Elizabeth Chadwick - The Wild Hunt

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.