In the Shadow of Midnight

by Marsha Canham

  Sedrick grinned slowly. “In truth, it was the last five; the fourth and fifth being yer mother and sister.”

  The brothers stiffened and sent their hands to the hilts of their swords.

  “For the love of Christ,” Henry muttered from his perch on the log. “Can the three of you not pass a single hour without drawing insults? Lord Rhys …? Lord Dafydd …? My belly aches enough without having to constantly run a course with your Welsh humour.”

  “Neither Dafydd nor myself is smiling,” the older of the pair answered blithely. “In fact, the very notion of either our mother or our sister showing such poor taste as to choose this barrel-brained Norman for a bedmate causes even the hint of mirth to vacate our heads.”

  “Mmmm. Perhaps not Gwladus,” Dafydd objected mildly. He leaned forward to see past his brother’s armoured chest and cast a slow, critical eye along Sedrick’s form. “She has been known to admire any manner of long, thick objects when her husband is absent from home. Mother, however—” He leaned back with a creak of saddle leather. “Aye. I suppose I might be prompted to slit a throat or two in her defense.”

  The squatting knight started to respond, but a swift, cool slash of steel came out of the bushes beside him, the deadly edge of the falchion pressing a painful threat into the stretched underside of his chin.

  “The only throat that will be slit here today, my lords,” Ariel announced, “is the one resting over the edge of my blade.”

  Gold-flecked hazel eyes darted upward and widened when they saw who wielded the sword that teased his throat. The unfortunate knight opened his mouth to speak, but the blade nudged higher, forcing him to crane his neck to the limit to avoid having skin and sinews severed.

  The other three men had whirled around at the sound of Ariel’s voice, their weapons half out of their sheaths before her shout stopped them.

  “I would not want to be the cause of so brave and illustrious a knight losing his head in such an ignoble position,” she warned.

  The Welshmen kept their fists curled around their hilts, but they made no further move to draw. Their faces hardened into angry masks; all traces of humour—mocking or real—vanished. Only the bearlike Sedrick remained stolidly impassive, although a close observer might have seen the grimace of disgust he directed at his blond, compromised companion.

  “You seem to have us at a disadvantage, my lady,” said the one called Rhys. His anger waned somewhat as he took a long and insolently frank perusal of the slender wood nymph’s body. With her long red hair flaming around her shoulders and her tunic still clinging damply to shapely breasts and thighs, she made an intriguing impression on eyes unaccustomed to such delicacy—delicacy with the added pique of a sword in her hand. “Might I inquire as to how we might serve you?”

  Ariel was not listening. Her gaze had fallen to the limp, flaccid body of the fawn draped carelessly over the back of Lord Rhys’s saddle. She recognized the small white diamond on the snout and knew it was her fawn, the timid, trusting creature who had begun to answer to her whistle, and for whom she had brought the fragrant sprigs of dried parsley today. A large wound in the pale brown neck was proof of the skill with which the knight wielded the enormous longbow he wore slung across his shoulder.

  The surge of cold rage that shivered down her arm caused the edge of the falchion to slice into the taut surface of her captive’s neck. A curse brought his hand shooting up at once and he knocked the blade aside. His fingers grasped Ariel’s wrist and he wrenched her forward with enough force to fling her onto her back in a crush of ferns, and moss, and thrashing white limbs.

  The Welsh brothers laughed and wheeled their big war-horses around. Sedrick scratched at his chin and shook his head, but did nothing more than lean an arm over the front of his saddle and observe.

  The hotly flushed Norman jumped to his feet and fumbled to refasten his chausses. He dabbed at the cut on his neck, cursing anew as he saw the streaky threads of blood on his fingertips.

  “By all the heavenly martyrs—! What manner of game is this? And what the devil are you doing here”—he glanced around as if searching the fringe of woods for more unexpected surprises—“alone!”

  “What matter does it make?” Lord Rhys asked with a slow smile. “She is not alone now.”

  Ariel saw where his black eyes were roving and scrambled to cover her bared limbs. She stood and brushed furiously at the clods of earth that clung to her tunic, and when she finished, she planted her hands on her waist and ignored the leering Welshman in favour of the knight who still tugged and yanked at his clothing.

  “A more worthy question might be: Where the devil have you come from and why are you strayed so far off the main road?”

  The knight glared at her. “We thought to avoid any travellers who might announce our arrival in Pembroke.”

  “Why? What manner of heinous crimes have you committed that cause you to skulk from one shadow to the next like … like …” She glanced at the dead fawn and the man who had slain it. “Like the lying, thieving, cowardly vermin who infest the nether regions of Wales?”

  The piercing hazel eyes narrowed. “You have a bold tongue in front of strangers, wench. Happens one day it might be pulled from your head if you do not take a care.”

  She gave a derisive snort and bent over to retrieve her falchion. “I should not give warnings of anything being pulled from anywhere, my dear Lord Henry. Not if I had just been caught with my jewels hanging over the edge of a tree stump.”

  The Welshmen showed surprise. “You know each other?”

  Lord Sedrick chuckled—a deep, rumbling sound that brought to mind giant boulders rubbing together. “Ma lords … ye have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Lady Ariel de Clare, Lord Henry’s fair sister.”

  “Sister?” Lord Rhys whistled under his breath. “He mentioned he had one, but not that she was as delectable a morsel as what I see before me.”

  “Take heed not to say such things too loudly to be overheard,” Sedrick warned amiably. “The Lady Ariel takes poorly to compliments, regardless of who delivers them.”

  “Perhaps she will accept a gift then,” the Welsh lord announced in bolder tones. “As an offering of peace for having obviously intruded on her solitude.”

  He reached around and grasped the dead fawn by the slender forelegs, lifting it from the horse’s rump and dangling the soft, lifeless body for Ariel to admire. “A single arrow at two hundred paces,” he boasted. “It should provide a tender meal for a maiden of such … tender abilities.”

  If the gentle mockery was meant to flatter her prowess with the ambush, it fell well short of the mark. Ariel’s gaze grew even colder and harder and she forced herself to turn away from the arrogant Welshman before she gave way to the temptation to slash his grin to bloody ribbons.

  She waited for Henry to retrieve his gloves before she trusted herself to speak. “Did I hear you say you brought news from the king?”

  He looked up sharply and stared at her for a moment. “I, ah … Aye. Aye, I do have news.”

  “Well?”

  “Well …” Henry’s stomach responded with an audible and prolonged gurgle. “Better it should wait until we reach Pembroke. Is Lady Isabella there, or has she left for Cavenham?”

  “She is still here … why?” Ariel grabbed Henry’s arm and blanched a shade. “Is it Uncle Will? Have you brought news of Uncle Will? He is not—? He has not been—?”

  “The lord marshal is fine,” Henry assured her quickly. “At least he was the last time I heard.”

  Ariel’s shoulders rounded briefly with relief, then squared again with a return of impatience. “Then what is it? What has you squirting over logs and travelling in the company of … of outlaws?”

  Henry glanced over his sister’s head, but the two Welshmen had either not heard the hissed insult, or, because they were indeed outlaws and deserving of the appellation, decided to ignore it.

  “At home, Ariel,” he insisted grimly. “It will be best if I tell
you at home.”

  Chapter 2

  The original keep of Pembroke Castle had been built thirty years after the Norman conquest of England, when the death of the great Welsh king Rhys ap Tewdwr had cleared the way for a further invasion into Wales. Initially a single square keep standing on the edge of a promontory of land, successive generations of prudent—and wealthy—lords had added towers and baileys, tall crenellated battlements and barbicans. William of Pembroke’s father-in-law, the immensely powerful warlord known as Strongbow, had used this castle stronghold as his base for the successful invasion of Ireland. Upon his death and the subsequent marriage of his daughter and heir Isabella to William, work had begun on the enormous eighty-foot-tall circular tower that commanded not only the view, but the respect of several square miles of land and sea surrounding the inlet of Milford Haven. Within a hard day’s ride of Pembroke there were other castles that had been raised to defend and hold this important thumb of Wales— Haverford, Tenby, Lewhaden, Stackpole, Narbeth, Martin. But none were as impressive, as important, or as impregnable as Pembroke.

  To the wide-eyed child of four who had first passed beneath its enormous barbican gates, and who had clutched her brother’s hand and stared up in awe at the sharpened teeth of the three separate iron portcullises, the castle had appeared as terrifying and overwhelming as the giant, lion-maned knight who ruled there.

  Ariel de Clare and her brother Henry had been sent into the marshal’s keeping upon the sudden death of Isabella’s half-brother and his wife. Barely wed a year and anticipating the arrival of their own first child, neither the gruff Earl of Pembroke nor his dainty wife knew what to make of the two orphaned children who stood in their grimy, tattered clothing before them. Young Henry, at eight years of age, was fiercely protective of his sister, daring to challenge even the marshal at swordpoint when a casual observation was made concerning the unusual, fiery red colour of her hair. Pembroke was quick to recant, albeit with the hint of a smile lurking behind his twinkling blue eyes, and even quicker to recognize Henry’s potential as a knight and vassal whose loyalty and bravery could be counted upon to the last drop of blood. As a result, the boy had not been fostered out to another household as had been William’s first intent, but became page to the Lady Isabella—a very great and grave honour which he bore with the solemnity of a grown man.

  The tiny Lady Ariel, with her big green eyes flashing and her jaw jutting with determination, let it be known with equal vigor that she was just as impatient to begin her own apprenticeship toward knighthood. She too looked forward to the day when she would earn the right to wear the golden spurs and smite mighty dragons in battle.

  It came, therefore, as a rude and unaccepted shock when she was forced to wear gowns and girtles instead of the more practical garb of jerkins, tunics, and leggings. When Henry turned thirteen and she nine, instead of applauding proudly at his investiture as the lord marshal’s squire, she launched an insurrection in the castle nursery—by then swollen in number with three of the marshal’s natural children—that lasted several months and saw five nurses flee in terror for their lives. No amount of whippings or threats had any lasting effect. It took promises from both Henry and the marshal to finally restore a semblance of peace, with the one agreeing grudgingly to share every scrap of knowledge he gained during his instruction and training for knighthood, and the other agreeing to turn a blind eye to her tutoring, a promise she held her uncle to even some years later when he found her in the stable yards, bruised head to toe, but stubbornly learning how to ride and handle one of the huge warhorses.

  Lady Isabella was openly horrified by the calluses on her niece’s hands and the whiplike leanness of a body that should have been growing round and soft and dainty. She scolded and clucked over torn hose and soiled tunics—patches of which were left clinging to trees and pallisades that had been climbed and conquered in the heat of a mock battle. She complained often to her husband, but Ariel had long since managed to wheedle her way into a special place in his heart and he could never quite stop the smile that lit his face each time he confronted her with one of her mischiefs. Moreover, in dangerous times and in dangerous surroundings, he saw no reason why a woman should not be proficient with a sword and bow, and had, on occasion, supplemented Henry’s instructions with a lesson or two of his own.

  The countess, recognizing defeat when she saw it, had thrown up her hands in surrender and concentrated her efforts on grooming her own sweetly natured daughters to be the proper chatelaines and hostesses they were expected to be as Pembroke heiresses. Thus, at age eighteen, when most young women were long married or at the very least, betrothed, Ariel was still tilting at quintains with her cousins, scorning any and all advances by prospective suitors.

  But because she was the niece of the Earl Marshal of England, and because there were a number of modest estates endowered to her through her mother’s will, there was no shortage of two-legged bloodhounds sniffing after her skirts. From the time she came of eligible age at twelve, there was a constant flow of knights, nobles, first sons, second sons passing under those same portcullis gates that had intimidated Ariel as a child. Some erstwhile swains sought only to ally themselves with the House of Pembroke. Some were more intent upon supplementing their holdings in Wales and could not have cared a whit if her teeth were black and her body bloated with suet. Ariel had sent them all riding out again, their ears pinned to their heads and, more often than not, stinging from the vehemence of her rejection.

  The countess had despaired; the earl had supported his niece’s right to choose whom she would or would not marry, although he admittedly grew impatient at times with her various reasons for refusal. One had crossed eyes and breath that stank of dead rats. Another possessed narrow, greedy eyes. Yet another, she claimed, had pissed himself when she had drawn her dagger and offered to defend him from an attacking dog.

  It should not have come as any surprise to hear of this stubbornness finally reaching the king’s ears, since many of those first and second sons would have whined straight to court with news of the insolence of a certain flame-haired heiress. It was also well within the royal right to contract unions between one powerful house and another, and to use such contracted marriages as a means of repaying debts the crown could not otherwise raise from its depleted coffers. The fact that there were not already writs of betrothal for each of the earl’s five daughters and five sons was solely due to King John’s reluctance to rouse the great lion’s wrath. William the Marshal, with his vast estates in Pembroke, Striguil, England, Ireland, and Normandy, was actually a far wealthier man than the king—a point which pricked the crown’s patience as well as his greed. And as his ambition for more wealth, more power, grew, the king’s cunning black eyes turned more and more often to Pembroke.

  “Possibly, because the lord marshal is bogged down in Normandy with these futile negotiations for peace with the French, the king feels safe attempting a small display of his authority this side of the Sleeve.”

  The family was gathered in the great hall. Ariel stood before the hearth, a log blazing brilliantly behind her in the twelve-foot-wide fireplace. Apart from the crackle and snap of burning wood, the hall was a cavern of throbbing silence. The monstrous arched beams overhead might have formed the vaulting of a cathedral; the gloom and chill gave it the atmosphere of a tomb. Not a foot stirred the rushes. No servant or varlet dared to venture near the circle of brighter light; they moved like wraiths in the smoke-hazed shadows, with only their eyes flicking warily toward the yellow glow around the hearthside.

  Henry, whose neck still stung from the slash he had earned earlier, was keeping a prudent distance from his sister and watched her guardedly each time her agitated pacings took her too near the display of crossed swords mounted along the walls. The Welsh lords, Rhys and Dafydd, maintained a similarily discreet gap between themselves and the immediate family members, although their faces were lit with ill-disguised amusement and intrigue.

  “I do not believe it,
” Ariel seethed, the rage keeping her voice as taut as a bowstring. “I will have to see the writ with mine own eyes before I will give credence to this news you bring to Pembroke.”

  Lady Isabella twisted her hands and appealed beseechingly to her handsome nephew for guidance. Petite and showing little signs of aging or plumping in spite of the ten children she had given her lord husband over the happy years of their marriage, the countess was at a complete loss to know how to deal with her niece’s mounting fury. That an explosion of Ariel’s famous temper was imminent, neither she nor Henry doubted. They watched her as they would watch a pane of glass pressed to the verge of shattering, wary of uttering the breath or word that would bring the deed about.

  “De Braose is a fine, respected name,” Isabella offered lamely. “Why, they once held lands in Brednock, Builth … even Limerick. The elder Simon de Braose rode with my own dear father when he fought the Celts.”

  Ariel turned nothing but her head. “Indeed? Was this the same Simon de Braose who fell drunk out of his saddle and was trampled to death under the wheels of a passing dung cart? The same De Braose who squandered every single hectare of land they ever owned in Wales and England? The same De Braoses who were reduced to hiring themselves out like common Brabançons just to retain the right to keep the family coat of arms on their blazons?”

  “Families … fall into hard times,” Isabella said haltingly. “And the current lord has … has performed valued services to the king in his desire to restore his family’s former prominence.”

  Ariel’s eyes narrowed. “Well. He will not be restoring it at my expense. I have seen this poxy son of his. At a distance, mind, for the stench he gave off would have offended a swineherd. The very sight of him would have offended the swine themselves, so pocked and bloated and festered with pustules was he. He could not walk without his finger up his nose and what he found there made for most enjoyable nibblings between meals. His eyes do not look in the same direction, but go every which way as if someone is standing constantly behind him hitting him with a pan. Marry him? Marry Reginald de Braose?” She snorted a fair imitation of a warhorse and whirled back around to face the fire. “I would sooner marry myself to the Church … or to the grave.”