by Tamara Leigh
Cyr strode to the saddlebags he had earlier dropped atop the chest, tossed back the flap of one, and withdrew what he had kept close since Senlac.
He touched the stain that reminded him of the things he had done that he wished never to do again, as well as the woman who told she would pray for him though it was hardly believable, especially had she become the leader of the rebels upon these lands.
As ever regretting he had no name to fit to her face and voice, he set the psalter atop the saddlebag and submitted to the humbling Fulbert had modeled for him during pilgrimage. Going down on one knee, he pressed his forehead to his other raised knee and closed his eyes. He thanked the Lord for His mercy, guidance, and blessings, beseeched Him to heal England by making Saxons and Normans one people of one mind and heart, and pleaded with Him to return Guarin to his family, bring Dougray out of the darkness dragged around him, and scatter whatever shadows haunted Maël.
When he rose, the light slanting through the open window told day had significantly closed the gap between it and night. Though it was hours before Cyr would sleep, he was tempted by the bed which the Baron of Stern was long negligent in claiming.
Time aplenty later, he told himself, then stretched out on the mattress, clasped his hands behind his head, and set his gaze on the timbered ceiling.
The upper layer of the mattress being stuffed with feathers, it was softly supportive. Though on occasion Cyr had known such comfort as a warrior, far more he was accustomed to straw-stuffed pallets, forest floors, and the saddle. The lord’s bed felt wonderful and yet…
He swung his feet to the floor, rose, and strode opposite that which was among the privileges of a landed noble—and which was nearly unbearable for how it made him feel a murderer and thief who had slit the owner’s throat so he might steal into another’s bed.
Chapter Nine
Village of Ravven upon Stern
England
It was not her—too aged was she—but the face glimpsed amongst the villagers gathered to greet their new lord made Cyr look again. Too late. She had lowered her chin, and now she turned aside.
He might have shaken off suspicion, but the seemingly frantic manner in which she pushed her way past the others while fumbling with the hood down around her shoulders made him hold his gaze to her. By the time she slipped past those at the back of the crowd, her hood was draped over hair gone silver—or mostly, enough blond showing through a circlet of braids to further move his mind to the young woman at Senlac. Not that fair hair was uncommon among these people…
With such haste the woman departed the gathering that her shoulder struck the corner of the wattle-and-daub building whose alley between it and the church would provide shadow in which to conceal her. She stumbled, righted herself, and went from sight.
Something about him had alarmed her, and he intended to confirm or eliminate the possibility it had anything to do with the rebel leader.
He thrust his reins at Dougray who, the same as the first day of the Baron of Stern’s tour of his demesne, had not wished to join the escort. However, given the choice of playing Nicola’s keeper or riding village to village, he had submitted to the latter. Now if only he would submit to practice at swords as thrice he had refused since their arrival at Stern.
The hunch of his shoulders evidencing boredom as much as resentment, Dougray glanced at the reins. “You would have me do what with those?”
“Hold them.” Cyr smacked the leather straps against the back of his brother’s hand that rested on his saddle’s pommel. “There is something I must attend to.”
Dougray grunted, took the reins. “I think we would all like to relieve ourselves. Thus, the sooner we depart this miserable place, the sooner we can address our needs in yon wood.”
Allowing him to believe as he would, Cyr swung out of the saddle. As he came around his destrier, he called in the Saxon language, “I am pleased to meet my people. Do you have any concerns or needs not being met, you are to come to me at Stern Castle.”
They began murmuring, and he hoped he was understood, proving worthy of the effort expended by Fulbert to teach Cyr English during and following their return from pilgrimage.
“As well as I am able,” he added, “I shall do right by you.”
Exchanging glances with one another, they continued to speak low to their neighbors. Unsurprisingly, the hum of curiosity increased when he moved past them and between the two buildings. None followed, and he was fairly certain they, the same as Dougray, believed he sought privacy in which to empty his bladder.
Emerging on the backside of the buildings, he had only to search for movement to once more set eyes on the aged woman. She moved slowly until, mid-step, her head turned as if to cast an eye across her shoulder. That she did not do, but she moved more quickly as if pursued. And she was.
Her destination was a pretty cottage with grass and flowers planted all around, and she slowed only when she was nearly at the door and Cyr a dozen strides behind.
Moments later, the tail of her skirt whipped up and barely cleared the space between the closing door and its frame.
Cyr halted on a barren threshold too well trod to allow grass to grow. He glanced behind, confirmed he had not been followed, and knocked. “Old woman, it is your lord. I would speak with you.”
The door opened so quickly she must have waited on the other side as if certain she would be given no choice but to admit him.
He smiled. “I am—”
“How daft do you think me that I do not know whose presence in my village causes all to gather ’round?” she spoke from beneath her hood and in such a rush it took him some moments to make sense of her English. “I know who you are, Cyr D’Argent, just as I know who I am—and that is not an old woman. I am Bernia.”
Feeling watched though he could not see her eyes, he said, “Pray, forgive me.”
She drew a breath, and when she exhaled, the scent of mint rose between them. “Since I have no choice but to offer my Norman lord hospitality, enter.”
Her words nearly made him withdraw, so pricked was he by guilt over the power wielded against these beaten people. But to do so would cost him time. If he did not scratch his curiosity and give answer to suspicion, he would have to return another day. “I thank you, Bernia.”
She turned, and he entered the single-room dwelling and closed the door. The shutters of four windows having been turned back, every corner was revealed. Assured no other was inside, he eased his hand from the hilt he had settled it on before raising the other to knock.
“I can offer no wine, no ale,” she said as she crossed to a table with a stool set on either side. “But I have goat’s milk.” She pointed at the clay pitcher on the table, settled on a stool, and nodded at the fire pit at the center of the room over which a small pot hung. “There is porridge from this morn, thick though it has gone.”
He lowered onto the stool opposite her, grimaced as its frame groaned beneath weight that had to be twice her own. “I thank you, but I am well sated.”
“And unaccustomed to common fare,” she said and swept the hood back off her head.
Cyr was shocked by what the light filling the cottage revealed that he had been given no opportunity to note when first he looked upon her. Were she not entirely sightless, she was nearly so, the clouds across her eyes obscuring their color.
Had this affliction only made it appear he had set her to flight, rousing hope she might lead him to one much younger than she? Certainly it had caused her to miscalculate the space occupied by the building against which she had struck a shoulder. But what mattered was whether or not she was kin to that young woman.
He let his eyes rove features that, on close inspection, were more familiar. In her younger years, she would have been lovely, so much that she remained a handsome woman in her older years.
Had her colorless eyes been as dark as those of the one he sought? Her nose was nearly as fine, mouth as wide though lips thinner, and the skin of her throat was l
oose and sloped as, surely, once it had not been.
Wishing she would smile so he might also compare teeth, he nearly startled when her eyebrows sprang high. “Have you looked your fill, my lord?”
Discomfited at having believed her sightlessness made it possible to delve her face without her knowledge, he said with forced nonchalance, “Enough.”
“And your conclusion?”
“I am thinking you are her grandmother.”
She frowned. “I am to know who her is?”
If she did know, one word should suffice. “Senlac.”
Bernia went still, momentarily lowered her lids. “I know what went there, just as I know my granddaughter did not give her name and would not wish it given now.”
“Regardless, I would hear it.” And if she refused, she must know he could learn from others in the village the name of the child of her child.
“Methinks that is not all you would hear, my lord. You would gain more than her name, hmm?”
“Have you more that you are willing to give.”
Despite the lines cornering her mouth and small gaps between upper teeth, her smile was pretty, and it was easy to imagine that bowing of lips on her granddaughter had the young woman something over which to smile.
“Willing,” she mused. “Only if Cyr D’Argent, Baron of Stern and now Balduc, is truly a man apart from Campagnon.”
He tensed. “If you know of my meeting with your granddaughter at Senlac, you must know he and I are nothing alike.”
“It is as I wish to believe, and that you will not put out my eyes as I have heard your king does when denied something.” She snorted. “Aye, too late to steal my sight, but the pain… Torturous, I imagine.”
Again, the delay in translating her words, but when he understood enough to make sense of them, he could offer no defense. He wished what was told of William was not true—more, that his liege had not done far worse, including cutting off the hands and feet of enemies who, during a siege some fifteen years past, mocked him for his bastardy and mother’s humble birth.
“Whether or not you tell what I wish to know,” Cyr said, “I vow to do you no harm.”
She mulled that, said, “A bargain I will strike with you.”
“Bargain?”
“You have looked upon me, now I would look upon you so I might know you better. Do you agree, I will speak my granddaughter’s name—and more for which she will not thank me though I believe it will aid in keeping her safe providing you are honorable as she told.”
That she had thought him honorable, stained as he had been by the blood of her people, made his chest constrict. “I agree. How is she called?”
“Aelfled.”
He let the name wind through him, then cross his tongue. “Aelfled,” he murmured. Though he did not know its meaning, it fit. “I thank you, Bernia. Now where can I find her?”
“Ah nay, my lord. You must fulfill your end of the bargain—allow me to look upon you.”
Suppressing impatience, he said, “What would you have me tell?”
“D’Argent—meaning of the silver,” she translated his name into English. “Is it true so young a man is as silvered as I?”
“Not yet, though do I follow the path forged by my sire and his sire, in a score of years what is now more black shall be more silver.”
“It is the same with all your brothers, is it not?”
He hesitated. “All but the third-born.”
“What color his hair?”
“Flaxen.”
“Unmarked by silver?”
“That is so.”
“And the sister you brought to England?”
She was well informed. “Nicola’s hair is dark but sparsely silvered, though given a few more years it may present the same as mine.”
Bernia nodded, and keeping those clouded eyes on his, put her head to the side. “Does your sire know he was cuckolded?”
Having ignored the voice warning it was in this direction they moved, Cyr was nearly as angered with himself as her. Dougray was not part of their bargain, but as he summoned words to rebuke her in Anglo-Saxon, she held up a hand.
“Forgive me, Baron. ’Tis you I wish to look upon, not family secrets you wish kept buried.”
He drew a deep breath. “I am done being looked upon. Now I would know where I can find your granddaughter.”
“’Tis no small thing you ask, my Norman lord. To ensure I not harm one I love well, I must look nearer yet.”
He ground his teeth, said, “Look.”
She surprised by rising, and further when she moved around the table. If she but intended to put more questions to him, for what did she draw so near? He took inventory of her, and confirming the only thing of consequence on her person was the meat knife on her belt, remained seated. However, lest she possessed concealed weapons, he set his mind on his own blades and angled his body toward her.
She halted alongside. “As your breath barely stirred my hair when first we spoke, I know you to be tall. And as much as my stool protested when you sat on it, I know you are of good weight. What I do not know are your features.” She raised a hand, ran a thumb across her fingertips. “These are my eyes. Will you allow me to touch your face?”
Cyr tensed further, and she laughed, a sound that jolted only because it was a poor fit for eerily sightless eyes in which light could no longer dance in time with that joyous sound. “Would you have me remove my knife, my Norman lord? Mayhap search me for other weapons?”
The warrior feeling a coward, he took her hand and set it on his jaw. “Look as near as you like.”
She stepped close and slowly began mapping his features. But she did not stop at his face. After lingering over the size and shape of brow, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin, she moved her fingers over his hair and ears and down his neck. “I think you must be handsome, Cyr of the silver. That she did not tell—though I hoped it was so.”
“Hoped?”
Her eyebrows flitted upward and the bit of a smile became more, but rather than give account of that hope, she slid her fingers from the base of his neck out to the bounds of his shoulders. Then she dropped her hands, lowered to her heels, and said, “Merciless.”
He jerked. “That your fingertips tell?”
“Nay, that is as Campagnon named you when you defended my granddaughter. I believe you can be—and certainly have been—merciless, but not that day nor this. Nor do I believe it of your brother, Theriot. But Dougray…”
Of course she knew the name of the one who kept Stern for him, but that she also knew the name—and vengeful nature—of the third son told she was well versed in matters of the D’Argents. There were informers afoot, doubtless within his own household.
Further she disquieted him when she said, “You are not wed, are you, my lord?”
“I am not, but I shall take a wife to get an heir.” Though that he would not do until he could determine as best as possible whether he was heir to his sire’s lands or these awarded by William. Did he lord Normandy lands, a lady of France he would take to wife, one whose dowry would either expand his demesne or fill his coffers. Did he lord English lands, a Saxon lady he would aspire to wed to better secure his hold on this demesne.
Bernia settled a hip against the table’s edge. “A lord must have an heir.” She appeared to consider his face. “And all the more acceptable your son shall be to your new people does he boast Saxon blood.”
Then she understood the way of things, as he supposed she ought to since other Normans awarded English lands had taken Saxon wives, regardless of whether the ladies were willing. But as it seemed a game she played, rather than benefit her, he determined to move his own playing piece onto a parallel path of benefit to him.
“I think you must be right, but tell, for what did your granddaughter’s lady wed a Norman a dozen years past whilst these lands were Saxon?” He was pleased by a shift in the air that bespoke now she was moved to discomfort, and when she did not answer, added, “I speak of the
Lady of Wulfen.” The air shifted further. “She whom Aelfled served as a maid ere the great battle, the same who lost a son upon Senlac.”
A fluttering of lashes.
Needing no further confirmation that, as thought, Hawisa Fortier was that same lady, he said, “Most blessed she had another son, do you not think?”
He nearly missed the bob of her throat.
Then perhaps she did not have another son… “Though it benefits her now to have wed a Norman since her heir has half that blood, she could not have known what would come to pass.”
The breath Bernia drew raised shoulders she turned into a shrug. “As with many a noble marriage, ’twas arranged. And King Edward—God rest his groaning soul—was pleased by the match made with one of his Norman favorites.”
Groaning soul… Because he had fathered no children, the absence of which gave Harold and William cause to spill the blood of thousands to decide who had the better claim to the throne.
“But enough about that noble Saxon lady,” she said. “Speak to me of the brother who went missing at Senlac. Has he a wife in Normandy?”
Now it was he who caused the air to shift, so swiftly standing and placing himself over her she stepped back. “What know you of Guarin?”
She tilted her face up, and the slight curve to her lips evidenced she was pleased once more he was the one moved to discomfort. “Only that he is believed to have been sighted near or upon Wulfenshire, and for that Sir Theriot’s search for his eldest brother finds no end.”
Hating that once more his playing piece was on her side of the board, he said, “I find it curious that of all the English lands upon which he might be sighted, it is these distant from Hastings, the same given to me.”
“That is curious, my Norman lord. Now the question is which is the imposter? Be it truth? Be it coincidence?”
