“Robert Beaumont, Lord of Pacy-sur-Eure and Breteuil?” she added for clarification.
Clid scowled. “He might be Guardian of the Lord’s pearly gates by now, I s’pose, the way his royal lordship throws around titles. What I know is that he’s at Hipping’s lodge. Arrived a few hours ago.”
She frowned. Why on earth had she not seen him or any of his retinue on the king’s highway?
“There’s back ways to everywhere,” said Clid, shrewdly reading her thoughts.
She considered this. It would be a dark and dangerous ride, what with the boars and wolves, and Hipping known as a wolf himself, but he was currently loyal to the king, and right now, nothing mattered more.
She looked into the chieftain’s eyes. “I must get there.”
He exchanged a few eyebrow-wagging glances with the men, then shook his head. “That’s a danger for us, missy. Best that the great ones don’t know we’re here. They’ve forgotten us, and I’d have it stay that way.”
“They’ll never see you,” she promised. “We can share a horse, and you can leave me miles from the lodge.”
“That’s where ye are now, missy. Miles and miles.”
“But sir—”
“Every time the great ones remember we’re here, it costs us. There’s not much ye can offer us to make it worth that.”
Gwyn grabbed one of the felt bags around her waist, fumbled with its knot, and dumped the pouch open on the table. Gold and silver coins tumbled across the scarred wood, clinking loudly in the suddenly hushed room. They gleamed brightly in the dim hut. She looked up into Clid’s amazed eyes. “Please. I have to get there. Tonight. ’Tis my home at stake.”
He ran his fingers through his grey-and-white beard. “Where’s home?”
“In the north. Besieged.”
He looked at her distrustfully. Behind him, the fire spat and crackled, then blazed brightly as a fresh log caught. “Pagan didna say anything about that.”
“Be that as it may, you can see that I need to be on my way.”
“Ah, well, and maybe not. Yer father will tend to it.”
Her throat constricted. “I haven’t a father. I’ve myself and a dozen knights, and ever so many villagers and their children and if I can’t stop Lord d’Endshire—”
Clid grunted. “Marcus fitzMiles?”
“—then it will fall, my men will die, and I will be wed to—” She stopped short and stared wide-eyed into the firepit, blinking hard.
They sat in silence for a long time. Gwyn became aware Clid was fingering the pile of coins on the table. Sifting it through his fingers, letting it clink back down. She looked over. He was watching her, a brooding expression on his face.
“Beseigin’ and burnin’ and weddin’,” he muttered. “What kind o’ place would Marcus fitzMiles think was worth all that effort?”
“Any place he could get his hands on,” she quipped, but swallowed the taste of something unpleasant. Fear.
Clid didn’t change his look, except perhaps to become more guarded. “Why don’t ye tell me yer name, missy?”
She lifted her chin. “My name is mine own, sir, and I would keep it so. Truth: we will all be safer that way.”
She could see a slow smile emerging from beneath his beard and it wasn’t a pleasant thing. “But since I donna know ye, lassie, I can hardly be trustin’ ye, now can I?”
A low rumble of nasty laughter rumbled through the room. The men exchanged glances. Something cold flowed down her spine as Clid turned back to her. “That’s a powerful lot o’ gold for a lone missy to be carrying about—”
“Have it all.” She cupped the pile and pushed it towards him.
“—and it makes me think ye might be worth more than whatever that pile there adds up to, so I’ll ask ye one more time: what’s yer name, and where’s this castle of yers that fitzMiles wants so bad?”
Gwyn’s mind sped through half a dozen responses, from pleading to fainting to snatching the knife from his belt and slitting his throat, but before he finished his sentence, she decided. Lie.
“I have to use the outhouse.”
Admittedly, a weak defence, but it amused him, and that was sufficient. He erupted into laughter. Bits of food sprayed over the table. Pleasant. All he had to do was think her a fool and she had her chance. A slim one, but a chance.
“Go, go.” He waved his hand in the air. “Elfrida, go with her. Show her the way to the ‘outhouse.’” The manly troupe exploded into more uproarious laughter.
Gwyn smiled as if she had no notion of what lay in store. The square-shouldered matriarch Elfrida shuffled forward, glared at Gwyn, and snapped the door open. They walked a few yards behind the huts, the woman trudging beside her. Gwyn’s mind raced. Elfrida The Matriarch might lumber along like an ox, but she wasn’t letting Gwyn get more than a hands-breadth away, and that would never do. The forest lay about thirty steps further on, a creek bed gurgling at its edge. Four huts sat to their right, dark and silent except for the sounds of farm animals shuffling inside. Gwyn caught a glimpse of the plough horse.
They stopped and the woman pointed generally in the direction of ‘over there.’
“Anywhere near them saplings. Ye’ll smell it. I’ll be standing here,” Elfrida grumbled.
“Yes, I think I smell it already.” Gwyn smiled. “But, ma’am, I hate to ask…” She dropped her voice. “I’m in need of…I’m afraid I’ve just come on my…monthly flux.”
The woman’s face shifted slightly. Her eyebrows went up, then down. “Oh, all right.” She turned and shouted “Elfwing!” for what seemed like an eternity, but no one came.
Gwyn smiled encouragingly. “I can’t really go back inside like…this.”
She pulled aside the cloak and displayed her skirts for viewing. In the darkness it was hard to detect colour, but not shade, and there was clearly a huge, dark stain right in the middle of her skirts. Cloaked as Gwyn had been, the woman didn’t realise the entire dress was in much the same state, nor that the stain was not Gwyn’s own blood, nor that much of it was not blood at all, but mud and muck flung up in her various pursuits of the night.
Elfrida backed up. “I’ll have ye a rag. I’ll be right back.” She pointed again, this time the other direction. “We girls go over there, near the forest edge, this time o’ the month.” She started off. “Don’t try anything,” she warned, looking back over her shoulder.
Gwyn smiled in a friendly way and waved her hand in the air, indicating the general vastness and emptiness of her surroundings. “What could I try, and where would I try it?”
Elfrida grunted and walked off.
Gwyn started running.
Chapter Nine
She reached Hipping Hall and was escorted inside at knife point. A lowered blade, once they knew who she was, but it was not sheathed entirely, which Gwyn found distinctly odd. She was a noblewoman in obvious distress, torn from stem to stern and shod less well than a rouncy. What on earth could be imperiled by her bedraggled presence?
“Lady Guinevere,” Hippingthorpe himself greeted her, holding her hand and pressing his lips to the back.
Gwyn smiled warmly, ignoring a shudder inside at his touch. He might be slightly revolting, and he might have a spotted past in the loyalty department, but he was her writ to the king, and she would have done almost anything to secure his goodwill.