Sourness bit at her stomach and she found herself thinking of the smithy. Why? Because he’d told Taurin? Nay, he didn’t have the time to go to the bog, and he certainly wouldn’t have reported to Taurin that the person there could be the woman for whom Taurin searched. The smithy didn’t care for Normans. Unless he said something to Taurin or his men by accident?
She and Adrien galloped along, and oddly, it felt good to be in the saddle again. The wind rushed past her face, freeing her hair, giving her a purposeful sense she was doing something, a sense she was getting closer to Kenneth.
In the distance, Broad Oak Forest loomed, swallowing the road. Yet, no sooner did they race into it, but Lord Adrien lifted his hand and pulled his horse to a stop. Clara did the same.
She walked her mount closer to Adrien. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“I don’t care to race through unknown woods. Broad Oak may belong to the king, but it’s full of thieves and other dangers.”
“Your horse is trained to fight back. I heard you did that on the new road when you were attacked.”
“True, but your mount is untrained and she’s been bred. I want a good foal from her next year.”
“Riding fast is safer than walking slowly, Lord Adrien.”
“Aye, but I don’t want any sur—”
A whinny! Clara snapped up her head and listened intently. A horse was coming their way. A moment later, a horse with white feet trotted into view. Clara reached across the saddle and grabbed the dancing reins as the animal slowed past them. A switch with crushed leaves was caught in the knot at the end of the leather, and Clara untangled them. “’Tis Kenneth’s mount. And look. Ivy and oak. This horse has been tied to one of the bigger oaks. Ivy takes many years to cover an oak, and ’tis deep into the forest where you find the bigger and older trees.”
“Aye,” Adrien added as he dismounted to take the reins and lead it behind his courser. Kenneth’s horse was edgy, not wanting to be behind the bigger stallion. It took some turning for Adrien to quiet him and set him in line. Clara watched as he tied the pair in tandem.
Then, abruptly, she smacked the courser’s hind end with the switch she’d untangled from Kenneth’s mount, just enough to annoy it. Immediately, it broke into a gallop, forcing the other horse to follow.
“Clara!” Adrien shouted. But before he could add another word, she spurred her mare into action. She put Adrien out of sight, easily passing the startled horses as they bolted deeper along the forested road. Kenneth’s mount broke free of its leather tie and turned immediately, while both the mare and Adrien’s courser kept the same pace for a long stretch.
Only when Clara had ridden around several bends did she stop the mare. She gasped. A babe’s screaming rent the air over the sounds of fighting, and Clara raced around yet another bend to find Kenneth pinned by two soldiers. To her right, Taurin gripped Rowena, his arm tight around her frame and his sword pressed against her neck. The babe wailed in Rowena’s weakening embrace.
The remaining soldiers, those recovering from Kenneth’s attack, whirled toward her with swords at the ready. Clara hesitated. Though mounted, she wasn’t sure what she should do next.
Adrien’s courser had followed her, and it had not survived the Battle of Hastings by being a foolish old cob. Immediately, agitated and sensing a good fight, it turned, driving both hind legs out behind it and drilling its powerful hooves into two of the soldiers. The men immediately fell.
In the next breath, the well-trained courser, used to fighting with little rein control, shoved hard sideways, then swung its strong hindquarters to knock down another man. The man in front of it received a powerful bite to the face, made worse because the soldier no longer wore his helmet. He also fell, screaming.
Caught up in the excitement, Clara’s mare reared up. Clara slipped from the saddle and fell to the ground. The other horses bolted away.
Taurin spotted her, recognizing her by her hair. “You! Grab my son and set him aside! Now! I won’t have his mother’s blood spilled on him.”
Horrified, and still slightly stunned by her fall, Clara scrambled to obey immediately, for Rowena looked as if she would surely faint, causing her son to drop. Quickly catching the babe, she stepped back, tripping on a large stone.
She stumbled backward into the trees but regained her balance quickly. Then she gasped. Beside her feet, one of the soldiers lay facedown, his head covered in blood. Had Kenneth ambushed him?
As she turned again, she peered back down at the rock she’d tripped over, wanting to move it. But with the babe in her arms, she could do nothing.
* * *
Kenneth spied Taurin wrenching sideways to control Rowena more fully, but the girl was barely conscious. He pressed his sword tighter against her throat. “Stand up straight, woman, or I’ll slice open your throat!”
Immediately, Rowena stilled, though ’twas obvious she could hardly keep herself upright. Kenneth looked to his right and saw that Clara still held the child.
“And you, Sergeant?” Taurin growled out. “Did Lord Adrien send you in his stead? Is he now some fool fawning over his wife, under her thumb and unable to get away?”
Kenneth struggled against the men holding him. Adrien’s angry courser had knocked out four soldiers, but two held him firmly. Two were out chasing Taurin’s mount and one was half-dead in the woods. One more soldier stood near Taurin, who shifted sideways, closer to Adrien’s still-agitated horse. Kenneth held his breath. He was one man against Taurin and three of his men.
“Release him.” Taurin then shoved Rowena toward the remaining soldier. “And kill them all.” In the next moment, he grabbed the babe from Clara’s arms and swung up into the saddle of Adrien’s courser.
Then he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Immediately, Kenneth swung his booted right foot hard to the left, connecting it with the soft inner thigh of the man beside him. Clara cringed. At the same time, he wrenched free of the other man and dived away from both. On the roll across the road, he caught Rowena’s legs and pulled her free from the soldier who held her upright. She dropped like a rock.
Standing, he glanced at both his hands. Clara knew his thoughts. Where was his sword? Snatched from his hand when he was caught, no doubt. He jumped and kicked sideways at the man coming at him, but then, too late, found himself facing the last unharmed soldier. The man’s sword lifted, readying to end Kenneth’s life.
The man suddenly slumped and fell hard.
Clara gasped at what she’d done. She had used the rock she’d tripped over to hit the soldier’s head on an angle that, she hoped and prayed, would only knock him out and cause him to drop the sword.
Horrified, Clara dropped the rock. Then, in that moment of revulsion, she scooped it up and flung it into the forest.
When she spied yet another sword, perhaps belonging to the unconscious man by the tree, she retrieved it and quickly hurled it into the trees, also. Then she looked up to find Adrien standing near Kenneth.
“I see I’m not as needed as I first thought.”
“Nay, milord,” Kenneth heaved out. “You’re needed here.” With that, he hefted up the sword nearest him and quickly mounted the mare that stood edgily nearby. He galloped off after Taurin.
Adrien threw a black glare at Clara. “Where’s my courser?”
Ignoring him and suddenly shaking, she fell to her knees, fighting nausea. In front of her lay a man with his skull opened, an injury that could prove fatal. And, she noticed as she twisted about, others lay about with dangerous injuries from Adrien’s horse, the one she’d driven here, while Rowena slumped nearby, half-unconscious.
“Rowena!” She struggled to her feet and staggered toward her friend. Pulling back the tangled mess of the younger woman’s pale hair, Clara leaned forward. Rowena was still alive. Her lids fluttered, and her small, chapped lips formed a pair of soft words.
“My babe?”
Tears burst into her eyes, and she pulled her frie
nd closer. “I’m so sorry! Taurin has taken him!”
The grunt of a man pulled Clara from her grief. She looked up just in time to see Lord Adrien mount one of the remaining horses and gallop away. Her heart squeezed. ’Tis too late, Lord Adrien. The babe is gone.
“Dear God, are You there? I’m not in a church. Give me back my babe. Clara says You can do everything. Please?”
Clara gaped at Rowena. The woman was praying?
“Rowena? Are you a Christian?”
The woman’s eyes fluttered open and she shrugged. “I don’t know. I just want my babe back, and you told me once that God can do everything. I want Him to give me back my son. And make me more like you.”
Shaking her head, Clara looked around at the carnage. “Nay, Rowena. You don’t want to be more like me. For my pride was so great, I didn’t even ask God for help.”
She shuffled over to the nearest soldier. The crack on the back of the head she’d given him would ache, but the lump was not as bad as she’d first thought. Already he was rousing. She quickly spied the leather strips used to tie Rowena. They still dangled from her wrists and feet.
Clara hastily tied the rousing soldier’s wrists at the back and did the same to the one she expected to awaken next. Her gaze returned to the first soldier, knowing that she’d seen him before, but unable to place him. She looked back at all the others.
She had pledged never to hurt anyone, and look what she’d been a party to! The least she could do was minister to them now and try to save their lives.
All the while asking God to forgive her prideful and stubborn ways.
When she was done, she returned to Rowena and lifted her up. “Come, we must leave. The men are all tied up, but Taurin may return at any moment.”
“But my son?”
“We can’t help him here, Rowena. All that I can say is that it’s in God’s hands now.”
Rowena nodded. “Taurin won’t hurt him. Not like he beat me. He has plans for my son, he said.”
They wrapped themselves in Clara’s cloak, and supporting each other, they began their journey home. Just as they were about to turn the bend and disappear from the soldiers, Clara glanced over her shoulder.
The first soldier was sitting up, tugging on the leather she’d used to bind him. His frowning profile edged clearly against the dark oak forest. Something about him, she thought. I’m certain I’ve seen him before. But she would not return to question him.
* * *
On Lady Ediva’s gift mare, the one Clara had ridden, Kenneth easily caught up with Taurin. The evil man had been kicked twice by Adrien’s courser and surely must find it hard to ride, and Lord Adrien’s courser—accustomed only to his master—would not make it any easier for him.
Racing up beside Taurin, Kenneth reached out and grabbed the courser’s reins, yanking them from Taurin’s grip. Taurin struggled to stay seated until, when the courser stopped, he slid, babe held tight, to sit on the ground.
Taurin slipped down between the horses, and Kenneth was sure he was kicked anew for it.
Kenneth leaped off his mount and, with one hard jab, drove the blade of the weapon he’d found deep through the chain-mail hood, piercing the opposite side of where the babe was cradled. With a shove, Kenneth pushed Taurin back and impaled his blade fiercely into a felled log behind him.
Taurin struggled to yank the sword out, but his arms weren’t long enough to get a good grip on it. He stopped after a few moments, chest heaving wildly and eyes glazed with pain.
“You deserve far more than being pinned like this, Taurin.” Then, horror sweeping over him, he yanked at the scrap of cloth Taurin was holding. “Where is the babe? What have you done with him?”
Taurin laughed, then coughed before sinking back against the ground. “He’s on his way to Normandy, where he belongs. You’ll never catch my men.”
“Normandy? Not your estate here? Why?”
“Here the brat will impress no one. But to my wife’s family, he will be like the finest gold. Their only child, my wife, God rest her soul, has given them a son. And I will be given lands that will rival even those of the king himself.”
Kenneth grabbed the slick and cold metal rings that made up the front of Taurin’s chain mail. He pulled Taurin up as far as the embedded sword would allow. “That child is not your wife’s!”
“He looks more like me than his mother.” Taurin tried to laugh, but coughed weakly.
Cold washed through Kenneth. Then fury. Relenting to the rage surging within him, he pulled back his arm, preparing to punch the man. Taurin shut his eyes.
Kenneth staggered backward, horror rolling through him. He was about to do something Clara would despise. He was a violent man, designed to fight, to hurt and to do everything Clara had vowed not to do.
And the child was gone. Ripped from his mother, being taken across the channel for the gain of land and power.
Kenneth had failed in his mission and promise. He hadn’t been able to save the little boy.
He looked around. Taurin must have caught up with the two men who bolted after his courser and handed over the babe to them. Where would they go first?
To collect a nurse needed for the journey, now that Rowena had been left behind. Taurin’s land lay to the south of here. Along the road that twisted like the letter S.
A thought, born of many hours spent updating Lord Adrien’s maps, came to him. He yanked out his sword and mounted Adrien’s courser just as the sound of thundering of hooves hit him.
Lord Adrien pulled his horse to a halt and looked down at Taurin, who still lay in a stupor. “Is he dead?”
“Nay. But part of me wishes so. He has handed over the babe to his men, to be sent to Normandy. His wife’s family has promised him tracts of land to rival the king’s in return for a babe from their beloved only child. But I suspect Taurin has murdered his wife and is passing Rowena’s babe off as hers.”
“We’ll tie him up and I will send my men for him. King William can deal with this deceit.”
The task done in short order, Kenneth looked out through the break in the trees, to see the land dip into a natural field.
“The men cannot travel fast with a small babe, especially a sickly one they want to survive until Normandy,” Adrien commented.
Kenneth lit up. “Aye, and having updated your maps a hundredfold, I know a way to intercept them.” With that, he remounted the stallion and galloped off. Not alone, he knew, for Adrien was close on his heels. He only hoped that they could intercept the men before it was too late.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The soldier was pacing his mount well, Kenneth noted immediately as he spied him approaching the edge of the forest in which Kenneth hid. The man knew the easy but unusual gait with less bounce would lull the babe in his arms. The Norman had swapped his mount wisely. This beast could pace for hours and not tire its rider.
Kenneth eased Lord Adrien’s mount back and tensed his legs. When he drew out his sword, he tightened the reins, not wanting the courser to react too sharply.
The beast stilled, its whole body taut and ready to fight.
“Nay,” he whispered to it softly. “I will decide when to go, not you.”
Thanks to memorizing the maps, he knew this edge of the forest finished in a series of serpentine turns. Kenneth had cut across the field to bypass half the road.
The soldier’s horse paced closer, its smooth, rolling gait slicing through a summer’s growth of shrubbery along the roadside.
Ever closer.
Now! The soldier was nearly dead ahead and Kenneth pushed the courser forward to cut off the smaller animal.
It startled, skidded to a stop and turned away. But Lord Adrien’s courser steered itself in front and around, blocking the horse further. Kenneth lunged and deftly caught the soldier’s mail hood, keeping his sword high. Much higher than the babe’s head. The man had neither time nor a free arm to draw his weapon.
“’Tis a bit foolish to travel alone,” Ken
neth growled. “And with a babe in your arm.”
The soldier stilled, knowing any sudden movement might slice open his throat. He said nothing.
“Climb down.”
Awkwardly, the soldier dismounted at the same time Kenneth did. Kenneth managed to keep the tip of his sword directly at the man’s throat. “Now, soldier, put the babe behind the nearest tree.”
Following the man, his sword still perilously close to the man’s throat, Kenneth kept control as the man eased the babe down. As they both bent forward, Kenneth relieved him of his sword.
“Untie your thongs,” he told him, indicating the strips of leather that held his leggings in place.
The soldier obeyed. Kenneth grabbed them and, in the same fluid motion, shoved the man to the ground and rammed the tip of his sword into the mail collar and then into the ground, similar to what he’d done to Taurin. Kneeing him in the back, he snatched the soldier’s hands and swiftly tied them behind him.
Still, defeated and acquiescing, the man remained subservient, lying in the dirt of the road. Kenneth straightened, his mouth turning grim and yet satisfied. Aye, ’tis finally over.
A squall of protest rent the air and, his expression growing grimmer, Kenneth sighed and rose.
He walked over to the babe and scooped it up. Swaddled well, but as light a kitten and with face scrunched up, the babe fought and yelled for all he was worth.
Kenneth moved the outer cloth and freed the babe’s arms. Then he opened his eyes. Blinking away his tears, the child stared up at Kenneth.
His lip quivered. His mouth opened. His eyes turned slightly cross-eyed as he tried to focus on Kenneth.
Kenneth had never before seen such a look of wonder and trust as he saw in this boy’s dark eyes. And all the turmoil, the anger, the determination to treat this child as a thing to be dealt with according to law and justice and common sense, all fell from him.
’Twas no purse of coins to fight over, no parcel of land to barter. Not a cloth nor a cloak or even a fine piece of horseflesh.
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