Kim Iverson Headlee Read online

Page 7


  Not to mention the fact that the Church discouraged such claims with the threat of excommunication—or worse, which explained why Edwina had never spoken to Kendra of her gift.

  Kendra had refused to leave the farmhouse before exacting a vow from the boy’s mother to keep her opinions about Kendra’s miraculous healing powers to herself.

  “And that gorgeous Norman squire…” Spewing crumbs, Rowena uttered a noise halfway between a sigh and a moan. She brushed her mouth with the back of her hand and grinned at Kendra. “What do you think of him, my lady?”

  Kendra looked away, seeking the men her father had sent with her. The fyrd veteran, Cæwlin, had taken the much younger Oswy to the far side of the hillock to spar with their swords, leaving no hope of a diversion from that quarter.

  She stared crossly at their horses as they cropped grass a few paces away. Because she was trying not to think of the squire, her nerves felt bowstring taut. She leveled her glare at Rowena. “I am duty-bound to wed another. What am I supposed to think of him?”

  A wounded look rippled across Rowena’s features. “Your pardon, my lady. I meant no harm, truly.” Glancing down, Rowena chewed her bottom lip. Her eyes widened, and the chewing stilled. “My lady, do you think—” She slid a shy, apologetic look toward Kendra. “Could there be a chance he might notice me?”

  According to the servants’ gossip, which Kendra tried to ignore but wasn’t always successful, Rowena’s long auburn hair and pleasantly shaped figure attracted the gaze of every man she met, providing Kendra wasn’t in the immediate vicinity. Studying the woman now, she could well believe the rumors.

  However, she suspected that Squire Alain was not just “any man.” His poise, manners, and language skills bespoke service to kings, not the boorish knight whom he had followed to Edgarburh.

  Who was this man?

  Mayhap the squire had done something to displease King William, who had ordered him into Sir Ruaud’s service as punishment. She suppressed a snort and downed a mouthful of ale. As entertaining as that idea might be, it didn’t fit what she’d observed of the Normans’ easy camaraderie. Nor did it make sense that he owed Sir Ruaud a debt. They behaved more like friends than master and servant. Kinsmen, then?

  A thought jarred her. She hid her reactions behind another swig of ale.

  Squire Alain probably was already involved with another woman; if not married, then surely betrothed. Kendra wasn’t prepared for the rush of jealousy, and the ale soured in her mouth. She swallowed hard. But if he had another woman, why was he making such blatant attempts to flirt with Kendra?

  Was he a rogue who used his charm and physical appeal to conquer women?

  An even more disturbing idea struck her like a slap in the face. Had Sir Robert sent Squire Alain to test her steadfastness?

  She resolved to be doubly mindful of her words and deeds around him.

  ’Twas a precaution she had no wish to take.

  Kendra engrossed herself in removing a pebble from her shoe, wishing Squire Alain could be as easily dislodged from her mind. Realizing Rowena was silent for the first time all day, she glanced at the woman, whose eager expression reminded her that she owed the maidservant an answer.

  Would the squire notice Rowena and be attracted to her? Kendra suspected not, but she replied, “I hope so.”

  After replacing her shoe, she finished her ale and sent Rowena to fill the skin with water from the nearby stream. Humming, the maidservant glided off, hips swaying as though she were practicing her wiles for her next meeting with the Norman squire. With a smile and brief shake of her head, Kendra reached for her saddle pack to assess its contents. She still possessed a reasonable supply of dried elder, comfrey, chamomile, linden, willow bark, and lady’s mantle, though the ground valerian root was almost gone. Salves also had been in high demand, especially those for fighting wound fevers. She gazed sunward. Time aplenty to visit at least two more farms on this, the eve of the longest day of the year, before finding a place to retire for the night.

  The vibrating ground alerted her to the presence of riders. The copse crowned a hillock yielding a fair view of the stream and surrounding pastures, and she located the riders. They were headed straight for her position. Cæwlin and Oswy stopped sparring, weapons still drawn, to watch the horsemen approach. Kendra squinted into the distance but couldn’t recognize them. There seemed to be five or six. Men from the fyrd, she presumed. Or mayhap her father was showing Sir Ruaud the estate, although why they were approaching from the west, when Edgarburh lay miles to the east, puzzled her.

  If it was indeed her father and Sir Ruaud, she tried not to imagine who else might be riding with them.

  Shrugging, she rose and caught Hilde before the mare got the notion to join the procession without her. Rowena had led her mount down the bank to the stream, which seemed like a fine idea. Kendra secured the saddle pack, checked the girth, tugged on Hilde’s reins, and walked down the gentle slope, choosing a spot a few paces from Rowena and her gelding. Hilde slurped the calmly flowing water.

  The whine of an arrow and a startled outcry made Kendra turn. Cæwlin had slumped to his knees and was struggling to remove the shaft embedded in his shoulder.

  “Away, my lady!” Oswy yelled as he ran for his horse.

  Shouting for Rowena, she grabbed the reins, scrambled atop Hilde, set heels to flanks, and galloped across the stream. She despised having to leave Cæwlin and uttered a prayer for his life, and her entire party’s. Crouched low over the mare’s neck, she had no idea whether the hoofbeats pursuing her belonged to the mounts of friend or foe.

  Screams and the clash of arms erupted behind her, and she slowed her mare to look back. And wished she hadn’t. Oswy, engaged with two of the intruders, was struck in the head. He fell with a sickening thud and did not move. Rowena stood shivering in the grasp of a third man. The other two, still mounted, were bearing down upon Kendra with frightening speed.

  With Hilde already laboring for breath, Kendra had no hope of outrunning them. Heart pounding, she halted her mare.

  “Fortune smiles upon us,” boomed one man. “She’s given us gold treasure ripe for the plundering.” Both laughed coarsely.

  Cheeks aflame, she turned her mare to regard the men, who bore the ugliest faces she’d ever seen, their expressions rank with greed and lust. Their hair and beards were scraggly, their teeth broken, black, or missing. Scars crossed every inch of exposed flesh. The men’s leather tunics and breeches were badly tanned, rancid, and patched in several places, and their boots had fared little better. Incongruously, their horses seemed sleek and well fed, if winded.

  The men probably had stolen them.

  Swallowing her fears, she squared her shoulders, thrust out her chin, and declared, “I have no gold.” Her deliberate misinterpretation of the jest prompted another round of guffaws. She had to raise her voice to continue. “You are welcome to my medicines and food if you will leave me and my servants in peace.” She’d need salve and bandages to tend Cæwlin and Oswy if either man was still alive, but the sick pit in her stomach cautioned her not to harbor such thoughts.

  “We care naught for your supplies, Lady Kendra of Edgarburh,” said a mountain of a man whose face featured a pale red scar on the left side from eye ridge to lip.

  She gasped at his knowledge of her rank and name.

  Grinning, he raised a hand. The others rode up to circle her, leaving Oswy where he lay. Kendra’s mare shifted nervously. She knew exactly how Hilde felt.

  The leader dismounted and sauntered toward Kendra at the speed of a cat toying with a cornered mouse. When he had drawn close enough, he latched on to her wrist and yanked her from her horse, catching her roughly. He turned her to face him and grasped her chin. Inwardly, she screamed at the forced pucker of her lips beneath his grip.

  “What you carry does not interest us.” His face loomed closer, and the reek of onions and ale on his breath made her stomach churn. “But you do.”

  Her heart began p
itching wildly as he released her chin, drew a seax, and raised it to her neck. With its point he pulled her locket from its place of concealment beneath her undertunic. How he knew it was there she had no idea. “Please, nay, that has no value!”

  “Oh, aye, Lady Kendra, it does.” His laugh was a nasty rasp. “’Twill show Thane Waldron how serious we are.”

  With a flick of his wrist, he cut the cord. The pendant fell into his other hand. Her hopes fell with it.

  Chapter 5

  KENDRA FELT NUMB.

  Numb from shock, from hunger, from fatigue, numb from the cramping and chafing inflicted by hours spent in the saddle, numb from the drenching rain and subsequent cold that stung her cheeks and hands and sliced through the folds of her cloak to attack other vulnerable places. Numb from worry about the fates of Rowena, Cæwlin, and Oswy, numb from fear that her captors would decide to have their sport with her.

  Her greatest numbness, however, stemmed from despair.

  ’Twas no small miracle that she’d stayed astride.

  Her fears sharpened when the outlaws drew rein, dismounted, and pulled her down. But she was too numb to struggle. They’d been traveling westward through a long, secluded valley that she recalled from her journeys, years ago, to visit Ulfric and other members of her mother’s family. She also recalled that, because this valley’s stream was seasonal, no crofter or farmer lived here.

  Nothing about this Godforsaken valley had changed. The downpour had turned the streambed into a ribbon of mud, not much use to either man or beast.

  As Kendra stood with a hand on Hilde’s withers to steady herself, eyeing her captors and yearning for salve and bandages to soothe her raw thighs, the outlaw with the livid facial scar pulled his wineskin from around his neck and offered it to her. The unexpected kindness took her aback, and she hesitated, wondering where her wineskin had gone.

  “Take it or not, ’tis your choice,” he said, not unkindly. “Ever ridden on your belly?”

  From the seriousness of his expression, she decided he was referring to a mode of horseback travel rather than making a vulgar sexual allusion. She shook her head.

  “Nor would you want to.” The man chortled, slapping his companion on the back. “Rat can vouch for that.” The outlaw called Rat looked irritated by the comment. “By the by, you can call me Snake.” He twitched his cheek, making his scar seem like a living presence upon his face.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She groped the saddle horn for her wineskin’s strap without taking her eyes from the rat and the snake.

  Snake elbowed Rat. “She may be nigh unto dead on her feet, but she still has spirit.” Again, Snake thrust his wineskin toward her. “Take it. Methinks you lost yours”—he jerked his chin eastward—“back yonder. We still have a fair way to go before we camp. If you don’t keep up your strength, you’ll be riding facedown ere long.”

  She drank. Rather than the bitter brew she’d expected, the outlaw had given her a sweet wine that bore a hint of apples. She hadn’t realized how parched she was until that moment and took several more gulps.

  Laughing, Snake pulled the wineskin from her grasp, and she groaned her disappointment. “That’s plenty for now, my lady, unless you do have a wish to ride on your belly.”

  Her face flushed, only partially from the wine. She asked, “What of our horses? They must have water soon, and this stream is useless.”

  Snake regarded her with approval. “Not far from here is shelter and a well, though we’ll have to lead our mounts up the last stretch to reach it. Think you can manage a bit of a climb, my lady?”

  She nodded. “If I can tend to some personal needs first.”

  Rat grinned, baring pointed teeth suggestive of his name’s origin. “Be pleased to help ye, m’lady.”

  “Imbecile!” Snake rounded on the man, drew back a meaty fist, and punched him in the gut. Rat doubled over, moaning and swearing. “The next blow will be lower. If her ladyship is harmed in any way, Dragon will feast upon our ballocks.” Snake faced her with a wink and a grin, hitching his trews in a suggestive manner. “Can’t speak for Rat, but mine are of much more use to me where they are.” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be thinking of running, would you, my lady?”

  The thought had occurred, but she had dismissed it. “I very much doubt I’d make it as far as yon hawthorn patch.” She pointed at some thick, thorny bushes growing near the streambed a score of paces away, the sparse remains of their May blooms looking as bedraggled as she felt.

  Snake nodded and cast another warning glance at Rat, who’d recovered enough to glower back at him. “Go do what you must, then, and don’t worry none about us.”

  She didn’t feel very reassured by Snake’s implied pledge, but as she removed the saddle pack from Hilde’s back and retreated from the men and mounts, her legs’ stinging convinced her she had little choice.

  Shielded by the hawthorn thicket, she hunted through the pack for a pair of bandage rolls and what was left of her elderberry salve, hiked her skirts, and set to work. The salve and bandages wrought a miracle on the abrasions caused by folds of her dress that had gotten caught wrong when she’d mounted. She wrapped each leg from thigh to knee while she pondered the outlaws’ words and deeds.

  That they intended to hold her for ransom she had no doubt. She did doubt that “Snake” and “Rat” were these men’s birth names, not to mention the mysterious “Dragon” Snake had alluded to with a strand of fear threading his tone. Their final destination presented another mystery to which she doubted she’d get a forthright answer.

  Then there was the matter of her father’s reaction to her abduction. Would he pay their demands or send the fyrd after her? She guessed the former, though she couldn’t be certain. Since the small terra-cotta salve pot was empty, she inverted it atop a low, flat rock beside the bush. She drew her dagger from its place of concealment beneath her overdress, cut off a lock of hair, and tucked it under the pot, hoping that if the fyrd happened by, one of the men would notice the odd arrangement and connect it with her.

  She couldn’t keep from imagining a certain Norman who might insist upon riding with them. In the next breath, she denounced it as a vain fantasy. She had done nothing but run from him each time they met, giving him no reason to risk his neck for her.

  The discouraging thought didn’t prevent her from harboring the fragile hope that Squire Alain might help rescue her. It remained the sole tether on her fears.

  BACK AT the same window where he’d begun his day, gazing toward the chapel and rose garden, Alain wrestled with his concern for Kendra, whom he had not seen since their disastrous dawn meeting. Since he’d acted far too boldly for a squire, he doubted she would wish to speak with him again.

  Around him drifted the soft chorus of sounds as Waldron’s retainers settled in for the evening. A sleek deerhound wandered over to investigate the intruder into its domain. Alain gently but firmly discouraged the questing nose and stooped to inspect the magnificent animal. By the white patches interrupting the brindle pattern on forehead and chest, he recognized the dog as one of the bitches that had accompanied Waldron’s hunting party.

  Alain enjoyed a hunt as much as the next man did, but today his heart hadn’t been in it. He suspected his heart could be found wherever Kendra had gone.

  The dog butted his hand. He obliged by fondling the spot at the base of her ears that all dogs seemed to enjoy. Emitting canine groans, she cocked her head and leaned into his caress.

  He hoped this animal’s mistress would one day respond as ecstatically to his touch.

  Instead, Kendra had left, ostensibly to dispense medicine and cheer to outlying farms, but the wringing of his heart proclaimed the truth. She was trying to escape him. Again.

  And, again, he considered whether to reveal his identity and accept the consequences. Switching hands to stroke the dog’s other ear, he envisioned the most probable scenarios.

  None were pleasant.

  He gave the hound a f
inal pat and stood. The dog regarded him, tail wagging. When that failed to produce the desired result, she sighed, turned thrice in a tight circle, and sank onto the rush-strewn flagstones at his feet. Folding his arms, Alain glared at the darkening rose garden as if by force of will he could make Kendra appear. She didn’t, of course; most likely, she and her escorts were sheltering with a farmer’s family. By the fading sunset, he judged that Edgarburh’s gates were already shut fast, and only in unusual circumstances would they be opened before dawn.

  Movement across the central yard drew his notice. A rider spurred his mount to the manor house, halted, and slid from the saddle. The man didn’t bother to tether his horse, who wandered, nose down, into the longer grass while its rider took the manor’s stairs two at a time and disappeared through the door leading to the upper rooms.

  One of Waldron’s men, Alain mused, probably a gate sentry. But why the urgency? If Kendra had returned, there would be no need to alert her father. Someone else had to be at the gate, someone unknown to the sentries and demanding the thane’s permission to enter. Someone desperate enough—or powerful enough—to refuse the sentries’ injunction to camp outside until morning.

  Foreboding gripped his gut.

  The rider appeared a few minutes later, raced down the staircase, caught his horse, mounted, and spurred it toward the main gate. Alain followed their progress until the angle of the hall blocked his view. He glanced at the manor house in time to see a disheveled but determined Waldron emerge, descend the stairs, and stride toward the hall as briskly as his limp allowed.

  The moment the thane shoved open the doors and crossed the threshold, he began bellowing to rouse his men and order the torches lit. The hall erupted into frenzied activity as the men started awake and rose to don armor and retrieve swords and shields from recesses around the hall. Even the hounds, including Alain’s erstwhile companion, scrambled about, adding their canine voices to the din.