by Tamara Leigh
“You are looking poorly, Rhiannyn.” He brushed a thumb beneath her eye that was yellowed from the bruise Meghan had given her. “Far from the fair maiden I remember.”
She drew back. “I have been helping build the wall.”
“And brawling.”
“When I must. But tell, why are you here?”
He pushed back the hood, revealing a face so harsh, it was hardly familiar. “What a strange question.”
It was, she silently agreed, and said, “You have come for your rebels.”
“And?”
She shook her head. “Nay, Edwin, do not ask them to challenge the Normans. No good will come of it. More will die.”
“You do not believe in the superiority of our people over Normans?”
“There are more of them than Saxons, and heavily armed. Pray, leave your people be so they might live and rear children and raise crops upon which to feed them. Maxen Pendery has promised them this. Do not take it from them.”
“The promise of a Norman,” Edwin spat. “They are my people. I trained them, and they will join with me against the Norman dog with whom you fornicate.”
“I have not lain with him!”
“You think me a fool? You left with him—betrayed me.”
“I did not. It was from Dora I ran. Maxen Pendery saved me from the death she tried to work upon me.”
“What lie do you tell?”
“No lie, Edwin. You saw Dora that night. She wanted me dead. When all slept, she and three others took me from my tent and tried to bury me alive. It is the truth!”
He was silent some moments, then said, “The only truth I know is Pendery murdered three of my men before you left with him, not to mention those lives he took when he attacked our camp.”
“Three?” Rhiannyn gasped. “There were two dead when I came to consciousness. The third was wounded and ran with Dora.”
“I do not understand your part in this, Rhiannyn, but it was three who died—three I buried.”
She could think of no reason Maxen would lie when he had readily admitted to taking two lives. “Mayhap Dora killed the third,” she said, knowing it was true the moment she spoke it. “Aye, so he could not be made to tell the truth of what she tried to do to me.”
“Dora is a healer, not a murderer.”
“Are you so blind, Edwin? Did you not see the grave she put me into?”
“Grave?”
Rhiannyn sighed. “She must have moved the bodies to hide the truth. She is evil, Edwin. If only for your soul, you must send her from you.”
Contempt further lined his face. “It is as she foretold—you would betray your own people and take another to your bed. What she said has come to pass, and yet you wish me to believe lies that fall from your mouth like venom?”
“They are not lies. Believe me in this!”
“As you would have me believe you did not lead Pendery to us?”
“I know now that in fleeing Etcheverry, I led him to the camp, but I did not know it then. And upon my soul, I have not lain with him.”
He grasped her chin and lifted her face toward his. “Even were it true, you will lie with him.”
Which she could not vow she would not do, Rhiannyn realized as she was flushed with memories of their last encounter—Maxen’s laughter, his smile, his hand gently picking feathers from her hair. And their kiss…
“What? You do not deny it?” Edwin said. “Tell me you will not give yourself to him—swear it upon your soul—and mayhap I will believe your other untruths.”
On the verge of tears, she whispered, “I cannot.”
Edwin shoved her back and strode away. “You may give yourself to the Norman dog,” he said over his shoulder, “but you will not give away my people.” He pulled the hood over his head, eased the stable door open, and slipped into the night.
As the door whined closed, Rhiannyn leaned against the stall wall and looked heavenward. “What am I to do? How to end this?”
The door whined again.
“Edwin?” She peered through the shadows. He was not there, but as she watched, the door closed a second time.
“Ah, nay,” she breathed. Someone else had been in the stables with Edwin and her, someone who might alert the Normans to the Saxon leader’s presence.
Rhiannyn ran from the stables to the outbuildings where her people were quartered. In her flight, she nearly tripped over two of the men Maxen had set to watch over the Saxons. She paused to verify they lived, and finding them unconscious—a wonder, considering Edwin’s hatred of Normans—she ran to the larger of the buildings where the Saxons took their evening meal.
“Do we stand together?” Edwin asked from atop a table. “Take the castle and all who defend it?”
“Edwin!” Rhiannyn called as she pushed her way through the crowd. “You must leave. Now!”
“You are not welcome here,” he said. “Go.”
“Heed me,” she pleaded. “Methinks the Normans may be coming.”
His lids narrowed. “You told them?”
A path opening to the table upon which he stood, she hastened forward and strained her neck to meet his gaze. “I did not, but another may have.”
“How would you know?”
Desperate for the moments being lost to argument, she cried, “There is not much time. Leave!”
The Saxons began muttering, looking from Edwin to Rhiannyn, no doubt weighing the wisdom of what their leader asked of them.
“What is your answer?” Edwin demanded.
An older Saxon stepped forward. “Were I not forty-three summers aged, I would, Edwin. Were I still willing to die no matter the cost, indeed I would. But I cannot.” He stepped back.
“Pendery has promised to return us to the land,” said another of significantly less years. “I am a simple man, and would like to sow the seed of children and crops ere I die.”
“You believe Pendery?” Edwin asked, fists at his sides.
“Since the coming of the Normans, there has been less to believe in, but his promise is the best we have.”
“Aye,” agreed a Saxon not much more than a boy. “He provides well. There is food aplenty, clothing, and fuel for warming fires.”
Rhiannyn stared, stunned by their response.
“And when winter comes and this ravished land has provided only enough for the Normans?” Edwin asked. “You will either starve or meet your death of cold.”
The murmuring increased, and Rhiannyn also wondered what winter would bring, for it was true what Edwin spoke. The harvest after another year of Saxon rebellion was insufficient, and Thomas had hardly managed to feed his own during the winter past, leaving many of the Saxons who had taken him as their new master to fend for themselves. And there had been deaths.
“Are there none who will follow me?” Edwin asked. “None who will take back what is ours?”
“What is yours,” Meghan said. “Aye, we are all of us Saxons, Edwin, but we are simple folk, whereas ye are noble. Be it Norman or Saxon who possesses the land, still we answer to a master. For what should we give our lives in exchanging one for the other?”
Agreement stirred among the others.
“I will follow ye,” Peter said and jumped onto the table alongside Edwin. “Who stands with the betrayer”—he pointed at Rhiannyn—“and who remains loyal to the rightful lord of Etcheverry?”
Rhiannyn held her breath, but her prayers were quickly answered—or nearly so—when only two more took up places alongside Edwin.
“Is Aethel not among you?” Edwin called out, eyes searching for the height and breadth of a man who would have been conspicuous among those present.
“He and four others are imprisoned ’neath the donjon for loyalty to you,” Peter said. “Though they do not yet hang, they shall.”
From the look in Edwin’s eyes, it was obvious he had set himself to devising a way to release them.
But it was not to be. Moments later, all was thrown into chaos as Normans swelled into the
building with weapons drawn and Sir Guy at the fore.
Much of what followed was a blur. Edwin passed a dagger to Peter, and with sword in hand, leapt from the table and hurled himself at the Normans. The air was filled with shouts, curses, the meeting of weapons, and the cries of Saxons who feared for their lives.
Though those who had decided against Edwin dropped to the ground in surrender, Rhiannyn remained standing.
“Your neck if they escape!” Sir Guy shouted.
Rhiannyn looked around and saw Edwin and two others fight their way to the door and out, a dozen men-at-arms following close behind. But where was the third who had joined Edwin? Dead?
“If you wish to live,” Sir Guy shouted, “remain where you are. Any who rise up will taste the edge of a sword.” He shifted his gaze to Rhiannyn.
The fury in his eyes chilling her, she looked away and began praying. And did not stop until the men-at-arms who had pursued Edwin returned.
“Regrets, Sir Guy,” one said, “two escaped.”
“The other?”
“Wounded, but death is nigh.”
“Tell me it is Harwolfson.”
The man shook his head. “He and the Saxon named Peter went over the wall. We followed, but could find nothing of them before Andredeswald.”
Sir Guy’s shoulders bunched, but he did not strike the man. After a long moment, he turned to Rhiannyn. He did not have to speak his summons, for it was in his eyes.
Feet feeling as if encased in stone, she wove her way between the ones who had laid themselves at the mercy of the Normans, faltering when she came upon one of the three Saxons who had chosen Edwin. He was dead, his tunic bloodied neck to hips.
She continued to where Sir Guy awaited her and beseeched, “Will you allow me to speak?”
He jerked his head and said between clamped teeth, “Speak and be done with it so we might begin the fettering.”
Then he had come to his own conclusions that all the Saxons had joined the uprising. Thus, their punishment would be bondage until Maxen returned to pronounce judgment.
“It is not what it looks,” she said. “Edwin asked these people to join with him, but they chose to remain under the house of Pendery, as was their promise to your lord—now their lord. Only three joined with Edwin.”
Sir Guy stared.
“She speaks true,” Meghan said, rising to her knees.
From the ground came murmurs of agreement.
“She speaks lies!”
Rhiannyn gasped, sped her gaze to Theta.
The woman skirted the men-at-arms, sidled up to Sir Guy, and put an arm through his. “With my own ears did I hear Rhiannyn and Edwin make plans with these people to take the castle while our lord is absent. Had I not brought word to you, they would be overrunning Etcheverry and slaughtering us all.”
It had been Theta in the stables with her and Edwin, Rhiannyn realized. She who had alerted Sir Guy to what was barely a half-truth, she who this moment renounced her own people.
“Theta lies,” Rhiannyn said. “None of these people plotted with Edwin. They are innocents.”
“Aye, ’tis the Norman harlot who lies,” Meghan concurred.
“If you wish to live, woman,” Sir Guy snarled, “lie down.”
Meghan complied.
Sir Guy returned his attention to Rhiannyn. “I trusted you. Though your place is in the hall, I allowed you to work upon the wall so you might know your people again.”
“Listen to me. I—”
“I have listened enough, and now you will lie down, too.”
“But they have done naught wrong. Theta—”
“Down, Rhiannyn!”
Feeling as if the bones had gone out of her, she lowered to the ground between two Saxons.
“You tried,” whispered the man on her left, his sad smile welcoming her back.
If only such were not the circumstances under which she gained acceptance, she silently bemoaned and squeezed her eyes closed.
“You, you, and you,” Sir Guy called to his men. “Carry word to our lord of what has transpired. He must return at once.”
Calm, Rhiannyn silently urged. Within a day and night, Maxen would return. If she was to reach him again past the fury that would be like a wall around him, she must be calm—and prepared to sacrifice whatever was required to keep the noose from her people.
The missive was delivered, but Maxen asked no questions, uttered no word, before sending the messengers away.
“It cannot be,” Christophe said as soon as the men departed the hall.
Maxen closed his eyes and felt pain behind his anger. Time and again, he had thought on Rhiannyn these past days. Time and again, he had moved nearer a place he had told himself he would not go. Time and again, he had resisted stepping over that line—until upon awakening this morn when he had been the one to yield, though he had excused his decision to wed Rhiannyn as but a means of strengthening his hold on Etcheverry by joining their two peoples. But she had deceived him again, plotting with her Saxons to take Etcheverry.
Lord, he silently called to the heavens, why did she have to be at the center of this?
“Wait until you have spoken with her,” Christophe said.
Maxen set his jaw. “I warned you about being quick with your apologies. As Rhiannyn and her people have not fulfilled their end of the bargain, I need not fulfill mine. I am done with them all.”
Ignoring Christophe’s outburst, he strode from the hall. Within the half hour, he and his men rode out from Blackspur Castle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I am ready, Rhiannyn told herself when Maxen returned the following day.
From the clamor outside, she and the others knew when he rode beneath the portcullis. Yet he did not immediately come to the outbuilding that had become their prison. For some, it might have seemed reprieve. For her, it made his return that much more terrible.
They were bound one to another at the ankles, but now that the silence of waiting was upon them, the chains were eerily silent.
Finally, footsteps.
Though Rhiannyn felt Meghan’s gaze, she did not look her way. She stared straight ahead, and when Maxen threw open the door and strode into the midst of those he believed had betrayed him, reminded herself she was ready.
She was not.
The moment his gaze picked her from beneath the layer of dust and mortar she had worn since the day before, a part of her folded. Never would she be ready for one such as Maxen Pendery, but neither did it mean she would throw up her hands in surrender.
Anger was visible all about him—the set of his shoulders, the hard line of his mouth, the flare of his nostrils, and those eyes.
With a generous measure of docility and a rattle of chain, she stood. “My lord, will you hear us?”
He walked forward, his gaze growing heavier with each footfall. “No more, Rhiannyn.” He halted before her. “I have had enough of your lies.”
A retort sprang to her lips, but she swallowed it and said, “They are not lies. What I would tell you, what you need to hear, is the truth.”
He put his face near hers. “I said no more.”
She moistened her lips. “But there is more. What you have been told is not true. These people rejected Edwin for their new master. Pray, do not punish them for gifting you their loyalty.”
Near to bursting with all the brooding he had done since learning of Rhiannyn’s treachery, Maxen stepped back and swept his gaze over the expectant faces of men and women whose only champion was a small, filthy, infuriating woman whom the weak part of him—the Maxen she liked—wanted to believe.
Could it be Theta who lied? It could, but as easily, it could be Rhiannyn.
“Only three joined with Edwin,” she further defied him, “two of them now dead. The others stood down. You must believe me.”
He returned his gaze to her. “You plotted with them, though why Sir Guy allowed you to work on the wall is beyond me.”
“You are wrong. Does it not
tell you something that these people immediately surrendered? Ask Sir Guy.” She looked to where the knight stood at the door—and beside him, Christophe.
“Did they not go to the ground when you and the others came in?” she demanded. “Was there one among them who resisted?”
Before Sir Guy could answer, Maxen said, “Fearing for their lives, no doubt.”
“Nay, keeping their word to you.”
It further angered him how much he wanted to believe her, but still he held to the single, taut thread of control. “You will not convince me, Rhiannyn, so waste no more words.” What was done was done, and he must do what he should have in the beginning. He headed for the door.
“What do you intend?” she called.
“You know the answer,” he said over his shoulder.
Silence, then she cried, “I yield!”
He halted, turned. Though he knew to what she referred, he waited.
She lowered her gaze and, so softly he more imagined than heard it, repeated, “I yield.”
Then if he wished it, if he rejected the teachings of the Church she had reminded him he did not have the right to do, without benefit of marriage she would give herself to him. For her people, she would sacrifice the only thing she believed he desired of her.
As he stared at her, much too aware that beneath her begrimed, pitiful figure was a woman who moved him more than any other, he told himself to throw her yielding back at her and do what needed to be done to ensure Etcheverry’s future, to forget it might be Theta who lied and be done with these Saxons. But he could not.
He motioned to a man-at-arms. “Bring her to my chamber,” he said and stalked from the building.
Sir Guy followed, his silence more irritating than the scratch of claws on a door.
Past the stables, Maxen swung around. “I want every one of them questioned. Separately.”
Guy frowned. “I thought…Rhiannyn…”
“If punishment is due, it will be given, regardless of what she offers in exchange for her people.”
Relief lightened the man’s face. “Wise, my lord,” he said and turned back to the outbuilding.