When they reached the keep defences, the people were out in force to greet them. Serving maids, scullions, soldiers, hound-keepers, the blacksmith and his apprentice, the falconer, knights, squires and serjeants, all pressed forwards, cheering. There was a lanky boy who strongly resembled Adam de Lacey. There was also a young woman with fat, honey-coloured braids, a toddler balanced on one hip, another child ballooning beneath her skirts. Renard leaned over the saddle to speak to her and she blushed.
As it came to her turn to pass the young mother, Olwen changed her grip on the reins, jibbing her mount sideways, forcing the girl to dart back out of the way. As the young woman met Olwen’s eyes her pretty colour faded. A former mistress, Olwen surmised, and busy in his absence if the child and advanced pregnancy were any indication.
The bailey was thick with people jostling and clamouring, cries of delight and welcome on their lips. Renard felt the euphoria sing through his blood. His eyes filled and he had to blink as he slid from Gorvenal’s back.
‘Jesu!’ his mother said, ‘Adam has brought me home a Saracen!’
He turned swiftly to face his mother’s scrutiny. ‘It’s a good disguise, isn’t it?’ His light tone contradicted the expression on his face. ‘Sometimes I even forget that there’s a man living behind the mask.’
And then they were in each other’s arms, hugging hard, kissing and weeping.
Judith, practical as ever, sniffed, and wiping her eyes stepped back to study the whole of his long, lean form. ‘Is a beard part of the mask too?’
Renard fingered the luxuriant growth on his jaw. ‘It was more convenient to let it grow while we were on the road. If you promise not to cut my throat, I’ll let you barber it off.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ Her laugh was shaky. ‘But my eyesight is not as good as it was!’
‘Rubbish!’ said Guyon from behind her. ‘It’s still sharp enough to pluck a needle from a haystack!’
Renard had expected to set his eyes upon a walking skeleton or an old man, hunched and incapacitated. His father was neither. Thinner, yes. There were marked hollows under his cheekbones and his eyes were set further back in their sockets and pouched with wrinkles, but they still glowed with vitality, and there was not a great deal more grey in his hair for the sake of four years.
Renard wondered briefly if Adam had been wrong and merely panicking, but as he embraced his father, Renard felt the roughness of the older man’s breathing against his palms, and heard a faint whistle that would only need an injudicious sprint across the bailey to turn it into a severe wheeze.
‘You made good time,’ Guyon said as they parted. ‘We did not expect to see you for another month at least.’
‘The summons was urgent. I came as fast as I could, and the good weather has been a blessing.’ He turned to face the keep.
‘Yes, it has,’ Guyon said, turning with him.
Judith had not moved with her husband and son but was regarding the young woman who had dismounted unaided from a brown mare and was staring at Renard’s back with an almost hostile expression in her deep blue eyes. Adam had very briefly told her that Renard had a female travelling companion. His expression had said far more than his few words, but now Judith was wondering how to deal with the situation.
Renard’s associations with women before he left for Outremer had been fleetingly casual. The closest he had ever come to forming a permanent bond was with Eloise, the falconer’s daughter who had borne him a little girl. The infant had died of a fever the summer before he left. Since then Eloise had married the farrier’s journeyman and settled well to the yoke. Renard, it seemed, had moved on to more exotic fare, and if he had brought her all the way from Antioch, then it was more than just casual.
‘Renard’s absence has certainly not taught him any manners,’ she said to the girl in a carrying voice. ‘It seems that we must introduce ourselves.’
Renard turned. Both women were watching him expect — antly, and his face grew ruddy beneath his tan. He cleared his throat. ‘Mama, this is Olwen. She has travelled with us from Antioch. Her father was a Ruthin man who took the Cross with Duke Robert and settled there …’
There was a drawn out pause where much went unspoken but a great deal was communicated. Eventually Guyon stepped into the space where courtesy and etiquette were unmapped.
‘Come within and be made welcome,’ he said formally to Olwen, giving her the kiss of peace and flickering a brief, eloquent look at his wife and his son. ‘Time later for all else. Today is a day for celebration.’
Chapter 7
It was not quite dawn when Judith discovered Renard seated at the huge chopping trestle in the keep kitchens. There was a beaker of milk at his right hand and he was eating a slab of rye bread topped by a thick slice of cold salt beef.
‘I see time has not moderated your appetite,’ she observed as she fetched a cup and sat down beside him. ‘You ought to be as fat as a bacon pig!’
Renard stretched his legs and leaned back, raising his shirt to show her his flat, muscle-banded stomach. He smacked his palm on it. ‘I challenge you to find an ounce of spare flesh!’ he said indignantly. ‘We’ve been on pilgrim rations for four months and travelling so hard that we’ve hardly had time to eat them!’ Lowering the garment, he returned with gusto to demolishing his bread and meat.
Judith poured milk from the pitcher. ‘Your companion weathered the journey well, considering she miscarried your child on the way.’ Her tone was barbed with the dis approval that had been evident ever since the rudiments of Olwen’s story had been relayed at table the previous evening.
Renard’s mouth was too full to make answering mannerly and it gave him time to raise his defences and prepare to do battle. He had known this was coming since last night, but some things could be said in public and others were best left to the firelit darkness of an early kitchen where the only ears to overhear were English and would not follow the rapid Norman French.
‘Do you love her?’
Renard sighed. ‘I do not know,’ he said when his mouth was empty. ‘It is like being in the heart of a thunderstorm. We strike sparks off each other all the time.’
An aroma of fresh bread filled the kitchen as one of the cook’s apprentices paddled a batch of loaves out of an oven. Over at the stone sink a scullion clattered utensils together and whistled loudly. Judith watched the work go forward, noting its alacrity, doubtless the result of her presence. ‘Tell me about her,’ she said.
Renard swished crumbs off the table with the side of his hand. ‘She’s a tavern dancer from the hovels of Antioch. Her father was Welsh, her mother native. She uses a dagger as well as any mercenary.’
‘Her body too, it seems,’ Judith snapped.
‘Mama, I’m not a monk, nor of a monk’s temperament,’ he said. ‘Done is done, and a lecture is not going to unwind any of this coil, or cause me to change my nature.’
A dairymaid arrived with another pail of milk and was followed by an older woman swinging two necked chickens by their feet.
Judith sighed and pressed her hands to her forehead. ‘My temper is short these days. Your father was coughing badly in the night and I have barely slept.’
‘Neither have I,’ Renard said, contrite now. ‘My mind has been turning like a butter churn.’ He made a wry gesture. ‘That’s more than half the reason I need Olwen. It’s impossible to think of anything else when I’m …’ He made an eloquent shrug serve for the rest.
‘You must decide what you are going to do with her.’ Judith warned. ‘You have seen how it is with your father. I know we haven’t had the opportunity for a full discussion yet, but you must know from Adam what de Gernons is saying and doing. Your marriage has to come soon before true winter sets in.’