‘We’ll curve through the next valley and re-join the road later. Is that better?’
She heard the words, but could hardly take in their meaning, her whole attention fixed on the track ahead. Now she was there she couldn’t drag herself away
. Ghostly figures filled her imagination...the past replaying itself in the present. Where had her father fallen? She sought for the place, her gaze settling at last on a large lichen-covered boulder. There, next to that rock, was where she’d found him—too late to help, too late to do anything but grieve.
‘Lady Cille?’ Svend moved across her line of vision. ‘Come away.’
Without waiting for assent he took hold of her bridle, steering her aside as she wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve. She hadn’t even known that she was crying; the tears had seeped out of their own volition.
At last her heartbeat returned to normal and she looked around again. They’d re-joined the road at the end of the valley and were riding up into the hills, avoiding the quicker route through the marshes to the south. She understood the Normans’ reluctance to enter the low swamplands. It was too easy to get lost amongst the tall reed-beds or mired down in a muddy quagmire. Not to mention that the men of the marshes were known to be a law unto themselves, and the swamps provided the perfect setting for an ambush. Only the most inexperienced or reckless of leaders would enter such terrain lightly, and she had the strong feeling that her captor was neither.
She glanced towards him apprehensively, expecting questions, but he stayed silent, face averted as if to give her privacy.
‘You must wonder why...’
He made a dismissive gesture. ‘You don’t need to explain.’
‘No, but...’
She faltered. But what...? But she wanted to tell someone? She’d stayed strong for so long—for her people, for Cille—that she thought the words might burst out of her. No, she didn’t just want to tell someone, she had to—even a Norman. Her grief was so deep it seemed to drown out every other emotion, even hatred.
She took a deep breath. ‘My father died there.’
‘Ah...’ He was silent for a moment, as if letting her words sink in. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘He was stabbed in a skirmish with Norman soldiers last winter.’
A muscle jumped in his jaw. ‘What happened?’
‘He thought he was defending his land, but he was a farmer, not a fighter. He wouldn’t yield, so a Norman soldier killed him. It might have been you.’
‘It wasn’t.’
His tone was sharp and she felt a momentary twinge of guilt. She shouldn’t have said that—not when he was being sympathetic.
‘How many soldiers?’ He sounded angry now.
She bit her lip, wondering how much she could tell him without giving away her real identity. Cille hadn’t arrived in Etton until almost a month after their father’s death, but surely there was no way he could know that.
‘There were four of them.’
‘Renegades, then, not a garrison. Were they wearing a crest?’
‘None that I know of. Why?’
‘If there were a way to identify them it might still be possible to bring them to justice.’
‘The Earl would side with Saxons over Norman soldiers?’
‘No. But there are other means.’
She glanced at him in surprise. He looked implacable now, every inch the warrior, fierce and forbidding, as if he might truly avenge her father. She felt a flicker of hope, quickly suppressed. Words were easy, but why would a Norman knight care about one murdered Thane? Yet something in his face told her he meant it.
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why would you avenge him?’
He looked at her askance. ‘Because a man shouldn’t be slain for protecting his land or his people.’
She lowered her gaze, swallowing against the lump in her throat. That pit in her stomach had opened up again, cold and empty like a wintry chasm.