'Is there something wrong?' Judith enquired.

Rhosyn shook her head and smiled wanly. 'I hate these places.' She shuddered. 'No light, no air save that it be musty and tainted with damp. The wall s hem me in. I never sleep well when I'm lodged in one of these keeps. I need to be free.

Guy could see it, but he never understood. He loves the stones. Perhaps they grow warm under his touch as they do not under mine. It is one of the reasons I would not stay with him. In time the nightmare would have swamped the dream.' She looked round at Judith and dropped her arms to her sides. 'You are like him; content to dwell here.

You do not feel the hostility. I could no more make my home in a keep than you could live rough in Wales.'

Judith took her coney-lined cloak from the clothing pole and handed Rhosyn hers across the space separating them. 'Then you do not know me,' she responded with a glimmer of fierceness. 'Yes, I do enjoy the security of these wall s and caring for those within their bounds, but it is not all my life and, if it was, I would go mad.'

She led her out of the room and on up the twisting stairway to the battlements, her tread making nothing of the steep, winding steps.

Almost defiantly she added between breaths as they went, 'I know how to track and snare game. I can make a shelter from cloaks and branches. I speak a fair degree of Welsh and I can use a dagger as well as any man. When Guy goes on progress to his other holdings, I go with him and it is no hardship for me to sleep beneath a hedge or hayrick wrapped in my cloak. I need to feel the wind in my hair and the rain on my face. Sometimes I come up here for precisely that purpose.'

Rhosyn, her calves aching, put her hands on the stone and leaned between the merlons while she rested to gain her breath. A guard saluted the two women. Judith greeted the man by name and stood beside Rhosyn, her tawny hair wisping loose of its braids.

'You have it in you to keep him,' Rhosyn said, seeing now the promise. Not just a strikingly attractive young woman, high-bred and Norman with all the domestic and social skill s that a man of Guyon's status required, but one who beneath the cultured exterior was still only half tame, a thing of the woods, wild for to hold. Guyon was not about to grow bored with such a complex, complementary blending of traits.

A few late swallows swooped the sky, their cries poignantly sharp, like needles darting through blue cloth. Judith looked down at her hands. 'If we are granted a life together,' she said with a hint of bitterness and stared at a blemish on one of her nails until her eyes began to sting.

'Since last Martinmas, I have scarcely seen him. Either he is with the King, or about the King's business and the times he is home, he just eats and sleeps and his temper is foul ... but then I suppose it has reason to be. There is no guarantee that Henry will win this war. If he fails it won't matter whether I have the ability to hold him or not ... in this life at least. De Belleme knows whose work was behind half the charges he was summoned to answer.'

Rhosyn leaned with her and watched the swooping birds. A trickle of foreboding shivered down her spine. 'Is he in serious danger?'

'I have never known my lord when he has not been in serious danger,' Judith said with a reluctant smile. 'From his own contrary nature, if nothing else. He sets out to court trouble sometimes and I have the devil's own job to persuade him that he should be courting me instead!'

It was spoken with humour, but it was in no wise amusing, as Rhosyn well knew. Leopards did not make good hearth animals. They were liable to tear out your heart.

The watch changed, spears scraping on stone, jocularities bantered. Some sheep were driven into the bailey from the surrounding fields for slaughter the next day. Below them, the market was packing up as folk began wending their way home. Leaning over the battlements, Judith saw the guard who had been having his tooth pulled weaving this way and that over the drawbridge, clearly the worse for drink. She made a mental note to check with de Bec that he was not on duty that night.

'I was foolish to come,' said Rhosyn in a soft voice that Judith had to strain to hear. 'Only I wanted ... I wanted to see you for myself. If I am honest, that at least was the half of it.'

Taken aback, Judith stared at her. 'I would call it a very dangerous indulgence,' she said.

Rhosyn made a face. 'Do you think I have not said the same thing to myself a hundred times over?' She smiled sadly. 'But it has been like a sore tooth, nagging me and nagging me until it had to be drawn. I had to know. Well , now I do and I am glad it is over, but that is not the sole reason I am here.' She drew a deep breath, her eyes on the horizon towards which the sun was now angling. 'My second cousin Prys, who lives in Bristol and with whom we have strong business ties, has asked me to marry him and I have agreed.'

'Congratulations,' Judith said courteously. 'When is the wedding to be?'

'We don't know yet. Before Christmastide, I suppose. We have my father to mourn first and the business to sort out.' She frowned and pressed the heel of her hand into the gritty stone.

'I've known Prys since we were children and Rhys and Eluned are fond of him ... but it is Heulwen, you see. After all , she is Guyon's daughter and for the sake of what was between us, he should know my decision. Prys has no heirs. Perhaps in the fullness of time I shall bear him children, but he is willing to take Rhys, Eluned and Heulwen for his own.'

'I do not think Guyon will stand in your way,'

Judith said slowly after a pause for consideration.

'Neither do I.' Rhosyn blinked. 'It has run its course, for him at least. We never had enough in common to make of it more than a dry grass fire. I wish ...' Rhosyn shook her head and turned away, her chin wobbling.

Judith had imagined Guyon's mistress to be dark and mysterious and beautiful with all the wiles at her fingertips. Only the first was true. The reality was a straightforward practical woman with a generous, gentle spirit. She could see why Guyon had held on to the bond for more than four years and also why it must now be severed. And Rhosyn saw too, or else she would not be crying here beside her on the battlements.

Rhosyn sniffed and, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, gave Judith a watery smile. 'I am sorry, I was being foolish. Will you and Guyon come to the wedding?'

Judith looked doubtful. 'Will it not cause trouble?'

Rhosyn shook her head. 'Prys knows my past. You will be most welcome.'

Judith inclined her head. 'Then gladly we will come, circumstances permitting.' She watched the drawbridge being drawn up for the night. One of the men on watch shouted a cheerful insult across to the guards at the winch and was answered in kind.

'I hope Guyon will still see her on occasion,'

Rhosyn added. 'She is his daughter.

'She will always be his firstborn,' Judith agreed with a judicious nod. 'It would be wrong to try and prevent him. That far I will permit you to tread on my territory because I cannot change it, but seek further at your peril.'

From the inner bailey, the dinner horn sounded and someone cheered with irony.

Rhosyn stared at Judith. The challenge was there in Judith's strange, stone-coloured eyes, but leavened by a twinkle of humour. 'I do not think you will see me at Ravenstow again,' she replied.

* * *

Rhosyn rode out the next morning on to a sun-polished road with an escort of eight serjeants and her manservant, Twm. The pony hooves echoed on the dusty drawbridge planks. She looked beyond the rise and fall of their loaded backs to where Judith stood between the bridge and portcullis, one arm shading her eyes, the other raised in farewell . Rhosyn returned the salute briefly and turned in the saddle so that, like her mount, she faced Wales.

At noon they stopped to water the horses and eat a cold repast of bread, cheese and roasted fowl. Heulwen, as usual, ate the cheese, spat out the bread and made a thorough mess. Eluned in contrast, nibbling as daintily as a deer, considered her mother, swallowed and said, 'He was forced to marry her, wasn't he, Mam?'

Rhosyn looked at her daughter in concern.

Eluned had been very quiet since yestereve's rudeness, a brooding kind of quiet that would not yield to cozening. 'At the outset, yes,' she answered cautiously.

'He does not love her.' Eluned fingered her amber necklace.

Rhosyn bit her lip. The child's eyes were her own - hazel green-gold and full of pain. You grew up and learned to hide it, that was the only difference. 'You cannot say that, Eluned,' she said. 'It is what you would like to be true, not truth itself. You should wish them joy in each other, not strife.'

'She's ugly!' Eluned thrust out her lower lip.

'Eluned!'

Heulwen choked and Rhosyn unthinkingly rescued the half-chewed piece of chicken wing from the back of the infant's throat, her attention all focused on her elder daughter.

'I hate her, she's a Norman slut. Guyon belongs to us, not her!'

Rhosyn's hand shot out and cracked across Eluned's cheek. Eluned gasped. The men of the escort looked round from their oatcakes and ale.

Eluned put her hand to her face, stared at her mother with aghast, brimming eyes as the mark of the slap began to redden. Whirling round, she fled beyond the startled men into the thickness of the brambles and trees.

'No, Mam, let her go.' Rhys caught Rhosyn's arm as she made to pursue. 'She's leaving a trail a blind man could follow. I don't think she'll go very far.'

Rhosyn subsided with a sigh. 'It is my fault. I did not realise it ran so deeply. She used to say that she was going to marry Guyon. I thought it was a child's game.'

'So did she,' Rhys said with a wisdom beyond his years.

Rhosyn reseated herself upon the spread skins to finish her meal, but her eyes kept flickering towards the trees.

Rhys considered her for a moment and then gave an adolescent sigh, heavy with impatience, and hitched his belt.

'All right, Mam, I'll go and find her.' Rhosyn gave him a grateful smile. She wondered how to go about dealing with Eluned when she returned. Diplomatic silence as if it had never happened? Detailed, careful explanations? A scolding? Sympathetic affection?

Heulwen was rubbing her eyes and whining.

Rhosyn bent her mind away from the problem of her elder daughter to persuade her younger one to take a nap beneath one of the skins.

Two greenfinches dated across the clearing, their song a chitter of alarm. A horse snorted and, throwing up its head, nickered towards the trees, ears pricked. One of the men put down his drink and went to the restless beast.

Sounds of something crashing blindly through the under-growth came clearly to their ears, and then a cry. Rhosyn sprang to her feet, her heart thudding against her ribs. She stooped and covered Heulwen, by now asleep, with another of the skins, concealing her as best she could.

Her escort drew their swords. Shields were reached for and slipped on to men's arms. One of the escort turned to give Rhosyn a command but she ignored him, transfixed by horror as she watched her son stagger towards them, hugging the trees for support, his tunic saturated with blood.

'Rhys!' she screamed. Lifting her skirts, she started to run towards him. A young serjeant, Eric's brother, caught her back.

The boy looked in the direction of her voice, but his eyes were blind, his mouth working, pouring blood. 'Mam!' he gasped frothily and then, choking, 'The Cwmni Annwn!'

'Rhys!' she screamed again and tore free of her captor to run stumbling to where he had fall en face down in the turning crisp leaves. He was dead. She could see the rents in his clothing where a blade had been plunged and his blood was hot and dark on her hands.

Bent over her son, she did not hear the horrified warning yelled by her escort, nor see the riders of the wild hunt advancing through the trees, the wild hunt advancing through the trees, following the trail of lifeblood to their victim.

CHAPTER 25

Soon after Rhosyn had left, Judith fetched her cloak and departed Ravenstow with her own escort, her destination one of Ravenstow's fiefs.

The lord of the small , beholden keep at Farnden had recently died and she had promised his son, the inheritor of the holding and its military obligations, that she would attend a mass in the church there for the soul of his father before he rode out to rejoin Guyon. Also, there were the customs and rights of the new tenancy to be confirmed and the oath of fealty to be sworn.