Still sniffing, she left the bed. One of them upstairs, one of them down and no words spoken, only a deepening chasm of silence. She looked down at her wedding dress and was tempted to take her shears to the convoluted embroidery and the lies it portrayed; tempted but unable to bring herself to do so.

The brazier had gone out. The night candle sputtered. Elene rubbed her arms and paced the room. Another piece of sewing caught her eye, the silver thread on the hem reflecting the candle’s dying flickers. It was the tunic she was currently making for Renard. Turning, she stared at it and gradually it occurred to her that a needle was capable of weaving more than one tale and of creating more than one garment — that a needle could repair and refurbish.

Fetching a kerchief from her baggage chest, she wiped her eyes, blew her nose and, setting her jaw, went down to the hall.

Renard was sitting by the fire where Matille of Chester had sat that afternoon — a lifetime ago. He was staring down at a chess piece taken from the gaming table beside him and was turning it over and over in his hand.

‘It is very late,’ she said tentatively. ‘I have been waiting for you a long time. Will you not come to bed?’

He raised his head to look at her, and after a moment sighed and put the chess piece carefully back down on the board. ‘It’s not love,’ he said with a swift gesture. ‘I never felt that for her. I wasn’t even at ease in her company unless we were in bed, and even there it was a battle.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m choking on pride, Nell, on the fact that she should have chosen to leave me for Ranulf de Gernons.’

Elene faced the warmth of the banked hearth and rubbed her icy palms together. ‘Do you think you are the only one with wounds? I watched her dance, taking her pleasure from us all, feeding on our responses. I do not believe that I will ever feel the same way about love-making again.’

Her curly hair was loose around her, screening her face from him as she fought to steady her voice.

‘There’s a world of difference between making love and siege warfare,’ he said, and rising from the chair put his hands lightly on her shoulders. ‘With you I don’t feel as if I have to guard my back in the act, nor do you turn to ice when it is over as if you hate me or have begrudged the responding. You fit well into the hollow of my shoulder, Nell.’

She stared into the fire. She did not want to fit into the hollow of his shoulder. She wanted him to look at her the way he had looked at Olwen and forget all about control, as he had forgotten at the palace tonight.

‘Nell?’

She turned to face him, new tear tracks glistening on her cheeks. Muttering an oath, he took her in his arms. She clung to him. Against her damp face the gold thread on his court tunic was abrasive.

‘Perhaps I needed this to happen,’ he muttered into her hair. ‘Perhaps I had to learn that all you get for playing with fire is badly burned.’ Bending his head and angling hers up, he kissed her. Elene hesitated and then with a small gasp responded, her lips parting beneath his and her body yielding from its rigidity as desire melted her bones.

Renard broke the kiss and raised his head. ‘Listen.’ Releasing her he went to the window that looked out on to the street and unhooked the oxhide shutter. Elene heard the scrape of hooves on cobbles, the champing of a horse and the jingle of harness.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Edmund.’ The harshness of his voice said everything that the single word did not. He repinned the shutter with precise care and went to the door.

‘Sweet Jesu.’ Elene brought her hand to her mouth. Edmund was the youngest son of Ravenstow’s constable, his trade that of messenger when haste was required, and there could only be one message that would bring him to Salisbury’s gates in the dead of night.

‘When?’ she heard Renard ask the young man. The chill darkness blowing through the open door was frightening.

‘Two nights ago, my lord,’ Edmund’s voice rasped and he knelt at Renard’s feet, half in obeisance, half in exhaustion, his eyes dark-ringed in a face tight and pale with strain. ‘I’ve ridden three horses into the ground reaching you.’

Renard stooped, pulled him to his feet and, bringing him into the hall, pointed to the chair by the hearth. Alys, her face puffy with sleep was poking the fire to life. ‘How did it happen? My father was in reasonable health when we left for this feast.’

Gratefully Edmund accepted the drink that Elene poured for him. ‘On the same day that you rode out, my lord, a merchant bound for Shrewsbury sought hospitality with us overnight. He brought some kind of contagious ague with him. It starts with a sore throat and shivering fever, then a tight chest and a cough capable of cracking the ribs. For those already weakened …’ He broke off and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Roslind lost her new baby and old Gamel the hafter died on the same night as your father. Half the garrison’s down with it too.’

‘What about Lady Judith?’ Elene asked, her thoughts on Judith and the state she was likely to be in already without being struck down with this sickness, whatever it was.

‘She was all right when she sent me with the tidings,’ Edmund said. ‘Shocked, yes, and as pale as a ghost, but within her senses.’

‘My mother is not lady of Ravenstow any more,’ Renard said to Elene in a dull voice. ‘You are.’ He signalled down the hall and sent the responding servant to go and rouse the rest of the household.

‘You mean to set out for Ravenstow now? In the middle of the night?’ Elene clutched his sleeve, less to detain him than in shock at his words. She was not ready for this, but had no choice.

‘As soon as the baggage wain can be packed. I doubt there’s any bread, but tell the cook to boil up something hot for the men before we set off.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Ranulf de Gernons had the advantage over me tonight. Now it’s my turn to take advantage of him. He won’t be stirring this side of prime and by the time he does we’ll be long gone from any designs on ambush and murder that might be lurking in his mind. You’d better fetch me parchment and quill before you pack them for travelling. I’ll need to write to Stephen and explain our haste. Edmund can sleep here and take it to the palace in the morning.’

Elene nodded. She would have been disturbed by the impartial briskness of his speech and manner had she not known the emotions they masked. Instead of leaving, she put her arms back around him and hugged him hard.

Renard stroked her hair, tightened his fingers in the curly strands, then made an effort and released her. ‘Go on,’ he said gruffly. ‘There is much to be done.’ He turned away, beckoning to Ancelin who had just staggered sleepily into the hall, but not before Elene had seen the glitter of tears in his eyes.

Chapter 16

The Welsh Marches, February 1140


The stink of burning horn filled the farrier’s small corner of Woolcot’s crowded bailey as he pressed a red-hot horseshoe on to Gorvenal’s near hind hoof. Although unable to feel the fierce heat of the glowing iron, the stallion hated having shoes fitted and tried to snap and kick. His endeavours were thwarted by the confining English frame in which the farrier had sensibly secured him.

‘Hold him, lad!’ the sweating man grunted over his shoulder to the youth standing at Gorvenal’s headstall. ‘Earl Renard’s got a long journey come the morrow.’ Hissing gouts of steam vapoured the air as he plunged the shoe into a kilderkin of cold water.

‘Where then?’ The apprentice fished into pouch on his belt and brought out a sticky brown object which he offered to the horse.

‘Down to Ravenstow with the the Lady Elene first, so one o’ the knights was telling me, then across to the Fenlands in payment of his feudal service to the King, and there’s trouble brewing over there, mark me.’ The older man’s voice was constricted because he was doubled over, tacking on the horseshoe. ‘Some bishop’s turned rebel and the King’s set to deal with him.’

‘Can’t my lord Renard get himself excused? He’s got enough to deal with here.’ The youth gave another of the brown, sticky lumps to the horse.

‘Best to show willing in the early days.’ The farrier straightened up to pick another fistful of nails from his bench. ‘What’re you giving him there?’

The youth grinned. ‘Dried dates. My Lord filched them from the locked cupboard in the kitchens last night especially for this. He said it would sweeten him if he started acting up.’ He groped in his scrip and tossed one over.

The farrier examined it dubiously. ‘Looks like a piece of sheep-shit,’ he pronounced, but put it in his mouth anyway, before resuming his task.

‘Tastes all right though.’ The boy bit the date in two and offered half to the horse.

‘Anything would taste all right to a glutton like you,’ the farrier growled. ‘Here, make yourself useful and throw me that rasp.’

Cup of wine in one hand, platter of bread and cheese in the other, Elene looked down at her sleeping husband and wondered if she should wake him. It was long past dawn, but he had not ridden in from Caermoel until well after compline, and had not stopped to rest until he literally fell into bed somewhere around midnight.

She tiptoed round to the coffer and carefully put down cup and platter. The soft clunk of wood on wood caused him to stir and turn over. His hair needed cutting and he was bearded again, the growth a rich, beech-red that gave a markedly strange aspect to his appearance. He more resembled one of her shepherds than a marcher lord, but then, she thought, glancing ruefully down at her own homespuns, she looked nothing like a great lady, nor at this moment did she particularly want to be one. The last two months had been the most difficult of her life and there was every indication that the rest of the year was set to continue in the same vein.

January had been spent of a necessity at Ravenstow. With so many people sick and the trauma of the Earl’s death, it had resembled not so much a home as a staging post on the road to hell. Judith contracted the coughing fever and became seriously ill, her reserves sapped and her will to live a precarious spindle of flame that was kept alight only by the knowledge of duty. On her worst day, the one after Guyon’s funeral, she had become delirious with fever and Elene had fetched John and pushed him urgently into his mother’s chamber — not because he was a priest, but because he was the one who most physically resembled his father. Judith had recovered, but was a grey husk of her former self.

Renard had contracted the coughing sickness but thrown it off within a week, as had William. Henry was still barking like a seal when she left for Woolcot to supervise the lambing but was otherwise making a good recovery. The wound in his shoulder was much better too, although he still wore that arm strapped in a sling and would never have much use in it again.

Elene herself had not been struck by the contagion, which was fortunate since with Judith so ill the responsibility for the domestic side of running the keep had devolved upon her shoulders. Heulwen had helped, of course, but the main burden had been hers.

Stephen had sent a message of condolence and half a dozen mares for Gorvenal. Ranulf of Chester had sent mercenaries to raid the Ravenstow lands, but Renard and William had tracked them down and destroyed them. It was a bitter but welcome outlet for grief.

Sighing softly, she put her palm on his exposed shoulder and leaned over him to kiss his throat below the prickly forest of beard. He raised his lids, looked sleepily bewildered for a moment, then focused and cupped her face to touch his lips to hers.

Elene wriggled away. ‘It’s like being kissed through a thicket!’ she complained. ‘And besides, it tickles.’

Grinning, he pulled her down on top of him. ‘Does this tickle too?’ he murmured after a moment.

She ran her palms over his naked chest and around the back of his neck, locking her fingers in his hair. Desire flickered through her, but more playful than urgent. It was high morning and the day was wasting. He stroked the small of her back, moved his hands to cup her buttocks, and pressed down.

She nipped his earlobe. ‘The farrier says he’s finished shoeing Gorvenal. I’ve had the grooms saddle him up, and Bramble.’

Renard groaned softly. ‘You’re a hard task-mistress,’ he complained. ‘Aren’t I entitled to any leisure?’

‘Why, yes.’ Elene struggled out of his arms. ‘We’ll escape from the keep and have the whole afternoon to ourselves. I want to show you the site for the new fulling mill and we can look at the herds. There’s a sheltered place I know where we can stop to eat and …’ She let the remainder tail off suggestively.