Elizabeth Chadwick - The Wild Hunt

'Within my expense as well ?' Guyon asked. 'I know the place you mean. Lord Gruffydd's men came through the gap this spring and carried off some of our herds.'

'I am sure we can come to an amicable agreement,' Chester said with a benign smile.

'It might be possible,' Guyon fenced, knowing that look of old. Hugh d'Avrenches was no man's fool when it came to arguing prices and what he did not know the canny officials he kept around him did.

Chester's smile became a rich chuckle and his eyebrows flashed swiftly up and down. 'I thought we could ride out tomorrow, your health and your wife permitting. There are some fine hunting grounds up there on my side, too. I've recently built a lodge.'

'I may be able to escape for a few days,' Guyon answered cautiously. 'Providing your quarry is not boar.' His eyes went to the door. 'I don't hunt them for pleasure.'

'Does anyone?' Chester said, taking his meaning immediately, and changed his expression to one of beaming welcome as Judith entered the room followed by a maid bearing a flagon and cups.

LONDON

WHITSUNTIDE 1100

The cry of a boatman floated up from the river.

Judith set her sewing aside and went to the casement. Blossom was drifting down from the apple trees in the garth, as green-tinted through the glass as the bright feathers of the popinjay regarding her beadily from its perch. Being momentarily high in the King's favour, Emma's husband could afford to waste silver on such rare frivolities as green glass windows and exotic foreign birds.

She and Guyon were in London to attend the Whitsuntide gathering of the court, held this year at the newly completed Palace of Westminster designed by Rannulf Flambard, who took men's money and spent it in the name of the crown. The city was crowded, as packed to bursting as a thrifty housewife's jar of dried beans, and only the highest magnates in the land were granted sleeping space within Westminster and its immediate environs. The rest had to manage as best they could. Conveniently for them, Richard, Guyon's brother-in-law, owned a house on the Strand but a few minutes' walk from the new palace and was able, with a bit of a squeeze and a great deal of organising from Emma, to house Judith and Guyon and their immediate servants for the length of their sojourn. They were uncomfortable and cramped, but more fortunate than most .. fortunate being a relative term, Judith thought and scowled over her shoulder at the bed in the corner of the curtain-partitioned room.

It was Richard and Emma's and they had insisted on giving it up to herself and Guyon during their stay. A kindness that was a cruelty in disguise. Last night Guyon had sat up until the early hours talking to Richard and used the excuse of not disturbing Judith and the other sleepers across whose pallets he must step in order to reach his own bed as a reason to roll himself in his cloak among the other men in the hall .

Judith leaned her head against the wall and folded her arms, her eyes troubled. Ever since that incident in the bedchamber at Ravenstow, when his body had reacted to her touch and she had run from him in terror, he had taken pains to avoid the physical contacts of their relationship.

The morning after Earl Hugh's arrival, he had ridden out with him to inspect the proposed site of the new keep. Judith, her mind and emotions in turmoil, had not been so foolish as to try and stop him. Indeed, when he told her of his intentions, after one brief, involuntary denial she had listened quietly to his reasoning and to Earl Hugh's jovial bluster and agreed with them that they must go; she had even found a smile from somewhere and the will to be interested in what they intended.

In the morning she had served them both the stirrup cup and wished them good fortune with a smile on her lips, and when Guyon had leaned over Arian's neck to tug her braid she had suffered it with humour and forced a smile. It was only for a week at most that they would be gone, only a week she told herself, but it might as well have been a lifetime. She had sobbed furiously into her pillow. The mastery was no longer hers.

She had lost it the moment she ran from him in panic, her hands slick with aromatic oil and the feel of his skin still imprinted on hers.

In the event, it had been a full ten days before he returned, looking positively refreshed by his freedom. His skin had worn an outdoor glow and his manner had been ebullient as he discussed the plans for the intended new keep. It was literally a stone's throw from the Welsh border.

There were merlins nesting on the lichened rock face and wolf pugs in the mud of the river crossing at its sheer, boulder-tumbled face. To the west, the hill s of Gwynedd were a purple dragon-back in the distance. To the east lay the fertile Chester plain.

A price had yet to be haggled and the costings worked out, but both men professed themselves content that the project should commence by the early spring. So much Judith had heard from Guyon, his manner enthusiastic, nothing concealed. In a roundabout way, as it went from guardroom to hall servants to her personal maids, she also heard that Earl Hugh not only kept an excellent table at his hunting lodge, but also provided a comprehensive list of other creature comforts for the benefit of his guests. Apparently the girl had been well endowed and willing and Guyon's enthusiasm as boundless as that which he displayed when discussing the proposed new keep.

At first Judith had been hurt and jealous, but these emotions had been replaced by irritation with herself and a certain wry acceptance. At least he had not sought his relief with Rhosyn.

She did not think she could have borne that. And, the remedy she knew lay in her own hands could she but bear to reach out and grasp it, thorns and all . He still called her Cath fach and pulled her braid, but he was more wary of touching her now.

Fewer hugs and kisses. Sometimes he would look at her in a way that made her insides melt with fear and on those occasions his eyes were not on her face.

He lingered more with his men. Some nights he did not come to bed at all . He spent much of his time away, some of it genuine, concerned with the new keep and maintenance of those he already held, some of it an excuse to avoid her.

The easy camaraderie of the early days was gone. The thread that bound them was taut, vibrating with tension and stretching a little further each day. And if it snapped ...

Stifled by her thoughts, Judith opened the casement and looked out. The apple blossom, prematurely detached by a frisky breeze, drifted in pink-tinted snow across her vision. The sound of laughter silvered her ears and she saw that a boat was being manoeuvred into the steps at the foot of the garden, a private riverboat with protective bright canopy and furs piled within against the nip of the spring breeze.

The source of the laughter was an exceptionally pretty young woman wearing a cloak lined with vair. She sat on the nearside of the canopy and was leaning intimately into Guyon's shoulder. Her braids, exposed beneath her veil, were the colour of new butter against his dark cloak. He was laughing too and the woman leaned further to kiss him playfully on the lips as he rose to leave the boat. Richard, his brother-in-law, followed him, chuckling a remark and receiving a jesting slap from the woman in punishment. The last to leave was a slender young man who bent with polished courtesy to kiss the beringed white hand offered to him.

'That's Prince Henry's private craft,' Christen said, nudging her way in to lean beside Judith and watch the boat steer out into the swift, grey current of the river. 'He still sees Alais on occasion.'

'That is Alais de Clare?' Judith narrowed her eyes, but the blonde figure was too far away now to be freshly appraised.