Bond of Blood

by Roberta Gellis

  "Cain, Pembroke must be kept out of this. What smirches him, smirches our name too. If it were not for the dower … We have won our way up from nothing on great dowers, but he is worse than I thought." Anxiety filled the old man's eyes, but he turned them to the ground so that his son might not see. "The more I think on it, the more I wonder why he offered so much."

  Again Cain's lips parted to tell what he was coming to believe was really true, that Pembroke intended to seize the Gaunt estates through Leah. A new consideration held him silent.

  His father's father had been the holder of a small barony in William the Bastard's time. He had taken to wife a Welshwoman and, through a set of fortuitous circumstances, which had robbed her of every male relative, had inherited the entire property of the family. So much had been chance, but the first Gaunt, not yet an earl, had not needed a second lesson. In turn he arranged that his son too be married to a Welshwoman, and this time there was no need for fortuitous circumstances. With great deliberation, that first Gaunt had murdered his son's father- and brothers-by-marriage. Thus Radnor Forest and the adjoining properties had come undivided and uncontested into the family. Moreover for his great work in subduing the Welsh, he had been made an earl.

  Cain assumed that his father knew what had been done, although he had never spoken of it. If he had connived at it, perhaps he had already been punished or perhaps his punishment was yet to come. In any case, Cain would not torment the man who had just called him son by recalling that old shame.

  "One thing more," Gaunt said.

  "Yes?"

  "Let not that pretty piece of a wife distract you from this affair. Her head hangs on it as much as yours."

  Radnor lowered his voice and fixed his father's eyes with his. "Do you too advise me to leave her here?"

  "Certainly not! If I were going to Painscastle as was first intended, I would take her and set her there, but I cannot now spare the time. Watch her close, very close."

  "It must be as you say, I am besotted." Tension crept back into Radnor's eyes, changing their shape. "I cannot help it, I believe her to have no part in her father's plans—be they what they are."

  "For the love of heaven," Gaunt said in a disgusted voice, "how I ever came to have a son so soft-headed and softhearted, I will never know. Only an idiot like yourself could think of employing such a simple babe for any purpose beyond warming a bed and breeding an heir. He did not offer that dower for nothing, I say, and somehow he looks to make a profit of her. Perhaps the bride price you paid for her has whetted his taste and he thinks to have another or even to have back the dower by keeping her from you. It needs no great mind to see that you would sell your soul to have her near. Cain, you are a greater fool about money than about friendship, and that is saying enough. I tried to tell you that you should not make yourself look so soft a mark when you came to his terms for the sake of the girl's bright eyes."

  Lord Radnor scowled, furious with himself for being a gullible fool and listening to Llwellyn's tales. Of course that was what Pembroke wanted. He knew that neither Cain nor Gaunt really cared much about money, so it was safe to bleed them. Surely Pembroke was too lily-livered to plan Radnor's death, especially while his father still lived. Perhaps he believed that there was little love between Gaunt and his son, but the loss of his only heir would be reason enough for Gaunt to tear Pembroke and his property to little pieces, and in no quick or merciful way.

  "Well, Cain, that is all. Have you money enough for your purposes? There may be some buying of men and voices to be done to bail Chester out of his trouble or if the question of promising the succession to Henry comes up."

  "Yes, and I can draw on the moneylenders if I need more. You have reminded me, though, have you a box of silver?"

  "Silver, yes, to pay for field forage. What is your need for silver?"

  Radnor looked a little shamefaced. "My wife would have needles and thread. These she asks for from me as if I were used to carry them or conjure them from the air. She is young. Let her have the pleasure of buying them for herself."

  Gaunt burst out laughing. "You are ten times a great fool, but this I will let you learn for yourself, you can afford it. Oh, madman, to give money to a woman! How much do you want?"

  "About two pounds. For more I can break gold at a moneylender's."

  Gaunt laughed again and nodded, dismissing his son with a friendly blow on the shoulder. Why he was presently in charity with Cain, he did not know. Usually his son's pleasure aroused him to protective brutality. He should have reminded him that about half of all young brides, his own mother included, died in childbearing. Well, let him learn that the hard way too, if learn it he must.

  Leah had come into the great hall flushed and flustered. Her delay had been caused by Edwina who had come to say goodbye in a more private spot than the hall or courtyard. Leah loved her mother deeply, in spite of their recent differences, and was greatly moved by Edwina's obvious distress, but the back of her mind kept urging her to hurry because Lord Radnor wanted her. She was not yet of an age that would permit her to mask her feelings from her intimates, although she was rapidly perfecting her ability to do so in public, and her mother read the divided attention in her transparent face.

  Tears rose to Edwina's eyes. Nothing she had said or Radnor had done seemed able to alter Leah's love. Plainly the girl doted on her husband; plainly she would suffer when he was killed. Edwina was coming to a desperate decision because her love for her daughter was stronger than her pride or her fear, but she wished to test Leah's bond to Radnor. Perhaps a hint of permanent separation from her mother would show where her real affections lay.

  "How can you be so unfeeling?" Edwina asked. "How many blows have I taken for you? Who has loved you so long and so well? Child, we may never see each other again."

  "Oh, Mama," Leah cried, startled into giving her mother the name she had used most tenderly in childhood, "never say so." Now she ran to Edwina to be hugged and kissed. "Mama, mama, that cannot be true. Not even father could be so cruel, and my lord is so kind. He would never forbid me to visit you. Painscastle is so very near, not more than a day's ride. I am sure we will be together again soon. I could not bear it." And Leah was also in tears.

  For a long moment Edwina held her daughter in her arms, silently struggling with her fears. She had not heard from Leah what she wanted to hear. She could not bear to see Leah hurt without having tried to help her, yet if Pembroke discovered that she had divulged his plans her punishment would be terrible. And if she told Leah and Pembroke was foiled through her, there was truly little chance she would ever see her again. Her decision wrenched her very being awry, and in the final moment her courage failed so that she compromised.

  "Do not become involved in your husband's affairs; seek to know nothing of them. Try to wean your affection from him. Moreover, never come here alone, and if a messenger should come from your father or from me and ask you to go aside with him, by the Holy Name, do not do it. To seem to know anything of your father's doing will be death to you, for he purports to bring you here and keep you from your lord."

  "No, he could not.” Leah was convinced her husband controlled the world, but she was afraid to claim much influence with him. “For pride alone Cain would have down the castle, even if he had no care for me, and, Mother, in spite of what you have said, I am sure he has a kindness for me."

  "As a breeder of young. Hush, quietly. There is no need for the maids to hear. How could Lord Radnor have down the castle if you are in it? He will pay what is asked, for he must breed an heir, but he would hate you for this. I have told you only so that you can show yourself innocent—so that you will not be punished for your father's faults."

  "Oh heaven, he will punish me for father's fault anyway. He will be fit to tear me apart when I tell him."

  "Tell him! You are mad! This is for your ears alone so that you may take care. If Radnor hears this he will take vengeance and your father will either murder me or set me in the deepest dungeon of
the keep to rot."

  "Nay, Mother, it will not be so. It is your care that has given us warning. I will pray my lord that you may come to Painscastle. You will be safe there and we may be together always."

  "To be a handmaiden to my own daughter. Do not be foolish, child," she said sharply as Leah shook her head and started to protest. "It must be that way if I am a second woman in your home. Even if you would suffer me to be the lady of the house, and I do not think from what I have seen of late that it would be so, your husband would not suffer it. I will not do it, Leah. Only hold your tongue. This habit you have of telling your lord everything will bring you to grief."

  They had parted with more tears and kisses on that, and when Leah reached the hall and found Cain still engaged with his father, she was grateful for the respite from her problem. To tell or not to tell, and it was a bitter choice. When they mounted up to leave and Leah kissed her mother for the last time, she wept again and so bitterly that for some time she could not have spoken even if she wished to. Her husband rode by her side without interference. He felt her emotion to be natural and was, moreover, occupied with issuing instructions for the order of march. These were so detailed and cautious that Giles looked questioningly at his master. Cain met his eyes steadily and shook his head.

  "For now just look sharp."

  "But for what?"

  Radnor shifted his eyes briefly to his wife. There was no sense in frightening her or making her sadder than she already was. "Later, Giles," he said. It was not likely that Pembroke's men would attack so close to the keep with the other guests leaving sporadically.

  For the first few miles the territory they rode over was familiar to Leah who had been hawking and hunting over it. There was nothing new in the low green hills and sparkling streams to assuage her grief or divert her mind from her troubles. If only she had the faintest notion when her father planned this thing; if only she could wait until they were abed. She could tell Cain anything then. Leah was not experienced, but there was no mistaking the effect she had upon her husband in bed. He would not be angry then, at least not with her. She could make him promise anything then, too, and he would hold to his word so that her mother would be safe. But if her father made his try that day and her husband were caught unawares he might be hurt in the fight. Leah was so sunk in her own thoughts that she never noticed the preparations against attack that Radnor was making. Was it more likely that Pembroke would try close to home or farther away? Close, Leah thought, because he could use his own men, because it would be easier to get her home, and because there was less chance that Radnor would overtake his attackers and win her back again. But if they were prepared her father would know that her mother had confessed; if they were not prepared, Cain might be hurt. Scenes from the tourney rose in her mind. Come what might, she had to speak now. Above all, Cain must not be hurt.

  "My lord."

  "Have you had your fill of weeping?"

  "I pray you, be not offended. I have never parted from my mother for so much as a day, before this."

  "I am not offended," Radnor replied. He was not really attending to her. His eyes followed the meeting of the low hills with the sky on either side of the rough track, and his forefinger ran up and down the puckered mark that drew up his mouth.

  "I have something to tell you, my lord." Leah's voice trembled so noticeably that Cain turned to look at her with attention.

  "Well?"

  "No, it is not at all well."

  "I know," he said in a resigned tone that struggled to conceal its amusement. "You have left all of my clothes behind, or yours, or the bed, or something else from which you cannot be parted—we must return."

  "Oh no, my lord, I am not so careless. Indeed, the matter is of greater moment. Do not be angry with me, for it is none of my doing or desire."

  "Of greater moment than my clothes?" Radnor laughed heartily. "I cannot believe it." Then, seeing the tears in his wife's eyes, he became serious. "Very well, I will not be angry. But suppose you tell me about what I am to keep my temper."

  "My father," Leah faltered, "my father sometimes does strange things."

  "This once, at least, a woman has spoken less than the truth," her husband muttered. Leah, however, was so encompassed by her own fears that she scarcely heard him and did not understand him at all.

  "I have heard that he proposes to take me by force or guile and hold me to ransom." She gasped out the words as quickly as possible and held her breath, waiting for the storm to break.

  The silence, however, was broken only by the sound of the horses' hooves, and after a minute or two Leah dared to breathe easily and look sidelong at her lord's face. He looked, instead of shocked or angry, smilingly interested, as well he might since his hope of Leah's innocence was more than confirmed.

  "Who told you?"

  "You are not angry? You do not care?"

  "You did not answer my question. I suppose, if I think about it, I am a little angry, but certainly not with you. Who told you?"

  Men were utterly incomprehensible, thought Leah. A decision about who would be crowned in a faraway city at some unspecified time in the future could throw them into an ungovernable rage, but treachery at home, among their own relations, moved them not a whit.

  "My mother told me," Leah replied with more assurance. "She must have overheard my father making his plans."

  "She has courage. If your father knew he would make matters most unpleasant. Ay, well, you may be easy on that head. I will do nothing to inform him and I will keep you safe."

  Leah's spirits rose. She was not to be blamed for what was no fault of hers after all, and if Cain was not troubled and furthermore understood her mother's position, why should she be worried? They were now out of the area familiar to her, and she looked about with bright eyes. The countryside was changing. The lows hills were in the background now and they were traveling through a fertile valley where the fields gave promise of plenty in spite of the settled drought.

  The people of the small hamlet they had passed were not like the people on her father's land either. There had been a flurry of fright when the armed cavalcade came into view, men and women running from their labor in the fields towards the houses, but it had subsided when Radnor called out something Leah did not understand.

  After that fear diminished. When they passed through the straggling dusty street with low mud and wattle cottages thatched with straw on either side, the people came out to stare and exchange comments with the members of Radnor's troop who spoke their tongue. One old man, toothless, bald, and dressed in a sheepskin so matted with grease and dirt as to look almost smooth and black, hobbled to Radnor's side and passed a remark that made her lord laugh and throw some copper coins. That had been only an hour ago, and now they were coming to an even larger village.

  Here the people were even less frightened. Lord Radnor stopped and asked Leah if she were thirsty or hungry, since it was nearly midday. Thirsty, Leah replied. She would be grateful for a drink, the road was so dusty. But even before Cedric, accustomed to doing the lord's buying in English villages, had dismounted, a rather pretty young woman with a year-old boy on one hip had come out of a nearby hut carrying a wooden bowl of milk. This she had offered wordlessly, but with a smiling, clumsy curtsy to the bright vision on the grey gelding. Other women came up shyly to look at Leah's wonderful clothes—wonderful to them, although the pale grey tunic and darker, dusty green gown were among the simplest and hardiest Leah now owned.

  They were even more fascinated when Leah stripped off her gloves to take the milk and exposed her white hands with their long, shining, buffed nails and the great betrothal ruby winking on her finger. One even made so bold as to touch one of Leah's braids with a grimy, broken-nailed finger. Many of the village girls had fair hair too, but none of them had the time or knowledge to care for it, and it soon became matted and scraggly. To them the braids seemed like the spun gold hair of the fairy princesses occasional minstrels sang of in the village in exchange
for food and a night's lodging.

  Radnor was at first surprised when the women came out, because ordinarily they did not venture forth even when peaceful troops passed for fear of being carried off. He realized that it was Leah's presence that made them show themselves. First of all her appearance and clothing were an almost irresistible draw, and secondly her presence virtually guaranteed the proper behavior of the men escorting her.

  He was pleased too with Leah's manner, which showed neither revulsion at the dirt and odor of these people nor any friendliness or compassion towards them. She nodded kindly at the woman who had given her the milk and allowed the others to touch her without really acknowledging their presence. Radnor had just flung another handful of copper coins wide and was trying to pick out a small enough piece of silver to pay for the milk—or rather to reward the woman for her free offer of it, for in itself the drink was not worth even the smallest of the copper coins—when the warning he had been half expecting came.

  "Ware! Arms!"

  Instantly Leah was surrounded by a group of hard-faced veterans who cleared the other women away rapidly, if not kindly, with the butts of their spears. Radnor, slapping on his helmet and lifting the great shield that had been strapped across his back to cover him, was moving to the front center with Giles coming up hurriedly from the right. Before Leah could shame herself by crying out to ask what was happening, a firm hand clasped a lead rein to her horse and the cheerful Beaufort reassured her.

  "It is nothing, madam. Be of good cheer. Probably no more than a single messenger going from one place to another, but in these hard times it is well to be sure."

  Leah did not like that lead rein on her horse, but as Sir Harry made no move to use it, she remained silent, looking anxiously towards her husband. The sound of hooves came closer at full gallop; plainly it was a single messenger, but he might be the forerunner of an armed band. A second or two later, Leah heard the horse sliding to a halt, then what must have been the messenger's breathless voice, and finally Cain's laugh. The group surrounding her disappeared as quickly as it had formed and Cain was coming back, pushing off his helm and shifting his shield back over his shoulder. Radnor himself unhooked the lead rein and Sir Harry fell back.