by Jo Beverley
Her uncle’s voice shattered her thoughts. She called out to get his attention, then crawled to her cousin. She didn’t want him dead for then the whole Norman might would be turned to finding his murderer.
No danger of that. Odo had a large lump on the side of his head but was beginning to stir and groan.
The eruption into the glade of Paul de Pouissey, four of his men, and three cavorting hounds caught her just as she was wondering what she was going to say about her predicament.
“Odo!” Paul was off his horse in a moment and at his son’s side. “Who did this?” he demanded of Madeleine, fiery anger coloring his heavy jowls.
“Not me,” she said hastily. Paul de Pouissey’s anger easily took a physical form. “We were set upon,” she explained quickly, acting on instinct alone. “Outlaws.” No, that was too close to the mark. “A band of marauders. Many of them . . . Danes, perhaps . . .”
Her uncle snarled at her babbling and whirled on his men. “Find them! Find the curs who did this to my son. And,” he added quietly, “take them alive for my vengeance.”
In a moment the yelling men and their dogs were off into the wood, hunting new prey. Madeleine watched in horror. She had not intended that. But, she told herself, her outlaw was at home in the forest and would easily evade such clumsy pursuit.
Chapter 3
Aimery and Gyrth raced through the forest, their dun-colored clothes blending with the greens and browns. Then, as surely as a man walks through the streets of his town, they took to the spreading oaks and moved from tree to tree. When they had evaded the hunt, they halted on a slope by a stream as their pursuers circled aimlessly in the distance.
Aimery watched in silence as he got his breath back.
Gyrth rolled on the ground laughing. “Norman pigs,” he gasped. “Stupid, shit-eating Norman pigs!” He sobered and sat shaking his head. “Why’d you have to take a risk like that, lad?”
“I couldn’t watch a rape.” Aimery bent down and scooped up water to splash over his face and head, then shook the excess off. She was as beautiful as he remembered, as his dreams told him. He should have killed Odo de Pouissey. The mere thought of the man touching her . . .
“A Norman sow being raped by a Norman hog?” said Gyrth. “The only thing wrong with that is the chance of little piglets.”
Aimery fought the urge to bury his knife in Gyrth. “She’s a woman and deserves protection.”
“She’s the little trollop you trysted with down by the stream, you mean.” At the look in Aimery’s eyes, Gyrth backed off. “So you did your noble Norman duty. You nearly got yourself killed.”
“I was in no danger.”
“Say that if de Pouissey catches you. That was his son you knocked out.”
“I know. I know Odo de Pouissey.”
Gyrth raised his brows. “Nice friends you have.”
“He’s no friend of mine,” said Aimery. “He’s a braggart lout and now my enemy.”
“So,” said Gryth. “Who was the pretty maid? No servant, I’ll go odds, dressed so fine and with gold bindings on her braids.”
“No.” Aimery hadn’t really considered her appearance before. He gave a crack of laughter. “She must be the Baddersley heiress, and I almost rolled her by the stream that day. No wonder she screamed no.”
“Well now,” said Gyrth thoughtfully. “You could do a lot worse, lad.”
“A lot worse than what?”
“Roll her by the stream—after you’ve married her. Baddersley would be in good hands then until Hereward claims it back.”
Aimery was surprised by the wanting that pulsed through him. He could have her, and finish what they’d begun. And damned well teach her how to defend herself. Would she really have tried to hold them off with that little knife? He suspected she would. She was brave, if foolish, his dusky maiden . . .
“I don’t see her setting up a squawk,” said Gyrth, “after the way she was looking at you today.”
Then Aimery came to his senses. “You should have had this tempting idea before you embroiled me in Baddersley’s affairs. I’ve been here too often now as Edwald. If I move in as lord, someone will soon recognize me, and there’s a traitor in the village.”
“We’ll soon find him and put an end to that,” said Gyrth flatly. “Most of the people would die before they’d betray you. You’re their hero.”
“It would be madness,” said Aimery, tempted all the same. But then he shook his head. “She’d recognize me. It would hardly be fair to put her in a position where she would have to deceive the king or betray me. Nor to tie her to a man walking the perilous path I have chosen. My fall would ruin her, too.”
And his fall came closer every day.
He had a special fondness for Baddersley, and the people here were suffering. That was why, against his better judgment, he’d returned. Aimery had responded to the pleas of the most desperate and had agreed to help them flee. They were gathered in the woods nearby. Aimery would set them on their way to the north country, which was less firmly under the Norman heel, but he well knew some of the more warlike would head east to the Fens and Hereward. He’d seen Gyrth speaking with some of the young men, recruiting.
And that—providing soldiers for the king’s enemies—was undoubtedly treason. It even went against his own aim of dissuading rebellion. But the alternative was worse: to leave the people under the tyranny of Paul de Pouissey.
Killing Normans. Helping fleeing peasants. Recruiting for Hereward. One day he would have to pay the price, but he had accepted that when he had set his foot on this path in those days after Senlac. His only regret was the pain and disgrace he would bring to his parents. There was no need to add the heiress to those who would suffer.
“I would have thought,” said Gyrth slyly, “that Baddersley held fond memories for you. Aldreda, wasn’t it?”
Aimery couldn’t help a grin. “Yes, Aldreda of the chestnut hair and luscious body.”
Gyrth grinned back. “A man never forgets his first woman.”
And that, thought Aimery, was true.
It had been at Badderseley that he’d become a man. He’d just turned fourteen, and Hereward had decreed he was ready. He’d received his last tattoo—the hart on his right hand, which was supposed to gift him with the powers of that animal. He’d received his ring. He’d chosen his woman and made love to her there in the hall.
It was an honor to be chosen, and neither Aldreda nor her husband, Hengar, had objected. After the celebration a chosen woman spent the night with the lord, and any child born a nine-month later was considered the lord’s child. It would be given favor and raised high. Aldreda had borne such a child, a girl called Frieda, though there was no way to know whether she was his, or Hereward’s, or even Hengar’s.
Aimery realized he should check on Frieda’s welfare in these uncertain times, but he’d have to do it without meeting Aldreda, for if anyone could recognize him, it was she.
He smiled. She’d been only sixteen to his fourteen, but she’d seemed a woman grown to him—shapely, full-hipped, and with long chestnut hair. She’d been kind to a nervous boy and delicious in his arms.
There was a resemblance between Aldreda and the heiress. Perhaps that was why he had been so instantly attracted to her. He pushed the thought away. Madeleine of Baddersley was not for him. Unfortunately.
Gyrth interrupted his thoughts. “So, does that winsome smile mean you’re going to try to win Baddersley for yourself?”
“No,” said Aimery shortly. “It’s safe now. Let’s be on our way.”
They climbed down the far side of the hill, heading for the camp they’d set up for the cottars. People had been quietly slipping into it over the past day. Tonight they would move everyone out.
“Why don’t you want Baddersley?” Gyrth persisted.
“Because I’d like to live to see the year out.”
As they drew close to the camp, Aimery halted. There were no sounds when there should be, for there were c
hildren and even babies among those who sought freedom. There was no smell of wood-smoke when they had agreed a fire was safe this deep in the woods. With a hand signal to Gyrth, Aimery moved forward.
The camp was deserted. The fire was trampled out, though wisps of smoke still rose. Only an overturned pot and a forlorn bundle told of people recently in the area. Aimery and Gyrth walked slowly into the camp, puzzled.
A rustling sounded nearby. Aimery spun around, knife already in hand. A boy crawled fearfully out of the undergrowth.
“What happened?” demanded Aimery, still alert for danger.
“Men came,” said the lad tearfully. “On ’orses. With dogs. They rounded ’em all up. Then ’e came.”
“Who?”
“The Devil.” The boy shuddered. “ ’E as ’ow they’d attacked his son. They’re all to be flogged to death. All of ’em!” He fell to wailing. Aimery gathered him in his arms, knowing the boy’s family had been among the taken.
A few other people shuffled out of the dense undergrowth, gaunt with horror.
“But they were pursuing us,” Aimery said.
A woman came forward, a babe at her scrawny breast. “They were as surprised to find us, Master, as we were to be found. That’s why so many of us had the chance to flee. Curse the Norman bitch!” She spat sharply into the ashes of the fire.
It took Aimery a moment to register it. “A woman was here?”
“She came afterward with the Devil, fairly begging him to torture us all. I can’t understand their heathenish tongue, but anyone at Baddersley has cause to learn the word ‘fouettez’. ‘Whip them, whip them,’ she kept saying.”
“Who was she?” It must have been Dame Celia, he told himself. It must have been.
“It were the Devil’s niece, Master.”
Aimery couldn’t believe it. “Chestnut hair, brown eyes?” he queried, praying the woman would say no.
She nodded.
He was chilled. What kind of woman was she, to do this? She knew these people were innocent.
He began to wonder if there was a different pattern to the attack he’d witnessed. Perhaps she made a practice of teasing men. In Odo de Pouissey had she finally met a man without gallantry and almost paid the price? Aimery felt some sour sympathy for Odo. Not much, but some.
“You’re sure it was Lady Madeleine?” he asked again.
“Clear as day,” the woman said.
“And she was begging for the people to be whipped.”
“Fair desperate about it.”
Hope left him. She was deceitful, lewd, treacherous, cruel. The thought that he’d been drawn to such a creature disgusted him. “She will pay,” he promised the people in front of him.
The woman’s eyes brightened. “Praise to Golden Hart.”
It was like a shower of icy water. “What?”
The woman touched the design on his right hand as if it were a sacred thing. “It’s what we call you, Master.”
Aimery looked down. The male deer which leaped down his right forearm onto his hand was of such an ornate design that many would fail to recognize the animal, but not enough apparently. Done in shades of red, brown, and yellow, it could be called “golden.” But this new name was a disaster. How had anyone ever seen the marks? He’d been careful to hide them with dirt or a bandage, but they were clearly visible now.
He remembered plunging his hands into the cool stream. The dirt must have been washed off. He had obviously been similarly careless before.
Had the design become visible when he’d been slaving for d’Oilly? Or on other occasions? How many people here at Baddersley remembered the mark given to Aimery de Gaillard all those years ago? Very few, but one would be enough if he had a mind to betrayal.
Aldreda would certainly remember. He hoped she was still kind and honest, but his faith in women was at a low ebb.
“You must not call me that,” he said to the cottars. “Otherwise the Normans will soon find me.”
“Yes, Master,” they all said.
His eyes met Gyrth’s, and he saw his own skepticism mirrored there. They would try to keep their word, but they needed a myth these days, and he was apparently it.
It would be worse than that. Any story of English resistance would be attributed to Golden Hart; the murder of the four Norman guards would be just the first. Golden Hart would be eight feet tall and carry a flaming ax. He would rip out trees by the roots and hurl them at his enemies. Soon the country would be rocking with the myth. And it only needed one Norman to study the design on his skin for the connection to be made.
His wyrd was likely to be a brief life and a violent end, but he was English enough to accept that. He turned his mind to practical matters and ordered the few remaining cottars to gather their belongings. They must be out of here before Paul de Pouissey organized a manhunt to round up the stragglers.
But at the last moment he sent them ahead with Gyrth.
“What are you about, lad?” asked Gyrth. “It’s hazardous in these parts just now.”
“I need to find out what’s happening to the ones who were taken.”
Gyrth scowled. “You mean you want to see if the little bitch is as wicked as they say. Have done. She has you spellbound. Cut free while you can!”
“I thought you wanted me to marry her.”
“Not anymore. You get close enough to touch, lad, you slit her throat.”
Madeleine sat in the solar of the old manor house of Baddersley, plying her needle under her aunt’s critical eye and trying to ignore the sounds coming from outside—the crack of the lash, the shrieks, and the constant wailing misery. It had been going on for so long. Her uncle had rounded up nearly twenty runaways and herded them back to the castle. He’d ordered them all flogged.
Madeleine’s convent-trained needlework was better than her aunt’s, which did not prevent Celia from criticizing. Today, however, the woman had grounds for complaint, for Madeleine’s hands were shaking, and her stitches were all over the place.
Celia leaned over and gave her a vicious pinch. “Rip it out!” she snapped. “How useless you are. As useless as these wretched Saxons.”
Aunt Celia was thin and bony, with a mouth that was constantly pursed, as if she had bitten into a green apple. She poked her needle sharply into the cloth before her as if she wished to be poking it into the Saxons, or into Madeleine.
Madeleine moved out of reach of the woman’s hard fingers and began to undo her stitches. She was working on a new cloak for her uncle, and the worse it was done the better as far as she was concerned. She couldn’t believe the depths of his cruelty.
She glanced around the room. One woman, Aldreda was her name, was working at the loom. Another, called Emma, was spinning. Both looked taut with bitterness. Emma and Aldreda’s daughters sat by their mothers doing plain sewing, one dark-haired, one angelically fair. Tears ran down their faces, and their hands were as unsteady as Madeleine’s.
Dame Celia poked in her needle and pulled it out as if the sounds from the bailey were of music, not suffering. Her one Norman attendant, Lise, took her demeanor from her mistress. Madeleine didn’t know how any human could be unmoved by what was taking place.
She was still stunned by it all. Her body was stiff and sore from Odo’s abuse, her mind was still reeling from the aftermath. Why had she said those fateful words? Why not say Odo had hit his head on a branch and fallen from his horse?
Anything.
She had told her uncle these people had nothing to do with the attack, but he hadn’t believed her. He didn’t really care. Someone must suffer for the attack on his son, and these people deserved punishment for fleeing their place.
Madeleine said a prayer of thanks to the Virgin that she had persuaded him to make do with a whipping. She had saved the men from the loss of a foot, the women and children from branding on the face.
At first she had stood and watched the whipping, still racking her brain for some way to stop the punishment, but she had become aware o
f the people watching her; the hate in their eyes had been as cutting as a bitter wind. She’d fled inside. There had been no green eyes among the prisoners, no stalwart build such as that of Edwald. Had these people been found quite by chance? Had they no connection to him at all? If so, their punishment was even more unjust.
Her aunt had soon spotted her—idling, as she put it—and set her to work. Madeleine wouldn’t mind the work if it would blot out the floggings, but on such a fine day the shutters stood open and there was nothing to block the sounds. At a dreadful shriek her hands clenched on the cloth in her lap. It was as well she wasn’t working on fine linen or silk; it would be a mangled rag by now.
A servant crept in fearfully with a pile of clothes to be placed in a chest, eyeing the Normans as if they were the Devil. The whip-cracks and moans continued, and Madeleine pressed her fingers to her aching head. “Will it soon be over?” she asked the girl in her careful English.
Aunt Celia gave a snort of disgust.
The maid looked up and nodded, then lowered her eyes, but not before Madeleine had seen a flash of hate there, too. Why? Just because she was Norman? Reason enough, she admitted.
She started as a new wailing built. “What’s happening?” she asked the maid.
“Just the children, lady,” the girl muttered.
Madeleine stood in shock. Her work fell to the floor. “He’s going to whip the children?”
The girl cowered away.
Aunt Celia said, “What are you about, you silly girl? Pick up your work. It will be soiled.”
Madeleine ignored her and ran into the hall, where her uncle sat drinking, staring at smoke marks on the wall. His two vicious hounds lay by his feet.
Aunt Celia was hard at her heels. She grabbed Madeleine’s arm. “What are you doing?” she shrieked. Then in a whisper, “Don’t bother him, you foolish nodkin.”
Madeleine tore herself out of her aunt’s hold but took the caution to heart. Hating the need, she swallowed her anger and sought diplomacy. “Surely the floggings should be over by now, Uncle.”
“Pretty near, I’d think,” he said without interest. “What’s the matter? Bothered by their caterwauling? You wanted it this way. A few lopped feet would be a better lesson, and quicker. Branding would make sure they couldn’t sneak off again.”