Shadows and Strongholds (15 page)

Father Ailred was sorting through a wooden chest near the chapel door and looked up in myopic surprise as Brunin gabbled out Lord Joscelin's command. For an instant the little priest stood frozen in shock, then, shaking himself, hastened outside. Brunin ran after him, his heart drumming and his stomach pushing into his chest. The heat of the afternoon sun was hot enough to bake bread; the sky was as blue as enamel, and the smell of blood like the day of a hunt or a pig-sticking.

Father Ailred fell to his knees at Adam's side, speaking in swift Latin, doing what had to be done with haste while the soul still occupied the body. Joscelin held the youth, bracing himself to absorb the shudders of imminent death. Sybilla knelt too, clasping Adam's hand so hard that her knuckles were white. Brunin stared, his eyes locked on the scene.

'Jesu… Jesu…' Hawise came to Brunin's side, her eyes huge, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth.

Close by, Marion stood as rigid as an effigy. 'Look at all the blood,' she whispered. 'There was a lot of blood when my mama died.'

Father Ailred sat back on his heels, his fingers glistening red. His voice rose in a prayer for the dying, powerful with the breath that was denied the young man. Adam arched in Joscelin's arms in a final paroxysm as he strove to live, and then slumped, eyes staring wide-pupilled at the sun. Joscelin's hands were red to the wrists, the rims of his fingernails black with blood. He bent over the dead youth and his own body shuddered.

Hawise gave a small, wounded whimper. Marion said nothing, but swayed from side to side as if in a trance. Sybilla's senior maid, Annora, came belatedly to her senses; setting her arms around the girls like a mother hen, she hustled them away towards the living quarters. Sibbi remained, but turned her face into Hugh's breast. He raised his arm, and set it around her shoulders, drawing her in close. He clenched his hand around her braid like a man clutching a lifeline.

Brunin watched Joscelin slowly relinquish his hold on Adam and rise to his feet, his movements slow and stiff as if he had been repeatedly kicked. A litter was fetched and Adam placed gently on it—face down, for the feathered shaft was still lodged deep in his flesh. For the rest of his life, Brunin was never able to view the arrow-shot carcass of a deer without feeling sick to his stomach.

He was in the stables rubbing the caked sweat from Morel's hide with a twist of straw when Hawise came to find him, her face tear-streaked and swollen. She had unbound her hair, as girls and women did in grief, and it framed her face in wild auburn spirals. Brunin had not cried. The shock and the pain had channelled inwards, not out. He kept reliving the moment when the arrow had struck. He kept seeing Adam die, and the desperation in Lord Joscelin's face. Henry's difficult campaign had seasoned Brunin to some of the brutal realities of warfare, but today had been the difference between wading in a stream and being swept away in a red torrent. That was why he was lurking in the stables, seeking solace from Morel's solid bulk and solitude for himself.

'I knew you would be here,' she said.

Brunin gave a defensive shrug. 'I had to gallop Morel hard. He needed tending.'

She sat down on a heap of straw and wrapped her arms around her raised knees. 'Papa said it was Hugh Mortimer and Gilbert de Lacy and that they were far too close to us. I wasn't supposed to hear… but I did.' A shiver rippled down her spine.

Brunin compressed his lips; turning back to Morel, he groomed the black hide with long, forceful strokes. Most of the sweat had gone, but there was comfort in the motion of his arm in a different kind of repetition to that occupying his mind.

'Do you think they'll come for us?'

The frightened misery in her voice made him turn. He knew her fear for he could feel it crawling through his own bones. It was all too easy to imagine an army of mail-clad men gathering outside their walls, intent on slaughtering everyone within. 'No,' he said, more bravely than he felt. 'Ludlow is far too strong for them to take.

Your father says so, and it's true.' He threw away the twist of straw and, wiping his hands on his hose, sat down beside her. 'They are desperate because Prince Henry is here and they know their time is slipping away. Even if we were ambushed, we managed to fight our way out, and they didn't chase us because we had wounded too many of their men.' He found comfort in comforting her, and as he spoke the words, realised that they were true. De Lacy and Mortimer had not pursued them because they were matched, and dared not risk riding closer to Ludlow where the balance would have tipped in Joscelin's favour.

She gnawed her lower lip. 'Were you frightened when they attacked?' she whispered.

Brunin grimaced. He didn't know what to say. It had been drilled into him that only a coward admitted to fear… that only a coward felt fear. His grandmother in particular was adamant on that issue, and, since the incident at Shrewsbury, his father too had been vehement on the subject. And now Hawise wanted to know… and he was afraid to answer. Was that cowardly too?

'I don't remember,' he said.

She looked disbelieving. 'You don't remember?' Jerking to his feet, he returned to fussing with the pony so that his back was to her. It was easier that way. 'Well, only bits of it,' he said. 'It was as if none of it was happening to me.' He laid his hand flat against Morel's side, taking courage from the glossy black flank. 'But afterwards I felt sick.' He preferred not to tell her about the initial surge of terror, so huge that it had numbed him. He didn't have the words to describe it, nor truly the comprehension.

'I was frightened,' she admitted in a small voice. 'Mama said everything would be all right, but I could see she was afraid too.' She rubbed her chin against her upraised knees. 'Papa wasn't scared,' she said on a more vibrant note. 'But I've never seen him so angry. I think there's going to be lots more fighting. He says that de Lacy and Mortimer will pay.' Her voice shook. She was in desperate need of reassurance.

'They will,' Brunin said awkwardly.

Hawise rose and came to the pony. Leaning against the opposite side to Brunin, she pressed her face into Morel's hot, black neck and wept. Unsure what to do, Brunin stood rooted to the spot. When his mother cried, his father would stalk out of the room, growling about the weakness of women. He had never seen his grandmother weep. Marion and Sibbi always ran to Sybilla for comfort. Hawise usually went to her father, or else, like him, sought a corner alone.

Uncertainly he came around to her and set his arm across her shoulders. He didn't know what to say, but the act of going to her and touching seemed right and when she turned and cried against him, rather than against the pony, he felt his vitals knot with pain and his eyes start to burn.

That night, a vigil was held for Adam in the castle chapel. His body had been washed and tended by Sybilla and the women; the arrow that had killed him drawn from the wound and burned on the fire. He had been gowned in his best tunic, and a sword had been placed between his clasped hands. Grim-faced, Joscelin stood guard before the bier upon which the youth lay. FitzWarin and Hugh stood with him… and Brunin, who had begged to be allowed to keep vigil too. Beeswax candles burned on the altar and in every sconce and niche, so that although there were shadows, none were deep, and the air in the chapel was scented with honey.

Sybilla brought the girls, each bearing a lighted candle, and for a time they prayed at the bier. Sibbi wept quietly throughout. Hawise and Marion were dry-eyed, but the former's face was a swollen testimony to all the tears she had shed, and the latter looked so pale and wraithlike that Brunin fancied he could almost see through her.

After a few hours, Marion began to sway on her feet; Sybilla made the girls leave their candles and took them away to bed. But later she returned and knelt to keep vigil with Joscelin.

Several times during the night, Brunin almost fell asleep. The need to close his eyes crept over him like a slow, warm blanket. Despite his preoccupation, Joscelin noticed, and nudged him awake. On the third occasion he murmured that Brunin should lie down for a while. No one would think less of him. But Brunin shook his head and adamantly refused. Joscelin gave him several sips of sweetened wine and sent him to duck his head in the rain barrel outside the door. After that, Brunin stayed awake until the cockerels began crowing on the dung heaps and a new day brightened in the east. It seemed a lifetime since yesterday morn when they had set out from Hereford. In a way it was, and although he could not fathom the difference yet, Brunin knew that he had changed.

Joscelin rubbed his hands over his gritty eyes and poured another measure of wine into his cup. In the two days since the ambush on the road, he had barely slept. There was too much to do, or so he kept telling himself. He dreaded the time when he had to stop and allow thoughts beyond the practical into his mind. He dreaded having to face Adam's father when he rode in to claim the body of his son. Wine, he hoped, would grant him an interim oblivion tonight.

FitzWarin was drinking with him, but not as fast. His mood was sombre and, although he was keeping Joscelin company, he was saying little.

'I will understand if you choose to take the boy back to Whittington with you on the morrow,' Joscelin said, summoning his voice from the dregs of his cup.

FitzWarin shifted in his chair and patted one of the deerhounds as it raised its head. 'You do not want him any more?'

'No, of course I want him. But after what has happened, perhaps you would rather keep him at your side.' Joscelin looked down into the murky lees of his wine. 'Perhaps I am not to be trusted with other men's sons.'

FitzWarin gave a rude snort. 'I never thought to hear you talking from wine and self-pity. You're supposed to be the one with the clear head.'

'It doesn't feel clear at the moment,' Joscelin said bleakly. 'Indeed, I'm not even certain that it's my head.'

'And that's a good reason for me to ignore everything you say' FitzWarin leaned forward and opened his hand. 'Christ, man, there was nothing you could do. If not Adam, someone else would have taken that first arrow. We were riding in good formation; we fought them off and gave them a hiding into the bargain. Your patrols should have been more diligent in making sure that the undergrowth was cut back, but that's one mistake and, since you've spent the summer away, not your fault. God knows, if you are going to wallow in guilt, you're a weaker man than I took you for.'

Joscelin tried to feel anger, but it wouldn't come. 'Then perhaps you should indeed take your son,' he said.

'Perhaps I should rattle your teeth in your skull,' FitzWarin retorted impatiently. 'I watched the way you dealt with Brunin on campaign and I have seen the difference in him that time with you has wrought. He is as likely to fall down a well at Whittington or get trampled by a horse as he is to be struck by an arrow. You take too much blame on yourself. I can think of no man who is a better master to his squires.' Finishing his wine, FitzWarin rose to his feet, and stretched. 'I'm for my bed,' he said. 'And you should be too.'

Joscelin grimaced. 'I doubt I will sleep.'

'You've got wine; you've got your wife. Never fails for me.'

Despite himself, Joscelin found a laugh… and realised that what FitzWarin said was probably true. Perhaps, mercifully, he would find a brief respite in the remedies suggested.

At Wigmore, Gilbert de Lacy was also suffering a fretful lack of sleep. A sword blow had reached past his shield in the skirmish with de Dinan's troops, and he was nursing not only a cracked collar bone, but dented pride and frustrated ambition. He had picked his moment, chosen his place, and attacked hard—to no avail except to sound a warning at Ludlow that would set it even further beyond his reach. He had retreated with three dead men and a passel of wounded ones who would take days and in some cases weeks to heal.

'That bastard has the luck of the devil,' he muttered to his ally, Hugh Mortimer, lord of Wigmore and ardent supporter of King Stephen.

'Of which bastard are we talking?' Hugh asked, his voice long-vowelled and lazy. 'Henry of Anjou certainly has it, since he's slipped through all our traps like a fox and managed to reach Bristol.'

De Lacy shifted on the settle, trying to ease the nagging ache in his damaged clavicle. He had little interest in whether Henry of Anjou had avoided the traps or not. Nor did he care about Stephen and Eustace. As far as he was concerned, they were all cut from a similar cloth. His main reason for forming an alliance with Hugh of Wigmore was their mutual objective of wresting Ludlow from Joscelin de Dinan, and everything else was little more than the backcloth on which to sew his stitches.

'Let Prince Eustace deal with Henry of Anjou,' he said. 'I was talking of Joscelin de Dinan.'

Hugh tugged a fleshy earlobe. 'Luck plays its part. I agree, but he's no novice at war. He was a field mercenary before he took command of Ludlow, and field mercenaries are not given castles like that unless their abilities are exceptional.'

'Not that exceptional,' Gilbert grunted sourly and glanced to his squires who had no tasks for the nonce and were engaged in a game of dice. 'Ernalt, more wine,' he snapped.

The blond youth rose and went to the flagon. There was a healing cut across one cheekbone where a tree branch had whipped him during the light. He had been supposed to stay back with the archers but had ignored the order and had engaged in a skirmish with one of de Dinan's footsoldiers. As it happened, he had wounded the man and come out of it with his own hide intact. Gilbert had whipped him for disobedience, but, in acknowledgement of his courage, not too hard. Besides, whipping seldom had any effect on Ernalt. The youth's mental hide was as tough as boiled leather.

'Ludlow is mine,' he said as he took the wine from the squire's hand and dismissed him. 'I will not rest until it is in my family's possession again.'

Hugh thoughtfully ran his forefinger across his upper lip. 'To which de Dinan would answer that it does belong to a de Lacy. His wife is one by blood, if not by name.'