CHAPTER 24

SUMMER 1102

Rhosyn drew rein and let the leather hang slack in her capable fingers so that old Gwennoll could graze the dusty roadside grass. Beyond them, pocked and rutted, the road cut through fields and forest and past formidable fortresses - the marcher eyries of Robert de Belleme - until it reached Shrewsbury, crouched within the protection of the Severn bend. Behind her on the drovers' road lay Wales and safety, as far as anything could be termed safe these days. Guyon had been right, Robert de Belleme and his vassals had turned the marches into hell for men who had to travel them for a living. The war in the south where King Henry sought to bring his most voracious Earl to heel sent disturbing rumours scudding north. If Arundell fell to the royal forces, then the storm would burgeon here in the heart of de Belleme's honours and blight the land she rode.

She considered now the left fork and felt a surge in her solar plexus. She always did when she thought of Guyon and not just because of what had been between them. He would be furious when he realised she had risked crossing the border with only a drover and his market-bound herd of sheep for protection.

Her father had been in Flanders when his heart had finally failed his driving will and he had died in a hostel on the Bruges road. Prys had sailed from Bristol to fetch his body home for burial. They would mourn him, and then, because time did not stand still , they would marry. Rhosyn bit her lip, beginning to regret the impulse that had driven her from the hafod towards the market at Ravenstow. There were items she needed, she told herself, items for her wedding. The item she most wanted, she could not have. Better to settle for the same thing in a serviceable day-to-day mould without the gilding, but knowing what was better and sensible did not ease the pain.

'Why have we stopped, Mam?'

Rhosyn looked round at her daughter and the fine lines fanning from her eye corners deepened into a deprecatory smile. 'I am beginning to wonder if we should have come at all .'

'Too late now,' declared Twm sourly, riding up from behind, the pack ponies jingling behind him.

'Won't Guyon be pleased to see us then?' Eluned looked anxiously at her mother and then at Heulwen cradled sleeping in Twm's broad embrace.

'Probably not,' Rhosyn admitted ruefully. 'He may not even be there, not with the war down in the south.'

'What about his wife, will she?' asked Rhys, thinking of the young woman he had met on several occasions during trading visits with his grandfather. Despite himself he liked her.

Beneath her wariness dwelt a sense of humour and a genuine interest in people whatever their station.

'Perhaps.' Rhosyn's fingers twitched on the reins and Gwennoll raised her head and backed restively. Guyon's wife. How would she react to their presence at Ravenstow and what in God's name was she going to say to her if they met?

Neither child nor virgin, Guyon had said, but as vulnerable as blown glass, and there had been an expression in his eyes that she had never seen before.

'I don't want to meet her,' Eluned said with a mutinous pout. 'She's probably a haughty Norman bitch.'

Rhosyn turned to her daughter. 'Whoever we meet and whatever happens, you will remember your manners and not disgrace my name or your grandfather's. Is that understood?'

'Yes, Mam,' Eluned said with a scowl.

The market at Ravenstow was in full cry, the booths hectic despite, or perhaps because of, the unrest and warfare swirling around the county.

Men had to make a living and even with their lord absent at the siege of Arundel, the Ravenstow lands were still safer than many.

There were stall s of pies, breads and sweetmeats to tempt the hungry. Spice vendors cried their wares. One of the Ravenstow guards was having a tooth drawn, the efforts of the sweating chirurgeon observed with grisly relish by a critical crowd. A performing bear lumbered in pawing, shaggy circles to the music of an off-key set of bagpipes played by a man with a paunch that could have supported a cauldron.

There was a cacophony of livestock. Women sat with baskets full of surplus home produce to barter or sell - cherries and root vegetables, butter and cheese. The potter was there with his green-glaze wares, as was the salt chandler, the shoe-smith, the basket-weaver, and the other tradesmen of the town.

Judith did her duty by the senior merchants and towns-people, pausing to speak and smile and discuss, setting their fears at rest before making her purchases. At the bronze-smith's booth, she bought a new chappe for one of Guyon's belts and a collar for Cadi, the bitch having deposited the last one somewhere on a ten-mile stag hunt, and then she repaired to the haberdasher's stall to obtain needles and embroidery silks for the hanging she intended to warm the solar wall .

Another woman was already there, intently scrutinising a length of ribbon. A small child clutched her skirts and peeped up at Judith from a pair of round, kingfisher-blue eyes. An older, black-haired girl at the woman's other side shifted impatiently from foot to foot. Behind Judith, de Bec muttered a startled, stifled oath.

'What's wrong?' Judith asked, half turning. In that same moment, the boy Rhys stepped from the crowd and joined his mother and sisters at the stall . There was no mistaking the relationship.

They all had variations of the same blunt nose and their hair grew to a similar pattern.

' Heulwen, dewch yno,' said the mother absently as her redhaired youngest one moved from the safety of her skirts towards Judith.

Judith's stomach turned over as the child smiled at her. She put her hand to her mouth and bit on at her. She put her hand to her mouth and bit on the fleshy side of her palm. Guyon's mistress, Guyon's daughter, here in the heart of their lands.

Here, where she had thought she was inviolate.

What did one do? Fight? Back away like one cat sighting another? Brazen it out? Judith lowered her hand and drew herself up. She was no longer a child beset by unfocused emotions, bereft of weapons or defence. She had the knowledge now and the confidence to use it. All that this woman had were the ties of the past ... and the child. Involuntarily, Judith's hand went to her own flat belly before she crouched to the infant's level.

'Heulwen,' she said with uncertainty and smiled.

Rhys turned his head, dark eyes widening.

Rhosyn looked round, the ribbon twined in her neat, capable fingers, her expression first surprised, then anxious. It was a pleasant face with glossy arched brows and full -lidded autumnal eyes. Pretty, but not strikingly so and there were faint weather lines seaming her eye corners.

'I am Judith de Montgomery, Guyon's wife,' Judith introduced herself with an impassivity that gave no inkling of the seething emotions beneath.

'If you have come to see him, I am afraid you will be disappointed. He's down at Arundell with the King.'

Heulwen smiled coyly at Judith before turning to her mother and pressing her face into her skirts.

Her heart thumping, Rhosyn stared at the woman who now rose to her feet and confronted her. Were it not for her cool statement of identity, she would never have connected the imagination to the reality. Here was a striking young woman, as slender and straight as a stalk of corn in her golden wool gown and not an inch of vulnerability in her attitude.

'I am pleased to meet you, my lady,' Rhoysn responded in excellent accented French marred by the crack in her voice. 'You are not as I thought.'

The gold-grey eyes fixed on her in cool appraisal. 'Neither are you.'

Rhosyn swallowed. 'I have not come to make of Guyon a battleground,' she said, trying to defend herself against Judith's gaze which owned the properties of winter sunlight - bright but killingly cold.

'But nevertheless you are here, and I do not think that it is because you intend buying trinkets or watching the bear dance.'

'No, there is more to it than that,' Rhosyn admitted. 'Some of it is a matter of trade. I have those spices you asked my father to obtain for you last time and I needed some trimmings for a new gown ...' She drew a shaky breath. 'My father went to Flanders last month and died there. Prys has gone to bring him home. I was hoping to ask Guyon for an escort back into Wales - he did promise me one should I need it - and I thought he should know of my father's death ... and other things.' Her voice stalled into silence.

'Then you had best come up to the keep,' Judith said stiffly. 'There will be tallies to settle and you will need a place to sleep. I am sorry to hear about your father. We had become friends.' She wondered what she would do if Guyon came unexpectedly home now and lavished all his attention on Rhosyn and their small , engaging daughter. It was an area they had left well alone.

Judith had never enquired beyond the superficial and he had seldom volunteered insights, both of them avoiding what might cause them too much pain. She saw now, too late, that they had been wrong.

The tension between the two women remained palpable, although Judith relaxed her guard sufficiently to haggle prices with Rhosyn, who responded vigorously to the challenge as soon as she realised Judith's astuteness. Eluned was sulky and intractable and de Bec took her and Rhys off to the stables to show them Melyn's latest batch of kittens before the child's rudeness became inexcusable. The two women were left alone in each other's company, except for the infant.

'Eluned has lost her father and now her grandfather,' Rhosyn sighed, 'and this new babe has not made matters any easier.' She looked tenderly down at the child curled sleepily in her lap. 'I did not mean to conceive, you know - a slip-up with the nostrums that would have prevented such a thing. She is a tie with Guyon I could well do without.' Gently she touched the feathery whorls of red-blonde hair and smiled. 'She takes her colouring from Guyon's grand-sire, Renard de Rouen. He married a Welsh girl, old Lord Owain's daughter, Heulwen. My father was at their wedding, although of course he was no more than a child himself then.'

Judith was silent, not knowing what to say.

Spoken in a different tone, Rhosyn's words might have been a challenge, yet crooned softly like a lullaby to a drowsing infant, there was no threat but, Jesu, they stung all the same. A vision of Guyon's lithe, muscular body filled Judith's inner eye. She knew exactly how his skin would feel beneath her fingertips; the gliding, sensual promise of joy. So did Rhosyn, the child in her arms a visible, living reminder of the pleasure Guyon had taken on her body. And as yet she had no such reminder to comfort herself.

Glancing up from her sleepy daughter, Rhosyn glimpsed Judith's expression before it was masked to neutrality, and her stomach lurched.

Behind that controlled facade there stalked a wild beast.

'Perhaps it would be better if you gave me my escort now,' she suggested with dignity.

Judith parted her lips to snarl an agreement, caught her voice in time and, hands clenched in her lap, looked away towards the space upon the solar wall where she intended to drape the hanging. The jealous anger she felt was corrosive and damaging. She had to face it and force her will through it. Turning back to the small , dark Welsh woman, she laid her hand on her sleeve.

'No, please stay. It is too late in the day to set out for Wales. You would not reach your home before dark. Besides, we have not concluded our business. Can you obtain some more of that rich cloth for me? The last gown was ruined in London.'

'I will try. We've been swamped by demands for it since last winter, but of course you and Guyon have priority. I'll speak to Prys.' She studied Judith warily. They were navigating a deep, narrow channel and where there were not jagged rocks to be avoided, there were currents and whirlpools.

Ignorant of adult strivings, Heulwen slept, a heavy warm weight in her mother's arms, and Rhosyn was only too glad to accept Judith's invitation to put her down in the upper chamber with Helgund and Elflin.

The room was well appointed and reasonably warm, for in addition to the braziers it boasted a hearth. The maids whispered delightedly over the sleeping child. Rhosyn laid her daughter in the huge bed which dwarfed the small form to the size of a doll and, after tenderly smoothing her curls, gazed around the room. The wall s were bright with hangings that stayed the draughts and combated the seeping coldness of the stone wall s. The narrow windows were covered by slats of wafer-thin ox horn so that at least some daylight was permitted into the room, but rush dips still illuminated the corners and unseen things seemed to lurk there. She shivered and hugged her arms.