Thus, assuring herself there would be time aplenty to regret what she did, at last she had yielded to what she ought not. Rather than the chevalier holding to her, she had turned into him and, wrapping her arms around him, tried to sleep away dread alongside weariness. It was mostly futile, but there was comfort in the beat of his heart and that he neither discouraged her nor reacted in any way to indicate he found close contact distasteful.
Now, feeling the draw of his breath, she was not surprised when he spent this one on words. “We have arrived, Lady.”
“I know it,” she said and removed hands placed atop each other on his back, sat up, and turned forward.
Beneath a dimming sky, the gate in a massive timber wall enclosing a broad hillock was being swung wide while torches around a walkway were lit in advance of the night.
Since they were ascending from lower ground, the roof of the manor was barely visible above the wall, but that glimpse made her shudder. Soon she would see the building in its entirety, then what was inside—rather, who.
Though their pace was easy enough she no longer needed Sir Guy to stabilize her, once more his arm slid around her waist, and she hoped it was habit rather than in response to the quake she did not wish him to feel.
Then his face was alongside hers. “Calm your breath, Lady, else such rapid draws could find you at the feet of my king where I am certain you do not care to be.”
Though aware she quaked, she had not realized she panted.
Oh, Vilda! she silently berated. If you cannot hide your fear, be not the hare put to flight who seeks only its hole. Be the boar who turns and guts as many as possible ere being skewered.
She turned her face toward his and was grateful he drew back when she realized how near their mouths would have been. But that did not stop her from being the boar. “Sir Guy, as you are about to give me into the hands of my greatest enemy, do not advise me as if you are my savior.”
He tensed, and she told herself it was good she offended, but her words did not rouse an angry retort. “I think this the time,” he said.
She leaned away to more easily view him across her shoulder. “What time is that?”
Further he slowed his mount, causing his men to fall back to form columns two abreast to enter the gateway though they must wish to spur the remaining distance to sooner end the journey for which none had been prepared. “You asked how I am so well versed in your language.”
So she had, and though he had indicated he would answer at some future time, she had expected either he would deign not to enlighten her or her loss of a future would preclude an explanation.
Glancing at the walls rising before them and the gateway through which could be seen a portion of the manor beyond the outbuildings, she said, “As we are nearly there, it must needs be a short tale.”
“It is, and shorter yet do you know the name The Bloodlust Warrior of Hastings.” Her catch of breath confirming it ahead of words, she said, “I know it, just as I am aware he was given command of one of the largest Norman forces in the Fens.”
He inclined his head. “Better he is known to me as Maxen Pendery, and he has been my good friend for nearly as many years as I have lived.”
Here the answer to his ease with her language. Like Pendery, he had been raised in England, possibly born here. And therein the greater tragedy that both had wielded arms against people surely better known to them than those of their native Normandy. Too, how could this man of greater honor than most Normans be a friend to such a fiend?
“Aye, your language is nearly as much mine as Norman-French,” he said. “Aye, my family’s oath of fealty to the Duke of Normandy stands me William’s side rather than yours. But also true as your cousin must accept is that once my liege sank his teeth into this country by slaying King Harold and the majority of England’s fighting men, there was little chance of prying open his jaws. And none now, I believe.”
Vilda raised her chin. “Then you excuse your crimes against people who were your friends and neighbors by telling yourself that as soon as those who continue to resist cease resisting all will come right? That your people and mine shall heal the great rift and live in harmony? You forget that just as Normans are not saints, neither are Saxons whose struggles are tenfold what they were before the conquering now the rewards for their labors have been lost to thieves?”
Though she knew they passed through the gateway, she continued, “’Tis not harmony that sprouts from that but resentment at the least, vengeance at the worst. Even if all Saxons are yoked by Normans, our oppressors will not walk easy in the day nor sleep well at night knowing the moment they let down their guard is the moment the oppressed back out of their yokes and fit them upon the enemy.”
When she paused to fill her lungs, he said, “Your breath yet comes fast, Lady, but as it has more substance than before, methinks it less to your detriment.”
She blinked at the realization that though she was more roused than he must have expected, for such he had
