Elizabeth Chadwick - The Wild Hunt

'I doubt it will trouble her new husband for long.'

Guyon put down his cup so that she could draw the hauberk over his head.

Judith frowned, for he was shivering violently.

Her knuckles touched his throat as she drew the garment over his head. His skin was cold and clammy to the touch. 'I'd better look at your leg,' she said and began to unlace his gambeson.

'One of the men bound it for me,' he said with a shrug. 'Let be, Judith. I'm so tired I could fall asleep on my feet. The last thing I need is you poking at me with your tortures and nostrums.'

'Nevertheless you will drink what I give you.' She threw him a stern look from beneath her brows.

The faintest twist of humour curled his mouth.

'Oh God,' he said. 'What have I ever done to deserve this?'

'You married me,' she retorted, her own lips curving for an instant from their severity before she took the wet gambeson from him and the clinging damp linen shirt he wore beneath it.

Guyon eyed Judith, his vision throbbing to the lead weight pressing down on top of his head, sensing a change in her but unable to fathom what or where. She returned with a sheepskin bed covering and flung it around his shoulders then turned away to mix a brew composed of poppy and feverfew in wine.

'So I did,' he said softly and bent to remove his boots. The room swam before his eyes. He reached to brace himself against the clothing chest and missed.

Judith spun round and, with a cry of consternation, ran to him. She saw a brighter red stain spreading on his chausses and his breath was coming in harsh, effortful gasps. He was on his knees. She knelt down and unlaced his chausses.

'Lie down,' she commanded.

'I don't--'

'Lie down!' she snarled and pushed him. Guyon subsided as though she had struck him with a mace and not the flat of her hand.

Efficiently she stripped him, her lips tightening at sight of the ineptly bound linen strip, newly wet and red. 'How long have you been riding with this?'

'Five ... six hours,' he muttered from between clenched teeth.

'You fool!' She left him to fetch a wad of clean linen which she folded into a pad and pressed hard to the leaking edges of the wound.

'No choice, not with Walter de Lacey and his cohorts howling for my blood.'

'It looks as if they got it!' she snapped, 'and perhaps your life with it.'

'I've taken worse.' He tried to smile and failed.

'I doubt it.' She leaned on the pad. 'You've lost more blood than a stuck pig, to look at you.'

'I knew it would come back to boars in the end,' he said and lapsed into semi-consciousness.

Judith was almost panicked into running for her mother.

Almost, but not quite. There was nothing Alicia could do that she could not and he was her charge. 'So much for subtlety,' she said shakily, looking down at her wet, bloodied bedrobe and smeared hands. Seeing that the bleeding had eased she left him in order to fetch the powdered comfrey root and fresh bandages, and sent her maid Helgund for a bowl of mouldy bread.

Returning to him, she shook the comfrey root into the wound, wondering with grim laughter how the fair Alais de Clare would have coped with such a situation. And the humour died as she wondered what Rhosyn ferch Madoc, mother of his child, would have done.

The maid returned with the bread and was told to fetch sheets and blankets. Judith braided her hair, pinned it out of the way and set to work with needle and thread. The Fleming's sword had caught Guyon's inner thigh where the hauberk was slit to allow for riding and there was no mail to protect his flesh. It was not a long wound, but it had pierced deep and, had it been two inches higher, she would not have needed to worry about the matter of subtlety, and neither would he.

Indeed, as she worked, the hysterical urge to giggle almost overcame her again, for kneeling between his legs she had a very intimate eyeful of what had previously so terrified her. Not so daunting now for the simple reason that she had control. If she wanted, she could leave him to bleed to death. It was a sobering thought. She swallowed her sense of the ridiculous and attended single-mindedly to her purpose.

Having dressed the main wound as best she could, for it was in a difficult position to bind properly, she examined him for signs of other injury.

Surprisingly, for a man so dark, Guyon was not hirsute; there was just a ridge of hair running from the centre of his breastbone down into the thick bush at his groin and she was able to scrutinise his flesh closely. It was something she had never done before, preferring to dwell in deliberate ignorance and he, sensing her fear and awkwardness, had seldom stripped naked in front of her.

It had never occurred to her to think of a man's body being attractive. A source of pain and brutalisation, so her previous experience said.

Now, almost in wonder, she traced with light fingers a thin white line scoring one muscular pectoral and one higher up, just grazing his jawbone.

Guyon groaned and opened his eyes. Judith sucked a sharp breath between her teeth and quickly withdrew her hand.

' Cath fach, ' he said weakly and found a smile from somewhere; this time his tone was not patronising. 'How bad is it?'

She could see his pulse racing in his throat and the sweat sheening its hollow. 'Bad enough.

You've lost so much blood that there's scarcely a drop left in your body and you're quite likely to develop wound fever. There were flakes of rust in the cut. I've packed it with mouldy bread, but it's hard to bind. I can't move you for fear that you'll open it again. You are going to be uncomfortable for no small time ... if you live ... and no, I am not japing with you. You had best prepare your soul.'

'What kind of comfort is that?' he said, tried to laugh and desisted, eyes squeezing closed.

Judith used the moment to scrub her face with her sleeve, refusing to be seen in tears. 'The only kind you'll get from me!' she snapped. 'And don't go to sleep. You've to drink this first.'

He lifted his lids, then with an effort widened them at the sight of the stone pitcher full to the brim and the cup she was filling from its bounty.

'All of it,' she said with a certain satisfaction.

'God's death, you evil wench. Robert de Belleme does not have sole monopoly on torture after all . What is it?'

'Boiled water, a sprinkling of salt and three spoonfuls of honey. It is to make up for the blood you've lost.'

'I'll be sick,' he said faintly.

Judith propped him up on the bolster and pillows fetched by the maid and rammed the cup under his nose. 'Drink it!' she commanded in a voice of steel that gave no indication that her knees had turned to jelly.

Something like surprise flickered across his pall or as he looked at her. 'I'm not worth it, Cathfach ,' he said huskily.

'You are when I think of the alternative,' she answered, and lowered her lids over betraying tears.

As Judith had predicted, the wound fever struck and sent Guyon's temperature soaring out of bounds and with it his grip on reality. Steadfastly she did what she could to bring the fever down, Alicia giving her aid and relief between times.

During one of his lucid periods they moved him to the bed and Judith forced him to drink ox-blood broth in an effort to give his body the strength to fight back. He was promptly sick and she went away and wept in a corner, then returned and gave him more of the salt and honey water.

Once, his eyes glittering like black glass, he looked through her and spoke in Welsh as if holding a conversation. 'It would still be rape. Not that much of a woman.' And another time, 'She's developing a sense of possession and it's becoming uncomfortable.'

Bouts of raving showed her facets of his life that he had previously hidden from her. His relationship with Rhosyn, twisting like the current of the Wye, bitter-sweet as gall and honey. Once he laughed and called her Alais and made a suggestion that both flustered her and filled her with curiosity. She had not known that such a position was possible. During an occasional lucid spell , he would recognise her for her own self.