LadyOfConquest:SaxonBride

by Tamara Leigh

  Though Rhiannyn could make little sense of what she witnessed, the horror of it made her cry out.

  But Maxen was quick to make sense of it, pushing her down on the wall-walk and spreading himself atop her as an arrow meant for one or both of them struck the wall and clattered to the stones.

  “Ancel has decided it is time,” he growled. Then he was on his feet, sword in hand, running toward the watchtower where the knight stood atop its roof.

  “Christophe!” he called. “See Rhiannyn to the donjon.”

  Past anguish over the Saxon’s death and worry over whether the others had met the same fate in the seconds since the first had laid down his life, Rhiannyn heard the clamor arising from the bailey. She lifted her head and saw Sir Ancel nock another arrow.

  “Maxen!” she cried.

  But her husband moved too fast, and once again the knight’s arrow fell unbloodied to the walk.

  Christophe dropped down beside Rhiannyn and gripped her arm. “Make haste!”

  “But Maxen—”

  “He is a warrior. Come.”

  She watched as her husband began mounting the steps to the tower roof. Christophe was right. She had to believe he would prevail. But what of Aethel and the others?

  “The other Saxons?” she asked as Christophe assisted her to her feet.

  “I do not know, but we must—”

  She pulled free, swung around, and leaned into the embrasure to search the land.

  The Saxon who had taken the arrow in the back lay motionless, and running toward the wood were the four who had abandoned their leisurely departure to save their lives.

  Rhiannyn could not be certain, but from Aethel’s peculiar gait, it appeared he had been struck.

  “You have seen,” Christophe said. “Delay no more.”

  As she turned to him, Sir Ancel shouted, “The time has come to choose!”

  Rhiannyn shifted her gaze to the man on the roof’s edge, bow flung aside, sword raised above his head as he looked down on those in the bailey who had paused in their flight to aid their lord. Maxen also paused upon reaching the rooftop opposite Sir Ancel.

  “Now we draw the lines!” the traitorous man called to the knights and men-at-arms. “Those who stand with King William and me, there.” He pointed left. “Those who stand with the Saxons and Pendery, there.” He pointed right.

  Voices rose as Maxen’s men pondered aloud the knight’s words, for none wished to stand against their king.

  Sir Guy moved first, pushing through the gathering to the place where he would stand with Maxen. “The side of right is King William and Maxen Pendery!” He jabbed a finger in Sir Ancel’s direction. “Not the side of the traitor!”

  “It is Pendery who betrays the crown!” Sir Ancel turned sideways and leveled his sword at Maxen who remained unmoving as he waited to see with whom his men would stand. “He has released the enemy to make war upon our own.”

  “War?” Sir Guy scoffed. “What is a handful of untrained Saxons to the greater Norman army? Are you so weak to fear five men who know more of ploughs and scythes than ever they will know of swords and horses? Are you so short of memory you have forgotten our victory at Hastings?”

  There was a stirring among the multitude as eyes swept from Sir Guy to Sir Ancel to the lord of Etcheverry.

  “You will die with Pendery if you do not come to my side,” Sir Ancel warned, this time with a note of desperation. Doubtless, his belief there would be enough division among Maxen’s men-at-arms to support his cause floundered.

  “Mine is the only way,” he persisted.

  The mass continued to hold.

  “Decide!” Maxen bellowed.

  They began moving right to stand with Sir Guy.

  Rhiannyn had not realized she held her breath until its release nearly folded her over.

  “It is between you and me,” Maxen said and strode toward Sir Ancel. “Defend yourself!”

  “Fools!” The knight ran toward the rooftop opening that led into the tower’s bowels.

  In the bailey below, the men who had cast their lot with Maxen pressed back as one great body to better follow a contest destined for blood.

  Maxen leapt after Sir Ancel and overtook him before he could escape down the opening. “To me!” He beckoned with his sword.

  Having no choice but to fight, Sir Ancel lunged.

  The first meeting of steel on steel knelled in the expectant silence, and grew more deafening, as did curses, grunts, and groans.

  That the opponents were not well matched soon became apparent as all watched their lord transform into the celebrated Bloodlust Warrior. He seemed completely ungiving, allowing neither his opponent nor himself a moment’s rest. With each thrust of the blade, his great body bunched and strained and terrible sounds tore from him. And when he took first blood, he loosed such a shout it caused knights well-tried in battle to flinch. As if more beast than man, he drove Sir Ancel back until the knight stood only by the grace of God who seemed close to abandoning him.

  As Rhiannyn fearfully watched the macabre contest, Christophe said, “We must go.”

  “I will stay.”

  He stepped in front of her, blocking her view. “You should not see this.”

  She skirted him. “I need to.”

  “You do not. This is not the Maxen you love. Pray, do not taint your feelings for him with this.”

  Would her love for him wither after witnessing Sir Ancel’s slaughter? she wondered as the conqueror and the defeated continued a battle clearly decided. Regardless, she could not turn away, for this was Maxen’s demon, and to understand it, she must know it all.

  “I beseech thee,” Christophe continued, “come away.”

  She shook her head.

  Showing signs his arm had grown heavy and pained, Sir Ancel clasped his other hand atop the first in a two-handed grip that allowed him to lift his sword to counter Maxen’s next blow. It was not enough. Maxen’s blade knocked the other aside and slashed through the knight’s chest.

  Sir Ancel cried out, dropped his sword, and slapped a hand to the wound.

  Although Maxen did not immediately finish the knight as Rhiannyn imagined The Bloodlust Warrior would have done, he appeared ready to end what the other had started.

  “Devil’s seed!” The knight thrust his stained palm before Maxen’s face. “My blood!”

  Whatever Maxen’s response, it could not be made out by those who watched.

  With a shout, Sir Ancel snatched his dagger from his belt and lurched forward.

  So swift Rhiannyn thought she might have imagined it, Maxen thrust his sword through the faithless knight, laying him down as cleanly as the piteous Saxon who had been felled by Sir Ancel’s arrow.

  Victorious shouts rose from those of Maxen’s men farthest back who saw all that transpired atop the watchtower, and other voices joined theirs as word of their lord’s triumph spread. They had chosen well the one with whom to side.

  “Have you seen enough?” Christophe demanded.

  Rhiannyn turned to him. Though grateful her husband was not the one lying in a pool of blood, something in her sought to counter the good of what had happened. She had witnessed many horrors these past years, but this touched her with fingers nearly as chill as when Dora had laid her in a grave.

  Why? Maxen was not in the wrong to defend himself. Sir Ancel had initiated the confrontation by murdering a Saxon, wounding another, and attempting to put an arrow through the lord of Etcheverry. Surely there was no other course Maxen could have taken. Why, then, this tumult of feelings?

  She returned her gaze to her husband who remained unmoving before the dead knight, head bent, broad shoulders bowed.

  Realizing the terrible feeling inside her was his anguish, she said, “I must go to him.”

  “You must not!” Christophe cried, and when his bad leg prevented him from catching hold of her, shouted, “Maxen! Rhiannyn comes!”

  Hardly had she set foot on the first step up to the roof than her
husband appeared at the top.

  Rhiannyn stepped back, and as he descended, looked from the splatters on his tunic to the hem where parallel streaks evidenced he had wiped his blade on it. Though she tried to keep her face impassive, she knew she failed when he stepped down to the wall-walk and she saw the guardedness in his eyes.

  “You were to have returned to the donjon,” he said and took hold of her arm and pulled her after him.

  “Maxen, I know you must feel—”

  “Speak no more!”

  Closing her mouth, she told herself she could wait until they gained their chamber.

  He led her to Christophe and said, “Your Josa is avenged.”

  Rhiannyn caught her breath. He spoke of the Saxon healer who, two years past, had been murdered by Sir Ancel, his one crime being compassion and care for the dying.

  Christophe nodded.

  “I ask you again to deliver Rhiannyn to the donjon.” Maxen pushed her toward his brother.

  “He is not to blame,” she protested, but he did not linger to allow her to defend Christophe.

  He descended to the bailey where a mass of men clamored to his side. His sharp words turning them aside, they opened a path for him to walk the bailey alone.

  His destination—the chapel.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “It is good,” Christophe said as he watched his brother enter the building.

  “He goes to pray?” Rhiannyn asked.

  “I believe so. Let us go now.”

  All the way down the steps, she fought the impulse to be with Maxen. But upon reaching the bailey, she lifted her skirts and ran. Ignoring Christophe’s shouts, she made for the chapel and paused at the great doors long enough to compose herself to quietly enter the sanctuary.

  She halted inside the dim interior and located Maxen where he stood before the linen-covered altar, head pressed to the forearm he propped on it.

  “What do you here, Rhiannyn?” he asked without looking around, his voice more weary than angry.

  Wondering how he knew she was the one who trespassed, she said, “I did not think you should be alone.”

  “Is God not here?”

  “He is.”

  “Then I am not alone, am I?”

  Denying him an answer he surely did not expect, she started forward. Halfway down the aisle, she stepped on something. Having been too intent on Maxen to notice he had cast off his belt upon which his sword was fastened, she stared at it.

  “Leave it!” he commanded.

  She stepped over the sword and closed the distance between them. “It had to be done,” she said and set a hand on his shoulder.

  The muscles beneath her fingers were taut. “You know naught, Rhiannyn. Now go.”

  “I know you are greatly burdened.”

  “I said go!”

  “I know there is much blood on your hands you wish away.”

  He pushed off the altar, swung around. “Wish away? Pray away!” His face darkened further. “Though God knows I have done enough—and to no end. Hardly am I out of the monastery and already I have killed several men. And do not forget the Saxon who lies dead this day, shot through because I did not do with Sir Ancel what should have been done long ago. Now tell me how God could be with me.”

  She longed to put her arms around him as he had held her when she had spilled her misery two nights past, but his pain was of guilt and self-condemnation, whereas hers had been of loss. “You cannot change Hastings,” she said, “but you can change what happens now in this place. And you have.”

  He stepped around her as if in distancing himself he might gain control of his emotions. “Did you not yourself just witness a killing?”

  “What choice had you? For that matter, what choice did you have at Hastings? ’Twas for your liege you fought—to him you answered.”

  He faced her again. “You truly believe that?”

  The derision in his tone frightened her. “Is it not true?”

  Though his eyes remained hard, regret and disgust and other dark emotions crossed his face. “It is not.”

  Her insides twisted. “What is the truth?”

  He looked past her as if searching for it there. “The truth is that I well earned the name given me at Hastings. As a man who has been long without food, I longed for the blood of those against whom I took up arms.”

  Rhiannyn swallowed hard. Though never would she have believed she would defend a Norman over a Saxon, she said, “Hastings was a battle between two peoples. You are Norman, your opponents Saxon. What else were you to do?”

  “There is the lie, Rhiannyn. By birth I am Norman, but as I was reared in England among Saxons, I am as much one of them as I am one of King William’s.”

  “But as your family’s liege, it was your duty to fight at his side.”

  “With such atrocity?”

  So much he bore a name that conjured visions of mass slaughter. Though she feared asking him to speak further of it would take back whatever ground she had gained, she said, “Why did you do it?”

  He stared through her. “It was what I had trained for all my life. Nils, Thomas, and I had ever to prove ourselves such that there was not a day I can remember having been without a weapon in hand. All I learned, I learned from my father—not at his knee, but against the swing of his sword.” His hands closed into fists. “Though I had killed before Hastings, it was always with just cause. But William’s battle was different. As already told, it was for me and my brothers to prove our family’s allegiance to our Norman liege. But I was also eager—not to gain land as many sought to do, but to prove myself a warrior in every sense. To prove it to myself, my father, and William. And I did.”

  It was difficult to hear such things, especially with the faces of her father and brother rising before her, but the Maxen he spoke of was not the one she had come to know. Nor the one she loved.

  “You repented.” She took a step forward. “To atone, you entered the monastery and gave your life to God.”

  “And took it back.”

  “Not by choice. With Thomas dead…” She shook her head, repeated, “Not by choice.”

  His eyes flashed, and he strode toward her, but she was not his destination. He stepped around her and slammed a fist on the altar. “If you think that is excuse enough, why does God not take this haunting from me? Day and night it is before my eyes when they are open, behind them when they are closed.” He shook his head. “You wished to know why I released the Saxons, and I told you. What I did not tell is I did it for myself as well.”

  His pain piercing her, she drew alongside. “You must forgive yourself.”

  “How? Only after so many lay dead did my sword no longer run with blood. After I saw…”

  “What?”

  “Nils!”

  “What did you see?”

  Though Maxen tried to push down the vision, it came. He did not wish to speak of it, did not want any of it to touch her, but she needed to know. And so he would tell her, even if it meant losing her.

  “I was wet through,” he began, “as much with blood as perspiration, and though William’s victory was assured, I raged on.”

  She sank her teeth into her lower lip, nodded for him to continue.

  “As I searched out the next to slay, I heard Nils and found that the powerful, invincible man he had been that morn, was a man barely alive. Sprawled atop Saxons three deep, his chain mail was being torn from him as he writhed and groaned.”

  Rhiannyn shuddered.

  “His own were stripping him of everything of value.” At her gasp, he smiled grimly. “Aye, the very ones alongside whom he had fought robbed him. No honor. No respect.”

  When she swayed, he demanded, “Have you heard enough?”

  “Are you finished?” she breathed.

  “Would that I were.”

  “Then I am not finished.”

  He shifted his jaw. “I smelled it, saw it, tasted it—the blood of William’s conquering. Rivers of it. And when t
he Saxon women came upon the field to search for their dead, the hems of their skirts grew so dark with blood they seemed weighed down by it. All those lives—lost for naught but greed.”

  She closed her eyes. “I am sorry.”

  “You are sorry? You who lost your entire family to Normans? Has it not occurred to you I might have slain your father? Your brothers?”

  She lifted her lids. “No more of my life will I squander pondering their deaths, nor the deaths of the others. And neither should you. You must forgive yourself. The battle, one not of your making, is done.”

  “I assure you, by the end of it, I had made the battle mine.”

  “It is done,” she repeated.

  He turned his body toward her. “Who do you think the king will summon to put an end to Edwin Harwolfson come spring?”

  She looked away.

  “Aye. For my liege, blood will again stain all of me.”

  “You will find a way to stop it,” she said with pleading. “You are no longer the…”

  “Bloodlust Warrior of Hastings,” he said what she could not, and strode to his sword, belted it on, and spread his hands to display it. “You are certain?”

  Rhiannyn hated how menacing he looked—how ready to take life.

  “Certes,” he broke her silence, “we will know soon enough.”

  She put up her chin. “I already know.”

  “So innocent,” he scoffed.

  She stepped from the altar and crossed to his side. “Nay, forgiving.”

  His eyes moved sharply over her face as if to catch the lie there before it slipped away.

  Confident he would find no trace of it, she held.

  What seemed minutes passed, then he sighed and caught a lock of her hair between thumb and forefinger. “Have you truly forgiven?”

  “I try.”

  “Then you have not forgiven.”

  “Every day a bit more. And so, too, must you.”

  He searched her face. “You give me hope.”

  And love, she silently added.

  He pulled her close, and his muscles began to relax. When finally he drew back a space, his face had softened as if the terrible memories waned. “I am glad you are in my life.”