstakingly applied a line of kohl beneath and within her lower eyelid, stepped back from the tiny sliver of polished steel to study the effect, and picking up a pot of red paste and a dainty camel-hair brush, started to paint her mouth. A sodden snore stopped her in mid-stroke. She looked round at the couch and scowled at her Uncle Gwylim. Her sister had taken pity on him last night and given him drinking money and sleeping space — more fool her, the stupid slut. Gwener was never going to be anything more than a common soldier’s whore; this tiny hovel in the wrong quarter of Antioch a reflection of her capabilities.

Olwen returned to her preparations. Her sister brushed through the curtain that separated the house into two squalid rooms. She was wearing a gold silk over-dress that Olwen recognised as her own, and new at that. Gwener had larger breasts and the seams were straining to contain her flesh. Yesterday Olwen might have made a cat-fight out of such blatant misappropriation. Tonight, the glimpse of another world in her eyes, she was merely filled with contempt. Bestowing on her sister a single, cold look, she returned to her toilet.

Gwener yawned and scratched her armpit. ‘Who is he?’ She picked up Renard’s knife that was lying on Olwen’s pallet and examined it.

‘That is my business.’

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.