Snow in July (5 page)

No boorish Norman would trample these sacred flowers underfoot.

She hoped her brother’s memory would never wilt, but as the weeks had stretched into months, she found it harder to preserve his features in her mind’s eye, and it goaded her grief.

Running her fingers over his cool granite effigy helped. The image faithfully portrayed Del as fair of face and broad of shoulder and brawny of limb, facing death as he had life: head-on and arrayed for battle, his hands folded in eternal prayer. The only missing detail was his smile.

Her heart ached. That Godforsaken Norman sword may as well have pierced her too.

She blinked and retrieved the red and white roses. Avoiding the thorns, she twisted the stems together. The white’s stem was much longer than the red’s, casting the illusion that it overshadowed the other. She separated them and adjusted the stems to make the blossoms even. Pleased with the effect, she kissed both and laid them on the effigy in time to ease to her knees with the rest of the congregation.

After the priest’s prayers ended and people began shuffling past her, she kept her eyes closed and head bowed, adding her silent petition for the redemption of Del’s soul and for the means to fulfill her vows.

“Daughter. Walk with me.”

Her father was looming over her, his arms crossed and face stern. She swallowed hard. Such a look brooked no disobedience.

Gazing at Del’s tomb, he sighed, expression softening. “Come.” He offered his hand to help her rise, which she accepted with resignation. Tensions had flared between them since his return from London, and she braced herself for another bout.

She genuflected again, grasped her basket’s handle, and turned to accompany Waldron from the church. Not across the yard to the feast hall, as she’d expected, since that was where most Edgarburh business—including private matters—transpired, but past the garden toward the manor house. In silence they ascended the outer wooden staircase, entered the building, and trod the corridor containing the bedchambers. Specifically, she realized with a start when their course became apparent, Waldron’s.

Several paces from their destination, curiosity compelled her to blurt, “What’s wrong?”

Pulling up short, he gave her an odd look. “Wrong? Let me see.” He snorted, ticking the points on his fingers. “Taxes are due ere long, and the tenants have barely recovered from the war to scrape together their payments. A Norman is on his way to take possession of my daughter and the estate.” Waldron’s gray eyes gazed at her levelly. “My son is dead, and my daughter acts like a widow rather than a bride.” He inclined his head at the black woolen veil she wore even as these final spring days warmed toward summer.

This time it wasn’t the sun that made her face heat. “My choices honor Del’s memory.” She gripped the basket with both fists, raising it before her like a shield. “Do yours?”

“My choices, Kendra,” he grated between clenched teeth, “are made for the good of all. Including yourself, though you’re too stubborn to acknowledge it.” Despite the limp that was the legacy of an old war wound, he strode the remaining distance so briskly that she felt obliged to break into a trot.

Waldron yanked open the door, ushered her inside, and pulled it to with a timber-rattling thud. She tilted her head to meet his glare.

“The good of all, Father? What possible good is it to surrender me—and, by extension, Edgarburh lands—to this barbaric Norman?” When Waldron didn’t answer, she pressed on, “What good can come of forcing me to break my vows to Del?” After setting down the basket to fold her arms, she lowered her gaze to the floor rushes, lowering her voice to match. “If I had accepted Ulfric’s suit, this matter never would have come to pass.”

The irony forced a laugh from her lips. Ulfric, a relative of her mother, had petitioned for Kendra’s hand five summers after Edwina’s death. Fifteen years Kendra’s senior, he had given the then eighteen-year-old Kendra the impression that he possessed a dual nature. Nothing she could explain beyond vague suspicions, but Waldron had honored her decision to reject the suit.

She looked up, emboldened by the memory. “You promised me that I need never marry save for love. Have you forgotten in just three years?”

He dropped into the chair beside his worktable, propping his elbow on the dark, smoothly planed oak surface and bracing his forehead against his fist, his thatch of white hair falling over the scarred, gnarled fingers. Never could she recall him looking so old and weary. “I remember.” His care-lined face adopted a plaintive look. “And nothing would delight me more than to honor that promise. But this is a royal command you would have me break.”

“Made by the royal bastard—”

He glared at her. “Spare me your opinion of our new king. I cannot control your thoughts, but his lineage has no relevance to this or any other conversation you might have. In a thrice William will execute any Saxon lord he perceives as a threat, and treasonous speech is as valid an excuse as any other.” His eyebrows knotted into a thick white line. “And do not dare to presume these Normans will not understand you. Many of them know our tongue as well as we do. Do I make myself clear?”

She nodded, chastened, realizing there was no wisdom in inciting this Sir Robert to wrath by insulting his king—their king, she amended. “I understand, Father,” she whispered, gazing at the floor.

She felt his leathery fingers slip beneath her chin, and she lifted her head. “Be of good cheer. By all reports, Sir Robert is pious, courtly”—he winked—“and handsome.”

Shrugging free, she rolled her eyes. “By Norman reports, you mean. That hardly qualifies as an honest assessment.”

“So you would call King William a liar too?” Her father’s tone rumbled as ominously as a summer storm.

“Nay! I—I had presumed—” She clamped her mouth shut. After a few moments, she said, “Please forgive me, Father.”

Waldron nodded and crossed to the wall where the chests containing his clothing and other personal effects stood. The longest and newest chest—and one of the few secured with an iron lock, the key to which lay in Waldron’s possession alone—contained the shield of Del’s murderer. To her surprise, he stopped before the first in the line, bent over, and swiped its age-darkened, leather-hinged lid with his tunic sleeve to clear the dust. He pushed it open and started sorting through its contents. She shifted from foot to foot to peer inside the chest, to no avail.

He extracted a length of finely spun linen, gave it a gentle shake, and turned to hold it up before him. She gasped. It was a lady’s veil, edged in an elaborate pattern of silver thread and dyed a delicate shade of slate blue, the precise color of her eyes, and her mother’s.

Waldron’s smile was tinted with a mixture of affection, pride, and sadness. “Your dear mother made this and wore it the day we wed. I couldn’t bring myself to bury her in it. I had hoped—” He drew a swift breath and thrust the veil toward her. “I know you have been hard at work making your wedding garments, and I commend you for that. But it would please me if you would wear this veil to greet Sir Robert.”

Though she’d always known that her father loved her, never had he shown it so tenderly. She drew near to caress the fabric. It smelled faintly of must, but that could be remedied with fresh lavender and a good airing. The silver threads glittered in the candlelight. Waldron laid it across her outstretched palms. It weighed next to nothing, far lighter than her mourning veil, which at times felt as if it had slid off her head to bind her heart.

“Father…” A quiver threatened to block her throat, and she swallowed. “I will be honored.” Edwina’s veil clutched in one hand, she stood on tiptoe to throw her other arm about her father’s neck. Tears burned her cheeks. Waldron completed the embrace with fiercely protective strength.

She would never surrender the lock of Del’s hair she had taken such pains to preserve, but she had to admit it would feel good to shed her black veil for a while. And she would savor giving her would-be bridegroom a glimpse of what he would never possess.

Chapter 3

A
LAIN LAY ON his back beside the raucously snoring Ruaud, right hand beneath his head, staring at the ceiling’s dark oak timbers. The guide they’d hired in Sarum, a man named Ecgfrith, hadn’t returned from his evening’s entertainment—likely in a woman’s arms. Ecgfrith had recommended keeping to the Winchester road until it intersected the road to Ilchester in front of this decaying excuse for an inn.

He scratched absently at his chest. While he distrusted Ecgfrith’s furtive manner, the man’s advice had proven sound, for their choices had been limited to braving the creatures inhabiting this lumpy mattress or the ones creeping into their bedrolls atop some windswept hillock. As an unwelcome Norman traveling across unfamiliar English territory, he preferred the sensible solidity of walls any day.

Or night.

Hoofbeats thrummed outside. It seemed a strange hour for someone to be arriving unless it was a courier, but the irregular drumming sounded like several horses. Alain honed his senses but couldn’t discern anything else above the snores. He rose, padded to the shuttered window, and stooped to peer through a knothole.

Light from the half-moon illuminated the scene well enough to wrench a soft curse from his throat.

In the courtyard below, five men had dismounted and were throwing their reins over the rail. The horses’ bridles and harnesses had been wrapped with rags. The men eased out their swords, speaking in tones too low to catch. Outlaws, he guessed. A sixth man joined them from the inn. Though the gloom prevented him from being certain, the chill prickling his spine told him the sixth was Ecgfrith.

One by one, they crept inside.

Alain withdrew from the window. Reaching for his sword, he breathed a prayer of thanks that he’d remained in his squire’s garb of plain jerkin and trousers. Ruaud had scoffed at Alain’s caution. If they survived, he doubted that Ruaud would ever scoff again. He drew his sword and battled the shiver wrought by the
if
.

“To arms, Ruaud!” he rasped, giving his friend’s shoulder a shove.

Years of battle propelled Ruaud awake, and his brow furrowed. Finger to lips, Alain pointed with his sword toward the door, where footfalls shuffled in the corridor beyond. While Ruaud dressed, Alain scooped a shovelful of embers from the brazier, blew to redden them, and stationed himself near the door.

No match for the combined weight of a half dozen men, the door yielded with a crash. Alain launched his surprise, shovel included, catching some men in the face and others on the arms and hands. Howls of rage and pain split the night, followed by curses and stomps and the clatter of steel on steel as Alain drove the intruders back into the corridor.

Two men nursing burn wounds fled. As Alain fought with the apparent leader, he felt Ruaud pressing at his back, surging like a leashed hound scenting the quarry. Alain dodged aside, and Ruaud joined the fray, spouting a cheerful stream of French insults.

Alain found nothing entertaining about this fight. His adversary, though dressed in poorly tanned and patched leather such as an outlaw might wear and wielding his sword with both hands when one should have sufficed, landed his blows with the might and precision of one well trained in the military arts. Alain couldn’t see his face, but a memory nagged that he’d fought this man before. He squelched it, redoubling his efforts. His shoulder began aching, and he prayed the old wound wouldn’t betray him.

Saxon screams and thuds behind Alain told him Ruaud had finished the last of his attackers. Faced with two Norman swords, the man fighting Alain disengaged and ran off. No one else of the erstwhile band was in any shape to accompany him.

Of Ecgfrith there was no sign.

As Alain’s opponent fled down the corridor, his silhouette seemed to blur. Thinking it a trick of the quivering torchlight, Alain blinked but couldn’t shake the sensation. After a few moments, the sound of boots pounding timber ceased, replaced by a mad scrabbling, as if an animal had been loosed.

Puzzled, Alain took a step or two after his foe, but fatigue and the aching of his shoulder halted him.

Silence reigned save for ragged gasping as both knights struggled to regain their breath.

Ruaud clenched his sword, glaring. He didn’t appear to have suffered more than a few scratches, for which Alain was thankful. “Aren’t we going after the bastard?”

“To what end?” Massaging his shoulder, Alain didn’t bother to leach the disgust from his tone. “So he can lead us into another trap like Ecgfrith did?”

“Is that what you think happened?”

“Absolutely.”

“But why?”

Good question.

Most likely they’d fallen afoul of Sarum outlaws. If these attacks occurred with regularity, Alain wondered why Bishop Odo hadn’t acted to combat them. Even if all the other victims had been murdered, surely such reports would have reached the regent’s ears by now.

The men could be part of the Glastonbury band; a remote possibility, given the distances involved, but worth considering. Such a connection would imply that these outlaws were far better organized and informed—and dangerous—than Alain had presumed.