by Tamara Leigh
The queen’s man spoke little more whilst awake than during rest. The few sounds that parted his lips were those of discomfort and pain when the ship heaved and the floor went out from under him, wrenching his shoulders and arms and distancing him from the pole before slamming him back against it.
Beata had attempted to ease his discomfort by belting him around the hips with her girdle, but his anger had sat her back on her heels. “More bindings I must escape to keep you alive?” he had barked. “Nay, Lady, I shall endure that I may sooner see you punished.”
Once more huddled in her mantle and encased in the material of the swinging bed with her back to him, she trembled and perspired as she tried to keep bile from spilling.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered since He did not heed prayers spoken over and over in her mind, “deliver us.”
“Unbind me, Lady, and mayhap He will.”
Sir Durand’s voice made her startle. She had been certain he could not hear her above the din. Or mayhap it was not a whisper upon which she had spoken.
“Lady!”
Except for when he had called to her as she scaled the ship’s ladder, Lady—not even my lady—was all she was to him, as if to ensure she remained so.
“Listen to me. Even if the captain does not try to make the coast, we will likely be broken on the rocks. He has no stars to guide him and too little visibility to see warning beacons.”
She turned in the bed and gulped as bile scorched her throat.
“Do you understand, Lady?”
Moaning as the acid burned its way back down, she waited for him to continue.
He did not. As a shake of her head would not suffice, the lantern having extinguished long ago, she said, “We shall die.”
“If you do not untie me.”
“’Twill make no difference.”
“If you believe that, you can have no objection to releasing me.”
It was so true she nearly laughed. “Wh-what can you do?”
“As we will die trapped here, I shall deliver us to the deck.”
“But up there is only the sea and the storm, and…” She gasped. “I am so tired. All of my insides—”
“Get up!”
His cruel tone offended, but she had no strength or stomach for anger.
“Do you wish to live, Lady?”
Not like this. Not with all her—
Enough, Beata Fauvel! The voice sounded so loudly through her, she almost rebuked the knight for it, but that was her, hating that the mere tossing of her body reduced her to apathy. The Vestal Wife who could almost always find something over which to smile or laugh was worse than dull. She was pitiful.
She opened her eyes and strained to see the one who shared the dark with her—he who had gone silent amid the clamor overhead and must think her the foulest, weakest being.
I am not, she told herself, and as she moved as she did not wish to move, he bellowed. Then she heard the kick of his boots over the floor and felt the slam of his back against the post supporting one end of her bed. Another slam followed—and the cracking of that post or some other part of the ship.
All of her shaking, she peeled herself out of the bed, but could make no sense of her feet and crashed to the heaving floor alongside Sir Durand—so near his breath moved the hair across her cheek.
“Do it!” he bit.
Lest she retch on him, she pressed her lips tight and dragged her legs beneath her. Though pained by splinters that slid into her palms as she crawled to the post at his back, they offered reprieve from the sickness felt from the roots of her hair to her toes.
She groped her way up the post in search of the rope that would require a blade, the knight’s struggle having made the seaman’s knots too tight to pick loose.
As she slid her hands up over Sir Durand’s, his fingers gripped hers so hard she gasped.
“Cut it, Lady!” he demanded, then released her.
She took hold of the rope in the space between his wrists and reached for the meat dagger on her girdle. Before she pulled it from its scabbard, the ship listed hard, and she fell onto her side. As she slid across the floor, the queen’s man called to her over the shouts above. And somehow she had the presence of mind to tuck and throw an arm around her head. Had she not, her meeting with the hull might have broken her neck. Forearm taking the brunt of the hit, she cried out and heard the knight call again.
Blessedly, the ship did not soon right itself, allowing her to return to her hands and knees. Then she retched, the force of a belly expelling contents it lacked causing her eyes to burn and head to pound.
“Forgive me,” she gasped before once more bending to the cramping.
Then she was tumbling opposite, but one of her flailing hands caught the post to which the knight was bound, and when the ship found its center again, she made it to her knees and drew her dagger. She slid the blade between Sir Durand’s wrists and, hooking her other arm around the post, choked, “Spread your hands wide,” having too little control to keep the blade from slicing through his fingers once the rope fell away.
“I do not require your counsel,” he growled. “Highly I value my hands.”
His tone was so dangerous, she reconsidered releasing him, but she set her teeth and put her weight behind her blade’s stroke. She had to pause often to accommodate the ship’s roll, but finally the rope gave way.
A moment later, she slammed to the floor, carried there by the man who snatched hold of her hand that held the dagger aloft.
“Yield!”
There was no reason to fight him. Even if he decided his chance of survival was better with her dead, she would likely meet the same end without his aid.
Staring into the dark that denied him face and form, she opened her fingers. “’Tis yours.”
His hand moved up over hers, took the dagger, and from the ease of weight on one side of her, she guessed he secured it in his boot. “I ought to leave you to your fate,” he growled.
“You should.”
He muttered something and pushed back.
The removal of his body from hers allowed her to draw a full breath. And lose it when he yanked her upright.
No sooner did she gain her balance than he pulled her close and her shoulder struck the post. She started to protest his violence against her person, but it proved consideration when the ship careened, stilled, and crashed down with such force that had he not anchored her, she would have been flung across the cabin.
“Come about!” The shouted order was louder than the others. More desperate.
“Hold to the post,” Sir Durand commanded and set her arms around it.
“But—”
“Do it!”
Beside her, she felt his jerky movements, accompanied by the din of his mail until it rang more harshly upon hitting the floor, sliding across it, and striking the wall. There could be only one reason a warrior shed that valuable keeper of life—that it would prove a giver of death. They were going into the sea.
Of a sudden, his hands were at her neck, and for a moment she feared he meant to strangle her. But as she strained away, the weight of her coin-ladened mantle fell from her shoulders. “Nay! I need—”
“Not if you are dead,” he snarled, and she knew he had guessed what she had sewn into the hem. Like his mail, it would more quickly deliver them to the bottom of the sea.
“We go now,” he said and hauled her across the cabin.
She heard the scrape of the bolt and felt the gust of the door’s opening.
The short passageway that led to the steps was nearly as dark as the cabin had been and more treacherous to traverse. Blessedly, Sir Durand was not unversed in the sea’s temperament, ever bracing them before they were knocked off their feet.
When he tossed open the hatch following their ascent of the steps, the storm-beaten night that flung rain and wind in their faces and blinding light in their eyes was more fearsome than anything Beata had experienced on that canvas between heaven and earth.
She shrank back, but as if she were a wisp of a thing, Sir Durand drew her onto a deck slick with rain and sea water whose frantic course was corrected by one backhand after another.
“Come about! Come about!” That same command, as if not heeded before, followed by a great tearing of cloth.
Sir Durand did not pause, keeping his footing as he traversed the sodden deck and pulled Beata with him.
Then she was backhanded, something whipping across her face and dropping her to her knees so suddenly the queen’s man dragged her a space before hauling her up against his side.
“Pray,” she gasped, “let me catch my breath—”
“It will be the last you draw,” he shouted so near her ear, it felt bloodied. And as he propelled her forward and between seamen too beset to pay them heed, he shouted again, “We have reached England, Lady, and she is not pleased to see us.”
“Sir Durand—”
“Rocks ahead!” he snarled.
Just as he had predicted.
“Lady!” This time it was not Sir Durand who afforded her so little a name.
She peered over her shoulder and saw the lightning-lit figure of Sir Norris run toward them from the opposite side of the deck. Then a wall of water snatched him away. Its reach toward Sir Durand and her exceeding its grasp, it drew back to recover the strength needed to reunite them with her father’s knight. And came again.
A woman’s scream, so loud it pained.
A man’s shout, so mighty it struck like a blow.
A crack of wood, so thunderous it was as if a mighty oak fell.
A great cry, so desperate it proved even the ungodly could be moved to call upon the Lord.
Then iron bands clapped around her back and hips, her feet left the deck, and the sweetest air filled her before being replaced by water so vengeful its brine burned her mouth and throat.
And so I die, she allowed as the arms of the storm gripped her harder and the cold sea swallowed her.
The need to survive demanded he release the lady, but he held to her. It tried to convince him better one dead than two, but he kicked harder toward what he prayed was the surface, his senses so upended he might sooner deliver them to the deep.
Lungs aching for air, the voice once more urged him to abandon The Vestal Widow.
As once I abandoned Beatrix Wulfrith, believing her dead in the ravine? he countered.
Injured leg protesting, survival snarled, She is no Beatrix Wulfrith. Let her go!
As once I let Gaenor Wulfrith go, too soon ceding the chase when she fled to protect me from her family’s wrath?
The cold clenching his body, survival taking him by the throat, he heard, She is no Gaenor. She is a liar. A deceiver. Let her go!
I am Wulfen-trained, he silently declared. Wulfen-worthy. No more will I break my vows. Never again will I dishonor the name of Marshal!
Then he broke the surface, but he managed only a gulp of air before he was knocked back down and the lady was nearly torn from him.
Merciful Lord, he implored, give me the strength and sense to save us.
He surfaced again, and though the water slapped at him, he kept his head above it and dragged his charge up. Her head dropped onto his shoulder. If her life was not yet forfeit, soon it would be.
Spitting out the sea, he turned and searched for something to support her while he cleared the water from her lungs.
As he swam toward the nearest section of hull torn from the ship, he saw the broken vessel list hard and heard the cries of men abandoning the coffin lowering its lid on them, past it saw rocks nearer the shore whose brethren had lain in wait for those who dared sail the sea. Those whose lives were lost for their arrogance.
A small loss, he thought as he took hold of the planks and moved The Vestal Widow onto them. Once he had them out of the water, he straddled the lady to keep his balance and empty the water from her.
The sea fought him, rocking the makeshift raft front to back and side to side in an attempt to return them to the depths, but finally the lady emptied her lungs, gasped, and collapsed.
Durand confirmed she yet breathed, then unfastened her girdle, wrapped it around her upper arm and his wrist, and forced its buckle between two planks. When the fastener unhinged against the underside, anchoring them to the raft, he hooked an arm around the lady and fell onto his side.
As he prayed for the sea to send them toward the shore, he pressed the woman against his heaving chest and watched across the top of her head as the ship slipped lower, affording a glimpse of something beyond whose shape seemed that of a vessel.
Was it possible they had not only struck rocks but another ship? Both? He squeezed his eyes closed and opened them, but the wave that swept over the raft blinded him and forced water down his throat.
Expelling water, he clamped a leg over the lady to keep her from being snatched away as the sea sought to do time and again. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning of a journey he prayed would move them toward land.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sussex, England
Early December, 1161
I breathe.
Of that Beata was certain, her heart’s movement so strong she felt its every beat. And though the back of her was cold and damp, her front was warm from cheek to thighs.
She lifted her lids, and as she brought the dawn-feathered, rock-strewn scene into focus, made sense of the sound that was like a mother shushing her child. Lazily, the tide crawled up the shore. Listlessly, it slid back. Half-heartedly, it washed down another mouthful of land.
On the night past, the sea had been murderous, and yet she had survived while others perished. And absent a miracle, among the dead would be the man swept away before her eyes.
Sliced by regret, she moved her thoughts from Sir Norris to the one who had saved her. And was cut again by the likelihood Sir Durand had died so she might live.
“Lord, not also him,” she whispered across a raw throat, then turned her face into what should have been sand. But no rasp of grains across her face, and she lost the sound of her heart in her ear.
Realizing the beat had moved to the base of her throat, she questioned if it was hers and drew her fingers into her palms. Sand did not slide between them but moved over what seemed muscle. It had to be him. His body. Heart. Warmth. Arm holding her to him as if…
…we are lovers, she thought and immediately prayed for forgiveness. Then thanking the Lord for sparing their lives, she moved her hands to the sides, pressed them against something slightly more solid than the body she lay upon, and raised herself on trembling arms. Not surprisingly, Sir Durand had appropriated wreckage to deliver them ashore.
Though his hold on her was loose, she did not extricate herself but considered a face relaxed except for eyes moving behind heavily lashed lids.
Despite further scrapes, cuts, and bruises, the queen’s man looked younger than his thirty or so years—enough of the youth about him to make the warrior appear vulnerable. But it was more than his state of repose. It was the absence of tolerant, dismissive, and judgmental expressions with which he mostly regarded her. And would again, and more severely when next he looked upon the one whose flight to England wrought such tragedy.
You would do well to distance yourself, urged the caution with which she had become familiar since her father’s summons had upended her comfortably safe life. You may have reached England, but the crossing is only one of several obstacles ere your journey’s end.
Amidst how many lost lives? her conscience tossed back. Regardless of the ilk of the ship’s crew, many had died to deliver her across the narrow sea. And Sir Norris…
Her emotions shuddered, and she wished she had not run with him during the attack by Count Verielle’s men.
But you did, caution spoke again, and the lives lost will be for naught if you do not flee this one
who will do as commanded no matter the right of it. If it is not the convent to which you are destined, then a husband of the queen’s choosing. And what chance of another Conrad?
She confirmed the rise and fall of Sir Durand’s chest, told herself it was proof enough he did not need her aid, then eased his arm from around her and discovered something else held her to him. Peering between their bodies, she followed the girdle from around her wrist to where it wrapped his own to its end that disappeared between the planks.
It took little effort to free herself, but when she straightened, her legs were so unsteady she nearly fell. Finding her balance, loose hair dancing before her face where she stood with her back to the chill breeze coming off the water, she steeled herself for what awaited her. Then arms hugged over her chest, she turned to survey what the passing of night laid bare. And clasped herself more closely as she took in a scene that chilled her more than the air slipping through her garments.
Jagged teeth projecting far into the water beneath a sky clothed in enough clouds to stir up another storm, the shore’s curved mouth stretched long from one end to the other. But not long enough that the bodies among the wreckage seemed a small number. Never would she have imagined so many would wash ashore nor that there would be so much wreckage. Whatever had settled to the bottom of the sea was surely too little to render tale of a ship gone asunder.
Teeth chattering and convulsing body tempting her to return to Sir Durand and curl against his side, she might have had she not glimpsed movement partway down the beach beside an overturned rowboat. Though possibly one of the crew who could prove dangerous, the hope it was her father’s knight made her raise her damp skirts and run.
The sand was wet enough to offer firm footing, but twice her ankle bent to rocks, vegetation, and wreckage. Blessedly, she was sturdily built and suffered only mild discomfort as she continued forward.
“Be Sir Norris,” she gasped. “Be alive.”
She skirted a mast snapped to the height of a man, its lower end tangled in sailcloth, and averted her gaze from the blue-cast, open-mouthed young seaman whose life Sir Durand had spared only that he might meet a crueler end.
