The Leopard Unleashed Read Online Free PDF Page B

soldier’s whore; this tiny hovel in the wrong quarter of Antioch a reflection of her capabilities.
    Olwen returned to her preparations. Her sister brushed through the curtain that separated the house into two squalid rooms. She was wearing a gold silk over-dress that Olwen recognised as her own, and new at that. Gwener had larger breasts and the seams were straining to contain her flesh. Yesterday Olwen might have made a cat-fight out of such blatant misappropriation. Tonight, the glimpseof another world in her eyes, she was merely filled with contempt. Bestowing on her sister a single, cold look, she returned to her toilet.
    Gwener yawned and scratched her armpit. ‘Who is he?’ She picked up Renard’s knife that was lying on Olwen’s pallet and examined it.
    ‘That is my business.’
    Gwener tossed her head. ‘He wasn’t there last night, was he?’ she said spitefully. ‘I’ve never seen you come home in such a temper before.’
    ‘And is it any wonder when I find you writhing on the floor with one of your foul clients and yonder drunken sot lying across the door in a pool of vomit!’ Olwen smacked down the pot of red paste so hard that it cracked in half. ‘He wasn’t there last night because he had company – some relative from England.’
    ‘Ah, he’s English then.’
    Olwen tightened her lips and turned her back.
    Gwener stretched like a cat. Her eyes were sleepy and feline, blue like Olwen’s, but lacking their size and clarity. ‘Nobility?’ She fondled the knife in a suggestive fashion. ‘What’s he like between the sheets?’
    Olwen snatched the weapon from her sister, and seizing a fistful of her straggling hair, jerked back Gwener’s head and let the blade glide against her jaw. ‘Are you really so desperate to know?’
    Gwener screeched and struggled. Gwylim’s snores ceased in a stertorous series of grunts and he sat up, blinking, disorientated like a day-wakened owl.
    Gwener’s wild threshing caused the knife to slip. It was only a shallow cut, but there was enough blood to drip on to the gown, staining the silk. Gwener flapped like ahalf-wrung chicken. Gwylim staggered to his feet with some vague thought of separating the girls, tripped over the piss pot that no one had bothered to empty last night, and pitched headlong. A pungent, stink filled the room.
    An elderly, inquisitive neighbour poked her head around the door to see what all the noise was about.
    ‘She tried to kill me!’ Gwener howled, pointing a dramatic finger at Olwen. ‘Look, she’s still got the knife! I’m bleeding! Oh, God’s love, someone help me!’
    Olwen threw a rag at her sister. ‘Staunch it yourself, you stupid slut. I wish I’d cut your throat!’
    Their neighbour started to jabber her own advice and condemnation. Other curious faces clustered the doorway as Gwylim struggled to sit up, his clothes stinking of stale urine.
    Olwen stared round the squalor of the room where she had been born and raised, first in poor decency then in hand to mouth desperation. She detached herself from it in a single stroke, like a knife severing an umbilical cord, and stalked past Gwylim. He cowered away from the dagger. Ignoring him, she took her best silk gown and another of good linen from her clothing pole and also the black wool robe that she wore when she went out at night to dance.
    Gwener howled and dabbed at the nick on her jaw. The neighbour snatched a half-loaf from the table and tucked it away inside her shawl. Olwen saw but made no comment. It was not her concern now, nor ever would be again. She had other battles to fight.
    Without a backward glance or even a word of farewell, she went out of the door, and the onlookers made way for her like a crowd parting before a queen. She had that air about her as she took the first steps of a decision madetwo days ago in the bed of a man she had known for the space of a single night.
    Stripped to the waist, Renard curried Gorvenal, a task he could have left to his