Court of Foxes (34 page)

‘All but one,’ he said.

‘All but one?’ And suddenly she saw that it was very strange, this contrived encounter, with the Black Toby employed to lure her forth, to bring her to this secret assignation, leaving them all in doubt. She faced him in the dying light of the day, the great mountain rising up grim, and yet dearly familiar, behind her; her hair flying like a blown torch in the rising wind. ‘Gareth — why have you brought me here? It isn’t gold and jewels, I know that. What is it you want?’

He was silent for a moment, as if for once even he was a little afraid to voice his thought. He said at last: ‘It is the fox cub.’

‘The fox cub?’

‘The boy,’ he said. ‘Your child and mine.’

‘Your child—?’ Fear caught at her heart now. ‘You want the baby?’ She confronted him, the wild hair blowing away from a face grown absolutely white; and said with deliberation: This is a trick for ransom: and such a trick, even you, Gareth, couldn’t play, and survive. There’s no force in England or Wales would not be employed if you were to take this child. He’s the son of the Earl of Tregaron, let me remind you: he is Gereth, Viscount Llandovery—’

‘He is Gareth the Cub — son of Gareth the Fox,’ said Y Cadno. And he smiled but it was grimly, with very little mirth in it. ‘Born prematurely, my dear Gilda, I understand?’

Such a thought had never entered her mind; occupied as it had been during much of her pregnancy and ever since, with horror and — God forgive her! she thought now — with grief, at the fate of this villain who now stood before her. ‘You truly believe that the child is yours?’

‘Make your calculations,’ he said and laughed outright. ‘It was October, was it not? — that evening by the river’s edge.’

Now terror entered into her, she began, perhaps for the first time in her life, to be truly afraid, truly bewildered in her fear, a rising panic numbing her understanding. ‘The physicians—’

‘The physicians were misled by you no doubt; deliberately or — it now seems — otherwise; had you forgotten your fainting attack that morning I robbed the Lady Blanche, when you came to my hide out? I confess that when I saw you at the playhouse you seemed to me remarkably far gone for a lady so recently admitted to the arms of her lover.’

And again that last day at Castell Cothi — had she not fainted away for no apparent reason at all? And if it were all true… Her child had been to her — a child: something of her own, no doubt, but born to her after long illness, taken from her immediately, reared by others — the little Lord Llandovery, whose very name, whose present, whose future belonged to that other world of great lands and grand titles, where such things were ordered by age-old tradition and not by owning, by motherhood, by the long travail and the pangs of birth. But now… Torn ever between two loves, she asked herself how much room there was in her heart for a third; for this small son who, claimed on this side and that, at least without question was her own. I must cling to that, she thought; he is my own. Somewhere deep in her heart was the knowledge that this might not be the true maternal love but would do well enough in its place. ‘I’ll never give him up,’ she said. ‘I’ll never give him up.’

‘Who asks you to? You may come with him if you will — I care not one way or the other. But he’s my son and no other man shall have him.’

‘He is the son of the Earl of Tregaron. He’s the Viscount Llandovery.’

‘If he’s the son of the Earl of Tregaron,’ he said laughing, ‘then he’s not the Viscount Llandovery, or no more so than
I
ever was — who also am the bastard son of an Earl of Tregaron.’ And he reminded her mockingly: ‘For while I am alive, my dear –his mother is not the Earl of Tregaron’s wife.’

‘Dear God!’ she said, confounded. ‘It’s true. And if so — I’m not truly married to David…’

‘None knows that,’ he said quickly, ‘save you and I and a handful of friends who will never speak of it. You may continue as his wife if you will — since the loss of him, I perceive, brings a new blanch to your cheek and a new trembling —
and
as Countess of Tregaron, though I do you the justice to believe that that means less to you — to the end of your days; and your children his heirs. But not this child. This child is mine.’

‘Gareth — Gareth, for God’s sake…’ But her mind seemed sick and dazed, she groped in a fog of doubts. She said at last (lying, for if the child resembled anyone it resembled only herself) ‘Now I think of it — you’re wrong — it
is
David’s child, you have but to observe the likeness…’

‘A Tregaron likeness,’ he said, tossing it aside. ‘Of which family, if only by blood, I also am a member.’

She was defeated. ‘You’ve thought of everything,’ she said, and moved away from him, blindly, hardly knowing what she did or where she went, half-way across the little clearing and back again — found a great rock and leaned back against it, her head bowed, her hands clenched against her forehead. ‘Have pity on me, Gareth! What could I tell David? What could I say? I — I told him I had resisted you… Am I now to say that you claim parentage? — so that he’ll force me to let the child go, believing it to be a bastard, after all—?’

‘The child can’t be a bastard,’ he said, ‘unless it be his child. But it’s my child — born, for a wonder, in wedlock.’

‘—very well then, believing it not his own. What does it matter? Either way, he’ll force me to hand over my baby to you.’

‘Who, however, am four foot underground. You forget,’ he said, ever mocking, ‘that your first husband is several months dead.’

She dashed her little fist into the hollow of her hand. ‘That at least can soon be dealt with; for I shall tell him, even if I tell no other, that you are not dead.’

‘What, and find yourself no longer Countess of Tregaron? You move round in circles, my dear! For, with all dear David’s doting, I don’t see him accepting you as his wife, knowing you to be otherwise; begetting upon you other children to be — illegitimately — his heirs. Do you?’

Her whole body sagged, she turned against the rock and, half lying there, pressing her forehead against its rough, cool surface, broke into despairing tears; and for the first time in her life, pleaded with him. ‘Oh, Gareth — spare me: spare me! Why should you be so cruel to me?’

She could imagine the little shrug, the hard line of his lips, the gleam in his dark eye. ‘I don’t deal in softness,’ he said shortly.

‘When you were in trouble,’ she said, sobbing, ‘I offered everything — I offered my very life for you, when yours was in danger.’

‘It was on your account that it
was
in danger,’ he said indifferently, ‘so that was but fair. And in any event, I repaid the kindness, did I not? By my supposed death, you became a great lady, you married the one of your choice. And what do I ask now? — only my son. You may have all the rest — you may have your estates and your titles, you may have your beloved; and a pack of other children to make up for the one I take.’ And he put out his hand and caught at her shoulder, pulled her up, roughly, from where she crouched, leaning against the rock; turned her round to face him. ‘Come, up, girl! — and show a little of the vixen in you — you’ve grown soft of late, lying in a soft white bed, folded in the soft white arms of my Lord of Tregaron.’ He pulled out a cambric handkerchief, filched no doubt from some traveller of other days. ‘Here mop up these tears, you’re blubbered and unlovely to the sight!’ As she sobbed and sniffed and pushed back her hair from her hot forehead, he spoke to her sharply in the old tones of unquestioned command. ‘I’ve been teasing you; in fact it’s all arranged. While we’ve talked here — (and have no anxieties, the Black Toby will long ago have returned to them and remained there; your love is not thinking of you as in his arms — Dio will have disappeared and be supposed talking over affairs of the gang with you) — while we’ve been here, I say, the women will have discovered themselves afire with curiosity to see the dear little lordling — his nurse bundled out of the coach and dispossessed of her charge; and there’ll be a great dandling and cooing and running off to show the child to this one and that, each further away from the coach than the last. Tears and terrors, no doubt, from the ladies as to the little one’s peril in those rough hands; but behold! — he will be returned to his nurse’s arms at last, safe and sound, and all will be happiness again.’ He paused; and again there came that faint hesitation as though he were almost afraid to voice his thought. But… ‘These great folk,’ he said, ‘what do they see of a child? Poke beneath his cap and chuck his chin and hand him back to the nurse; and she a new one, I understand, having succeeded the wet nurse? And… Well, one baby is much like another; and this one also will have the Tregaron blood and has, I promise you, something of the Tregaron look.’

‘Gareth!’

‘You didn’t suppose me lying alone through the long nights up at Twm Shon Catti’s cave? A pretty little creature — for a time I was quite seriously taken, especially when I found she was with child. Serving wench she was at the Towy Bridge inn — that same inn where I held up the Lady Blanche; my pretty Mifanwy it was who then gave me the assistance I needed. Returned now to her native Pembrokeshire; but she left me a legacy and a blue-eyed one, by heaven’s favour, her own being as blue as the skies; for my information from London is that — unlike most fox cubs, I confess — this one has blue eyes.’

She was speechless; standing there helpless, confounded, the dark green dress a blot against the pale of the grass, her face white and luminous as a pearl in the evening light, crowned with the gold of her hair. ‘So, Madam — dry your tears! Lord Tregaron has still a son and of the Tregaron blood; and may still have a wife. And you have my oath on it — the solemn oath of Gareth y Cadno — that from this day forth I will trouble you no more. Only…’ He caught up her lax hand and drew from her finger the gold and ruby ring. This I will reclaim; not for the jewel, but for the words that have always gone with it. Another oath, but one from which I will ask you to absolve me after all.’

I will love you till I die.

She went from him without a further word, climbed back up the sloping bank between the clumps of gorse, the turf springy beneath her feet. The sky was darkling blue, at the roadside the two coaches made black humps, the horses restlessly stamping their hooves with a jingle of harness and creaking of leather, tossing nervy heads against the light restraining hands on the reins. The ground was fairly level here, ringed round with a few bushes and trees. Against one of the trees, separated by twenty yards or so from the group by the coaches, the Black Toby negligently leaned, his pistol, however, resting upon a crook’d arm, pointed towards where David stood beside the foremost coach. The nurse was not to be seen — was within, no doubt, with the new little Lord Llandovery in her lap fast asleep in his hurriedly substituted rich embroidered clothes, all unaware of the magnificent future — bastard brat of a tavern doxy and a highwayman on the run, in whose veins however coursed the blood of the great family whom he would one day represent before the world. The old mother was still out, however, standing beside her son, almost as though she would protect him: deathly weary, deeply afraid, and yet with something always of that spirit that could make one, disliking her, still never quite despise her. And the Lady Blanche… Standing there like a statue, still, with no outward sign at least of the terrified dread that must be in her heart. I remember, thought Gilda reluctantly, how she took the ball from David’s shoulder when he lay wounded on this very road: saved his life, perhaps — braver than I in that, for all she might hop without her petticoats and have less courage for being seen not absolutely decent than she had for probing a wound and seeing the blood flow… And she told herself bitterly, smiling, that it was as well she could find it in her to feel not too badly towards them: for through the long future, for David’s sake, these were to be her companions and friends. She had this moment made the final choice.

The gang stood or sat around, each alert to guard his own charge, the women clustering, curious, their children about their skirts. In Catti’s arms, a small bundle rolled in a shawl — a shawl, woven, no doubt, at the Cwrt itself of wool culled by the children from the thorny hedgerows after the sheep had passed. Catti would care for the baby, would protect it with her life; she loves me, thought Gilda, and she loves Gareth, and the fox cub will be safe with her. If it were otherwise… If it had been otherwise she could never have let him go. Would she ever see him again? she wondered: her little son — riding by, perhaps, a small boy, fierce and proud as his father was, sitting a sturdy pony, bright with the finery of pillaged passers-by? — would she, a great lady driving in her stately coach, lean out one day and say to her own son, ‘I have safe conduct,’ and hear him say: ‘Pass friend.’ Oh, David, she thought: for your sake — only for your sake!

She came out of the shadow of the trees and stood there, apart from them all; the pistol in her hand. The Black Toby roused himself from his leisurely watch. ‘Well, Madam Vixen, I perceive that you are in command again; and will therefore ask your permission to be on my way.’

She nodded absently. ‘And with my best thanks for your — assistance — upon this and other occasions. Which is not to say,’ she added sharply, however, ‘that you’re absolved of your old undertaking not to poach upon Y Cadno’s preserves.’

He choked up laughter. ‘What, not upon any of his preserves?’ And he came across to her and held her hand and kissed it — not as the fashion was, but as a lover. ‘Farewell, Madam Vixen, then.’ A man brought forward his horse and he swung himself up; turning, tall, splendid, in the long black cloak with the old glitter of steel in his eye. ‘It’s late: I have your permission to sleep this night at least upon your territory?’

‘If it be for the last time. You’ll find accommodation — of every kind, I understand — at the drovers’ inn beside the Towy.’

‘Even nearer than that,’ he said. ‘You forget I have ridden this way before.’ And he bowed, bowed to them all: his horse’s hooves thundered on the rough grass with the sudden energy of his departing; she heard them strike hard among the stones of the road as he came off the grass, slow down as he started the long, steep ascent of the mountain towards Cilycwm. ‘Relax your guard, let the ladies get back into the coaches if they will, and you, my lord of Trove; there’s no more danger.’ And across the intervening space she advanced a little and said softly: ‘David—!’