by Tamara Leigh
Though Rhiannyn longed to explain to him what had happened, it was unlikely she would be believed, and even if she were, the Normans would avenge Thomas’s death with further carnage of her people. Thus, it was best to let Christophe believe this was all her doing. Since his brother had died because of her, it was fitting justice that she shoulder his death.
“Lady Rhiannyn, rise,” Sir Ancel commanded.
Lady only because Thomas had named her one. Intent on wedding her, though she had shamed him with her public refusal, he had bestowed the title on her. After all, it would not do for a favorite of the Norman king to take a Saxon commoner to wife.
Imagining her blood would soon soak the ground as Thomas’s did, she rose to face the one who would pronounce judgement upon her.
Short-cropped hair plastered to his head, face contorted with loathing, Sir Ancel demanded, “Who did this?”
She lowered her eyes so the lie would be more easily told. “It was I who killed him.”
The knight grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “No more of your Saxon lies. I would have the truth!”
“I have told it!” she gasped.
“Do you think me a fool? It was your lover who put the dagger through him.”
He spoke of Edwin, the second son of the Saxon thane who had ruled Etcheverry before the coming of the Normans. Edwin, whose bitterness kept the enmity alive between the conquering Normans and the vanquished Saxons. Edwin, who was not her lover, though he would have been her husband had the Normans not conquered this land to which they had no right.
Though she would never admit it, it was Edwin who had aided in her escape this morn. It was he who had fought Thomas and been wounded by his opponent’s blade. But it was not Edwin who had landed the death blow. A moment after Thomas had sliced through Edwin’s sword arm, a dagger had been thrown from the concealing wood.
Thomas’s pained cry, mingled with Edwin’s angry shout, echoed in Rhiannyn’s head as she stared through Sir Ancel. She saw herself run forward and take Thomas in her arms, the disbelief with which he regarded her as Edwin urged her to her feet, Edwin’s contempt as he berated her for refusing to leave the dying man, the injured arm Edwin pressed to his chest as he struggled to mount his horse. And then Thomas’s sightless eyes.
Returning Sir Ancel to focus, Rhiannyn said, “No, it was I who killed him.”
He sneered. “Where is your weapon?”
What had become of the dagger? She lowered her chin and searched for a glint of silver. It hid itself well, and only by dropping to her hands and knees and scrabbling in the moist earth did she find it.
Grasping its intricately carved hilt, she stumbled to her feet and raised it toward Sir Ancel. Though the blade had drawn the mud of the earth, the dark red spilled from Thomas’s veins was yet visible. “I used this.”
Disbelief continued to shine from Sir Ancel’s face and the faces of those behind him.
Was it that they did not believe her capable of the atrocity? Or that they did not believe she possessed the stomach or strength required to kill a man?
She stepped forward. “God is my witness,” she lied, promising herself she would repent later.
Sir Ancel knocked her hand aside, sending the dagger into the rain-beaten grass alongside the road. “Lying Saxon. That coward, Edwin, did it!”
As Rhiannyn nursed her pained wrist, Sir Guy stepped forward and retrieved the dagger. He considered it and looked to Rhiannyn.
She averted her gaze.
“It was Edwin!” Sir Ancel insisted.
She shook her head. “You are wrong. I hated Thomas.”
“Non!” Christophe dismounted and hobbled forward. “You did not hate my brother, Lady Rhiannyn, and even if you had, you could not have done this.”
“I am responsible,” she asserted, which was true whether it was she who had wielded the weapon or the one in the wood who had slipped away unseen.
“Fear not, young Christophe.” Sir Ancel grabbed hold of her wet hair and forced her head back. “Either way, justice will be done.”
Rhiannyn quelled the impulse to struggle against the pain. After the death she had just witnessed, it shamed her to feel anything other than a twinge of discomfort.
“Do it now,” she said.
“Too good for the likes of you,” Sir Ancel snarled. “When it is time, you will suffer the same as Thomas. A slow, painful death.”
She thought it strange that only now she fully felt the chill of clothes soaked through. Or was it fear that caused her to shudder? Past clenched teeth, she said, “Do with me as you will.”
“Such brave words! We shall see how well you fare in a dark cell.” The man thrust her from him.
Rhiannyn threw up her hands to catch her fall, and landed upon the muddied road. Facedown as if she prostrated herself, she prayed, Dear God, be here, be merciful, be swift.
A hand turned around her arm, and with effort, assisted her to her feet.
As she delved Christophe’s face, wondering how it was possible there was not even a smudge of hatred amid his pain, she felt more tears gather.
He smiled sorrowfully. “Lady Rhiannyn—”
“Do not call her that, boy!” Sir Ancel snapped. “She is no longer a lady—indeed, never was.”
Christophe Pendery, who knew most believed he was undeserving of his surname, looked around. “She was to have been my brother’s bride,” he said, hating the quaver in his voice.
“Aye, and Thomas was a fool to think he could trust her. Look at him.” The man jabbed a finger at where two knights arranged their lord’s body over the back of a horse. “He is gone, boy. Your brother is dead.”
Christophe lowered his chin, closed his eyes, and fought emotions that sought to unman him before knights who would scorn him for showing a woman’s weakness.
He had to be strong. With Thomas gone, the estates now fell to him, one who would never train for knighthood, whose single aspiration had been to some day serve as his brother’s steward. He did not want the responsibility, nor the struggle for power that would ensue. But what other course was there? Of the four sons born to Lydia Pendery, only two survived, himself and the eldest.
He opened his eyes, murmured, “Maxen.” He to whom all would have belonged had he not shunned it in favor of a different life. A far different life.
But would he come out? If so, would he stay?
CHAPTER TWO
His demons quieted, tension drained, the lone figure rose from before the high altar and lifted his tonsured head to consider the holy relics that were the only witnesses to his prayers.
“Answer me, Lord,” he said quietly. He waited, as he did each time he prostrated himself in the chapel, and again was denied deliverance from the memories that had brought him to this place.
Disdained by God who was not yet ready to forgive him his atrocities, he strode from the chapel. He would try again on the morrow, and the morrow after that. And one day there would be peace for his soul, a place for it other than perdition.
Paying little heed to the cool wind that whispered of winter, he left his head uncovered and crossed to the cloister where his studies awaited him.
It was Brother Aelfred who stopped him. “There is a messenger come from Etcheverry to speak with you,” he said from deep within his hood.
All of Maxen went still. What had befallen the house of Pendery that Thomas should call upon him now? For two years there had been only silence, as Maxen had directed upon entering the monastery. Why had Thomas broken his vow to leave him be?
“He awaits you at the outer house,” Brother Aelfred continued.
Maxen inclined his head and moved away. When he reached the building, he saw the messenger stood to the right of it. His back to Maxen, wind sifting his short black hair and tugging at his clothes, he appeared to be appraising a section of the monastery’s outer wall. But as if sensing he was no longer alone, he turned.
Recognizing the one who had fought beside him at Hastings, Maxen halted
, causing his heavy clerical gown to eddy about his feet. “Guy.”
The knight grinned. “No other.” He strode forward and gripped Maxen’s forearm. “It is good to see you.”
His demons roused, tension returned, Maxen demanded, “Why have you come?”
Clearly taken aback, Guy released Maxen’s arm and donned an impassive expression. “Let us talk inside.”
Maxen narrowed his lids. “Something is amiss at Etcheverry?”
“It is. I would not have come otherwise.”
“Thomas sent you?”
“No, Christophe.”
Maxen’s youngest brother who was now… Was it fourteen summers aged? It boded ill that it was he who had directed Guy to the monastery.
“What of Thomas?” Maxen asked.
A long silence, and then, “I am sorry. Your brother is dead.”
Maxen’s chest constricted. Another brother destined for the dirt. Another taken far too young.
The memories he had struggled to bury rising from their graves, he saw the sloping meadow of Senlac, the strewn, ravaged bodies. He heard the Norman battle cries of Dex aie! and God’s help!, the Saxon cries of Holy Cross! and Out! Out! He smelled the spilled blood and felt the heat of body after body pressing in upon him. And then there was Nils.
Maxen wrenched himself back to the present. Nils was dead. Now, too, Thomas. Only Christophe and himself remained. Turning his back on Guy, he gripped a hand over his face. “How? Saxons?”
“A Saxon woman. She whom he intended to wed.”
Maxen jerked back around. “A woman?”
As if uncertain how to deal with this man of God who, in that moment, must look anything but, Guy took a step back. “She claims she was the one, but Sir Ancel believes it was her rebel lover who murdered Thomas.”
Maxen knew he should distance himself, that he should accept his brother’s death and return to the chapel and pray for him, but he had to know. “For what did she turn on him?”
“Rhiannyn—that is her name—is the daughter of a villein who died at Hastings. She blames the Normans for the deaths of her father and two brothers in battle, and that of her mother during a raid upon their village shortly before the fighting.” Guy shook his head. “Thomas thought he could make her forget all she had lost by bringing her into the castle and grooming her to become his wife.”
Hands concealed in the long sleeves of this robe, Maxen turned them into fists to control emotions he had thought to never again experience. “It was Thomas who lost,” he growled. “Everything.”
“So he did. Rhiannyn refused to wed him, and though he might have forced her to marriage, he was determined she would come to him willingly.”
“And she never did?”
“She did not. When she slipped free of the castle a sennight past, Thomas rode after her, refusing to wait for others to accompany him, though the woods teem with Saxon rebels.”
An old anger stirring his blood, Maxen nodded for Guy to continue.
“When we found him, Thomas was dead, put through with a dagger.”
“And the woman?”
“Rhiannyn was there. She said she had killed your brother, but all think it unlikely. The murdering blood of the Saxons may run through her, but she has not the strength or skill to down a warrior.”
“Then she protects her rebel lover.”
“Edwin Harwolfson, to whom she was betrothed before William claimed England’s throne.”
“Who is this Edwin?”
“The second son of the thane who possessed the lands which King William awarded to Thomas. As the only survivor of his family, he claims right over Etcheverry, refuses to acknowledge a Norman as his overlord, and leads the Saxon rebels who abound in the woods of Andredeswald.”
“He murdered my brother for revenge.”
“For which he is more than qualified. A worthy adversary.”
“Is the uprising restricted to Etcheverry?”
“No longer. It now touches other Pendery lands, and many villages are dying as the young and strong leave to join the rebels. There are not enough to work the land and tend—”
“Tell me more of this Edwin.”
“He was a royal housecarle to King Edward before his death, then later to the usurper, Harold.”
Surprise sprang through Maxen. A housecarle who had not died with his king? According to Saxon tradition, no housecarle should leave the battlefield alive if his lord was killed. No worse disgrace could there be than to survive.
“Edwin does not limit his foul deeds to Normans who pass through the wood,” Guy continued. “Time and again he leads attacks against Etcheverry Castle and its sister castle, Blackspur. The first year, he set fire to both so often that Thomas began rebuilding with stone rather than wood.”
Returning to what was yet unknown, Maxen asked, “How is it this Edwin did not die at Hastings?”
Guy nodded. “The Saxons say that while William expired a hundred feet away, an old witch pulled Edwin from beneath the dead and breathed life back into him, then took him from the battlefield and healed up his wounds with magical words and herbs.”
“What do the Normans believe?”
Guy’s brow was momentarily disturbed, and Maxen guessed he was tempted to point out that Maxen was also Norman. “They say Edwin is a coward, that he ran to the wood when his king fell.”
“What do you think?”
“Word abounds of his courage. And with my own eyes I have seen the wound he is said to have gained while fighting to protect his king. Though I dare not say it too loudly before others, methinks he did not take to flight.”
Maxen wondered if he had ever met this Edwin. By invitation of the now deceased King Edward, who’d had a particular fondness for Normans, the Penderys had resided on English soil for nearly a quarter century. For this reason, the first language of the Pendery offspring was Anglo-Saxon, though they were equally fluent in Norman French. However, following King Edward’s death, the Penderys had not supported Harold Godwinson’s claim to the throne, siding instead with their liege, Duke William of Normandy. So much blood shed…
The images having grown sharper, as if only yesterday he had thrust his sword into the blood-soaked soil of Senlac and walked away, Maxen silently raged. Curse Thomas for his obsession with the Saxon wench! Curse him for dying and leaving none but Christophe to take control of the Pendery demesnes!
“There is only you,” Guy said.
Maxen jerked. “What speak you of?” Not that he did not know. He just did not wish to know.
“Christophe cannot do it, Maxen, nor does he wish to. If that which belongs to the Penderys is to remain theirs, you must come.”
Leave his refuge that, with prayer, might someday free him from his demons? “I cannot. My vows are spoken. My life is here.”
“A petition has been dispatched to King William. If he agrees, which he would be a fool not to, you will be freed of your vows—at a price, of course.”
Further reminded of who he was and what he had done, Maxen struggled to contain emotions that might once more make of him an animal. When he had entered the monastery, it had been with the intent he would never again know the outside world in which he had turned merciless and bloodthirsty—more, that it would never again know him. But now…
“Christophe sent the petition?” he growled.
Guy swallowed loudly. “I did, Maxen—with your brother’s blessing.”
Maxen stepped toward him. “You?”
“I had to, not only for our friendship, but because I could not bear to see all lost.”
“But Christophe—”
“I have told you. He is not fit to lord over Etcheverry and its environs, nor Trionne once your father passes on. If you do not come out, it will be Sir Ancel Rogere who controls Pendery lands. At best, Christophe will be a figurehead.”
“Rogere?”
“Thomas’s friend whom he intended to make lord of Blackspur Castle. Surely you remember him?”
He
did. Thomas had become acquainted with the Norman prior to the Battle of Hastings. A landless noble, Rogere had sought his fortune fighting alongside Duke William in the quest for the English crown. However, it was said he had fallen early in battle, a handful of coins his only reward.
“Continue,” Maxen ordered.
“It is he who sits at the high table in Christophe’s stead. He who directs the household knights and to whom the steward answers. He whose intent it is to seal his power by gaining your father’s permission to wed your sister, Elan.”
Maxen turned away. All was lost. Duty bound him to defend his family’s holdings, even at the cost of the soul he had worked hard to save these two years. Suddenly weary, he asked, “When do you expect the king’s reply?”
“He should have my petition in hand by the morrow. Thus, he will likely give answer within a sennight.”
Maxen knew William would not dally over the decision, nor did he question what that decision would be. After all, William had wanted to award the barony to Maxen, and had only conferred it upon Thomas when Maxen refused and entered the monastery.
“Does Sir Ancel know what you do?” Maxen asked.
“He does not, my lord.”
My lord. So, neither did Guy suffer delusions as to what William would decide.
Maxen’s anger flared, but he forced it down. Still, it did not go far, simmering beneath his surface.
“I will ready myself.” He turned away.
“Maxen?”
He looked over his shoulder.
Guy’s smile did not reach his eyes. “It is for the better.”
“For the house of Pendery. But for me?” Maxen’s laughter was bitter. “This is where I belong, Guy.” And she who had forced him from his sanctuary would pay for her faithlessness. “The woman,” he said, “tell me she yet lives.”
“She does. Sir Ancel would have put her to death, but it is the one thing upon which Christophe will not be moved.”
“Why?”
“Regrettably, he is as enamored of her as was Thomas.”
Foolish boy. Directly or not, the woman was responsible for their brother’s death. “She still dwells within the castle?”