Dream of Me/Believe in Me (53 page)

“I am not merely loyal, lord. I
know
the Lady Krysta and I can assure you, she is not interested in controlling anything.”

He speared her with a sudden look that sent a shiver to her toes. “She's not a lackwit, is she?”

At this rate, she'd be swallowing flies before long. Krysta shut her mouth hard. She took a breath and another before she tried to speak. “Might I ask, lord, why you should wonder such a thing?”

“Most people want some control over their lives. Only the most inept seek to be told everything to do, when to do it, and so on. She's not like that, is she?”

Patience
, her mind counseled.
Hope
, her heart pleaded.

“No, lord, she is not like that.”

He bent down, picked up the opalescent rock she had been admiring a few minutes before, and sent it spinning out over the water where it splashed, once, twice … five times before settling out of sight.

“What is she like?”

A boy's gesture, a man's question.
What is anyone like?

“She … cares about her people, as I have said. She wants peace between Norse and Saxon. She will miss her home but she is determined to find a new one here.”

She spoke wistfully, Hawk thought, another who would miss her home. He stared at the girl whose company he had not meant to seek, whose name he deliberately had not asked, the girl with green eyes and freckles across the bridge of her nose. She was a pretty thing, not with the stunning beauty of his sister Cymbra, whose presence was enough to make men walk into walls, but pretty all the same. More even than pretty when she smiled … or
looked thoughtful … or merely stared back at him as she was doing now.

He looked at his hand reaching out as though to touch her cheek and had no idea how that had come to be.

She swallowed hard and stepped back. “Lord …”

“Caauuuaaawwww …”
Black wings flashed overhead. Hawk looked up as the raven swept past, little higher than his head, circling. He heard fluttering, turned, saw other ravens perched in the trees just beyond the beach, black shadows amid the branches.

“Caauuuaaawww.”
Had there always been so many at Hawkforte? He didn't remember that but thought little of it. Birds came and went.

The green-eyed girl's reaction was different. She looked surprised, then annoyed. Mayhap she did not like birds.

“I must go, lord.” This was said on the wing, as it were, for she was already halfway up the beach. He almost moved to stop her but caught himself. His betrothed wife's servant. Folly unimaginable.

He lingered awhile yet on the beach before impatient duty sent him back whence he had come. The gates of Hawkforte stood open, carts and wagons streaming through. Beyond those gates lay the town and beyond it more walls and more gates, all well guarded by the Hawk's own men, trained to his exacting standard of vigilance and deadly skill. It was a fat, prosperous town, straining at the walls that contained it. Soon, mayhap as soon as the coming year, he must needs begin to build a new ring of wall to let the town expand. There were so many merchants coming in search of his protection, growing wealthy beneath the shelter of his sword, and drawing many more to do the same. So, too, were there scholars, for Alfred had begun that fashion and Hawk had followed it gladly. Men came who were at home in books, marvels that they were, who could speak of events long distant as though they had
happened but yesterday. Others came with talents of their own. Hawkforte boasted some of the finest smiths in all of Essex, if not beyond. The same for tanners, carpenters, and the like. There were monks to illuminate the manuscripts that poured from the abbey Hawk had founded, apothecaries to tend to his people's ills, men who built marvels never seen before in these lands, who had conceived the idea for the channels that kept the crops green in a year of scant rain.

It all made for a loud, messy concoction, this burgh of his, but he was proud of it in a way he had never expected to be in a life that seemed destined for little more than blood and sweat. Thanks to Alfred's vision, something better had proved possible and Hawk was determined to protect it at all costs. Yet, too, did he wish to enjoy it. He went among his people now without display or hindrance, on foot and dressed simply in a well-worn tunic of unor-namented brown wool. Only the sword belted to his side gave hint of his rank, that and the deference of his people. Hats were doffed in his direction, he received shy smiles, and an old woman pressed a warm raisin bun into his hand. Hawk was glad of it, having come out without first breaking his night's fast. He bit into it as he walked.

He moved slowly along the rows of shops and stalls, pausing to speak to a merchant here, a peasant there. There was a time when he had known virtually everyone at Hawkforte by name. The place had grown too much for that still to be the case, yet he tried. A man, Toby as he was known, put an arm around the shoulders of his sturdy young son and announced that the lad was beginning his apprenticeship as a wheelwright that very day. Hawk riffled the boy's hair and offered his congratulations as family and onlookers alike beamed their pleasure.

He moved on past a tavern popular with ship captains and their crews. Trestle tables were just being set up outside, yet a few stalwarts were already enjoying a
morning tongue-tickler. Hawk received invitations to join them but declined cordially. He was climbing the mount toward the fortress itself when a flicker of movement at the corner of his eye stopped him. Instinctively, his hand went to the hilt of his sword.

Thorgold snorted. He unfolded himself from his perch beneath a stone arch that held up part of the road and grinned at Hawk. “Easy there, lord, 'tis only old Thorgold. Good morrow to ye.”

“And to you,” Hawk responded automatically. He felt foolish reaching for his sword, although not as foolish as he had felt reaching for the green-eyed girl. That sensation prompted him to speak more sternly than he would have otherwise. “What do you here?”

“Restin' my bones, lord. 'Tis a long journey we've had.”

Still irked, Hawk said, “It must be as it is taking your mistress so long to make it.”

The strange fellow—bearded and stooped, barrel-chested above bandy legs—chuckled. “Impatient are ye? Well an' ye' should be. She's a fine lass, she is.”

“Lass? Are you that familiar with her then?”

“Ye could say so. Known her since the day she was born.”

Foolishness was dogging him this day. He might as well add to it. “Tell me of her.”

Thorgold grinned. “Are ye that eager to know her?”

“Eager? No, merely curious.”

The old man pursed his lips, nodding sagely. “Ah, curiosity, now there's the thing. Men have wandered the earth because of it.” He cast a sideways grin. “Or mayhap they only wanted to get away from the womenfolk. Trouble they can be, sad to say. Harpin' on this and that, never done. Voices like … well, I won't say ravens 'cause I want no trouble myself. But raucous they can be when they've a mind. Know what I mean?”

Hawk thought of Daria and sighed. “I suppose I do.”

“Ah, but then there's the other kind. Soft as a spring rain, strong as water running over rock. Wears down the rock, it does, but gently like. Rock hardly knows what's happening to it. Doesn't seem to mind neither.”

“I am not a rock,” Hawk said. He looked up at the sky so blue as to sting the eyes, down and around at the trees cut back from the fortress walls. Ravens were sitting in them. So many ravens. “I am a man.”

Thorgold chuckled again. He seemed pleased with the response. It made him generous. “She likes hair ribbons.”

“What … ?”

“Ribbons, for her hair. She likes 'em. All different colors, doesn't seem to matter. Ever since she was a little thing, she's liked hair ribbons.” He stared back at Hawk staring at him. “Keeps 'em in a little chest, she does. All curled up like flowers.”

“Are you suggesting I acquire some hair ribbons?”

Thorgold shrugged. “Couldn't hurt.”

“What about jewels, furs, silks?”

“Hair ribbons.”

“A fine mount, luxurious hangings for her chamber, rare perfumes?”

“Hair ribbons.”

“A mirror from the farthest reaches of Araby, cedar chests filled with spices, a harp strung from the tail of a unicorn?”

“Hair ribbons. And I'd forget that about the unicorn, if I were ye. They can't be caught.”

Hawk fought a smile, didn't win. “Are you telling me I'll be an old, old man and still buying her hair ribbons?”

“Ye will if ye be lucky, lord. Are ye? Is the fey gift of fortune sittin' on those broad shoulders?”

“Damned if I know.” Was it? He'd had good fortune in his life and bad. The Essex of his childhood had been a more dangerous and uncertain place than it was now. Yet
no man of sense drew more than two easy breaths in a row. His mother had died too soon, yet gentle memory remained, elusive, sometimes filling him with yearning at unexpected moments. Odd things would set it off—a snatch of song, a whiff of scent, the murmur of a voice that was almost but not quite familiar. He was accustomed to it. By contrast, he scarcely remembered the selfish, unthinking girl who had perished in a foolish accident of her own making shortly after their marriage, taking their unborn child with her. He had done well in the terms of the world and was glad of that, yet were there times when he found himself wondering if there was anything more to be hoped for, something as yet undiscovered and unexperienced.

A signal horn rang out, the warning of riders approaching Hawkforte. Its master took a quick step, levering himself up onto the arch, and looked out beyond the town. He spied the banner of the royal equerry fluttering above a party of a dozen horsemen.

T
HEY WERE LIKE MEWLING BABES, BRAYING
their laughter, posturing, expecting their every whim to be obeyed. Watching the men newly arrived from the court at Winchester, prattling on with her
dear
brother, Daria sneered. They were such dung-for-brains, all of them, imagining themselves to be of worth and consequence when they could not even recognize the person of true consequence among them. And Hawk was the worst of them. Malicious fate had made them siblings of a sort. He suffered her presence under his roof because it was his duty to do so. She knew it and hated him for it. But he went his own way, brushing her off as lightly as he would a fly, scarcely noticing that she existed. She would change that. Oh, yes, make no mistake, she would change it once and for all.

Daria looked away from the men at the high table, trying to block out their deep laughter, but the very smell of them overtook her. She was engulfed in the scents of leather, wool, sweat, and something intrinsically male she did not care to know. Her senses whirled and for a
moment she thought she would be ill, vomiting it all up right there for everyone to see.

Father Elbert's pale hand on her arm steadied her. “Be at ease, lady.” His voice was low, sibilant, oddly soothing. She stared into his narrow face lit by coal-black eyes and felt the tumult of the hall fading. Slowly, she exhaled, willing her weakness away.

“How I despise them,” she murmured, conscious of the need not to be overheard. Anyone observing them would see only a holy man in consultation with a righteous woman, her gaze suitably downcast, her manner humble. Appearance was all.

“As you should, lady, but the time of repentance is coming. They shall pay for all their crimes.”

“They cannot pay enough, it isn't possible.” She glanced again at Hawk—big, hard muscled, blatantly masculine in a way that made her strangely unsettled. Her late, unlamented husband had been a weakling, too stupid to do as she directed, too inept to seize the power that had gone to Alfred instead, an utter failure who, instead of making her the queen she was born to be, had dared to die and leave her to live on charity and dreams of revenge. Dreams that could not come true soon enough.

She had failed once, when that cow Cymbra everyone thought was so beautiful managed to survive being taken captive by the Norse Wolf and thwart the plot to provoke him into killing her, becoming instead his cherished bride. Merely thinking of that was enough to make Daria's gorge rise again. She would not fail this time—she couldn't. Hawk's unwanted Viking wife was due to arrive any day. Turning him completely against her
and
the peace she represented would give Daria more pleasure than anything else in her bitter, resentment-filled life. She glanced down the high table where Hawk sat in conversation with the lords from Winchester. A fierce, dark sense
of anticipation rose within her. How eagerly she awaited his destruction, how fiercely she would relish it.

The prickling at the back of his neck distracted Hawk. He turned slightly, not taking his attention entirely from the man with whom he was speaking but seeking the source of his sudden unease. Such was his life that he had learned long ago the folly of ignoring his instinct for danger. But danger in his own hall, among his own people? Not impossible, to be sure, yet it was unlikely. He knew all the men lately come from the royal court, had fought beside them, shared hardships and hopes, and he trusted them. They were the pick of Alfred's most loyal nobles, the men who were rebuilding England, and he was proud to be counted among them. As for the rest …