Court of Foxes
Page 29
She snatched her hand away from him. ‘Give me back my property!’
‘It’s the property of the Lady Blanche Handley and of the Earl of Tregaron and his family — none of whom, I sadly fear, would willingly see it in your hands.’
‘It’s as much mine as yours at least; for I robbed them of it. Give it back to me—!’ And she launched herself suddenly upon him, mad with mortification and rage, fighting him with fists and elbows, reaching up to grab at the chamois bag held high above his head while with his right hand, laughing, he fended her off. ‘Give it to me! Give it to me!’ Her hands battered at his breast but he had got his fingers into her hair, holding her back and away from him. ‘Oh, Madam Vixen, my Vixen, you are losing your cunning! I’ve seen you do better than this and with Blodwen herself who can fight any man and have the better of him.’ And as her arms dropped wearily to her sides and she pulled away from him, defeated, he slid the gold and jewels into his own saddlebags; and said to her softly: ‘You have, after all, other weapons than your fists, my love.’
So she went to him: put her two hands behind her back and went close to him, stood up close to him and put her mouth against his mouth and, not kissing him, pleaded: ‘Gareth — give it back to me!’
He did not put out his arms to her; stood as rigid as she and only did not move away, or turn aside his head. He said: ‘Give back what?’
‘Give me back the ruby ring,’ she said.
It was night and the stars were bright when they rode at last along the rough mountain track he had followed to cut her off at the boulder. ‘So, my Vixen — I have you and hold you at last!’
She sat the pony easily, one knee crook’d at the pommel because of impeding skirts, swaying laxly as it picked its sure way among the rocks and stones in the tussocky grass. By now the coaches would long ago have reached Castell Cothi and hurrying servants would be bringing reviving drinks and good, hot, comforting food; there would be huge fires in the splendid rooms where they sat in their velvet and brocades; upstairs, the great marriage chamber would have been prepared for her — for her! — with lacy pillows and silken sheets… And at home in the Bijou, there might still have been the frilly white bed and a fond mother fussing and clucking, and undemanding love and easy laughter with no wearisome standards of pretty behaviour any more than of courage and daring; but all this too she had thrown away. Ahead — ahead lay the fortress home, the roughness, the discomforts, the ever present danger from the law, the cold fear at the pit of the stomach as one rode out with the men, the dread if one stayed at home that disaster might befall and few of them return… ‘You have me,’ she said, riding along the mountain path at Y Cadno’s side. ‘Whether you hold me — that’s another thing.’
He brought his pony up close to hers and caught at her so that she half lay back against his shoulder, his arm about her. ‘You may fight,’ he said, ‘as you ever have; but this time — as I hold you now, so I hold you for ever. For you forget, my love — the Fox Cub.’
‘You have others I suppose,’ she said indifferently.
‘One, which I have this moment given away. For the rest — a litter run about the Cwrt which their mothers tell me are mine; but all those that have any certain claim on me are females. So this sole one — and born in wedlock, imagine it! — do you think I should ever let its mother go?’
‘You let me go just now: took my ring from me and sent me packing.’
‘I thought you wanted to be with — that other one, with Dafydd of Tregaron. But you don’t belong there, and at last you know it. You belong with me.’
She sat up straight. ‘I belong nowhere. A fox runs free — and a vixen too.’
‘Not when she has cubs.’ He put his arm about her and brought her back to him again. ‘You are free no longer. I am master now. I am Y Cadno, I am the Fox and the cub is mine; and therefore, I warn you again — I will never let you go.’
Oh, well: if that were all! She said nothing, leaned back softly against his arm, the two ponies ambling gently side by side, flanks rubbing, along the starlit mountain track. The cub is mine… Laughter began to bubble up in her, the old, effervescent, irrepressible, naughty family laughter of those other careless days. Brown Eyes was gone; and bright dark eyes looked down into hers. But hadn’t her mother often told her — was it, after all, only an old wives’ tale? — that a child could not be born with blue eyes unless its parents both had the same.
‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked, smiling, his arm about her shaking shoulders.
‘Dream your dreams,’ she said. ‘The vixen runs free.’
A rough phonetic guide to Welsh pronunciations — (I think people don’t realise how much Welsh is still spoken, with English only as a second language, hardly used inside the home. In many parts, the children don’t understand English at all until they are taught it as part of the lessons in their ‘big schools’ — having so far had all their education in Welsh.)
The accent is almost invariably on the second last syllable.
The difficult double l is best pronounced by putting an h before the l (and not, as too often advised, a c or th.) Llan is pronounced H-lan, not Clan or Thlan.
The double d is pronounced like the hard th in ‘the’. The double f is pronounced f, the single f is pronounced v. Y is pronounced uh and the confusing w is pronounced like the short double o in ‘room’ — as opposed to ‘loom’.
So:
Llandovery is pronounced — Hlan-duvvery.
Dafydd, the Welsh form of David — Da-vith (with the hard th.) The a short as in ‘Dad’. Dai, the diminutive, as ‘dye’.
Y Cadno, the Fox — Uh-Cadno.
Cwrt y Cadno — Coort (sounding the r) uh Cadno.
Lluinoges — a vixen — hluinogess.
Bach, fach — the masculine and feminine of an endearment peculiar to Wales, perhaps most approximately ‘little one’, ‘my pet’ or even ‘darling’. The French ‘cheri’ may come nearest to it. Pronounced bar-ch (not sounding the r) or like the German name Bach. Fach would be vach.
Dio y Diawl — Dee-oh uh Dee-owl.
Diw, diw — as it were, ‘Lord, lord!’ To rhyme with ‘dew’.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1969 by Christianna Brand
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
ISBN 978-1-4532-9043-9
This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY
CHRISTIANNA BRAND
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com offers readers essenti
al noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia