He rested his cheek against the softness of her hair, and breathed in the sweet, fresh smell of it. His loins ached. It was almost too much temptation. Briefly, he wondered whether any harm could come to her baby, and instantly there flashed into his mind the memory of his mother and stepfather making love in the room the family shared above the forge. His mother had been pregnant then, with Will, and she would not have consented if lovemaking threatened her unborn child; Alan’s mother had always been the best of mothers. No harm then would come to Gwenn’s babe if they did make love. He suppressed a groan. It was like a gift from God, every man’s dream. The woman who was the sum of his desires was safe and willing.

If Gwenn had not consented, he would have kept his distance till she was safely at Sword Point, but her consent made that impossible. He would go mad if he didn’t have her. He was barely managing to keep his hands off her tonight, and that was only because they were not alone. Odd that, he had never felt the need for privacy before. Privacy was such a luxury that most men must take their pleasures where and when they could.

Gwenn gave a moan of distress in her sleep, and involuntarily his arms tightened round her. She was so slight, just a skinny wand of a girl, with too-small breasts rather like the beggar-woman, not at all the sort of woman he usually took to his bed.

Alan calculated that if they rode between thirty or forty miles a day, it would take them a week to reach Richmond. He had kept the patched tent that the Duke, God rest him, had issued him with. He had avoided pitching it for fear of what he might do, but now... They could make love in glorious privacy in the tent.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was harvest time, and the peasants of England laboured in the fields on their lords’ behalf.

Often they would turn anxious eyes to the heavens, hoping and praying that the weather would hold fair until the harvest was gathered and they would be released from their duty. All over the realm, peasants were united in a single desire – that they should be free to give their womenfolk a hand with the crops they had planted on their own narrow strips. Their strips were what counted. The crops that grew on them would ensure their families were well fed in the coming winter. Every day the farmers worked for their lords was a day lost, for they would not gain so much as a mouthful of the bread milled from the lords’ grain. That disappeared into the storehouses of the manors and castles of England. An early storm, coming while the peasants were bound to the lords’ fields, could wreck the fruits of a year’s labour. If their lord was generous, their families might not starve in the winter months, but an early storm would certainly cause belts to be tightened and faces to grow pinched. It demeaned a man to go begging to his lord, especially when he had slaved all year, and it was not his fault if God sent foul weather. It made him beholden. But then, despite what it said in the Gospels, everyone knew that God usually came down on the side of the rich and the powerful.

The old Roman road Gwenn and Alan rode along was covered in a fine, dry dust; their horse’s hoofs kicked it into drifting swirls which hung in their wake, ready to choke anyone travelling behind them. The air was hot and windless. There was nothing to be gained by cantering, though they tried it from time to time – the air that rushed at their faces was no cooler, and cantering only made the poor, toiling beasts beneath them hotter than ever, and in the end the horses transferred their heat to their riders.

No, Alan decided, it was better to proceed slowly. Better to walk north as it was so warm. He didn’t want a horse to founder. Even Firebrand was drooping. In any case, Alan found he was no longer inclined to gallop home.

Scarlet poppies studded the hedgerows and strips. The wheat wilted in the heat, its ears fat and heavy, ripe for the reaper. God’s gold. The sky was a glorious, even blue.

They stopped at a village for an evening meal, bought freshly picked apples, bread, and mead from the tavern while the sun was yet up. Everything was tinged with rich, vibrant, harvest colours.

‘You’ll want beds, I expect?’ the alewife asked, eyeing Alan’s purse and indicating the stairs at the back of the inn. ‘We’ve proper mattresses,’ she went on with a touch of pride, ‘stuffed with fresh grasses.’

‘My thanks, but no,’ Alan said, quickly. ‘We must press on.’ Gwenn blushed.

Outside, he squired her onto Dancer, and she gave him a smile of thanks so warm he felt it in his toes. Marvelling at the power this slip of a girl had over him, he trotted onto the sun-warmed road.

He chose a sheltered spot between some bramble bushes and a stream, and when they had seen their horses were content, Gwenn walked upstream to see to her toilet. Alan pitched the tent. He spread his cloak over the meadow grasses and reached into Gwenn’s saddlebag, which she had left open after removing her comb and her soap. He drew out her cloak and a bundle fell out with a thud. Alan picked it up. His hand was already moving to return the bundle unopened to Gwenn’s pack, when something about the size of it struck a faint chord. Heart pounding, he unwrapped it.

The statue was cold to his touch and looked much the same as he remembered. He puzzled over the walnut plinth but then, recalling how Otto Malait had smashed the original, his brow cleared. Did this base have a secret compartment too? Idly, he gave it a gentle twist...

***

Gwenn took a long time. When Alan had bathed himself further downstream so as not to disturb her, she had not returned. He built a fire between the tent and the muttering stream, but still she did not come. Hoping she had not gone coy on him, he went to look for her.

He found her sitting behind a ripening blackberry bush in one of the last patches of sunlight, a cloth round her shoulders while she combed out her hair. Rooted to the spot, he watched her. He’d never seen her with it loose before, and it hung about her like a dark cloak, shining in the waning sunlight. It was even longer and more luxuriant than he had imagined.

He must have moved, for she glanced up and berry-bright colour stained her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, Alan, if I’ve kept you waiting. But I felt so dusty, I had to wash all of me, and my hair gets very tangled.’

‘Here, let me.’ Kneeling on the grass at her side, he relieved her of the comb.

‘You start at the ends and work up,’ Gwenn began to instruct him, but she broke off when she saw that he was as competent as any lady’s maid. Her flush deepened. ‘You’ve done this before, I see.’

‘No.’

She shot him a look of disbelief.

Alan grinned, and deftly finishing one section of her hair, began on another. ‘I had a mother, once, and when I was a boy, I used to watch her.’

Gwenn tried to imagine Alan as a little boy. ‘Tell me about your mother.’

He shrugged, and spoke in a distant voice. ‘There’s not much to tell. She was tall and when she was young she had dark hair like yours, but it faded to grey. She married the Breton sergeant at Richmond Castle, and for years she let me think that he was my father.’ Alan moved behind her, working on her hair. The sun sank below the top of the brambles, and as dusk gathered over the river, the fire that Alan had lit began to glow. The evening stars dotted the heavens.

After a space, Gwenn concluded softly, ‘So Alan le Bret is not a Breton after all.’

‘No.’ He gave a strained laugh. ‘Christ knows what I am. A mongrel by all accounts.’

‘It only matters if you let it. You kept the sergeant’s name, so you must love and respect him as your true father.’

Alan gave her a sharp look, and silently went on with his combing. Now that the sun had gone, he could no longer see very well and he was finding the tangles by touch. Somehow she had managed to rinse her hair with rosemary. He wondered if her skin was scented too.