Firebrand was tethered to an overhanging alder. Unhooking the reins, Alan led the Duke’s courser onto Pontivy’s main thoroughfare. He walked as the far as the inn and, finding the shutters closed for the night, hammered until the landlord appeared.
‘What is it?’ Scrubbing sleep from his face, and none too pleased at being roused from his bed, the landlord scowled.
‘I want a word about the girl.’
‘What girl? We’re closed. I gave you your wine.’
‘I know that. But I’d like to ask you a favour.’
The landlord’s scowl deepened and he did not reply. Favours usually cost money.
‘That girl I was with.’ Alan didn’t know her name, hadn’t wanted to know it.
‘The beggar-maid?’
‘That’s the one.’ Alan took a couple of coins from his pouch and juggled them in his palm. ‘I was hoping that you might see your way to employing her.’
‘God’s wounds! This is a reputable hostelry, I can’t be employing poxy drabs.’
‘I think she would work hard if you gave her the chance.’
The innkeeper swore. ‘No. It’s more likely she’d scare off my trade. Have you seen the state of her skin? She looks as though she’s infected with the plague.’
Alan smiled crookedly. ‘I think if you employed her, you’d find her cured of that affliction.’ He held out his palm, and the innkeeper’s eyes did not shift from the coins.
‘You’re leaving the area?’
‘Aye.’
‘What’s to stop me taking your money and not giving her work?’
Alan remembered the well-regimented inn, the neat lines of hams, the orderly onions, and the landlord’s dazzling linen apron. He grinned. ‘Nothing. I’m taking the chance that you’re not a man to sweep things into the rushes. I shall trust to your honesty, landlord.’
The innkeeper’s fingers closed round the money. ‘I’ll try her out,’ he agreed, reluctantly. ‘But I give you notice, if I find her dishonest, I’ll throw her back into the midden.’
‘My thanks, landlord.’
It was rare for Alan to be moved to compassion, and it unsettled and disturbed him, but he could not have stalked off and dismissed that girl from his mind as once he might have done. He grimaced ruefully into the rustling night, conscious of a wave of regret at leaving her. Time was when he would not have spared her a moment’s thought, but something had opened his eyes to her plight. It would have been easier if his eyes had remained closed. It would have been far simpler to ride off and forget her.
Alan had another leave-taking preying on his mind. He was becoming as strongly attracted to Gwenn as his cousin was, and he would shortly have to say farewell to her. If he felt like this over a girl he’d only known for one evening, how was he going to react when he parted from Gwenn? Briefly, he considered confessing his feelings to her, but he could not see what that would achieve. He could not bring himself to come between Ned and Gwenn, he had seen how they cared for each other, and even if his feelings were reciprocated, did he want to make an adulteress of Gwenn?
Fiercely, Alan dug in his heels and Firebrand surged through the waving bracken. At least he was happier with himself having spoken to the landlord about the beggar-girl. It was best she remained nameless. Weren’t beggars always nameless? Perhaps next time he passed this way he would visit the inn and see if she was there. Perhaps he might learn her name, next time.
***
Conan had stowed away among a merchant’s bales of cloth in a trading vessel bound for the northern port of Lannion. Lannion was half a day’s walk from Ploumanach. Conan had tried to shake off the white mongrel, intending to abandon it on the quayside, but the animal had clung like a tick, and in the end Conan had taken it with him. If the dog threatened to give tongue and betray him, he could always slit its throat. But the animal had learned that it paid to be silent, and while the merchantman skimmed over the waves, the cur kept a cowed silence.
In Lannion, a fortuitous chance in La Rue des Templiers had a donkey shedding its burden at the bottom of the hill. While the load was set to rights, the way was blocked to the church at the top, and in the muddle Conan cut the strings of the cloth merchant’s elaborately tooled leather purse. As a result, he was in possession of enough minted silver to bide his time, and pick his moment.
He reached Ploumanach two days before Alan’s party, hiring lodgings in a fisherman’s cottage in one of the many fishing hamlets that had grown up in the surrounding inlets. While he and the dog waited, he set his mind to pondering on how he could get his hands on Gwenn Herevi’s Virgin. His mind, undirected by any but himself for the first time in a decade, moved slowly.
***
The last leg of their journey to Ploumanach was without mishap, and Gwenn and her companions rode into the main village at sunset on a balmy evening. There was hardly a breath of wind in the air.
Alan and Ned had been talking tournaments for the last hour, and though Gwenn had paid attention at first, she had wearied of the topic and chose instead to take an interest in the changing countryside. Clumps of gorse flamed yellow in the evening light. Slender white ribbons of cloud trailed across a fading blue sky. The trees had thinned out some miles back, and though a few oaks grew here, by comparison with their proud brothers in the forest, these were stunted and twisted. There were tall pines though, and as they drew nearer the coast, stunted oaks yielded to sprawling banks of bramble. The scent of pine lingered in the air, and in the distance, breaking up the skyline, the spiky trees formed a dark traceried screen for the evening light to glow through.
A seagull arrowed over their heads. They must be close to their destination. Gwenn dragged her attention from the terrain and homed in on the cousins’ discussion.
‘If you find you can’t settle here, Ned,’ Alan was saying, ‘you could come to King Philip’s August Tournament. My Duke plans to go, and I shall be accompanying him. There are bound to be opportunities for a young man like yourself. You would love it.’
Philippe was asleep in Gwenn’s lap, a contented little cherub, totally unaware of the dramatic train of events that had led to him being dragged to the other side of Brittany. What did the future hold for him? What did the future hold for any of them? Glancing at her husband, Gwenn felt a warm upsurge of emotion for him. Her future was with Ned. Holding her brother firmly, Gwenn steered Dancer towards him so they were riding with their arms just touching. Ned reached over and gave a plait a friendly tug. Smiling impishly at him, Gwenn faked a yawn. ‘You’re not still droning on about tourneys, are you? I should have thought you would have talked them to death.’
‘Sorry, my sweet.’ Ned’s expression was wistful. ‘They fascinate me. I would love to go to one.’
Gwenn bit her lip, recalling with a pang the times she had seen him hanging on her uncle’s words as though they were his meat and drink. ‘You could go, Ned. I see nothing to prevent you.’
Warm blue eyes met hers. Ned was trying, and failing, to hide his eagerness. ‘But there’s you and the children. I have to consider you.’
‘Poor Ned,’ Alan teased, ‘shackled to a wife and children at your tender age.’
Suddenly uncomfortable so close to Ned, Gwenn threw Alan a black look. ‘Alan,’ she urged Dancer level with Firebrand’s glossy flanks, ‘I’ll have you know it won’t be me who keeps Ned from attending the King’s Joust.’
Alan bowed his head. ‘Very gracious of you, my lady.’ He rolled audacious eyes at Ned, whose mule was dragging its heels. ‘There you are, what more do you want? You have your wife’s permission to go to King Philip’s tournament.’
The irony in Alan’s voice was wasted on Ned, busy belabouring his mule, but not on Gwenn. It was a rare man who heeded his wife’s wishes when they conflicted with his own. A wife was a chattel. Gwenn was lucky with her Ned, he did not view her in that light. How did Alan le Bret view her? As a chattel of his cousin’s?
‘I’ll look for you in August, Ned,’ Alan said, and then he grinned at Gwenn, and she could not divine what he thought.