Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances

by Lindsay Townsend

  "But —” Suddenly she did not want him to leave. "Where is he, then?"

  "De Sens? I neither know nor care. I believe he has returned to France. You are well rid of him, niece."

  She rose before her uncle's women could find her naked in a damp bed. Her clothes had been left on top of a chest and she smelled them before she put them on. They had been washed: no scent of fever remained in her underclothes or gown. Spotting no comb in the small chamber, she drew her fingers through her hair. Her hair felt glossy and soft.

  Sunniva sat back down on the bed, which she had stripped of its sodden sheets, drew on her shoes and considered afresh what her uncle had told her.

  That she had been sick with fever.

  That Marc had repudiated her.

  That Marc had returned to Normandy.

  How would her uncle know that last thing? And if she had been sick, why did her hair feel as it always did?

  Although she had taken only a sip of the blackberry tisane before she had spilled it, she was not unduly thirsty, as she would have been with fever. And she had looked herself over while she dressed. Her body and breasts were unmarked; there were no fever blemishes. She had a small bruise on her left wrist and a tiny scab on her left heel. Marks from being tied?

  If I was taken by force, where am I?

  Unbidden, unwanted, her uncle's most damning words swung back into her mind. She had tried to block the thought by being busy, but this thought was too strong.

  What if Marc has rejected me?

  She tried to argue against it, but she knew very well what he had said to her, the last time they had met. "Later. We shall discuss this later." She remembered his narrowed eyes, his lean face blazing with suppressed anger.

  What does it matter that Marc is not a woman-killer, that he has told me the truth behind all he did, if he has cast me off? she thought, and then was appalled at her own question.

  Struggling to contain her despair, she felt a draught strike against her face as the door to her small chamber opened and two middle-aged women stepped inside. Taller than most men, tanned and sinewy, they nodded to her and, without asking, began to comb and dress her hair.

  She smiled at them, asked the pair their names and thanked them for tending her. She apologized for the spillage on the sheets and offered to wash them herself.

  The women said nothing and gave no sign of hearing her. Their allegiance to her uncle could not have been clearer. Taking all the bedding, they backed out of the room leaving the door fully open, hanging on its hinges.

  Not caring what might be beyond the chamber, Sunniva followed. Slipping across the threshold, she found herself in an upper-floor gallery, overlooking a hall filled with people and milling with dogs. The hall was divided into two by a series of wicker hurdles: on one side folk crowded around the fire, sitting on benches, on the other were pens of sheep.

  Sunniva let out a long breath in surprise. This long, wooden, thatched, windowless house was not as splendid as she had expected from her uncle, a man of the court. There was no dais here, she realized, nor any chairs. Bertolf showed his status by sitting alone on a bench closest to the fire, out of the possible back-draught from the smoke-hole in the roof. He peered at her through the smoke, and beckoned.

  Sunniva hung back a moment. Among the clothes left for her, there had been no covering for her head, nor any cloak. She felt exposed in her tight Norman gown, showing her braided hair. She could not even return to where she had slept, in order to retrieve a sheet she might use as a shawl: the women had taken every single blanket.

  "Come, niece," Bertolf called to her.

  She wanted nothing more than to hurtle back into her own room and cry on the bed, to weep for Marc and his nieces and all she had lost. But what if her uncle was lying? What if Marc was seeking her, wherever she was?

  Think of a tapestry, she told herself. The threads wind together to make a pattern all can see. If you hide away, you make Bertolf's task easier for him. Better to go out, be seen; let word travel in the district that I am here. Then Marc will surely find me. Or I can find a means to flee and escape, as I planned to before when on pilgrimage.

  Slowly, Sunniva went downstairs.

  The next few days crawled along. She was not allowed to help the other women in the running of Bertolf's household, but she was expected to remain with him and his two sons. Nor was she allowed to ride, or, at first, to walk outside. Inside, there seemed to be no mending to be done and when she mentioned her embroidery, Bertolf shook his head. The excuse was always that her fever had weakened her and that she must rest.

  The pretence was that she was an honoured guest, but Sunniva knew what was happening. She was being kept prisoner but no one would admit it. She dared not admit it herself, least of all to her "family". Bertolf's sons in particular made her wary. They were big, coltish lads of her own age, fair-haired and skinned and with wispy beards. They reminded her too much of her own brothers, especially the twins, Ketil and Told. Her brothers were now all dead and buried and she could not grieve for them without shame. In Bertolf's sons they seemed reborn: even in the way they followed her and spied on her. Their names were Hrothgar and Wybert and she disliked them intensely.

  Bertolf for his part was forever devising ways that she would be together with the pair. They must eat together, "as a family", Bertolf said. They must show her round the house. They must take her into the marshes on a hunting trip.

  This last Sunniva had firmly declined, using her "fever" as an excuse. She did not trust Bertolf, or his sons, and would not willingly go alone with any of them into the marshes. Walking with Bertolf's sons around the palisade that bordered his homestead and looking out across the earth and timber ramparts she had seen these marshes. She did not trust them, either.

  No one spoke to her directly except for her uncle and his sons but, from snippets of overheard conversation that she could understand, she realized that Bertolf had brought her to a place called Eldyke, or eel-dyke, close to the Isle of Ely.

  The Isle of Ely was exactly that — a distant rise of land surrounded by streams, marshes and wetlands, smothered with reeds, scrub and alders, embroidered with ducks and other wading birds. It was a good place for eels — indeed, Sunniva learned that its name meant "Isle of Eels" and there was an old monastery, rumoured to be rich in relics and treasure, dominating the skyline of the island.

  Eldyke was another island rising from the marshes, smaller than the Isle of Ely and more remote, surrounded by marshland and patches of sedge grass. There were wooden trackways through the marshes but Sunniva frowned when she saw them. If she used them as a means of escape she would be quickly spotted in this flat landscape and even more swiftly hunted down along the trackways.

  Besides, what was the point of fleeing if Marc had turned from her?

  She walked out, though, as often as she could. Hrothgar and Wybert accompanied her travels, pointing to the fine wooden gates and timber fencing that bordered their father's home, bragging of how they used nets to catch birds and bring down slaves who tried to flee, describing in detail how they would hunt the wild boar at shallow water-holes and bloodily dispatch them with their spears. Neither spoke of her father, or her cousins. Neither offered her any kind of consolation or sympathy for her loss. Sunniva wondered if they even knew that Cena and her brothers were dead. They never asked her anything, except when prompted by their father.

  Bertolf was another matter. She feared her uncle. As the days went on, his questions concerning her "inheritance" became more pointed. He was impatient when she did not know how many fields Cena had ploughed for wheat, how many cattle he had, how many slaves. His question of slaves brought Sunniva out into a cold sweat but luckily her uncle did not notice: he said that, once she was fit enough to travel, they would visit her lands and he would see for himself.

  "And order them accordingly," he went on. He patted her hand. "Do not trouble yourself, my dear. These matters are for men. Now, which of my boys do you like best, Hrot
hgar or Wybert?"

  Sitting outside with Bertolf on a rare day of sunshine, Sunniva felt as if a black cloud had engulfed her. Fear crawled over her scalp and she was acutely aware of details. The feel of the bench against her legs and back. The sound of a woman milling grain by hand. The shadow of the palisade, shutting her inside this yard of beaten earth and dung. The smell of fire and drying fish turned her faintly sick as she struggled to find an answer without committing herself.

  "I could not say in fairness that I could choose one above the other," she answered, with a steadiness she did not feel. "They are both fine young men, with many worthy qualities. I like them both."

  She closed her eyes, overcome by unwelcome memories. The elder son Hrothgar, who smelt of rancid milk, constantly flicked twigs or pieces of food at her — any missile at all, if she was within a sword's-length of him. That, she assumed, was his way of wooing her. The younger son, Wybert, had pressed himself against her only that morning, while she had been watching the sheep in the pens within the homestead. Under the pretence of pointing out the cracked horn of one of the rams, he stepped right behind her, thrusting her against the wicker hurdles as he leaned over her right shoulder, trying to peer down the bodice of her gown. She felt him hard against her and tried to move away, but his weight imprisoned her.

  "You shall be my favourite tupping ewe," he hissed against her back, rubbing himself against her lewdly.

  "I am in mourning for my father and brothers!" she whispered in return, sensing how fatal it might be if she refused him outright. "Such matters must wait. And are we not, as cousins, too close kin to marry? Your priest will say we cannot, and he will be right."

  "We pay little need to priests in the eel-lands," Wybert replied, brushing aside the church and its teaching. "Whatever that fat old man says, we shall please ourselves. So soon, little ewe..." He gave her left buttock a painful squeeze and then stepped back, departing from the homestead with his hunting net, his steps sure and jaunty.

  And that had been his wooing of her.

  Bertolf cracked his finger-bones one by one and smoothed his beard. "They are, as you say, young."

  "Yes, my lord." In a show of humility, Sunniva lowered her head, sensing her uncle staring at her profile. Bertolf was a widower: was he interested in her for himself? If he was, it was utterly against the laws of the church, totally disgusting to her, but perhaps — just perhaps — this was also a chance for her. It would mean he would allow her to delay any choice between his sons at least for a few more days, until he began to "court" her himself.

  Sunniva closed her eyes briefly. Where are you, Marc? she cried out inside her head. What should I do if you do not come?

  The next day, so far as Sunniva could sense, Bertolf began his own seduction. He invited her on a boating trip to see the bones of a fantastic creature — "A dragon at the very least," he said, with genuinely glowing eyes. For an instant, catching a glimpse of the curious young boy beneath the courtier, Sunniva was touched, and agreed to go with him.

  An hour later, out in a shallow, dug-out long boat with her uncle, her two silent, strapping "maids" and a leather-skinned boatman, she was mentally cursing her own folly. Bertolf made no move toward her, did not touch her except for handing her into the boat, but he positioned himself alongside the oarsman so that he was facing her, and he took an oar — to show off his strength, Sunniva assumed. As she sat between the brooding maids, Bertolf talked throughout their journey.

  "Have you had word from your own people in your lands?" he asked, rowing with a small, jerky stroke that made the oarsman beside him clench his jaw in frustration. Sunniva longed for Marc to be in his place, imagined Marc sculling the light dug-out forward, skimming it across the sunlit, gleaming waters as a boy might throw a pebble. She thought of his long, bronzed arms and powerful, hairy chest, both moving forward and back, lilting towards her, then away, in a tease of activity. She thought of his long, powerful legs, braced against the bottom of the boat, and, most of all, of his smile and his bright eyes.

  "No word at all, then?" Bertolf's question returned her to the present. The pain of her separation from Marc, of his possible abandonment of her, struck her deep in her chest and belly, but she smiled for her uncle and shook her head.

  "I shall look into that for you," Bertolf said.

  "Thank you, uncle."

  His smile faltered a little at that reminder of their being close-kindred, and then reappeared. "This is a beautiful country, is it not?"

  "It is indeed." It was today, Sunniva thought, with the sun bright and glowing, an orange ball high over cool blue and grey waters, with ducks and geese swirling about on the little rivers and across the huge, open skies like brightly-painted leaves. "Very lovely."

  "Nothing so lovely as the jewel that is in this vessel with me. Look at all this!" Bertolf released one hand from his oar to sweep it across the waters and the boat slewed into an underwater bank and stuck there.

  Sunniva kept a straight face and stared off into the sedge grass as the boatman sweated to release them from the sucking mud and Bertolf gave orders and suggestions. Eventually they were on their way again, working up a narrow stream partly choked with water weed and enclosed by huge bulrushes and reed mace, their tips white and sparkling with frost.

  The "dragon" bones were a disappointment to Sunniva, although she was careful not so show it. She and the maids remained in the boat while Bertolf splashed through the mud to another earth-bank where the bones were lying.

  "Look at these teeth!" he was saying, running his hands over the long, curved items. Privately, Sunniva thought the "teeth" matched the description Marc had given her of elephant's tusks, but she agreed with her uncle that they were very fine.

  On the return trip, Bertolf sat beside her in the boat and allowed the oarsman to do the work of rowing them back.

  "You do know that the king cannot allow a woman alone to hold lands?" he said, the instant they were on their way.

  "Naturally," Sunniva agreed pleasantly, more aware of Bertolf's thigh pressing against hers than of any words he was saying. "Thank you for showing me the dragon, uncle."

  He stroked his beard and moustache. "I shall show you more, soon."

  There was no mistaking the desire in his voice. Sunniva turned her head to watch a flight of geese, thinking of the dug-out they were in and the bewildering array of water channels to become lost in. At least on the water she would be hard to track, she decided, folding her borrowed cloak in bunches across her knees.

  First, though, she would have to steal a boat.

  "How long must this mourning for her family go on?" Wybert demanded that evening. "I want to get her bedded and pregnant before the spring. She chattered some nonsense about our being cousins and too close kin, but our priest will not care, will he, father?"

  Bertolf grunted and did not check his stride. He and his two sons were out walking on the trackway. He was meeting someone in the marshes and had brought his boys with him to learn from the encounter. Now he was regretting his decision.

  "What makes you think she will choose you?" jeered Hrothgar, between sucking the last bits of meat from a mutton bone that he had been gnawing on since supper. "She smiles at me. She likes me best."

  "You think every woman fancies you!"

  "Boys, boys," Bertolf said without heat, thinking them both deluded. Sunniva clearly admired older men. Even the Breton was older than her, if only by a few years.

  He pursed his narrow lips, putting aside the delightful prospect of having a willing, amiable Sunniva in his bed as he considered Marc de Sens. Wybert was right about the priest falling in with their plans, but de Sens was going to be a nuisance. His niece had not mentioned the foreigner for days but he had no illusions. She would be thinking of him. She had not asked to see a priest or go to church yet, but he had no doubt that she would. She would want to pray for him. And it would be far better if she did her praying believing that de Sens was dead.

  Chapter 32


  The day after her outing with Bertolf, Sunniva was roused early, while it was still dark. The maid who shook her awake said nothing but indicated by gestures that she should rise and dress. She did so as swiftly as she could in the grey and black murk, her usually strong and steady fingers fumbling with the drawstrings of her gown. The two maids, her "guards", brushed and plaited her hair with no great gentleness, smothered her in a huge fur cloak and walked her between them out of the door.

  Bertolf was waiting for her by the smouldering, low fire, his long face grave and draped in shadows. "You must prepare yourself, my dear," he whispered, offering her his arm for support.

  Wordlessly, Sunniva walked with him past the sleepers in the homestead. Whatever news Bertolf had learned this early, before the rest of the household were awake, must be evil. She dared not ask her greatest horror, her dread that something terrible might have happened to Marc, in case her voicing of that fear made it real.

  From the very rim of her sight she caught movement off to her left and realized Bertolf's two sons were following. Her hope plummeted further. Forgetting for an instant that she no longer had her knives, she touched her waistband, feeling foolish and helpless as her groping hand found nothing. Even the comfort of habit was no comfort now.

  She and Bertolf had reached the outer door and she hesitated on the threshold.

  "You must come, my dear." Her uncle prodded her firmly in her flank and she urged her limbs forward, keen not to have to endure his touch again. Clearly, whatever was out there he would force her to witness it.

  Please let it not be Marc, nor anything to do with Marc. Please, Freya, let it not be his nieces. I could not bear that. Let no harm have come to them. Please. Please.

  She was still praying when she felt the cold damp air smack against her face and opened her eyes to stare down at whatever she must face.

  There were a circle of men in the yard, their features indistinguishable in the low light and cloud of fog. Mist was rising everywhere, blurring the tops of the palisade, muffling the restive bleatings of the sheep still housed within the homestead. The men parted to let her and Bertolf into their midst.