by Tamara Leigh
Avoiding the bodies of two others, a mere glimpse of whom proved they were as devoid of life with their frozen, discolored faces, she returned her regard to the one who moved.
Dawn’s light too muted by clouds to reveal his identity, she called to Sir Norris, but he responded in no way to show he heard. Having made it to his hands and knees, he hung his head between his arms.
“Sir Norris!”
“Stay back!” he barked.
It did not sound like him, but seeing a knightly sword on his belt, she dropped beside him. As she set a hand on his shoulder, he fell onto his back and caught her wrist.
Her cry muffled by tight throat muscles, she looked from the teeth-baring grimace of the captain to his bloodied neck and chest to a belt hung with the purse and sword taken from Sir Durand. And coming up from his other side was the Wulfrith dagger.
“You think to scavenge from the dead?” He set the blade to her throat.
“Captain! ’Tis Lady Beata Fauvel.”
Eyes spasming, he eased his grip, though not so much she could free herself. Then he lowered the dagger.
“Are my crew dead, Lady? All of them?”
Shivering as much from dread of how he would react as the chill, she said, “I know not.”
“Look!”
She peered across the overturned boat and saw as she had before, that of all those strewn amid timber, sailcloth, and ropes, only the captain evidenced life.
“Are they dead?”
“It appears so.” She swallowed. “But do you loose me, I shall go amongst them and give aid if any live.” Not a lie. Though the search would delay her departure, shortening the distance between Sir Durand and her, it was the least owed the crew.
“Your word,” the captain commanded.
“It is yours.”
“And prayer.”
“Prayer?”
He scowled. “Not all of us wanted this life…only until we could make a better one and right our sins.”
Though part of Beata argued there were more godly ways to feed and clothe one’s self—ways that did not steal the fruit of others’ labor and their lives—she was in no position to judge him or his crew. Not she who was blessed to labor only as long and hard as she wished, and whose greatest desperation was experienced while fleeing Count Verielle’s men.
“I shall pray for all, Captain.”
He released her and let his arm fall atop his chest, then his mouth curved, but his smile was so misshapen it was ugly.
She set a cold hand over his, and though the dimming of his eyes told he required no prompting, whispered, “The Lord is merciful. Go to Him.”
His lids dropped, but as if fearful of the darkness there, he sprang them open and looked to the heavens. Then he emptied his lungs.
Beata stared into eyes that saw only what lay beyond this world, and the finality of death made her press her lips against a sob. Only twice had she been so near the loss of life—that of her mother and Conrad—and as she had prayed for them, she would pray for this man.
She bowed her head and beseeched the Lord to forgive the ship’s crew their trespasses and sins. And when she could beseech no more, she closed the captain’s eyes and stood.
She started to turn away, but Sir Durand’s sword caught her eye, next his Wulfrith dagger.
She looked across her shoulder at the wreckage to which the queen’s man and she had been secured. It was angled such that she could not see him, but a sweep of her gaze across the shore confirmed she was the only one able to walk away. And impressed on her that no matter her duty to her father, it was wrong to risk the lives of others as Sir Norris had done for his liege.
She would not abandon the man who had saved her. At least, not until certain Sir Durand could also walk away. But first she must keep her word to the captain.
She started forward, but the possibility she would need protection made her turn back. It tossed her stomach to take from the dead, but she told herself she took only what the captain had stolen. “Forgive me,” she said and uncurled his fingers from the Wulfrith dagger.
Wishing the sun beginning its ascent of the winter sky would burn away the clouds, she set off across the shore. Shortly, she heard a groan and followed it to a man so torn it was a struggle to keep her stomach from turning inside out. Though not unaware of the sorrows and ills of the world, Conrad had shielded her from what lay behind the talk of men.
She held the dying man’s hand, prayed as life fled him, then searched for others. There were more than a score of bodies, several of whom stared at the lightening sky until she lowered their lids.
As she moved farther down the shore, she noted the garments of many over whom she prayed were finer than what the seamen had worn and realized her party could not have been the only noble passengers. Others had been as desperate to reach England that they sought passage aboard a pirate’s ship rather than one with a legitimate reason for plying the seas.
More heavily feeling the deaths of those on this shore, none of whom proved Sir Norris, Beata looked and listened.
All was still but for clouds plodding across the sky, birds coming to earth, and the sea stirring itself into another frenzy.
Deciding it was time to face Sir Durand’s wrath, she turned, but a glimpse of yellow cloth caught between large rocks near the shoreline gave her pause. Another body, and likely that of a woman, it being rare a man donned that soft, pale color.
With the hope of finding life there, Beata gathered her strength and moved toward rocks most easily reached by venturing into the tide. It was difficult to climb their slippery surface, and as reward for her effort, the only aid she could offer was prayer for another victim.
“I am sorry,” she whispered as she knelt beside a lady of middling years whose woolen mantle was splayed beneath her like wings, face tranquil despite its horrible discoloration.
After beseeching the Lord for the woman’s soul, Beata acceded it was time to return to Sir Durand, but her body would not obey. Despite the promise of warmth in movement, she was too cold to rise, her heart too heavy for all who would not know home and hearth again…whose absence would ever be felt by those who loved them…
She folded over herself, pressed her face to her bent knees, and finding warmth there, yielded to sobs as the day’s horrors carved themselves into her memory.
CHAPTER NINE
The Vexing Widow—beyond any woman he knew—was more trouble than she was worth. Thrice he had dragged her out of a mess, first thwarting her abduction, next delivering her from a man’s unwanted attentions, then keeping her from the great maw of the sea. For all that, she had stolen away whilst the exhaustion of ensuring they reached land held him in the depths of sleep.
Blessedly, he had not yet fallen prey to those quick to pick over the wreckage of ships. But they would come, ready to do to survivors what the sea had not lest witnesses threaten their claim on the wreckage.
Denying himself the comfort of cursing, Durand sat up and looked from the gray sky that portended another storm to the beach. The only surprise of the latter was the amount of wreckage and bodies.
“Too much,” he rasped and recalled the dark of hours earlier when he had glimpsed another ship. Here was proof it was not imagined. Two ships had broken offshore.
His chest tightened. Had Wulfrith insisted on sailing to keep his vow to deliver The Vestal Widow to England? Had the other ship been his?
Nay, though he would keep his word at the cost of his own life, he would not risk the lives of innocents. But if the captain had been confident the crossing could be made…
Durand released his hand from the girdle looped around it and stood. Though his leg ached, it held, evidencing that woman was useful for one thing—sewing up a man’s flesh.
Lest he required something with which to bind her, he freed her girdle. As he knotted it around his waist, he turned to study the land rising from the sea. On the left side of the cove to just past its center, a scrub-covered knoll sloped down
to the beach. To the right, a chalk cliff rose.
But it was not of Dover. They had not been blown that far off course. Was it of Worthing whose settlement lay several leagues inland? Nay, farther east, likely near Brighthelmstone.
As he set off across the beach with a hitch in his stride, one moment he prayed that if Wulfrith had been on that other ship he lived, in the next he vowed if his former liege had died, The Vexing Widow would know no more joy.
Careful, Durand, his painstakingly restored honor warned. Do you grind me in the dirt again, I might remain there and make of you a man like the one you killed so he could work no more ill on she who first owned the name Beatrix.
Praying he would not return to that darkness, he followed footprints that showed the lady had searched body to body, including that of the captain from whom Durand retrieved his belt, sword, and purse. But though the miscreant was said to have also claimed the Wulfrith dagger, it was not to be found.
Lost to the sea? Or had the one forced to relinquish her own dagger taken it? Aye, just as she had taken coin and other items from the dead in preparation for her journey to Wiltford.
“I will find you Lady,” he growled. After buckling his belt and adjusting his sword and purse on it, he opened the latter’s drawstring that did not feel as it should. The stiffly rolled wax-sealed parchment was missing. Had the Vestal Widow taken it? More likely the captain. Whatever the missive’s contents, only that miscreant and the queen knew what was expected of the lady’s father should she prove an heiress. And now only the queen.
Once more tracking his charge, he noted an increasing number of the dead were not the sort to seek passage on the ship he had forced his way aboard. Here were honorable men of the sea, among them a handful of others whose garments told they were noble. But no Wulfrith, nor his knights, who might be at the bottom of the sea.
He lengthened his stride to sooner bring the lady to ground and learn the identity of the second ship, but discovered the rocks had wreaked as much devastation on the vessel as its passengers.
Damp garments increasingly uncomfortable in the brisk air coming off the water, teeth set to keep them from warring with one another, he silently beseeched forgiveness from the dead nobleman whose mantle he claimed. Though the garment was no drier than his own clothing, once it covered him shoulders to calves, it deflected enough of the chill to aid brisk movement in warming his body.
With further regret, he relieved the man of his wineskin and wet his salt-stung mouth with a long swallow before resuming the hunt.
When he lost the tracks at the tide’s edge near the eastern end of the cove, he was tempted to leave the lady to a fate that could see her taken as booty, but faith and honor rejected that option.
Assuring himself there would be satisfaction in thwarting her, he considered the chalk cliff rising from rocks at its base, then the scrub-covered slope at the opposite end of the cove that provided the easiest and safest means of ascent.
Despite his injury, he must go the way of The Vestal Widow who appeared to have followed the chalk cliffs skirting the shore for what could be many leagues. Why had she gone that way? Was she addled? Did she hope to throw him off her scent?
The latter, he decided. But just as the disappearance of her footprints did not fool him, it would not deceive scavengers who might give chase lest a survivor carried away valuables or alerted others to the wreckage. Still, Durand also went into the cold tide in the hope pursuers were less likely to follow survivors who numbered two or more strong.
Resenting the soaking of boots that had begun to dry, he moved toward the rocks projecting into the sea and, as he began his ascent, caught the rumble of carts.
He looked around at the land above the shore. Assured the scavengers were not in sight, he turned forward again. And saw a piece of cloth between jagged rocks that stood like pillars near the point.
Though the material was not of a color worn by The Vestal Widow, and whoever wore it was likely dead, he altered his course. It was harder going. Worse, he would be seen more easily. But it proved worth the effort when he glimpsed in the space between the rocks the one who bent over her knees alongside a lifeless woman. She must have seen him coming and hidden.
As he moved around the side of the western-facing rock, he pressed down emotions that sought the surface as surely as he had done when the sea offered itself as a tomb.
Voices sounding above the turning of cart wheels, he peered over his shoulder. The scavengers visible now, he pushed his injured leg harder and sprang around the backside of the rock.
And there she was, shoulders convulsing and sobs muffled by her skirts. He would not have believed one who so readily indulged in laughter, teasing, and unsolicited opinions capable of such misery. But then, her sorrow was surely for her own circumstances.
When Durand closed a hand around her arm, she cried out and strained opposite. When he yanked her to her feet, she swept the Wulfrith dagger to his abdomen.
“Lady,” he growled, “you do not want to do that. I vow, you do not.”
Her tear-reddened eyes widened. “Durand!” she gasped and dropped the dagger and collapsed against him.
Though further angered by her disregard of his prized possession, her reaction and familiarity with his Christian name disarmed him.
As she intends, he told himself and set her away—only to drag her back when her knees would not hold.
“Save your games for when scavengers are not upon us!” he snarled.
She dropped her head back, and past damp tresses the wind slanted across her face, he saw what seemed confusion and fear. And noted her chattering teeth and chilled flesh beneath his hands.
As he pondered her reason for not securing a mantle, she mumbled, “They are lost. All are lost.”
She wished him to believe her despair was for others. “Aye, and for no good cause. Now we are leaving.”
He released her, and when her legs held, retrieved his dagger and thrust it in its sheath. Then he freed the hem of the dead woman’s gown from the rocks so it would not draw the scavengers’ attention and, as gently as possible, removed her mantle.
But when he opened it to The Vestal Widow, she stepped back. “I will not take from the dead.”
That gave him pause, her movement body to body evidencing she had done exactly that to aid her journey to Wiltford. However, it appeared the Wulfrith dagger was the only thing she had taken, and though it was worth a fat purse, it was not conceivable she would be content with something for which she must secure a buyer.
Ponder it later, he counseled and whipped the mantle around her shoulders.
“Nay!” She jumped to the side, causing the garment to slide off her back.
With one hand he gripped her arm, with the other raised her chin. “Though I like it not, once more I shall risk my life to save yours, even if I must put you over my shoulder. Now behave!”
Her lashes fluttered, and the fearful woman shifted toward the one tossed from his destrier. Then she pulled free and reached to the mantle. And gingerly lifted it as if it were smeared with offal.
Durand snatched it from her. “God’s patience, you vex, Lady!” He swept the damp wool over her shoulders, snatched it closed at her throat, and pulled her around and over rocks whose dark color he prayed was near enough that of their garments and hair that they would not be seen.
To the lady’s credit, she was no fragile thing, and though she panted, she did not force him to slow.
Before leaving the cove, Durand looked back. A dozen men were halfway down the slope. Hoping the need to guide their carts carefully and quickly claim their treasures would prevent them from closely searching the area, he pulled the lady out of sight of the first cove and dropped back against a rock to rest his leg.
As he considered the new cove they must traverse—unscalable, being entirely rimmed by chalk cliff—he sensed the gaze of The Vestal Widow who kept the reach of his arm between them as if she feared brushing against his anger.
&
nbsp; Feeling regret over alarming her, he thrust it away with the reminder Baron Wulfrith’s wife might now be a widow and his children fatherless, then turned his attention to the beach. Only one body was visible amidst the wreckage that had come ashore here, and it was not of Wulfrith or one of his knights. The face down man was large, but in an extremely broad sense.
Durand pushed off the rock. Grateful the lady required no threat to set her moving again, he drew her along the cliff base, quickening their pace when the air stirred further and the darkening clouds began to spit.
In the same manner, they traversed two more stretches of beach almost devoid of wreckage before the knighthood training that had impressed on him the importance of being aware of his surroundings gained him a glimpse of men atop the cliff. They approached from the direction toward which the lady and he moved.
Durand yanked her back against the cliff, and when she looked wide-eyed at him, said, “At so early an hour, and with another storm in the making, likely more scavengers. A good thing, since warring over booty should prevent them from searching us out.”
Shoulders shrugged up, she said, “S-searching us out?”
“Though our footprints disappeared beneath the tide, they will know we go this way.”
“You believe they would harm us?”
Resolve once more tested, he said, “Do they decide ’tis worth their time to give chase, it will not be to assuage their consciences over our well-being.”
She averted her gaze and asked low, “How fares your leg?”
Hitch apparent, patience stretched, he eyed the clouds that would not merely spot those caught out in the open.
“I am so dry,” she said, and he heard her swallow. “May I have a drink?”
He passed her the wineskin and watched her put the spout to her lips. Before he could warn her to drink as little as possible lest the journey was long, she refit the stopper and returned the skin. At least she had some sense.
