To Defy a King Read Free Page A

slower to leave the sky at night.

    'I can have a wolfskin rug for my bedside now,' said his thirteen-year-old brother Ralph, a gleam in his dark grey eyes.

    Hugh smiled. 'With a sheepskin the other side for balance, and to remind you why we hunt wolves in the first place.'

    'I don't know why you want a wolf pelt anywhere near you, they stink,' said William. At almost fifteen, he was the closest of the brothers in age to Hugh.

    'Not if they're properly tanned and aired,' Ralph argued.

    William shook his head. 'The only good place for a wolf is a midden pit.'

    Accustomed to their verbal sparring, Hugh took little notice. It meant nothing. They squabbled cheerfully among themselves - sometimes even came to blows - but the rancour never lasted and they were always united against a common foe.

    Hugh remounted Arrow. The mare was so named because of her ability to fly into a fast gallop from a standing start. She could outrun any wolf and she was his pride and joy. Gathering the reins, he studied the sleet-laden clouds scudding in from the east coast while he waited for Ralph to swing the bloodied corpses across the pack pony's saddle. The wind was as vicious as the bite of a wild animal. It was a day when any sane man would remain by his hearth, and only venture outside to empty his bowels - or deal with wolves.

    He had been lord of Settrington for five years, ever since his father had granted him ten knights' fees of his own following King John's coronation.
    He had been sixteen then, old enough for responsibility under supervision, and he had cut his teeth on these Yorkshire estates, preparing for the day when he would inherit vast tracts of fertile land and coastal villages in East Anglia including the castle at Framlingham with its thirteen great towers.

    His father was still hale and fit, but one day, Hugh would be Earl of Norfolk, and his knights' fees would amount to more than 160.

    He paused by the shepherds' hut to give the herders the good news about the wolves, and then rode down to the manor. As the afternoon settled towards dusk, the horses churned their way through the icy mud of the track, bitter air clouding from their nostrils and steaming from their hides. Lantern-light gleamed through the cracks in the shutters of the manor house and grooms were waiting to greet the hunting party and take their mounts.

    'Sire, your lord father is here,' the head groom told Hugh as he dismounted.

    Hugh had already noticed the extra horses in the stables and the increased number of servants. He had been expecting his father because King John and the court were at York, and Settrington was only twenty miles away. Hugh nodded to the groom, stripped off his mittens and, blowing into his cupped hands, entered the manor house. His waiting chamberlain presented him with a cup of hot, spiced wine, which Hugh took with gratitude. His father was sitting before the hearth, legs crossed at the ankle, sipping from a cup of his own, but when he saw Hugh, he stood up.

    'Sire.' Hugh knelt on one knee and bowed his head.

    'Son,' Roger Bigod replied, pride in his voice. He raised Hugh to his feet and kissed him on either cheek. Hugh felt the solidity of his father's body beneath the fur-lined mantle as they embraced. He was as hard and sturdy as a pollarded tree.

    William and Ralph arrived to be similarly greeted and for a while the conversation was all of the foul weather and the wolf hunt. More hot wine arrived, and platters of hot fried pastries. It was Lent so they were neither filled with cheese nor dusted with sugar and spices, but the tongue-scalding heat and the lard-fried crispness were still welcome to men who had been at hard exercise in freezing weather. Hugh's hands and feet began to throb back to life. Chilblains were another good reason not to leave the fire on a bitter February day. He pushed away the nose of a hungrily questing dog.
    'How is my lady mother?'

    His father wiped his lips on a napkin. 'Well enough, but