The youth lifted his gaze and met Guyon’s as the latter dismounted. Unlatching the last buckle, he spoke a quick word to the servant, and came across the ward to greet them. Judith looked curiously at the lad as he arrived and stood smiling before them. He was as solid and stocky as a young oak tree and darkly Welsh, his eyes onyx black and extravagantly fringed. His wide-planted stance exuded the confidence of a man, the flush in his cheeks the uncertainty of boyhood.
‘I’m here with my grandfather,’ he said in rapid Welsh. ‘We’ve brought cloth to trade and we need new ponies, and grandfather has other business besides.’
The grooms took the two mud-smirched horses.
‘How fares your mother?’
‘She had a baby girl two days since,’ Rhys said, gaze darting to Judith, obviously wondering how much Welsh she understood. ‘She is well and so is the baby … Eluned is jealous.’
Before Guyon could compose himself to reply, Madoc ap Rhys himself strode out of the forebuilding and clapped a brown, knotty hand on Rhys’s shoulder.
‘I thought you’d have finished unloading by now!’ he declared, but his hazel eyes were laughing and his tone was indulgent. ‘God’s greeting, my lord. I see that you’ve had the good tidings. A fine, healthy babe and blessed with your grandsire’s red hair and, to judge from the sound of her lungs, his temper too!’ His manner was affable. Rhosyn’s liaison with Guyon FitzMiles and the resulting child were useful bonds to future profit as far as he was concerned.
Judith opened her mouth to speak, but changed her mind and compressed her lips instead, not trusting herself.
Guyon invited the merchant into the hall to drink to the infant’s health and discuss the business he had brought with him upon the back of a dozen ponies. Belatedly, he remembered to introduce Madoc and Rhys to his wife.
Master Madoc made the proper responses in impeccable Norman French and concealed his curiosity and surprise behind deep-set lowered lids. The girl who tepidly smiled her duty was not the fey, frightened thing that Rhosyn had led him to expect. Her agate-coloured eyes were cool, her voice clear and firm. Slender, yes, with barely a curve to her name, but possessed of a certain gauche grace and also a certain coldness of manner and, from the quick look she had tossed at Guyon as they entered the forebuilding, it did not take much of his merchant’s shrewdness to guess the cause.
At first he and Guyon discussed the merits of the new downland rams that had been introduced to Guyon’s herds and the effect they would have on the quality of future wool clips.
‘It will make your fleeces whiter and increase the length of the staple. The Flanders looms are crying out for good-quality wool. If God grants me my health, I should be crossing the sea after harvest to see for myself.’
‘Rhosyn said you had been unwell.’
Madoc gave a dismissive shrug. ‘I lack breath occasionally and my chest gripes, but the bouts are usually when I’ve done more than I should, or the weather grows too cold. A few more years and Rhys will be old enough to shoulder much of the burden.’ He smiled at his grandson, who smiled in return as he plied his meat with a fine, ivory-hilted knife.
Madoc applied himself to his own meal for a while, then turned his shrewd gaze upon Guyon’s young wife who had been silent throughout the previous conversation. ‘My lady, if you permit, there is a matter I would like to discuss with you.’
Judith inclined her head. ‘Master Madoc?’
‘I believe you wrote to the widow of Huw ap Sior, offering to her the sables that had come by underhand means into your possession. She has asked me to act for her in this business and gratefully accepts your generosity.’
‘It is naught of generosity, it is her rightful due,’ Judith said with a grimace. She had put the sables away at the bottom of a chest, wrapped in fresh canvas, and had thrown the bloodstained coverings on the back of the fire. Even to think of them made her shudder.
Guyon looked at her with surprise and approval. He had not asked her what she had done with the furs, merely assumed that their disappearance marked their disposal.
Madoc too studied her and wondered if she knew her own power. Probably not; she was still very young and her eyes were innocent of all guile. One day she would be formidable. A black leopard and his golden mate. He smiled at the whimsy.
‘You will need an escort,’ Guyon said. ‘Sables these days are worth their weight in blood.’
‘Is Rhys yours too?’ Judith enquired a trifle acidly when they were alone in their bedchamber.
Madoc and his grandson were asleep on bracken pallets in the hall among the other casual guests and travellers seeking a night’s hospitality.
Guyon scratched the sensitive spot just behind Melyn’s ginger ears. The cat purred and kneaded his tunic with ecstatic paws. ‘No,’ he said, giving his attention to the cat.
‘You look alike.’
‘Colouring mainly. His father was black of hair and eye. You’re not the first to assume my paternity. I wish it were true. He’s a fine lad.’
‘You have a daughter of his mother’s blood,’ she said, watching him through her lids.
Guyon’s fingers stilled in the cat’s thick cream and bronze fur. ‘Not one who will know me as more than a shadow,’ he said carefully.
‘Why did you not tell me about the child before?’
‘Where would have been the point? It is not as though she is going to be raised beneath my roof. Rhosyn will give her a Welsh name and raise her to be Welsh.’
