Luke crawled backward toward the ladder, but his feet met something heavy and unyielding. He turned as another flash of lightning revealed the obstruction: the Saxon, on his back in the straw, his eyes half open, blood trickling from his slack mouth.
No. Luke shook him; he was entirely limp. His chest didn’t move; no breath came from his mouth.
God, no. Luke suddenly felt all too sober. No.
An anguished cry from outside drew him to the little window. Thunder crashed as the sky lit up. He saw the whore running away in the rain with her skirts gathered up, her white legs flashing, her kirtle unlaced down the back.
Before the wavering light died away, he saw something else as well—blood on his hand. He flexed his fingers; his knuckles stung.
Luke closed his eyes and remembered his fist impacting the Saxon’s face with savage force. It wasn’t just a fanciful imagining this time, but a real and vivid memory—the memory of something he’d done, just moments ago. He’d pulled the Saxon off the whore and punched him as hard as he could, killing him with a single blow to the head.
He tried to remember more, but it was all a red blur, just as in the aftermath of battle.
What have I done?
“Luke?”
Alex! Even he couldn’t sleep through this violent thunder. Luke clambered over the Saxon’s body and peered down into the main room of the cottage. His brother stood at the table, lighting the lantern, his tunic rumpled and his cropped hair sticking out at all angles.
“Bring that up here!” Luke called out. “Hurry!”
Alex joined him in the loft, bending over nearly double as he held the lantern over the dead Saxon. “Who’s this, then?”
“He came in after you went to sleep.”
Alex nudged the corpse with the toe of his boot.
“Did he smell like this when he was alive?”
Luke kneaded his forehead with his sore knuckles.
“What happened?” Alex asked in a tone of mild curiosity.
“I killed him.”
Alex yawned as he squatted down. “Why’d you do that?”
“I... I can’t remember much.”
Alex smiled crookedly. “I’m not surprised, considering that empty brandy jug I tripped over.”
“How can you find this amusing?” Luke demanded. “I killed this man. This isn’t like taking a life on the battlefield. This is unconscionable.”
His brother shrugged. “You must have had a reason.”
“Aye. I murdered him over that woman! I took a man’s life over a two-penny whore.”
Alex waved his hand dismissively. “Nay—I meant you must have a good reason, even if you’re too drunk to remember it.”
“I think I’m mad,” Luke said hoarsely. “Is that reason enough?”
“You’re drunk, but you’re not mad.” Alex glanced around. “Where’s the wench?”
Luke nodded toward the little window. “I saw her running away.”
“In this storm?”
“She seemed upset.”
Alex frowned and held the lantern toward his brother. “What happened to your arm?”
Luke looked down to find his right shirtsleeve hanging raggedly, the edges scorched. His forearm was reddened and blistered, the hair singed off. “I don’t know. I must have burned myself.” He stood, cursing when his head collided with the ceiling.
Alex chuckled. “I think you’re more a threat to your own safety than anyone else’s.”
“This dead man might not agree.” Luke stepped over the Saxon’s body and started down the ladder. “I’m going to find her.”
Alex followed him downstairs. “Why bother?”
“She was here. She saw it all. She can tell me what happened. I’ve got to find out.”
Alex sighed. “I suppose ‘twill set your mind at ease. We should wait for dawn, though. And perhaps by then the storm will have let up.”
“Aye, and perhaps by then she’ll be miles away.”
“She’s on foot,” Alex reminded him. “She won’t get far.”
* * *
She didn’t, but it took them a while to find her on the obscure trail she’d taken. They spotted her around midmorning, sprawled faceup at the top of a hill, unmoving in the cold, gray drizzle.
“Mother of God,” Luke muttered as they rode toward her.
Even the normally implacable Alex blanched when they were close enough to get a good look at her. “What do you suppose—?”
“Lightning.” Luke slid off his horse and knelt to close the woman’s eyes and murmur a prayer over her burnt remains.
Alex dismounted as well, but walked a few yards in the other direction to vomit at the side of the trail. “Let’s go,” he called out as he remounted his horse.
“We can’t just leave her here,” Luke said.
“Someone will find her.”
“Nay!” Luke rose to his feet. “This is my doing. I’m not going to just ride away as if nothing—”
“Shh!” Alex grew still, and Luke followed suit, knowing how uncanny his brother’s hearing was. “Men.” Alex pointed down the dirt track. “From that direction. On foot, so they’re probably English. I suggest we continue this conversation from a more private location.”
Luke grudgingly mounted up, and the brothers secreted themselves in a nearby copse of trees as a cluster of dark shapes materialized in the rain. When the Englishmen got close, Luke could see that one of them led a mule dragging the Saxon’s body on a stretcher. They gathered around Helig’s corpse with expressions of rage and horror. One began to sob into his hands. A burly fellow squatted down and inspected the body with open curiosity, poking at the charred feet and peering closely at the strange, fernlike pattern burned onto her face and arms. Two men fled into the bushes, their hands covering their mouths.
The burly fellow stood and withdrew a small, shiny object from his tunic. Luke squinted to make it out, groaning when he recognized it. “Alex,” he whispered, “that’s your—”
“Damn!” Alex clutched at the collar of his open mantle, where his pin should have been.
Luke shook his head in dismay as the Englishmen passed Alex’s mantle pin among themselves, examining the little pearl-encrusted wolf’s head, turning it to puzzle over the Frankish inscription. Several of them raised pickaxes, reaping hooks, and pitchforks into the air. From their outraged exchange, it was clear that they intended to find and punish the Norman bastard who murdered one of their brethren over a whore.
They tied Helig’s body over the back of the mule and returned the way they had come, brandishing their weapons.
“They probably won’t connect that pin to me,” Alex said. “Only our own men know me as the White Wolf. Still, I think it’s time we put some distance between ourselves and Cottwyk, don’t you?”
He flicked his reins, but Luke grabbed them, halting his progress. “I’m going to surrender myself to Alberic.”
“What?”
“He’s the sheriff now. He’ll see I get tried in the king’s court for—”
“Are you mad?” Alex exclaimed.
“Very possibly,” Luke said softly.
“Do you have any idea what these Saxon savages will do to you if you admit having killed one of their own?”
“I’ll be in the custody of the Normans.”
“They’ll get to you somehow. Why invite trouble when we can just ride away and no one will be the wiser?” Alex closed a hand over his brother’s shoulder, looking as grave as Luke had ever seen him. “I can’t let you do this. You’re exhausted, and you’ve got a head full of brandy. You’re not thinking straight.”
“What if they do find out that’s your pin? I can’t let you be implicated in a crime you didn’t commit.”
“And I can’t let you go on stepping into harm’s way for me.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You’re always looking out for me,” Alex said. “Even in battle. I see you keeping an eye on me. And when something go
es wrong, you’re always there. You’ve saved my life more than once, at risk of your own. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything. And you can’t stop me from giving myself up.”
Alex grinned smugly. “If you do, I’ll tell them you’re lying to protect me. I’ll say I did it. They’ll believe me, too. They’ve got the evidence right in their hands—that pin.”
“I’ll just tell them you’re lying to protect me,” Luke said.
Alex shrugged. “Then they’ll probably just hang us both. ‘Tis a far better course of action to simply return to Foxhyrst and pretend this never happened.”
Luke rubbed his eyes while he pondered the trap that had snared him. Alex kept quiet for as long as he apparently could before saying, “Well? Can we leave here?”
Luke nodded slowly, and the brothers set out through the woods, away from Cottwyk. “I’m not going back to Foxhyrst, though.”
Alex gaped at him. “You’re not—”
“There’s a monastery at St. Albans. I’m going there.”
Chapter 2
Two months later: The Cambridgeshire manor of Hauekleah
“Milady! Milady!”
Faithe looked up from the daisies she was tying together to see young Edyth burst through the open doorway of Hauekleah Hall, red-faced and breathless. Ewes’ milk spilled from her two full buckets, soaking into the fresh rushes.
“Edyth!” Faithe scolded. “Slow down. You’re getting the new rushes all—”
“There’s two Normans headin’ up the road,” the dairymaid gasped. “One of ‘em must be him—the Black Dragon.”
Silence fell over the great hall as the house servants turned apprehensive gazes on their young mistress. Faithe’s fingers grew cold, and she realized she had stopped breathing. She set down the daisy garland and rose from her bench, summoning all the composure at her disposal.
“His name,” Faithe said quietly, “is Luke de Périgueux.”
Edyth blinked. “But Master Orrik, he says they call him the Black—”
“His name is Luke de Périgueux,” Faithe repeated, her gaze sweeping every member of her raptly attentive audience, “and as he’s to be your new master” —she drew in a steadying breath— “and my lord husband, you are to address him with respect or suffer the consequences. Am I understood?”
Faithe’s famuli, unused to such threats or admonishments—for Faithe rarely found them necessary—exchanged uneasy glances.
“Am I understood?” Her words were softly spoken, but clear.
There came a chorus of murmured assents, accompanied by the occasional pitying look. They viewed her as a martyr, she realized—first widowed by the Normans, then forced to choose between marriage to one of their own or the loss of her ancestral home.
Faithe tucked her hair behind her ears and smoothed her kirtle, hearing the crackle of parchment in the pocket of her skirt. The letter from Lord Alberic, the Norman sheriff to whom she now owed allegiance, had been treacherously courteous in that manner the Normans seemed to have perfected. He’d told her little about the husband he’d chosen for her, only that he was a knight named Luke de Périgueux and that he was famous for his soldiering skills. Skills used against her people... her husband.
Know, my lady, his lordship—or, more likely, his lordship’s clerk—had written, that you would be fully within your rights to refuse this marriage. In such an event, I will endeavor to dispose of the estate by other means. In other words, she could marry the notorious Luke de Périgueux and remain at Hauekleah, or refuse to marry him and let the Normans seize it—in which case she’d no doubt spend the rest of her days languishing in some convent somewhere. Worse, the sprawling farmstead that had been her family’s for over eight hundred years would fall into the hands of strangers, enemy strangers.
Better to give myself to some Norman devil and keep Hauekleah, she’d decided. Her grandmother, Hlynn, had done much the same, entering into a loveless marriage to a Danish warrior chief rather than relinquish Hauekleah to the Northmen. Finding farm life tiresome, Thorgeirr had stayed but a single summer—long enough to build a new manor house and plant the seed of Faithe’s father in Hlynn’s belly—and then moved on. Although it was rumored that he lived for many more years, Hlynn never saw him again, and counted herself lucky.
Perhaps, Faithe told herself as she stepped out into the warm spring afternoon, she would be as fortunate. Her new husband, used to the ways of the sword and the crossbow, might be so bored here that he’d leave her in peace and she’d have Hauekleah all to herself again.
All eyes were upon her as she walked slowly through the entry gate that provided passage through the stone wall surrounding Hauekleah Hall—a wall that had stood since Roman times. Shielding her eves against the sun, she squinted down the dirt path that connected her manor and the village it encompassed to Foxhyrst and the other great market towns to the west.
Two men on horseback rode toward her on that path, one tall in the saddle, the other slumped over. Faithe’s mouth felt chalky. She wiped her damp palms on her plain wool kirtle. Field-workers abandoned their plows and livestock and ran to join her house staff in what felt like a defensive phalanx around her. As always, their loyalty and affection moved her immeasurably. If for their sakes only, she could never abandon Hauekleah to the Normans.
As the riders drew closer, she saw that the upright man gripped a sword in one hand and the reins of both mounts in the other. The insensible one swayed in his saddle. The fellow with the sword dropped the reins and grasped the other man’s tunic to keep him from falling. Leaning over, he whispered something into his companion’s ear and gently patted his shoulder.
“He’s hurt.” Faithe stepped forward.
Her young reeve, his eyes full of worry, grabbed her arm. “Nay, milady...”
“That man’s hurt.” Faithe shook Dunstan off and approached the two men, wondering which one was Luke de Périgueux. They were sizable men, both of them, with hair as black as ink. The injured man—she saw the blood on his tunic now, and a raw gash on his forehead—had his hair shorn in the Norman style, while the other wore his unusually long and bound in back.
Faithe’s servants followed her, Dunstan and some of the burlier men flanking her protectively. The man with the sword pointed it at them as they approached. Faithe hesitated, along with the others. It wasn’t the weapon that gave her pause, for although he was armed, he was but one man and they were many; it was the way he looked at them.
Some of his hair had come loose and hung over his broad forehead, enhancing his feral image. His eyes were deep-set and fierce against oddly swarthy skin. Black stubble darkened his grimly set jaw. He didn’t look like any Norman soldier Faithe had ever seen. He looked untamed... as menacing as a beast with its fangs bared.
Faithe’s gaze traveled to the ornate pin holding his mantle closed—a golden disk inset with black stone in the shape of...
A dragon. A black dragon.
Merciful God.
“That’s him,” someone whispered.
Faithe stifled a sudden urge to cross herself. So this was the man to whom she would be wed within a matter of days, this dark, savage creature with murder in his eyes and a quivering broadsword in his hand.
Forcing her fear beneath the surface, Faithe stepped forward, her escorts at her sides.
“Stop right there,” de Périgueux ordered in French-accented English as he thrust the weapon toward them. “I’ll have none of your Saxon tricks.” His voice rumbled like thunder; his tone was that of a man accustomed to being obeyed. That he spoke English came as something of a shock. She’d never known a Norman to utter a word of her native tongue.
Faithe clutched her skirt in both fists. “We mean you no harm.”
“Tell that to my brother. We were ambushed in the woods not a mile back.”
“Ambushed!”
He scanned the faces behind her. “Where’s your mistress? My brother needs help. He’s badly wounded.”
Faithe lift
ed her chin, consciously ignoring his sword, which was aimed directly at her. “I’m Faithe of Hauekleah. I’ll tend to your brother.”
Those intense eyes of his pinned her with a look of astonishment, his gaze lighting on the handful of brass keys hanging from a long golden chain around her neck, which he evidently hadn’t noticed before. He surveyed her from head to toe, taking in the unbound hair that hung loose over her breasts, the humble kirtle she’d shortened for field work, and the patched slippers soiled from that morning’s gardening. As usual, she’d gotten too caught up in the day’s chores to bother overmuch with grooming, and as a result looked more like an untidy adolescent than a chatelaine.
Even when she did bother to dress in her finest silks and adorn herself with jewels, Faithe looked far younger than her four-and-twenty years. She’d learned to counteract her youthful appearance with displays of unflinching confidence, even when they had to be feigned. Therefore, when Luke de Périgueux’s attention returned to her face, she met his eyes steadfastly.
He held her gaze. She saw his throat move as he swallowed; his penetrating eyes darkened from brown to black. So... it unnerved even the infamous Black Dragon to come face-to-face with his betrothed.
Faithe nodded toward his sword, still aimed at her throat, and said quietly, “If you’ll lower that, my lord, I shall see to your brother.”
* * *
“Gently, now... gently,” Lady Faithe urged as six of her men, gripping the edges of Alex’s mantle, carried him through a gate in an old stone wall and over the threshold of the enormous timber manor house it surrounded. Alex was unconscious, his face drained of color. Luke muttered a quick prayer as he followed his brother into a vast whitewashed hall flooded with sunlight, its lofty roof supported by two rows of thick oak posts. Each post, he noticed, had a garland of flowers wound around it from top to bottom, and floral swags hung from the ceiling beams. The green rushes that crackled underfoot were likewise strewn with sweet blossoms whose scent perfumed the air.
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 70
