by Faye, Amy
Did the lady have a husband paying for her things, or had she made all the money that she so obviously had by selling her potions? If this was the sort of money that might be made selling little remedies, what was she doing in the middle of the forest?
Deirdre swallowed a bite. Lord, she hadn't realized just how hungry she was until she'd started eating. She had felt hungry, but the sensation had faded away as if her body realized that she wasn't going to be eating any time soon. Now that food, real sugar even, touched her lips her stomach had remembered its emptiness and was begging for any food she could put in it.
It was a struggle, but she set her fork and knife aside and stood up from the couch, then immediately fell back into the cushioned protection from the floor. Her feet were raw and blistered. It hurt to walk. She'd need to ask her hostess about some sort of shoes if she were going to be staying here.
The food left an odd taste in her mouth, though it did little to put off her appetite. It was enough to make her wonder, though. What was she tasting?
As she started trying to guess little things—garlic, no. Onion, no. What, then? She started to think harder, racking her brain. None of them were right. It tasted strangely like…
Rose? The taste was fading in her mouth and her memory must have been mistaken. No one would put rose in food. Yet another mouth-watering bite of the sweet roll confirmed it. The tiniest hint, but it lingered in the mouth. Honey and rose.
Her eyes narrowed. She'd heard that before somewhere. Some concoction that had slipped her mind. Something she would never have needed, so it wasn't worth memorizing. But Brigid had insisted that she be able to recite every recipe in her little book, so she'd learned it despite her reservations.
She'd already rose again, ignoring the pain in her feet. It felt as if she were hobbling around like an old woman, at first. As she walked, she felt the pain fading, felt herself returning to looking more-or-less normal. What on earth was she forgetting? Roses and honey. A strange combination. Roses were more suited to perfume than eating.
Where had her hostess gotten herself off to? Deirdre stepped through the door into the kitchen. It was large, a wall full of spices and dried herbs in small glass bottles. Each of them was clearly labeled with what they included, and most were only half-full.
A pair of skillets hung from hooks on the wall, and the entire place smelled very much of food, reminding her of what she'd left behind. But Brigid had always been very fond of saying that you shouldn't eat anything if you don't know what's in it. That went double when you knew that it wasn't merely for flavor…
There were stairs up in the front room, but she ignored them. An exterior door in the kitchen led out the back. Then there was the room in the rear, where the maid had ducked. That was an idea.
Deirdre peeked her head around, looking around while trying to stay casual. It was important to make sure that she wouldn't draw any attention. She was just looking around, after all. The question kept coming into her mind. Roses and honey. Think. Think!
She opened a door that turned out to be exterior as well, spied the paddock, and shut the door again when it hit her.
Roses and honey—a love potion? She tried to recall the book, but it had been so long. Roses, honey, a bit of wine, and silver. The effects were not nearly so promising as some hoped, but to soften someone up, to make them think you're swell—it worked well.
Yet, every sign had pointed to Amelia as both a friend and a lady of substance. There was no reason for her to doubt the woman… but that didn't change anything. Deirdre shut her eyes and tried to think. That would explain how a woman who seemingly had no family would have made such a fine living for herself.
How hard would it be to convince people that you were a-ok, and that your little potions were effective, than to force them to like you? And whatever she wanted from Deirdre, the girl didn't want to know. She walked out to the stable, her head on a swivel. She needed to make sure no one found her until it was too late. That would be the only way she could manage.
She slipped in the front, and a young man sat with his hat pulled low over his eyes. He was slumped back and Deirdre had a strong suspicion that he'd been sleeping when she came in. He jerked awake and pushed the hat back.
"Can I help you, miss?"
"Mrs. Amelia, she said I could take one of the ponies for a ride around the yard. I've never been on a horse before, and I thought it sounded very exciting."
He chewed on that for a moment before standing up. "Take a seat, I'll get the blue ready for you."
"Thank you very much," she said, letting herself settle in.
He went off, fussing with a saddle and so on. She hadn't exactly lied—she didn't know a whole lot about horses, but she had to hope Amelia didn't catch on before she could get out of here. Once she was on the horse…
After a few minutes, the boy came around with a steel-gray horse that stood nearly as tall at the shoulder as she did. "This is Blue—she's a sweet heart. Shouldn't be much trouble. Let me help you up."
He stood beside the horse and held his hand out. Such a nice boy, she thought. He helped her up. As Deirdre settled her weight into the saddle a woman's voice called out. "Mark, have you seen my guest?"
"She's right out here," he called back, then turned back, already starting a spiel about how to work the reins. But Deirdre had already taken off, and as the pretty blonde lady watched, she set the horse straight out of town.
Valdemar was wrong. That much was obvious. Deirdre had been nothing but sincere with him. He'd seen her, seen how panicked she was. How mad she was to get away from that place. Well, he'd gotten her away, sure enough.
But he'd done it on his own terms. He'd done it after forcing her to wait twice, which he certainly felt bad about—but he couldn't exactly turn back on it now. What's done was done.
The real question, the question that bothered him most of all, was who left the trail. It seemed obvious now that it wasn't necessarily for him, but for some English reinforcements. But if the English had a scout trailing behind, then why hadn't Gunnar rode straight into him?
No, it couldn't have been that easy. It was someone in the camp, he knew that. Likely someone sitting in this very room, because if they were going to work with the English they'd do it for a reason. Not simply to be killed in the next fight. He blinked, tried to think.
Unless it was her, but… that made no sense at all. Why would she run away, why would she kill an English soldier, if they were there to pick her up? She hadn't known he was watching. Couldn't have, unless he assumed that her powers of clairvoyance were that much more impressive than she had pretended them to be.
He turned to face the circle of men, each and every one of them a trusted adviser of his or Valdemar's. There was no need to speak quietly; after all, they were in English territory. One man in a million might speak their tongue, and certainly not the oaf that guarded them.
He had a soft body, the sort of body that a man gets when he sits on a stool every day and watches petty thieves sit. There was hardness in him, a cruelty that might have been hammered out into discipline with time and effort. No one had put that discipline in him, so instead he delighted in meting out "discipline" of his own, to anyone unlucky enough to make it into his prison.
There was always some provocation, but they were so particular and so hard to predict that there was little reason to assume that they might be avoided. Rather, they were just meted out in a timely manner, to suffer each and every one of his charges before they left, and if they were repeat customers, perhaps twice.
The only ones saved from his ire, of course, were the Danes themselves. He seemed to feel in their case that discretion was the better part of valor, and that it was better not to let them loose for an instant, for fear they might snap their chains like they were only spider's silk, and crush his head.
Well, they wouldn't be able to do that much—but killing him would have been possible, if necessary. It wasn't useful to consider, however, until the time was right. So Gun
nar ignored him as he rapped his billy-club against the bars and shouted to "stop talkin' gibberish in there!"
"It will be soon. Has to be."
"They're already building the gallows. You can see it, if you try. Across the way, there, in the distance. They mean to parade us like thralls through the street, so that their people can see how defeated we all are. Pfah!"
Lokir and Valdemar remained silent, their heads both bowed. Gunnar didn't have to wonder too much what they were thinking about, but the conclusions they came to were theirs alone.
Gunnar spoke up, finally. "Well, we'll need to get out of this box first and foremost."
The others nodded in agreement for a moment. "But the bars are too thick to bend easily. Surely, if we had time and we all worked together—but it wouldn't mean much, because they'd stop us right away."
"The bars are built into the stone, it seems. They won't be smashed down that way."
Finally Valdemar spoke. "No, there's only one way out we need to consider, and that's through the open door."
The others hushed. The criticism didn't need to be said, that the door was certainly locked. If he'd said it, then he must have an answer to the locked door, but none of them could begin to guess what it might be.
"We get the guard to come in here. You've seen him. He's violent. We've got him running for now, but what if we wanted him in here, with us? To show how big a man he is, of course he'd play along."
There was the suggestion. Gunnar liked it, but his mind started to turn. What happened if they made it out? What would he do, then? Go off on his own? Track her down and find her, make her tell him the truth? And then what? If Valdemar told it true, they didn't have any sort of future together. They'd all have to go, or he'd be stranded in a very hostile foreign land.
No, he couldn't afford that. But he had to think of something. It must have been a week or more, even on horseback, to get back to the town they'd taken her from. Why she would want to return to it, he couldn't say. But it must not have mattered to her that they'd destroyed the town nearby. Her little cottage was all she cared about, and that was good enough for her.
Perhaps it would be good enough for him, as well. He was a soldier through-and-through, but when he was with her, he hadn't thought about fighting, about dying. About his future in Valhalla.
He'd thought about children. About seeing them running through a patch of pumpkins, about teaching his boy to use a sword and shield. It wasn't the sort of thing that he'd given much consideration before, yet when he was with Deirdre the thought was… oddly enticing.
He turned his mind back to the conversation when he heard his name.
"You said something?"
"Odin's breath, we were talking about your role in this. It's an important one, are you certain you can handle it? Or are you too busy day-dreaming?"
"I'll ignore that you said that. Repeat it, I'll be able to make it happen."
"Magnus will lure him in with some behavior, sure to set him off. He's the smallest, surely if any of us can be attacked, that will be in our favor. The guard will be able to brag in the bar that he beat all of us into submission if he pummels the boy a few times. Isn't that right?"
Magnus's face was twisted into a wicked smile. "Aye, sir."
"You're right here beside the door. If I stay close, then you should have enough slack to grab him as he comes through. A quick death, and we'll have him—and his keys. The door will be open, and we'll be free to go."
"Interesting enough, but what if he is too much of a coward?"
"That's a concern—but if we wait until the right moment, we can mitigate it. When he's been in his cups, that's when we'll get him. We have already seen that he isn't opposed to drinking on the job. We just have to wait until he drinks to drunkenness, and then have Magnus do his thing. That'll be enough, mark my words.
"But what if it isn't?"
"Then we've got a problem, and we all try to smash it down. Why so many questions?"
Because if not, then we're all dead men, no one added.
Thirty
The sun was shining bright on her back, and the day was the warmest in months, and everything seemed right for her arrival home when Deirdre pulled the horse up in front. She shifted herself off, her bottom and hips sore from the ride, and then let go of the reins and stepped back. What was she supposed to do with this horse? She seemed satisfied to wander and graze on the forest grass, so Deirdre pulled the saddle off and let her do that.
The smells were all familiar, and yet at the same time it had been such a long time since she smelled them that it was almost foreign. As if it were someone else's house, someone else's stale air, someone else's herbs and someone else's flowers, now dead.
She let out a long sigh. There was cleaning to be done, and then she'd be able to enjoy a long day to herself. Like she'd always used to. Maybe she could get one of the kids to fetch her some food from the butcher—the realization hit her like a punch in the gut. Not likely, not at all likely. There wasn't going to be a butcher's shop, not any more. Not here. It was gone now.
She sat down in the wooden chair she'd set out for herself, all that time ago, to sit by the fire. She was going to be sick. The distance, the strain had all made it that much easier to deal with their deaths, but now she had nothing but her little house and the memory of what she'd been surrounded by for all this time.
She forced herself to stand back up, grab a rag, and walk out to the little well they kept out back. She filled the bucket and then brought it inside, wet the rag, and started to wipe down everything in sight. It was nice to see it all coming so clean, so nice. All of her things, as beautiful as when she'd left them. How she would manage it, she didn't know. But she did know one thing, she'd never leave it again.
That was the right way to go, she decided. Then she couldn't lose it all again. She had to toss what meat she'd had remaining. The awful smell permeated the pantry, turning her already-frustrating nausea up another notch. She managed to keep herself together just long enough to carry it out past her little garden and dump it into the compost.
Once she was back inside the smell had already faded, for which she was infinitely thankful, and she settled into the other chair. The comfortable one, but it was heavier, so she wasn't about to move that one by the fireplace. She looked at the rag ruefully, but it wasn't worth it. She'd done the important stuff already.
Deirdre hadn't realized how tired she was until she let herself sit, let the wind out of her sails. She was hungry, as well, but that could wait. It took a real force of effort to push herself up, but she managed it and started to climb the steps to the bedroom, already working the snaps on her ruined dress until it came apart.
She'd never slept with her clothes on, for years, and then she couldn't even sleep in a bed for the past month. Returning to her routine was more than she could have ever asked for. She let the dress lay in a pile on the floor. There would be time later for her to deal with it, decide whether or not it was worth repairing. The blood would likely never come back out.
She slid into her bed, the heavy blanket simultaneously familiar and foreign, like an old friend she hadn't seen in a while, and in a certain sense that was exactly what it was. She looked at the bedside. She was too old for dolls, but she could never let Mags go, either. The last little reminder that she'd had a life before living here, she had spent the last years on the bedside.
But it was a time to get acquainted with old friends. She reached over and pulled the little rag doll off her perch and into her arms, wrapped 'round them tight, closed her eyes, and let herself drift off to a light nap. Or at least, that was what she told herself it was going to be. The sun dipped lower and lower as she slept until it was gone completely.
By the time she woke again, the sun was up. She gave Mags a little kiss on the forehead and set her back on the table. Such a sweetie, she cooed in her mind. Then she pushed the blankets back off and stood up. Her wardrobe was much nicer than having to wear the same th
ing every day. The same mud-covered, torn, blood-soaked thing, every single day. And a pair of shoes—imagine how that would feel, after all the time since she'd had those! To finally have a stable footing in the dirt!
Already she was planning her day out. She'd have to check the gardens first, of course. There would be more cleaning to do, getting the rest of the house dusted, making sure there wasn't another pest infestation.
The thought hit her like a bolt of lightning. What was Gunnar doing? Was he alright? Had he survived? She knew he had. She'd heard the folks in some of the towns on the way home; news was spreading fast.
There was going to be a big execution in Norwich, and while nobody said they were going, it was supposed to be quite the event. They'd set it well in advance, so anyone who wanted to could come. Very pompous.
Deirdre had ignored it when she heard it. After all, they had nothing to worry about. First, because those men were the very same men who had killed all those good English folks. They deserved whatever they got.
Second, because she'd seen them fight, and if they wanted to escape, how could they be kept prisoner?
She dressed quickly and was out before she could think too much about it, get herself in trouble. But instead of inspecting or cleaning, she found herself standing on the back step of her cottage wondering how Gunnar was doing. Was he alright?
It was one thing to say that she didn't care whether he lived or died. He obviously hadn't cared whether or not she was alright, or he would have come with her.
It was an entirely different thing to try to mean it. She shook her head. No, she couldn't afford to think like that. She was home. This was what she wanted. She had thought they might have some kind of future together, but obviously they didn't, so she needed to forget about it. She checked on the horse, who hadn't gone far. She could still see the girl from the front of the house.
She wasn't thinking about going to Norwich. That much she knew. There was no reason for her to go, after all. Nothing for her there except a few men she'd been kept captive by getting what they deserved.
