Surrender My Love (34 page)

“You there.” She was startled from her thoughts. “Who is that Celt standing with King Alfred?”

The tone was imperious. So was the man’s expression. He was one of the king’s party, with two others by his side, all three of them waiting for her to answer. And there were now so many people, horses, and baggage wains in front of her, she had to go up on tiptoe to see whom he referred to.

But she should have known by the description of “Celt.” “My husband, Selig the Blessed, and only half Celtic. His other half is pure Viking.”

“You are both
Danes
?”

Revulsion, as if the word were the foulest curse. Erika was too numb to care.

“He is Norwegian,” she said, pushing herself away from the wall. “I am the only Dane here.”

She returned their rudeness with her own, walking away from them, but they were immediately forgotten. She had to get away from this crowd to decide what she should do. But with Selig in the bailey and apt to notice her wherever she went…She pushed her way through the gate after all.

Lord Durwyn watched her leave with narrowed eyes. “I do not like this,” he said, turning to one of the men with him. “Find Ogden and tell him to follow her. He can take one other with him, but they are not to lose her. Tell him Aldwin will bring word if they need do more than that.”

The first man slipped away to locate the three others who had entered Wyndhurst with Durwyn. Aldwin, who remained with him, asked, “What is it you suspect, my lord?”

“You did not recognize that black-haired Viking with Alfred? You should have, since we left him for dead last month. Ogden wears his sword even now.”

“One of the king’s delegates?” Aldwin gasped. “Nay—a twin mayhap?”

“When Alfred cut short his business in the west to return here, and there stands a man with him who should be dead? I think not.”

“Then we must leave—”

“Do not be a fool. If I am to be accused, I must know it. If I am, then it will be that Viking who will do it. So do not associate yourself with me or come near unless I bid you, for it will be up to you to take the woman and use her against him, to get him to withdraw his accusations. You know where to hide her?”

“Certainly.”

Durwyn nodded. “I have a feeling we will know one way or the other as soon as I show myself, so stay near enough to hear what tran
spires. You can judge for yourself if the woman needs be taken. You can do so, I trust?”

“Aye.”

“Good. Then let us find out now.” Durwyn started to leave, but turned back to add one more thing, almost as if he had forgotten. “And, Aldwin, if I do not leave Wyndhurst by, say, late this afternoon, kill the wife.”

Durwyn made his way through the crowd then, not to approach the king, but to make himself visible. As he had guessed, both Alfred and the Viking moved toward him as soon as he was noticed by them. He was not worried, though. It would be his word against the other man’s, and the other man was a
Viking
. Who, after all, could trust the word of a Viking?

It went exactly as he had supposed it would, except that Lord Royce had to translate for the man, since he didn’t speak Saxon, and Durwyn didn’t bother to admit that he spoke Celtic. But this merely added to the confusion, and in his favor, so he was not displeased by it.

As Durwyn had expected, he was accused of the very crime he had committed. Of course he denied it. His feigned disbelief and then outrage were worthy of applause. And Alfred’s frown said clearly he didn’t know whom to believe. There was no proof, after all.

What he had
not
expected was for the hotheaded young man to backhand him, and before he could even get up from where the blow had landed him, he’d heard Royce explain, “You have called him a liar by your
very denials, Lord Durwyn. For that he challenges you.”

“This is an outrage! I cannot be expected to fight a damned heathen—”

“’Tis my brother-in-law you speak of, so be careful what you call him, or my challenge will follow his. And frankly, my lord, I am inclined to believe him, particularly since I know you had good reason to keep a Dane from wedding the girl your son should have wed. You were a fool not to bring your objections to Alfred.”

“And I would have if I had even known such was in the offing. But I was not aware of it, I tell you! I knew naught of it until I but recently joined the court.”

“So you say. His contention says differently. Yet are you challenged now, so it really no longer matters who is telling the truth, does it? So do you accept, or do you let him cut you down where you lie? And I assure you, he would not hesitate to do so.”

Durwyn got hastily to his feet and said shakily, “I accept—but I need time to recover from my travels first. I am no longer a young man.”

Royce heard the snorts clearly, two of them, and knew without looking that they came from Turgeis and Garrick, both older men than Durwyn, who was not yet twoscore years. Durwyn’s flush said he had also heard them. Yet was it Alfred who decided the matter.

“Three hours hence, my lords. Lord Durwyn may rest during that time, break his fast, sharpen his weapons. What he may not do
is depart Wyndhurst without my leave. And there will be no wergild accepted in lieu of this challenge. Unless I hear a confession in the interim, the challenge will go forward as issued and accepted.”

Chapter 44

“M
Y LADY, YOU
must come with me.”

Erika turned from tossing pebbles in the lake to see a short, dark-haired man-at-arms at the top of the bank. She didn’t recognize him, but then, Wyndhurst had so many soldiers, and she would know by sight only those she had traveled with from East Anglia.

“Who are you?”

“Ogden, my lady. Your husband has issued a challenge and would like to speak with you before he fights. He has men searching for you every—”

“
Who
is he fighting? That Lord Durwyn who masquerades as a thief?”

She was rushing up the embankment too quickly to note the man’s clenched jaw and baleful stare. “Aye, Lord Durwyn,” he answered tightly. “You will have to ride with me. We must make haste.”

Haste? Her heart was already racing. She would have run all the way back to Wyndhurst had it been necessary. And in fact, she did run past Ogden to the waiting horses. Another man stood with them. Still another was already rid
ing hell-bent back toward Wyndhurst, obviously to inform others that she had been found.

“Well, hurry!” she snapped at the two who had been left to escort her, trying to mount one of the animals without assistance.

She was boosted up to the saddle before she had managed it herself, and Ogden mounted behind her. They set out immediately, and at a gallop that matched her state of urgency. She was frantic with dread.
Why
would Selig want to speak to her before he fought? Did he think he might not survive? Did he have things to tell her that she had longed to hear, but would be hearing too late?

At the speed they were making, it took only a few minutes for Erika to realize that they weren’t riding toward Wyndhurst. “Where do they fight, if not at the manor?” she turned to ask Ogden.

“We are almost there,” was his only answer.

No sooner had he said it than she saw the camp in the distance. She didn’t bother to wonder why this place on the edge of a woods had been chosen for the challenge. She would find out in moments, and in fact, it was only another minute or so until they burst into the camp, retaining their speed until the last second.

Erika was practically thrown from the saddle, the horse had stopped so abruptly, and then she was tossed down, literally, and just barely caught by one of the men on the ground. When she regained her balance, she started to upbraid her escort, but didn’t get the chance, his orders issuing first.

“Bind her and put her in the pit. I trust you have had time to finish it?”

“’Tis almost done,” replied the man who had caught Erika and was still holding her arms.

“Then that is done enough,” Ogden said. “She is a woman, so it does not have to be as deep as the others, and we cannot take the chance of someone coming by and finding her. See to it immediately.”

Erika tried to jerk loose of the man at her back, but he was a stocky fellow and too strong. His hold only tightened to a painful grip.

“What means this?” she demanded, glaring up at Ogden. “You lied?”

“Only about who sent me to find you. My Lord Durwyn
was
challenged, and if your husband cannot be made to retract it for your sake, you die.”

“Is your lord such a coward, then, that he fears to fight in single combat?”

“You jest, lady. I was told your husband is nigh a giant, and a Viking berserker besides. Any man would be a fool to face him in battle.”

It was amazing that she could feel pride in those words even as impotent rage rushed through her. Her being here was
her
fault, for going down to the hall this morning without stopping by Turgeis’s room to tell him, for leaving Wyndhurst alone, for being so gullible that she had come right along with her kidnappers, had even urged them to hurry—so she could be thrown into a pit. A pit! Odin
help her, she was afraid theirs would have no resemblance to the one at Gronwood, but would be an actual hole in the ground.

Having said all he intended to, Ogden rode off, back to Wyndhurst, she assumed, to tell his cowardly lord that she had been captured as ordered. And Erika was dragged over to the start of the tree line, where, a few feet beyond, two men were pouring dirt into a crate that another man waited to carry off into the woods to dispose of, thereby leaving no evidence that a hole had been dug.

The pit was there, three feet long by two feet wide. Near it was a plank of wood the same size, and on top of that, the grass that had been carefully cut away from the top of the hole, so that when it was replaced, there would be little or no evidence that a hole was beneath it—or anyone inside it.

“You heard?”

“Aye,” one of the diggers replied, the one standing hip-deep in the hole in the ground.

“Then get out of there,” the man holding Erika said, then called loudly over his shoulder, “I need some rope over here and some thing for a gag.”

Erika fought to keep from trembling. They were going to put her in that pit. There were at least twenty men in that camp. She wasn’t going to get away. And she could conceivably die in that hole if she was never let out.

“You dig pits everywhere you make camp?”

She said it to be sarcastic, to take her mind off her mounting fear, but the one holding her
took her question seriously. “Always. We have found them most useful, and they are never discovered.”

“But how can you dig it so quickly? Your lord just came this morn.”

“’Twas started last week when we stopped here briefly while Lord Durwyn sought the king at yon manor. There was no time to finish it then.”

“So you have finished it now. Then you must kidnap people everywhere you go?”

He shook his head. “It is sometimes necessary to hide one or more of us. With these pits, a man can completely disappear from sight, in the middle of the day, with no trace or clue left for his pursuers.”

“Ah, so you
have
become thieves as well as murderers under your brave lord’s guidance,” she sneered. “Now do I see the necessity for these pits.”

Her scathing contempt infuriated the man, so that he shouted at whoever had come up behind them with the requested items. “Gag her!”

It was done with swift efficiency, her binding. She managed half a scream before cloth was stuffed in her mouth and tied off. She was then pushed to the ground, her knees bent to her chest, a rope wound tight around her to keep her in that scrunched-up position. It was not even necessary to bind her hands separately, the rope looping around her so many times keeping her arms tight at her sides, yet still her wrists had been tied at her back, merely
to add to her discomfort, no doubt. And they had tried to deny doing this before with other victims? Craven churls, the lot of them.

But the moment she was dropped into the pit and the cover was pushed into place, sealing out every trace of daylight, she no longer thought of Durwyn’s men. Pitch blackness. The air was so thick with the scent of newly cut earth that she could barely breathe. And it was cold. Who would have thought a tightly enclosed space could be so cold? Or was it her own blood, freezing with fear?

How long? Surely if a challenge was issued, it would be seen to right away. But they wanted Selig to cry off. She was being used to that end, but at what success? His compliance was certainly not guaranteed. The revenge he had been unable to extract from her he wanted out of Lord Durwyn, and he wanted it badly. She had realized that when he told her about Durwyn. So what would a man do who didn’t love his wife? See to his honor first, then merely hope he could find the wife before she was murdered?

She was so afraid that Selig would do just that, she already counted herself dead. And not another thing needed to be done to have Durwyn’s threat carried out. Why bother to drag her out of the pit just to cut her throat? Leaving her there with no escape and no hope of ever being found was just as effective and much crueler. This pit would be her grave and she would die knowing it.

Chapter 45

“W
HAT DO YOU
mean, you cannot find her?” Selig asked, sitting up from his slouch against the wall, where he had been staring at Durwyn on the far side of the hall, savoring his anticipation of the coming fight. The man had only one hour left to live. “Where have you looked?”

“Everywhere,” Turgeis replied.

It was the look of worry that was revealed, just briefly, in Turgeis’s expression that was responsible for the panic that burst on Selig without warning. “Where in Loki’s realm were you?” he demanded. “You are her shadow! I trust you to always know where she is when I do not!”

“She did not let me know she was leaving her room. I have not seen her at all this morn.”

Selig’s raised voice drew Royce and Kristen. Kristen asked her brother, “Have you seen her since you came down?” When Selig shook his head, she added, “I did, briefly. She was on her way out to the bailey.” Then she asked Turgeis, “Did you check Selig’s hall? She could have gone there.”