“You know where he is now? In the slaughterhouse, taking out his frustrations with his fists on a side of mutton. All on account of a slip of a girl whom he ought to bed and have done with.”
A second man responded. She knew his voice. It was Gaines.
Frey paused her work and listened.
“She has him bewitched. I tried to warn him about her, mind, and he nearly severed my head.”
“He’s usually an even-tempered man but he’s not been right since they found the body of that girl.”
Gaines grunted in agreement.
The anonymous voice continued, “Witchcraft, that’s what it be, and I’ll go on saying it. What kind of woman dresses like a man and leads a battle? A witch, that’s who. And I reckon it was she who summoned up the wolves as her familiars. That's why she was able to kill four of them with Talbot’s bow and arrows.”
A melodic clanging of metal stirrups and the squeak of well-polished leather punctuated the conversation as the two men removed saddles from the tack room in the far corner of the stable building.
“She ought to have burst into flames the minute we passed through the gates of this holy place.”
Gaines responded with a half-amused grunt.
“She may not be the devil’s daughter, but she is a Saxon one,” he answered. “I for one will be glad to see the back of her. She’s been nothing but trouble.
“Aye, she’s comely enough to look at, but with no lands and no dowry, she’ll have no choice but to take the veil. Either that or marry some wealthy old widower who won’t care that she’s not a virgin.”
“Still, if the baron doesn’t want her, I’ll be happy to ride her,” the other knight sniggered. “I’m sure she’s been well broken in by those men of hers.”
Four stalls over, the sound of timber beams scraping through iron loops indicated the men had opened two enclosures.
Sure enough, the slow and even clopping of hooves could be heard as the horses were led from the stable, their steps enough to drown out the rest of the conversation.
Once sure they had left the yard, Frey rose to her feet. A few quick blinks cleared her eyes of the rage that suffused her being.
She had been scolded once as a child for listening in on adult conversations. Her father’s steward squeezed her arm and pulled her away from the door of the long-house. Even now, Frey stroked her arm unconsciously in memory of the bruises the steward left.
Ebon nudged her shoulder and Frey responded with a stroke along his nose.
“Nothing more than a Saxon witch-whore…is that how they all see me, Ebon?” she whispered. “Even Sebastian?”
Ebon was silent on the subject.
* * *
Blood dripped from the cloths that covered and padded Sebastian’s knuckles. Beads of red fluid fell to the sawdust as he pounded the flesh of his opponent.
Anger and frustration—his near constant companions for days—were now being transferred, blow by blow, to the side of mutton that swung on a meat hook in the abbey’s slaughterhouse. With each punch, he was grateful for the physical action that allowed his mind to consider things less tangible.
Yes, Frey’s deception about her brother rankled, but he could see its logic. It was a very clever ploy on her part to gain the cooperation of someone she did not know. He set that subject aside to reflect on the revelation that Frey was in Durham to be married.
Well yes, he argued with himself, why should that not be so? She was of marriageable age. Most girls of her years were already married or promised. That topic would not so easily dissipate though.
It continued to gnaw at him despite the reasoning he applied to it.
And what of this man Drefan? Surely he could not be Frey’s intended. She claimed not to know the identity of the man she was to marry and he was inclined to believe this. So was Drefan her lover?
Sebastian delivered the carcass so powerful a punch that it jarred along his hand and arm all the way up to his shoulder.
Frey had a lover.
He returned to that point again and again, touching it like a bruise. It hurt.
He jabbed again with increasing speed—left, right, left, right—until the length of chain on which the meat was suspended rattled and danced, bouncing adjacent slabs of mutton waiting to be dressed.
Soon, Sebastian’s lungs demanded air and his arms and shoulders screamed for relief. He steadied his breathing and, with each exhalation, slowed his punches.
He sensed rather than heard or saw that another person had entered the butchery.
“When I heard you were taking your frustrations out on a side of mutton, I thought you were feasting, not fighting.”
Sebastian acknowledged Frey’s presence in the doorway with a half glance before turning back to his makeshift punching bag.
The smell of wildflowers and lavender broke through the charnel house stench of blood as she approached.
She stood a foot away and stared at his hands before gently reaching across to touch them. Sebastian pulled them away, letting her believe the action was caused by physical discomfort.
“How much of this blood is yours?” she asked, placing her hands behind her back. Out the way of temptation.
Sebastian unwound the strips of rag that protected his knuckles.
“Very little.”
He raised his hands to examine them front and back. His fingers were indeed unbloodied and he flexed them with a little effort. They were undoubtedly bruised though.
“Just as well,” she said with a touch of humor coloring her tone. “The abbot ought to be thanking you for tenderizing the meat.”
“Is there a reason you’re here?” he snapped, and felt a twinge of guilt as a momentary look of hurt flickered across her face.
“Ebon was worried about you.”
He turned away before a smile at her jest could reach his lips.
“Thank you. I’ll tell him he worries needlessly.”
With his back to Frey, Sebastian walked over to an oak water butt, dipped his hands, and sluiced his face.
“Actually, there is a reason why I sought you out,” she continued.
Sebastian scrubbed his face and straightened.
He waited, but no explanation was forthcoming. He turned.
Frey looked at her feet as though collecting her thoughts. She looked tired, dejected, defeated. This was not the woman he met four days ago.
“Well?” he said, impatience coloring the word.
He saw it the split second it happened, had seen it before. A spark of spirit glowed to life like an ember in a breeze. Deliberately she raised her eyes and skewered him with a look.
Odd. He felt rather proud of her at that moment.
“Firstly, I’ve come to apologize for my deception over Brice,” she started. “I see now you are a man of honorable intent and kindness despite…”
“Despite being a Norman cur? A forhergian, a dysig, a helsceaða?” Sebastian mocked. Yes, he was aware what some Saxons still called him—a despoiler, a fool, a devil.
* * *
Frey merely blinked and folded her arms, uncowed by his fit of temper.
“Actually, I was going to say despite being an ealdor—a leader—though in your case, dysig is also appropriate.”
“Is that all?”
Frey shook her head; there was more.
“No doubt you’ll be overjoyed to learn I have decided to join a convent. I will have Abbot Ranulf recommend one as soon as I know from Brother Halig how my brother will fare. You will no longer have care of me, nor need to linger on the unpleasant memory of Alfred of Tyrswick and his children.”
Frey held out her hand and waited for Sebastian to clasp it as warriors did as a sign of good faith. Sebastian stared at it as though he had never seen one before, then slowly raised his eyes to hers.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
The question came out as a growl. It reminded Frey of the wolves they killed the day before. She frowned, dropping her h
and.
“I just told you. A convent.”
The last expression Frey had expected to see from Sebastian was a smile, which started slow and spread wide. She started to smile in return until she realized something else lurked behind that expression.
“I do not think so, princess.”
“Don’t call me that! And besides, where else can I go?”
“You pledged yourself as my hostage.”
Frey saw a flash of surprise at her laughter in response.
“That was when you had no idea my men were virtually unarmed and near to starving,” she said. “Now they’re back home tending their hearths, they have no stomach for making mischief. You saw them yourself. Do you honestly believe any of them could raise a rebellion?”
Sebastian took a step toward her and Frey stood her ground by keeping her eyes firmly fixed on his.
“I know nothing of the sort,” he said, taking another step. “When headed by a competent leader, especially one with your attributes, I can easily imagine men ready to fall in behind at any time.”
Frey was mesmerized; she could not recall ever seeing eyes that shade of green before. She blinked and he was three paces closer. Close enough to touch in fact. Her fingers tingled in anticipation.
“I gave you my word,” she whispered as Sebastian closed the final distance between them.
“Sometimes actions speak louder than words,” he said, trailing a fingertip from the back of her hand, along her arm, and up to her shoulder.
A shudder of anticipation ran through her, its cause unmistakable. Sebastian’s hand continued up her neck to the back of her head, beneath the veil that hid her silky blonde hair from him.
Despite closing her eyes, Frey’s lips anticipated Sebastian and parted of their own accord.
Unlike the frantic mating of lips from yesterday, this kiss was soft and unhurried and deepened as Frey let Sebastian take the lead.
“You and I still have much to discuss,” he said in hushed tones in her ear. “And I told you I am not a man to be satisfied quickly.”
The promise implicit in those words sent a flood of desire to her loins and Frey clung to him tightly, her body urging Sebastian on as his lips conquered her ear lobe and her neck.
Her imagination took flight as she imagined them coupling, his strong body covering hers, moving above, filling her with the sweet ecstasy her friend Diera assured her would come from an accomplished lover.
Not like Drefan, she recalled involuntarily. In her mind, the warmth and softness of Sebastian’s touch was no match for the power of this older, well-traveled memory.
Frey trembled and halted.
Sensing her sudden lack of responsiveness, Sebastian stopped. Pulling back, he saw silent lines of silver tears. He touched one with a finger and paused in wonder at them.
“I do not understand what you want of me,” she explained in a breathy plea, and her agony was made complete when Sebastian stood straight and put a few paces between them.
“It is no wish of mine to make you cry,” he told her softly.
“Then what?”
Any answer Sebastian may have given was lost when his squire Robert barreled through the door of the slaughterhouse, eyes wide in panic.
“My lord, come quickly! Baldwin and the Saxon have come to blows!”
Sebastian spared a glance at Frey and followed Robert, who sprinted out of the yard before Frey could ask which Saxon was fighting.
Frey followed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The melee was over by the time Frey caught up with Sebastian and Robert.
Orlege struggled in the arms of a brawny, brown-robed man, snarling at the back of one of Sebastian’s knights who was being escorted a safe distance away by Sebastian and Gaines.
Frey found it strange the knight should turn back to grin at Orlege even as a livid bruise formed over his eye.
“Orlege! What happened here?” she demanded.
Her man-at-arms ceased his thrashing and shrugged off the monk who detained him. His chest still heaved with violent emotion.
“Naught to concern you, m’lady. Just a disagreement among men.”
“About what?”
Her man-at-arms was silent but kept his eyes fixed on where Gaines and Sebastian were questioning the man she heard named as Baldwin. Frey felt as though time had slipped backward and she was once again forced to fight for the respect of her men.
“I demand an answer!”
Orlege turned a dead-eye stare on Frey and each word of his response was coldly punctuated.
“I no longer answer to you, Lady Alfreya.”
He returned his attention to Sebastian, who was still in deep discussion with Gaines and Baldwin.
Orlege thrust a chin in the baron’s direction. “If I have to answer for this,” he said to Frey without looking at her, “I’ll answer to my new liege and not to a mere woman.” At that, he stalked off toward the chapel.
She lost sight of him as he rounded the chapter house.
The small crowd that had coalesced around the fight dispersed, the monks returning to their daily chores while a group Sebastian’s men appeared to drift away in embarrassment at witnessing the scene playing out in front of them.
Fury blossomed in Frey so intense and so cold her heart and lungs felt frozen in her chest. She keenly felt the absence of her bow.
By God, she would she would make Orlege pay! How dare he undermine her authority in front of Sebastian’s men?
Frey determined to have answers, and if Orlege would not give them to her, then she would get them from the other man. She had only taken a couple of steps toward Sebastian, Gaines, and Baldwin before Larcwide grabbed hold of her elbow.
Frey tried to shake it off, but the older man’s grip was unyielding; so too the expression he wore.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“Leave it be, my lady. It is over.”
Larcwide’s words were soft but full of authority.
“It is not over,” she argued. “One of my men comes to blows in an abbey, of all places, and I demand to know why.”
The light misting drizzle that characterized the day so far started up again, and Frey reluctantly followed Larcwide to shelter under the stone-arched doorway of the chapter house.
After a moment, the thick oak door opened and Abbot Ranulf stood there, his mouth a taut line of disapproval.
“My lady, I’m going to ask your man to escort you to the library.”
His tone brooked no argument. He looked past them and out of the door. Frey turned at the sound of three pairs of booted feet running toward the chapter house and out of the rain now falling steadily.
The abbot looked pointedly at Larcwide, who turned, walking toward the door on the far side of the hall. Frey swallowed her annoyance and followed.
Larcwide closed the portal after her, but despite the thickness of its timber, she could hear every angry, clearly enunciated word from the abbot.
“Baron, this is a place of peace and of godly contemplation, not a tavern. If you cannot control your men, then you will leave!”
Sebastian’s answer, whatever it may have been, was lost as Frey was forced to quicken her step and keep up with Larcwide, who was making his way across the courtyard that linked the chapel and chapter house complex with the two-story library and dormitory building.
He stopped at the foot of the wide stone staircase spiraling upward to the library as the sound of bells from the chapel tower marked Nones, the third hour of afternoon, and drew Frey aside as she caught up.
The library not only housed books and local records, but also was where young men learned to read and write by painstakingly copying texts. Now, as the last peal decayed, the sound was overtaken by that of dozens of footsteps belonging to the young scholars and the manuscript copyists spilling out and walking briskly to the chapel.
When the last left, Larcwide ascended the stairs, Frey following a step behind.
; He looked tired, thought Frey as they climbed. Shafts of light from the slits in the outer wall made the crevasses that lined his face seem even more pronounced.
They entered the library itself. Two small fires burned brightly in hearths situated midway along the long walls. The walls were whitewashed and large mullioned windows comprising multiple panes of diamond-shaped glass allowed in copious amounts of natural light even on a day as gloomy as this.
Six rows of desks with four stools at each dominated the center of the room. At each place lay a sheet of cream parchment. Dark blue ink, still wet and glistening on the page, drew Frey’s eye. Each sheet shared the same words, the same lines.
She paused, listening for the sound of Sebastian and the abbot ascending the stairs. There was silence.
Walking down the left-hand aisle, Frey passed shelves upon shelves of books and manuscripts, titles lit by the windows opposite.
She fingered the titles as she walked by—Bibles, stories of saints, legends of yore, and local histories. Frey had a decent command of Latin thanks to nearly six years in Scotland. There had been precious little else to occupy her days and the scholars paid to keep the exiles’ offspring out of mischief did not care if one more joined in their studies.
At the far end of the library, her attention was caught by a raised platform upon which stood a beautifully carved desk. On it, in turn, sat a large, elaborately bound leather volume.
Frey opened the cover. The beautifully illuminated frontispiece was decorated in vivid red, green, and blue inks, as well as gold leaf. It read Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum—The Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
Larcwide sat on an abandoned writing stool, scraping the legs across the timber floor as he did so. Frey walked back toward him, deciding the time for answers was now.
“Do you know why Orlege got into a fight with one of Sebastian’s men?”
“I haven’t spoken to him,” he answered, rolling a pen up and down the writing slope.
“Then take a guess.”
Larcwide placed the pen back into its recess and remained silent.
Frey closed her eyes and sighed, recalling the conversation she overheard in the stables. Without question it was Baldwin who spoke of her so vilely. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself the subject of Larcwide’s careful regard. His gray eyes watched every response. It was evident her man-at-arms had drawn the same conclusion.
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