By Possession (2 page)

She might be risking much for him. The final surprise, since she had made very clear that he wasn't really with her under those moons, that he only provided a body that the god Menulius used. Well, for whatever reason, she had decided to give him a chance for freedom, and he would take it.

The hope long suppressed scorched, moving him to action. He swung up on the horse, noting that it was one of her father's finest. He quickly tied the basket to the saddle, noticing some garments stuffed into a leather bag on the other side. Eufemia had provided well for him.

He paused, looking once more to the river. From his height he could see the top of her black head bending toward the water. Mouthing silent words of farewell, he dug his heels into the horse's flanks.

CHAPTER 1

Wiltshire, England
1326

M
OIRA FELT THE DANGER BEFORE
she heard it. It rumbled from the ground up her legs and through her back while she bent over the hearth setting some water to heat. She froze as a distant thunder began shaking the cool dawn air entering through her open door. She darted to the threshold as the sound grew stronger. Stepping outside she saw the men approach through the morning haze.

They poured down the hill from the manor house of Darwendon, aiming for the village, four dark shapes flying on fast steeds with short cloaks waving behind them. They looked like legged falcons soaring through the silver mist.

Rushing over to a pallet in the corner, she crouched and shook the small body lying there. “Brian, up now! Quickly.”

Sun-bronzed arms and legs jerked and stretched and she yanked at one wrist while she rose. “Now, at once, child! And silence, like I told you.”

Blue eyes blinked alert with alarm and he scurried behind her to a back window. She could hear the riders galloping toward the cottages now. Brian paused on the sill, his blond head out and his rump still in, and twisted with apprehension toward her.

“Where I showed you, and cover yourself well. Do not come out, no matter what you hear,” she ordered, giving him a firm push.
Even if you hear my screams.

She watched until he disappeared behind the shed in which she stored her baskets, then she closed the shutters and sat on the narrow bed. With quick movements she tied her disheveled hair behind her neck with a rag, smoothed her stained homespun gown, and stretched to move her darning basket near her feet. Lifting a torn veil, she pretended to sew.

She tried to remain calm while the horses clamored toward her with a violent noise. They were not stopping in the village. They were coming here, to this house. The sour bile of fear rose to her mouth and she sucked in her cheeks and forced it down.

Two horses pulled up outside in a m´elange of hooves and legs and pivoting turns. Two men swung off and strode toward her. They barged in and peered around the darkened chamber.

“Where is the boy?” one of them asked.

“What boy? There is no boy here.”

The man strode to the large chest against the wall, opened it, and began rummaging through the garments inside. She did not protest. Brian's things were not in there, or anywhere they would easily find them. She had prepared for this day, although the passing years had led her to believe him safe and forgotten.

The other man grabbed her arm and pulled her up from the bed. “Tell us where he is or it will go badly for you.”

“I have no boy. No son. I do not know who you mean.”

“Of course you know,” a new voice said.

She twisted around to the doorway and the tall, thin man standing there. His long blond hair looked white in the dawn's glow.

“Raymond!”

Brian's uncle, Raymond Orrick, smiled smoothly and stepped inside, his knight's spurs glinting. He gestured lazily and the gouging grip released her arm. “Forgive them, Moira. It was not my intention to frighten you. We got distracted in the village and they moved on ahead. They thought …”

“They thought I was a peasant and undeserving of any courtesy.”

He sauntered over to the hearth, glancing around the simple chamber, taking in her two chests and bed and table and stools. His eyes finally came to rest on the pallet. “He is safe?”

She moved up close to him, shooting cautious looks at the two others. Even if they were his liege men he should not speak of this in front of them. “Aye, he is safe.”

Raymond smiled in the familiar way he had used too often since her fifteenth year. It was the smile that a magnanimous lord might bestow on a favored servant. But she did not serve him, least of all in the way he would most like.

“You have done well for us, but we have come for him,” he said.

“Come for him?”

“It is time.”

A sickening strumming began in her chest. She wished suddenly that she had claimed that Brian had perished in this summer's fever. Behind her she felt the presence of a fourth man enter.

“He is safer here,” she said.

“It is time,” Raymond said more firmly.

“Nay. It is unwise and you know it. Your sister, Claire, asked me to care for her son before she died. You agreed because you knew Brian could be hidden here. If you take him back to your home at Hawkesford now, the men who wish him harm will learn of it and take him from you. You cannot withstand those who invoke the king's name as they commit their crimes.”

The latest man to arrive moved. He came around her, taking a place in Raymond's shadow near the hearth. “Where is the boy?” he asked in a commanding voice that expected a response.

She pivoted and peered at him. He stood taller than Raymond, and broader too, and she could make out similar long hair, but dark, not fair. He wore a peculiar garment on his legs, and no armor or sword. She could not see his face well in the shadow, but he did not appear friendly.

Raymond looked over at the man and seemed to shrink a little, as if in natural deference. That was not like Raymond at all. He counted his own worth very high.

“The boy,” the man demanded.

Raymond caught her eye meaningfully. He stepped toward her, whether to signal that he relinquished responsibility for what occurred, or to protect her, she couldn't say. With his movement, the hearth glow suddenly illuminated the stranger.

She gasped.
Surely not. It was impossible!

A handsome face composed of sharp planes emerged from the retreating shadows. Deep-set dark eyes met her gaping stare, the low fire highlighting golden sparks that brightened while he considered her. He turned slightly and she gasped again when she saw the pale scar slicing down the left side of his face from forehead to jaw, contrasting starkly with his sun-browned skin.

Impossible!

“You know who I am?”

She knew who he appeared to be, who the scar and eyes and dark hair said he should be. But that was all that reminded her of him. Certainly not the suspicion and danger quavering out of him and giving that face a harsh, vigilant expression. Especially not the crude garments that made him appear like some marauding barbarian. In the hearth light she could see that they were made of buckskin, not woven cloth. The hip-length sleeveless tunic displayed the sinewy strength of his arms. More leather clad his legs to the ground in two narrow tubes. The tunic was decorated with orange beads that picked up the fire.

“You spoke boldly enough before, woman. Do you doubt your own eyes?”

“I doubt them, since the man you appear to be is dead eight years now.”

“Well, I am not dead, nor a ghost.”

“If you are who you appear to be, you should know me as well.”

The eyebrow bisected by the scar rose. “Come here.”

She stepped closer and he scrutinized her face. She managed not to flinch as his gaze pierced hers, invading and probing with a naked contemplation. Still, he didn't look quite so fearsome up near, and her own examination revealed something of the handsome, blessed boy she remembered. Leaner and harder, but the same high cheekbones and strong jaw defined the face.

“In the last few years that I served Raymond's father, Bernard Orrick, as a squire, Bernard kept a serf woman named Edith as his lehman,” he said. “You are Edith's daughter, but you are well grown these eight years, and not the plump child you were when I left.” His intense gaze drifted down and then returned to her face until their eyes met in a frank connection of familiarity. She saw
recognition and maybe something else in his expression. Her nape prickled.

Another count against him and she doubted anew. The man he claimed to be had never looked at her like that, and never would.

“Raymond no doubt told you who I am,” she said.

“So you do not trust Raymond either? No wonder you have kept the boy safe. In these times you are smart to suspect everyone. But Raymond would not know the name I called you when you were underfoot and in the way, would he?”

Nay, Raymond would not know that name that spoke volumes about her youth, her appearance, her status in the Orrick household. Her insignificance.

He reached out and touched the tip of her nose as he had done on occasion when she was a child. “You are little Moira, Claire's Shadow.”

A stunned acceptance swept her, splashed with relief and joy and heartbreak. Brian's father, thought dead these last eight years, had come for his son.

“Now, where is the boy?”

The heartbreak submerged the other emotions. She turned away, castigating herself. She had been keeping Brian safe for a reason, hadn't she? He was not really hers and did not belong here. This man above all others would ensure that he someday sat in his rightful place and lived the life he was born to live.

She should be happy, not devastated, but her spirit began a silent, grieving moan as she realized that she would lose Brian forever. “I will show you. Tell the others to stay here. They may frighten him.”

Raymond and his men remained in the cottage while she led the way around to the shed in back. She called Brian's name when they approached the stacks of reeds drying for her baskets. The bundles shifted and a blond
head stuck up. Young blue eyes examined the stranger cautiously.

“It is all right. Come out now.”

He scrambled up and came over to her. Moira stepped away. Man and boy examined each other. She was glad that Brian had the good sense not to comment on the scar or garments, even though both obviously fascinated him. He looked so small and brave there, struggling not to shrink from the hard countenance above him. Her heart swelled at the image of them taking their mutual measurements.

She slipped back beside him and knelt, placing her hands on his shoulders, closing her eyes, and savoring the feel of his small frame under her palms.
Probably never again.
She wished she had known that it would be today. She would have taken him to the stream to play yesterday, and cooked him a special meal. Tears puddled in her eyes and she looked away, biting her lip for composure. Then she pressed his shoulders and smiled at his questioning face.

“This is Addis de Valence, Brian. This is your father.”

“My father is dead. He died on the Baltic crusade.”

“Nay.”

He frowned up. Realization began dawning. Fear and panic masked his face and he lunged into her arms, burying his face in her breast. She embraced and rocked him and silently pleaded with her eyes for Addis to be patient.

The scarred face turned toward the house and she twisted and saw that Raymond and the others had followed. Perhaps they thought Addis de Valence needed help subduing one seven-year-old boy. She tried to disentangle Brian but he burrowed in deeper. Perhaps they were right.

Addis reached down and pried the boy loose. Brian squirmed in resistance but Addis lifted him and gave a
sharp look that quelled the rebellion. He began walking away with little Brian's distraught eyes locked back on her. She reached out a reassuring hand to the boy who had been her son for four years.

Addis walked as if indifferent to the boy's tears. When he passed Raymond, he glanced back. “Bring the woman.”

The solar of Addis's manor house at Darwendon rose above the eastern half of the hall. He stood on the stair landing in front of its door, looking down on the activity below. This property had been his wife's dowry when he and Claire had married. Its value lay in the surrounding farms, not the old house protected on its hill only by two circles of wooden palisades.