The Leopard Unleashed Read Online Free PDF

bring up blood.’
    Renard swallowed. His own lungs stopped working. He struggled for a breath.
    ‘It was your father who sent me to fetch you,’ Adam said gently. ‘Before it is too late … are you all right?’ Anxiously he leaned across the trestle to touch Renard’s shoulder.
    ‘Struck by lightning,’ Renard answered woodenly. ‘What do you expect?’ He shrugged off Adam’s compassionate hand. ‘Yes, I’m all right.’
    ‘There is more,’ Adam warned. ‘Ranulf de Gernons is making a nuisance of himself and your father can’t hold him any more. Henry’s doing his best but …’ He grimaced. ‘Well you know Henry. All brave heart and nothing but solid stone in the head.’
    ‘What manner of nuisance?’
    ‘He’s nibbling at Caermoel. Claims that the castle stands on land belonging to him, not Ravenstow.’
    Renard’s eyes flashed. ‘That’s a lie! We have a charter from the time of the great survey to prove it, and reaffirmed by King Henry!’
    ‘I know that. There’s no need to blaze at me!’ Adam raised and lowered his hands in a calming gesture. ‘It is the excuse that’s important, not the truth. There have been a couple of nasty clashes between Chester’s and Caermoel’s patrols, and when your father has complained, it has fallenon deaf ears. De Gernons merely laughs and goes his own way, and Stephen does not want to anger one of his most powerful tenants-in-chief over a fly-biting dispute so he just mutters platitudes into his beard and looks the other way.’
    Renard put his hands down on the trestle and stared at a white scar on one of his knuckles, legacy of a skirmish with the Welsh when he was scarcely old enough to wield a war sword. The sun-brown skin would eventually fade like a dream, but the scar would remain with him for life.
    ‘De Gernons has also been hinting to the King that a certain betrothal might be broken and placed more profitably elsewhere,’ Adam said. ‘To his credit, Stephen has taken scant notice thus far, but he’s apt to change his mind under persuasion.’
    Renard felt a burden settle on him, heavy as a black cloak with a gilded border – the responsibility for his family’s estates. ‘So,’ he said, ‘Ravenstow still stands by Stephen then?’
    ‘For the moment. Your father would rather have Stephen for king than the Empress for queen, but it eats at his conscience that he swore to uphold her claim while her father was still alive.’
    ‘Everyone swore, and under duress,’ Renard grunted. ‘What about you, where do you stand?’
    Adam grimaced. ‘Precariously on the fence, like your father. Were it practicable, I would support Matilda. Her son might only be seven, but the throne is his by right, not Stephen’s. The pity is that she is not fit to be regent while he’s growing up, and his father is too occupied with matters in Normandy and Anjou to be bothered with England. As matters stand, I’m too close to Stephen’s stronghold atShrewsbury to risk renouncing my fealty. For now I’m a crusader, beholden to neither, and it’s a relief.’
    Renard made some swift mental calculations. ‘It will take about a month to make ready. That should give you time enough to reach Jerusalem and return – unless you plan to stay longer?’
    ‘There is not the time.’
    ‘No,’ Renard agreed and saw that his hands, flat a moment ago, had clenched into fists. ‘It will soon be winter, won’t it?’

3

    Hand steady, Olwen painstakingly applied a line of kohl beneath and within her lower eyelid, stepped back from the tiny sliver of polished steel to study the effect, and picking up a pot of red paste and a dainty camel-hair brush, started to paint her mouth. A sodden snore stopped her in mid-stroke. She looked round at the couch and scowled at her Uncle Gwylim. Her sister had taken pity on him last night and given him drinking money and sleeping space – more fool her, the stupid slut. Gwener was never going to be anything more than a common