Court of Foxes

by Christianna Brand

  Here, in this patch of mud, he had died, here in this ditch his body had lain concealed until they had loaded it into his own coach for the last drive home — Gereth Earl of Tregaron who, with so much dash and courage, had fought off, with only his brother at his side, a gang of men vastly outnumbering them. It was a stupid place for the gang to have chosen, that was the truth of it — they hadn’t allowed for the huge size of the coach, the road had been too narrow to give them space to manoeuvre their ponies. But for her purpose, it was perfect. The branch of an ash tree hung half-way across the road, one of the few tall trees in this stunted forest. She had marked it, though idly, at the time; today had built her plan upon it. Then the gang had been almost a score against four; this time she would be one against half a dozen or more. You couldn’t hold up coachmen if outriders were able to creep up behind you; you couldn’t deal with those inside the coach, while those outside remained uncovered. And, for good or ill, she must hold up the old woman inside this coach.

  Hold her up at gun point; force her to listen. ‘Your son is in the hands of Y Cadno’s gang. You must raise half an army, you must split it into three parts, one part must come one way, one another way, one a third — and by doing so you may take his captors by surprise. But you can do it only by recourse to these maps I’ve drawn out for you — knowing what little I do of the locality; here at least you will see the strength and weaknesses of their fortifications… And above all you must act soon, act immediately — even by sundown tomorrow I can’t swear that he’ll still be safe. I’ll go back to him now and guard him with my life; but both his and mine are forfeit if you don’t believe me, if you don’t act soon… She had made within herself sundry subsidiary plans — to secure, hide, destroy perhaps — at any rate in some way to reduce the gang’s store of ammunition; to scatter the ponies, to light fires if possible for the guidance of the approaching troops; above all to barricade herself in with him when all her arrangements should be made and with firearms, fists, feet, teeth, nails, defend him, lying there helpless, to the death. If only… If only the old woman came this way tonight. If only she could be made to listen and believe — and act.

  She hitched up the silk scarf which was tied loosely about her neck, until it covered mouth and chin, leaving only her nostrils free to breathe; and began with small, helpless kickings and clingings to fight her way inch by inch up to the overhanging branch of the tree.

  Far away, far, far away, the faint clip-clop, clip-clop of hooves; far away but drawing ever nearer, the jingle of harness, the rumble of iron-shod wheels on the pitted road. Down the narrow defile past the waterfall, through the ford in the broad valley below the old farm of Aberbranddu; the slower ascent of the hill up the roadway cut through the hanging forest — nearer and nearer. Her heart thudded in her breast till she thought sheer terror would suffocate her. She lay like a snake along the branch, perilously swaying with her weight, and watched two armed men ride beneath her in advance of the carriage. It was a post chaise, chosen presumably for even greater speed; far smaller and lighter than a coach and controlled not by a driver upon the box but by the rider of one of a pair of horses. She saw him now pass under the branch, gathered herself to spring — and as the shining black hump of the roof came directly below her, jumped — rolled, scrambled, fell, grasped at a rail, leapt to her feet at last and standing, legs wide apart to balance herself, cried out high and triumphant: ‘Stand and deliver!’

  The rider reined in his horses, confounded, not knowing whence the voice had come; the mounted guard doubled back but, as the gang had been on that other occasion, were impeded by the branches of trees growing close to the road’s edge and, also mystified as to the source of the danger, milled about, arms at the ready, looking helplessly around them. She flung herself flat on the hump of the roof, slithered forward on her stomach till she hung over the side and, head downwards, could look in at the open window; and thrust in a small hand, clutching the cocked pistol; and cried out again: ‘I have you covered!’

  And the black hat fell off, the mop of marigold hair tumbled all about her face as she hung there, head downwards: staring, petrified across the dark interior of the carriage to the window opposite. Framed in its square outline, lit by the swinging lantern inside the coach — the muzzle of a second pistol, pointing directly at her; and behind the muzzle, a small, strong hand, very steady; and behind both, a face with a scarf pulled up till she could see only a pair of eyes, brilliantly dark. A pair of bright, dark eyes that too well she knew. Gareth y Cadno. And he was laughing.

  How long she hung there, gazing back at him, the blood slowly mounting to her head, she would never know; but suddenly, close by, branches crackled and she had scrambled back to lie on her elbow on the roof of the carriage and was firing into the scrub beyond it. A man’s voice cursed: the voice of the Fox cried, ‘Splendid! Keep at them! I’ll attend to the coachman.’ In the chaise the old woman cackled out, commanding, ‘James! Drive on! Drive on!’ but nobody heeded.

  Behind her the trees moved and creaked again and she swung round on her stomach and saw a hand with a firearm pointing directly up and towards her; and fired and heard a man curse again and a horse’s wild whinneying as it scrambled and skidded with brightly shod hooves, unaccustomed, on the leaf-mould of the forest floor. And the rider was down from his horse and another man up; and a gay voice yelled: ‘Hold fast!’ and the pretty, shining thing rocked into motion. Men fell back as the two horses lunged forward, and they were away — tearing up the slope of the hill, leaving the outriders wounded, dismounted, paralysed with astonishment, standing feebly staring. She slipped and rolled, fell against the light rail that fenced the roof in, crawled up to her knees and, as the horses flagged, toiling more slowly up the steep hill and the men showed signs of mounted pursuit — clinging with one hand to the rail, fired back into the night behind her. They left their horses and dodged back into the shelter of the trees. Others might have crippled their beasts, but she would not; and anyway they were at the crest of the hill now and the carriage horses wildly galloping with stumbling feet down the rutted road towards the valley.

  At the cross roads, he pulled up the beasts to a trot, turned into a narrow lane so deeply rutted as to be almost impassable; brought them to a halt and, quick as his namesake, had leapt down from his mount, run round to the side of the chaise and commanded: ‘Down!’ And he held out his arms for her and she scrambled and slithered across the rail and over the side of the vehicle, swinging feet feeling for the rim of the high rear wheel. He caught her round the waist and lifted her to the ground, dumped her down unceremoniously and left her by the side of the lane, pushed his head in at the window and demanded: ‘Come now, ladies, quick! I have no time to lose — your valuables!’

  No squawking and squealing here! But as they rolled and tumbled along the road, the women must have been stripping off such personal jewellery as they wore, and now wordlessly placed it, wrapped in a handkerchief, into the outstretched hand. ‘Is this all?’ he said, examining it with disgust.

  ‘We are travelling,’ said the older of the three women, ‘not going to a rout.’

  He acknowledged it, ruefully — perhaps respectfully — laughing; flung open the door, raked at their feet — a whimpering maid drawing up hers, not daring to cry out however while her ladies sat so straight and indomitable — threw out into the grass by the wayside dressing chests, writing cases, a basket of eatables. ‘Unfasten the box,’ he said briefly to Gilda, ‘we may as well have that also.’ She ran to the platform in front and tugged at the leather straps securing the trunk, as black and humped as the roof of the chaise itself. As she worked, a memory came back to her and she called to him: ‘She arrives from abroad; has been posting all day and last night. She must carry a sufficiency of money.’

  ‘Good wench!’ he said; and to the old woman: ‘Come — hand over!’

  ‘How do you know this? How do you know that I come from across the water?’ But she fumbled in her skirts and from some dee
p pocket pulled out and stonily handed over a small soft-leather bagful of gold. ‘Now — you have it all. Let me be on my way, for my errand is urgent. I have nothing more to give you.’

  ‘You, Madam, however—?’ he said to the younger woman.

  ‘My mother has told you; it’s all we have. Let us go on now, sir, I beg of you… Have we travelled like furies these three days and nights,’ she said wretchedly to the older woman, ‘to be held up now, indefinitely delayed, by these — people? — the very same, for all we know, the very gang of assailants who set upon my poor brothers.’

  ‘I know nothing of your brothers,’ said Gareth quickly. ‘We’re no gang, as you see for yourself. This woman is my doxy; we work together and alone.’ And he drew away from the chaise and slammed the door to, and bowed with a flourish of the black tricorne hat. ‘You are free to continue on your way, ladies, as soon as your henchmen have courage to rejoin you. I, at least, will no longer detain you. Come,’ he said to Gilda, ‘we will withdraw from this scene of much ado, I fear, about very little,’ and he gave her a shove down the bank to the untilled fields where, ahead of them now, a line of trees, hazel and elder, edged the gentle stream of the river Cothi. ‘Let their men catch up with them, the booty will be safe enough — they’ll not wait to take the boxes with them. We’ll go down to the river’s edge and — after a short interval which I hope, my dear, may prove sweet to both of us — collect it and so back along the road and find our ponies and ride off whence we came.’ And he took her hand and ran with her across the broken ground till they came to the gleam of the river and there without further ado, threw her down upon the grassy bank and with wild kisses flung himself across her body. ‘Oh, my love! Oh, my love! All these hungry days and nights, how starved have I been for you!’

  She fought with him, struggling like a wildcat. Now, with her true love after all attainable, with the vigils of her attendance upon his helplessness so strong and sweet in her memory — now she was proof against the seduction, the desire and the melting. Now his hot, seeking mouth and ravaging hands only hurt and enraged her; his white teeth cut against her lips, his hard fingers bruised her tender breasts, she wondered how she could have come unscathed out of those other rough tumblings, what magic lay in the response to passion, that protected one from pain and the outward evidences of pain. But he cared nothing for her resistance, perhaps in his passion of desire at last to be fulfilled, was hardly aware of it. Only when he lay at last relaxed, did he say, half sullenly yet always with a touch of his own cool irony: ‘What change is here? The violence of your struggles on other occasions, has been matched at least by the ardour of your succumbing. Not this time, however.’

  She had leapt to her feet, was furiously pulling together her disordered clothes, hoisting up the boy’s velvet breeches, fastening the wrenched buttons of shirt and waistcoat. ‘You outrage me! I am not a slut and wanton, to be flung down on to my back in an open field, for you to take your pleasure of.’

  ‘You deceive yourself,’ he said. ‘Slut and wanton is just what you are, and most deliciously so; only you’re too much of a silly little prude to admit it.’

  She stood towering over him as he lay, looking up at her, now laughing. ‘I a wanton? When have I ever let you come to me without a struggle?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, laughing still, ‘but nothing to the struggles before you let me leave you! That night at the inn…’ And he caught at her hand and gave her arm a jerk that brought her, half sitting, half kneeling by his side as he lay on the green bank, looking up, teasing, in the moonlight. ‘You had me near exhausted…’

  ‘I was a married woman in the matrimonial bed,’ she said haughtily, interrupting. ‘And you supposed to be my noble husband.’

  ‘Are the embraces of a peer of the realm, then, supposed to be superior to those of a poor common highwayman? Who has, in this case, however, the very self-same attributes: the self-same arms, the self-same lips—’

  ‘Very well, don’t continue, I have no desire to list your anatomical perfections—’

  ‘Why no: being well aware of them already. But tonight, my love, seemed less than usually appreciative; fought and snarled and used teeth and claws like a vixen—’

  ‘Well, and so I am a vixen,’ she said, glad to leave an argument that might lead dangerously close to the subject of her love for David of Llandovery. ‘ “Lluinoges”, they call me now at the Court of Foxes — Madam Vixen.’*

  ‘Madame Vixen!’ He sat upright, dark eyes shining with delight. ‘A good name for you — who, after all, are the consort of the Fox. And fit consort too! What a piece of work was here with the post chaise, what despatch, what execution! Who taught you this trick, Madam Vixen, of attack from above? — and by the same token, who sent you alone upon this errand? Where is Dio, where is Sam? — ah, Sam was wounded, I recollect now — but where’s Willie-bach and James and Ivor and Huw Peg-leg and the rest of them?’

  ‘Ridden out towards Lampeter,’ she said and added sullenly, for now all the point of her desperate excursion was lost — and what would become of them? I am alone.’

  ‘Alone? But why? For what purpose?’

  ‘To rob the coach,’ she said. God forbid that he ever suspect the reality, with all her intended treachery towards himself and the gang!

  ‘But alone? Why alone?’ He caught her by the wrist, violently. ‘Come, answer me! What are you hiding?’

  Away across the field, the coachmen and outriders had rejoined their charge and the chaise was in motion again, rumbling towards Pumsaint and the security of Castell Cothi. The distant movement deflected his attention, gave her breathing space. She made up her mind. She said: ‘If I must tell you, why then — was trying to gather together sufficient money for bribery.’

  ‘For bribery? Of my people?’

  ‘They’re afraid: afraid at having taken back to the Cwrt, David of Llandovery — Lord Tregaron. They think there may be trouble. They’re planning to — get rid of him.’

  ‘David of Llandovery — my little brother Dafydd!’ And he turned suddenly, swinging viciously round upon her and his eyes were as cold and bright as black stars. ‘Ah! — so that’s it, isn’t it? For the moment I’d forgotten, so hot was I for you: but that’s why your struggles in my arms were not quite like the old struggles, nor the succumbing at all like the old succumbing. It’s Dafydd of Llandovery, my lord Earl of Tregaron whose embraces now sicken you for mine.’

  ‘I’ve never touched him, not in the way of love—’

  ‘And yet would risk your life to plunder a coach… By the same token,’ he said, getting up to his feet, ‘we had better collect the booty and find our mounts again. I have a long ride before me.’ He made no effort to assist her to her feet, simply started off walking across the moonlit field towards where the coach had been robbed, leaving her to follow, manfully striding after him across the rough, ridged surface, in the unaccustomed riding boots. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, catching up with him, walking alongside him, clutching his unresponsive arm. ‘They want to — make away with him.’

  ‘And so?’ he said coolly.

  ‘For God’s sake, Gareth! He is your brother.’

  ‘T’other side of the blanket. And would see me hanged a dozen times, wicked toby-man that I am, and never turn a fraternal hair. At least we’d give him a burial and not leave him to dance on a gibbet by the wayside, stripped of his hands and his tallow by the Glory men.’

  They had come to the place and there, sure enough, was the trunk, a black hump in the moonlight, with the boxes and cases. He kicked out an ungracious foot towards them.

  ‘That lot you may have and welcome; send men to pick them up in the morning. Women’s finery, I daresay, with which you may at least buy a little kindness from the ladies at the Cwrt. For the rest…’ He delved his hands into his pockets and produced the handkerchief wrapping the jewellery and the bag of sovereigns. ‘Not much. Good pieces but few, such as sensible women would wear upon a journey. But there’s qui
te a little gold.’ He counted it over, appraising it. ‘I’ll make equal division, I keeping the gold since disposal of jewels isn’t easy in my present condition. You may have the gew-gaws.’ His cold face relaxed a little as he watched her stow away the bag in her breeches pocket, bending her leg, knee forward, to get at it, like a boy. But he started off immediately, again without ceremony, along the road to where their ponies dozed and dreamed in the darkness. She followed, trotting anxiously after him. ‘In this matter of Lord Tregaron—’

  ‘It’s all nothing to me,’ he said, walking steadily on.

  But she persisted. ‘And yet it is something to you; or you wouldn’t be so angry. But — I don’t understand why. You and I have never loved one another, have been nothing to one another—’

  ‘I’d hardly say that,’ he said. ‘But as to love…’ And now he did come to a halt, standing facing her in the narrow, rutty roadway as it ran between the little scrub oaks. ‘As to love — why, Madam, if I may ask you so — why did you marry me? For my part there were other reasons, which by now you doubtless appreciate. But you — rich, highly born, free of other entanglements — loving me so little as you do, and make no secret of it — why did you marry me?’ He added with deliberate brutality: ‘The more so as you had already cast your lecherous eye upon this other.’

  And indeed, short of telling him the truth, it was difficult to explain. She essayed a little shrug. ‘He was promised elsewhere.’