Bond of Blood

by Roberta Gellis

  Chapter 8

  For all her frail looks, Leah was actually about as delicate as one of her father's field oxen. Twenty minutes after Lord Radnor left she was up, completely refreshed. What she had wanted all along was a chance to get at Cain's clothing, of which she was desperately ashamed, and she now attacked with enthusiasm the load of baggage the Earl of Gaunt had brought with him, which had been placed in their room. All of the garments were removed and examined and clucked over with frowns and head-shakings. In her opinion every article Cain owned would have to be torn apart and resewn properly as well as trimmed and embroidered.

  Radnor returned to find his wife on her knees amid a welter of clothing. He had just passed several of the most harrowing hours of his life. Philip of Gloucester had been in particularly bad condition, and his struggles to concentrate and communicate were horrible to witness. The litter in the room tore at Cain's jangled nerves and the suspicion that Leah had tom apart his baggage looking for jewels or money—it had happened to him in the past—brought a swift and violent reaction.

  "What are you doing with my things?" Cain bellowed. Leah whirled to face him. She opened her mouth to explain, but the impact of his appearance brought entirely different words. "Oh my God, what has happened? What is wrong?"

  "Nothing," Radnor said bitterly. "Nothing is wrong. Is not God in His heaven? Does not that make all right with the world?"

  A fit of trembling seized him. Leah stood frozen. What should she do? Would it be better to ignore what she saw and explain what she was doing? Dared she ask again what his trouble was and try to soothe him? Very slowly Leah approached her husband; his lips drew back from his teeth in a feral snarl. Leah stopped and clasped her hands before her in an attitude of prayer.

  "Will you not sit down, my lord?" she asked in a trembling voice. "Will you not tell me how I have offended you so that I may try to amend it?"

  But Leah knew she had done nothing wrong; she recognized the expression of impotent rage on her husband's face. It was the same expression her father wore when something he could not control went wrong, and it ordinarily preceded his most dreadful excesses of cruelty. To her amazement, for Leah had already braced herself in terrified expectation of a brutal beating, Cain covered his face with his hands for a moment and then looked blindly around the room as if he had never seen it before. He looked so stunned and confused that Leah took a good grip on her courage and approached him again.

  "I pray you, sit down."

  Cain allowed himself to be led to a chair and sat. Leah knelt before him and took his hands in hers. For a long time she said nothing; her knees began to ache on the hard stone floor and she moved almost imperceptibly trying to ease them. Radnor sighed heavily and focused his eyes, which had been staring into space.

  "What were you doing, Leah?" he asked quietly, If she was greedy, he had better know it.

  "Sorting your clothes, my lord, so that I could tell what must be done to them and what more you will need."

  He looked puzzled.

  "The other men," she explained gently, "are dressed much differently. The cloth of your garments is so fine, it would be a shame upon me if it were not made as well and bedecked as well as theirs."

  "I see. I thought—never mind." If the idea of money had not entered her head, he would not put it there.

  "You are wringing wet. Let me bring you water to wash with and fresh clothing."

  "Very well." Leah released Cain's hands and prepared to rise, but he suddenly pulled her back. "No. Stay with me just now."

  There was another silence, short this time. Cain lifted Leah to his knees and pulled her close against him. There was nothing sexual about his desire for her now, only the desperate need to feel the warmth of her healthy, living body against his after the hours of contact with Philip's dying flesh. Leah put her cheek against her husband's neck. She could feel the quick pulse of his blood, a little uneven still. Not like my father, she thought, he is not like my father. He did not hurt me although he was mad with rage. He spoke the truth; I need not fear his frown. Her hand stole up from her lap to caress his cheek, to feel gently for his eyes and press them closed, to pull his head so that it rested against hers.

  "My lord, I have been looking— Oh, I beg your pardon." Edwina had come with an urgent message directed to Radnor's attention, but Leah's attire, her position in Radnor's lap, the mussed bed, all led to one conclusion. Edwina was embarrassed by her intrusion and prepared to back out of the room.

  "Come in, madam, I pray you." Radnor read her expression quite right and his face was suddenly ruddy with the rush of his blood. "Did you want me, or your daughter, or both?"

  "I have a message for you, my lord. A courier from your estates, I believe." Edwina stared as she handed the scroll of parchment to him, but not at Radnor. Leah had to be pushed to make her get off his lap! Not only had the girl seemed perfectly content to continue as she was, but now she had moved behind his chair and was lifting his hair, still wet with perspiration, off his forehead.

  Radnor for his part seemed neither angry nor impatient at Leah's fussing over him. He had broken the seal of the letter and started to read, but he reached up with his free hand to stroke his wife's arm. Edwina watched them with bitterness. She had not been prepared for the pain of losing her daughter so completely. She had been so sure that her own daughter could not be like the coarse maidservants and "enjoy love," that she had not feared that Leah would truly mourn her husband.

  "When you have time, Leah, I would like a few words with you." Edwina could not keep the coldness from her voice.

  Cain had finished reading and was staring straight ahead with a totally expressionless face. At Leah's gentle touch, however, he twisted to look at her. She repeated her mother's request and Edwina's lips tightened. Cain nodded. Permission received, Leah turned to her mother.

  "Very well," she said softly, "I will come straight away." Instead of following Edwina when she left, however, Leah shook her head gently. "I wonder what makes my mother so strange? Well, it is no great matter. Come, dear lord, let me bring you washing water and fresh clothes."

  "Never mind that," Cain snapped. "Send a servant for the water and just lay out what you want me to wear. I am accustomed to caring for myself."

  "I know, my lord." Leah, still behind Radnor's chair, pressed his head back until it rested against her breast. "But now it is not fitting. I am here only to serve you."

  Radnor closed his eyes. After what he had just read, how could he believe in Pembroke's daughter? The seeds had been sown, not in Fitz Richard's land but in his own, and already they were full-grown and bearing fruit. It was so sweet to lie thus. Her arms were sweet, her lips, her eyes so innocent. Surely Philip must be wrong. Pembroke was involved in something, yes, but Cain could not bear to think the girl knew anything of it. He lifted his head finally and squared his shoulders.

  "It is nearly time for the evening meal, Leah. You had better go to your mother." He twisted around to face her, smiling faintly. "My trouble has passed," he lied. "You may go."

  "Yes, my lord, I will. After I have seen to your needs."

  Shortly after the servants removed the broken meats from the groaning tables, Radnor crossed the hall to seek out a quiet spot. His castellan at Penybont, Owen of Wells, had written to say that the tribes of Rhayader on the border of his holding were restless. If Rhayader rose, that rebellion might easily spread east and set the whole land on fire. No doubt Pembroke and Chester did not believe this to be true, but they had not spent their lives fighting the Welsh. Blank-faced and blank-eyed, Cain fought his battle with desire. No matter how much he wanted to ignore Owen's warning, he could not do it. He would have to leave his own wedding feast and attend to the Welsh. They had done it deliberately, Cain realized, stopping stock-still in his pain. Pembroke and Chester, his father-by-marriage and his godfather, had chosen this moment because they believed he would not leave his new-wed wife and his wedding guests to go to war.

  The price of Ra
dnor's abstraction was that he was snatched by Hereford into the wild romp of "Hoodman Blind" because rough games had taken the place of eating and drinking for amusement. Cain might well have refused to play because romping hurt his crippled foot, but his bitter decision had been made and he wanted relief. Moreover, Leah was already engaged in the game. Forgotten were her womanly dignity, her new cares and joys. Skirts lifted to show very pretty ankles, braids flying, she was shrieking with laughter, running and jumping like a ten-year-old. Cain was enchanted. He was so enchanted that he forgot to duck and was caught by the hoodman whose vision was obscured by having part of his tunic drawn forward over his face. Now the hoodman needed only to guess whom he had caught, and the victim became in turn the hoodman blind. Guessing in Radnor's case was no feat at all. His size and facial scarring were distinctive. Moments later, he himself was blinded and groping about for a victim. He heard Hereford laughing and protesting.

  "No, no, Lady Radnor, you must stand well back. There are parts of you his lordship knows entirely too well, and you have a look in your eye that bodes the sport no good. You will let him catch you out of sympathy."

  Radnor swung his blinded head about, listening. His ears were well trained, but the hall was so noisy they did him little good. His step was too slow; he could only depend upon his immense reach and the lightning-swift hand action that years under arms had given him.

  Someone was very close—a woman, by the suppressed titter that he heard. Just as he lunged, a ravishing scent that was horribly familiar assailed him, but his physical action was quicker than his mental recoil. His hand had fallen on a shoulder and breast all too well known; he had Joan of Shrewsbury. She pushed him, very lightly and obviously with no intent to free herself, for she had no objection at all to the rude handling that was customary when a man seized a woman. It was all Radnor needed, though. For the first and only time in his life, he thanked God for his lameness and stumbled. His hand, which could easily have held her, fell away. He spun about and began to grope in the wrong direction to a chorus of howling laughter, but it was better to be a fool than a dupe.

  He would have liked to catch Leah. To run his hands over her under the eyes of a room full of people would lend spice to what was his, but he could hear by a confused murmur that she was being kept out of his way. The rushes rustled softly and gave another victim to him. Radnor threw his arms wide and grappled like a bear before the person who was near could land a blow or trip him up, a customary proceeding in that rough game. The push he received this time was not at all gentle and rocked him on his heels, sending a searing pain up his left leg, but now he laughed and held on because he could feel the short-cropped hair of a man under his chin.

  "Hereford," he chortled, knowing the slight form with the strength of a wild horse.

  When he was freed of his hood, he stood watching for a while longer well out of reach. Hereford caught Elizabeth, Chester's eldest daughter, not entirely by chance. He felt her hair and face and shook his head sadly; he slid his hand over her hip and thigh murmuring, but loudly enough for all to hear, that those parts were not familiar to him. Then he gripped her about the waist so that she could not wrench herself free and felt her breasts.

  "No," he said, "I have never touched these before."

  The crowd roared appreciation and ribald jests. Radnor looked down, tensed to move away, as someone nestled to his side, and then relaxed when he saw Leah. They watched together as Hereford lifted Elizabeth's face and kissed her lingeringly on the lips.

  "Ah—Elizabeth Chester," he cried, "with the sweetest lips this side of heaven."

  Cain smiled down at his laughing, pink-cheeked wife. "Do not let them catch you, or they will make that pretty white face as red as a beet." He tweaked a braid, treating her like the child she still partially was. "Have a good time. This sport is too rough for me."

  Later, when they were in bed, Leah held him off gently with one hand. "Cain, why does the Countess of Shrewsbury interest herself so greatly in her husband's affairs when she cares nothing for him?"

  "What?"

  "Have I said something wrong, my lord? She makes no secret of it, so I thought it no harm to ask." This, thought Leah, needled into action by the obvious by-play between her husband and Joan of Shrewsbury, was going to put a fine light on Joan's character. Maybe Cain would think twice about having ado with such a blabbermouth.

  "What do you mean, she makes no secret of it?"

  Leah looked a little apprehensive, an emotion she did not feel just then. "Well, I do not know if it be fit. She spoke as a woman among women and I think to me—because I was a young bride—perhaps she thought I needed to be warned that men are sometimes harsh because she knew nothing of my father. She told me … private matters."

  "About Shrewsbury? About me?"

  "A little about each, but that was not what she really wished to speak about. It seemed to me that she wished to know if you had told me aught of your plans."

  "Ohhhh. And what gave you such a thought?"

  "Because she asked me in passing, as if it were a matter of no moment, about your affairs."

  "And what did you reply?" Cain was startled by the intelligence in his wife's eyes.

  "That I knew nothing. Which was true, but I would have said the same in any case. Your affairs are no business of hers. It could be that she did not speak the truth about—about the matters of her bed and only wished to draw my confidence because it was my first time and she thought, like my mother, that I would be angry because you hurt me. I would swear though that it was truth and that though she loathes him, she would have run posthaste to her husband with anything I told her. Mayhap I do her an injustice, my lord, and she was only a little talkative because of the wine."

  Cain was watching open-mouthed and made no reply, so Leah continued after a little pause. "I almost thought that she wished to make trouble between us—but that could not be so. It must be that she wishes to know where you will next move for Shrewsbury's sake. Therefore, I should have something to tell her, my lord."

  "Tell her! What would you tell her?"

  "Anything you wished me to say, but I would not say that you had given permission. I would say that I heard you speak of these things with my father and yours."

  Pembroke's daughter, born a liar and a cheat! "Even so," Cain said coldly, "why should Lady Shrewsbury, or any other person, believe you?"

  "My lord, I do not say she will believe, but indeed she may. In any case she will talk and much can be learned from lies. And, if I am skilful in reply, hesitating as if the confidence was drawn from me unaware—have I spoken amiss, my lord?"

  "My God, I would never have believed it. I have read it, but I could not credit—"

  "What? How have I erred?"

  Cain laughed a short bitter laugh. "Not even Pembroke could have taught you so much. I believe you have spoken the truth of your heart, if there is truth in the heart of a woman. But fifteen years old, and wise as the serpent—and as evil."

  "Evil!"

  "Ay, they say women are born with the knowledge of evil in their bodies, and that they save this to give their daughters to use as a weapon against men. The men children they bring strong, but unknowing, into the world. Man must learn evil, to his bitter cost, mostly from women, but sometimes from other men who have learned. Have you learned this from your father to use against me?"

  Leah cried out in protest against this injustice. "But it was for you, my lord. For myself I care nothing about such matters. You said before you left when we were betrothed that I should listen in the women's quarters, and I have thought much over every word you said to me—"

  "So Eve spoke when she bade Adam eat the apple of sin—for you, my lord, for you. Nay, Leah, do not weep. It is no fault in you that you are as God made you."

  He took her into his arms, knowing that he should try to impress upon her the idea that her father was no good guide to follow, knowing that he should tell her that he was leaving in the morning to put down the
rebellion that her father had started in Wales. While he was seeking for words, her appearance warmed his blood. She must be ignorant of Pembroke's tainted plans and in a way innocent too, he thought. She would not show the turnings of her mind if she wished to use them against him. He leaned over and, with his lips, touched her breast where it began to swell near the armpit; he breathed her light lavender scent.

  Leah lay staring into the unsnuffed candles and thinking that it had been easier this time. The trouble was that now Cain was through with her she found herself wakeful and tense. She wanted something more of him. Cain had turned onto his side, away from her, as was his custom, and Leah touched him gently, He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  "Are you asleep, Cain?"

  "How can a man sleep when you hiss in his ear. Let me be!" Leah moved away at once, but she felt alone and sad and began to weep softly, "Curse you, woman, what ails you? If I hurt you, I could not help it. It will grow easier for you in time."

  Leah buried her face in the pillow to smother her sobs. After a while she stopped crying and lay listening to Radnor's even breathing, broken every so often by a low moan. She could see the moonlight shift on the floor.

  "Leah." It was spoken so low it could not have wakened her if she slept.

  "Yes, my lord?" Cain did not answer at once, and Leah felt him shift his position in the bed. "What is it?" she asked anxiously. "Is there something wrong?"

  "No." He sounded hesitant, and weakly putting off the moment of revelation, said, "I am hungry."

  Leah sat up and began to feel for her shoes. "I will fetch something for you. I pray you, do not be impatient, it will take me time to find the way with all the sleepers in the passage."

  By the time Leah returned, Cain had found flint and tinder and had lighted some new candles to replace those that had burned out. He was sitting up, a robe thrown over his bare shoulders, and when Leah entered he pulled the bedclothes so that they covered his feet. Leah hesitated infinitesimally, her throat closing with fear. Was one leg shaggier than the other? Could that dark, rounded shadow glimpsed for an instant be a horn hoof? A half-frown brought her hurriedly to the bed. He was already cross with her; if she showed fear or consciousness of what he was hiding, the worst might befall her at once.