The Wild Hunt (20 page)

she said and began to unlace his gambeson.

'One of the men bound it for me,' he said with a shrug. 'Let be, Judith. I'm so tired I could fall asleep on my feet. The last thing I need is you poking at me with your tortures and nostrums.'

'Nevertheless you will drink what I give you.' She threw him a stern look from beneath her brows.

The faintest twist of humour curled his mouth.

'Oh God,' he said. 'What have I ever done to deserve this?'

'You married me,' she retorted, her own lips curving for an instant from their severity before she took the wet gambeson from him and the clinging damp linen shirt he wore beneath it.

Guyon eyed Judith, his vision throbbing to the lead weight pressing down on top of his head, sensing a change in her but unable to fathom what or where. She returned with a sheepskin bed covering and flung it around his shoulders then turned away to mix a brew composed of poppy and feverfew in wine.

'So I did,' he said softly and bent to remove his boots. The room swam before his eyes. He reached to brace himself against the clothing chest and missed.

Judith spun round and, with a cry of consternation, ran to him. She saw a brighter red stain spreading on his chausses and his breath was coming in harsh, effortful gasps. He was on his knees. She knelt down and unlaced his chausses.

'Lie down,' she commanded.

'I don't--'

'Lie down!' she snarled and pushed him. Guyon subsided as though she had struck him with a mace and not the flat of her hand.

Efficiently she stripped him, her lips tightening at sight of the ineptly bound linen strip, newly wet and red. 'How long have you been riding with this?'

'Five ... six hours,' he muttered from between clenched teeth.

'You fool!' She left him to fetch a wad of clean linen which she folded into a pad and pressed hard to the leaking edges of the wound.

'No choice, not with Walter de Lacey and his cohorts howling for my blood.'

'It looks as if they got it!' she snapped, 'and perhaps your life with it.'

'I've taken worse.' He tried to smile and failed.

'I doubt it.' She leaned on the pad. 'You've lost more blood than a stuck pig, to look at you.'

'I knew it would come back to boars in the end,' he said and lapsed into semi-consciousness.

Judith was almost panicked into running for her mother.

Almost, but not quite. There was nothing Alicia could do that she could not and he was her charge. 'So much for subtlety,' she said shakily, looking down at her wet, bloodied bedrobe and smeared hands. Seeing that the bleeding had eased she left him in order to fetch the powdered comfrey root and fresh bandages, and sent her maid Helgund for a bowl of mouldy bread.

Returning to him, she shook the comfrey root into the wound, wondering with grim laughter how the fair Alais de Clare would have coped with such a situation. And the humour died as she wondered what Rhosyn ferch Madoc, mother of his child, would have done.

The maid returned with the bread and was told to fetch sheets and blankets. Judith braided her hair, pinned it out of the way and set to work with needle and thread. The Fleming's sword had caught Guyon's inner thigh where the hauberk was slit to allow for riding and there was no mail to protect his flesh. It was not a long wound, but it had pierced deep and, had it been two inches higher, she would not have needed to worry about the matter of subtlety, and neither would he.

Indeed, as she worked, the hysterical urge to giggle almost overcame her again, for kneeling between his legs she had a very intimate eyeful of what had previously so terrified her. Not so daunting now for the simple reason that she had control. If she wanted, she could leave him to bleed to death. It was a sobering thought. She swallowed her sense of the ridiculous and attended single-mindedly to her purpose.

Having dressed the main wound as best she could, for it was in a difficult position to bind properly, she examined him for signs of other injury.

Surprisingly, for a man so dark, Guyon was not hirsute; there was just a ridge of hair running from the centre of his breastbone down into the thick bush at his groin and she was able to scrutinise his flesh closely. It was something she had never done before, preferring to dwell in deliberate ignorance and he, sensing her fear and awkwardness, had seldom stripped naked in front of her.

It had never occurred to her to think of a man's body being attractive. A source of pain and brutalisation, so her previous experience said.

Now, almost in wonder, she traced with light fingers a thin white line scoring one muscular pectoral and one higher up, just grazing his jawbone.

Guyon groaned and opened his eyes. Judith sucked a sharp breath between her teeth and quickly withdrew her hand.

'
Cath fach,
' he said weakly and found a smile from somewhere; this time his tone was not patronising. 'How bad is it?'

She could see his pulse racing in his throat and the sweat sheening its hollow. 'Bad enough.

You've lost so much blood that there's scarcely a drop left in your body and you're quite likely to develop wound fever. There were flakes of rust in the cut. I've packed it with mouldy bread, but it's hard to bind. I can't move you for fear that you'll open it again. You are going to be uncomfortable for no small time ... if you live ... and no, I am not japing with you. You had best prepare your soul.'

'What kind of comfort is that?' he said, tried to laugh and desisted, eyes squeezing closed.

Judith used the moment to scrub her face with her sleeve, refusing to be seen in tears. 'The only kind you'll get from me!' she snapped. 'And don't go to sleep. You've to drink this first.'

He lifted his lids, then with an effort widened them at the sight of the stone pitcher full to the brim and the cup she was filling from its bounty.

'All of it,' she said with a certain satisfaction.

'God's death, you evil wench. Robert de Belleme does not have sole monopoly on torture after all . What is it?'

'Boiled water, a sprinkling of salt and three spoonfuls of honey. It is to make up for the blood you've lost.'

'I'll be sick,' he said faintly.

Judith propped him up on the bolster and pillows fetched by the maid and rammed the cup under his nose. 'Drink it!' she commanded in a voice of steel that gave no indication that her knees had turned to jelly.

Something like surprise flickered across his pall or as he looked at her. 'I'm not worth it,
Cathfach
,' he said huskily.

'You are when I think of the alternative,' she answered, and lowered her lids over betraying tears.

As Judith had predicted, the wound fever struck and sent Guyon's temperature soaring out of bounds and with it his grip on reality. Steadfastly she did what she could to bring the fever down, Alicia giving her aid and relief between times.

During one of his lucid periods they moved him to the bed and Judith forced him to drink ox-blood broth in an effort to give his body the strength to fight back. He was promptly sick and she went away and wept in a corner, then returned and gave him more of the salt and honey water.

Once, his eyes glittering like black glass, he looked through her and spoke in Welsh as if holding a conversation. 'It would still be rape. Not that much of a woman.' And another time, 'She's developing a sense of possession and it's becoming uncomfortable.'

Bouts of raving showed her facets of his life that he had previously hidden from her. His relationship with Rhosyn, twisting like the current of the Wye, bitter-sweet as gall and honey. Once he laughed and called her Alais and made a suggestion that both flustered her and filled her with curiosity. She had not known that such a position was possible. During an occasional lucid spell , he would recognise her for her own self.

Cath fach
, he would say and smile ruefully at his own febrile weakness. If she had ever desired revenge for his treating her like a child, she had it now and the taste of it was sour as vinegar.

After the second night, his condition worsened.

Miles rode in at dawn to find his eldest granddaughter gulping tears and clinging to her mother for comfort and the priest bending over Guyon's fever-ravaged body, administering the last rites. Judith, her face waxen, stood opposite Father Jerome, her hands clenched upon the cloth with which she had been wiping Guyon down in a vain attempt to lower the raging of his blood.

Miles came to the bed and gazed down upon his son's fight for life as he had gazed down on his wife's. Guyon's hair was lank with sweat, his cheekbones like blades with blue hollows beneath.

Miles looked at Judith. She returned his gaze evenly with eyes that were full of fear. It had gone beyond what she could do for him. In God's hands his life now lay and the odds against his recovery were not favourable. Beyond the moment she dared not think. Life went on; she knew it all too well .

Miles stood a moment longer and then, unable to bear the room, turned and strode out. Judith hastened after him and found him leaning against the rope-patterned pill ar of the cross-wall 's arch, his fist clenched upon the stonework, staring blankly at nothing. She set her hand on his arm.

Miles closed his eyes, opened them again and faced her. 'How did it happen?'

She told him. 'Eric won't be using his arm for some little time. I have scarcely spoken to the girl or her husband, but he told me they owed Guyon their lives and their gratitude. I need not tell you that at the moment it is no consolation.'

'No,' Miles agreed bleakly.

Judith bowed her head and returned to her vigil.

Two hours later, de Bec came grim-faced to tell her that Walter de Lacey was waiting in the outer ward.

She put down the mortar in which she had been grinding herbs. 'And what could he possibly want?' she said sarcastically as she made sure that Guyon was as comfortable as his condition all owed, and bade her maid Helgund stay close by him.

De Bec lifted his craggy brows at her. 'Mistress, when he saw our new huntsman, he didn't know whether to leap for glee or fall into apoplexy.'

'What a pity he couldn't decide,' Judith said viciously.

De Bec cleared his throat. In this kind of mood his young mistress was lethal and the man to best deal with her was in a raving fever at the gates of death. He took a deep breath. 'From what I have heard, you had best bring the lass up here out of sight until Sir Walter's gone.'

Judith considered, nodded and sharply bade one of the maids fetch Elflin of Thornford to her chamber.

The girl arrived from her duties in the kitchens.

There was a smut of flour on her cheek and her hyssop-blue eyes were filled with terror.

'Oh my lady, please don't send me back to him, for the love of God, I beg you. I'll kill myself, I swear I will !'

Judith looked at the bent flaxen head, the clenched small hands that were as delicate as a child's. 'Get up,' she said neutrally. 'Do you think that I would give you up to that scum when my lord has perhaps sacrificed his life that you should go free?'

The girl stood up and wobbled a curtsy.

'You say you would kill yourself?' Judith said coldly. 'You would do better to take a knife to the tryst and put it through his black heart.' Her voice seethed on the last words. She eyed the girl with contempt. 'Elflin, is it not?'

'Yes, my lady.' Her voice quavered, thin and reedy with fear.

'Well then, Elflin, stiffen your spine and stop snivelling. There is no room for a wet fish in my household. He won't have you, I promise. Now, do you take up that distaff over there and that basket of carded wool and work awhile. Ask Helgund if there is anything you need to know.'

Elflin squeaked assent and bobbed another curtsy.

Milk and water, thought Judith impatiently, then checked herself, recalling her own fear of the unknown in the early days of her marriage to Guyon and remembering too, with a guilty pang, his patience and good humour during that time. If she was not afraid now, it was because of him.

In the hall , Walter de Lacey was standing before the hearth. The chamberlain had furnished him with a cup of wine and she saw with a sinking heart that he was deep in conversation with Father Jerome, who had about as much guile as a newborn lamb. From the smirk on de Lacey's face as he watched her come forward, it was obvious that he knew and delighted in the news of Guyon's grave illness.

Stifling the urge to be rude until given grounds, Judith made a stilted, traditional speech of welcome.

De Lacey's smile was supercilious. He looked at his nails. 'I am sorry to hear that your husband is so grievously wounded, but the fault is his own.

He should not have meddled in my affairs on my lands.'

Father Jerome frowned at him. 'My lord, as I understand matters, he came to the aid of innocent travellers being wrongly molested.'

'A jumped-up gamekeeper and my groom's wayward daughter?' De Lacey's laugh was caustic. 'Guyon FitzMiles prevented my men from carrying out their lawful duty. Indeed, I am sorely tempted to seek compensation from him for the death of my captain.'

'Your former gamekeeper is a free man to sell his services where he desires and his wife is a free woman,' Judith said, looking at him with repugnance. 'You have no right.'

'So you refuse to turn them over to me?'

'It gives me the greatest satisfaction to deny you both them and your compensation,' she said, her chin high. 'Drink your wine and go. There is nothing for you here.'

His lids narrowed. 'I do not think that with your husband on his deathbed you can afford to annoy me. After all , who knows where these lands will be bestowed next and my wife is growing old and not in the best of health. I expect soon to be bereaved.'

'Rot in hell !' Judith hissed.

He smiled at her. 'There'll be more pleasure in taming you than that bag of bones I've got at the moment. My compensation is already assured.'

Father Jerome made a shocked exclamation.

'If you want to be a gelding, that's your own choice,' Judith retorted, her fingers itching to draw her eating knife from her belt and do the deed there and then. 'I think we have nothing to trade but threats and insults. Excuse me if I do not see you on your road. My husband needs me.'