“Only for the servants,” Æva heard her faceless form say. “If you wish another dress, I can get one for you.”
Æva shook her head, but the gesture was lost in the shadowy cubby-hole. She didn’t need another stylish dress to mark her as superior and guarantee curious stares wherever she went. They made her memorable. What she needed was to be able to slip about unnoticed, like the handmaidens could.
She pulled the scrap of wool covering back and rifled through the jumble of material. Her hands clasped around a handful of fabric and she pulled it from the basket, holding it up against the light of the doorway. It was shapeless, with long sleeves and a wide skirt that would drown her petite figure. Although it was hard to tell the colour in the murky room, she assumed it would be the same sludgy brown cloth most of the servants wore. It was perfect.
“Lora,” she said slowly, a plan forming in her mind. “Watch the door for a second and make sure nobody comes.”
“My Lady?” the girl asked, her voice full of nervous hesitancy.
“The door,” Æva repeated, her voice a little sharper. She wanted to act quickly, before she lost her nerve.
She heard the girl sigh once in resignation, a barely audible sound, before rustling to fill the bright rectangle of the opening. As soon as she was in position Æva hastily untied the knot of woven blue rope she wore as a belt and whipped her dress over her head. She shivered for a moment as the cool autumn air pierced her thin linen under-dress, before yanking the ugly, coarse servant’s robe over her body. It gaped uncomfortably over her frame. She reached for the blue rope belt, tying it around her waist and giving the dress a modicum of shape.
“What are you doing?” Lora asked, her body still facing out towards the square.
Æva didn’t answer. Instead she pulled another scrap from the basket, this one much smaller, an off-cut awaiting a use, and pulled it over her shoulders, laying it across her hair like a shawl.
“I’m going for a real walk,” she said, squeezing past Lora and marching across the square. The servant girl’s frantic steps pattered against the ground in a trot behind her. Two steps later a pale white hand grasped her wrist, pulling her to a stop. She shook the hand off easily, but when she turned Lora’s face hovered just inches from her own. Her face was bloodless, her eyes pools of fear.
“You mustn’t,” she hissed, desperate and terrified. “Lord Bayan would be furious.”
And Lora would once again pay the price. Æva stared into the girl’s eyes, hesitating. She did not want to put her back in harm’s way, to cause her more pain, but she couldn’t stay here, trapped within the four walls of the Commander’s Headquarters.
She couldn’t let Bayan dictate to her like that; steal the only thing that mattered to her.
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, undecided. Just ten paces behind her the wide archway stood open, guarded only by a couple of bored soldiers, who surely would not notice a servant girl slipping out on an errand. It would be easy.
Lora drew her eyebrows together, her dull brown eyes pleading with her. Æva clenched her fists, torn.
She would not be some plaything to be kept in the cupboard, brought out only when it suited. She wouldn’t.
“Look,” she said, “I’m going. You can stay here, or you can come with me, but please don’t stop me.”
She knew with one shout Lora could bring the patrolling soldiers. They would force her to stay; worse, they would tell Bayan and he would be enraged. She needed Lora’s help, needed her silence. The girl didn’t answer but continued to look at her. Making up her mind, Æva turned away and headed for the archway. Though she fixed her eyes dead ahead, her ears listened keenly for sounds behind her. For one, two, three steps there was nothing. Æva’s heart was in her mouth, expecting a warning yell to come barrelling over her shoulder any second. Then she heard the light scraping of leather shoes on the gravelly mud, slowly at first but then picking up speed as Lora rushed to catch up with her. Æva didn’t move her head, but she sensed the girl’s presence, just a pace behind her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice thick with gratitude.
Getting out of the headquarters proved to be just as easy as Æva had imagined. The bored soldiers paid them almost no attention as they walked with purpose through the archway. Now she knew where she was going, she proceeded at speed, marching forward with long, sure strides. Lora shuffled along behind, showing her disapproval with silence that tugged at Æva’s conscience. She forced herself to ignore the girl, however, pushing on around the back on the building and hurrying up the broad avenue spiking out at a right-angle from the headquarters.
Little noise came from the surrounding tents as they ghosted along. A few soldiers skulked around feebly sparking hearths, trying in vain to burn dampened wood. The quiet hush of the morning, punctuated only by the whispering drizzle, was both comforting and worrying. Less eyes loitered to watch her walking by, fewer chances that a curious glance would recognise her face under the hood she wore, but at the same time the empty streets of the camp made her presence more noticeable. Bored eyes had little else to look at.
Æva tried to keep her gaze forward, head angled towards the ground in a gesture of servility. Eventually, she left the expanse of tents where the lower ranking soldiers were billeted, arriving at the larger, grander tents of the most eminent warriors and nobles.
Here she paused, eyes darting apprehensively at the row of identical shelters. Six of them stood in a neat line. Half a dozen tents which might be the chamber of Wulfram. And five that weren’t. She didn’t want to go blundering into the wrong one; she had no idea who lurked behind the draping leather walls. A minute passed as she hovered, undecided.
“Which tent?” Lora whispered, jolting her from her trance.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I can’t remember.”
Lora opened her mouth to speak again, but Æva hushed her, placing a finger on the girl’s lips.
“Come on,” she said in an undertone. She took Lora’s hand and guided her between two of the tents, stepping over the taught guy ropes. Behind the tents was a narrow gap, with a second identical row backing snugly on. An empty space. Æva stepped closer to the dark brown wall of one tent, blackened in uneven streaks where the rainwater had soaked into the tough material. She listened, holding out a warning hand to Lora to keep the girl silent. After a moment she shook her head and stepped away.
“Not that one,” she mouthed to Lora.
It had been empty; no sounds bar that of her own ragged breathing, no murmuring voices or rustling sounds of movement. The next tent was also empty, and in the third she heard soft mewling and moaning sounds that had her dancing back, mortified.
“Definitely not that one,” she said, in return to Lora’s quizzical look.
At the fourth tent she heard the sound of low voices. She leaned closer, one hand sliding forward and balancing lightly on the fabric as she tried to make sense of the muted muttering. Her mouth dropped open with surprise as a horribly familiar voice floated to her ears.
“... it is unacceptable.”
Clipped with anger, she pictured the accompanying expression: dark eyebrows drawn together in fury over shocking blue eyes, a firm jaw clenched tightly, prickled with dark blond stubble. What was Bayan doing here?
Her blood ran cold for a moment. Surely he had not come to repeat his command, to tell Wulfram they could no longer... well, see each other, for want of a better phrase?
A voice responded, speaking quickly, its tone both placating and persuasive. Idin, perhaps?
“Absolutely not.”
Bayan’s response was swift, loud with anger. Æva twitched, her face grimacing.
This time she easily recognised Idin’s steady, calming voice, but the words were lost on her, his quick sentences running together. Frustrated, she tiptoed closer, the edge of her shoes treading on the bottom hem of the tent.
“She belongs to me; I will not have it.”
Bayan was al
most shouting now. The force of his fury made Æva want to step back, though it wasn’t her in the line of fire.
“And what harm do you think will come to her in our company?”
The scorn in Ælric’s voice rang clear, blazing indignant. Despite the stress of the situation, Æva smiled grimly.
“Ælric.”
Spoken in a low undertone, but final. One word, seemingly insignificant, but Æva knew what it meant. She did not register Ælric’s angry tut or Idin’s dissatisfied sigh; neither of them mattered. Wulfram had spoken; Wulfram had accepted Bayan’s order. He was a soldier, and he had been given a command by a senior man. There would be no questions, no arguments.
She was about to lose them.
“But I would ask you, Lord Bayan, what your intentions are for the girl?”
Silence followed these words. Æva blinked several times, trying to make sense of his question.
“Exactly what do you mean by that, Thane?”
Wulfram’s title was spat out, a clear reminder that Bayan was the most senior noble.
It was Idin who answered him, his voice seething with venom in a way Æva had never heard it before.
“She is no whore!”
This time Wulfram did not rebuke or caution, his silence an unspoken agreement.
“Do not overstep your mark, boy.”
Æva recognised with a tremor of fear the calculated evenness of Bayan’s response, the voice he used to veil the ire smouldering under the surface, ready to explode. She hardly dared breathe. Her legs cramped with the effort of standing still and crouched, but she was almost unaware of the pain. Every ounce of her concentration was focused on the voices inside the tent. In her mind she visualised them standing, eyeballing each other. She clenched her fingers into a fist, hoping Idin would not rise to Bayan’s taunt. He was too far below the prince to escape punishment.
“It would be a wicked thing to use her as your plaything and then discard her, tainted. You are aware of who her father was.” Wulfram. And now he, too, had an edge to his voice.
“I know exactly who she is. I will not have you question me.”
Æva continued to listen, her ear flat against the edge of the tent. A small part of her wanted to run away from the things being said, the humiliation of it all, but she determined to hear every word. She had all but forgotten Lora’s existence.
The next move, she knew, was for Wulfram to apologise. He had dared to say what was on his mind, and now was the moment he backed down and acknowledged Bayan’s superiority. Æva knew that was the right thing to do, knew Wulfram would follow the soldier’s decorum.
His next words, therefore, came as a complete shock to her.
“I would be most disappointed to hear of her being mistreated. You would do well to remember that.”
It was a threat, scarcely veiled. A Prince to a Thane, Bayan easily outranked him; such impertinence could have Wulfram severely reprimanded. He could be stripped of rank, maybe even executed. That he would take such a risk for her.
“I think our discussion is over.”
Æva listened to the scuffles and thuds as Bayan turned on his heel and stomped from the tent. She panicked for an instant, filled with a crazy terror that he would choose to walk around the tent and discover her, but the muffled sound of his footsteps on the gravelly earth died away in the opposite direction. She wondered where he was going, hoped he would not return to the headquarters to look for her. She should hurry back there, just in case, but she could not tear herself away. She had to know what Wulfram, Idin and Ælric would say about the incident.
Wulfram had won the battle of wills, that much was clear. Bayan had had the chance to rise to his threat but had chosen to walk away.
Æva didn’t blame him: it was all she could do to look Wulfram in the eye.
Idin’s voice cut through her musings, rougher than usual, still sharp with anger.
“Are you going to go along with this Wulfram?”
‘With what?’
As ever, Wulfram remained composed, absorbing Idin’s anger.
“With that...” he paused, searching for an appropriate insult.
“Careful,” Wulfram murmured, almost too low for Æva’s straining ears.
“With Lord Bayan’s request,” Idin finished lamely.
“If Lord Bayan wishes us to stay away from his woman, then that is what we shall do. That is what we shall do, Idin,” Wulfram repeated, raising his voice a shade at Idin’s dismissive grunt.
Æva echoed Idin’s feelings a hundredfold. It was as though the air had been choked from her throat. How could Wulfram defend her like that, and then agree to this?
“I am going for a walk,” Idin spat.
“Idin,” Ælric called softly.
Idin ignored him, shrugging his way out of the tent. Æva sprang out of her crouch, almost tripping over a guy rope and colliding heavily with Lora in her haste to move.
“Stay here,” she gasped, grabbing the girl by both arms. She took a moment to stare into her nervous blue eyes, trying to impose the importance of her request, before dashing around the side of the tent. She glanced around and spotted the dark, tousled hair of Idin traipsing away from her. Grabbing the folds of her skirt and hitching the thick fabric, heavy with rain, up around her shins, she ran after him, her feet skimming over the uneven ground. She did not dare to call out to him so close to Wulfram’s tent.
He walked briskly; rage pushing his long strides faster so that she was out of breath by the time her jolting run brought her on his heels.
“Idin,” she puffed. She spoke softly, aware of the listening ears all around, but he turned at once, his keen soldier’s senses always alert.
“Æva?” he took in the ugly servants’ robes she wore, the wild look in her eyes, her flushed face. “What are you doing here?”
Surprise etched across his face for a split second, before caution kicked in and he glanced around him, taking her elbow and drawing her in nearer to him.
“Come with me,” he murmured out of the side of his mouth, already towing her away.
He led her away from the wide main avenue, his head constantly in motion, searching for inquisitive faces. At the end of the row he turned left, pulling her towards a space crammed full of parked wagons. Behind these Æva just made out the top of the wall, cornering at the point of the square. She realised they must be at the very back edge of the Roman fort. It was completely deserted here: there was no need to guard wagons that had been stripped of all their supplies. Idin drew her in deeper until their heads were invisible to any soldiers passing by.
He turned her to face him, and the hand gripping her elbow slipped down to curl around her fingers.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was at the tent,” Æva confessed.
His eyes softened into melting brown as he connected her words with the crazed fright of her wide eyes.
“What did you hear?” he asked, his free hand reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear.
“Everything,” she croaked, her voice tightening with emotion, constricting her chest and making her eyes sting. She sniffed it back, blinking furiously.
“I am sorry,” he whispered, unconsciously shifting closer to her. He dropped her hand and curled his fingers around her neck, winding them into her hair, as close to an embrace as he would allow himself.
“Please don’t leave me,” Æva dropped her head, unable to beg whilst looking him in the eye.
Idin paused, pained by her wretched plea. He closed his eyes and rested his chin again her forehead.
“That is not in my control,” he said. He slipped one finger under her chin, lifting her face until she had to look at him.
Æva’s pupils dilated as she realised how close he was. His breath tickled her face and she drank in the precise colour of his brown eyes, flecked with spots of gold, the faint raised lines of long healed scars running down his temple and across his jaw. Seconds were marked out by heartbeats, and s
till neither of them moved. She stared into his gaze and saw fire. It terrified and electrified her in equal measure. Both of his hands slipped up and cupped her face.
Indecision flitted across Idin’s face for a brief second, but then he kissed her. Nothing like the guilt-tinged kisses she had shared with Bayan; it was soft and gentle, then hot and urgent. His hands dropped her face and curled around her, drawing her closer; she reached up and tangled her fingers in his hair, moulding her body to him. She felt alive: her nerves tingled, her skin overheated despite the cold day.
Idin broke off, pausing only to chuckle breathlessly before he kissed her cheeks, her chin, her eyelids. His hands stroked and squeezed her back, the narrow curve of her waist. His mouth moved back to hers, kissing her top lip, then the bottom; gentle, caressing touches. She remembered the rough urgency of Bayan, and his hunger seemed selfish now. Idin was kissing her, and she felt fragile, and beautiful and loved.
Without warning, Idin jerked loose. Clutching her closely to him, his eyes scanned the wagons.
“Wha…” she began.
“Shhh,” he murmured.
Frightened now, Æva snuggled closer into the protection of his encircling arms. She peeked round, seeing nothing but the rows of wagons, and beyond, the tents, standing silent. Out of the blue the snap of a muffled movement disturbed the tense silence. Idin was right: someone was there.
“My Lady?” a frightened voice whispered. “Æva?”
Lora crept out from behind a wagon. She trembled from head to foot, petrified. With a shock Æva realised it was Idin who frightened the girl. With his broad chest and thick muscles, the series of battle scars adorning his skin, and the fierce look in his eyes, she supposed he was a frightening proposition.
“Lora, what’s wrong?” Æva asked, pulling herself from Idin’s embrace and taking two hesitant steps towards the handmaiden.
“Æva, Lord Bayan is heading back to the headquarters. You have to come now. Please,” she added when Æva made no move.
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Aeva The Wild Page 16
