Elizabeth Chadwick - The Wild Hunt

Alicia, about to set her foot where angels feared to tread, once more found herself a baffled outsider to the understanding that existed between Judith and the green-faced man now gingerly rising to his feet.

'You'll be all right by this evening,' Judith consoled him and gestured one of the household knights to help him back to bed.

'Witch,' he muttered, but managed a wan smile over his shoulder.

'I do not suppose you are going to explain any of this to me?' Alicia asked, a line of exasperation between her brows.

'No, Mama,' Judith agreed, her smile the secretive one that was all her father's legacy.

The shadows of the June evening had begun to lengthen. The sunlight was as golden as cider, but the wind that cut across the marches and ruffled the slate feathers of the peregrine on its eyrie was edged with cold.

Guyon stood upon Ravenstow's wall walk and inhaled the clean, meadow-scented air with appreciation. Below, the hall was hazed with the smell of the smoked fish that had been the main dish of the evening meal, it being Friday. A lingering aftermath of the deception practised upon de Belleme - a punishment and a penance — was the delicacy of his stomach where such food was concerned.

Cadi thumped her tail, eyes cocked adoringly, alert to move if he should, but he remained staring out over the demesne. The water meadows gave way to the peasants' strips sown with oats and beans, green-blowing in the wind that chased a contrast of shadows and amber sunlight over the land. A harsh land, filled with the dangers of sudden Welsh raids and the slinking shadows of wolves.

As the summer advanced, the Welsh had grown bold in their raiding. A flock of sheep here, a bull there, a woman in one of Guyon's border hamlets.

He had, of course, retaliated. An eye for an eye.

Everyone knew the rules ... except Robert de Belleme who rampaged up and down his earldom like Grendell of the marsh, destroying and torturing. Doggedly the Welsh retreated into the hill s where he could not follow, taking everything with them and letting their flimsy hafods burn. Reconstruction took only a matter of days and de Belleme was too great a lord to occupy his entire summer chasing shadows through wet Welsh woods. He left that to his vassals, men such as Walter de Lacey and Ralph de Serigny.

The latter had died last month during one such foray into Wales. He and his men had been ambushed and, while fighting his way out, he had suffered a seizure and fall en dead from his horse.

Guyon and Judith had attended the funeral as a mark of respect but, circumstances and the other mourners being what they were, had not remained beyond the ceremony.

Guyon had dealt efficiently with the raids on his own lands and kept a jaundiced, watchful eye on de Lacey's efforts to do the same. He did the rounds of his vassals and castellans, holding manor courts, advising, solving, replacing and recruiting, granting, denying, his finger firmly on the pulse.

He began to move slowly along the wall walk.

Cadi leaped to her feet, shook herself and followed, nose grazing his heels. A young guard saluted him. Guyon paused a moment to speak, remembering from long training the man's name and family circumstances. It was a little effort that never failed to repay more than double its expenditure in willingness and loyalty.

The guard paused in mid-reply to Guyon's query and saluted again, this time flushing scarlet to the tips of his ears.

Guyon turned to find his wife, pink and breathless from her climb, strands of hair escaping her braids and blowing wild. The guard's blush he attributed to the fact that women seldom came aloft and certainly not as informally as this. It never occurred to him to think the young man might find Judith attractive.

'I've found her!' Judith panted, clutching Guyon's arm, her eyes as bright as two polished agates.

'She was in one of the bailey storesheds nestled among a heap of fleeces.'

He slipped his arm absently around her waist and kissed her cheek. 'I told you she would not have gone far,' he said with a superior air.

Judith stiffened. 'You groaned the words at me from the bed because you wanted to be left in peace to sleep,' she said tartly. 'You could not have cared less!'

'Well , not at the time,' he conceded with a grin.

'But I knew she was bound to turn up. I've never known a beast with a life so charmed.'

'She's taken a lover. The same one that sired her last lot of offspring. A great black mannerless leopard of a tom that lives wild on the slope!'

Guyon smiled and leaned upon the limewashed sandstone to watch the clouds chase past on the wind. 'Well , it is spring after all ,' he said with amusement.

Judith blushed. He had been very patient with her thus far, his embraces light and fraternal, teasingly affectionate and 'safe'. Her stomach no longer lurched sickeningly when they retired of a night. She knew she was not about to be raped.

Once, unconsciously he had reached an arm across her naked body and murmured a name into her hair, his lips nuzzling her nape and her blood had prickled, moved by something alien and unsettling that flushed her loins with moist heat. Afraid, she had tossed vigorously and coughed and, the pattern of his breathing had broken; he had removed his arm with a wry, half-waking apology and rolled over away from her.

The time would come, she knew, when she would have to know his flesh. He was his father's sole heir, the duty pressing upon him to beget more branches on the tree than Miles had done.

'If I was barren would you divorce me?' she asked curiously.

He left the merlon and walked onwards until they could overlook the river and its bustle of traffic at the toll as boats sought to moor before nightfall . 'Come now, Cath fach , where else would I find a wife capable of besting me at dagger play?'

'I do not suppose it would matter if she bore you half a dozen sons.'

'Kind of you to offer,' he grinned, deliberately misconstruing her words. 'I have the patience to wait on your ripening lust.' She pinched him. He recoiled with a protest, and then suddenly craned forward, narrowing his gaze the better to focus on the distance. 'Visitors,' he said.

Judith came to his side and stood on tiptoe.

Below them, a long barge had just nudged into its mooring and the crew were making her secure.

'Your father!' she exclaimed as Miles stepped on to the wharf.

'Cat among the pigeons,' Guyon said with a thoughtful smile.

'Who is that with him?' Judith bobbed against her husband and a stray tawny wisp of her hair cobwebbed his face.

'My half-sister, Emma. If you remember, she could not attend our nuptials because she was in London.'

'Those girls with her are your nieces?'

'Christen, Celie, and Marian,' he agreed, looking wryly amused.

Judith regarded the group for a moment. The older woman, even from this distance, was obviously lovely, and rich. The white fur lining of her cloak gleamed like silk on snow as it caught the sunlight and her braided hair was the precise colour of a sweet chestnut new-hulled from its case. The girls too were elegantly robed and pristine. Delicately bred, gentle young ladies.

Dismayed, Judith bit her lip, aware that she was wearing her oldest gown and that it was rough with Melyn's moulting fur. Her hair was unkempt and there was nothing prepared to make them a fitting welcome.

'What am I going to do?' she asked.

Guyon turned, looked her up and down from the bird's nest crown of her head to the scuffed toes of her leather slippers and grinned. 'And yet you can face down Robert de Belleme with never a qualm.' He tilted her chin on his forefinger and kissed her nose before whirling her about to face the stairs down. 'Em's all right, she won't eat you.'