Heart of Vengeance

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Maud nodded doubtfully. “Yes, my lady.”

  Helena tugged loose the bindings that held one of her braids in place. “Help me!”

  Maud reached for the other and separated the skeins. Soon Helena’s hair hung loose like a Saxon maiden’s, warming her shoulders and gently brushing the small of her back. There was nothing she could do about the costly appearance of her gown but at first glance she would not be easily recognized as one who did not belong in the countryside.

  Helena hurried to the tiny window in the far corner of the room. “Watch and warn me if they come,” she told Maud.

  “You’ll not fit through that, one like you.”

  “I’ll manage,” Helena said grimly. She pulled the only other stool in the room beneath the window and stepped on it. The window did indeed look impossibly small.

  “My lady, they come!” Maud hissed.

  Fright seized her. Instead of carefully threading her legs through, as she had intended, Helena lunged headfirst. Her shoulders rammed up against the edges.

  “Oh, hurry!” Maud squeaked.

  Helena twisted her shoulders and thrust again. Sharp, silvery pain flared in her right arm but her head and body were free, leaving only her hips.

  Hands grabbed her legs. At first Helena struggled, thinking the soldiers had entered and were dragging her back. Then the hands were squarely on her bottom and pushed.

  Her hips scraped through—and brief agony flared—then she slithered onto the bare ground beneath the window.

  Helena pushed herself up. Pain blazed in her arm, sharp enough for her to gasp. She pulled the cumbersome sleeve out of the way and saw a gaping rent in both the fabric of her dress and the kirtle beneath. Blood smeared both, welling from a deep cut.

  Behind her, she heard the rough, deep tones of men and Maud’s startled squawk. Before her lay the forest that bordered the village on two sides. Helena scrambled over the rough ground, keeping her head down. She slipped into the shadows between the boles and paused behind a thick tree-trunk to glance back.

  From the window through which she had just escaped appeared a face divided by the nose guard of a helmet.

  “There goes one!” the man snarled, pointing at her.

  Helena waited no longer. She gathered up her skirts and ran.

  The forest, any forest, was home to her. She understood the ways of survival there. It had been over a year since she had slept with boughs for a roof but being hunted quarry brought back skills as if they were instincts. She found herself dodging trees, jumping bushes and fallen logs with ease. She picked out leafy litter to run upon to hide her tracks. Aware of close pursuit, she constantly changed directions, using the trees at her back to hide her progress.

  Despite her skirts, Helena’s passage through the trees was almost silent. Not so her pursuers. They crashed through the undergrowth like boars in bloodlust, calling to each other, panting heavily. The panting alone told her she could outstrip them, for her own breath still came easily. She had to get far enough ahead of them, however, to fall from their sight. This would give her time to find a hiding place to burrow into while they blundered by.

  Gradually, Helena pulled away from all her pursuers save one, a hunter who came from her left and seemed fleeter of foot than the rest. She glanced backward. She was out of sight of all of them but the one on her left was too close to give her the time she needed to hide.

  Helena knew she had to stop soon, to tend to her arm. The blood ran freely, making her arm and hand slick. The throbbing faded, then all feeling faded from her arm. That was a bad sign. She could already feel her energy flagging. She made a reluctant decision.

  She picked out a tree with a trunk wide enough to hide her and altered her course toward it. She grasped the trunk as she passed and let herself be pulled around against the trunk. She pulled out her knife and waited.

  Soon the persistent one came closer, heavy feet pounding the ground. Then she heard the exertion of his breath and prepared herself.

  He passed the tree and Helena launched herself at his back, unable to prevent a growl of effort squeezing from her. It was enough to give him warning. As she landed against him, he was already stopping and twisting. His abrupt halt sent Helena crashing into his back. Her breath pushed out with an agonized wheeze. Fiercely, she concentrated on the necessary action. She clamped onto him with her knees and arm and reached far around in front of him with her knife hand, feeling for his throat.

  Astonished, she realized he was moving backward. His hand clamped onto her wrist and she realized what he intended with his reverse stagger. Her back slammed into the trunk of the tree she had just hugged so closely. She was flung back and her head thudded against the solid wood with a force that sent a wave of nausea through her and pushed another sickly groan from her lungs.

  He held her pinned against the tree with the full weight of his body and extra force he gained from levering his feet against the ground and thrusting backward.

  “Peace, ’Elena, if you want to live!” he said, his voice low.

  She drew a painful breath. “Stephen!” she gasped. It emerged as a croak.

  “Be still,” he snapped. He added in a low tone, “There are five. We must let them all pass. Listen!”

  The soldiers drew closer once more. Their thundering progress was enough to scare every deer from the king’s domain and leave his hunting bare for a year. No wonder she had been able to dodge them despite her rusty and noisy passage. They would hear nothing above their own labored breath and stomping march.

  She saw Stephen’s head turn to look to their right. He nodded, a small movement of the head. She looked. A dozen paces to the right, the lead soldier crashed through the ranks of trees into view. He looked neither left nor right, unable to hear the silence that spoke of his prey’s halt, but instead barreled on deeper into the forest.

  Stephen looked to the left. Two others barged through the trunks, intent on following their leader’s direction. A moment later another man followed.

  When they did not glance aside, Helena drew a long breath and let it go. Stephen would have been plainly visible if they had only looked.

  “Wait!” Stephen hissed over his shoulder.

  She was suddenly more than content to wait. The last of her energy had drained from her as steadily as the blood drained from her arm. If Stephen had not pinned her to the tree trunk with his broad back, she would have slithered to the ground in a tired heap.

  But there was still a fifth man unaccounted for.

  Then she heard his slow, plodding steps. They were close. He would pass directly by their tree. She held her breath. If the man discovered them, she would be helpless to prevent whatever came next. She hadn’t the strength to lift her hand.

  Helena heard his breath now, blowing raggedly. Then he appeared barely five paces away. He must surely see us! But the man was too concerned with his own labored breathing. He was stout, his face a deep cherry red. Even the back of his neck, she noticed as he moved ahead of them, was an angry color.

  When he was out of sight, Stephen stepped away from Helena and turned around. She grasped for the tree trunk to hold herself up. Before she could command her knees to lock, he caught her under the arms, holding her up easily. “Shhhh!” he breathed and carried her around the trunk until they were hidden again.

  Stephen propped Helena against the tree and examined her injured arm. “It needs tending.” He reached for the knife she still held in her bloody hand and tugged it from her unresisting fingers. Gently, he threaded it back into her belt.

  Helena felt the tug and pull at her belt dimly, as one would in a dream. Stephen’s voice seemed to ebb and fade in her ears. “My head hurts!” she cried and heard her voice whisper the words.

  “I’ll get you safely home.” There was a pause. “If only I could determine where the blessed river was from here! I’ve got completely turned around in this dank place!”

  Helena tried to lift her arm and failed. She pointed with her left
. “It’s there. Half a mile, not more.”

  He watched her closely. His dark eyes were alive with the light she had seen in the spindle room, when she had looked up after giving him her name. “Are you sure?” he asked gently.

  Helena couldn’t explain how experience and hard-won skills made her so certain. Instead, she nodded. Her pointing hand dropped. She fought against her eyelids closing too but they fluttered shut.

  She felt his hands at her knees and shoulder. She was lifted. “Come, brave one. To the river.”

  * * * * *

  Helena woke to the sound of gentle water and the dance of light sprites on her closed eyelids.

  There was a sound of movement by her side—rustling grass and the damp crunch of leaf litter. A strange scent wafted under her nose. It was oddly refreshing but seemed musky too. Her nose wrinkled.

  “You’re awake.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Helena opened her eyes. “Have I slept long?” She’d no sense of time passing at all. They had been beneath the trees but a moment before.

  In that lost passage of time, Stephen had found his way to the river and carried her to its brink. She lay in a comfortable pile of bracken and green reeds. She had only to reach out her hand to dip it in the water, which flowed sluggishly and deep. The trees grew almost to the bank of the river and leaned over it. Helena rested under one mighty old oak, who held just enough of his summer leaves, faded and dry now, to cast a gently moving, dappled shade over her.

  “You’ve been asleep long enough for me to stitch your wound, for which I’m grateful,” Stephen said. “I’ve stitched wounds aplenty but never on such tender skin.”

  Helena looked down at her arm. It throbbed steadily. While she had slept—if sleep it was—he had neatly slit her sleeve and the kirtle beneath, clear to her shoulder. Her arm had been cleaned of blood. The wound was sewn closed with small stitches.

  “You’ll wear a scar for the rest of your days,” he told her. He sounded apologetic.

  “It will not be the first.” It was the simple truth, but when she looked up, Stephen was staring at her strangely.

  “I suppose not,” he said at last. He turned his attention to a metal flask lying on the ground by his feet. Spread on top of the flat side was a rough paste flecked with green and brown. Herbs, she guessed. He worked the paste with a short, broad stick, using the stick and the side of the flask as a mortar and pestle. As she watched, he tested the compound with his thumb and finger, dipped his hand into the water and let some drops sprinkle onto the paste.

  “You practice the mixing of charms and potions?”

  He glanced at her from under his brow, black eyes shadowed. “A woman’s task? Aye, I could be accused of that. This is for your wound, to help it heal.”

  He continued to mix the paste steadily, concentrating on it. “Where I learned this art, it is practiced by men who are counted among the wisest of their people. The practice is an ancient and respectable one and well it should be. It carries miraculous powers, if it is applied aright.”

  “From where did you learn it? That dry land?”

  “No one lives there. Even those who know no other place can only pass through it. But nearby there are more friendly lands.”

  “These people came from there?”

  “From there and from other places. They do not stay in one place for long. They roam as they please.”

  “They have many castles?”

  He picked up a strip of her discarded kirtle sleeve and smeared the paste onto it. “They don’t live in castles. Or cottages.”

  “Then what do they live in?”

  “They carry their homes on their beasts of burden, creatures with humps on their back. They live in…” He paused, frowning. “You would call them pavilions. Large, wide, low pavilions.” He drew close to her side. “Hold up your arm.”

  She lifted her arm carefully and found strength had returned to it. He applied the makeshift bandage, settling the paste squarely against the wound and then wrapped the long ends of the bandage around her arm and tied them.

  Helena tried to sit up.

  “No, lie still,” Stephen said sharply. “You have lost much blood. You need time to rest and recover.”

  Helena lay back, more than a little grateful. The simple attempt to sit proved how weak she was. “Good Lord!” she murmured.

  He smiled grimly. “Some food, drink and rest and you will find you’re much stronger.” He scraped the remains of the paste off the side of his flask, rinsed it in the river and pulled the stopper. “Drink I can offer immediately.”

  She sipped from the flask. The wine was well watered and cool to her parched throat. After many small mouthfuls, she paused for breath. Stephen watched her with a small, amused smile.

  “Why do you watch me so?”

  “You have disproved a theory of mine. I had thought it was only man who thirsted for wine after battle and could quaff it without blinking.”

  “It is well-watered,” she pointed out. “And I am thirsty.”

  “And you are, in truth, a warrior.” He took the flask from her and replaced the stopper.

  Helena lifted her bandaged arm. “A careless one.”

  “A swift one, too. I have seen no swifter among trees than the deer themselves.” Admiration sounded in his voice and Helena felt a quick swell of pride.

  “One has need of speed when strength is missing,” she said, trying to sound cavalier.

  But he glanced at her again with his dark, measuring eyes. “I dare say,” he said, with equal offhandedness.

  “How is it you were in the forest today, just when I needed help?”

  “I followed you from Oxford.”

  “Oh.” Bereft of words, Helena stared at him. “Why?” she asked, at last.

  He looked out across the river and was as long answering as she had been in asking the question. “Because of all the duties I must complete, the things I would care to complete and the joys I would like to partake of if only I could, you are by far the most fascinating of them all.” He turned his head swiftly to glance at her, as if he only dared look for a moment lest her reaction be not to his taste.

  Helena was suddenly breathless, for her reaction was far from being one he would find distasteful. She felt a keen pleasure and a tinge of excitement that stirred deep in her belly. This strange, honorable man who had seen such wonders and learned such wisdom, found her company more to his preference than councils for war and the affairs of men and state?

  It made her feel for the first time in her life a fierce pride in being who and what she was, though Stephen knew but a sliver of the truth.

  Chapter Seven

  By the time the sun was high enough to shine on the river without casting a shadow, Helena had slept a sleep of pure exhaustion, safely hidden away in the tall bracken. She woke to find Stephen had fulfilled his last promise: He had procured food.

  Helena sat up and gazed at the repast. “This is the remains of what Maud and I carried here this morning.”

  Stephen broke the loaf, tore off a piece and offered it to her. “The Sheriff’s men didn’t find it all.”

  “But you did.” Had he taken this from them?

  He recognized her disapproval and frowned. “I did not steal this away from your friends.”

  Helena fingered the bread. “Then…”

  “Your cook was still there. I found her and explained your need. She rounded up a little from all who benefited from your calls this morning.”

  “Did the Sherriff and his men harm Maud in any way?”

  “They all but abandoned their tax collecting once you were sighted. Maud was untouched.” He touched her wrist. “Will you eat now?”

  Helena pulled the bread apart and ate some morsels. Stephen sliced a peach and sat back, watching her eat with hawk-like scrutiny.

  “Have you become my guardian now?” Helena asked between mouthfuls.

  “I?”

  “You watch me as if you count each crum
b that passes my lips.”

  “I want to see you recover from your misadventure.”

  “It is only because of your intervention that I stand a chance of recovery at all. They would have caught me.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Eventually.”

  “Would capture have been such a disaster, ’Elena?”

  The way he pronounced her name reminded Helena sharply of Brittany and the days she had spent there as a child. He was not being as careful with his speech in front of her and it pleased her that he had relaxed his guard.

  “Would capture have been a disaster?” she repeated. “Probably. There were five of them and they did not strike me as the courtly, gentle type that honors womanhood.”

  Stephen smiled. “No, indeed. I think you are right there. But is capture all you fear?”

  Helena shook her head. “Questions.”

  “Aaaah,” he breathed. “Yes, you would want to avoid the wrong sort of questions.” He frowned. “You have more experience than I in clandestine affairs. I am more accustomed to settling matters openly, with sword and shield if necessary.”

  “I would not have it otherwise,” Helena declared swiftly. Then she realized the import of her words and felt her cheeks turn hot. “I meant no assumption, my lord,” she said stiffly.

  Stephen laughed, his teeth white in the shadowed light beneath the mighty oak. “Pray, do not attempt to amend your words, my sweet lady. They bring me pleasure, no matter their intention.” He cupped her glowing cheek with his hand. His flesh was cool against hers.

  Stephen’s touch was startling but Helena did not resist the gesture, for it salved her conscience. She smelled his scent. It was an appropriately manly smell, astonishingly pleasant. She had experienced the different odors of men when living cheek by jowl with them in Robert’s camp. She had grown used to the often repugnant, acrid aromas they gave off. If a man’s scent was fresh enough to avoid wrinkling her nose, she thought nothing more of it.

  But Stephen’s worked a different effect on her. Helena liked it. She liked his touch. It was pleasant and she would welcome more of it. She sat perfectly still, while through her mind tumbled images and confusing feelings. Her whole body prickled into an almost painful alertness. Her breath came faster.