Her fingers automatically flew to her waistband, then to her mouth as she gasped at the sight before her. She was glad of the mist, before she realized that she must look closer: she would have to know if this still, stiff figure was anyone she knew.
It was a man, stretched out on his side as if in sleep, but his wounds meant that he would never wake. In the dim light and fog, the blood on his tunic front and leggings looked black. Half his face was missing, gouged away by some kind of weapon — Sunniva feared that it might have been a spade. His hair was cropped in the Norman style. His cloak was foreign: the embroidery along its neckband was English but the weave of the cloth she did not recognize.
"This poor creature is a stranger to our district," Bertolf murmured, his voice oozing fake concern. "We must know for our own peace if he is Norman or not: our new king will fine us heavily unless we can prove that he is English. I fear, my dear, that he is your man, Marc de Sens."
"Roll him onto his back," Sunniva heard herself say.
The circle about the corpse glanced as one man at Bertolf, who nodded. The murdered man was turned over, his ruined head leaking blood and other matter. Sunniva raked her fists into her fur cloak, gripping tightly as she struggled not to be sick. The stranger was tall, with brown hair, and well-made, with strongly-muscled thighs and arms.
"He has no sword," she whispered. "Where was he found?"
Bertolf jutted his chin at the nearest in the small crowd, a wiry, bald marsh-man with a ragged patch over his left eye and carrying a staff on his shoulder. He replied in the local dialect, pointing into the fog.
"On the trackway, about half a mile from here," Bertolf translated.
"He was alone? No horse? No dogs? No pack?"
More murmurings between her uncle and the crowd, then Bertolf said, "They have carried him here even as you see. There was nothing more with him, neither man nor beast."
"Where did he come from? How? By boat? Did anyone see him approach? When was he found?"
"Early this morning." Bertolf shook his head at her other questions and did not even attempt to ask his people. "No one knows more."
Forcing her stiffened body to obey her, Sunniva knelt beside the figure. She could not look for long at the mutilated head, so tried to focus on the body and on what she knew: the clothes. She touched his long cloak and his tunic. The wool cloth felt less fine than she would have expected from English wool. Through the drawstrings of his tunic she saw a long cut running raggedly across his chest: the mark of a blade where someone had tried to slash his throat? She swallowed a mouthful of bitter bile and leaned closer, drawing his cloak off his shoulders by her fingertips.
Then she saw it, a tattoo. A blue tattoo on the man's arm. Shocked, she sat down in the dirt and began to cry.
"Call her women to come and fetch her," Bertolf ordered. "She has seen enough."
That lunch-time Bertolf allowed Sunniva to remain in her room and have a maid bring food to her. She ate a little, wept again, and lay down on her bed. The maid covered her with her fur cloak and a few rough blankets and left her to sleep away her grief.
Snug under the cloak and blankets, Sunniva did not move. She allowed the maid to leave and heard the door open and sensed her uncle enter. Again she did not stir, not even when she realized that Bertolf was not alone.
"Why do you not take her now and be done with it?" a strange male voice demanded.
"It will be better this way," said Bertolf. "A willing bed-partner is easier."
"What of this Norman king? This Christian king?"
"I will keep her here. William will not know she is alive."
"And her estates will pass to you?"
Nothing more was said but Sunniva sensed that Bertolf and his companion were convinced of the outcome. Listening to these unpleasant revelations, she felt no surprise: it merely hardened her determination. When the chance came, she would need to be ready.
As the day slipped away towards evening, she stirred and tottered down into the homestead to go to the midden. The maids went with her. She motioned to her stomach and scowled and they nodded and stood guard while she braved the slops and dung of the midden. Again and again she did this: retiring to her room, lying down, sitting up and staggering downstairs clutching her belly, the maids hovering behind, trying not to smile as she groaned on her way to the privy. As twilight fell and torches were being lit in the homestead, the knowing smirks of the maids had changed into looks of sullen boredom. Finally, when Sunniva did not even attempt the stairs after one of her interminable trips outside but turned instead to return to the midden, the two maids busied themselves looking for something on the rush-strewn floor — perhaps a missing armlet, or a string of beads — and left her to it.
Sunniva hauled herself to the midden and then kept going, edging her way along the palisade, walking far more slowly than she could. If anyone challenged her, she would claim she was disoriented, lost, but no one noticed. As she had hoped it might be, the fog was her ally.
She had taken the precaution in her last but one trip to the midden of hiding a drab blanket there and retrieving it on her final visit. The dark cloth hid her completely and made her look like one of the marsh-women — an old, bent marsh-woman, wheezing her way to the water-side, to check on her fish-traps. She passed through the main gate, grunting a greeting that she had often heard in these parts to the guard. He let her though with a dreary wave of his spear, staring at her as something to watch as she plodded along the trackway; a small figure buried in an old blanket and surrounded by rising river-mist.
Sunniva waited until the track twisted into a bank of tall reeds and then she began to run.
She soon found a boat, an old, warped hollowed-out log of a boat that had been abandoned in a reed-bed close to the trackway. Blessing her luck and using an alder branch as a pole, she floated herself out into the endless rivers and streams of the fens. She listened constantly for any hue and cry but there was nothing: as she had hoped, the fog still worked in her favour and no one was abroad. If her luck held, her maids might even assume that she had crawled back from the midden to her chamber. She had left the blankets there in a coiled, hunched shape suggestive of a body: her maids might suspect nothing until morning.
She meanwhile travelled all night, drifting and using her alder pole to stop the listing boat from running aground. Now, looking for somewhere to hide out during the day, she admitted that she had no idea where she was.
Strangely, she did not feel disturbed by this at first. Instead, she found that her mood veered wildly from jubilation to despair. She was glad, so very glad, that she had escaped from Eldyke, away from her uncle. But always on the heels of that giddy rush of pleasure were her dark, dragging feelings surrounding Marc, who was lost to her.
I must not think of that now, she told herself, but her mind would not obey her wish: it dwelt, too, on the body that she had been forced to look at during that brutal display. The image of the murdered man played on the insides of her eyelids as she squirmed in the bottom of the log boat, trying and failing to sleep. After only a short time she gave up altogether and moved on, relishing the simple action of poling the boat onwards, deeper into a small stream bordered by reeds.
She was now permanently damp, the wetness of the marsh felting stickily against her head and hands, any part of her that was not covered. As day broke she realized that the fog was not going to lift today. It had a way of seeping across everything, cloudy and muffling, smothering the outlines of the reed beds and the water until she longed for a sight of clear lines and a glimpse of the sun. She missed trees in this low landscape of bulrushes, bare-stemmed reeds and grasses, and she missed land she could be sure of — whenever she used the pole to test for solid ground, she found it sinking into foul-smelling mud.
Panic boiled in the bottom of her mind but she refused to admit to it. She was free of Bertolf and his sons, that was enough. These marshes would not continue forever. She would find a way out of them.
Unl
ess I am going round in circles...
Hours or minutes later — she had no way of gauging time in this place — Sunniva stopped poling for a moment and allowed the boat to drift. Panting, she rubbed her aching arms and then her stomach, wishing now that she had eaten more of the last meal provided for her by her uncle. But her eating sparingly then, and her pretend stomach illness, had been part of a larger ploy to throw Bertolf and his people off-guard so she could escape more easily. It had worked, but she was very hungry.
Worse than hunger, though, was shame. After seeing that dead body, she understood now why Marc had been so devastated by her offer to fight in his place. She was no warrior, and all the pretty knife-throwing skills she had would not make her one. Battle was ugly and trial by battle just as ugly and unpredictable as any other kind of murder. Marc had been right to be angry and alarmed with her.
Again, the ghastly picture of the murdered man rippled on the waters as Sunniva tried to fight off tears. Trembling, she rubbed a hand across her hot eyes and then froze, shocked into stillness by a new sound.
"Hey! Hey!" A man's voice calling across the marshes.
"Hey! Hey!" His cry was answered by another voice.
"Hey! Hey!" And now a third.
Sunniva flung herself into the bottom of the boat, desperately trying to pin-point where the voices were coming from. She thought the second was closest to her but she was not sure. She was not sure of distance, either: where the men near or far? Were they seeking her?
Who else would they be looking for?
"Saint Freya, help me!" she whispered, paralyzed by indecision. She had not expected Bertolf or his followers to come so far so quickly. Should she move? If she did, would they hear her?
There was a dull splash somewhere in the main flow of water and a few moments later, the same yipping cries: "Hey! Hey!"
A dog barked, once. A duck broke cover so close to her that Sunniva almost screamed. She flinched, the boat rocking beneath her, water spilling into it and threatening to sink the ungainly vessel. Using her hands she bailed, expecting at any instant that her own soft splashing would be discovered and targeted.
Her boat was moving, deeper into the choking mass of grasses, then bursting through and out into another channel, this one with faster flowing water. Afraid to stir in case she gave her position away, Sunniva dared not bail any more. Ignoring the water lapping against her flanks, she sank deeper into the boat, and allowed it to bear her off.
Faster and faster the boat sped, the fog enveloping its wake. Sunniva gave herself over to the motion and the water nibbling at her sides no longer seemed cold now, but warm. Comforted, exhausted, she sank into sleep.
A ruddy glow burned against her eyelids. Her whole body was tingling painfully, smarting as if she had been whipped with thistles. Strong hands were kneading her flesh, rubbing her back and belly. She opened her eyes and mouth to protest.
"Hush!" said Marc, massaging her calves and thighs with a sheepskin cloak. "We are hidden for the moment, but not if you shout."
He blew warmly in both her ears and drew her into a sitting position, bracing her back against his knee. "Drink this."
Sunniva sipped at a steaming cup of a fishy broth and almost choked.
"Drink it all," Marc warned. "We need to get you warm."
Obediently Sunniva drank.
"Now sleep," Marc ordered. "I will tend the fire and keep us safe."
"Are you a dream?" she asked. "My uncle told me you were dead."
"And you believed him?"
"I believed the tattoo I saw on a dead man," Sunniva answered, with a yawn. Her body felt to be blazing with heat now, but she was still tired. So very tired....
Chapter 33
Marc added more dried pine cones from his pack to the small fire, glancing around the nest of dried reeds that he had gathered together on this island of thickly-growing reeds, sedge grass and bulrush. Recalling the "dens" he had made in the Breton marshes when he was a boy, he was glad to have remembered how to do it, especially here, in these chill, fog-bound fens, where even the reeds were brown and leafless, barren except for their fluffy seed-heads.
The mist was both enemy and friend. It was a shield at present, saving Sunniva and himself from unwanted attention. But it could so easily have been deadly. He and Sunniva might have passed a thousand times within a boat's length of each other and never known it.
When he considered how lucky, how fortunate he had been to spot Sunniva toiling in these marsh waters, he was caught somewhere in a state between gratitude and terror. As he lay down beside her sleeping form and took her little body in his arms to comfort and warm her further, he was mortified to find that he was shaking.
No fear this, or cold, but relief. The good of all those pilgrimages that he had made had come together today. Only the guidance of King Christ and all his saints could have made his finding of Sunniva possible.
Still he shook like a skittish horse, his teeth grinding together as he fought the weakness in his body. He felt tears run down the sides of his nose and into his ears but made no move to wipe them off: it would have meant releasing Sunniva.
I will never let her go, he vowed. I have no true life without her.
We must be together.
Being without her had been a hell on earth. When he had left the court in pursuit of her — even William had sense enough not to try to stop him — he had gathered up Ragnar Fire-Breeches and his men and stormed Bertolf's London house. A terrified servant there had quickly told him that Bertolf had another house, far from the city amidst the fenlands. Marc had guessed at once that Bertolf would have arranged for Sunniva be taken there. Begging Ragnar to remain in London with his nieces, and sending word across the sea for his mother to come with an escort to the city and join them — for he wanted his women-folk all together — Marc set out alone to track Sunniva down.
He had been eleven days seeking her, three on horseback and the rest by boat. He had been sorry to sell his horse — not his war-charger Theo — for a rowing-boat but it had been necessary: threading through these fens was quicker by boat than on foot, whether two feet or four.
Sunniva's knives left in church had been a sign from those who had kidnapped her on behalf of her grasping uncle. In his own homelands he had seen such spiral patterns on ancient standing stones, some still worshipped by the marsh-folk of his lands. He knew them to be a pagan people, far from the ways of the church. The thought of Sunniva in their hands had been a terrible spur, but, because of his knowledge of the Breton marsh-folk, he had known where to look in the fens. He knew the signs such pagans left each other, and he knew where to look for them: scratched onto elder trees or tall boulders, or feathers tied onto reeds where the water-lily flowered in summer, or spirals of grass hanging from posts set in the midst of brooks where three streams met. He sought such signs and they told him the story: a golden woman — symbolized by a golden feather — taken to the fastness of the lord, in a place called -
That was where his reading of the signs had failed Marc. He had understood the golden feather, the crescent moon and antler scratches on wood for the lord, but the strange, flowing symbol for the place had eluded him. Reduced to seeking out every scrap of rising land in case Bertolf's homestead was on one of the many islands in these marshes, he had hunted for days and nights. He did not sleep for three days — he did not want to stop. He grudged every moment he was not looking for Sunniva. He ate stale bread on the move and drank water straight from the streams. Tonight was the first night he had made a fire, indeed the first night he had stopped.
And he had almost missed her. Only the shouts of her pursuers had alerted him that Sunniva was close. His first sight of her, through the fog and reeds, had been like the blessing of God, lifting his heart sky-high and shattering his weariness. Thinking of the moment when he had slid beneath the waters to grab Sunniva's ponderous log boat and guide her to safety, he remembered how fiercely his heart had been beating, how much he had longed to shout t
o her, tell her he was there. But he dared not — not with Bertolf's men so close.
Those bastards were still close, but they would not catch Sunniva. He was determined that no one would touch her again, unless it were by her will.
She had been so cold when he had made himself known to her, as pale as a primrose frosted with ice. It had taken a good deal to warm her and he prayed she had taken no lasting hurt from her long exposure.
Please, King Christ, visit your wrath on me. She does not deserve such punishment.
He rocked her, brushing a streamer of hair from her flushed face. Tomorrow, if the fog persisted, he would cook fish for her: she needed feeding. There would be crayfish here, and eels, of course. This was where she had been taken, to an eel island.
Marc smiled grimly, staring into the mist.
He must have slept, for his next sight was of a golden feather, tickling across his chin. He sighed and raised a hand to scratch his face and Sunniva drew back.
"Hello, little one, you need not stop for me." He smiled and kissed the hanging lock of gold hair dangling above him. "Why the frown, sweeting?"
"You are so thin," she breathed. "I can feel your ribs."
"Searching for you has made me starve," Marc answered, instantly regretting his teasing as her face crumpled altogether. "No, I did not mean —”
He folded her against him as she wept, cursing his own insensitivity and wishing he had never spoken. "I am sorry," he said. "Can we not begin again?"
Can we? Her eyes asked. Even in the fog her face was bright with feeling and memory. He, too, remembered: his foolish pride and anger at her selfless courage, his filthy threats of "Later." He had made her endure "Later" before, so was it any wonder she was nervous?
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 52