by Tamara Leigh
Shrieking around the gag, she snatched hold of his tunic, but the weight of her descending body tore it from her fingers and she slammed to the bottom of a pit.
As the musty smell of freshly cut earth assailed her, the soil loosened by her descent sprinkled on her in a cruel mockery of what was to come. She lifted her joined hands, pulled the gag from her mouth, and loosed a scream so thin, it barely carried above her head.
Desperately working her tongue to return moisture to her mouth, she reached up, searched the walls on either side of her, and latched onto a frayed root. Dragging herself to sitting, she screamed louder and was quieted by a fist to the temple that dropped her onto her back.
“Nay!” Dora protested. “She must feel her death. Bring the stone.”
Though dazed, Rhiannyn managed to turn onto her stomach in the narrow space and rise to her knees, but before she could get her feet beneath her, a hand slammed into her back and knocked her facedown, catching her bound hands beneath her. Then something painfully heavy was laid across her back and lower body.
“Nay!” She strained against the weight, scraping her hands and tearing her nails as she scrabbled at the earth in an attempt to push herself upright. “Oh, Lord,” she cried, “not like this. Pray, not like this!”
“He does not hear you,” Dora said with sickening satisfaction.
Rhiannyn snapped her head to the side and looked up.
The woman’s white hair and pale face a blotch against the dark sky, she continued, “But I hear you, and I say death upon you.” Then she straightened, motioned to the faceless men, and began chanting strange words.
As dirt poured down on Rhiannyn, she filled her lungs and emptied them on high-pitched wails, calling to the only one who could help her now. But still the dirt descended—shovelful by shovelful burying her alive.
And giving Thomas’s curse its due.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Arising through the haze of uneasy sleep, Maxen thought it a bird, but when it cried out again, he knew it was human. Rhiannyn?
He thrust off the pel he had dozed against and surged upright. Sword in hand, he sprinted across the darkened glade.
The monk’s gown hindering him, catching between his feet and legs, he halted, dropped the sword, and dragged the garment off. Going into battle armored only in long braies and undertunic, he reclaimed the battered sword and thundered into the wood.
With the next scream, he corrected his course, veering to the left into thickening trees whose gnarly branches raked his exposed flesh. Deeper he ran until he heard the grunting of men, the old witch’s voice, and another scream ending on a whimper.
He bellowed and vaulted into the clearing. Instinct guiding him more than the dawning light, he struck the first man alongside the head with a blade so dull, it had naught but impact to prove itself worthy. But it served well enough, as evidenced by the crack of bone.
“The false monk!” Dora cried where she stood alongside a gaping hole. “Kill him!”
The shadow beside her divided into two men, both wielding weapons.
Blood boiling, as in days past when he had first and foremost been a warrior, Maxen lunged at the larger of the two, knocked aside the spade swung at him, and countered with a blow to his opponent’s midriff. As the man doubled over, Maxen turned his efforts upon the other who aimed a branch at his head.
An upward sweep of the sword sent the primitive weapon flying, but it did not stop the one who wielded it. He hurled himself at Maxen, and they fell together.
The sword ineffective in such close quarters, Maxen released it and captured the man’s descending fist in his palm, then thrust his weight to the side and rolled the Saxon beneath him. “It is done,” he growled and placed his hand over the man’s face and wrenched it hard left. The snapping of the Saxon’s neck coincided with a burn in Maxen’s side.
He lurched back onto his knees, and as he stared at the dagger protruding from him, the dead man’s spasming fingers released the hilt. An instant later, Maxen saw the shadow creeping over him and felt death on the back of his neck.
He pulled the blade from his side, twisted around, and threw it at the Saxon who had first come at him with a shovel. It caught the man high in the shoulder and staggered him back. For a moment, he stood unmoving, then he turned and fled.
Pressing a hand to his side to stem the blood, Maxen stood and swept his gaze over the area.
On hands and knees, the old woman labored to push dirt into the hole.
“Witch!” Maxen shouted, and forgetting the fire in his side, bolted forward.
She sprang upright. “The death of us!” she screeched and ran.
Though he longed to pursue her, Rhiannyn was a more immediate concern. The grave being too narrow for him to go into, he flattened himself beside it and reached for the still figure beneath loosely piled dirt.
Had he come too late? Telling himself the dread he felt was for the secret she might take with her into death, he caught hold of her shoulders and managed to raise her several inches before meeting resistance.
He thrust aside the dirt, slid his hands over her facedown body, and found the stone. It was awkward, positioned as he was above her, but he hefted it off. Grasping her beneath the arms, he pulled her from the grave and lowered her onto her back.
“Rhiannyn!” he called, wiping dirt from her face.
She did not respond.
He pressed a hand between her breasts. No rise and fall, no fluttering heartbeat.
Fury flooded him. He had not killed two men to rescue a dead woman!
Gripping her shoulders, he shook her, but she made no protest.
“Lord,” he rasped, “let not the wickedness in me forever shadow any good.”
It was then he recalled the words Guy had spoken at the monastery—that an old witch had pulled Harwolfson from beneath the dead and breathed life back into him.
Maxen lowered Rhiannyn’s jaw and placed his mouth over hers. He blew once and again, but his breath immediately returned to him by way of her nostrils. He pinched them closed. It took four more breaths before, miraculously, he captured her groan his mouth.
Hardly able to believe he had returned life to her, he held her as she coughed and spat dirt. Finally, she sank against him and narrowly raised her lids. “What…?” she whispered. “I do not…”
“Dora tried to murder you,” he said, resenting how protective he felt.
Her clouded eyes cleared, only to widen with horror. Beginning to shake, she gasped, “They buried me. Alive.”
Maxen fought the impulse to comfort her. And lost. He smoothed the hair back from her brow and pressed a palm to her cheek. “You live,” he said as her tears wet his hand. “You are well.”
Am I? Rhiannyn wondered, chest tight with sobs she longed to loose. Will my mind hold after this?
Recalling the dirt falling down around her, straining her head back to keep her mouth clear for the breath needed to scream to those who did not hear, she said, “I called, but no one came.”
“I came,” Brother Justus said.
Thus, she lived, but how had he saved her? He was but a monk against the four who had taken her.
Lowering her gaze over him, she noted the absence of his clerical gown. Stretched across a broad chest and shoulders half again as wide as hers, he wore only an undertunic woven of such light cloth the perspiration causing it to cling outlined the muscles beneath.
“The false monk,” she murmured. “I heard her call you that.” She returned her gaze to his. “Are you false, Brother Justus?”
His lids narrowed, and he jutted his chin to a place beyond her. “I have killed as a man of God should not do.”
She saw a body ten feet from her, and another farther out. Two men dead. What of the third? What of Dora? Were they in the trees awaiting another opportunity to kill them both?
She sniffed back tears. “There were three with Dora. I see two.”
“The third was wounded. Had he not run, I would have tak
en his life as well.”
The monk had killed to save her, and though she was grateful, her unease deepened. “Are you truly a man of God?”
He pulled away and stood. “I was, and now no more.”
“But—”
“We must go. Dora will return with others, and if we are here, it could mean both our deaths.”
She pushed to sitting. “Where will we go?” she asked. Where would a woman named a traitor and hated by Saxons and Normans alike, and a monk turned murderer, be welcome?
“I know a place,” he said and strode to one of the dead.
The sound of tearing fabric startled Rhiannyn, and a moment later she saw the reason for the destruction of the Saxon’s tunic. Thinking she must be in a state of shock not to have noticed the blood draining from the monk’s side, she exclaimed, “You have been hurt.”
“I will live.” He wound the material around his waist, tore off another strip, and secured it as well. Shortly, he crossed to the other body—a man more his size—and divested him of his clothes. After donning the rough garments, he returned to her.
“Your hands,” he said.
She raised them, and winced as the flat of a blade touched the insides of her wrists. Her fetters fell away, and as she rubbed the blood into her hands, he severed the rope binding her ankles.
“Come.” He pulled her to her feet.
Head reeling, she staggered against him. “A moment, please,” she beseeched.
“Do you wish to live?” he demanded.
“Aye, but—”
“Then move your feet. Now!”
CHAPTER NINE
“We will rest here awhile,” Brother Justus said.
Rhiannyn walked to the stream that had beckoned hours earlier when they had first begun following it, and lowered to her knees. She dipped her hands in the water and splashed it over her face and neck. Gasping and blinking, she savored the cold trickling over her heated skin, then scooped more handfuls until the front of her perspiration-dampened tunic was soaked through.
Heart beating briskly from the pace the monk had forced upon her, she lifted the hem of her tunic to dry her face. And paused over her distorted reflection.
On the surface of the water was something of the young woman she had been, the layers of age and wear peeled away to reveal herself to her again. Granted, she appeared older than her ten and eight years, but much fresher than the thirty she had looked upon escaping her prison cell. And she was alive.
Shying away from remembrances of what had transpired hours earlier, she buried her face in the tunic and rubbed vigorously—as if doing so would banish those memories. But they were there when she lifted her head.
“Leave me be,” she whispered. It was not her pleading, but a movement on the water that caused the memories to slip away. Looking nearer upon it, she saw it was the reflection of the one who stood behind her.
Brother Justus’s mouth was a thin line, eyes dark with what seemed accusation.
The sensation that had bothered her when he had first come into the rebel camp—a feeling she knew him—beckoned her back in time and closed fingers around her throat.
She gasped and leapt to her feet.
“Something is amiss?” he asked, reaching to steady her.
She sidestepped.
“What is it?” His expression was one of concern, a poor fit for the man she had glimpsed in the water, a man who, with the shedding of his clerical gown, appeared to have shed the last of his holiness as well.
“Naught. I…” She lowered her gaze, and the peculiar sensation turned to shame when she saw her wet garment was molded to her chest.
Hoping Brother Justus had not noticed, she glanced up and discovered the carelessness with which she had cooled herself had captured his interest. He did not regard her with monk’s eyes, but with the eyes of a man not forbidden the fruit of women.
Rhiannyn clapped a hand to her chest and lifted the material from her skin. “I have not thanked you for saving my life. I owe you much.”
“Aye, you do.”
His slow, deliberate agreement summoned forth that which shame had sped to the back of her mind, and she began to shiver. This sensation was remembrance of when Maxen Pendery had stood before her blindfolded eyes at Etcheverry.
But could it be? She searched the monk’s face, looked higher to his dark hair. In no way did he resemble Thomas or Christophe. The hair coloring was different, his features too defined. And his voice—she detected none of the thick French accent, nor the strained, rasping quality with which that man had spoken. Too, Christophe had said his eldest brother was a warrior, and this man was undoubtedly trained in the ways of the Church.
But he had also killed as a warrior, surely something no man of God would do.
“I know you,” she said, and caught her breath at the realization she had spoken aloud.
Something appeared in his eyes that pried loose her desperate hold on doubt—the predator.
And I am the prey, she realized. Maxen Pendery had carefully laid his deception by denying facility with the Anglo-Saxon language, feigning the thicker French accent of one who had not been raised in England, and allowing her to escape the castle so he could discover the location of Edwin’s camp. Then he had come to avenge his brother’s death. And he would likely have achieved that end had he not answered her cries for help.
Why had he not sacrificed her? More, what of Edwin and his followers whom she had placed in jeopardy? She had to warn them, even if they killed her for it.
She turned and ran, but within moments, he took her to ground.
Pinned beneath him, she swept her hands through the fallen leaves in search of something with which to defend herself and closed a hand around an embedded rock. Resisting Maxen Pendery’s efforts to turn her, she strained and clawed at her weapon. When it came free, she fell onto her back and swung the rock toward his head.
He captured her wrist, forced her arm above her head, and pressed his thumb hard at the base of hers until her hand cramped and fingers uncurled.
“Nay!” she cried and raised her free arm and struck him alongside the head.
He grunted, seized that wrist as well, and pinned it with the other.
With only her legs to defend her, she bought her knee up and into his side.
Though she had not targeted his injury, she knew what she had done when an oath rushed out on the air he expelled. But it did not move him off her.
“Enough!” he barked.
His monk’s pretense entirely abandoned, the savage visible in every line of his face, Rhiannyn stilled. “I do know you,” she said again, and added, “Maxen Pendery.”
His smile was wry. “Nay, you do not. But you shall.” Her wrists caught in one hand, he straddled her, felt down his side, and considered the blood on his palm.
Preferring a show of contempt over fear, Rhiannyn said, “Know this, Norman, as you have killed, so will you be killed.”
He returned his gaze to her, and she saw his pupils had spread wider, obliterating all color save a dark ring of iris more black than blue.
“You will die,” she recklessly pressed on, “the same as—”
“Thomas,” he snarled, “and Nils.”
It was not his lost brothers she had intended to name, but the great number of his countrymen who, despite their victory at Hastings, had pooled their blood with that of the Saxons.
Maxen felt every beat of his heart as memories returned him to Hastings. He saw himself pull his sword from a Saxon, lift an arm to wipe the blood from his eyes, turn to search out who would die next. And there was Nils—barely alive, though treated as if dead. Without honor, without glory, beyond deplorable.
He yanked himself back to this moment that was not entirely different from the place to which he had briefly gone. Blood was also spilled across this day, not just by those he had prevented from burying this woman alive, but him. And just as Thomas had survived Hastings only to die for her, he might himself.
&n
bsp; “Heed me well, Rhiannyn of Etcheverry,” he said. “Your life is no longer your own. It belongs to me, to do with as I please. Give me no excuse to see the end of you, and you may live to become a wretched old woman. Give me good cause, and I will do what Dora could not.”
Her eyes flashed. “I am no man’s possession. You may imprison me, but never will I belong to you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Already you do. Your tears are mine, the secret you hold near is mine.”
“Secret?”
“I will have Thomas’s murderer. And soon you will deliver him.”
She shook her head.
“Soon,” he repeated. “Now, we must resume our journey. Will you resist?”
“All the way.”
“Then you bring this upon yourself.” He untied the rope from his waist, lashed her wrists together, and wrapped the opposite end around his hand. “Your prison awaits,” he said as he rose.
She stared up at him. “You do not frighten me.”
“Aye, I do.” He jerked the rope, a warning he would drag her. “And that is good.”
Her defiant expression briefly softened into what seemed despair, then she got her legs beneath her.
“Better,” he said.
She raised her chin. “You think so? Do not be so sure, Maxen Pendery. Andredeswald still holds you, and it belongs to Edwin.”
He reeled her near. “My lord, to you, or have you forgotten?” It was the same as he had ordered her to title him in the dungeon.
“’Tis you who has forgotten,” she challenged, “but I will say it again. Never will I accept you as my lord.”
He smiled. “By the morrow, you will be addressing me properly.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue further, closed it, and looked at the blood spreading across his tunic. “Do you intend to reach the castle alive, Maxen, we had best not dally.”
In this, she was right.
Two things Rhiannyn knew for certain. The first, that the only benefit of trading Dora for Maxen Pendery was that she lived—for now. The second, that she was alone in a world she had not realized was so heavenly before the Normans had crossed the channel and conquered her people.