by Tamara Leigh
He stared at one who could be no more than ten and two, then looked to the others he had tossed aside. Boys. All of them. Boys who had given their lives to bring down the mighty Norman. Boys intent on defending what was now no longer theirs to defend. Boys who would never grow to men. Boys soon to return to dust.
Another lay farther out. Smaller than the ones who had toppled Hugh, he sprawled on his belly, arms outstretched as if to crawl home and into his mother’s arms. And the fifth boy was the one over whom the Saxon woman bent.
Her brother? Likely, for she appeared too young to have given life to one of that age.
Guilt gaining a foothold, he reminded himself of the papal blessing bestowed on Duke William for the invasion of England, as evidenced by the banner carried into battle. More than for the crown promised and denied William, more than for the land and riches to be awarded to his followers, the Normans had taken up arms against the heathen Saxons for the reformation of England’s Church. Regardless of who had died on the day past, first and foremost they had done it for the greater good. Had they not?
Trying to calm the roiling that was no fit for a warrior, he breathed deep, filling mouth, nose, and throat with the scent and taste of death never before so potent. He expelled the loathsome air, but it was all there was to be had. Breath moving through him like a wind, chest rising and falling like a storm-beset ocean, he sent his gaze up his blade to its point.
Were we not justified? he silently questioned. Was I not?
Images of the day past rushed at him—the flight of arrows, slash and thrust of blades, shouts and cries from savagely contorted mouths, blood and more blood. And laid over it all, the faces of ones who could barely be named young men.
Distantly separated from his uncle and eldest brother, Cyr’s sword arm could not have taken any of the boys’ lives, but considering how thoughtlessly he slew the enemy, ensuring those come against him did not rise again, it was very possible had he been alongside his uncle, he would not have noticed their attackers were children. Like Hugh, he would have put them through.
“Boys,” he rasped and dropped his head back. The bones of his neck popping and crackling, ache coursing shoulders and spine all the way down to his heels, he slammed his eyes closed. But more vividly memories played against the backs of his lids, and with ground teeth he gave over to them.
CHAPTER TWO
Aelfled of the Saxons stared at the warrior in horrified anticipation of his desecration of the dead, and when it did not come wondered if here was God’s answer to the prayer flung heavenward when the Norman pig drew his sword. Whatever stayed his hand, his survey of the savagery had landed on her and the boy before moving to the blade that had surely let much blood. The blood of her people…
Were she not pulled taut between the Lord whose comfort she sought and hatred over what had been done the Saxons, the barbarian might have made her tremble with fear. Instead, what spasmed through her was anger so reckless and unholy she dare not look longer upon the warrior—just as she dare not allow him to see that from which she had turned back quaking fingers.
She tugged up her skirt’s hem. Hoping she would not cut herself, she slid the beautiful instrument of death into the top of her hose, glanced at the warrior to ensure he had not seen, and returned her attention to the boy dragged from beneath the blue-clad Norman.
Lids flickering, chest rattling, he would not reach his eleventh winter. In her arms he would die rather than the arms of his mother who had lost her husband a fortnight past when he joined King Harold in defeating the Norwegian invaders at Stamford Bridge. Thus, it was for Aelfled to carry tidings to Lady Hawisa that another was stolen from her, this time by the Norman invaders.
She looked around, wondered if any of those moving among the dead carpeting this portion of the battlefield was her lady. During the ride to Senlac on a horse shared by both women, time and again Hawisa had risen above weeping and cursing to cry out to the Lord to keep her son safe. Were she not near, it was because she had moved her search farther out. Never would she depart until given proof of her son’s presence or absence, be he alive or dead.
Soon dead, Aelfled once more pushed acceptance down her tight throat to her aching heart. Loathing herself for believing the word of one who, struggling to suppress tears over his sire’s death, had spouted vengeance against any who sought to conquer England, she reeled in her searching gaze and paused on the boy’s companions where they had landed when the Norman tossed them off. Village boys, all of an age similar to the one she held, all christening themselves men by taking up arms against the invaders. To their mothers, Aelfled must also carry news of loss beyond husbands, fathers, and brothers.
“Merciful Lord,” Aelfled whispered, then caught back a sob as anger once more moved her head to toe. Merciful? Where was His mercy when Saxons sought to defend their homeland? Where was His mercy when boys abandoned childhood to wield arms? Where was His mercy in allowing Normans to cut down Saxons like wheat to be harvested? Where was His mercy—?
Appalled at the realization her faith was bending so far it might break its backbone, she gasped, “Pray, forgive me, Lord. ’Tis not for me to question You. But I do not understand.”
“Aelf,” breathed the one whose head her hand rested upon.
Blinking away tears, she bent closer, causing her throat to spasm over the odor of spilled blood. During her search for her lady’s son, the sight and scent of death had twice caused her to wretch, but though her belly had been emptied of foodstuffs, there was bile aplenty eager to make the climb.
“I was trying…to be a man, Aelf.”
For that he brought sword and dagger to the battlefield, while the village boys carried any implement they could bring to hand. The sword and dagger of her lady’s son were gone, but that had not stopped him. Though she could not be certain the weapon beneath her skirts belonged to the fallen Norman, it seemed likely, and as evidenced by its bloodied blade, it could have dealt the killing blow.
The boy whimpered. “Aelf?”
“Wulf?”
“I tried.”
She attempted to smile encouragingly, but it was as if something learned was forgotten. “You more than tried,” she choked. “You succeeded, and I am proud of your defense of England as I know your father would be and your mother shall be.” Such lies, but perhaps they would ease the pain of his passing.
“Then you forgive me for…not keeping my word?”
They were both liars, but the damage done could not be undone. “Naught to forgive, Love.”
His eyes widened, and the corners of his dry, cracked lips barely creased as if neither could he remember how to smile. “Love. Truly, Aelf?”
That she did not mean in the way he meant it, but what was one more lie? “Ever and ever, here on earth and in heaven, dearest.”
“Love,” he breathed, then passed from this world comforted by the belief the one he had vowed to wed when Aelfled entered his mother’s service years past—she who was now ten and eight to his nearly eleven—loved him as a woman loved a man to whom she wished to be bound.
She touched her lips to his forehead, and as her tears fell on his slackening face, prayed, “Lord, receive this boy. Hold him close. Let him know Your peace and beauty. Give his mother—”
“Mon Dieu!”
She snapped up her chin, swept her gaze to the warrior who interrupted her audience with God as if he, arrayed in Saxon blood, were more entitled to call upon the Almighty.
Where he had dropped to a knee alongside his fellow Norman, he beseeched in a voice so accented it took longer than usual for her to render Norman French into English, “Forgive me my sins.”
Her breath caught. Never in her hearing had such humble words sounded so sacrilegious. Without considering what she did, she eased Wulf to the ground, staggered upright on cramped legs, and drew her meat dagger from its sheath on her girdle.
The warrior gave no indication he heard her advance, and soon she was at a back made more vulnerabl
e for being divested of chain mail. As she raised her dagger high, she looked upon hair cropped short the same as most Normans. And stilled at the sight of so much silver amid dark. She had thought her enemy no more than twenty and five, yet he was silvered like men twice his age—though not as much as the one before whom he knelt.
She gave her head a shake, determinedly lowered her gaze to his back. But no nearer did she come to committing that most heinous sin, her conscience forcing her to retreat a step and lower the blade.
“Pray, Lord,” the Norman spoke again, “forgive me.”
Dark emotions tempered by horror over what she had been moved to do, Aelfled said in his language, “Do you truly believe He gives ear to a savage, a murderer, a slayer of children?”
When he neither startled nor looked around, his still and silence made her question if this were real, but such sights and scents were not to be imagined. She was here. He was here. And her lady’s son and thousands of others were dead.
He continued to ignore her as if confident she could not—or would not—harm him. And so she waited, for what she did not know, and it was she who startled when he straightened. As he came around, revealing a face that confirmed he was below thirty years of age, she raised the dagger to the level of her chest.
Though she had seen he was marked by her slain people from brow to toe, she was unprepared to be so near evidence of his bloodlust and had to swallow to keep bile from her mouth—and breathe deep to match her gaze to his, the color of which could not be known absent the spill of light across the battlefield. Not that it mattered. To her, ever his eyes would be black.
They slid to her dagger, the tip of which was a stride and thrust from his abdomen—were he of a mind to remain unmoving while she did to him what he had done to her people.
Returning his gaze to hers, he said with little emotion, “Offensive or defensive?”
Ashamed his words caused her lids to flutter, she bit, “Were I a man, offensive.”
He inclined his head. “Were you, you would not have been allowed near my back—would be gasping your last.”
That she could dispute only were her size and physique equal to his. Standing nearly a foot taller, shoulders as vast as any warrior, he had to be twice her weight.
“How do you know my language?” he asked.
The question surprised, though it should not. Few Saxons spoke Norman French, and even fewer among the lower class of freemen to which she belonged. But there was no cause to reveal she served in the household of one whose Norman husband’s family had dwelt in England since the reign of Edward, the recently departed king who was fond of Normans owing to his exile amongst them previous to being seated upon the English throne—the same throne Harold had next ascended and from which Duke William had toppled him on the day past.
As Cyr waited on an answer not likely to be given, once more he considered the dagger whose sole purpose the Saxon would have him believe was defense. Even if only for a moment, it had come close to being used offensively against one who shed his hauberk on the night past to more quickly search among the dead.
He had sensed she came to him to put the blade between his ribs, but in the grip of prayer—more, something so foreign he could only guess it was that great slayer of souls known as apathy—he had done naught to prevent her from adding his death to his uncle’s.
Returning his regard to her face, he realized he had fallen far short of one of the most important skills possessed by a man of the sword, that of being observant. Until that moment, he could not have well enough recalled her features to describe one whose pooled dark eyes, delicate nose, and full mouth were framed by blond tresses whose soft undulations evidenced they had recently lost their braids.
She might not be called beautiful, but she was comely enough to become the pick of the plunder once the less honorable Normans came looking for sport. Though her French might be nearly without fault, it would be of little use to one who numbered among the conquered, especially were she of the lower ranks as her simple gown suggested.
He started to warn her away, but in a husky voice almost sensual in its strains, though the rough of it was likely beget of tears, she said, “You have not answered me.”
Casting backward for what she had asked, he recalled words spoken while he beseeched the Lord’s forgiveness. Did he truly believe the prayers of a savage, a murderer, a slayer of children would be heeded?
Offended as he had not been earlier, he fought down ire. There was much for which he required forgiveness, but he was none of what she named him. He was a soldier the same as her men with whom he had clashed. And she who had witnessed a humbling to which he had only subjected himself in his youth mocked him for it.
“My prayers are between God and me,” he growled. “His forgiveness I seek, not yours, Saxon.”
She set a hand on a thin psalter suspended from her girdle, its leather cover stained at its upper edge. “What of the forgiveness of a mother soon to learn one most precious to her is lost? What of she who shall mourn her slaughtered child unto death?” The woman jerked her chin at the boy whose blood had likely stained the psalter, then with more contempt than he had managed, added, “Norman.”
Cyr was not steel against imaginings of such loss he knew must be greater than that felt for a brother gone too soon. Had the eldest D’Argent son not survived the battle, never would their mother recover.
The Saxon lowered her chin, slid the dagger in its sheath, and stilled. It was the psalter that gave her pause, and as he watched her slowly draw her hand away, he knew she had been unaware of the blood upon it.
A sound of distress escaping her, she pivoted and started back toward the boy.
It was then Cyr became aware of gathering voices and looked down the hill across the meadow. The Normans who had slept off the day’s battle were rousing.
“You should leave!” he called.
She halted alongside the boy, peered over her shoulder. “I am not the one who trespasses.”
He shifted his jaw, allowed, “You are not, but those who have little care for who has the greater right to be here will care even less when the unfolding day allows them to look near upon their dead.”
Her brow furrowed, and he knew she questioned his concern. Then she laughed, a sound that might have soothed a beast were it not so barbed.
“You are not safe here,” he snapped.
She narrowed her eyes at him, swept them over the body-heaped meadow. “This I know, just as I know none of England is safe whilst beasts like you trample it.”
“You are a woman alone.”
Her hands curled into fists. “What care you?”
What did he care? She was no concern of his—unlike Hugh whom he ought to be delivering to his son. Still, he said, “Leave!”
“When I am done.” She lowered, whispered something to the boy who had surely heard his last, then slid her arms beneath him and drew him against her chest. What followed was so great a struggle she would not get far even if she managed to regain her feet. The boy was young but of a build befitting one destined to defend his people.
Cursing himself, Cyr strode forward and caught her around the waist. As he pulled her upright, the boy rolled out of her arms onto his side.
She swung around. “Loose me, nithing!”
He did not know the meaning of the word, but having heard it shouted by her people during battle, it was something to which one did not aspire. Staring into eyes the rose of dawn confirmed were so dark as to be nearly black, he demanded, “What do you?”
She strained to free herself, but she would go nowhere without his leave. Chest rising and falling against his, she said, “I would take him to the wood that he be returned to his mother as whole as he remains—that his body not suffer desecration.”
That to which grief over Hugh had nearly moved Cyr. As if he had committed the ungodly act, the weight of guilt grew heavier. And urged him to atone. Though he longed to leave the woman to her fate, he set her back and
scooped up the boy.
“Non!” She snatched the child’s arm.
“I mean you no ill, Woman. I would but see you sooner gone that I may deliver my uncle from this carnage and resume the search for my brother. Now loose the boy and lead the way.”
Lips parted as if to protest further, she searched his face for a lie she would find only were it imagined. Then her shoulders lowered. “I thank…” As though rejecting the expression of gratitude, she gave her head a shake and turned.
The wood was near, and though she did not venture far into the deeply-shadowed place where what remained of the Saxon army had fled and some might yet lurk, he engaged all of his senses lest he find himself set upon.
At an oak so ancient a dozen men could conceal themselves behind it, the young woman halted and turned her head in every direction.
“What is it?” he asked as he came alongside.
“Our horse. It is gone.”
Cyr tensed further. “Our horse? You did not come alone?”
He more felt than saw the gaze she settled on him and the wariness there. “Non, the boy’s mother and I rode together.”
“Then she has taken your mount and departed.”
She shook her head. “She would not leave without her son. Another took it.” She looked past him toward the battlefield, and he guessed she intended to return there to search for one soon to grieve the death of a child.
Though Cyr wanted to command this Saxon to make haste to those of her own who would aid in delivering the boy home, it would be futile. If she heeded him at all, the moment he resumed his own search she would do as she wished.
So be it, little fool, he silently conceded, it is not on me but you. He would complete this act of atonement, give one further warning, then attend to his own kin.
“This seems a good place,” he said.
She stepped around the backside of the tree, and he followed her several strides distant from the roots. As he settled the boy on the ground, she unfastened the girdle hung with psalter and dagger and unsheathed the latter.