Alric turned at her oath to see the nature of her distress. Discerning no real threat, he broke into a grin. “Is there something I might do to make milady more comfortable?”
“Aye, you can give me the luxury of your horse.”
“He’s mighty spirited.”
“So am I.”
“Fortunately the journey is not a long one,” Alric observed with seeming indifference.
Deirdre bit her tongue to keep from giving him a piece of her mind. But his time would come, she resolved, brandishing a honey-sweet smile in return. Not even Scanlan’s low “tut-tut” could dampen the pleasure she found at the prospect.
The noonday meal was taken in the shade of the green wood, beneath the spreading branches of majestic oak and yew, with a spotting here and there of evergreen conifers. Glad to be done with her fast, Deirdre ate with relish, ignoring echoes of her mother’s cautions against having an unladylike appetite.
Scanlan had been her earthly mainstay during the last three days without food while God managed her spiritual support. A fast did bring one spiritually closer to God, if for no other reason than praying that He keep the hounds of hunger at bay—and prevent her from choking Alric as he helped himself to all manner of tasties in front of her. The scoundrel had even fed the treats to Tor!
“Are you ready to make way milady?” Alric asked, approaching from a short distance away where his men had eaten.
Deirdre made a face but nodded. Her backside felt as if it had been flayed with the oak bench instead of sitting on it. Tor nuzzled her hand as she approached the cart, no doubt in hopes she had more tasty morsels. To think this overgrown pup had frightened her so that first night was almost laughable.
Deirdre lifted her russet skirts, resigned to climbing into the back of the vehicle, when Alric stopped her. “Sir Dustan awaits.” He pointed to where the stallion pawed impatiently An extra blanket had been added for her comfort. “You wished to ride my horse.”
She struggled to unknot her tongue. There was surely something amiss, given that treacherous Saxon smile of his. It infected his men as well, but not until he’d lifted her onto Dustan’s back was its nature clear. With a single bound, he leaped up behind her and, circling her waist with his arms, gathered the reins.
“This is not what I meant, and well you know it. Would that your bottom be flattened by a bouncing oak plank.”
Alric laughed, and the vibration of it against her back was far more distracting than a lifeless board. “Milady I speak with the authority of a scholar, having studied the very matter whilst you wandered to and fro along yon stream. You have my word that such sore fate has not fallen upon your person.”
“But sore, nonetheless, milord, for I speak on the authority of experience,” she averred quickly Too quickly, for the sniggers Alric’s remark evoked gave way to raucous huzzahs, all at her expense.
Brigid’s fire! Her thought kindled instantly spreading like the real thing upon her face and neck. Hot and fueled as she was by her humiliation—and by the distracting presence of Alric’s body against and around her—there should at least have been smoke.
“I must say, you make a striking couple.” Gunnar’s brown eyes danced with ill-suppressed delight. “Such fire you kindle between you.”
Deirdre looked at him, aghast that her thoughts were so transparent.
“Careful, lest you feel the scorch, friend,” Alric warned. Whether he bantered in good humor or nay, the threat glanced off Gunnar’s wide shoulders without effect.
As the cart squeaked into action behind them, Scanlan broke from the traditional hymns in favor of an old bardic tune expounding on the omnipotent power of love.
“Frig save us from a priest playing the romantic buffoon,” Alric muttered. Were it not a sacrilege, Deirdre would have chimed in with a hearty amen.
Oh, heavenly Father, help! I cannot feel the least bit holy with Alric so close. Indeed, she wasn’t the least bit sure this man and the word holy should even be in the same prayer.
By late afternoon, the enveloping shade of the forest gave way to the gentle rise of sun-blanched fields and heathered meadows laid off in long rectangles divided by low stone walls or hedges. Beyond lay a yellow and stone backdrop of gorse-splashed hills rising toward the skyline. The farmsteads boasted humble A-framed dwellings and, occasionally, separate structures to shelter the livestock. Now and then the ruins of a villa or the more familiar corbeled stone huts, left behind by the displaced Britons and now taken over by their Saxon conquerors, appeared.
Unfamiliar to Deirdre was the parched look of the land. What wasn’t yellowed was a sickly green bled by the sun. She had heard of the drought during her pilgrimages to the Water Gate Church during her prayer fast and now understood why the people in Chesreton spoke of nothing else.
The field workers lacked the friendly zeal of Gleannmara’s people, as though the sun had bled them, too, of life. Either that, or they were an unfriendly lot … or perhaps they simply had nothing to offer in hospitality The idea would have been unthinkable at Gleannmara.
These men and women toiled with lackluster indifference to the travelers until Alric was recognized. Only then did they stop what they were doing and wave, inviting him to join them for refreshment. In a hurry to reach Galstead by nightfall, the prince graciously declined, but the story the people approached to share with him during his polite stop was always the same. If their gardens and com crop did not survive, they and their livestock would starve come winter. Only those whose hides of land lay along the riverbank expressed any hope.
“My wife lost the child she was carryin’ tryin’ to tote water to her garden, so that we could feed the rest of the babes. I’m thinkin’ the old gods were kinder to us,” one farmer complained. Dressed in rags and covered with the dirt and sweat from his labor behind the ox-pulled plow, he was a study of hopelessness and anger. He cast an accusing look at Scanlan and repeated his sentiment in tattered Latin for the priest’s benefit. “We could protect ourselves from invadin’ enemy, but not this. Never were our fields suffering for lack of water.”
“It is when we are weakest that God Almighty is strongest,” Scanlan replied. “But I shall pray on your behalf and suggest that you do so as well.”
“I’m not much at this prayin’. That’s best left to you priests. You speak your God’s language better.”
“God created the languages as well as the men who speak them, sir.” Scanlan turned to Alric. “Milord, would you allow me some time to—”
“If this man has a mind to pray I welcome him come to Galstead to learn how. You can teach him there.” With that, Alric gave Dustan a nudge, starting the procession forward again.
“Wait!” Deirdre drew back on the stallion’s reins, halting it. Hastily she took off the golden cross from her neck. “Sometimes we need to feel something that reminds us of God and how present He is with us, even though we can’t see or hear Him.” She cast an apologetic look at Scanlan. “I know it helps me sometimes, even though it isn’t really necessary for Him to hear me and answer my prayers.” She held it out to the farmer. “Just hold on to this and share your troubles with Him as you would your closest friend, because that is what He wants to be.”
Skepticism furrowing his dirt-and-sweat-smeared brow like the plow he’d been working, the man hesitated, glancing at Alric.
“Go on, it’s the lady’s to give,” Alric assured him. He tightened his grip about Deirdre’s waist as she leaned down to bestow the token.
“Milady is generous,” the man mumbled, backing away from Dustan, his head down.
“Come see our priest at Galstead and learn how God is even more so,” Deirdre invited. She’d never championed God in such a manner before. While a believer, she preferred to debate the essence of the Word and His nature. The resulting sense of reward seemed to glow within like the filigree chain dangling from the peasant’s callused hand—pure, without the tarnish of recrimination or second thought. “Better yet, come to our wedding and brin
g your family Milord will set a table bountiful enough to fill our bellies, while Father Scanlan fills our souls.”
The man nodded and waved, still avoiding her gaze. It wasn’t until Dustan led the party forward again that she realized the man had been too overwhelmed to speak. She’d given things away before, but somehow it had never felt like this.
“I couldn’t have said it as well, Princess,” Scanlan called out to her as she rested without thought against Alric.
“What possessed you to give away your jewelry?” Alric whispered in her ear, his lips not touching her yet still evoking a tingling sensation.
Was that mockery or wonder she heard? Regardless, her thoughts scrambled, unable to settle on the answer. Indeed, all she knew was that it had been a good thing, at least for her and hopefully for that wretched soul with hope-shallow eyes. “God led me to do it. Does that bother you?”
“No, milady I saw my mother give away half the gifts Lambert bestowed upon her. It seemed to give her pleasure.”
“If someone saved your life one day and on another you saw the opportunity to come to the aid of His Son, wouldn’t you do so?” Deirdre could sense her companion’s wariness in the way he stiffened behind her.
“Were it in my power.”
“God saved me, and I have tried to help one of His children.”
“Ah, that.” Alric had obviously heard the message before. “Well, if the prayer doesn’t work, the jewelry will purchase him some food, I suppose.”
Instead of anger, she felt as sorry for the heathen as she had for the discouraged farmer. While she’d always championed the downtrodden, this felt different. After all, Alric and his people were her enemy, her captors …
Lost in her own thoughts, she left Alric to his, riding on without really seeing the passing farmsteads and common pastures until they crossed a planked bridge over a dry overgrown ditch between some properties. After they’d crossed two more like it, she inquired as to their purpose, aside from a division in the land.
“It’s left from the Roman legion that used to be stationed here years before. There is a network of them branching out from the outpost at Galstead. Maybe for defensive purposes,” Alric suggested.
“Or irrigation,” Deirdre said. “You know, like the Egyptians used.”
“The nearby creek is no Nile,” Gunnar scoffed.
“But it’s continuously fed from somewhere. If it could be channeled into the ditches, there would be that much more hope for the crops.”
“For the Egyptians, drought was the normal circumstance,” Gunnar replied.
“Yes, but this is not ordinary for Galstead. I have never seen it so dry” Alric looked about them.
“Besides,” Gunnar pointed out, “by the time we clear the ditches of the brush and fill that has washed in them, the rain will have returned. Left alone, they’ll make fine hedgerows.”
“You may not have seen such a drought as this, but I’ll wager the men who dug these ditches have. Nature works in cycles.” Surely, Deirdre thought, everyone knew that. “Clearing and digging a series of ditches with dams for when the water is not needed would be a practical solution. Perhaps one of the mills on the running water might be modified with buckets to fill them.”
“Hah, she speaks like an engineer!” Gunnar grinned at Alric. “What manner of female are you marrying?”
“One who will never allow me to waste away with boredom, of that I’m certain.”
“Surely you’ve mills here.” Deirdre wished she could see Alric’s face. “And think, if this land is sufficient to produce clay for piping, why—”
She broke off at the sharp, silencing raise of Alric’s hand. With the other on the reins, he stopped Dustan. Gunnar reined in his own steed. Deirdre looked at the crossroad beyond and below the hill they’d just breeched, where a number of armed soldiers surrounded what appeared to be a funeral procession. A following of peasants escorted a two-wheeled farm cart bearing a wooden coffin draped in a pall. Angry voices rose from where men waved their arms at the troops, who apparently harassed them, while two women and a child held back behind the vehicle.
“Bandits?” Deirdre whispered.
“Hardly” Gunnar snorted. “Isn’t that Hinderk’s banner?”
“Aye, but what is the bretwalda’s horse thane doing here instead of up at the wall with Ecfrith?” Alric said.
Gunnar tilted his head. “Collecting tribute?”
“’Tis bad enough to tax the living, but the dead?” Alric put his hands at Deirdre’s waist. “Your place is here, milady.”
With that he lifted her from her seat and dropped her on her feet next to the horse. Just as startled as Deirdre, Dustan sidestepped and snorted. Tossing the extra cushion after her, the prince gained control of the animal as he slid forward onto the saddle. In a flash, his scramasax was drawn. The others followed suit.
“Ready friend?” he asked Gunnar, rising in the saddle to address the men behind them. “You will proceed cautiously with the lady If there is any sign of trouble, take her to Galstead.”
Without waiting for acknowledgment, the prince gave Dustan a hearty prod and started down toward the crossroad at full gallop, Gunnar less than a length behind him. With a loud bark, Tor covered their flank.
The men left behind closed in around the wagon as efficiently as they’d manned the ship—proficient warriors on land or sea. One could not help but admire the cohesion and discipline their leader inspired in them. Just from the way they spoke and looked at Alric, it was clear they’d follow him to their deaths, not out of fear but out of loyalty and respect.
“If nothing else, we can praise the Almighty that our journey has not been a boring one.” Scanlan seemed unconcerned that battle might erupt at any moment.
Taking his offered hand, Deirdre climbed up on the wagon seat again. “How can you be so calm at the prospect of bloodshed?” In truth her pulse pounded with an excitement as shameful as the priest’s lack of concern.
“God is in charge, milady.” Scanlan reminded her as she strained to look through the protective barrier of horseflesh at what transpired below them.
EIGHTEEN
Father Scanlan’s saintly focus robbed Deirdre of her former feeling of benevolent obedience. It wasn’t as if she wanted to see another bloodbath like that on the Mell. Like any red-blooded Irishman, though, combat in games and sport stirred her like nothing else. She loved the whistle and percussion of the sword song to a breath-for-breath cadence. With his animal-like grace, Alric undoubtedly would present a fine spectacle of skill, no matter his spiritual deficiency.
Whatever the armed party was below, the leader rode out ahead of his standard bearers to greet Alric with the friendly wave of a hand once the prince hailed him and identified himself, so her quandary was moot. “The prince should have a standard made,” she remarked to Scanlan.
“His standard is a sail, milady,” one of the guards informed her, “belonging only to the wind.”
And his kingdom the sea, Deirdre recalled. It was hard to imagine never having a place where she felt at home—a concept she’d find unbearable. No matter where she was forced to live, her home would always be Gleannmara. Mist and glen, forest and fall, mountainside and sea sand—she would always be its daughter.
Below, Alric signaled his men to join them. On a downhill slope, Deirdre’s party made good time while Alric, Gunnar, and the thick-bodied leader of the troops continued to speak to one of the mourners—a scrawny yellow-haired man in a ragged shirt and trousers. The rest were gathered around the cart bearing the coffin, as though to protect it. From what?
She watched as two of the armed troopers dismounted. Handing their painted shields to companions, they approached the wagon.
“I’d last heard that you were with the bretwalda in the north, Hinderk,” Alric said to the commander.
While thicker than Alric at the waist, Hinderk was undoubtedly as hard as the prince beneath his leather tunic and armor. Like good horses, some men were built for
the race, others for endurance. His armor and his long, brown hair spoke not just of command but of affluence.
He shoved a polished helmet back off his forehead, wiping perspiration away with the back of his hand. “The death rate from Saltersford has been uncommonly high. I’ve been sent to investigate.”
“Since when has it been against the law to die?” The low, wolflike rumble still raised the hair on Deirdre’s arms. Conflict didn’t seem out of the question yet. “Or do you seek to take over my father’s duties as king of Galstead? I believe it is up to his aldermen to collect tribute from his people for the bretwalda.” Alric clearly was not pleased at this infraction on Lambert’s rights. His hand rested on the hilt of his scramasax, ready to either sheath or use it.
“It isn’t against the law to die,” Hinderk answered. “But if the corpse is packed in salt, there is a tax due. Considering the drop in revenues from Galstead, Ecfrith asked me to investigate.”
“Investigate Lambert?” Alric’s bellow made Deirdre flinch. “You dare—”
“I dare nothing more than to look for something your loyal father may have overlooked.”
On the edge of her seat, Deirdre glanced around anxiously Hinderk’s men numbered the same as Alric’s. Whether they were as seasoned as the prince’s warriors remained to be seen.
“Well, milord?” The mourner who’d been speaking for the rest looked anxiously at the prince. “Will ye have him disturb my cousin in his own grave box?”
“I’m sorry, Dak, but let the king’s thane see the man so that you and your good family might see him properly buried before sundown.”
“But—”
The prince cut the churl off. “Unless you’ve something to hide in there? I’d hope my father’s salters have more respect for the law than to embarrass him by resorting to such a morbid charade.”
“And our bretwalda as well,” the armed leader added.
“Your loyalty to Northumbria would do you honor, Hinderk, were it not for that Mercian in your ranks.” Gunnar glared at one of the men beside the banner carriers. Clearly Alric knew the bearer, for the man looked no different than the others to Deirdre.
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