‘What is happening that has you both clucking like hens?’
Their indrawn breath made her realise that she’d not spoken of her own accord to them since the day…since the day he arrived in Alston.
‘Lady, he has taken—’ Gytha began. But Aldys cut off her words.
‘Girl!’
She sighed. They were ever like this. ‘Aldys, tell me.’
Another pause followed and Sybilla could almost see the exchanged glances again before Aldys spoke.
‘The new lord beat Gareth and had him taken away, lady.’
Gareth yet lived?
Sybilla felt the tug of concern growing within her heart. Gareth had somehow survived the battle and now would die because she would not give him what he demanded. This conqueror was carrying out his threat because she would not obey him. Sybilla gripped the arms of the chair, not believing that she would or could stop him from his atrocious act but, for the first time in days and days, wanting to intervene.
‘Take me to him,’ she ordered in a calm voice that did not reveal the tumultuous roiling in her stomach.
After days of living in a purgatory, empty of all feelings or concerns, Sybilla was shocked at how quickly those lost emotions came flooding back into her heart and soul.
The two maids began to argue between themselves, so Sybilla pushed herself up from the chair and took a tentative step towards the door. And then another. Within moments, they were at her side, guiding her steps while they warned her against such action. Walking, even in her own chambers, without being able to see her path, was terrifying! The palms of her hands grew sweaty and her heart pounded with each step.
Worse, fear of confronting the man who had killed so many in his efforts to claim Alston dogged her every move forwards. With his size and strength and with the ever-present anger and hatred for her and her family, he would kill her with one blow—if he chose to strike her. She shivered as she remembered the moment she heard him draw his sword and knew he would not delay or hold back his anger once he’d decided on her death.
Would it be today? Would dying be easier than trying to live, blind and at the mercy of a man who clearly had none? She swallowed back the fear and reached out to touch the door, searching for the latch.
The shuffling of feet before her alerted her to their presence. One of the guards spoke, though both now stood close enough to her that their feet touched as she tried to move forwards.
‘My lady?’
‘I wish to speak to your lord. Take me to him now,’ she said, trying to speak in a calm manner that belied the lack of nerves she felt inside her.
‘I cannot do that, my lady,’ he said. Before he could explain, she offered another choice to him.
‘Aldys, seek out the new lord and bring him here,’ she said, hoping her voice exuded the calm of one in charge of a situation.
‘She cannot leave either, lady.’
Her temper, one that had laid dormant for days and days, flared. Amazing how quickly an unused thing could come back to life.
‘My servants have had leave to see to my needs since your lord arrived. By what right do you stop them now?’
A moment of silence met her question and the shifting and scuffing of heavy feet on the wooden floor outside her doorway as the guards considered how to answer her.
‘By Lord Soren’s command and their duty to him, lady,’ answered another voice from further down the corridor.
Sybilla turned and listened as this new man strode towards her chamber. Clenching her hands together, she took a deep breath and then another and another, gaining a bit of control with each exhalation, until the man arrived at her door. Sybilla stood her ground and swallowed deeply.
‘Lady Sybilla, are you well?’
‘I need to speak to your lord,’ she repeated. She took a step forwards, unsure of how close the guards were, or where this man stood. ‘You are called…?’
‘I am Guermont, serving now as Lord Soren’s steward.’ She now felt his foot in front of hers, telling her that he was close indeed. But his introduction reminded her of her failings.
Guermont served as steward because Algar was dead.
‘Take me to your lord,’ she repeated. ‘Now.’
One of the guards coughed and the other cleared his throat, drawing her attention to one side and then the other. From the sounds, she could tell that Guermont stood directly before her and the guards must stand close at his side. With Aldys and Gytha at her side, she was blocked in tight with nowhere to move.
‘Please return to your chambers and I will send a message to him that you would speak with him,’ the man offered. It was not enough and Gareth could be dead before his lord deigned to seek her out.
‘It is important that I speak to him now, Guermont.’ Her hands began to shake at the thought that he might refuse her. ‘A man’s life is at stake in this matter.’
A stalemate. Whether in battle or in controlling villeins, power and uncertainty vied for dominance and in this case, she knew Guermont weighed his options. Moments passed before she heard his sigh—he would relent.
But the loud voice, arguing and shouting, that echoed down the corridor between her chambers and the stairway to the main hall told her differently. Lord Soren returned, full of anger, full of threats, full of force, and she stood there unable to move out of his path. Sybilla shook now, expecting at any moment to hear the news of Gareth’s death at his hands.
Worse, she knew that by her own timidity and inaction and by existing in a haze of sorrow for her own condition, she’d caused it when she could have stopped it with but a word earlier. Sybilla stumbled back, away from the door, away from him. Her maids shuffled back, trying to guide her to no avail.
Guermont spoke in low tones to him, explaining, she could hear, her request to speak to him and he grunted in reply. Then, with that one word that seemed to be his favorite, he cleared the room and area of everyone.
‘Out.’
Sybilla waited, barely breathing, as he strode with bold loud steps into her chambers and approached her. The door slammed, distracting her for a moment, but Sybilla could swear she could feel the heat of his body moving closer to hers before he spoke another word. Now that her heart and soul had awakened from their slumber, Sybilla braced herself for this new, terrible world he would bring.
Instead, he pressed a small piece of parchment into her hand, uncurling her fingers and letting them grasp it. She tried to understand what it was, but could not. Lifting it between them, she shook her head.
‘You know I cannot see,’ she said. ‘Do you do this to make certain I know my limitations?’ Though she did not doubt his hatred of her for a moment, this belittling action seemed low of him to do.
‘This,’ he said, encircling her hand and the parchment with his larger hand, ‘is what you demanded from me in order to comply with my request.’ His voice, deep and rumbling even when almost a whisper, caused tingling to race up and down her skin and her spine.
‘My demand?’ Did this mean…?
‘You demanded a list of your dead. It lies on that parchment in your hand.’
She grasped it tightly, crumpling the precious sheet before she relaxed her grip. This did not excuse Gareth’s death, though. How would she atone for her inaction that had added another’s name to this tally of her sins, her failures?
‘And you had to kill another to prove that you now rule here? To make certain I know you will enforce your commands and demands?’ Bold words, but her heart pounded so loudly she was certain it could be heard by him.
‘Kill another? Of whom do you speak now, lady? Other than those who took up arms against me and were killed in the battle, I have sent no others to their deaths here.’
After spending only a sennight or so in the dark world of blindness, Sybilla was beginning to pick up on other signals of danger. The tone of his voice was one such clue and every part of her prepared for the onslaught of his anger now. Clearly, she’d insulted him somehow and she would
pay. When he grabbed her shoulders and hauled her up closer, with only the tips of her toes touching the ground, she felt the danger in his hands.
‘I fulfilled my part—now, Lady Sybilla, tell me where the records and rolls are hidden.’
She swallowed hard against her fear and told him. ‘In the small chamber next to the kitchen. A small storage closet dug into the stone wall holds the important records of Alston and my family.’
‘Who else knows its location?’ he asked, giving her a slight shake.
‘Only my family and Algar.’
‘Your father’s man Gareth knows not?’
‘Gareth? No.’ Terror struck her heart then. ‘Did you try to torture it from him before he died?’ she asked.
Each encounter with her engendered a new response within him and he never knew if it would be anger, hatred, pity, ambivalence or even good, plain, unmitigated lust. Not knowing meant being unprepared, as he was in this moment, and left him ill at ease, without a way to effectively deal with her. One look at the pained expression on what he could see of her heart-shaped face when she thought he’d executed her father’s man and Soren nearly lost his resolve not to soften towards her.
The only thing that brought him back from the brink of losing his control was the knowledge that she could not see him. Placing her back on her feet, he stepped away from her.
He would not explain his actions, especially not to her, even if the words sat on the edge of his tongue and wanted to vindicate him in her opinion. So much of his recent life had been driven by his quest for vengeance and for Alston that he’d given little thought to the wisdom he’d learned from Lord Gautier of Rennes. Now, as he gazed down at the woman who personified his obsession for revenge, he heard the older man’s words in his mind.
Hatred is the perfect weapon for it gives your enemy power over you that you would never otherwise put in their hands.
Had he not done exactly that?
He watched as Sybilla tried to regain her balance, her hands flaring out as she wobbled on her feet. Soren waited, but then did reach out when she stumbled once more and would have fallen.
It seemed that now people believed the worst of him based on his appearance just as they had previously always thought the best. A prisoner of his anger and his torn flesh, Soren waited for her to regain her balance and then turned to leave. Well, he was in no mood to disabuse her of the wrongness of her judgements or to enlighten her of his true actions here.
‘You are not a prisoner here, lady,’ he said. ‘You and your women can go and come as you please.’
’Twas time for him to move along and get his plans underway and she was, regardless of his original intent, a part of that. The surrounding lands must be secured, the keep and walls repaired and strengthened against attack and stores replenished. Now, with the information he knew would be in the manor’s records, he would know who owed service, who owed crops, and who owed other goods to the lord.
He glanced back as he reached the door and noticed the forlorn look of her face. Even with the bandage in place, the downturn of her mouth was in view. Damn! Soren did not know why he did so, but as he left he offered her the words of comfort he knew she needed to hear.
‘Gareth is not dead.’
He did not delay or hesitate in leaving her chambers, but he sought out his men to help him find the storage closet and the needed rolls of the manor.
‘Enough.’
Stephen waved him off and pulled off his helm. With his surrender, Soren had no other opponent to fight. He’d fought every other man standing in the area that they’d used as a practice yard. Outside the walls, yet within clear sight of the keep and its gates, it was a level plain back to the treeline and perfect now for the needed exercise and practice of fighting skills. Usually this was something he enjoyed—pushing his muscles, his body and his mind to their limits and then a bit more to improve his already formidable abilities on the field of war.
Though the others began to loosen and remove layers of heavy mail and thick quilted hauberks, he remained clothed. Sweat poured down his head and neck and over his body, but he would not undress before them. Not like before when his body was a thing of male beauty and when it was admired by others—men for its strength and women for the pleasures it promised.
Now, a tangle of criss-crossing scars marred his skin from head to hip, all marking the path of an axe’s blade and resulting in torn and yet-mangled flesh. Healing irregularly as they had, the skin lay tight and twisted and never lost its sting. Peering off to the woods at the edge of the field, he remembered a stream they’d crossed on their way here. That would fit his needs perfectly.
Soren told Stephen of his plans and then whistled to his mount. Climbing on the black monster’s back, he pointed him in the direction of the trees and touched the horse’s sides with his boots. Within minutes, they had crossed from the sunny field into the shadows of the woods and Soren guided the horse deeper and further until the sound of the rushing water could be heard ahead of them.
When they reached the nearest part of it, Soren jumped from the horse and tossed the reins around a branch to keep him there. Then Soren waited and listened for any sounds that would reveal others nearby. After a few minutes of silence but for the birds and other small creatures that lived within the wood, Soren walked to the edge of the rushing flow and began to peel off the layers of protection and clothing he wore.
Once naked, he stretched this way and that, trying to ease the tight, scarred flesh. He stepped into the rushing water and nearly lost his breath at the chill of it. This land was so much colder than his homeland of Brittany. There, the lands were warmed by mild breezes off the sea and the sun dominated the days. Here, merde, it was enough to freeze a man’s balls from his body!
He did not let the cold stop him, striding in until the water reached his waist and throwing his head under it. The sweat washed away and his body immediately cooled from his exertions of the day. Soren scrubbed his skin and rubbed his scalp with the water. He’d not planned this so he’d not brought along any soap. Next time…
Hell! Next time he would bathe in heated water inside! Surely Sybilla would allow him the privacy of her chamber to do so.
Soren walked to the edge of the stream and sluiced most of the water off him as he left the current. Turning, he leaned over, grabbed the length of his hair and twisted it, allowing the worst of it to drip back into the stream. As he did so, he noticed the reflection of himself in the calmer edge of the stream. He could not help but stare at the monster there, the one everyone saw now when they beheld Soren, the Beautiful Bastard.
If he turned to one side, his face barely looked touched, but it was the other side that bore the brunt of the blow that had nearly killed him in battle. It was that side, his right, that made others cringe in horror or turn away in fear or revulsion. Caught up in the vision reflecting off the water’s calm surface there, he nearly missed the sound of leaves crunching beneath someone’s feet.
Nearly.
Soren crouched and reached for his sword and dagger, ready to face danger. He turned his face so that the unscarred side was forwards and he could see better into the shadows.
‘Who goes there?’ he called out.
‘Raed,’ said a voice to his right side in the bushes.
‘Return to the keep and I will be there anon,’ he ordered, keeping the worst of his injuries hidden from view. The boy would have nightmares for days if he saw the extent of it. And he’d be worthless as a squire if he saw the results of battle now before trained.
‘Aye, Lord Soren,’ the boy called, never showing himself.
Soren took up his clothing and put on only what would cover him for the ride back to the keep. But what bothered him throughout that ride was the realisation that softer emotions were creeping back into his soul. Emotions like sympathy for the boy…and admiration for the woman.
When she haunted his dreams over the next several nights, in spite of her keeping to her chambers regard
less of his leave to do otherwise, he knew changes were coming. He just prayed his soul would survive them.
Chapter Eight
Though things were settling back into a routine in Alston, one she could hear through the portal her window provided, Sybilla remained in her chambers. The parchment he’d provided yet remained rolled and in her grasp most of the time. Instead of finding someone to read it to her, she simply spent her empty hours offering up prayers for the souls of those listed there.
The souls of those who’d died for her.
The worst part of this was she lacked the courage to go out among her people now. Blind, she could not serve them as she should as lady. All of her duties, ones she’d performed for her father after her mother’s death, had been lifted from her control, much as her keep and hands had, with the arrival of Lord Soren and his men. Now, others ruled, others oversaw, others supervised every aspect of life here in Alston. So, she sat here in her chambers, hiding from all she’d had before and even from the people she should be serving.
She could not sew or embroider now. She could not weave and that was something she always did when troubled or unable to sleep. It soothed her restlessness and helped her to concentrate. Moving the threads over the loom aided her in seeing other patterns around her. Now, with nothing to do to be useful, she sat praying.
And wondering.
He’d not touched her since that disastrous first night and had never spoken of exercising his marital rights to her bed and her body. Had he decided against consummation? Did he plan to put her aside? Sybilla shifted in the chair, her body exhausted from doing nothing at all and her mind now teased with this possibility.
She’d planned to ask him for leave to go to her cousin’s convent before he attacked. With no one there to lay claim, or argue his, to Alston, Sybilla had hoped that his anger against her people would dissipate. Mayhap he would allow it now if she did not contest the annulment of their ill-timed, ill-fated marriage?
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