‘I’ll tell Belmere.’
‘You’re always telling tales. She won’t listen.’
‘I didn’t tell when you—’
‘What’s the matter, my young mistresses?’
Both girls turned and stared guiltily up at Hilda, the senior kitchen maid. She was neck-craningly tall to a child’s eye, as broad in the beam as a merchant galley, gave respect where respect was due, but was not in the least intimidated by differences of rank. Juditta and Rhosyn had watched her knead dough at the huge, scrubbed trestle near the bread oven and knew the power in the muscular pink forearms and thick hands.
‘I’ve got a thorn in my finger,’ said Rhosyn, drooping her lip and fishing for sympathy.
‘Look how many berries I’ve picked.’ Juditta quickly held up her basket, determined that her sister was not going to get all the attention. ‘And a nettle stung me.’
‘Rub it with a dock leaf, over there, look, and then pull your gown down a bit; that way it won’t happen so easy.’ Hilda tucked a stray wisp of greying hair back into her wimple and stooped rather breathlessly to examine Rhosyn’s finger. ‘It’s not in deep. Belike your grandmother will be able to get it out and put some salve on it when we go back.’
Juditta discarded the screwed-up dock leaf, a juicy green stain on her rubbed leg, and stared towards the floury main road. ‘Hilda, look!’ she cried. ‘Horsemen!’
Hilda followed the child’s pointing finger to the distant but swiftly approaching riders. ‘They’re none of ours,’ she muttered with alarm, and, grasping Rhosyn’s arm, hauled her to her feet. ‘Go on, child, get you back to Ravenstow as fast as your legs will carry you. Mistress Juditta, go with your sister now!’
Juditta ignored the woman and shaded her eyes against the hot, golden beat of the sun.
‘It’s all right!’ Juditta cried. ‘It’s Papa! It’s his shield and he’s riding Lyard. I’d recognise him anywhere!’ And as if her skirts were not already raised to an indecent level, she drew them higher still and began running towards the party.
Hilda screeched after her but to no avail. She lumbered round to detain Rhosyn, but heels flashing, like a hare’s, she too evaded the maid and headed at a direct run for the horsemen.
Renard reined down as he saw the girls approaching. For a moment he thought that they were serfs’ children but quickly dismissed the notion. Serfs’ children would not run yelling at a strange troop of riders. To the contrary, they would run screaming in the opposite direction and warn everyone else.
Adam pulled Lyard round. ‘The hoydens!’ he growled with a mingling of anger and amusement.
‘Surely not … They can’t be!’ Renard’s eyes widened with disbelief. ‘Juditta and Rhosyn?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Adam said ruefully. Taking Lyard out of the company, he cantered the last twenty yards to reach his nearest daughter before she could reach him amidst a press of iron-shod jittery horseflesh.
‘Papa!’ She held out her arms for him to lean and sweep her up on to his saddle. Then, half-choking him, she smacked kisses on his cheek and the corner of his mouth and wriggled herself secure, by which time Rhosyn had arrived at her father’s stirrup and was clamouring to be lifted up. Adam thought it fortunate that Lyard was no longer young and full of fire or they would probably all have been thrown, but he could not bring himself to scold his daughters.
‘Mama’s not here,’ Juditta said. ‘She’s gone to visit Elene up at Woolcot, but she’ll be back before Michaelmas.’
‘Will she?’ Adam felt a small twinge of disappointment but did not let it show on his face. It was selfish and Woolcot was but a day’s ride away, not half the world as Jerusalem had been.
‘I don’t like your beard.’
‘Don’t you, puss? It was easier to grow than to shave off while we were travelling. Your Uncle Renard’s got one too.’
‘Uncle Renard?’ Rhosyn, seated behind her father, arms squeezing his waist, looked at the riders in her father’s company. A man was staring at them. His smile was very white against a skin that was almost as brown as her homespun gown, and bracketed by a full, beech-red beard.
‘Don’t you remember? No, I suppose you’d both be too small.’ Adam wheeled the sorrel and trotted him back to the line.
‘Who is the lady?’ whispered Juditta.
‘Her name’s Olwen. She’s travelling with us,’ Adam said, telling the literal truth. Time enough for revelations later. ‘Rhosyn, it’s rude to stare.’
‘But she’s very pretty, Papa. I wish I had hair like that.’
‘But then you wouldn’t be mine. Here Renard, what do you think of these two hussies?’
‘I think they have more than doubled in size.’ Renard laughed and tweaked one of Rhosyn’s black braids.
‘Grandpa does that to me too,’ Rhosyn said, giving him a wary brown stare.
‘Does he now?’
‘You don’t look much like him.’
‘It’s probably the beard,’ he replied and turned to his other niece who was watching Olwen with the kind of fixed fascination found in young children who had yet to learn the artifice of manners. ‘As I remember, you’re Juditta?’
Her eyes came back to him, Adam’s eyes but differently tinted by the reflection of copper hair, brows and lashes. ‘Yes.’ Her round chin came up. ‘I’m the eldest.’
‘So,’ sniffed Rhosyn from behind the safety of her father’s bulk. ‘You’ll get wrinkles sooner than me!’
Renard grinned. ‘Not for the sake of half an hour,’ he chuckled.
Adam tightened his grip on Juditta as she drew breath to do battle. ‘Is this how you have been taught to behave? Will you shame yourselves and me before family and visitors?’
Both girls fell silent beneath the tone of his voice. ‘Sorry, Papa,’ murmured Juditta, lowering her lashes to purple-stained fingers. Rhosyn laid her cheek against his back and gave him a squeeze.
‘Come,’ Adam said with a rueful look at Renard who was biting back his laughter. ‘We’ll ride on to Ravenstow and let them know Renard’s on his way, shall we?’ He slapped the reins against Lyard’s neck.
Renard shook his head, and chuckled into his beard. ‘They wrap him round their little fingers,’ he said to Olwen.
‘Women are born with their weapons already honed, otherwise they would be defenceless,’ she replied.
Some of the humour left Renard’s expression. ‘You were certainly born with an abundance!’
‘The gift matches the need,’ she retorted. ‘Are those the Welsh hills over there?’
He narrowed his eyes against the sun. ‘Yes. That line of trees marks the border dyke. Where was your father from?’
‘Near Ruthin.’
‘That’s north of here. Closer to Caermoel than Ledworth and Ravenstow.’
They rode on in silence. Olwen gnawed her lip and looked at her lover’s broad, hauberk-clad shoulders. Their relationship was as volatile as a barrel of hot pitch and occasionally she had the disquieting feeling that the passions invoked were beyond all control. Had they all been on Renard’s part, it would not have mattered; it was her own responses that troubled her.
On the road from Brindisi when her flux had come at the appointed moment, she had feigned a miscarriage. As it happened, she had indeed been mildly ill at the time with a stomach upset from eating tainted meat. The results had been convincing, particularly as she had been overtaken by a storm of grief, as if the child had been real and not a figment of her imagination. Certainly Renard had believed her dramatics, had been so gentle and tender with her that she had wanted to lash out at him from the depth of her guilt. That release had not been feasible. She wanted to keep him, not drive him away. Her anger had turned inwards against herself, but every now and then some of it would surface and she would be unable to keep from baiting him.