by Georgia Fox
“Selfish girl,” the cook muttered, rolling her head from side to side on its massive neck. “Never give a thought to what might become of us when he’s gone. You could have married Bloodaxe by now, joined this land with his, and that would secure Lyndower. But oh no, you’re too fine for him. Vanity! Ravished, that’s what we’ll be. Ravished in our beds by mercenary soldiers.”
She thoughtfully surveyed the large, lumbering old woman. “Bertha, I’m quite certain they will be too afeard of you to attempt any forceful possession of your person.”
“Aye, joke. You’ll see. No good will come of this. That ugly great rook was a sure sign of evil on its way. You love yourself first and Lyndower second. If that was not true you would have married and put your own wants aside for the good of the manor.”
A cold fist closed around her heart. She dropped the remains of her snack, losing her appetite. Was it true that she was being selfish? She couldn’t win, it seemed. Had she persuaded her father not to travel so far for an audience with Count Robert, people would accuse her of purposefully delaying any chance she might have for a husband. Now, because she was unable to talk him out of it, she’d sent him to his death and left them all without their beloved master. Everything was Elsinora’s fault and she was so confused by it that she no longer knew what she wanted. Sometimes she thought it would be best if she had married Stryker Bloodaxe, just to stop them all blaming her for every ill that befell the manor—everything from bad harvests to sick cows.
Although she would never say so and show her weakness, a day did not pass when she was free of worry about Lyndower and what might happen without her father there to settle disagreements, keep order, and dispense justice. For the first nine years of her life, she’d watched her brother Edwy learn the ropes at her father’s right hand side. She always took a spot behind Edwy, quietly observing and absorbing. When her brother died, she’d stepped up to her father’s side, hoping to share his burden, but Gudderth immediately began planning her marriage. Wife and mother was all she could be and she must embrace it for the sake of the manor.
Elsinora was three when the Normans conquered England. It had little effect on their lives for several years, because they were so remote. Edwy had been too young to fight for the Saxons at Hastings and so Gudderth, unlike many Eaorls, had not lost his son to battle. Keeping to their quiet hamlet in this remote outpost of the country, he’d hoped to go unnoticed as long as possible. That all changed when Edwy died and Gudderth saw his beloved Cornweal slowly sacrificed, piece by piece, to the conquering Norman king’s best knights. He told his daughter then that they must collaborate with England’s new rulers if Lyndower had any chance of surviving intact.
When she was seventeen a Norman knight came to marry her. She barely had time to accept this idea, before they learned that he’d accidentally digested poisonous mushrooms and met an undignified end on the road to Lyndower. That was two years ago and since then their hamlet had been forgotten once more. Hence her father’s latest journey to jolt Count Robert’s memory.
“Bloodaxe would have made you a proper wife and a mother by now, several times over,” Bertha grumbled as she tossed bones into the stock pot over the fire. “Then poor Gudderth would have grandsons to carry on. He would have no need to put himself in danger by undertaking such a journey, just to get you a man.”
“Stryker Bloodaxe would not make me a good husband,” she replied. “He only wants me for my father’s land.” She’d never forgiven him for calling her a mindless, unreasonable wench who talked out of her behind, and then threatening to cut her tongue out for her. That was the last time they spoke. Now she heard he’d taken himself off on some sort of pilgrimage. Good riddance.
“How would you know what makes a good husband? You’re a hot-headed, hard-hearted chit.” Bertha’s big face was somber in the light of the great hearth. “Of course a man will wed you for your father’s land. That is the way of life. You were born the daughter of an Eaorl. You have a responsibility to the people of this manor. You can’t sit about waiting for love, Elsinora. Lyndower needs you to be practical.”
“Why do I need a man? I’ll take my father’s place.”
“Nonsense.” Bertha snorted, shaking her head. “You can’t make babes without a husband.”
“Why not?” she replied wryly. “The blacksmith’s eldest daughter has a babe and no husband.”
“Well…” Bertha didn’t know what to say to that. Finally she exclaimed, “Always got an argument you have, girl! Just like your brother, you fight for the sake of fighting and look where that got him! Buried up there on the moor when he should have been ready now to step into your father’s boots. Half the time you don’t even know why you’re fighting. Ravished in our beds, that’s what we’ll be. Thanks to you.”
“Hush!” Elsinora put a finger to her lips, suddenly hearing the sound of horse’s hooves in the yard. Leaping to her feet, she cried out, “He’s back!” Relief lifted her feet in a race to the door. “He’s back, Bertha. All your worries were for naught!”
She pulled on the iron loop handle and the door groaned, moving slowly and heavily. Rush torches were lit around the yard and a brazier burned, around which several grooms, on the lookout for Gudderth’s return, warmed their hands. “He’s back,” she yelled at them, flying across the puddles, eyes straining through the folds of night, breath misting before her face. “I heard him, I know I did.”
But there was no sign. The guard at the gate looked at her as if she might be addled.
How could she have heard—
And there it was, a great black beast, dark as the night itself, loomed forward, hooves stomping in the dirt, mane and eyes shining in the torchlight. She smelled horse sweat and leather. It was not her father’s horse. This animal was no tame, placid mount; it was a fire-breathing demon, about to trample her into the dirt.
Stumbling back a step, she looked up and found the most fearsome face she’d ever seen staring back at her. He wore a helmet with a strip of metal over his nose, but as the torchlight guttered across his rough features it revealed a thick, vicious scar dividing his cheek. He had a rough, dark beard and through it his lips curled in a gruff shout.
“Don’t just stand there staring, wench.” He jerked his head back and she realized another figure was slumped over the powerful rump of his horse. “Help your master. He is ill.”
Ill? She could smell the ale fumes from where she stood and those low groans were all too familiar.
“Father!” she cried, rushing around the horse and grabbing his dangling legs.
The scarred soldier twisted in his saddle, glowering down at her. “This is your father? You’re his daughter?” he demanded, his voice cracking like ice under heavy cartwheels. “I took you for a servant.”
She ignored him to shout at the grooms, who still clustered around the brazier, staring in awe at the monstrous stranger on horseback. “Help me! Why do you stand there catching flies?”
“Help her,” the scarred soldier’s voice croaked out again and only now, much to her chagrin, did the others move to her aid.
* * * *
Dominic stole a cautious glance at the young woman as she set a plate of stew before him with a clatter, poured thin, lackluster wine into a goblet by his hand, and then took a bench on the other side of the table. She had thanked him for bringing her father home, but in such a surly tone of voice that suggested she was more irritated and embarrassed than thankful. She’d had to be prompted by her father’s steward even to offer that slender branch of gratitude.
Now her bright, aqua-blue eyes surveyed the food on the table, but she did not eat. Her mind was clearly preoccupied by her father, who had been carried to bed in his private chamber and now slept soundly, his snores echoing through the high timbers of his hall.
“You are Gudderth’s only daughter?” He had fully prepared himself for something with warts and horns, since her father’s praise of the girl was so fulsome and suspiciously overexcited. Usually a ma
n who spoke that highly of a daughter he could not be rid of, sought to hide something unfortunate.
“Of course I am his only daughter. Why?”
Dominic hastily shoveled stew into his mouth. It gave him an excuse not to answer her question.
“I am Elsinora,” she added, sitting straight, shoulders square, face proud.
It seemed as if she thought he should have heard of her. In truth he was surprised he hadn’t. Seldom had he seen a woman so fair. And haughty. One glance from her heavily-lashed, painfully-blue eyes made him conscious of the scar that marked his face. At thirty he should be accustomed to the frightened looks of young maids when they beheld his ugliness. He thought he was, until that moment.
“And your name, sir?” she inquired.
He grabbed the goblet of wine she’d poured. “Dominic Coeur-du-Loup.”
There was a pause while he drank and she stared, lips pursed tight. Finally she said, “You are a Norman soldier.”
It was not a question, just a statement thickly spread with a layer of disgust. Dominic nodded again, thrusting more stew into his mouth, thick gravy dropping to his beard.
“You may stay the night if you wish,” she muttered reluctantly. “I owe you that much for bringing him home to us. I’m sure a pallet can be spared for you among my father’s serfs.”
He scraped the thing she called a “spoon” around his plate, chasing a lump of meat. When he failed to capture it, he tossed the spoon aside and ate with his fingers in the custom more familiar to him. She passed him a bowl of bread to mop up the gravy and he grabbed a lump in his fist. Crumbs sneezed across the table as he crushed it between his fingers. “Any ale?”
“I thought you would prefer wine.”
“This,” he lifted his cup, “tastes like piss.”
Her lips parted in a tiny, disdainful exhale. Two spots of color darkened her cheeks.
“Gives me a headache,” he added, gesturing with the bread, tapping it to his forehead. “Saxons should stick to brewing ale.”
She considered for a moment, eyes burning into his. He could almost see his shape reflected in the great aquamarine whirlpools that sucked him in and spat him out. Apparently she held her temper. Just. She turned and summoned the stout woman standing in the shadows. “Fetch the ale jug, Bertha.” She lowered her voice. “But don’t fill it all the way. And not my father’s best brew.”
Dominic slowly picked meat out of his teeth with one finger. After going hungry so long his stomach let out a mighty grumble of content.
The woman across the table pushed her plate away, her food uneaten. “Drunk a lot of pee have you, Norman?”
He looked at her through the fat, sputtering tallow candles, measuring every bony inch of her shoulders, noting the slight dent in her petulant lower lip, the superior angle of her nostrils and the fine arch of her brows.
“If you are so familiar with the taste,” she added smugly, apparently thinking him too stupid to understand her comment.
With one bite he devoured the bread in his hand and chewed hard. She was a devastatingly handsome woman, he thought, but she needed a few good meals to put some flesh on her bones. As she was now, a strong gust of wind might carry her off over a cliff edge and into the sea, just when a man had invested time and patience in her guidance.
Each time her gaze traveled to the scar on his face she almost flinched, but put on a brave front. Only the rapid rise and fall of her breasts—a mere hint of a swell under that shapeless, unflattering woolen gown—betrayed her anxiety.
“And we are not Saxons here,” she exclaimed. “We are of Dane blood.”
Some generations passed, he thought dismissively, just as he was of Viking ancestry, but now considered himself Norman.
He glanced around the hall. There were only a few servants in attendance, a motley group of individuals, frightened looking wenches and knock-kneed boys. No wonder the old man, Gudderth, was so desperate for someone to take the place in hand and protect it. He’d traveled with the old man slung over the rump of his horse, no signs of other settlements along the road for miles. This must be the end of the world, he mused, a fleeting spark of whimsy passing through his mind. And here before him sat the pixie princess, ready to use her spells upon him.
Her eyes gleamed angrily through the misty aura of candlelight. She wore a circlet of white sea shells around her head and her hair, the color of sun-ripened wheat, was tied back in a long, plump braid. He would like very much to see that hair loose.
A strangely intense charge of excitement heated his groin. He was unsettled by it and his next words shot out too loudly, with more boldness than he would usually have in the presence of an attractive woman. “Yes, my lady, I’ve drunk my share of piss. In some of the places I’ve been sent to fight, it was the lesser of two evils.”
She scowled. Even then she was still pretty, desirable. How was that possible?
Dominic tapped his fingertips along the table edge. “Your father is not very lucky with his dice.”
She shrugged. “What has he wagered now? His horse?”
“He’d already lost that when I came upon him in the tavern today.”
The woman waited, her expression bored.
“It is fortunate for you,” he added, “that I found him when I did, or else you could have found yourself at the mercy of much worse than me.”
A scornful laugh shadowed her reply, “Much worse than you? What can you mean?”
The candle flames ducked violently in a draft as the main doors opened again to readmit the woman with the ale jug. Dominic lost his courage, looked at his plate and thought of finishing his supper quickly, then leaving this place. But suddenly he caught sight of Elsinora’s hands resting on the table. She had small, slender fingers that might break as easily as twigs and her nails were bitten down almost to the quick. This woman, however proud, would never survive alone—and her father was sick and frail. The next soldiers that came there may not be like him. They would not be shy to take.
It was no good; he could not leave her there unprotected. He would never forget that prim little face peering at him through the candles and those fingers, curled as they were now, to hide her bitten nails. She was just a girl. What did he have to fear? Of course, she thought him ugly, a hideous monster, but there was naught he could do about that. He shouldn’t be afraid to tell her the truth about his presence there. What would she do, spit at him? He took a quick survey of the table and saw no sharp implements within her reach.
Time to tell her why he was there.
“Your father made a bet with his lands and his property,” said Dominic slowly, uneasily. “He lost. I won.”
She licked her lips. That extra color in her face had faded. “I cannot imagine any knight of honor, even a Norman, would hold a man to his wager, if it was clearly given when his judgment was clouded by bad ale.”
He gave no answer. In truth he had not taken Gudderth’s bet seriously in the beginning. He had only brought the old man home as a charitable deed, certain he would otherwise be robbed and left for dead on the side of the road.
But charitable thoughts turned to other things when he laid eyes on Elsinora and took quick measure of her plight.
“I can assure you, Norman, there is no place for you here, so you can take your dice and find another man to cheat. No law in the land will support such a claim.”
He signaled for the ale jug and the other woman brought it, pouring some in a fresh cup. “But your father is most anxious to have me here for the protection of his fief. He tells me the place is in need of strong, new blood.”
“My father is drunk and does not know his own mind.” She stood abruptly, fists clenched at her sides. “Tomorrow when he is sober he will send you on your way.”
“I think not.” He took a swig of ale and smacked his lips. “I think tomorrow he will slap me on the back and call me son.”
She stared, eyes widened even further.
Well, he was one foot in now, no point ha
nging back with the other, like a timid fool. “And since he raised the wager to include everything he owns, that includes his daughter.” He held out his cup for more ale and winced with as much apology as he could summon for the skinny wench. “You, my lady, are now my property, too.”
Chapter Three
Gudderth lay on the bed, snoring with his mouth open, still fully clothed, his boots hanging off the bed, remnants of a previous meal clinging to his graying beard.
“Father, wake up!”
He smacked his lips, smiled and nestled his head further into the bolster. Elsinora dipped her hand in the water ewer beside his bed and impatiently flicked cold drops onto his face.
“Wake up at once! What have you done, father?”
He blinked, sputtered, and sat up. Only to immediately fall back again. “Speak soft, Elsie. I have Roman centurions marching through my head and the one in the rear drags a drum along the ground on a broken strap.” His brow wrinkled. “And several empty wooden bowls on a string. I can’t think why he does not pick them up.”
“Father, is this true? Have you given me away like a fat sow to pay a wagered debt?” She was so angry she could barely get the words out.
“I’ve found you a good, strong husband. At last my duty is done. Now the devil can take me.”
Elsinora felt the horror sinking in—a nightmare becoming cold, stark reality. She’d dreaded something like this would come to pass, that her father would give up waiting for her to marry Stryker, or for Count Robert to send a gallant knight to marry her. Gudderth was convinced, for some time now, of his own impending death, making the marriage of his daughter even more urgent. But never could she have imagined he would grow this desperate and bring her a beast like that one currently sitting in the Eaorl’s chair in the great hall, eating everything in sight and criticizing the wine she made herself. If she must marry, she would have preferred a handsome man, educated and well-mannered. Clean.
