Court of Foxes (13 page)

But the neighing of the horses excited her own pony; it began to call back, nervous and restless, and she came to her senses, slipped down off its back, forced it hindways into the shelter of the trees and there left it with its bridle hanging free. To have ridden it away, with a scudding of hooves down the mountainside and the giveaway crashing of branches, would have been to invite pursuit, since they would suppose one of the coach party escaping. She crept back up to the road. A pistol, jerked no doubt out of the hand of one of the outriders, lay there, its silver chasing gleaming in the moonlight, and she picked it up and held it cocked as she crouched back into the shadow of the undergrowth. The country pursuits of her native home had made her an excellent shot; and whose side she might be on in this struggle must be problematical but it might yet be that a firearm would come in useful.

From within the coach came the wailing of women; and, one from either side, two men now leapt out and began firing into the scrub forest, working their way slowly crab-wise, forward to the horses’ heads. Let them but disarm those who kept the coachman in subjection and he might, by driving relentlessly forward, force a passage between the three or four marauders left on the road ahead of them, and they two leaping on as it passed them, contrive a getaway. And indeed, Sam the Saddle, taken unaware from behind, was caught in the wrist and dropped his pistol screaming out in agony, a second man cried out and tumbled from his pony; only two were left in the path of the coach. Those riding past to fire in at the windows, seeing what was happening and trying to turn back, were caught and mazed in the low branches of the oak trees; it began to look as though, for all their outnumbering, the strategy of the two creeping figures, stealing with cocked pistols to the horses’ heads, might yet succeed.

And out of the roadside shadows a man’s figure rose up and moved quietly to stand in front of Marigelda, looking down the roadway towards the struggle going on around the coach; with pistol also cocked but seeming to take no part in it. She kept very still, crouching in the shadows almost touching his cloak; and he made no move to look down at her but after a moment spoke in a rapid whisper. ‘Gilda! Keep quiet — it’s I, Tregaron. They caught up with me in the woods and brought me here at pistol point, telling me to keep silent or it would be the worse for me. We must try to help these people; but meanwhile keep absolutely still, keep absolutely quiet and only, for God’s sake, cover your head. Don’t you know that that hair of yours is like a flame where the moonlight catches it? I knew it in a moment.’

The two travellers now had joined forces, shooting their way to the very heads of the leading horses. One cried up to the coachman: ‘Be ready! Drive forward with all your might. Take heed of nothing in your way. We will give you the signal.’ They stood side by side, swivelling their guns to cover any lingering opposition at the wayside ahead of them. One moment and they would be gone. Gilda, beside herself with excitement, whispered triumphantly: ‘They’ve won!’

And must have jerked back her head and let the dark covering fall; for one man cried out: ‘What’s there?’ and both pistols swung to point directly towards her; directly towards Lord Tregaron, standing immediately before her.

In one moment they would see him: at this range, could not miss. She leapt up, levelled her own pistol and fired point blank at the first man’s heart. In the same moment her husband also fired and cried out: ‘Got him!’

For one startled, terrible second all was silence. Then the shouting began anew, horsemen burst forth from the shelter of the scrub, from the coach the wailing and screaming were redoubled; and as both men fell, Lord Tregaron ran forward and with Gilda almost at his shoulder, looked down at them.

For one moment he stood there; and then he turned to her, caught at her hand, tore from her finger the heavy gold and ruby ring of their betrothal. Dio came running and he spoke a rapid word to him, grasped at the bridle of the nearest horse, swung himself into the saddle and was galloping like a madman off into the darkness.

All about her, Gilda was conscious of noise and movement. She knew that the coachman crawled down from his box in abject surrender, that Dio y Diawl was shouting out orders, that out from the coach two women were being dragged in a terror of weeping. But she knelt between the two fallen men and saw that they were desperately wounded; one cried out indeed at this moment: ‘Oh, God help me! I’m dying.’

It diverted her attention from the other. She whispered: ‘No, no, you shall have succour, you shall be cared for,’ but he only cried out again, ‘I’m dying!’ and fell to a sick and feverish muttering. She caught the words, ‘Gereth… Earl of Tregaron…’

At her left hand the other lay, softly moaning; white face turned up to the moonlit sky, a spreading stain above the heart, fair hair all blotched with blood; and choked out, ‘My brother? Is my brother hurt…?’ and moved his head towards where the dying man lay, opening upon her piteous, questioning eyes; and unanswered, let the heavy lids fall again and slid back into oblivion…

But not before she had seen that look, as brief now as upon those two other, ever beloved, ever recollected occasions.

The Honourable David Llandovery: Brown Eyes.

And she looked up and saw the great coach with its blazon of arms, as once she had seen it when a man who was now her husband leaned against the door, watching her smile down upon a gift of white roses; and cried to the dying man whom David Llandovery this moment had called his brother: ‘Then, for God’s sake — who are
you
?’

And he whispered again: ‘Earl of Tregaron,’ and fell back again to his mumbling and muttering: ‘The Fox… I am killed by Gareth y Cadno, Gareth the Fox…’

Gareth y Cadno: no Earl of Tregaron any more than she had been Marchesa D’Astonia Subeggio, but a penniless adventurer who had married her for the ransom she would pay over to him and his gang before he turned her loose again: who would find himself, however, having been outwitted by as penniless an adventurer as himself.

Gareth y Cadno! Her wedded husband, who now had shot and killed a man and ridden off into the darkness with only her ruby ring for his fortune, and a price upon his head.

*
Madam fach:
the single f is pronounced like a v. This is the feminine of ‘bach’, an endearment robbed of any hint of disrespect by the ‘Madam’. The word rhymes roughly with the German ‘Bach’ as in Johann Sebastian.

T
HE TRUE EARL OF
Tregaron had died in her arms; the new Earl of Tregaron lay helplessly injured, his head in her lap. The false Earl of Tregaron had ridden off into the night. She called peremptorily to a man. ‘Send Dio y Diawl to me and quickly!’ and while he ran off began to wriggle out of her petticoats, to tear them into strips for the bandaging of the heavily bleeding wounds.

Dio came and stood over her. Even now in the midst of his anxieties, his big face was — a little quizzically — smiling. ‘So, Madam fach — now you know all?’

‘I know that I’ve been made a fool of. I know now who my husband is.’

‘He is Gareth y Cadno, Madam; whose woman, it seems, is already issuing orders.’

‘The Fox’s woman is a slut named Blodwen,’ she said. ‘I am his wife.’

He gave a small rueful assenting nod of his head. “Well, that’s true enough. So — your orders, Madam Vixen?’

‘This man is badly wounded; if he doesn’t have care, he’ll die. And the other is already gone, we’ve trouble enough without a second. Besides with his brother’s death he becomes the new earl, he’s a man of great importance now. Better get him back into the coach and send him home.’

‘What and lose a fine carriage and six horses?’

‘What good are they to you? Such horses are useless on the mountains? And the coach too — best be quit of it all with the women and servants…’ To have him here in her arms, and to send him away, perhaps for ever! But all that mattered to her was his safety. She urged: ‘Let him go! We’re in trouble deep enough already.’

‘We?’ he said. ‘Do you then remain one of us?’

It occurred to her for the first time — so intent had she been upon his welfare — that here lay her own chance of escape. She tried to speak unconcernedly. ‘Why, no: why should I remain with you?’

He stood looking down at her as she sat in the roadway, the wounded man held in her arms. ‘That’s not quite what I said, Madam fach. Of course you remain
with
us.’

‘But why? What am I to you?’

His bright eyes widened in his big, round face. ‘Well — are you not a ransom?’ he said.

A ransom! She opened her mouth to reply that she could pay none, that her whole story was as false as Gareth y Cadno’s own. But she closed it again. The hope of ransom might yet preserve in them some respect for her; and it was deeply necessary that they heed her opinion and advice. ‘Very well. But you’re a fool if you don’t let
him
go.’

He considered again, humping his huge shoulders in the effort to think it all over; pausing now and then to shout orders to his men — who, however, were efficiently employed in plundering the coach, the women meanwhile standing alongside, one white and silent, the other pitifully moaning. He nodded at last. ‘Ay, better be rid of him.’

‘Very well.’ And having won the first round, she took swift advantage. She said, and made it an order: ‘Send the women here to me.’

‘From the coach?’

‘Yes, I must have help.’ But she glanced at the dead man lying in the road beside her. ‘First best move him elsewhere; he’ll only distract them and I shall need all their attention.’ She sat with the unconscious body held close against her as with her free hand she pressed a swab of linen against his shoulder to stem the bleeding, while two fellows came forward and lugged the body away. ‘Send it back in the coach,’ she said to Dio, ‘or you’ll have the place overrun with his people, searching for it.’ And as soon as it was out of sight: ‘Now, call the women.’

They came hastening, weeping. ‘A woman! Thank God!’ And they threw themselves on their knees beside her. ‘Oh, he’s wounded! Yes, it’s true, he’s wounded. And the Earl? — can it be true also that his lordship is dead? — can you tell us, Madam—?’

An elderly woman in a mob cap, a sober dress beneath a travelling cloak; a sort of upper-class servant, apparently sufficient duenna for a young lady alone in a coach with two gentlemen. The other — young and very lovely, a skin like white velvet, thick and matt, unlike Gilda’s own white skin beneath which the colour came and went; a nose exquisitely chiselled, hair very blonde, no match for Gilda’s own lambent flame but the colour of corn in sunshine, fallen now from beneath the frilled white cap and tumbling to her waist in a ripple of gold. And the tapering fingers might flutter but they were capable enough, taking up the linen squares that Gilda had torn from her petticoat, dabbling them in water brought by one of the men from the little stream that ran down the mountain side and across the road to join the river below; tenderly bathing the wound with it. The ball had taken him in the shoulder; the blood in his hair must have come from his hand, for there was no wound there — but his arm and sleeve were soaked in it. Lost to all about them, now, but the need to staunch the bleeding which, after ceasing a little under Gilda’s pressure, had now started off afresh, they knelt one on either side of him, the servant holding a lantern brought to them from the coach. There was a ragged wound of entry and, high up behind the shoulder, a bulge and bruising with the skin not quite broken, where the bullet must have lodged against the shoulder blade. The girl said, awe-stricken: ‘Should we try to remove it?’

To remove the ball! To penetrate that fair skin, probe in, search through the welling-up of the blood… ‘Dear God, I could not do it…’

‘I don’t know… If we leave it… I know nothing about such things; but with the jolting of the coach between here and the castle, might not the bullet shift and do further damage? — perhaps break through the skin and start a bleeding which we would then be powerless to deal with?’ Across the unconscious body, they stared into one another’s eyes. ‘If you are brave enough to hold him,’ said the girl at last, ‘I will try to be brave enough to do it.’

The maid had a small penknife, pearl-handled; washed it in the blood-stained water, passed it, shuddering. Gilda held him in her arms, a pad of wet linen pressed hard against the major wound, the discoloured shoulder turned outward. The girl said: ‘One moment while I steady myself; my hand is shaking,’ and was still, her right hand holding the little knife, the left pressed across her eyes as though, thought Gilda, she might be praying. Then with a swift movement, giving herself no time to think, she made a shallow slash in the skin across the bulging bruise and almost before the blood could spring, had delved in with the tip of the knife and scooped the bullet out into her hand. And cried out: ‘Oh, God! — thank God!’ and fainted.

One hand still pressed against the entrance wound, Gilda dabbed at the other with linen and water; but it was nothing; the blood gushed for a moment, trickled and soon ceased to flow at all. The woman, meanwhile bent over the swooning girl, slapping at her face with wet hands, imploring recognition. ‘Come, my lady, wake my lamb, all is well, my darling! Come, Miss Blanche—!’

Come, Miss Blanche… Gilda sat up with the fair head cradled in her lap, her arm aching with the sustained pressure upon the bleeding. She said, ‘What was that name you spoke? Who is this lady?’

‘Who is she? Why, my Lady Blanche Handley, Madam, daughter of the Earl of—’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Gilda. ‘Daughter of the Earl of Trove. I know it!’ And she leaned across the unconscious body between them and slapped vigorously at the girl’s white, upturned face. ‘Come, enough of this fooling! Wake up, stand up, I have need of you!’ As the girl, bewildered, came-to and began struggling to her feet, she said: ‘I must have more cloths, I must have bandages. Off with your petticoats!’

She stood there helpless, astonished at the sudden change, her hands still bloodied, gaping. ‘My — my petticoats? I don’t understand.’ And the woman cried out: ‘My lady’s petticoats?’