Elizabeth Chadwick - The Wild Hunt

As it was, he lay in the road, struggling within his cocoon, hearing the curses of men similarly encapsulated fighting to win free. Horses circled and plunged around him. The Welsh tossed banter cheerfully hither and yon in dips and swoops of singsong language, haranguing each other and their victims alike and then, like autumn swallows, they were gone. A hoof caught de Belleme's side as the last horse departed and involuntarily he arched at the sudden buffet of pain.

Silence descended and it began to rain.

Rhosyn listened to the rain as an eddy of wind drove it against the hafod shutters. One of several spring squall s. In between, the stars would peek through the scudding clouds in pinprick points of diamond light.

The fire, banked for the night, gave off a low, comforting glow, glints of red jewel warmth winking beneath the aromatic logs of the diseased pear tree that Twm had cut down last year.

Rhys and Eluned were newly abed. She could hear their conspiratorial whispers behind the curtains. Her son had turned eleven last week and thought himself very grown up. At fourteen, in Wales, he could claim his manhood. She would be thirty then, Eluned ten and this new babe, if it survived the early months, would be rising from helpless infancy into sturdy childhood.

She picked up her sewing, took a few half-hearted stitches and, with an irritated cluck, put it down again. The rush-light was too poor for this kind of delicate work and her mind was restless tonight, fluttering purposelessly like a moth at a candle flame. The baby turned in her womb, busily flexing new, delicate limbs. She felt the thrust and flicker with a protective hand. With almost four months of carrying left before the birth, she had not yet burgeoned into ungainly discomfort. Her ripening body was still a pleasure and she was lost in the wonder of it.

The old dog sitting with its moist nose at her knee suddenly growled deep in its chest and stiffened. Rhosyn stood up to face the cottage door, one hand reaching for the rake that Twm had earlier been using on the floor rushes.

It was Twm's voice she heard outside now, gruff and questioning. A horse snorted. A man replied with amusement, the tone deeper than her servant's and edged with a foreign inflection to the Welsh she would have known anywhere. She bade the dog lie and, dropping the rake, flew to the door and unbarred it to the night.

'Guyon!' she cried and flung herself into his arms. Twm arched a knowing resigned brow and, completely ignored, dismissed himself to his bed.

Rhosyn withdrew from the hard clasp of Guyon's arms and tugged him inside the hafod. Gelert whined and thumped his brindle tail on the rushes. She reset the bar and came once more into the circle of his arms.

'You smell of sheep,' she said against his mouth.

He nuzzled her cheek with a stubbly jaw. 'What kind of greeting is that for a man who has ridden hard for your sake?'

'Not for your own?' Rhosyn queried pertly, her eyes laughing, as green and gold as moss agates. 'You are overblown with vanity indeed.'

Her dark hair spilled down over his hands in a fine, cool cloak. Her breasts were ripe and warm against his chest. Within her belly the child kicked.

'How goes it with you?' he asked, his face suddenly all tenderness and concern.

Rhosyn gave a little shrug. 'I'm not sick any more, indeed, I've an appetite like a bacon pig.

When I start to waddle like one, I will curse you and a certain hot, harvest night ... Have you come alo--' She stopped. Guyon lifted his head from contemplation of her glowing skin and brilliant eyes just in time to be almost bowled over by the two children.

They were like puppies, gambolling and clamouring; Rhys's new-found manhood had flown out of the window to leave only the excited child. Guyon bore with it very well , riding out the first storm with wry, rueful humour, curbed behind a half-turned head as their mother calmed them with dire threats and a voice suddenly grown as sharp as the flick of a lash.

Subdued, but not defeated, Eluned went to fetch Guyon something to drink and Rhys sat down before the banked fire, hugging his knees, a dark scowl on his face.

'How long will you stay?' he demanded, slanting Guyon a hard glance.

'Rhys!' his mother reprimanded more sharply than she had intended. It was a question she herself wanted to ask but dared not.

Guyon waved aside her anger with a grin. 'I am accustomed to it by now. If he was not so obviously a boy, I would think it was my wife sitting at my feet. She has that way with her too.'

There was a strained silence. Rhys's question was just the crust of the loaf, one of a thousand questions Rhosyn longed to ask him, but would not do so in the presence of the children and for the sake of her own pride.

'A few hours only, Rhys,' Guyon answered the boy. 'I have dared to pull the devil's tail and I must be in my own bed before dawn lest he scorch me with his pitchfork.' He smiled at Eluned and took the mead she offered him. It was strong and sweet and as honey-golden as the fragrant harvest evening on which the unborn child had been conceived.

Rhys looked blank for a moment and then his quick mind took in the implications of the rough Welsh garb and coupled it with his knowledge that Guyon had skill s most Normans did not.

Something clandestine had been afoot and Lord Guyon did not intend the blame to lie lying at his door. Eluned, younger and impressionable when it came to tales, took his words at face value and regarded him wide-eyed.

'And precisely where is your own bed?' Rhosyn asked, setting a platter of bread and cheese before him and thinking with a hint of bitterness that they were like courtiers, feting him with adulation.

Guyon gave her one of his quicksilver glances.

'Ledworth,' he answered and did not elaborate.

Instead, he tossed something to Rhys.

The boy caught the item deftly and transferred it to his lap. It was a leather sheath, lined with raw wool to hold in place the knife it contained and keep it naturally oiled. The knife itself was almost a weapon. Eight inches long with a blade gleaming as bright as fish scales against the blue herringbone pattern that fanned from its centre.

The hilt was carved from a narwhall tooth.

'I know it is a month after Candlemas, but I had not forgotten your year day,' Guyon said as Rhys examined the knife with speechless delight.

Rhosyn eyed the gift with mixed feelings.

Childhood was almost behind the boy and the knife was a symbol of the man too soon to emerge. 'You should not,' she said to Guyon with a frown.

'Grant us both the indulgence,' he answered, his voice light, but his gaze eloquent as he drew Eluned into the circle of his arms. 'And I had not forgotten that it is your own year day come Easter and, since I am unlikely to be here, I have brought your gift early. Guess which hand.'

Delighted, Eluned played the game with him and he teased her, knuckles clenched, his sleight of hand eluding her. At length she pounced on him, giggling and he conceded defeat, begging abjectly for mercy and presenting her with a small cloth pouch containing a string of amber beads.

Eluned flung her arms around Guyon's neck and delivered him a smacking kiss. 'The surest way to a woman's heart,' he chuckled as he fastened the beads around Eluned's slender throat.

'You buy us all ,' Rhosyn agreed and, blinking, turned away to mend the fire. Guyon watched her over the child's tumbled black hair.

'That is not true, cariad ,' he said softly. 'I have never had the price of you and I doubt I ever will .'

Rhosyn savagely poked the logs. 'You have always had the pretty words to cozen what you cannot buy!' she snapped. 'Rhys, Eluned, it is long past time you were asleep. Go on, get to your beds now!'