6

      The melting snow was red with blood. Richard, the young Earl of Clare and Hertford, pulled his horse to a rearing halt, struggling to control the animal as it plunged sideways in fear, its ears flat against its head. It had smelled the carcass and the wolves at the same moment and it snorted with terror as Richard tried to force it around the deserted kill at the edge of the track. A buzzard flew up at the riders’ approach leaving all that remained of the mangled corpse in the slush-threaded mud. A few rags of clothing were the only sign that it had once been human.

      ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ The slim red-haired girl swathed in a fox-fur mantle who had been cantering fast behind him, was concentrating so hard on catching him up that his sudden halt nearly unseated her. Behind her, at a more sedate pace, rode a second young woman and Richard’s twelve knights, wearing on their surcoats the gold and scarlet chevrons of Clare.

      The riders formed a semicircle in the cold sleet and gazed down at the torn limbs. One or two of the men crossed themselves fervently and the red-haired girl found herself swallowing hard. She pulled her veil across her face hastily. ‘Poor man,’ she whispered. ‘Who could have done such a thing?’

      ‘Wolves.’ Richard steadied his horse with difficulty. ‘Don’t look, Matilda. There’s nothing we can do for the miserable bastard. No doubt the men of the village will come and bury what the buzzards and kites leave.’ He turned his horse and kicked it on, forcing it past the body, and the other riders slowly followed him, averting their eyes. Two or three had their hands nervously on the hilts of their swords.

      All round them the bleak Welsh forest seemed deserted. Oak and ash and silver-limbed beech, bare of leaves, their trunks wet and shining from the sleet, crowded to the edge of the track. Save for the ringing of the horses’ hooves on the outcrops of rock and the squeak and chink of harness it was eerily silent.

      Richard gazed round apprehensively. He had been shaken more than he liked to admit by the sight of the slaughtered man. It was an ill omen so near the end of their journey. He noticed Matilda edging her horse surreptitiously closer to his and he grinned in sympathy with a silent curse for the need for an armed escort which prevented him from taking her before him on his saddle and holding her in the safety of his arms.

      But escort there had to be. He scanned the lengthening shadows once more and tightened his grip on his sword.

      Wales was a savage place; its dark glowering mountains, black forests and wild people filled him with misgiving. That Matilda should want to come here of her own free will, to join William de Braose when she did not have to, filled him with perplexed anger.

      ‘We should never have left Raglan,’ he said tersely. ‘Walter Bloet was right. These forests are no place for a woman without a proper escort.’

      ‘I have a proper escort!’ He saw the angle of her chin rise a fraction. ‘You.’

      Far away, echoing from the lonely hills, came the cry of a wolf. The horses tensed, ears flat, and Matilda felt the small hairs on the back of her neck stir with fear.

      ‘How much further until we get there?’ she whispered.

      Richard shrugged. ‘A few miles. Pray God we reach there before dark.’ He turned in his saddle, standing up in the stirrups to see his men better. ‘Make all speed,’ he shouted, then spurred his horse on towards the north.

      Matilda pounded after him, clinging low over her horse’s neck, determined not to drop behind, and their thundering hooves threw up clods of mud where the ice-rimmed puddles were melting slowly in the rain. The track was growing increasingly treacherous and slippery.

      She quickly drew level with him again, her white veil blowing for a moment across her face from beneath her fur hood. ‘Richard,’ she called, ‘wait. Slow down. This will be our last chance to talk …’

      He slowed fractionally, wiping the sleet from his eyes. ‘We have had time enough to talk,’ he said abruptly. ‘You have chosen to tell me very little. I have no idea, even, why you are here, which will make it hard for me to face your no doubt irate husband with a satisfactory explanation as to why I have brought you to him.’

      He saw her flush. ‘Just tell him the truth,’ she retaliated defensively.

      ‘Very well.’ He lashed his reins across the horse’s neck. ‘I shall tell him how I was quietly riding, minding my own business, from home in Tonbridge to Gloucester when I met his baggage of a wife, completely unescorted except for one trembling female, hell-bent on riding the breadth of England to his side in mid-winter. I shall tell him that I saw it as my chivalrous duty to escort you myself. And I shall tell him that any man who leaves a young, beautiful, newly wed bride alone in Sussex with her mother-in-law, while he travels to his furthest lands, is a mutton-headed goat.’ He managed a wry grin, ducking the wet slap of a low-hanging branch in his path. If Matilda had been his wife he would not have left her. He clenched the reins fiercely; no one would accuse Richard de Clare of lusting after another man’s wife. He admired her daring and her humour and her spirit, so unusual in a woman, no more than that. He glanced across at her and saw that she was smiling. ‘Why did you choose to come to Wales?’ he asked suddenly.

      She looked down at her hands. ‘Because I have nowhere else to go, but to my husband,’ she said simply. ‘With him I am a baron’s lady, mistress of a dozen castles, a woman of some importance.’ Her mouth twitched imperceptibly. ‘At Bramber with his mother I am merely another female with the sole distinction of being hated by her twice as much as anyone else. Besides,’ she added disarmingly, ‘it’s boring there.’

      He stared at her in disbelief. William de Braose was a vicious ill-bred man at least twice her age, with a reputation which few men would envy. Even the thought of the brute’s hands touching her made the blood pound in Richard’s temples. ‘And you would prefer your husband’s company to being bored?’ he echoed incredulously.

      She raised her chin a fraction, a mannerism he was beginning to know well. ‘I did not ask your opinion of him, just as I did not ask you to escort me to him.’

      ‘No, I offered.’ He took a deep breath. ‘So – I shall tell him also,’ he went on, ‘that an invitation to this Christmas banquet we hear he is to give for Prince Seisyll tomorrow is the only reward I shall ask for all my trouble. I shall wave aside the gold and jewels he is bound to press on me for my services in escorting you. I shall nobly ignore his passionate outpourings of gratitude and praise.’

      Matilda made a small grimace, all too well aware of her husband’s reputation for tight-fistedness. She frowned, glancing at Richard sideways. ‘Supposing he’s furious with me for coming?’

      ‘So you have considered that possibility at last!’ Richard squinted into the wind. ‘He’ll probably beat you and send you back to Bramber. It’s what you deserve.’

      A racing shadow in the trees distracted him for a moment. He scanned the surrounding forest, his face set. They were passing through a clump of junipers, thick and impenetrable; the ideal hiding place for an ambush. Secretly he suspected that his men, however well-armed, would be no match for the leaping, yelling Welsh should they choose to attack. He had heard that they could sweep down, cut a throat, rip open a horse’s belly and be away again before