Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

Sometimes, looking at him, she felt so resentful that it frightened her, and sometimes the pang twisting her heart was of a love so deep and hard that it was truly terrifying.

Occasionally she thought of leaving him with the women and running away, but there was nowhere to flee except back over the same ground, and besides, Ranulf could not be trusted with the child. He still questioned Jordan’s pater — nity and his feelings towards him were ambivalent. Indeed, the other day he had deliberately dropped him. The baby had not been hurt beyond bruises and Ranulf had been contrite, but Olwen had seen the warning signals. It was not going to get any better. As the boy grew, so too would the doubts and the violence.

Outside she heard shouting. Ranulf, in his usual inimical style was trying to out-bellow Earl Robert and failing. Earl Robert was insisting on his right as commander-in-chief of his sister’s army to take the prisoner into his own custody before he died of a surfeit of Ranulf ’s hospitality. There was disgust amidst his rage, and a ragged edge of pity.

Olwen heard the snarl in Ranulf ’s response and knew that tonight there would be no pleasing him. Bruises, blue and yellow mottled her upper arms which were still sore to the touch where he had held her down two nights ago.

Rising, she went to the tent entrance and looked out. Ranulf, hands on hips, face puckered with temper, was glaring at the unconscious, cloak-bundled man and the two guards who were hauling him across the saddle of a handsome bay stallion. ‘The horse is mine,’ Ranulf growled, ‘and the ransom. Your nephew or not, I’ll have you acknow — ledge that before you take him anywhere!’

Olwen saw Gloucester’s lips thin and tighten. ‘I should never have let you talk me into giving you Matille to wife,’ he said with gritted teeth. ‘Sometimes I think you’re capable of anything.’ He jerked on the reins and clapped his heels vigorously into his stallion’s sides. Olwen watched him leave, then fastened her gaze on the inert young man draped over the bay. Blood was clotted in his sandy hair and streaked like red rain over his features. His nephew, Gloucester had said. Renard too was Gloucester’s nephew, which meant that he and the prisoner must either be cousins … or brothers. She thought about asking Ranulf, saw the look on his face, and decided that later would do.

Across the river, the cathedral bells started to toll.

The battlefield on the plain was to the west of the city. Two armies faced each other. The King, against the advice of many of his barons, had descended the hill to meet the rebels head on instead of allowing them to besiege him. His temper was up, his fighting blood hot, and he intended coming to grips with Robert of Gloucester and the treacherous Earl of Chester.

Rhetoric was spouted from both sides. Robert of Gloucester made a grand speech for the opposition in which he maligned every one of Stephen’s senior barons. He was gentler with Renard’s reputation than the others, merely decrying him as a short-sighted, misguided fool and thanking God that his father was in his grave and unable to see him now.

Renard listened expressionlessly and stared across the coarse winter meadow, bleak green against scudding brain-grey clouds. He was in the centre section guarding the King, along with Baldwin FitzGilbert, Ingelram of Say, Richard FitzUrse and Ilbert de Lacey who was a far-distant relative of Adam’s. Adam himself, although forced to Lincoln itself by feudal duty, had no intention of fighting against the rebels with whom his sympathies lay. He had developed a ‘fever’ and cried off the battle, remaining within the city itself to prepare the remains of the royal camp for rapid retreat if need be. Stephen had been annoyed, but had seen the sense in Adam’s offer of organisation, and realising perfectly well the underlying cause of the ‘fever’, had not pushed him too far. Better to have half a man than no man at all.

Beside Renard, Ancelin wiped his moustache nervously on the back of his hand and stared at the mass of Welsh levies howling on the enemy flanks and almost drowning out what Gloucester was saying about the King. ‘Do you think Lord William’s among that lot?’ he asked.

‘Probably.’

Ancelin sucked his teeth and glanced at Renard. Behind the implacable mask there was anguish. Brother facing brother across the battlefield, and another already lost. The bodies of the slaughtered from the skirmish at the ford had been returned under a banner of truce. Henry’s had not been among them, but more than half the men had drowned in the river itself, dragged under by the weight of their mail. Others had been mutilated beyond recognition, and there had been no word from the enemy camp as to whether any prisoners had been taken for ransom. Probably Henry was dead, but without certainty the spark of hope was like a honed prick spur digging into an open wound. They needed to grieve and yet they could not.

Ancelin hefted the long-handled axe that had been passed down in his family, father to son, since before the Battle of Senlac when his great-grandfather had been a thegn of some importance. After the great battle the remnants of his line had taken service under Renard’s grandsire, Miles le Gallois, then under Lord Guyon, and now under Renard. Le Gallois’s wife had been English, and her blood, although diluted by strains of Welsh and Norman, still ran in Renard’s veins — and in William’s and Henry’s too, waiting to be spilled. He caressed the smooth, ashwood haft with loving, troubled fingers and wished that he too had a fever.

Renard, checking the position of his men, could see Stephen a little beyond them. The King’s gilded helmet and the fluttering red and gold of his standard marked him out as he listened to Robert of Gloucester’s speech and now and then dipped his head to murmur to Ingelram of Say. It was not just the wind that was whipping slashes of colour across his broad cheekbones. From the set of the royal face, Renard could see that Stephen was close to one of his famous but infrequent rages. Perhaps some of it was due to the knowledge that among the rebels stood his brother, Henry of Winchester, whom he had loved and trusted above all other men.

Even as he smiled and reassured his own soldiers, Renard felt his gut tightening. His own experience of war was mostly of light skirmish and brawl rather than the full weight of a pitched battle, and he was accustomed to fighting on horseback, not on foot as Stephen had chosen to do for his centre.

A shout went up from the flank commanded by Alain of Brittany as several of his knights broke formation to challenge some of the rebel knights to joust. Renard, his hand on the shoulder of a young Ledworth footsoldier, felt a tremor writhe through the lad.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ the youth whispered, face grey.

Renard looked at him, knowing that each man in his mind’s eye was seeing the moment of his own death, and knowing that he was trapped, the wheel set in motion. ‘Best do it now, lad,’ he said, tightening his fingers. ‘You won’t have time later.’

The shouts of challenge that had floated on the wind changed suddenly to howls of outrage and one scream of agony. Raggedly, like the edge of a rainstorm, Gloucester’s troops clashed with the Breton and Flemish flank. All thoughts of chivalry dissipated faster than the scent of expensive perfume into a gale as the rebels displayed their preference to fight in deadly earnest.

The youth vomited. Stephen bellowed something that was lost in the roar and clash of first battle. Renard hastened to Ancelin, unsheathed his sword, and brought his shield down on to his left arm, preparing for the assault of Earl Ranulf ’s vassals and levies.

Later, he was to recall very little of the ensuing battle, only that men who should have known and reacted better fled the field in the face of an opposition whose bark was twice as ferocious as its actual bite. They fled because they were afraid to lose the battle, because after yesterday’s ill omens in the cathedral they expected to lose, and in fleeing they sealed the prophecy.

Earl Ranulf ’s contingent went for the throat, attacking the footsoldiers holding Stephen’s centre. With no protection from the cavalry on the flanks, it was inevitable that they would be torn to pieces. Stephen fought like a man possessed. In a sense he was — possessed by the rage of despair and given the strength of three men by its violence. None could touch him. Renard, guarding him, was merely despairing. Being young, agile and the owner of a mail coat of superb quality, he had managed thus far to avoid any serious wounds, although he had taken his share of nicks and bruises. The pain from his overworked right shoulder kept shooting all the way down to his hand, cramping his grip on the hilt of his bloody sword.

Lungs burning, he leaped over a back-handed slash aimed at his knee and retorted rapidly, aiming inside his opponent’s guard and cutting him down. Beside him he heard Ancelin grunt with effort as his axe swung and carved. Both men drew back and panting stood shoulder to shoulder. There was time for the briefest exchange of glances, a rueful acknowledgement that this was the tightest corner they had ever been in, and probably their last, before another wave rolled over them, aiming for the King and spearheaded by the Earl of Chester himself.

Ancelin killed three men in rapid succession and went down beneath a fourth before he could recover to swing his axe again. Renard made the mistake of bellowing his name and trying to go to his aid. He was struck a shattering blow with a mace that was only half absorbed by his helmet. His knees gave way. He was struck again, and the sky turned black.

The blackness was still with him when he returned to his senses, but this time it was not of the open sky but of enclosing bare stone darkness somewhere in the undercrofted bowels of Lincoln castle. Pain jolted through his skull with every stroke of his heart.

His cheek on dusty straw, he became aware of small noises: rustlings and movements not his own, groans, voices in low conversation, someone retching up blood. He realised that the darkness was not as complete as he had first thought. A sliver of night-blue from a narrow grilled window punctuated its finality. Hardly a ray of hope, but distantly comforting nevertheless.

Beside him someone was shivering and moaning feverishly. He tried to raise his head then desisted as the pain crashed through his mind, robbing him of the ability to think. He lay still until the worst of it subsided. His hauberk was gone, and his gambeson, leaving him only shirt, braies and chausses. Thirst encroached upon his other discomforts as awareness returned. He knew that he was locked up, probably within the castle itself, but under whose auspices he did not want to think.

He discovered that the desire for a drink was for the moment less overwhelming than his dread of sitting up, and closed his eyes again.

The next time he awoke, the slit of light above his head had paled to a dull, rain grey. His skull was still throbbing fit to burst and his thirst was now too severe to be ignored. Gingerly he looked to one side. The man who had threshed and cried out beside him before stared back with filmed eyes, dried blood staining his mouth corners.

Very slowly, Renard raised his head and pushed himself upright. The cell wavered and wallowed before his eyes, giving him the impression that he was sitting under water— ‘Jesu!’ he gasped, and put his hand up to cover his eyes, encountering a swollen, tender line of clotted blood. Above it, his flesh was as puffy as risen bread dough, contracting his vision to a tight slit.

‘Welcome to hell,’ croaked Ingelram of Say, dragging himself across the rushes to Renard’s side. Then he recoiled and stared. ‘God’s blood, what happened to you?’

‘I don’t know. I saw Ancelin fall and tried to cover him. I think I was struck from the side.’

‘Regular mess it made of you, too. You’ll not be charming women with that face for a while.’ Ingelram looked dismally round the cell then at the dead young man beside them. ‘If ever again.’ He rubbed his injured leg.

‘Is there any water?’

‘No, but there’s ale. Richard, pass us the jug. There’s some dried bread too, but by the looks of you, you’d kill yourself if you tried to chew on it.’

‘I’m not hungry.’ Renard watched another knight pour liquid from a pitcher into a horn cup. The sound it made was musical torture, but when the man handed the drink to him, Renard took it with care, and, equally carefully, drank.