by Jo Beverley
No message came from the king.
Instead a spell of hot weather brought sickness, causing vomiting, fever, and death. Few of the castle people took the pestilence, but it roared through the already wretched village. Madeleine knew it was the near-starvation of the people there that made them so vulnerable. She cursed her uncle even more.
See what he had brought them to! Now there were few people fit to slave on his fortifications. Work in the fields had slowed almost to nothing. Animals were barely tended and the weeds grew up strong to choke the corn. A winter famine was almost certain.
Why didn’t the king come?
The villagers had always refused Madeleine’s attempts to act as healer, but now she would not be put off. Summoning two guards, she went out among the people. They still glared at her, but she was growing competent in English, and she demanded that they speak to her. She gave them herbs and explained how they should be used to ease the vomiting. Once, she saw a woman throw the medicine away and could have screamed with vexation. What was wrong with these people?
She refused to give up. Even if they did not use her treatment, at least she knew she was doing her best. As she sat alone one day in the solar tying bundles of herbs, a girl sidled in and waited. It was Aldreda’s fair-haired daughter.
“Yes?” Madeleine said.
“Please, Lady. There’s a child sick.”
“There’s dozens of children sick, girl.”
“My brother, Lady.”
Madeleine looked up. Was this the first crack? Was she being accepted? “What’s your name?”
“Frieda, Lady.”
Madeleine smiled at the child, who looked to be about eight. There was no answering smile.
“Where is your brother?” Madeleine asked.
“At our house. It’s between the hall and the village, Lady. Da’s a forester. Ma asks that you come, but without your guards, Lady. It must be secret or Da’ll throw the medicine away.”
It could be a trap, but Madeleine found it hard to believe that Aldreda would plot so openly to murder a Norman lady. The penalties for the whole community would be terrible. The father’s enmity was only too likely. This could be her chance to show the people she was their friend. She gathered up her supplies and wrapped a cloak around herself.
They slipped quietly across the bailey. The earthwork was up and a wooden palisade was being built on top. With so few laborers, however, the work was going slowly, and there were gaps here and there. On the far side, the stream had not yet been diverted to fill the moat, and rough bridges spanned the ditch for the carts of logs. It was alarmingly easy to cross unnoticed. Madeleine prayed that no enemy would attack Baddersley. She didn’t think it could repel a bunch of children armed with sticks.
Soon Madeleine and the girl stood before a substantial thatched hut at the edge of the woodland. Aldreda came out, a shapely woman with a strong, beautiful face. She was no more warmly disposed than usual, but Madeleine told herself she would be happier when her child was eased.
“He’s within,” said the woman coldly.
Somewhat hesitantly, Madeleine ducked through the low door and found herself in the typical house of a prosperous family. It was small but divided to give at least two rooms other than the one in which she stood. The walls were made of sticks well packed with clay, and there was a small window, open now to the sun, with shutters that could be closed to keep out the wind. The split-log floor was swept clean, and a fire burned in a central stone hearth. The smoke rose efficiently enough to escape through a hole above, but enough lingered to fog the room, and on such a warm summer’s day it made the room stuffy.
The only furnishings in the room were two long chests and a simple loom. Tools and dishes hung on the walls.
She looked around for the sick child and saw a man. The father? He stood looking at her, just a shadowy shape in earth-colored clothes.
“Where is the child?” she asked, disturbed by the slight tremor in her voice.
“There is no child.” Her heart leaped at that familiar voice. “You have been brought here to see me.”
“Are you sick?” she asked, moving toward him.
He stepped back, away from her. Light from the fire, the roof vent, and the window illumined him. He was as dirty and ragged as before, with a hood shadowing his face.
“No.” The coldness in his voice finally penetrated, stopping her. Menace weaved through the room with the smoke and caught her breathing. Logic said Edwald wouldn’t harm her. Instinct overrode logic.
“Then I am wasting my time,” she said and turned to escape. He grasped her arm.
“Take your hand off me!” She was as afraid for him as for herself. “Harm me and the wrath of God will fall on everyone here.” Oh, sweet Jesu. He hates me too. Why? Why?
“That’s your way, isn’t it, Lady? Punishment. Death.” He dragged her close. She braced her hands to hold him away.
“What do you want?” she asked desperately.
“To see if your evil has marked you yet.”
Madeleine’s heart shriveled. “What’s the matter?” she cried. “I’m doing my best. I try to heal, and they throw my medicines away. I try to be kind, but no one sees it. . .”
“Too little, too late,” he sneered. “Why are you trembling? Are you afraid for your skin, Dorothy? You should be. You have much guilt to expiate.”
She stopped struggling and raised her hands to his chest beseechingly. “Am I to be held responsible for everything done by the Normans in England?”
He looked at her, and she could swear his head began to lower to hers, but then he thrust her sharply away. “Oh no. You don’t play those tricks on me twice.” He thumped a fist against the sturdy pole as if it were her. The very cottage shuddered.
Madeleine was fighting tears. She’d held this man in her dreams as her bulwark against cruelty and suffering. Now he was striking her as cruelly as if he used his fist.
He turned to her. “Are you really trying to heal people?”
“Of course,” she said quickly.
Then she was filled with disgust that she was still so eager to please him when he was being so cruel to her. Had she no pride? What was he anyway? Just a ragged outlaw. She glared at him, but knew she was scrabbling for anger to cover a broken heart.
He picked up a small earthenware bowl of water and thrust it at her. “Make your infusion.”
She pushed it back. “Go to hell.”
Some splashed over his hands, but it was still half full when he flipped the contents in her face. She gasped and spluttered, then he was holding a full bowl again. “Make your infusion,” he said with exactly the same inflection as before.
Madeleine took the bowl.
She’d suffered worse in her life many a time than water in the face and her courage had remained unbroken, but here . . . here there were no rules. He could scare her, blind her, maim her.
The water rippled with her fear as she placed the bowl beside the fire. She put one of her bundles of herbs in the pot and then used the tongs to add a hot stone. With a hiss the water heated and she stirred it. The bitter aroma began to rise. She glanced up warily. He was leaning against one of the sturdy posts, arms folded, watching her.
“It must steep for a while,” she said, her voice thready in the leaden atmosphere.
“I can wait.”
Wait he did. The silence played on her stretched nerves like a harsh bow on a viol.
She couldn’t stand this. She had to know. “Why have you changed?”
“When we met before, you promised a good roll,” he said crudely. “You lied.”
It was like a knife thrust. “And for that you turn against me? Turn the people against me?”
“Oh, you turned the people against you on your own.”
Now her anger was real. Such was her hero—a lout who sulked because she balked at giving him her maidenhead.
A flare from the fire highlighted him briefly. On his right hand, where it lay upon his left
elbow, she could swear she had seen a design—a head, perhaps, with horns. The skin-marks. The skin engravings of the English nobles. She had not been wrong, at least, about his high birth.
“Are you the one they call Golden Hart?” she asked.
She saw him tense. “What if I am?”
She put a touch of malicious pleasure in her voice. “My uncle plans to maim and unman you and leave you in the village dust.”
“My plans for your uncle are no different. Is this why you’ve learned our language? To taunt the defeated?”
“I have learned because this is my land.”
He pushed off the post to loom over her. “Then perhaps you should care for it instead of working your people into the ground.
“There are so few!” she protested. “I am seeking to heal their sickness.”
“There are so few,” he echoed with grim humor. “Even the cruelest farmer learns to care for his beasts of burden. Eventually.”
Madeleine gave up. She tended to her brew in silence. Eventually she said, “It is ready, I think.”
“Don’t you know?” he said, sneering.
“It is ready,” she spat. She took a wooden cup and scooped up some of the brew, then added cold water from a pitcher. “Where’s the patient?”
“Drink it.”
“Me? Why?”
He just looked at her. She longed to hurl the medicine in his face but didn’t dare, which was as bitter as the feverfew she had mixed into the brew. Stiffly, she raised the bowl and drank all of the foul-tasting fluid.
“That was a waste,” she said icily. “I don’t have an endless supply of herbs.”
He regarded her in silence.
“I’m not going to keel over dead, Saxon.”
For a moment she thought he would hit her. She’d welcome the pain. It might smother the agony in her heart.
“I’ll tell them they can use your medicine.” He walked past her toward the door. I’ll tell them . . . These were her people. What right had he to stand there and pretend to be lord over her people?
“If I still care to give it.”
He swung back to face her. “You’ll care, Lady, or you’ll feel my anger.”
“You dare not touch me. The king would flatten Baddersley and kill everyone here!”
He sneered. “There are ways,” he said. “I’ll get you more herbs if you need them. Tell Aldreda.”
“How can you get herbs from Turkey and Greece?”
“Just tell her.” With that he left.
Madeleine stood for a moment fighting tears. She would not cry over a man who was so unworthy. He’d clearly told the truth. All he’d ever been interested in was her body. The nuns had warned her it was always so. A bitter lesson, but one well learned. She stiffened her spine, gathered her herbs, and walked out into the sunshine—to face half a dozen pairs of inimical eyes. The glances quickly slid away. She soon found out why.
“I have a daughter sick,” said one woman hesitantly. “She can’t eat or drink.”
Just because he gave permission. Madeleine was tempted to give curses instead of aid, but it would be a petty retaliation. It would put a black mark on her soul and destroy any chance of gaining the trust of her people.
And she wanted the trust of her people.
By the Virgin’s milk, she’d supplant that worthless rogue in their hearts.
She followed the woman into the village. She visited four homes and showed the women how to make the infusion, leaving enough of the herbs to last two days.
The situation in the village was horrendous. The children and the elderly were taking the sickness worst, and despite her help she thought one child would die. She hoped she wouldn’t be blamed for it. The adults were recovering better, but she still gave them strengthening potions.
What they all needed was rest and more and better food. It was midsummer and there should be plenty, but their gardens were in poor condition because they did not even have time to weed and water them properly. Nor did they have time to go into the woods to pick berries and find wild plants.
She would take up her country explorations again and gather some of the most beneficial plants to pass on to them. She would try to find ways to ease their labor at the castle. Improvements were needed in irrigation for the main garden near the manor, which was shared between village and hall . . .
As she made her way back across the earthwork, Madeleine was full of a new sense of purpose. To the Devil with Golden Hart. She would save her people herself.
Chapter 5
Aimery made his way swiftly through the forest back to his camp. He had given up acting the outlaw some time ago. It had served its purpose and become dangerous, especially once the myth of Golden Hart came to life, but he had resumed his disguise for this one visit. A fleeing family had brought news of the sickness there, and the heiress’ medicines. In some way he felt responsible for her behavior.
It would seem she was trying to do some good, but that didn’t warm his heart. Baddersley was a ruin and its people were wretched. Her concern came far too late. It would have been more to the point to have fed the people and not overworked them, to have been easier with the whip, then they would not have succumbed to the pestilence.
Still, he couldn’t suppress a touch of admiration for her spirit. Even alone, surrounded by the enemy, she had spat at him like a cat. He’d wanted to take what she’d offered and then snatched away. He’d even enjoy the fight . . .
He caught himself up with a curse. She was a witch to be able to tempt him so when he’d seen her cruelty with his own eyes. She did nothing to control her aunt and uncle, and only cared for the people when it seemed they might die.
At the camp he found Gyrth tenderly sharpening his scramasax as he eyed another man sitting facing him. Old enemies, thought Aimery, as his squire, Geoffrey de Sceine, rose and bowed.
“Greetings, Lord. The king sends for you to Rockingham.” Geoffrey was a tall, strong young man and very Norman. He wore his dark hair trimmed close to the scalp at the back, and his hand always rested on his sword. If he had any problems with his lord’s fondness for English ways, he never spoke of it, though he disdainfully ignored any English he found with him.
Aimery didn’t know whether Geoffrey guessed what he did when he “went Saxon,” or if he reported back to William. It was not a matter he could control.
“What’s he doing there?” he asked in French. Gyrth scowled at being excluded from the conversation. “Learn French,” Aimery said to him unsympathetically in English before turning back to Geoffrey. “I left the king in Westminster only a fortnight ago.”
“He and the queen are on progress, Lord. It is said he has gifted Huntingdonshire to his niece Judith, and so they have taken her there. The only question,” he added with a grin, “is to whom she will be given.”
“So there’s to be an Earl of Huntingdon, is there?” Aimery peeled off the cloth he had wrapped around his head instead of darkening his hair with soot and grease. “That must have started the dogs growling. But I wonder why I’m summoned.” He wondered, in fact, if this unexpected call to court meant his road had finally come to its end.
“Doubtless for the feasting which will follow the betrothal, Lord,” said Geoffrey, bright-eyed.
It was possibly true, so Aimery grinned at the younger man’s blithe anticipation. “And you are looking forward to fair ladies and contests with rich prizes, yes?”
Geoffrey smiled back and colored slightly. “Yes, Lord.” He was only four years younger than Aimery, but he had missed Senlac and did not have Aimery’s split heritage, so at times he made Aimery feel ancient. To Geoffrey, England was just a place for adventure where a man could make his fortune.
Geoffrey passed over a bundle, and Aimery took it to the nearby river where he could wash off his disguising dirt. He allowed his smile to fade.
It was only a few weeks since he’d left the court at Westminster after the queen’s coronation, and to be called back again so soon
was ominous. Other than those he considered a danger, William liked his vassals to be out in the country, making his authority felt. Had Aimery now been identified as a potential danger?
There had been vague, scoffed-at rumors at court about a mystical hero called Golden Hart. Fortunately the stories were so wild no one took them seriously. Golden Hart could kill three armed men with his bare hands. He could disappear at will. He breathed fire like a dragon . . .
Still, William was beginning to show an interest in Golden Hart—almost as much as in the real threat posed by Hereward—because Golden Hart was becoming a focus for rebellion at the lowest level of society, the peasantry. That was one reason Aimery had abandoned the persona.
Except for this one trip. He regretted it now even though only Aldreda had seen him. And the heiress, of course.
He admitted that he could have checked the heiress’ medicines at a distance, or just trusted her good sense not to poison anyone. The bitter truth was he had wanted to see her again, to see if she now appeared as evil as he knew her to be.
And she didn’t. She was still beautiful and stirred his senses in a way no other woman could. Perhaps she was a witch.
As he waded into the cool water, he looked down and saw the clean patch on his right hand, and the design standing out there. When had that happened? He was careful these days not to give anyone a glimpse of the mark.
When the heiress had splashed water on him.
He cursed softly. Could she have seen anything in that smoky atmosphere? He hoped not, or it was likely to be disastrous if they ever met in clean company. She would be sure he was Edwald the outlaw, and would doubtless guess he was Golden Hart, particularly if she had an opportunity to study the design.
He imagined the relish with which she would denounce him. All the more reason to keep well away from Baddersley and Madeleine de la Haute Vironge, despite the insane urging of his heart. No, not his heart, just his body, he told himself.
He gritted his teeth and struck out for deeper, colder water. He swam fiercely to wash her from his mind as he washed the dirt from his body. When he emerged from the stream, his body was clean, but his mind was still full of a brown-eyed witch.
