Cena instantly picked up her lifeless tone. "Stop sulking!" he snapped. He made to grab her arm and drag her outside. Sunniva flinched: she could not help it.
Cena reddened, his broad nose screwing up as if her very smell offended him. "Do not make a worse show of yourself!"
"Forgive me, father." Her nerveless fingers tried to grip her dagger, slipping on the handle. She wanted only to be away, before the walls of the church closed in on her or, worse, began to spin.
"What is wrong with you, anyway? You are getting to be as witless as your mother ever —”
"King Christ in heaven, as you blind as well as deaf?" Marc strode in between her and her father, causing the slighter, bandy-legged escort rider who had entered with Cena to step back. "This child was set upon by rogues of the worst sort and still she tries to placate you! Where were you to protect her?"
Her father's deep set eyes narrowed into slits of rage. "The girl is twenty!" he spat back, ignoring the escort rider's rapid, "What men? How many? What kind?"
"She should have more wit!" Cena raged on. "Look to your own brats, pilgrim, and leave me to deal with mine!"
"As you say." Towering over her father, Marc seemed to grow larger as he squared his shoulders. The escort rider hastily backed away further as Marc took another step towards Cena. "Your daughter, Englishman, something you and your wastrel sons seem to have forgotten. Had I not come in here when I did, Sunniva would have been violated."
"Sunniva? Very cosy…" Cena's complaint faded suddenly into the dust. Marc had his back to her, so she could not see his expression, but her father's jaw dropped and he began to bluster excuses. "This is a church! She should have brought her maid —”
"Then the maid would also have been raped," Marc answered relentlessly. "These were brutal men, Cena, armed and hooded."
"Leather hoods?" The escort-rider demanded, his sallow complexion greying further as Marc swung round and glowered at him. "Master Marc, there is a slaver and whore-master in these parts who wears a leather hood. I heard he was raiding across the border, in Scotland."
"Then you heard wrong, man." Learning this, Marc glanced at her to ensure she was all right. "Does it have a name?"
For an instant, Sunniva thought the escort-rider would ring his hands; he looked so embarrassed. "It is said his name is Magnus Long-Nose."
"That will be shorter now," growled Marc, while Cena was strangely silent.
"Has this Long-Nose friends?" Marc continued. "Allies to draw on? Should we not be going?"
"To be sure," the escort-rider said quickly, hurrying from the church so fast that he collided with the priest coming in through the doorway.
"Cena." Marc did not bow to him. Instead, turning on his heel, he offered Sunniva his arm. "May I be your escort, my lady?"
His mouth was solemn, even grim, but his eyes were warm. Sunniva knew she would leave with him — she was keen to leave with him, for her father would be in a foul mood.
"My thanks, Marc de Sens." It gave her pleasure to say his name.
Side by side they walked from the church, Marc exchanging a pleasantry with the hovering priest exactly as if they were lord and lady here. The foolish, happy thought buoyed Sunniva's humour until Marc had seen her safely mounted on her horse.
Once the party was traveling again, however, she found her spirits darkening. Reaction overcame her as she tried and failed to forget her attackers. She recalled the hooded Magnus's crow of delight, "Fetch us a guid price, she will!" and wanted to be sick — so close she had come to being ravished, kidnapped and enslaved.
And Marc de Sens, her rescuer? What did he think of her now? Why did I kiss him? Sunniva thought, staring blankly between her horse's pricked ears, seeing nothing of the road. Hers had been the act of a camp-follower — a slave, her father would have said.
Yet Marc had kissed her, too, and she had known such a sense of peace, of gentle rapture, as if for that moment the two of them had been sped away to paradise. For that blessed time, she had felt not only desired but valued, as if her feelings and thoughts mattered.
Still, she wished he had not seen her hair. So many men assumed things by it. When she was one and ten years old, a chapman coming to the homestead had called her "witch" because of her hair. Others had termed her man-eater, man-eager, man-hater — all this before her breasts had budded.
Did Marc like her hair?
"Look at me, girl." Cena prodded her roughly between her shoulders — his usual way of demanding attention. Conscious of her sore back and bosom, Sunniva braced herself.
"Yes, sir?" she regarded him steadily, unwilling to smile.
"Do not play the martyr with me." He reached across her horse to jab at her left temple. "Can you not disguise that bruise? You are no use to me ugly. You will not capture men's attention if you are ugly. Get Bertana to cover it — Bertana!"
He raised himself in the saddle to shout again for the maid when Edgar, who ever hung about their father, said quickly, "I will bring her." He savagely dragged on his grey gelding's bit, dropping back into the main pilgrim group, and Sunniva was left alone again with her father.
He wasted no time on asking how she was.
"That bearded oaf from church, Marc de Sens, what is he to you? Edgar said you were gawking at him."
"His children interest me," Sunniva replied, alarmed at the smarting resentment she felt against her brother. Edgar's malice was old, so why should she be so disconcerted? "They remind me of my childhood, and my mother."
Cena cleared his throat, a rare sign of embarrassment, but soon returned to the attack. "Does that fortune hunter know you have no dowry?"
"We had no chance to speak of it." Sunniva absently touched her mouth, remembering the gleam in Marc de Sens' eyes as he lowered his head to kiss her. "Not all men are interested in money."
"Pah! You are more witless than I guessed if you believe that. Bed sport fades and I must tell you frankly, you are no bonnier than many serf wenches."
"So you have told me. Often and at length." His spite twisted an ancient, invisible blade in her heart but Sunniva kept her countenance. "What do you want of me, sir? Your usual game?"
"What mean you by that? You will attend to what I tell you, girl!"
Sunniva waited and after a moment, when he had hawked and spat, Cena continued.
"The lands we are passing through now belong to one of Earl Tostig's followers, Orm Largebelly. We stay at Orm's homestead tonight and you will wear your best clothes. You will be pleasant to him, understand?"
"As you say." Borrowing one of Marc's phrases gave Sunniva some comfort, but did nothing to assuage her sense of guilt. It was, in the end, the usual game: Cena wanting her to charm and beguile. Always powerful men, rich landowners, whose favour and influence might prove useful. Often and most shamefully, he would even go so far as to suggest an alliance with such men, with herself as bait. Betrothal bait. She had been "almost" betrothed to seven different men in as many years. As a result of men desperate to pay her court and to win her hand, Cena had gained treasure, hawks and hunting dogs, passages of safe conduct, introductions to other wealthy men, promises of help with his harvests. He had done well from his exploitation of her beauty with men.
"I dislike it," she said aloud. She had already had enough of this behaviour, had her own plans to thwart it, but now, perhaps because of what had happened to her in the church, perhaps because of Marc's gentle, genuine interest, she resolved to speak out. Her father knew she disapproved but for once he would know by how much. "I am no prize to be dangled before any suitor who takes your fancy. It is not honourable —”
"Stop your mewling!" Cena reached across and grabbed her thigh. To onlookers it might seem an affectionate act, but Sunniva bit her lip strongly to prevent herself from crying out as he pinched her. Fingers digging into her flesh, he brought his bearded, rank-breathed face close to hers and hissed, "You will do as I say, or be left naked on the roadside! Your coy tricks are no use to me! This is for the family!"
He
released her with a final painful, twisting pinch, warning, "Your mother's dead, but I can still flay you. And I might let Ketil and Told have a turn with you, one night, to teach you about defiance! Half-sister's not the same as full and when all is said and done you are nothing but a slave's whelp. Remember that!"
He cantered off, leaving her in a shock beyond tears and to the clumsy, grudging ministrations of Bertana, who now appeared with a stinging salve to fuss at the bruises on her face.
Orm Largebelly matched his name, Sunniva thought, hiding her face as she sipped a cup of warm mead. He was stocky, russet-haired and with a wind-reddened nose and chin. He was closer to forty than thirty, a widower who stared frankly at her breasts and hips. When she smiled at him as her father hurried to introduce her, he winked at his widowed mother and smacked his lips.
I am but another kind of food to him, Sunniva thought in rising despair, wishing she could escape this evening of feasting. Usually she loved entertainments: the music, the bright hall, people laughing, strangers telling of wonderful distant lands. Tonight would be an ordeal: her father expected her to sparkle, to blind Orm into doing whatever he wanted.
Or he would allow Ketil and Told to —
I must escape, and soon, she told herself. The feast would give her no chance to do so, she would be constantly watched by both her father and her brothers. Half-brothers. But here before the feast was something: Orm's mother Hilde had invited her and her maid into her own room to change and prepare themselves. Sitting by the central brazier, eyes closed in sensual enjoyment, sunburnt, birch-thin Bertana was having her feet washed by one of Hilde's maids. Sunniva smiled to see her so relaxed: her maid might be a tale-bearer, but she had little joy in her service of Cena.
A light touch on her hand caused Sunniva to raise her head.
Hilde stood before her, stocky as her son but with more life and intelligence in her lined, homely face. "You are the seamstress, I think," she said, running a fingernail over the faint callus on Sunniva's index finger. "'Ware!" she warned, her quick brown eyes flashing to the stolid Bertana, sitting beside Sunniva on the great day-bed. "Come. I have something to show you."
"This is my sewing room."
Transferring with surprising agility, Hilde stepped from the simple wooden ladder to the upper chamber and pushed open the door. Following on, Sunniva saw the shuttered windows and many expensive candles and gasped.
"But it is above the barn!" she exclaimed, astonished at the contrast. Beneath her feet, she could hear the stamp of their own horses and smell the rich scents of hay, feed and manure. Here in this room, though, was a different world, a world she knew and longed to join.
Swiftly, after receiving a nod of permission from Hilde, she passed along the embroidery frames, some at standing height, some where the seamstress worked sitting on a stool. Beside each was a box containing needles and thread. She touched a skein of brown wool, looked at the embroidery being worked on — a scene of Beowulf and the dragon, where the dragon's jaw and flames glowed a vivid orange and red — and sighed.
"My ladies and I work here whenever Orm and his drinking companions grow tiresome in the main hall," Hilde remarked.
How wonderful, Sunniva thought, but said nothing.
Hilde sat on a stool before an embroidery of Jonah being swallowed by a whale and hooked another stool with her foot for Sunniva to sit. From a hidden pocket, she produced a narrow piece of intricate, delicate work — a child's belt — that Sunniva knew at once.
"The Prioress of St Oswald's received this from the messenger your father sent to Lord Morcar. There was a spoken message, too, where the seamstress told of her profound desire to work great altar cloths and stoles and robes, for convents and churches throughout the north. A noble, if naïve aim."
Sunniva blushed and said nothing. She had sent out many such "messages": pieces of her own embroidery and a verbal wish. Each time Cena had sent a herald, Sunniva had begged the herald to include her own small packet. She had hoped, rather foolishly perhaps, that it would reach someone who would take notice.
"Your work is exquisite," Hilde said softly. "You must know this."
"Thank you, my lady," Sunniva murmured, wondering what Hilde would say next. If the Prioress had passed the belt onto Hilde, did that mean St Oswald's convent was interested? Were they perhaps going to offer her some kind of place? Her heart beat fast at the thought, while her mind sang, escape, escape…
"I do not see you with a vocation for holy orders," the older woman went on. "What did you hope for? A position as a lay-woman, perhaps? A place at a noblewoman's court?"
"Yes." Sunniva saw no reason to deny it.
"And you seized the moment of pilgrimage to make your play." Hilde smiled, taking a needle and marking a place on her own embroidery. "Clever, my lady Sunniva, and I note you are also polite." She tilted her head on one side, her smile gently mocking in her round moon-face. "Or did you consider it politic not to point out the mistake in my work that you noticed?"
"I —” Sunniva bit her lower lip. She did not realize she had revealed anything. "I am sorry."
"Do not let it trouble you." Hilde drew back and plucked one of the lit candles from another nearby stool. She lifted it, studying Sunniva as if she was another form of tapestry.
"Any lady would be mad to have you in her household — No, Sunniva, please do not take my words amiss. I mean no disrespect. You are modest and able and if you could be as veiled as a woman of Byzantium, I would offer you my protection at once. But, as you are, you are the flame that draws all men as moths. You cannot help it."
Sunniva tasted the bile of defeat. She wanted to scream in frustration: instead, she scraped her foot under her stool, not caring that a splinter drove into her heel, welcoming the bodily pain as a distraction. "I am grateful that you should have thought of me within your home," she said. Hope flared again in her. "Perhaps you know of a convent nearby?"
Hilde pushed Sunniva's head-square back from her hair and nodded, as if to confirm what she had expected. "None that could withstand the rage of your father and brothers once they learned — as they surely would — that you had passed within its walls."
I must not cry, Sunniva thought. I could be a knife-thrower, she mused, her ideas growing wilder as her sense of being trapped increased. I have the skill. I know the tricks.
"You cannot consider making your way alone in the world," Hilde added, as if she guessed part of Sunniva's mind. "The world now is full of troubles and angry men. To them you would be a bauble."
"I am already that," Sunniva answered, recalling the rough handling she had endured earlier that day. She raised her chin. "I shall live alone, in the forests."
Hilde clapped her hands together. "For summer, yes, I think you could. But winters?"
"Times change," Sunniva said.
The older woman laughed. "I see you are as optimistic as your bright hair. That is good, for I vow you have much to be glad of. Not with my elderly son," she went on, careless of Sunniva's muttered denial that he was old, "but with another. You are meant to have children, I vow, and a home of your own and a good husband."
Sunniva bent her head, her eyes pooling. She hated her own weakness. At that instant, she hated being a woman. Why did men have so many choices in life, and women so few?
"I will pray for you."
She opened her lips, tempted to ask why, but another sound, in the stable below them, had her rising to her feet.
"Listen," Hilde pleaded. "It is not your kindred. The man is singing." She snapped her fingers in time with the jaunty tune. "Good voice. Marc de Sens, is it not?"
Could this woman read her thoughts? Sunniva said "Yes," faintly and had to sit down on the stool again as Hilde smoothed down her skirts and announced she was leaving.
"I must look to our supper-table," she said. "Stay as long as you wish. Oh, and please blow out the candles."
She was gone before Sunniva could protest, slipping down the ladder as nimbly as she had mounted it,
bidding Marc de Sens good evening, complimenting him on his well-groomed horse. Although she could not see him, Sunniva sensed Marc raising his head, looking with curiosity at the room above the barn.
What if he came up the ladder?
Testing each footstep, she crept to the doorway, knelt and looked out, drawing her sleeve across her face so her pale features would not catch the light. Marc was in profile to her, standing in the middle of the barn and stretching, arms above his head, a brush in one hand and a cloth in the other. He had stripped to his leggings, his tunic draped over the back of his snorting chestnut horse.
"Careful with the comb, Alde," he was saying. "You do not wish to lose it in Theo's mane. Isabella! Judith! Wash your hands in the trough before supper! If I must tell you again, it shall be tickles before you eat!"
Tickles? Sunniva was suddenly light-headed at the idea. She swung round and crouched on her heels, trying to forget the sight of Marc naked to the waist. She had never seen so many muscles, or such swirls of body hair. She thought of teasing her hands across his chest and the flat plane of his stomach and buried her head in her arms, convinced she was losing her wits altogether. Perhaps she was truly man-mad, perhaps the legacy of her colouring was finally coming out.
I was attacked by two men this morning, how can I be thinking of stroking any part of a man this evening? Saint Cuthbert, have mercy on me!
"What am I to do?" she whispered. How long would Marc and his nieces remain in the barn? How long before she herself was missed?
What should she do next?
Chapter 4
"Hey, ho, sweet holly!" Marc carolled the refrain of the lilting song, turning in the stable and reaching down, lifting one of Theo's great legs to clean out his horse's hoof. Theo whinnied at him and Marc settled his shoulder against the chestnut's flank, muttering, "I know, she disturbs me, too, but what would you have me do?"
He knew who was up there, in that mysterious chamber above the barn. Orm Largebelly's widowed mother had confirmed it when she wheezed her way down the ladder, granting him the kind of knowing look that all mothers seem to have perfected and saying under her breath as she passed, "Luck to you, sir. You may do well there, if you are patient and true."
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 32