The Running Vixen tor-2

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  Heulwen dismissed the maid and stepped into the tub, which was constructed from a large barrel with a bench lodged across its width. She seated herself upon it and pensively contemplated the bed and its silent occupant. ‘Adam, are you asleep?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want me to mix you something to ease the pain?’

  ‘No, it’s not necessary.’

  She gnawed her lower lip, wondering how to cut through this frosty reserve of his when all her compliance and concern were rejected as though she had offered him an insult. She tried again. ‘Adam, is there something wrong?’

  ‘No.’

  She heaved a sigh. ‘It’s impossible to talk to you when you keep pushing me away like this.’

  Suddenly he was no longer recumbent, but struggling to sit up, eyes wide and amber bright with indignation. ‘Is it any wonder? I haven’t needed a nursemaid since I was a brat of six. I’ve been coddled and swaddled and scolded like some puling infant, and every time that I’ve baulked, you’ve either wrung your hands or sulked!’

  The bath water swished as Heulwen grabbed the sides of the tub. ‘I am not the one who has been sulking!’ she flashed in return. ‘How dare you accuse me! If you are going to behave like a brat of six, then expect to be treated like one! You should be grateful for my care, not hurl it back in my face as though I had cursed you!’

  ‘Grateful!’ he choked. ‘Grateful, when it makes me feel like a leper receiving charity from the hands of a guilty patroness!’ Tears of frustration and rage glimmered in his eyes.

  Heulwen clenched her fingers on the side of the tub, throttling the wood in lieu of the man on the bed. ‘Should I then ignore your wounds?’ she spat at him. ‘Abet your stupidity by pretending they do not exist? Adam, you have been worrying me sick the way you drive yourself!’

  Abruptly, the anger drained out of him. He slumped back against the pillows, pain etching two deep lines between his brows. ‘Perhaps I do it because I dare not stop,’ he said wearily.

  Heulwen finished washing then left the tub and dried herself on the linen towels that the maid had left to hand. She donned a loose gown and said in a voice as weary as his own, ‘You should have taken one of those other girls that Henry was going to offer you. I will only make you unhappy.’

  He conceded her words with a lift and drop of his brows. ‘It’s a risk I’ll have to live with. Are you done? Don’t stand there shivering; come to bed.’ He shifted, making room for her.

  She hesitated, unable to fathom his mood.

  ‘Please.’ He raised his lids.

  ‘Oh, Adam!’ What she saw there brought her to the bed before she was aware of having moved. There was a lump in her throat. She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. It was meant to be a conciliatory gesture, contrition for hot words scattered abroad, but Adam’s arm banded hard around her waist, pulling her down and the kiss deepened possessively before he broke it to investigate her throat, pulling down the fabric of her gown, parting the deep opening to seek the swell of her breasts.

  Heulwen gasped, for this was not what she had bargained for in his tired, weakened state. His weight came clumsily down on top of her and her gasp became an exclamation as he entered her, because she was not ready and he was eager. She closed her eyes and made herself go as limp as a piece of tide-rolled flotsam. Instinct moistened her body and the discomfort diminished. Deliberately she arched and subsided to his rhythm, fanning her hands down over his narrow flanks. He was breathing in harsh, agonised gasps. Without fuss she increased her pace, urging him on, was touched by the edge of the maelstrom herself and felt pleasure burn within her, but before it could intensify or culminate Adam cried out and gripped her to him, his body shuddering with the violent ripples of climax.

  She listened to his breath whistling past her ear, felt the sharpness of stubble scraping her throat and the rapid rise and fall of his ribcage inhibiting her own attempts to breathe. ‘Adam, you’re squashing me,’ she told him in a calm, practical voice, and when he did not move, pushed at his broad shoulders, trying to lever herself out from beneath him.

  Through the numbness of aftermath and the zigzagging renewal of pain, Adam became aware of Heulwen’s struggles, and gathering himself withdrew from her. He rolled over on his back and with a groan bent one elbow across his eyes so that he would not have to look at her, for he was ashamed.

  ‘You’re bleeding again and no wonder!’ she reprimanded him. ‘Adam, you need not have been in such haste. If you bolted your food in the same way you’d have terrible indigestion, and serve you right!’

  Cautiously he took his arm away from his eyes, drawn to look at her but terrified of what he might see in her face. Her expression was cross; no, exasperated, and the look she returned him was speculative, assessing, as if an item taken for granted had suddenly sprung a hidden compartment. Nowhere did he read anger or revulsion. She adjusted her gown, left the bed to fetch bandages, then returned to him, shaking her head. ‘If only you’d taken the time to ask, I’d have shown you a way that would not have put pressure on that cut.’

  Shocked surprise replaced the bleakness in his eyes as he stared at her. For a woman to admit to such superior knowledge of the bedroom arts was beyond his experience, and probably that of most men. Whores, or at least the high-paid ones he had occasionally bought, were usually all soft, urgent compliance, begging and breathless in praise of his skill — and totally dishonest, he thought wryly. He had never owned a more permanent mistress to make him aware of anything different…until now.

  Heulwen lifted her shoulders in a gesture that strove for nonchalance but didn’t succeed. ‘I was married to Ralf for ten years. He was the kind of man who grew bored without novelty. Once the freshness of my virginity had paled, he amused himself by teaching me all the other devious little paths to the centre of the maze, and when I was accomplished the boredom set in. I was his mare and I was saddle-broken. He moved on in search of a new mount. In the end, the times he came back to me I could not bear it, knowing that I was just a “good ride” among countless others.’ Efficiently she rebound his wound with a roll of fresh bandage. Her hands were steady. It was her chin that wobbled.

  ‘Your father was right,’ Adam said gently after a moment. ‘You do know how to choose your husbands. We’ve all been bastards.’ He touched a tendril of hair that had uncoiled from her pinned-up braids. ‘If I behaved badly just now, forgive me. It was because I was afraid and overwrought. Starving men and feasts do not go very well together.’

  She blinked hard and turned away to remove her gown, surreptitiously wiping her face on it as she did so. She had cut through the protection of his indifference and seen what was layered beneath, but in doing so had revealed more of her own self than she wished to see. She felt soul-naked, vulnerable and frightened. Adam was watching her — she could feel his eyes boring into her spine. Quickly she pinched out the night candle so that abruptly there was darkness, but when he drew her against him, she went unresisting into his arms and rested her head upon his breast.

  He felt her cheek cool and damp and, stroking her hair, wondered if he was in heaven or hell.

  Chapter 15

  Miles felt the grey’s pace falter for the third time in as many minutes, and with a worried glance at the encroaching clouds, drew rein and stiffly dismounted, the pain in his joints a gnawing ache. He removed his gauntlets, to run his hand carefully down the stallion’s suspect near foreleg and, as he felt the hot, swollen cannon joint, knew the worst.

  ‘Trouble, my lord?’

  He faced the knight in command of his escort who was himself dismounting, and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘It’s an old strain. I thought he’d rested up enough after these weeks at Thornford, but obviously I’ve misjudged it. You’d best fetch the remount from the back of the wain and hitch him there instead. He’ll not bear my weight for the distance we’ve to cover before dark.’

  ‘Yes, my lord — are you all right?’

  Miles smiled a
t the young face, so earnest behind the helmet’s broad nasal. ‘Naught that a warm fire and cup of hot wine won’t cure, Gervase. My blood’s running as sluggish today as the Dee in midwinter.’ He struggled to pull his gauntlets back on and clapped his hands together to try and revive the feeling. There was pain today, a thin knife wedging itself between his joints and grating them apart. The biting damp and cold shredded his lungs as he breathed it in, and sent a chill shuddering through his body. He wondered briefly if it was the homing instinct of a dying animal that had filled him with the urge to travel down the march to his main holding, denying the weather and the exhortations of his granddaughter and her new husband that he remain with them at least until Candlemas. He went slowly towards the wain where Gervase’s squire was saddling up the brown remount.

  ‘You could always sit within, my lord,’ the young knight said, indicating the cart with its load of travelling chests and supplies pressed on him by Adam and Heulwen.

  ‘The day I cannot straddle a horse and take to one of those contraptions will be the day of my funeral,’ Miles said grumpily. Yes, he was feeling his years, but was not yet prepared to admit defeat.

  He set his foot in the long stirrup and allowed the squire to boost him into the saddle; suppressing a grimace of pain, he gathered up the reins. Expression blank, Gervase signalled to the wain driver and turned to remount his own destrier, but paused half-way into the saddle, his eyes widening in shock.

  ‘Ware arms, the Welsh!’ he cried, his voice whiplashing the cold air.

  Miles’s escort closed around him. He fumbled with his shield strap, swearing at the clumsiness of his gnarled, frozen fingers.

  The Welsh wasted no time on the niceties of battle. Arrows were the means of destruction, arrows aimed at the Norman destriers to bring them down. A shaft struck one of the geldings harnessed to the wain, but obliquely in the rump, causing pain but little serious damage. The horse threw up its head and, with a shrill whinny, tried to bolt. The driver cursed and strove to control its panic, but the horse was insensible to all save the instinct to escape from danger and the pain. Another arrow hit the driver, pinning his arm to the structure of the wain. He shrieked, and the reins were torn from his grip by the jerking of the injured horse. It shied into its companion, which, terrified by the lack of a guiding hand and the stench of fear and blood, skittered sideways and tried to bolt.

  Miles saw it coming, but could do nothing about it. He was aware from the corner of his eye of Gervase’s squire leaping to try and grab the reins, a warning shout tearing hoarsely from his throat, his eyes wide and appalled. As if in slow motion the baggage wain swayed and rocked like a drunkard caught out after curfew, and as the horses plunged and strained and kicked, it lurched and tipped over on its side, smashing its wooden-base frame into jagged spars, wantonly hurling its contents forth like tossed rags.

  The horses threshed free and with harnesses trailing bolted into the midst of the panic. A flying sliver of wood shot into the eye of Miles’s stallion, and with a scream of agony it reared, forehooves pawing the sky. Miles tried to cling on to the reins and pommel, but a lifetime separated his reflexes from Renard’s and he was flung from the saddle, landing hard against the shattered carcass of the wain.

  Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, it was quickly and bloodily over for the Normans. The Welsh leader, big and broad, with the legacy of the Irish Norse revealed in his sturdy bones and bright blue eyes, nudged his horse around a mailed corpse and drew rein before the smashed ruins of the wain where a dead youth, his neck broken, sprawled close to the stallion’s hooves. He pressed his knees and let the horse pick its way delicately around the body to the other side of the wain. For a moment he was filled with a sickening disappointment, thinking that his scheme had come to nothing, but then the man on the ground moved feebly and groaned.

  Davydd ap Tewdr dismounted and bent beside the old man to examine him with the swift thoroughness of one accustomed to doing battle on the run and dealing with its casualties. ‘Naught save cracked ribs and bruising,’ he announced with relief in which excitement trembled, ‘but he’s bruised and badly shaken. Twm, bring a blanket. We’ve got to coddle him as tenderly as one of our own until we can exchange him for Rhodri.’

  Adam couched the lance beneath his arm, held the shield well in to his left side leaving no gap, clapped his heels into the stallion’s belly and shouted, ‘Hah!’

  Vaillantif leaped from his hocks like an arrow from an arbalester’s wound bow and sped down the tilt yard. Adam’s lance struck the quintain a solid blow. He ducked as the sandbag flung round and parted the air over his crouched frame. He turned Vaillantif in a compact swirl of hooves and repeated the move with an effortless liquidity that had the spectators envying him his accomplished grace, and the young Welsh hostage viewing his own imminent attempt at the quintain with trepidation.

  Adam lit down from the saddle with only the slightest hint of stiffness to mar his movement and suggest a recently healed wound. Walking Vaillantif over to the youth, he handed the lance up to him. ‘Remember to keep your head down, your shield in tight, and don’t sit up too soon afterwards or you’ll get your skull well and truly rattled.’

  ‘And I aim for that red triangle in the centre?’ Rhodri sighted down the tilt, voice matter-of-fact, mouth nonchalant, eyes dubious in the extreme.

  ‘That’s right.’ The corners of Adam’s eyes crinkled for a moment before he schooled his expression to a teacher’s benign neutrality. ‘Not just the red triangle, but the dead centre of it, your enemy’s heart. Good fortune.’ He slapped the borrowed black destrier’s glossy shoulder and stepped back.

  Beside Adam, Heulwen paused on her way back from the somewhat neglected plesaunce where she had been planning some new herb beds. Linking her arm through his, she felt the small, unseen ripple of laughter make his body tremble.

  ‘What’s amusing you?’ she demanded.

  The fact that she had spoken to him gave him the excuse he needed to break into an open grin. ‘I know what’s coming next.’

  ‘What?’ She watched the young man’s throat move as he brought up the lance.

  ‘It takes months and months of practice at the quintain to avoid that sandbag. The beginners can’t divide their attention between aiming and ducking. They can’t co-ordinate it all. He’s in for a bruised back at the very least. Most likely he’ll end up on the ground.’

  ‘But I was watching you. It looked so easy!’

  He chuckled. ‘It is when you know how, but you learn the hard way, believe me.’

  ‘As in all things,’ she said with a small, almost sad sigh, and fell silent to watch Rhodri ap Tewdr gallop down the tilt to a rendezvous with his inevitable fate.

  More by luck than judgement, he almost succeeded in being one of the elite few to cheat the sandbag on their first occasion — nearly, but not near enough. The spear tipped the target just slightly off centre, its impact unbalancing him, so he was a fraction too slow when he ducked and the sandbag fetched him a buffet across the back of the neck that swiped him out of the saddle and jarred him to the ground.

  The black destrier jogged to a halt, and after one curious look over its shoulder, bent to nose at a tuft of grass. A grinning Austin ran out to catch the bridle.

  ‘Not bad,’ Adam admitted judiciously as he bent over the groaning, bruised young man. ‘We’ll have you jousting in Paris yet.’ He took the reins from Austin and enquired with the faintest hint of challenge, ‘Want to try again?’

  The Welsh youth threw him a burning glance, then turned aside to spit out a mouthful of bloody saliva. ‘Go to hell!’ he snarled, but struggled unsteadily to his feet. He caught his horse and pulled himself into the saddle, and prepared to attack the quintain once more.

  ‘Bravo, lad,’ Adam murmured, watching with calculating eyes the strike, the mistimed duck and the way he strove to stay aboard his mount before finally conceding defeat and sprawling on the tilt yard floor, the last of the wind driven from his lungs.

/>   Adam collected horse and spear and brought them back to him. Rhodri braced himself on his elbows, retching and fighting for air, wasted some of it on cursing Adam, but nevertheless got doggedly back on the horse as soon as his body was capable of obeying his will.

  Rhodri turned the stallion in a quarter-circle and galloped not at the quintain, but straight at Adam, the lance levelled and deadly. Heulwen screamed. Adam’s whole body tensed to move faster than he had ever done in his life if he had misjudged his man. At the last moment, the spear tip changed direction and the horse swerved. A string of foam globbed Adam’s gambeson. He smelt the strong odour of stallion sweat and was swept by hot breath as the destrier passed within a fraction of trampling him down.

  ‘Jesu God!’ Heulwen cried furiously. ‘He might have killed you!’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Adam turned to where two of the watching knights had seized Rhodri’s horse and were dragging him out of the saddle, pinning his arms and ramming them behind his back.

  ‘All right, Alun, leave him be.’ Adam gestured.

  They let him go, but almost as roughly as they had seized him. The young man shook himself like a dog and rubbed one of his bruised arms. Blood smeared and stained his chin. His lower lip was swollen and dark. ‘How did you know I would stop?’ he demanded belligerently.

  Adam smiled briefly. ‘A gamble on your nature and a guess that you wanted to live beyond a brief moment of glory.’

  Rhodri spat blood at Adam’s feet. ‘Rumour says that if my brother does not come, you are going to hang me from the highest tree on the demesne.’

  ‘Does it?’ Adam gave the youth a bland look, and taking Vaillantif ’s reins from Austin, swung smoothly into his own saddle.

  ‘He won’t swallow it, you know. He’d rather see me swing.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to hope the rumours aren’t true, won’t you?’ Adam took up a lance and turned from his hostage to canter with negligent grace down the tilt and lightly rap the shield in the dead centre, avoiding the sandbag with insouciant ease and swerving to an elegant halt at the end of the run. Rhodri scowled at him and touched his swollen, tender mouth.