Rosamund had to be there. Surely, it could not be that both Meggie and Ninian were wrong?
She arrested that thought too, replacing it with a positive one. Tomorrow the men would set out again, either to resume the hunt or to return to wherever it was they came from. She and Ninian would be ready and, whoever had Rosamund and wherever they went, the two of them would follow.
It seemed as good a thought as any on which to go to sleep. She returned to her bed, stoked the fire again and lay down. She knew she was meant to wake Ninian so that he could take his turn on watch, but she was all but sure that everyone in the lodge had retired for the night. Nobody would go anywhere until morning, so Ninian might as well sleep too.
She rolled on her side, her back to the fire’s warmth, and very soon fell asleep.
SEVEN
The man felt as if his head had been invaded by other people’s thoughts. They were in there, the voices, inside his skull. They ordered him to do things, and when he got it wrong, they grew angry. Lying in the darkness, he gave a low moan, quickly suppressing it. The others had mocked and laughed at him quite enough for one day, and he would not give them the satisfaction of starting all over again.
He did not understand. It was all so confusing.
It had been late in the day when he and the girl had reached the hunting lodge. He would have gone in earlier, but he dared not do so until his lord arrived. He had taken the girl back to the river, and they had played a game, making a dam out of driftwood across a little stream that wound down the bank to join the main current. She had enjoyed that, and so, he had to admit, had he.
He liked the girl. She was pretty, she was quick-witted and she made him laugh.
Then the self-doubt had returned and the silent questions had started up again. Was he doing the right thing? Ought he to return her to her family? Oh, but he had to go on! The voices told him so. They said it was the only way to get what he so desperately wanted.
He and the girl had been mounted on his horse, waiting on a low rise above the lodge, when his lord finally arrived. The lord was in a good mood, laughing loudly and joking with the men. They all went inside, and the man knew he could wait no longer. He said to the girl, ‘We can go in now!’
She looked at him brightly. ‘Is the party going to be soon?’
‘Yes, yes! Very soon.’
She had paused to fluff up her pretty hair and brush the dust off her cloak. The little gestures had gone straight to his heart. Before emotion could undermine him — remember why you are doing this! — he tightened his hold around her waist and kicked his heels into Star’s sides.
He went first into the lodge, holding her hand and drawing her in after him. Nobody noticed them to begin with. The lord was sitting in a fine leather-seated chair beside the fire, and two of his body servants were pulling off his boots. The boots were caked in mud. More servants had heated wine, and the aroma of spices was heavy on the air. The lord’s men all had mugs in their hands and were drinking greedily. As the man watched from the fringes of the group, the lord reached out a hand and took his own fine silver goblet from the servant who bowed low beside him.
‘To the chase!’ he roared, and all the others joined the toast. ‘To Madame Roe and Lord Fallow! Long may they thrive-’
‘And long may we hunt them!’ the men yelled back.
Then the lord caught sight of him. ‘There you are!’ he exclaimed. ‘We missed you on the hunt today. Where have you been?’
A narrow path opened up between the men crowding around the lord. His heart hammering in his chest, slowly the man walked along it. The girl’s small hand in his was hot and sweaty with nervous excitement.
The lord’s eyes fell on her and for an instant opened in recognition.
‘I have brought you an unexpected guest, my lord,’ the man began, ‘for I know that-’
He did not have the chance to explain himself. As if his lord saw everything that had happened in the past two days in the blink of an eye — he probably did, for he was very, very clever and his mind worked as fast as quicksilver — he turned to the man and fixed him with eyes that blazed with fury.
Into the hush that had suddenly descended, he said in an icy voice, ‘So you bring me a girl?’
‘I thought — I-’ the man stammered.
The lord, as if aware of all the ears straining to hear, flung out his arm in a wide gesture. ‘Get out, the lot of you,’ he shouted. ‘Go and hurry those blasted cooks. I want my dinner!’
One by one the others shuffled away. The man and the girl stood side by side before the lord. ‘You were saying?’ the lord prompted silkily.
The man sidled closer. Speaking almost into his lord’s ear, he whispered, ‘We — I know that your preference is for young women, my lord. Why, your good lady wife was scarce more than this girl’s age when you wed her, and she-’
The lord flung out his balled fist, and it was only the man’s quick reaction that saved him. ‘Do not dare speak of my wife!’ the lord hissed. His face was scarlet with fury, the bright eyes swelling alarmingly above the puffy cheeks. ‘She was young, yes, when first I laid eyes on her, but she was precociously mature and already a woman!’ He paused, panting. ‘What do you think I am?’ he demanded, the low, controlled voice almost worse than the awful shouting. ‘You have brought me a child!’
The man wanted to weep. Everything had gone amiss. He had got it wrong, as so often he did. Already, the voices were starting up their clamour inside his head, jeering at him, accusing him, calling him a fool.
His lord had beckoned to the girl, and she was slowly walking up to him. He held out a hand, and she took it. He was speaking to her; the man knew he must be because he could see the lord’s lips moving. He told the voices to be quiet so that he could listen.
‘-your name, child?’ the lord was asking.
‘Rosamund Warin.’ The girl spoke up clearly, causing the lord to smile.
‘Rosamund,’ he said. ‘Rose of the world. Warin… Yes, I know the name. Who is your father, Rosamund Warin?’
‘He is called Dominic and he lives at New Winnowlands.’
‘I know that name, too,’ mused the lord. He frowned in concentration for a few moments, and then, his prodigious memory coming to his aid, he said, ‘The abbess of Hawkenlye was called Warin.’
‘Yes, she’s my grandmother, only she’s not abbess there any more. She-’ Rosamund did not go on. The man wondered why. It was not that the lord had stopped her; more as if she herself had elected not to say any more.
The lord did not appear to have noticed.
The man watched him intently. As if the lord felt his eyes on him, he looked up and stared right at him.
The man bowed his head to receive whatever furious invective the lord chose to hurl at him. He did not even dare to think what his punishment would be. It would be severe and it would be painful, that was for sure.
The lord’s voice said calmly, ‘Look at me.’
Slowly, the man obeyed. To his huge surprise, the lord was smiling. ‘You are a fool,’ he said, quite pleasantly, ‘but then I expect you already know that, for people no doubt tell you all the time.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ the man muttered. He very much wanted to lower his eyes, for the lord’s hard stare was paining him, but he did not dare.
‘A fool, but it may yet be that in your folly you have unwittingly done me a service,’ the lord went on. He paused, frowning. ‘Yes,’ he said softly, more to himself than to the man. ‘Yes, I believe that would work very well…’
The man waited. Between him and the lord, Rosamund stood quite still, like a slender statue. The lord turned to her. ‘Why were you brought here, child? Do you know?’ he asked her kindly.