Touching the knives at her belt, she decided not to think of the twins. By a deliberate effort of will, she listened to the bald, sun-burnt Alric of Thornwyke, who was now praising Cena's older brother Bertolf, a tall, taciturn man she could scarcely bring to mind.
"The way he could use a battle mace was a wonder! Do you see him much, these days?"
"Bertolf often follows the court," Cena responded, tight-lipped. "Our paths rarely cross."
Behind Cena, Sunniva heard Ketil mutter to Edgar, "That perfumed, slinking old fool went raiding with you?"
"Against a few mangy shepherds and cow herders Bertolf was brave enough. He had his own filthy followers with him, too: those marsh-men that seem to be made out of mud," Edgar replied. He sounded smug and Sunniva knew he would be wearing that self-satisfied smirk. Dismissing him and Ketil, she refocused on Alric.
"Pity that," the warrior was saying, unstrapping a boot and pouring water out of it. "He was ever a one for finding treasure. I've heard Hardrada's camp is very rich."
Sunniva sensed Cena and the three brothers tensing with interest.
"There will be spoils for everyone, once we win the battle."
"If we win," Cena qualified.
Alric clapped him on the shoulder so hard that Cena swayed in the saddle and Sunniva was hard pressed not to laugh out loud. Suppressing giggles, she waited for the warrior to offer Cena and his sons the inevitable invitation to war.
It came with Alric's next sentence. "You should ride with us! Look at you, with your three great sons! We ride for glory, for England, to defeat that Viking wretch Hardrada — you must be part of it."
"But my pilgrimage," Cena protested, to be quickly over-ridden.
"The saint will understand. These are Vikings, Cena!" Abruptly, Alric drew back and resettled in his saddle, giving the older man a hard, assessing glare. "Should Earl Morcar come to hear that you denied this call to arms, I know he will be disappointed."
Sunniva blushed: the threat was barbed.
"I am an old man now. My knees," Cena wavered, making her feel more humiliated. Please let me fight in his place, she prayed to Saint Cuthbert, recalling that the saint's own holy, uncorrupted body had been taken from its resting place on Lindisfarne because that holy island had been ransacked by Vikings. True, that was many years past now, almost three hundred years, but Cuthbert would want revenge against the Vikings, would he not? "Please let me fight," she pleaded, not realizing, until Alric stared at her, that she had spoken aloud.
His face took on that slack-jawed look she was familiar with, but warrior that he was, he was on to her words in a moment, turning them to his advantage.
"See, Cena? Even your girl here wants to join in the fray!"
"Yes, yes, she is my daughter, gently-bred," Cena stammered. "I must see her home safely first. My sons and I will do that directly."
"Nonsense! Let her return home with two of your serving lads; she will be safe enough." Alric gave her a huge grin. "Is that not right, pretty one?"
Sunniva said nothing. There was nothing to be said.
Farewells with Cena and the others were swift. Sunniva raised her hand but did not wave as they cantered off into the rain with the rest of the war-party, reluctant conscripts to the last. She stared at what was left of Cena's original party: one limping mule loaded with bedding and cooking gear, two scrawny lads who would not look at her directly, one very sulky maid and the horses they were riding.
The rest of the pilgrims were already moving off, their escorts constantly scanning the skyline for more war-bands. Sunniva heard the carter's wagon creak past, earthen pots rattling with every slow turn of the wheels.
"Sunniva!" cried Marc's eldest niece Alde from within the wagon. Sunniva pretended not to have heard, though she felt ashamed of doing so. She wanted to talk to Alde, a clever, resourceful child, very serious yet also plucky. She wanted to play "tag" with Judith, who could run like a hound and was as brave as a lion. She wanted to cuddle Isabella, so small and troubled. But Marc did not want her to "seek him out", or have her spending time with his youngsters. And she certainly did not want to encounter Marc, not when he had made his feelings so horribly plain.
Hurting inside, she tried to feel something for her departing "family", but the wound they had inflicted upon her by their leaving was mingled with a numb despair and, strangely, a relief. No more would she sleep in dread of Ketil and Told. No more would she be pestered by Cena, berated by Edgar.
Finally, she could be her own mistress.
She clicked her tongue and nudged her horse forward, saying to the startled Bertana and the two, greasy-haired serving lads, "Come along, or we shall lose our places in the column."
"But, Master Edgar said you should return home," Bertana protested.
"And we will, Bertana." Sunniva smiled. "After I have prayed at the shrine of Saint Cuthbert in Durham. We shall complete the pilgrimage in my father's place and I will go there as his proxy."
And once in Durham I shall find work as a seamstress. I have samples in my pack, and I can do more. Bertana and the boys will find new places and I will be free.
Escape...
She touched her heels into her horse's bay flanks and coaxed the beast into a steady trot, facing forwards and never looking at Marc as she cantered past him and the carter's wagon.
That night, the diminished pilgrim party bedded down in a wayside church. Haunted by flash-backs to the last time she had spent time in a church and been attacked, Sunniva could not relax. Bertana grudgingly found her a sleeping-tincture in their luggage but still it was almost dawn before she drifted into a heavy, troubled sleep.
She woke late, her arms and legs tingling painfully from lying on the church's tile-and stone floor. Rolling onto her stomach, Sunniva tried to rub at her legs through her cloak, stopping abruptly as she realized that Bertana and the boys were no longer resting beside her.
"They ran off in the night," remarked a voice, a too-well-known male voice. "The other pilgrims have moved on now, too. The carter's wife tried to rouse you, but could not —”
The sleeping potion, thought Sunniva. I asked Bertana to mix it with water. I saw her do it. Unless she poured the water down the outside of the cup.
"—and when Judith's stamping and shrieking beside your ear failed to stir you, I knew we must wait."
Marc cleared his throat. "I have stayed until you woke naturally: I did not think you would appreciate being shaken by me."
Sunniva sat up so quickly, the whole nave seem to turn upside down.
"Gone?" She swung her head about and saw the priest of the church praying at the high altar, with three small kneeling figures beside him, and a taller, much more powerfully-built figure leaning against the stone font. There was no one else. Sunniva swallowed, her mind racing ahead. Had the boys run off with everything? The horses? The mule? "Has Bertana gone, too?"
He nodded. "I warned you of your maid, did I not? Though how she will fare in a battlefield unless she has your skill with knives, I do not like to foretell."
"What mean you?" Sunniva knew she should be acting, rushing outside to check if the pilgrims were already miles away, but she seemed paralyzed. How could her fortune have changed so quickly? "I would have paid them all, an honest price. Why should they leave me? Why should they creep away?"
"The lure of honour in battle for the lads, I wager. The draw of treasure and spoil plundered from the field of battle for the maid. Against that, madam, your wages are too small."
He held out his hand to raise her to her feet.
Sunniva held her ground, did not shrink back. "Why are you here?" she flung at him.
"I promised Hilde I would see you safe. There is a convent some few miles from here; one of the escorts vouched for its purity and safety and has given me most precise directions." He grinned. "The pilgrims were keen to go: they wish the walls of Durham snug about them sooner rather than later, although I do not think it will do them much good."
Still she di
d not move. "Why should I believe you?"
Marc leaned towards her, still smiling. "What part? That your own people have deserted you? That the pilgrims and escorts were happy to leave you in my charge?"
"Happy!" Sunniva was scandalized. "Happy, and you a man with blood on your hands!"
"Show me any man these days who does not. As for the pilgrims, do not judge them too harshly. Believe me, I can be most persuasive.... a little gold here, words there, a whisper of a threat of violence."
"You are enjoying this!"
"No." Suddenly he was solemn. "Believe me, lady, this is not my first choice. Yet what choice do either of us have on this green earth? Do you wish to stay with the priest? Would that not be another scandal? With me you travel with my nieces: even your betrothed should find no reason to object."
Sunniva struck the tiles with her fist. "I am bound for Durham!"
Marc de Sens shook his head. "Not anymore," he said.
Why had he lied to her? Marc considered this as he left a "gift" with the priest for their unusual lodgings last night and their bread and cheese breakfast. He had given Hilde no promise and he owed Sunniva nothing. The pilgrims had been content to leave her in his charge, especially when she proved so impossible to wake.
There was another darker reason why the pilgrims had been glad to have her off their hands, and it had nothing to do with the "gifts" he had given to sweeten his argument that they should go. Once the loathsome Cena and his shambling, cowardly sons had finally done their duty and left for the battle, Sunniva had become a problem. Her ambiguous position — was she lady or not? — her lack of powerful friends or family and most of all her outstanding beauty made her, in bitter truth, a liability. She might be brave, she might be handy with knives but against a marauding band of men she was vulnerable. As before, with the whore-master and slaver, her youth and looks made her an obvious prize and target. The pilgrims had been right to leave her.
So what was he doing, rushing in as her defender? She thought him a killer. No doubt she sought him out because she was watching for proof of his murderous nature. Or was it more than that? Did she actually like him?
So? Marc asked himself savagely, as he saddled and checked their horses and the girls' ponies while Sunniva and his three waited out of the rain in church. What did her reasons matter? She was already betrothed.
Be glad she has not asked you why you are still so keen to have her in your company, for you would not want to answer, even if you could. Shaking his head free of that discomforting thought, Marc ducked his head under the door-lintel and re-entered the church.
She came to him at once, hurrying ahead of his nieces, wearing a glad, bright look that reminded him achingly of Roland, his dead, burned brother. He growled at her, to cover his hurt. "Ready?"
"We are," she said, adding in that direct way of hers. "What did Bertana leave me?"
"Both horse and mule and I would say half the luggage." Marc smoothed out a coil in his beard, wondering even as he acted why he bothered: Sunniva would not care how he looked. "The guards on watch last night probably asked too large a bribe for Bertana and the serving lads to take everything."
He had "paid" the guards that morning, when, under his questions they had admitted as much and clearly expected a reward for doing no more than their job. But Sunniva did not need to know that, especially when her narrow shoulders dropped with relief.
"Thank God," she murmured, before turning her sea-green eyes on him again and asking with a perspicacity that both amused and alarmed him, "Or should I thank you, sir?"
"Marc." He wanted to hear her say his name. He ruffled Isabella's hair as she scampered to stand by him and motioned to the hovering Alde and Judith that their ponies were ready and waiting for them.
As the three hared off outside, he looked again at his latest charge. "We should go: the rain has stopped for now." He wanted to see her in her right element, in the sunlight. And they really should move.
"Why have you turned away from the pilgrimage, Marc?" The instant they were on their way, she asked the most difficult question, the one for which he had no clear answers, only instinct.
"It felt wrong," he said, surprised to be admitting even that.
She said nothing, did not even raise her eyebrows, and he found himself admitting more.
"Whatever Alfric said —”
"Alric?" she softly suggested.
He was tempted to say "Alfric" again, just to have her correct him, but said, more seriously, "The roads here in the north will be filled with men. Armed men, hungry for loot and trouble. Durham is another four, five days' travel. The convent of the holy sisters is six miles away." He scratched his beard, embarrassed to be explaining. "Those are better odds."
She did raise her eyebrows now.
"When I was in Constantinople, I often knew when the enemy would attack," Marc laboured on. "The lord I served thought me blessed by God — or the devil; he did not care which. I saved him twice from assassins."
"As you saved me," Sunniva remarked, her voice very low. "For which I will be ever grateful."
Warmed by her gratitude, he told her what he had told no one else. "I do not know how I knew, but I did. I often did. A sense of impending darkness.... It is as if you can hear a shadow: that is how it feels to me."
She regarded him steadily, without mockery or fear. "The tumbler who taught me to throw knives said to me once that our senses can be trained so that reactions can seem beyond natural. Perhaps that is what has happened to you; with your skill in warfare you can anticipate war."
"Perhaps. Mother says I am fey, like her." Enough, Marc. He warned himself. You do not want to be straying any further into this, into dreams and signs. You dreamed last night, too, and there was a very clear sign—
"And the pilgrims?"
"If they ride swiftly they should be safe. But Durham —” Marc frowned. "I feel a dark shadow in my heart about the city. I may be wrong — I have been very badly wrong before — but still I dare not ignore it. That is why I left the group. I want my girls safe. They have suffered enough."
Sunniva leaned closer. Under cover of brushing a fly from the flank of his horse, she whispered, "Their parents?"
Marc felt the breath in his chest tighten. "My elder brother Roland and his wife Joanna died when their town house in Dinan burnt down. Alde and her sisters are orphans."
He watched Sunniva blush, turning her head away from her him, though not before he saw the gleam of tears in her eyes.
"They were staying in the town house, were they not?" she asked softly. "They were in the fire, too."
Marc nodded, the tight heaviness in his body persisting, like a boulder in his chest. Grief and a terrible, deserved sense of failure swept through him. For all his foresight, he had not foreseen this. "Our mother, too. She was able to escape into the street before the staircase burst into flames. I got Judith and Alde out, went back for Isabella."
Suddenly he was there again in the sooty, orange, pulsing glare, fire licking everywhere, Joanna screaming for her children, Roland coughing and retching, trying to beat out flames with his bedding.
"I had just reached Isabella when there was a huge roar from the fire, like a maddened beast. Then the roof and ceiling caved in. I saw Roland and Joanna between puddles of fire, and then nothing, only a wall of flame. They were terrified and I lost them. They were right before me, only an arm-stretch away, and then, with that roar and the ceiling going, they vanished."
Marc spurred his horse, urging it to a gallop. He wanted no more talk.
Chapter 11
For the first hour all was well. Sunniva felt her heart rising like the skylarks in the fields and scrubland about them and her hands stopped flitting back and forth from her reins to her knives. She was still not entirely convinced of Marc's honesty where the convent was concerned, but she trusted him enough to go with him without protest, until events showed otherwise. She was inclined to believe him about the pilgrimage and Durham, if only be
cause the practical side of her recalled the many, many times Durham had been attacked, even in her life-time.
And he had not been lying about his nieces or his brother.
Sunniva listened as Alde told her the end of a joke she had heard many times before and laughed as if it was new to her, her eyes skipping ahead to where Marc rode, his back very straight, flicking the ends of his reins against his long, powerful thighs. His hair was growing longer now, so much so that its ends curled against his neck and dangled over his collar. He suited longer hair, she thought. It made him look less Breton-Norman.
She wished he had not lost his family like that, so cruelly. How can I comfort him? she thought, wishing she had been able to take him into her arms when he told her of his loss. But then, he would doubtless be stiff-necked with her, remind her, yet again, that she was betrothed.
Perhaps I should have trusted him with the truth.
As if he knew her thought, Marc twisted round in the saddle. Sunniva's stomach tingled as he smiled at Alde, Judith and Isabella, his smile including her, too.
"You do well?" he called out.
"Judith has picked up another iron nail, Uncle Marc!" Isabella shrieked, her voice bubbling with excitement. "That is her seventh this week!"
"I do not know how you find them, Judith," Marc said, scanning the road behind them for possible soldiers. "What will you make with them?"
Judith threw her older sister a knowing look. "A scold's bridle?" she suggested.
"I think you would need more metal for that," Sunniva dropped in as Alde's brown eyes darkened and narrowed into tight black slits. "But you would have enough for a cross," she added, while Judith recounted her roadside treasures.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 36