by Tamara Leigh
She looked to Isa, said past teeth beginning to chatter, “Even did I wish to go with you, I would slow you. Pray, leave me.”
“Here?” Isa gestured at the moonlit wood—trees, foliage, and the wide stream carrying away water spilled by the great fall whose veil sparkled in the distance. “There is no time to deliver you nearer the castle, and I will risk no life for so distant a hope it will be safe for you there. Come with us.”
“Nay. Find me a sturdy stick, and I can make my own way out of here.”
Her lady breathed deep. “Your path is your own. I will not stand in the middle of it nor force you onto mine. I…” Momentarily, she closed her eyes. “It is hard to forgive, Aelf, but I try. I do.”
Emotion nearly choking Aelfled, she rasped, “I thank you, my lady.”
Isa shifted her regard to her housecarle. “See her sheltered upstream near the falls lest any venture here in search of us. Provide her a good stick and provisions, then we leave.” Once more she addressed Aelfled. “Do not risk the journey ere dawn. After all you have endured, you must rest, and regardless of the outcome of the attack on Wulfen, it will be better seen in daylight and aid in determining the way forward.”
Aelfled had not thought that far ahead but accepted the advice, at the moment too pained, weak, and chilled to remain upright without Ordric’s support. “I shall journey forth at dawn,” she said and grasped a handful of the housecarle’s tunic when he lifted her into his arms. “Godspeed, my lady.”
“My lady,” Isa murmured, then said, “If you are still Lady Aelfled, and my fate lies beyond Wulfen’s walls, I am no longer that to you.”
Through fresh tears, Aelfled said, “Ever you shall be my lady.”
Isa gave what sounded a muffled sob. “Godspeed, Aelf.” She swung around, stumbled as if the sudden movement made her light of head, then strode away.
Ordric carried Aelfled upstream to the waterfall she had visited with Isa and her son in his early years. They had spread a blanket beside the pond and eaten cold meats, fruit, and bread there. They had waded in the cold water, swum, and splashed each other. And once, beneath a full moon, they had ventured there before dawn to watch those who trained at Wulfen run the ridge above. Isa’s husband had not been pleased to learn she was there, though he would not have known had she not advised him on a crossing atop the falls that would more greatly challenge the boys and young men—as it had challenged Ordric when he trained beneath Isa's father.
Now that boy-turned-warrior settled her on moss-covered ground in the shelter of towering rocks that formed a wall on one side of the falls, near enough the pool into which water tumbled that she could easily reach it, but not so near she suffer the spray. Here was only mist.
He left her and returned with a blanket he draped around her shoulders, a walking stick, a pack of provisions, and splints.
As he bound up her ankle, she stared at his bent head crowned with hair fairer than hers and remembered the boy he had been when Isa’s father took the orphaned youth from Ravven and gave him a means of venting so great an anger it had frightened little Aelf. A warrior he had become and nearly as esteemed as Vitalis.
“I pray you find your way,” he said.
“I thank you, Ordric. Keep our lady safe.”
“’Tis my duty and honor.” He rose and ran to overtake those venturing deeper into the wood—her people who, perhaps more than she, must find their way.
Drawing the blanket over her lower face and body, she dropped her chin to her chest and prayed for them and those fallen and injured this night. And Cyr.
Some might wonder how she could feel so much for him in so short a time, but in that moment she understood. What she felt was not only of the heart and mind, but the soul of which her grandmother had spoken—as if since Aelfled met Cyr upon Senlac, their souls had been together every hour of every day. And still hers felt joined with his, though he might no longer breathe.
She clasped her hands tighter against her chest. “Do You save him, Lord, I will praise You to my end days. Never again will I question…” She gasped, shook her head. “I think to test You as if I were the instructor, You the pupil. Forgive me.” She swallowed. “No bargains. No matter how great my loss, let me not become hollow. Help me that even when I think You cannot see me because I cannot see You, I remain in Your presence. Help me that even when I believe You lost to me, I remember never am I lost to You. Amid my darkest days, reveal Yourself even if only through Bernia and others more faithful than I. And if Cyr is gone…” She nodded. “Let me remain with You who are forever.”
Aelfled did not know she slept until awakened by the pound of hooves what might have been minutes later or hours. Not of one or two horses. Four or more.
Her first thought of Cyr, she nearly called to him. But more than the likelihood he would not hear her over the hooves and waterfall, what closed her mouth was the possibility it was Jaxon’s men, either fleeing or come in search of their leader.
The hooves slowed, ceased, and though from where she was tucked between jagged rocks she could not see them, she knew they were near the underground passage’s opening. Catching their voices, she strained to determine if they were of Normans or Saxon, but so distorted were they by distance and falling water, she would have to draw nearer.
Heart beating hard, she retrieved the stick, pushed upright, and whimpered when her ankle protested the weight given it. Ordric had assured her it was not broken, but it was damaged, and she would go nowhere without the stick’s support.
She drew the russet-colored blanket up over her head, ensured it covered her down to her ankles, and started forward.
Progress was slow as she kept to the wall that transitioned from rock to foliage-ladened earth, her movements hampered by the need to keep weight off her ankle and the persistence of the blanket clasped at her throat to catch beneath foot and stick. Upon reaching the last outcropping, she peered around it and saw five horses, their riders scattered in all directions as if searching for the passage’s opening.
Wishing they were near enough one another to converse that she might determine how great their right to be upon Isa’s land, she looked from one to the next. Hope leapt when her eyes settled on the fourth man a moment before he hunkered down.
Was it him?
Wishing away the canopy of branches and leaves that cast shadows across moonlight, she pressed her lips to keep from calling his name.
And heard hers called.
From the passage’s turns, bends, and courses, he had guessed right. Near the great waterfall was where the earth opened up to expel dozens of Saxons, including Hawisa, warriors, castle folk, and—he entreated the Lord—his wife.
Once more tortured by the possibility she was buried beneath timbers and rubble that had nearly become his own grave, he called again, “Aelfled!” and began his descent into the hole around which was scattered the dirt and debris of the collapse that had aided in its discovery.
“Cyr!”
He snapped his head around. Though he could not pick Aelfled from the shadows, she was near. He sprang out of the hole and ran to overtake his men who moved toward her voice.
Then there she was, darkness falling away to reveal hair and chemise not as pale as when he saw her in the passage, but enough to light the way to where she stood with a blanket down around her feet.
Though alarmed by the stick she leaned on, he saw no evidence of great injury and was further reassured by her gentle smile and tear-bright eyes.
“I have her!” he called. “Stand watch!”
As his men veered away, he took the last strides and caught her up against his dirt-clad body, the garments of which adhered to his skin wherever blades had rent the material and drawn blood.
With a cry, his wife dropped the stick and wound her arms around his neck, as unmindful as he they were much in need of bathing.
“Merciful Lord, you are here, Aelfled! Tell me you are not badly hurt.”
She hiccoughed softly, shook her head. “The worst is
my ankle, and it is not broken.”
“I feared—” Reining in words loosened by imaginings of her breathless beneath timbers, he swept her up and carried her to a fallen tree.
As he lowered to it, she said in a rush, “You have seen your brother, Guarin? He is well?”
“I saw and spoke with him.” He shifted her atop his thighs, easing her around to face him. “Though terribly beaten, there is much hope he will recover.”
“Praise the Lord,” she breathed, then her eyes widened. “You know I did not wish to leave you? That for the sake of your brother I persuaded your cousin to trade me? That I wanted—needed—you to come for me?”
He cupped her jaw. “I know. As you must know my desire and need are the same.” He kissed her, and she sighed into him. But there being pressing matters to attend to and the Lord having assured them of time later to linger over each other, he drew back. “I must know what happened to the other Saxons come through the tunnel, Aelfled.”
It took her a moment to return to that place she surely did not wish to go. “All of Lady Hawisa’s people made it out, though had you not slowed Jaxon with your sword, I…”
“Slowed,” Cyr muttered. “A dagger would have served better, but I had no time to draw it. Thus, the hilt rather than the blade struck him in the back. Such a poor throw.”
“But one that ensured he did not reach me.”
Much too narrow a save, Cyr silently berated, then asked, “He is dead?”
“I lost consciousness, and the housecarle who helped me collapse the passage brought me out. But my lady told Jaxon is no more.”
He would have to see the body himself before resting easy where that rebel was concerned. “Where are Lady Hawisa and the others?”
“Gone deep into the wood.”
“They left you behind?” he growled. “Because of your injury?”
“Non, Cyr. They would have carried me, but I clung to the hope you lived and would come for me. As I had revealed our marriage to my lady, I told her I would remain and she did not gainsay me.”
“Will she return when she learns Wulfen did not fall to Jaxon’s rebels?”
Hesitation, and he guessed she weighed confidences in her keeping against loyalty to her husband. Such quandary, in this instance where there need be none. “Aelfled, already I know what you fear to tell, and I understand why you hold it close. Guarin confirmed Lady Hawisa is Dotter.” The catch of her breath slight, he continued, “He beseeched me to keep her safe from ours—and those of her own who betray her.”
Wide-eyed questions and discarded answers flitted across her face, and one word was all she could summon. “Then…?”
“I know not what there is between them, Aelfled, only that he is sympathetic. And may be as ensnared as I by a Saxon woman met upon what seemed a godforsaken battlefield.”
More unanswered questions moved across her lovely face, then she sighed and said, “I fear your brother has little hope where my lady is concerned, but there is hope elsewhere—that as you say, Senlac only seemed godforsaken. As does England. As do—did—I.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Did?”
“Whilst I waited for you this eve, I prayed, and though I began to bargain with God—promising all did He keep you safe—I ceased and held to Him.” She drew a sharp breath. “And now you are here as well. Where you are meant to be. With me. Like this.”
Moved that she fit him into words spoken to her when he told she was not meant to be a nun, he said, “A great truth, Aelfled, as are our vows that were kept this day and shall be every day into the hereafter.” He reached to his purse. “I have something for you.” He withdrew her psalter and opened it to the pages between which her wedding ring was pressed.
“As if I have worn it always, I have missed it,” she said.
He slid it on her finger. “This eve, nothing mattered more than returning it to your hand,” he said and once more clasped her close. “Did I not tell I would hold you again come night?”
A sob slipped from her. “I know you love me.”
Though certain he had heard right, he drew back.
She smiled tremulously. “I know it.”
He chuckled. “Is that not for me to say?”
“Not if you have shown it, and you have—far more than I.”
“You are saying you love me?”
“I am. I do. Methinks since first my soul met yours.” She reached up, drew through her fingers the dark and silver of his hair. “Do you believe it possible?”
With so much to feel—relief, gratitude, happiness—it was hard to think clearly. Blessedly, the answer required little effort. “I feel as you feel. Should I speak it into you?” When she moved her face nearer, he touched his lips to hers. “I love you, my little Saxon.”
He felt her mouth curve against his, heard and breathed the words she spoke into him. “I love you, my honorable Norman.”
Epilogue
Wulfen Castle, England
Autumn, 1068
The rebellion was not done. Merely dormant. England was not on its knees. Neither on its feet. And in the space between the conquering and the bridling, a new day cast light across the dark. But on this autumn morn, two years beyond and scores of leagues distant from Senlac, a beautiful thing it was.
Something to behold, breathe, cherish. The same as the woman who shared his saddle.
“Breathtaking,” she said in that sweetly husky voice.
Holding his gaze to the sky above Wulfen Castle as its ink-black dissolved beneath a tide of sapphire blue and brilliant gold, Cyr slid his hand from his wife’s waist to her abdomen. “Aye, and more so now,” he said in her language.
She peered over her shoulder, raised her eyebrows. “’Tis the dawn I speak of.”
“As do I, for that is what you—and this child—are to me.”
Now came the sun, her smile warmer and brighter than that which had yet to mount the sky. Lowering his head, he kissed it open.
Aelfled turned into him, and as the blanket slipped from her chemise-covered shoulders, she slid her hands around his neck.
He groaned. “Perhaps we ought to have remained abed.”
“And miss the sunrise of this our last day at Wulfen?”
As she had said dawn was most spectacular from the western knoll, he had kept his word to bring her here before they returned to Stern. With the waning of night, he had wrapped her in the coverlet and scooped her up. She had drowsily protested being carried, then curled against him as he conveyed her through the great hall where he exchanged a nod with Wulfen’s long-haired, bearded castellan who opened the door for them. Only when they reached the outer bailey and Cyr ordered the yawning stable lad to saddle his horse had Aelfled roused. Or so he thought until she expressed concern over the castellan who looked to have found no rest on the night past.
“’Tis stunning, is it not?” she returned him to this moment—their moment.
He kissed her again. “I would not be anywhere but here with you, Wife.”
She drew a hand from his neck and over a jaw bristling with whiskers to which he ought to have taken a razor a sennight past. He would see to it upon their return to Stern.
“Yours shall soon be a proper Saxon beard,” she said. “Is that what you wish?”
He grinned. “Better the question—is that what you wish?”
She made much of considering his face. “I am partial to the Norman style that allows me to dwell on all your face, but I would not object did you wish to abandon the blade’s uncomfortable and tedious scrape.”
“Then there my answer. For my lady wife, I shall continue to suffer that keen edge. Now look. Here comes the sun.”
She turned forward, caught up his hand, and resettled it on her belly that would soon become more than a handful.
Peace. It poured through Cyr, though he dare not allow it to brim lest it make him vulnerable to stirrings amongst the Saxons. The resistance across England continued, but upon Wulfenshire, that rage was reduced to
restlessness—an uneasy acceptance of Norman rule, specifically that of the D’Argents.
Cyr upon Stern.
Theriot upon Balduc.
Guarin upon Wulfen.
Cyr closed his eyes, saw again his brother who had surely slept little last eve. He was changed, as were all who had done battle upon Senlac, some for the better, others the worse. And those who survived were not the only ones affected. Whether by great or little measure, no life either side of the channel would be as before that autumn crossing of the narrow sea.
Of further testament to that was Maël who refused to speak of his demons and Dougray who continued to struggle to reclaim the warrior's mantle. Then there was the Bloodlust Warrior of Hastings, recently come out of the monastery following the murder of the brother to whom he had given the demesne awarded him. Once more Maxen Pendery had donned chain mail to take possession of rebel-plagued lands near Hastings and avenge his brother's death by hunting down the Saxons hiding in Andredeswald.
Two years gone since Cyr aided Aelfled in those woods. How many more before the healing of England began in earnest?
Pulling himself back to the woman with whom he wished to be present, he opened his eyes. But despite the beauty before him, his oldest brother’s foot remained in the door that should not have been opened to him here and now.
Cyr had loved the brother Guarin had been before 1066. He loved this one. But it was hard to be at ease with the latter. Ever Guarin’s siblings had deemed him fearless, but he was more thoughtful and watchful now, and it was not of one hunted. Rather, of one who hunted. And yet he was not the same as Dougray who had breathed in and breathed out vengeance when first he came to England. He was…
Different. Guarin having spoken little of what he endured during captivity, one could only guess what prowled his mind, but Cyr did not believe he hunkered low awaiting an opportunity to wreak havoc on his former captors.
Unlike Maël and Dougray, he had supported Cyr’s decision to return to their villages the injured rebels who survived the attack on Wulfen—specifically, Vitalis’s men and those of Jaxon for whom Guarin vouched. Thus far, there was no cause to regret the decision, though the former rebels were watched closely to ensure they were not moved to take up arms again. And all the more imperative it was now they were honed warriors rather than wielders of whatever tool or stick could be brought to hand.
