Kim Iverson Headlee Read online

  Alain recoiled as if he’d been struck. “Why should I?”

  “You are the scout. You tell me.”

  “To see the woman and her land for myself?”

  Ruaud tapped a finger on his nose. “If she is not to your liking, you have lost nothing.”

  “Nothing except the easiest way to sidestep this matter.” Alain took another pull. “And how would you propose I explain the deception if I choose to reveal myself?”

  “A jest, a harmless ruse. Some portion of the truth. All of it, even.” Ruaud scrunched a shoulder. “You are clever enough to think of something suitable.”

  Alain had no desire to think of a suitable reason, no desire to come within five leagues of Edgarburh. “I leave for France tonight, with or without your help.”

  “You are serious.” Ruaud sucked in a long, contemplative breath. “Very well. I will no doubt regret this, but I will do as you ask.” The woman returned with a full flagon, which Ruaud took and raised to Alain. “And I hope the bitch of Edgarburh will be easier on the eyes,” he bellowed, “than this mongrel of a serving wench.”

  The two Saxons Alain had noticed earlier exchanged a glance, rose from their table with a clatter of toppling benches, and stomped toward Ruaud. Well muscled, they moved with the wary grace of seasoned warriors. Alain’s senses sharpened to danger.

  “What did you say, you Norman pig?” said one of the men in flawless French. “It is bad enough that you loot our land, but I will not listen to you insult our women.”

  Ruaud’s face flushed dark red as he stood, swaying, to meet the challenger. He and the Saxon were of a size and build that promised an equal match. The second Saxon hung back, perhaps waiting for Alain’s move. Odo’s men rose, fists on hips.

  The regent would not be pleased to hear of a tavern brawl. William had urged his knights not to drink in public places and had charged the coregents with enforcing the fragile peace. Alain studied the faces, measuring the fury glittering in each pair of eyes.

  “My good sirs,” he said in lightly accented English as he stood. “This little jest is not worth a fight. My friend will apologize to the woman, if that is agreeable to you.”

  The second Saxon gaped at Alain. “Who are you? You dress like a Norman and associate with one, and yet you speak our language as if you were born to it.”

  Alain inclined his head. “I am Norman by my father, Hugh FitzWalter. My mother was English. After my father’s death, she took me to the London court of good King Edward.” He summoned his courtliest smile. “It would not be seemly to profane the king’s blessed memory by brawling in the town where his widow yet lives, agreed?”

  Ruaud turned to Alain, eyebrows puckered. “What say you? You speak the English too fast.”

  “I told them you will apologize to the serving woman,” he whispered rapidly in French. “Which you will do, and then we will leave. There is much to be done ere I depart for Anjou.”

  Ruaud hesitated, his gaze shifting from Alain to the Saxons, Odo’s knights, and back to Alain. He shrugged. “As you wish.” He signaled to the serving woman, who answered his summons with alacrity. Ruaud swept her a bow. “My apologies, good woman,” he said in French, “if my jest insulted you.”

  The woman shook her head, clearly mystified.

  “My friend apologizes for any bad behavior,” Alain explained to her. He withdrew a farthing from the pouch at his belt and pressed it into her callused palm. “We would not want the fine people of Winchester to think Norman knights are ill-mannered.”

  “Thank’e, my lord. You’re a fair-speaking man, you are.” Her grin did nothing to alleviate her homeliness. She pocketed the coin, curtseyed, and continued about her business.

  The two Saxons nodded grudging approval. Alain and Ruaud bade farewell to the regent’s men and strode toward the steps.

  “I left half a flagon of ale,” Ruaud complained.

  “Better to waste ale than blood.” An image of his brother’s lifeless body tortured his mind. He tried to banish the scene, and the guilt it evoked, without success.

  He could almost feel the hot stares of the Saxon warriors burning into his back. He ascended the stairs into the soft evening light and began a brisk westward hike toward the far gate of the ancient walled city and Regent Odo’s half-built hall, where Alain and Ruaud would spend their only night in Winchester. Ruaud lumbered along beside him.

  “I still think this plan of yours is a bad idea,” Ruaud said, “but I suppose I owe you something for averting that trouble in the tavern.”

  “My thanks for your help. This will work out for the best, you will see.”

  Ruaud grunted.

  The street wasn’t busy, probably owing to the fact that most residents had retired to their evening meal, if the beefy aromas wafting on the breeze gave any clue. Alain’s stomach rumbled. He and Ruaud hadn’t walked far when a mounted courier rounded a corner and sped toward them. The courier reined his mount to a sliding stop.

  “Sir Robert Alain de Bellencombre?” When Alain nodded once, the courier said, “Well met, Sir Robert. Regent Odo commands your presence in his private audience chamber.”

  “Now? What about?” The courier shrugged. Alain’s spine tingled a warning. He plucked at his damp tunic that reeked of the tavern, no thanks to Ruaud, and curbed a sigh. “Then I would appreciate the loan of your horse to make better time.” He spared a wan grin for his friend, who looked none too steady on his feet. “And your assistance to accompany Sir Ruaud back to our quarters in Regent Odo’s hall.”

  “Understood, my lord.” The courier dismounted and held the bridle for Alain.

  “I do not need a nursemaid,” Ruaud muttered as Alain mounted.

  “Tell me that again if you are still awake after I return.” He turned the gelding about, dug heels into the horse’s flanks, and clattered off.

  Two hours later, Ruaud not only was very much awake—and sober—but demanding every detail.

  “Thieves. Hellish beasts. Grisly deaths. Rumors of curses and practitioners of the black arts.” Alain ground the words between his teeth as if that could somehow solve his problem. Ruaud’s cocked eyebrow bade him to explain. “The regent has received dozens of reports from the monks and merchants in the Glastonbury district, two days’ ride west of Edgarburh. God alone knows how much of it has been exaggerated. Regent Odo has ordered me to investigate and enforce the king’s laws there.”

  Clasping his hands behind his head and tipping his chair backward on two legs, Ruaud stretched his unshod feet toward the fire. “I thought that was the local thane’s task.”

  “Apparently that thane is not preserving the peace.” Bitterness overpowered Alain’s tone.

  The chair’s front legs came down with a sharp thud. “The father of the woman you are commanded to marry?”

  “Ulfric of Thornhill. The regent wants me to learn why he has not stopped the mayhem.”

  Alain spat onto the slate floor. That, for plans. Evading an unwanted wedding was one thing. No power under heaven could make him shirk duty to king and country when people’s lives stood at risk.

  Restoring order to Glastonbury might begin to atone for his failure to protect Étienne.

  He stared into the snapping gold flames, questing for answers and finding only more questions. Nothing could ever atone for his broken vows.

  Ruaud’s chair grated on the slate as he turned, grinning. “You will go to Edgarburh posing as my squire.”

  Alain wrenched himself from his depressing thoughts to regard Ruaud. “You’re joking!” Ruaud’s grin widened. “Dear God above, you’re not joking.”

  “You are too old, of course, but that comely face of yours makes you seem youthful enough if no one looks closely.” Alain snorted in denial. “Well,” Ruaud pressed, “have you a better solution to scout the land, the lady, Thane Ulfric, the outlaws, and heaven knows what else is plaguing the people? I have seen many a man quake dumbstruck in front of a knight and moments later reveal all to a lowly squire.”


  “True enough. It may work.” Alain fingered his chin. “If I can keep myself from drawing undue attention.”

  Ruaud chuckled. “That could pose a problem. The ladies always notice you.”

  “The ladies notice this.” Alain looped a finger through the lone symbol of knighthood he wore when not armed, a thick gold chain draped over the finely tooled leather jerkin he’d donned for his audience with the regent.

  “You are wrong, my friend. Your face has been collecting hearts all over London for weeks. You have been brooding too much to notice. So, what will you call yourself, squire?”

  “Alain,” he snapped, irritated at Ruaud’s blithe attitude. In the next breath, he recognized the reaction’s unworthiness and gave Ruaud an apologetic smile. “I do appreciate your help.” Thankful that his preferred name was common enough to avoid suspicion, he pursed his lips, trying to construct an innocuous surname. This evening’s tavern flashed to mind, Sign of the Rose. It reminded him of his shield’s device: a white rose nestled in a graceful tangle of greenery, symbolic of the Norman town of his birth, Bellencombre, “pretty entanglement.” His lips parted into a smile that felt more genuine. “Call me Alain Bellefleur.”

  Outlaws, hellish beasts, and mysterious deaths. Sorcery. An English estate. And a woman he must claim as his bride before claiming her land.

  Alain felt more like a thief than the men he’d been commanded to bring to justice. His smile vanished.

  He stood, crossed to the slotted window, braced his hands on the cold stone ledge, and gazed at the partially constructed towers rising above the castle’s far wall. The carpenters, stonemasons, and other workmen had long since returned home for the night. The scaffolding, barely visible in the twilight’s final moments, made the structures look as delicate as a child’s pebble-and-twig fantasy.

  Given time, many other Norman castles would defend the English countryside. He hoped it wasn’t a childish fantasy to believe that someday, God willing, one of those castles would be his, with or without Lady Kendra Waldronsdotter of Edgarburh at his side.

  Preferably, for her sake as much as his, without.

  STROKING THE black velvet cord at her neck, Kendra inspected the rosebushes, engrossed in her evening ritual of selecting the best bloom with which to adorn Del’s sarcophagus at vespers. This was the one blessed moment of her day not devoted to either the burh’s mundane concerns or preparations for her impending marriage…or to meaningless oblations to a God who’d turned a blind eye to the Norman sword that had cut her brother down.

  Although the gardens perfuming the expanse between Edgarburh’s church and manor house were not private, by tacit agreement no one disturbed her, for which she felt abundantly grateful. Here amidst the sanctity of the roses, gifts from Del the spring following their mother’s death, she could reflect upon the whirlwind her life had become since her father had returned from King William’s coronation.

  Waldron’s news had been just as bad for Kendra as Del’s death had been for their father. He’d been unable to secure from the king a firm promise to investigate Del’s attack. And, worse yet, Waldron had been “strongly encouraged”—forced, in her opinion—to establish a date for the arrival of Sir Robert de Bellencombre, her Norman bridegroom.

  Because of the severity of Sir Robert’s battle wounds, Waldron had selected mid-June, giving her more of a reprieve than she’d expected, but her vows lay in grave danger of being compromised.

  Even with the delay, she’d had no choice but to spend her every free moment preparing her wedding garments, dreading with each stitch the dawning of the day when Sir Robert would ride up to claim her like a sack of plunder. Today was the eve of that hateful day.

  For pride’s sake, she’d made each stitch perfect and each seam straight and sturdy, applying the same exacting standards to her maidservants’ work. To Hedda and Rowena she assigned the tasks of crafting her soft linen undertunic and bedgown, while Kendra embroidered the midnight-blue overtunic and scalloped the paler veil’s hem. She could not bear the thought of her own hands making the clothes she would be wearing when this Norman would force himself upon her in their bridal chamber. His coarse, violent fingers and rancid breath, his sweaty body crushing hers beneath him, his bony hips grinding against hers to make their union legal in the eyes of Church and King, mayhap making an heir in the process…the imagery made her flesh crawl.

  Chafing her arms, she returned to the decision at hand, which she had narrowed to two candidates: a red and a white, growing on adjacent bushes, their stems slanting toward each other as if striving to entwine. Both were flawless blossoms, full and fragrant. But she always laid a single rose on Del’s tomb, over the place on his effigy where his heart would have been. By this time on the morrow, whichever of the two flowers she did not select would be opened past its prime, its petals beginning to curl and die.

  Which rose should I choose?

  Red for Del’s heart or white for his soul? Red for the blood spattered with his final breath? Or white for the snow swirling outside that night, the snow embodying her fervent wish for his recovery?

  The vespers bell startled her. She whipped her head around to see the laborers lay down their tools and head toward the church.

  She glanced at the bushes swaying in the breeze. Her two favorites had blown closer, petals brushing.

  Which one?

  Red for her vow not to marry the countryman of her brother’s murderer, or white for her promise to seek happiness?

  The bell tolled again, sounding more insistent.

  Her ivory-hilted dagger flashed in the shortening sunlight. Both roses fell into her basket.

  She sheathed the dagger and hurried toward the church as fast as decorum allowed, making sure her necklace did not slip free of her tunic. She harbored no secret that she wore at her bosom a slim silver case containing a lock of Del’s hair, cut from his head the night of his death by the dagger he’d given her and taught her to wield. Those who didn’t understand might consider her practice idolatrous, however, so she kept it hidden.

  Inside the main doors, she genuflected before the altar and moved to her customary place near Del’s sarcophagus, where his remains guarded the church’s entrance and their mother’s tomb. His sarcophagus’s newly completed marble panel depicted Del, limned in gold, standing within the ranks of King Harold’s doomed shield wall. Upon their father’s orders, Del’s shield bore the family’s bent blue bar rather than the cocked arm-and-fist variant Del had carried into that fateful battle.

  If ignorant generations later presumed that Sir Delwin Waldronson of Edgarburh had lost his life at Hastings, so much the better. The truth was hard enough to bear without sharing it with the rest of the world.

  While Father Æthelward mumbled through the service to the choir’s less than tuneful responses, she took advantage of her position, screened by the other worshippers, to finish adorning Del’s tomb. She picked up the previous day’s offering, a yellow rose that reminded her of their friendship. The rose’s head hung as if in mourning, its petals already falling. Heedless of the thorns, she pressed it to her chest before stooping to lay it in her basket, along with the loose petals she swept from the lid. She would save these with the others in the tall earthen jar in her quarters, to be strewn on her wedding day, providing she could find a way to keep both vows.

  No boorish Norman would trample these sacred flowers underfoot.

  She hoped her brother’s memory would never wilt, but as the weeks had stretched into months, she found it harder to preserve his features in her mind’s eye, and it goaded her grief.

  Running her fingers over his cool granite effigy helped. The image faithfully portrayed Del as fair of face and broad of shoulder and brawny of limb, facing death as he had life: head-on and arrayed for battle, his hands folded in eternal prayer. The only missing detail was his smile.

  Her heart ached. That Godforsaken Norman sword may as well have pierced her too.

  She blinked and retrieved
the red and white roses. Avoiding the thorns, she twisted the stems together. The white’s stem was much longer than the red’s, casting the illusion that it overshadowed the other. She separated them and adjusted the stems to make the blossoms even. Pleased with the effect, she kissed both and laid them on the effigy in time to ease to her knees with the rest of the congregation.

  After the priest’s prayers ended and people began shuffling past her, she kept her eyes closed and head bowed, adding her silent petition for the redemption of Del’s soul and for the means to fulfill her vows.

  “Daughter. Walk with me.”

  Her father was looming over her, his arms crossed and face stern. She swallowed hard. Such a look brooked no disobedience.

  Gazing at Del’s tomb, he sighed, expression softening. “Come.” He offered his hand to help her rise, which she accepted with resignation. Tensions had flared between them since his return from London, and she braced herself for another bout.

  She genuflected again, grasped her basket’s handle, and turned to accompany Waldron from the church. Not across the yard to the feast hall, as she’d expected, since that was where most Edgarburh business—including private matters—transpired, but past the garden toward the manor house. In silence they ascended the outer wooden staircase, entered the building, and trod the corridor containing the bedchambers. Specifically, she realized with a start when their course became apparent, Waldron’s.

  Several paces from their destination, curiosity compelled her to blurt, “What’s wrong?”

  Pulling up short, he gave her an odd look. “Wrong? Let me see.” He snorted, ticking the points on his fingers. “Taxes are due ere long, and the tenants have barely recovered from the war to scrape together their payments. A Norman is on his way to take possession of my daughter and the estate.” Waldron’s gray eyes gazed at her levelly. “My son is dead, and my daughter acts like a widow rather than a bride.” He inclined his head at the black woolen veil she wore even as these final spring days warmed toward summer.

  This time it wasn’t the sun that made her face heat. “My choices honor Del’s memory.” She gripped the basket with both fists, raising it before her like a shield. “Do yours?”