She moaned as Guy swung her up into his arms to ensure her legs cleared the side. When her head rolled against his chest and she began coughing, he lowered to a bench and swept up the blanket given him. As he drew it over her, he saw blood seep from beneath her hair and across her cheek, likely a result of the oar that struck her.
“Sir Guy?” the captain said.
He knew what was asked of him. “As more easily she can be tended in the camp, continue past the blockade to the dock.” What Guy did not say was that it would better prepare her for the wrathful king when he learned that for all the warriors lost, he had gained only a single rebel to wield against Hereward.
Though William would relish the unexpected, if the resistance leader remained true to his mission, Alvilda would be only a nibble of vengeance. The conqueror would have to gain the isle another way, and this quaking woman whose capture could not be hidden…
As the boat resumed its course and moonlight shifted across her face, Guy found her eyes upon him and wished that just as he had done all he could to ensure the English princess who was now Queen of Scotland did not fall into his liege’s hands, he had been able to do the same for this woman.
Her brow furrowed, then her eyes widened. “Oh, my my me,” she rasped, “’tis the Norman pig.”
Which he had thought she would never again name him. “Rest, Alvilda. This shall be a long night.”
Her lids fluttered and lowered. “I am aware,” she whispered. “If only I had not lost my way.” Then something thumped against one of Guy’s boots and slid to the planks.
Leaning to the side, blindly he reached and, fortunately, gripped the handle rather than the blade of what proved a dagger with which she could have stuck him had she wished to—rather, been able. He straightened, considered the wicked blade, then slid it beneath his belt. Now he had two daggers from her, and neither had drawn blood. Yet.
With each pull and push of the oars, Hereward’s cousin relaxed against his chest, and when the boat docked with a thump, she burrowed deeper and whispered what sounded, “I would die first.”
Chapter Eight
The Fenlands
The water was murkiest here, the black of it warm rather than cold. Discovering she could breathe through it, she determined to stay under until her muddled thoughts and memories came right—or longer for how much it soothed now the sounds torn from desperate men were so muffled she could no longer discern their terror.
Though that terror heralded the suffering of the enemy rather than her countrymen, she was not so cold as to delight in Normans being given their due. Despite wanting to hate all those from across the sea as she had after speaking vows with—
Vilda whimpered. For a long time after that she hated them all, but in the years since, a good number had proven they were not evil when they gave aid to the subjugated or protested the injustice. Some had even departed England to avoid further witnessing the barbaric acts of their own people.
Few were personally known to her, and only one in good measure—Nicola of the family D’Argent whom Vilda was quick to scorn when the Danes brought that lady to Ely. She had been far from evil, warning the Danes were not Hereward’s allies and association with them would harm the resistance whom Nicola should have wished devastated.
Then there was Sir Guy, a Norman Vilda hardly knew beyond two—now three—brief encounters. Though details of that last swirled in this muddy water, there had seemed safety in the arms that pulled her onto the boat moments after she accepted the marsh would be her grave. And he had not been harsh when once more she named him a swine.
More fully recalling having spoken those words, the fish she had become caught her breath. Oh, my my me, she had prefaced the insult with a playful expression of derision that had not passed her lips these five years. Until this eve. Were it still this eve…
Curiosity bidding her rise above the waters, fear encouraging her to remain oblivious, when she began yielding to the former, she shook her head and rasped, “Stay here.”
Something brushed her sore shoulder, and she startled when warm breath swept her neck. “Lady, methinks you can hear me. It is Sir Guy who pulled you from the water,” he said in her language and with better facility and accent than she possessed with Norman-French. “A reckoning comes, but better ’tis received in daylight than the dark of night while anger boils over as it shall for many hours. Pray, do as I bid—stay behind your lids and breathe as of one yet lost to the world.”
Disobeying him as she had her cousin who, hopefully, had made it to the shore as she had not when she became disoriented from the ache in her head, she cracked open her eyes. Struggling to focus on the lightly bearded face near hers, she caught her breath when the blur sharpened and a shift of eyes set hers upon ones that looked to be brown.
Displeasure there, and she did not care if it was for her role in the deaths of fellow Normans or disregarding his warning. She needed an answer. “Hereward? Is he—?”
“He and the others made it ashore. Now do as told.”
No sooner said than from beyond this place a man bellowed in Norman-French, “Where is she?”
“Play dead,” the chevalier rasped, and when he drew back she saw his imposing, disheveled figure against the interior of a tent.
“Where is that lawless Saxon whore?” the voice came again.
Doubtless, it belonged to the one who stole England’s crown. Though she longed to rage and set him aright about the
