Immortal Champion

by Lisa Hendrix

  “I’ll pay,” said Torvald.

  “Aye. You will. And I hope you’re strong enough to carry me, too, because by dawn I don’t intend to be able to walk.”

  THERE WASN’T ENOUGH ale in all the taverns of England to wash out of his skull the image of Eleanor in her husband’s arms, but that didn’t stop Gunnar from spending a good portion of the trip back trying. He made his way tavern to tavern, and Torvald proved his strength more than once, throwing a well-soaked Gunnar over his horse so they could make a few miles before dawn. As a result, it took much longer to ride back than it had to go south.

  Eventually, though, somewhere along about Saint Swithin’s Day, they reached the dene. In the fullness of summer, the fog had long since cleared and the valley was in its glory, as fair as ever it had been, green and rich with life, the ground beneath the trees awash in a rainbow of wildflowers that made the salty air sweet with their perfume. To Gunnar’s mind, it was the fairest wild place in England, the place he and Jafri had called home for most of the last hundred years.

  And he couldn’t stand it.

  “It is too close to Raby,” he told Brand and Torvald as they sat around the fire that first night, after they’d told Brand what had passed in Sussex. “I am tempted already to go hunting her father, but I can’t do that to her, no matter how things stand between she and I. I need to go off somewhere till my anger cools.”

  “You could come with us,” said Brand. “Help me hunt Cwen.”

  Gunnar shook his head. “I already carry enough scars from the bear.”

  “Most of yours came from the lion.” Brand sliced another chunk off the flitch of ham Ari had bought along the way and handed it to Gunnar, then cut another piece for himself. “Besides, the bear’s claws are no longer a problem. We have a wagon now.” Brand’s face pinched a little as he added, “One with bars.”

  Gunnar froze with the meat halfway to his mouth. “A cage? Shite, Brand.”

  “No pity,” ordered Brand. “’Twas my idea, and I use it willingly if not happily. It lets us go where we could not go before. People think the bear is being taken somewhere for baiting, and we can stay closer without danger to anyone. It give us more hours to work and saves a good deal of running back and forth.”

  “I can see it would,” said Gunnar. They’d learned early on to separate widely at dawn and dusk; those who took dangerous forms ran a mile or more on foot before each changing to keep from harming the others or their own mounts. Not having to do that would save hours in every day. “But still … a cage.”

  “Aye, a cage.” Brand chewed a bite of ham, then grinned. “But every morning as I turn the key behind myself, I remember that Ari must pass the day as a carter instead of a knight.”

  “That might make it tolerable,” agreed Gunnar, smiling for the first time in a long while. A half smile, she’d called it, and he had to lock his fingers in his fist to keep from feeling the corners of his mouth to see. “Where is this wagon? You didn’t come with it.”

  “We left it in Easington. I saw no point in bringing it up the dene until we were certain you were here. I fetched it after you left. Because of it, Jafri remains safe and uneaten, as will the bull.”

  “How did you get it down here?”

  “Brought it up from the beach. We couldn’t get it all the way up, so it’s down past the lower cave, but it’s close enough. So, will you come with us?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “It will be good. As we travel, the bull will make the baiting story look even more true.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “Lancashire, east of Morecambe. On the way north Ari had a vision. Dark dealings, he said. I want to see if it’s Cwen.”

  “Lancashire isn’t safe for the wolf any longer,” said Gunnar. “It is too well hunted. We must stay farther north.”

  “Then you go with Brand, and I’ll stay here with Jafri,” suggested Torvald.

  Gunnar shot him a sideways glance. “He never liked you that much, you know.”

  Torvald laughed. “We’ll never see each other anyway.”

  “True enough.”

  “Come with Ari and me,” urged Brand. “You need the company and so do I. I tire of Torvald’s monkish ways. A talker would be a good change. Not to mention a drinker.”

  “Gunnar is that,” said Torvald.

  The idea of more time spent with a friend tempted Gunnar. Monkish or not, it had been good to have Torvald’s company these past few weeks, and Brand and he had always enjoyed an even easier friendship. In the end, though, Gunnar shook his head. “Jafri is my responsibility.”

  “I never understood you,” said Brand. “Kolla treated you like a turd, and yet you insist on seeing to her brother.”

  “He became my brother, too, when I married her. That didn’t change when she died. Anyway, I like him, or did the last time I talked with him. We’ll go up into the hills along the marches this time, maybe even into Scotland proper. Wherever we can find a thick patch of forest without too many hunters.”

  “You won’t like Scotland,” predicted Torvald.

  “I don’t like any of this cursed island,” muttered Gunnar, and reached for another piece of meat.

  CHAPTER 15

  Autumn 1414

  SCOTLAND DPROVED AS unpleasant as Torvald had warned, though Gunnar couldn’t figure out why. The people carried a fair measure of Norse blood in them, after all, and the weather was more like home than that of England. Yet the Scots seemed unfamiliar, and the land constantly reminded them they were neither in England nor truly at home. Jafri and he moved deeper into Scotland’s wild westlands trying to find a place they liked, but in the end they lasted but two winters and a miserable spring before they exchanged messages agreeing to return to the dene by summer’s end.

  By then, Gunnar’s anger had faded enough that he could grant Westmorland his due. The man was Eleanor’s father, after all, and it had been his right to contract her marriage as he saw fit and see that contract fulfilled. If Gunnar had a daughter who had been sporting in the woods with some errant knight, he likely would have done much as Westmorland had. If their paths ever crossed, Gunnar thought he might not be able to avoid a fight over the beating he’d given Eleanor, but he no longer had the urge to go hunting the man. That would have to do.

  He and Torvald slipped back across the border mid-August and finished out the month in the Cheviot Hills before heading east toward the great road that would take them south, taking advantage of their nearness to Lesbury to stop and see that the steward was doing his duty. The forests around Alnwick still stood thick enough to hide the wolf, and Alnwick itself had herds and fields so vast that another bull went unnoticed.

  They quickly fell into the roles they had set on their only other visit, Gunnar as the knight who hunted all day, every day, and Jafri as his wastrel friend who lazed about until midday because he was off every night tupping some woman in Alnwick town. After the bleakness of Scotland, the little vill of Lesbury and its manor seemed a fine place indeed, and with harvest and threshing in full swing, no one paid them much heed. They decided to stay until Michaelmas, when the year’s accounts would be settled and Gunnar could collect what was owed him as lord.

  A sennight passed peacefully, until one evening on the way back to the manor when Ghost picked up a stone. As Gunnar dismounted to remove it, he heard a distant rumble and saw the dust of a large group of riders coming his way from the direction of Lesbury. Not wanting to be seen by any more people than necessary, he quickly flicked the stone out and led Ghost deep into a stand of trees, then slipped back to the edge of the wood where he could watch from the shadows.

  York. Gunnar recognized the red and blue livery of some of the outriders as soon as they came into view, and the royal arms carried by the herald confirmed it. He spied the duke himself, looking older and a little heavier, like a man just reaching his prime, riding alongside another nobleman that Gunnar didn’t recognize. Gunnar remembered many of the flanking knig
hts from those evenings before Richmond’s fire and was glad he’d hidden.

  Behind the duke’s party, bright gowns and fluttering veils announced a smaller party of women on horseback, surrounded by more knights and men-at-arms, and behind them came wagons bearing serving women and baggage. With a party so grand, the duke clearly intended to rest at Alnwick for some time.

  As the cluster of women drew closer, the high-pitched twitter of girlish voices confirmed that the duchess still led her gaggle of fosterlings. And then one voice, husky and lower than the others, caught Gunnar’s ear. Heart thumping, he scanned the group.

  There. Eleanor.

  Her fine black mare pranced along on the far side of the train, where he might not have seen her if he hadn’t heard her voice—thank you, Freya, for letting me hear her—and she listened attentively to the swain who rode at her side. Jealousy bubbled through Gunnar, growing even more bitter when he realized that the man beside her was no swain, but Burghersh himself, grown a good hand’s breadth and filled out a little.

  Her husband. She was here with her prick of a husband.

  The blood thundered through Gunnar’s skull, deafening him so he could only watch as she smiled at something Burghersh said and twisted around to speak to the woman on the near side of her. The move let Gunnar see her face straight on, and her evident pleasure in the moment was a spear that went straight to his gut.

  He should turn away, he told himself, not torture himself. But just as he hadn’t been able to keep from kissing her that night in the glade, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her now, absorbing every gesture and expression. He knew those lips, those hands, that sweetly curved body. And he knew the hair that hid beneath that silver caul and crimson veil, too, the raven mass her husband would let down each night when he bedded her.

  Wrapping his fingers around the tree trunk as if it were Burghersh’s neck, he silently dared the man to betray any hint of discord, any sign he was unkind to Eleanor.

  But the husband looked even happier than the wife, clearly doting on her every word, and when Eleanor reached out to touch his knee as she spoke, Gunnar understood. She played her love games with Burghersh the same way she had with him, wielding that potent mix of innocence and seduction to snare him. No wonder the man grinned like a fool.

  Did she feel his smile in the dark to see if it was real? Gunnar wondered. Did she shudder in pleasure at his touch? Did she claim to love him?

  He tormented himself with questions until he could no longer make her out amongst the others in the dusk, not even her crimson headdress, and as the wagons at the back of the procession creaked past, he retrieved his horse and rode the few miles to Lesbury, where he wrote out a message for Jafri telling him exactly what he wanted him to do.

  “DINNER, MY LADY.”

  Eleanor kept her eyes on the stitchery she was sorting out for one of the duchess’s young fosterlings. She’d been picking at the girl’s tangle since after chapel and she finally had the knot almost undone. She carefully worked the needle into the wool and gave a little tug, and the final knot loosened and came apart. “There. You are back to where you went awry.”

  The girl sighed with relief. “Will you show me the proper way, Lady Eleanor? I have had to pick it out three times already.”

  “That is why your yarn looks so worn. And why it was so difficult to untangle this time. You should end it here and start a fresh strand.”

  “My lady.” Lucy grew more insistent. “They have already brought out the ewers. Lord Burghersh asks after you.”

  Eleanor pinned the needle into the edge of the cloth and laid the piece in the girl’s sewing basket. “We will attend to it later. For now, run ahead, and if Her Grace scolds, you may tell her I kept you.”

  “Yes, my lady. Thank you, my lady.” The child did her courtesy and hurried off. Eleanor just sat there.

  Lucy came closer, concern pinching her face. “Do you feel well, my lady?”

  “Yes. I am only weary.” So very weary. Of the journey. Of the false smiles. Of pretending. Of all of it.

  “Perhaps it is less weariness than riding right past his hall,” ventured Lucy. “We should not have come to Alnwick.”

  Eleanor frowned. Lucy had said nothing the day before as they’d ridden through Lesbury, and Eleanor had thought—hoped—her cousin had forgotten that it was Sir Gunnar’s home estate. Apparently, she had not. She motioned for Lucy to come sit by her in the window nook, where their words wouldn’t carry.

  “You know it was never my intent to come here. I agreed to accompany Richard only as far as Warkworth,” she said quietly. It had been Her Grace who insisted the women come to Alnwick with the duke.

  Lucy shook her head. “Even Warkworth was too close.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Eleanor protested. “I have never been so far north. It was merely a name to me. I thought only to keep York from gaining too much influence over Richard. He schemes to control him very nearly as much as my father does.”

  Lucy sighed heavily. “I know, but …”

  “If it eases your mind, Sir Gunnar once told me he seldom visits his lands. He is unlikely to be here.”

  “I hope you are correct. I beg you, my lady, be wise about this.”

  “I have been wise for better than two years. Why would you think I would suddenly change?” She rose and shook out her skirts. “Now come. As you said, my lord husband waits.”

  As they went downstairs, she pinched her cheeks, so that she entered the hall with a healthy glow and a smile on her lips. Richard responded as he always did, grinning like a happy pup. That pleased her enough to make her smile come more easily; as long as she kept him enraptured, she had some power.

  “There you are,” he said, motioning the ewerer back. “What kept you?”

  “Forgive me. I was entangled in a string.” She quickly explained to the table as she washed and dried her hands in the rosemary-scented water.

  “You were good to help her. I remember how demanding Her Grace was of your stitching.” Richard introduced her to the men at the table as the first course was carried out. She knew many of them by name if not face; they rode for one of her royal cousins, John, Duke of Bedford, who was holding Alnwick on behalf of his brother, the king. It was Bedford that York had come to visit, for reasons to which Eleanor was not privy.

  Dinner itself was a leisurely meal, the many courses occupying a goodly portion of the midday hours. However, the moment York and Bedford had finished the last bite of sweet, they were ready to ride to the hunt. The men excused themselves, Richard included, and they all trooped out.

  All but one dark, whip-thin knight who seemed to be attached to neither Bedford nor York, nor even Alnwick. There was something familiar about him, but though Eleanor stared at him, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. To her consternation, he seemed just as interested in her, studying her from across the hall.

  A varlet came by collecting the spoons from the table. As he reached for hers, she motioned with her eyes. “Do you know yon knight? The one with the hungry look about him.”

  The old man barely glanced at where she pointed. “That would be Sir Geoffrey, my lady.”

  Eleanor waited, expecting more, but the man went back to dropping spoons into his basket. She prodded. “And just who is Sir Geoffrey?”

  “A friend of Sir Gunnar’s, from over Lesbury way.”

  “He’s here?” Her voice cracked, making the fellow look up from his work. She quickly lowered her voice. “I mean, is Sir Gunnar at Lesbury now?”

  “Aye, my lady. I ween he came a week back or thereabouts. You know the gentleman, then?”

  After the way she’d reacted, he’d know it was a lie if she denied it. “I met him once, long ago.”

  “You must have met Sir Geoffrey, too, then, for he always comes and goes with Sir Gunnar.” He worried his cheek with his tongue. “Though I don’t believe I’ve ever seen them at table together.”

  Ah, God. Not Geoffrey. Jafri. The friend Gunnar had
mentioned.

  He’d been at Richmond, she realized now, a lean, ravenous man who’d been as fond of the meat during the day as Gunnar had been the fire at night. She’d taken note of him as a strange face in the hall, just as she’d taken note of Gunnar, but for whatever reason, she’d never approached him. And she’d certainly never linked him and Gunnar in her mind.

  She suddenly realized that the varlet was eyeing her curiously, waiting for some answer. “Pardon, what was that you said?”

  “That I’ve never seen them together, m’lady. He and Sir Gunnar.”

  “They, um, keep very different hours, as I recall. Though as I said, it has been a good many years since I spoke to either of them.”

  “Did you not pass through Lesbury when you came here, my lady?”

  “We did not stop.” Oh, thank the saints they hadn’t stopped. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lucy rise and head her way. She quickly dismissed the man with thanks. He dipped his head and went back to his spoons, jangling away with his basket to clear the next table. Eleanor dared a glance at Jafri and caught him still watching her. Assessing her.

  He knew who she was, she realized. If he told Gunnar she was here …

  “My lady?” Lucy came around the end of the table carrying a bunch of grapes. “Is something wrong? You are very pale.”

  “I … I …” She stared up at Lucy, unable to tell her. “It is too close in here.”

  “Perhaps we should go out for a breath of air.”

  Outside, where she just might be able to spy a noble red bull in the fields. Outside, where she could be in Lesbury before dark, even on foot.

  It was only three miles—she’d counted them out as they rode—and from what York had said, less than thirty to Scotland riding cross-country or forty by the road. They could be across the border almost before Richard realized she was gone. She could be with him.

  As though he knew her thoughts, Jafri stood up and started to work his way across the hall toward her.