"Tangletop doing fit work," remarked Told, ever more laconic than his twin as he checked that no one else was nearby.
"What mean you?" Sunniva already had her dagger out, backing up into the steaming midden slops to watch the hulking pair. "What?" she demanded. She refused to respond to the hated nickname, coined after many occasions when the twins had dragged off her headrail and mussed her hair.
"It is as we suspected." Ketil slid closer on her left side, cracking his knuckles in preparation. "And now our father sees it, too. Look at us, Tangletop, and look at you. We are all tall, except you. We are all well-made — except you. We all have our father's hair and colouring and eyes — except you."
Told tugged at his own brown-and-blond locks to emphasize the point and sidled nearer on her right. The constant drizzle ran over his bushy eyebrows into his eyes, making him squint, and Sunniva was reminded that Told did not see objects close to him so well. It would be perhaps a small advantage.
"I am no cuckoo." She plucked at her waistband: the smaller, older dagger that she drew out was not so sharp as her first but it would have to do. She hefted it, relieved to be armed in both hands.
"I say that you are, Tangletop." Ketil took out his own dagger and began to pare his fingernails, enjoying her frigid silence. "We all know your mother was nothing but a slave. You know what is said of lusty slave girls, who will go with —”
"Free or unfree, my mother was as married to our father as yours." Sunniva had guessed where this was going and she did not like it. "We are brothers and sister."
Told scowled: he did not like his twin to be interrupted.
"Do you go hunting?" she asked, lifting the daggers in her fists so her brothers — half-brothers — could see the rain bouncing and flaring off the blades. She flung their own words back at them. "You know our father — " and here, although her nerves were stretched so tightly she felt her spine might snap, she forced herself to smile — "does not like to be kept waiting."
"We are hunting," Ketil replied, "and our father is not yours." He held up a hand, although Sunniva had said nothing. "Father Martin told us; before we came away on pilgrimage. He said it had preyed too long upon his conscience."
Sunniva gripped her knives more tightly, feeling the rainwater drip down her back in icy fingers of creeping cold. "Yes?" she asked.
She was looking at Ketil but it was Told who answered. "Your mother had a paramour. Our priest saw them in the arms of each other." Told frowned, knotting his eyebrows together. "The lover had red hair."
"Like yours," Ketil added, and leaped forward.
Sunniva had not anticipated his attack. She was too shocked, her mind busy with a hundred questions, her thoughts darting everywhere, like bees in a fallen hive. "How is that possible?" she was asking, numbly, when Ketil's arm came flashing down and he struck her right hand with his pilgrim staff.
She screamed at the splintering pain, but did not let go of her blade, slashing out instead with her other dagger, snagging Told's jerkin as he came in to grab her.
"Drop them, you snivelling bitch!" Ketil beat her again, the heavy knotted staff cudgelling her shoulder and back as she jerked sideways, trying to shield her head and breasts. For a second, Ketil's throat was exposed to her but she could not do it — she could not cut him.
"We are kindred!" she screamed, despair almost overwhelming her as she realized sour Father Martin's no doubt garbled "confession" had given the twins the flimsy justification they had always sought to come after her. "We were brought up together!"
"That counts for nothing with this kind of breed," came a new voice, along with the unmistakable sound of a long sword being drawn from a scabbard. "These bucks need an urgent lesson in morality."
Ketil and Told looked at each other and at Sunniva, still armed, and grinned boyishly, as if they had done no more harm than lads caught pinching apples in an orchard. "We were fooling," Ketil began.
"So am I," said Marc de Sens, punching Ketil straight in the face.
Her half-brother sat down heavily on the spilled pail, rainwater mingling with blood as he brought both hands up to his pulped nose. "Yoo hi' me!" he protested, his voice blurred.
Told snatched his cloak and dragged him away, the twins lurching off into the curtains of rain.
"Are you all right?" asked Marc, kneeling before her in the mud. "May I escort you to the sewing room?"
She tried to answer but found no breath to speak. Instead, with a great shudder, her nerve gave way. She dropped her knives and began to cry.
Chapter 7
Marc sat by the midden and drew Sunniva onto his lap. He cuddled her lightly but close, letting her know she was safe. Mistress Hilde would take care of his other girls: he had left them with her in her sewing room, exclaiming over tapestries of saints and dragons.
Other girls? Sunniva was not his, however much he wanted her to be. True, he had come looking for her as soon as he could, hoping she would remember his promise that she should meet his nieces, but he had never expected to find her in such a horrifying state.
To have to fight off her own siblings! The inhuman betrayal of Cena's younger sons disgusted him. Over and over, that terrible moment when he had first found them all ran round his mind like a whipped spinning top. In a scene like a wood-carving on a church rood-screen he had witnessed a clash of demons and angels — only it was worse, because these were folk he knew and one he cared for very much.
For an instant, finding Sunniva driven back against a mound of fetid, steaming, stinking ordure and bones, her lovely face stripped down to a death-mask by terror, her supple, lithe form frozen into a stiffened, defensive arc by stress, he could not believe it. She was so small against those who snatched at her, who should protect her, head and shoulders smaller, tiny and fragile where they were brute. They had been mocking her, calling her slave-born, weaving about her in a deadly dance of feint and attack. He had not dared to shout in case he sparked them into something worse, or more dreadful still, shocked Sunniva into dropping her weapons.
And then Ketil had hit her. Twice. With his pilgrim staff!
"How could he do such a thing?" Marc whispered.
Reliving it in his mind, he was again appalled, while the fighter within him was intrigued. Yet again her skill with knives had amazed him. Where had she learned that?
More importantly, where was the wretch Caedmon of Whitby? Why was he not here?
"Our father in heaven," Marc whispered, something he did for Isabella when she was at her most need of calming. Isabella loved to hear the Lord's prayer in English: at present it was her most favourite thing. But he could not pray for himself. Each time Sunniva fought down a sob he wanted to grab Cena and hack his filthy head off his body.
"How can I help?" he murmured.
"Cannot!" She burrowed against his shoulder, adding gruffly. "Sorry."
"No need." He offered her his hand and she took it, her fingers whitening as she gripped him like a sailor washed overboard. She was drowning in fear and sorrow and he could do nothing except be there with her.
Feeling useless, helpless, he shook his head and looked up into the sullen grey sky, letting the rain beat onto his face. It cooled his temper but not enough. Already he was holding Sunniva carefully against his anger, as if she was the most delicate of flowers — a wood anemone, he thought. Her face was surely white enough.
"Rot and blast them!" he muttered in Breton. Inhaling deeply to rein in his rage, he gagged on the midden stench. At least he should bear Sunniva away from here, before the miasma overcame her or a servant came prying. If he ran again into any of her benighted "kin" — and he used that word of them most loosely — he would be paying wergild for their slaying. And if Orm Fatbelly, or whatever his name was, made him a Wolfs-head outlaw, so be it.
"Come, young one." He spoke in Breton before he realized what he was saying and by then he was carrying her off the muck and slime of the midden, picking up her knives on his way and dropping them carefully into her l
ap, because they were hers.
He was not sure she had noticed, but a steady "Thank you" startled him into looking down.
A slim, grave face, pensive as a Madonna, looked back.
"You should set me down, sir."
So they were back to "sir" again. "You would go sprawling in the mud if I did. You have had a great shock, so rest." While you have the chance, was his added, unspoken instruction.
Almost as if she had heard it, she sighed and closed her eyes. He relished the lacewing pattern of her eyelashes, long and blonde, flecked with gold. The tip of her nose was slightly sunburnt, making it teasingly kissable.
But there was more. She was warming quickly against his arms and flanks, reminding Marc of more intimate embraces. Shamed — was he no better than the brothers? — he tried to wrench his mind onto other things, mentally naming each war horse he had bred and trained.
He had reached Jonah when her eyes flashed open and she squirmed in his grip. "Please set me down, sir. As a true knight would —” she hesitated and swallowed — "would a lady."
She blushed deeply — the colour she would go when making love, he thought, feeling heat rush to his own face and loins. But this was ridiculous, he thought. She was a mere girl, and another man's betrothed. This was not the way he should be.
"We have a problem here, for I am no true knight." Marc rubbed his nose, realizing he was feeling both nervous and playful. He realized, too, that when he scratched his nose with Sunniva in his arms her breasts squashed delectably together, stretching and pressing against the fabric of her plain gown, vividly outlining their shape, the sharply-risen nipples.
Lust rammed through him; he wanted to pitch her into the stable hay and have her, make her cry out in ecstasy and weep with pleasure.
But Sunniva had already wept and her tears were ones of grief and pain. He would not add to those.
"Just a few more steps," he said, as much to himself as to her.
She stared at him, then a pink tongue clicked between perfect rose-petal lips and stayed there, defiant.
The little imp! "I am sure Mistress Hilde does that every day," he remarked, casually lifting her higher to clear a broken broomstick, left out in the rain.
He had reached the point where the midden track divided. Which way should he go? Stable and sewing room, or feast hall to confront her father?
No contest.
"No, please! Not there!" She was plucking at his arm and he stopped, not wanting her to be alarmed again and, selfishly, not wanting her to use those wickedly sharp knives of hers on him.
"You do not think your father should know of this assault?"
"He would deny it!"
Marc guessed that to be more than likely. "Show your bruises, in the feast hall, before others. He cannot ignore their censure, nor the evidence of his own sight."
She stiffened again, as if he had slapped her. "You do not understand!" she spat. "He would say I had provoked them! That is what he always says!"
"They have done this before?" Marc was horrified afresh, the muscles in his gut and across his spine chilling and contracting as he absorbed the punch of her words. "When? How often?"
"No! Not what you are thinking! Only slaps, before today. It was never as bad as this, before..." She began to kick. "Let me go! All men want to do is paw me! Let go! Now!"
Stung by the accusation, he dropped one arm, releasing her legs and feet. Though he would not have her flying from him yet. Allowing her to swing against him, he clamped his arm around her middle.
"I can be a good friend, Sunniva. I can help. Let me."
Her hanging feet glanced against his shins as she tried to kick him. "Listen!" he said urgently. "Let me get a message to Caedmon, have him join you on pilgrimage."
"Who? Why should he? Once he suspects, once any man suspects —” She stopped speaking by a deliberate effort, gnawing her lower lip.
Marc brushed a piece of dirt from her sleeve, heartened when she did not shrink from him. "Tell me of your mother," he said gently.
The question quietened her, as he suspected it would. For an instant she stared at him, her mouth trembling with feeling and answers, then she began to struggle again, still more violently.
"Stop that!" He wound his leg about hers, imprisoning her further. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, do you hear? I love my mother well and respect her most highly and my mother is a farrier's daughter!"
"So was William the Bastard's." In another quick-silver change of mood Sunniva was still and even-tempered again. "And your father?"
"My father loved and respected my mother till the day he died. No, please, do not cry. I did not tell you to make you cry."
"I know." She gave him a wobbly smile that seemed to turn his heart right over in his chest. "These are happy tears, see?"
"Yes." Marc was not convinced but time was passing. Much as he would have liked to, he could not stay here with Sunniva. There were his girls. "The sewing room, then? To meet my three whirlpools?"
"Whirlpools?" The image had caught her as he had known it would.
"All deep-minded, prone to temper outbursts, often in tears and ready to suck you into their games in a moment."
"That is surely unfair!" she laughed, settling against his encircling leg as she relaxed, her thigh and flank resting by his in a most distracting manner. "I think you do them wrong."
She went quiet. Marc reassured himself that her knives were now safely tucked back in her belt and waited.
"They are young," she said at last. "Impressionable. Do you truly wish that I meet them?"
"Why not?" He cupped her face with his hand and raised her chin. "You are not your father or brothers."
"If they are such," she muttered, blushing an even deeper red than before. "I know you must have heard that. You need not deny it."
"I do not — but you are not responsible for your parents, whoever they may be. You are yourself, and that is enough."
Marc lowered her to her feet and drew back, wondering if even now she might bolt from him, like a nervous horse. He longed to embrace her, drink in her fragrance, soothe and caress her.
All men want to do is paw me.
He stepped away and held out his arm. She took it.
Together they walked towards the stable block.
Chapter 8
Climbing the ladder to the sewing room behind Marc de Sens, Sunniva scolded herself. Why had she done what she had? Why had she lain so long in his arms, welcoming his embrace? He said she was in shock, but that was no excuse. She should not have thrust out her tongue at him. He would see her as frivolous, unseemly, as well as the spawn of who-knew-what.
"Mother, what did you do?" she whispered. The foundations of her world were slipping; she was no longer sure of anything. Was cantankerous, woman-hating Father Martin right?
Tell me of your mother, Marc had said, but she had not done so. Was she ashamed to do so?
She was ashamed of herself. And of Ketil and Told. Truth be told, both had struck and beaten her with lethal regularity, their violence increasing once she was past twelve years old. She had learned to keep out of their way, especially when they had been drinking.
This new accusation against her was the most dangerous yet: it stripped her of any rights in the eyes of her family.
Family? Can I even call them that now?
As soon as I reach the city of Durham I will flee, she thought. A city has need of many trades: I will find work there as a seamstress or a cook. I will survive.
And perhaps Marc -
No. There is no "perhaps Marc", she told herself, as he entered the sewing room ahead of her and excited squeals greeted his appearance.
Later that day, back from a good day's hunting, Cena was in a loud, jubilant mood. That evening as the stag he had brought down was roasted over the central fire pit, he knew that he was master of the feast. Even Orm Largebelly deferred to him, granting him the single great chair in the hall, where he sat with his sons at high table and Orm's m
other and the other women served them.
"More ale!" He banged on the trestle with his fist, satisfied when Sunniva hurried from the shadows to serve him. She was a useful wench, though not as biddable as she should be. Look at her now, shepherding those three yowling girls, the pilgrim-chits who made decent people's sleep almost impossible. Like the most foolish of ducklings, they were following her everywhere, copying almost her every gesture and expression. She would soon tire of them and their pathetic worship.
Coolly — he fancied he was a connoisseur of female beauty — he assessed the three against their model. The eldest carried her jug of ale like Sunniva, riding it against her hip, but there the resemblance ended. She was a tall, thin girl, with thin straight hair and a strongly defined nose and chin — mannish, to Cena's way of thinking. The middle sister, attempting to balance her jug on her head, had a glint in her bright blue eyes and a pouting, sulky mouth that shouted mischief — a trait that he would have thrashed out of her years ago. She was already as tall as her older sibling, solid where the elder was wiry, and with thick brown hair. He thought of his hellions, Ketil and Told, yanking on ten-year-old Sunniva's plaits until she shrieked, and he grinned, sinking the rest of his beer in celebration of the memory. It was, in truth, poor, watery stuff, not as good as the ale made in his household, but it would do.
Cena frowned as he studied the last of the trio. The youngest pilgrim — the midnight screamer — was a pretty thing if you liked rag-doll limbs and wild curly hair. Had Sunniva looked like her at the same age? He could not remember and was not really interested. What did anger him was the fact that this brat, who spoke a mangled English and who would cry at anything, from flea-bites to strong sunlight, was drinking from her jug of ale and offering it to no one.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 34