Conquest by Tracey Warr

Author:Tracey Warr
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-911293-44-6
Publisher: Impress Books

Haith and Ida crossed the Bristol Channel on a small trading ship heading for Tenby and planned to ride on from there to Cardigan. It was good to hear the lilt of Welsh voices all around him again. In the pungent gloom of the stables, Haith counted three coins into the cupped hand of the ostler who was loaning him two horses. ‘Do you hear news of the lady wed to de Marais at Cardigan?’ Haith asked in as nonchalant a tone as he could muster.

‘Princess Nest, eh?’

‘Yes.’ He could not say her name.

‘Not at Cardigan.’

The ostler was not given to extended speech, it seemed.

‘Do you know where she is?’ Haith prodded.

‘Might be Llansteffan.’ The ostler, his mouth hanging slightly ajar, scanned Haith, starting at his boots (damp again) and slowly reaching up to his face. It took a while and Haith was reminded that he was taller than most men here, unless they were of Viking heritage.

‘Flemish, are ye?’

‘Flemish by birth, yes. I am the sheriff of Pembroke,’ Haith replied, his tongue stumbling at owning his title and status.

The ostler raised one unimpressed eyebrow. ‘What be wanting with Princess?’

‘I am an old friend of the lady.’ He bit his tongue on his intended addition: and my sister resides in her household. The less said in public of Ida the better for her sake. Haith and Ida had winced at the story of a renegade nun told to them by one of the sailors during their Channel crossing. She was captured in a village outside Caen. The villagers had stripped her naked and whipped her in the marketplace, before the nuns had bundled her bleeding into a habit and into a solitary cell in the convent. The story had sent a chill through Haith.

The ostler appeared to have no intention of volunteering any information on Nest and must be pressed. ‘Lady Nest is not, then, at Cardigan with her husband, you believe,’ Haith stated. ‘Are you certain of it? I don’t want to be riding your nag in the wrong direction do I?’

The ostler shrugged and Haith craned towards the road to see who else was about and might be more forthcoming on the subject. His attention was startled back to the ostler.

‘Left her husband. The Norman.’

It appeared to be common knowledge that Nest was living apart from de Marais. Haith frowned, irritated by the unadorned gobbets of information delivered by the ostler. He mounted the horse and led the second to collect his sister. When she was safely mounted they turned their horses’ heads towards the coast road, towards Llansteffan.

A more loquacious pie-seller at the edge of town confirmed the ostler’s information that Nest was at Llansteffan. ‘Aye, master. You’d think the lady would have been happy enough with another Norman between her legs eh, after all the others she’s had!’ The pie-seller’s enormous grin was switched off abruptly at sight of Haith’s furious expression and how he reached toward his sword hilt.

The pie-seller bundled up his display and

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