The tears collected under my blindfold until the entire wretched thing was soaked, making me even more uncomfortable.
I prayed to my knight, my protector, but he did not come.
I remembered what he had said to Ghent.
There are trials ahead. There is blood ahead. There is nothing you can do, nor could have done, to prevent it. Do not grieve too much.
I wished I had never left London.
We passed through a town at some point, almost certainly Bergeveny. I could hear the street noise, the clatter of carts down the streets, the sound of people talking, laughing.
People living normal lives, not knowing that in the cart rumbling by them a woman lay in agony and in fear of her life.
I wondered if Ghent was still alive in the other cart, and if my women, too, were alive or if they had been slaughtered by now.
I hoped they were dead, if only to end their suffering and humiliation and fear.
Oh sweet Jesu, why had I insisted on this journey?
We travelled through until well after nightfall. I could not see the light from behind my blindfold and the heavy layers that covered me, but gradually I felt the air grow chill, and I shivered from the cold.
The cart also slowed as we travelled along increasingly rougher and steeper tracks.
We were moving uphill. I guessed we were into the hills and mountains on the other side of the Usk Valley from Pengraic if we had passed through Bergeveny.
We travelled long into the night, the movements of the cart increasingly violent as the terrain grew rougher. Occasionally, I heard one or two of the men speak, the language coarse and unknown to my ears.
When the cart lurched to a sudden halt, I moaned in pain through my gag.
There were more voices, raised in obvious greeting, and I knew we had arrived at our destination.
I trembled with fear and felt so unsettled in my stomach I worried I would vomit into my gag and choke myself.
Suddenly the heavy cover over me was wrenched back, and icy air rushed in about me.
The voices were louder now, laughing, close.
The hauberks were hauled off my legs, and then someone climbed into the cart and lifted me under the arms, sliding me down the cart until I half fell out.
My legs could barely support me, and I swayed to and fro, sure I would fall.
Someone caught me by the arm to steady me, and said something in a derogatory voice at which many men about me laughed.
Not before, or ever after, have I ever felt so humiliated. I knew I was dishevelled, stained, ungainly with my belly and numb limbs, and my clothes stank vilely. I must have looked like a street whore down on her luck.
There were fingers at the back of my head, and my gag fell off.
I heaved in a breath, desperate for water but not wanting to beg lest I set off the laughter once more.
Then the fingers were at the back of my blindfold, and it fell away.
For a long moment I could not see. It was deep night, very black, but there were five or six fires roaring fiercely, throwing leaping light about and highlighting the shapes of men walking to and fro.
There were two men standing in front of me, perhaps four or five paces away. I blinked, trying to focus, trying to make out their faces in the fractured light.
Then my vision cleared, and I saw standing before me Madog ap Gruffydd … and Henry, son of King Edmond.
Chapter Five
The weave scarring on Henry’s cheek looked black and deep in the firelight. He regarded me with obvious malicious contempt, then grunted in derision. ‘Not so beautiful now, bitch, eh?’ he said.
Then he strode over and dealt me a stunning blow to the side of my face, sending me flying to the ground.
The fall knocked the breath out of me, and it took me a long, painful time before I could get any more air in. I was crying, struggling for breath, my mouth full of dirt and my face smeared with it, and the impact on the ground had sent agony flaring through my back and hips and down my legs.
A back tooth had loosened, and I probed it out of its socket with my tongue and then spat it out.
‘We need her alive for a while yet,’ Madog snapped, and he came over and hauled me back to my feet.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw two men drag Ghent from the other cart, dumping him on the ground. He moved, but only a little and only sluggishly, and I thought he must be barely alive.
Madog took a knife from his belt and I flinched as he raised it. Both Henry and Madog chuckled, but Madog only used it to cut the rope bindings at my wrist.
‘Do not think to run into the night,’ Madog said. ‘These hills are not called the Bearscathe Mountains for nothing. Bears roam here, and they are just emerging from their winter dens, fierce with starvation.’
As if to underscore his words I heard a long, low moan echoing about the hillside.
For an instant everyone within the encampment stilled, listening, before they resumed talking and moving about.
Madog gestured to one of his men, who brought over a skin of ale, handing it to me.
I was parched, and lifted it to my mouth with trembling hands, the metal mouth of the skin clattering against my teeth as I drank.
‘We will need to move out soon,’ said Madog, and Henry nodded.
‘It will not be long before news of the lady’s seizure spreads, and doubtless d’Avranches will undertake some foolish rescue.’
Oh please, I begged silently, please, please let d’Avranches find me.
I thought of my knight again, he who had sworn to always come to my aid if I needed him, and begged him to come save me.
Nothing happened, and I hated him.
Madog sat me before one of the fires, two of his Teulu standing guard over me, while he and Henry moved about, ordering men to break camp. As well as the Teulu there were perhaps a dozen English soldiers, and I thought they must be Henry’s men. My cheek and jaw throbbed horribly from where Henry had struck me and where the tooth had fallen out. I cannot have been there long, but, even despite my pain, my exhaustion sent me into a fitful doze and I jumped in surprise when someone suddenly kicked dirt into the fire to douse it.
‘Come,’ said a voice, and one of the warriors pulled me to my feet.
I looked about, and saw with some surprise that while I had been dozing, the contents of my chests had been flung about the clearing — my kirtles, my chemises, my ribbons and baubles, as well as those of my women. The entire contents of the carts had been completely ransacked.
‘Can you ride?’ said Madog, walking over.
I looked at him, then back at the cart. Why couldn’t I — ‘No cart will go where we are going,’ said Madog.
‘Can you ride?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘That was not the right answer,’ Madog said, dragging me by the wrist toward a horse. It was a big, rangy animal, and it rolled its eyes alarmingly as Madog lifted me bodily into the saddle.
Again, pain shot through my back and hips.
Madog shouted to a horseman close by, and he rode over. Madog handed him the reins of my horse, then tied a length of rope about the horse’s neck.
‘Hang on to that,’ Madog said, and then he was off to his own horse, mounting up and shouting to his Teulu to ride out.
My horse lunged forward, almost unseating me, and I struggled to find the stirrups with my feet. I clung grimly to the rope, but even once I had my feet firmly in the stirrups I found it painful and very difficult to keep my balance on the thin-backed horse, who not only shied at every shadow with regular monotony, but stumbled his way to his knees on numerous occasions on the steep track up which Madog led us. Twice a Teulu riding close by had to push me back into the saddle as I leaned so precariously I would otherwise have fallen.
I could not believe the agony now coursing through my body. Everything hurt — my face from Henry’s blow, my back and legs, my belly, my hands which were still swollen and numb from being tightly bound for so long.
At one point Madog reined his horse to the side of the track and waited until I came level with him. He looked me over, his eyes narrowed.
‘We will make camp soon,’ he said.