“I thank you for breaking your word,” he said gruffly, “but never again disobey me.”
“I will try not to.”
“V!”
She snapped up her chin. “I can only try. Until the moment is upon us that is not as certain nor safe as the moment in which we agree to do one thing and not another, that is all we can do—try.”
Unlike the eyes of Sir Guy, she could see enough of Hereward’s to be certain he glared, but then he sighed. “We must get past the blockade, which will not be easy with those on the nearest boats aware ill has befallen fellow Normans. Once we are safely through, we shall put this night behind us.”
“Aye, ’tis done,” she said and hoped it was so.
But the night’s ordeal was not done. Though they made it through the blockade, more ill befell them before reaching Ely, and now it came from the enemy this side rather than the other—several weary, desperate survivors who had lost six of their friends proclaiming their cause hopeless and predicting soon Le Bâtard would sweep the rest of them off the playing board made of England.
Hereward was not of a mood.
Chapter One
The Fenlands
Mid-Summer, 1071
Elan. Elan Pendery. Now Elan Harwolfson. Another man’s wife, mother of another man’s child, perhaps even children now.
Why did she persist in visiting him when the dark without darkened that within, making his heart feel hollow? It was two years. Two long, bloody years that, if they felt a dozen to him, surely felt scores to Saxons who continued to struggle beneath Norman oppression.
“Two years,” Guy breathed out as he stared across moonlit waters at the Isle of Ely whose torchlit shores allowed glimpses of patrols who rebuffed every attempt to wrest from Hereward that kingdom unto itself.
Memory returning Guy to a riverbank north of here where months past he had come face to face with the man outlawed by his own people while old King Edward yet ruled, he ground his teeth. He had saved his squire who tried to be a warrior in full before his time. For that, the opportunity was lost to end the rebellion in the Fenlands and gain great reward for delivering the last eminent resistance leader to King William.
God willing, the last, he silently conceded.
Two years ago, it was believed Edwin Harwolfson was the last of note, and when finally he yielded to William, gaining Lady Elan, their misbegotten son, and Blackspur Castle, peace would come to England. But as there were others before Edwin, there were others since, and might be more after Hereward was brought to heel the same as Vitalis of the Rebels of the Pale who accepted Norman rule a year past.
What Guy had lost in no way compared to the losses of the English whom he had aided in subjugating as commanded by the Duke of Normandy who was now England’s king. And even less that comparison since Guy’s greatest loss was a woman he could not have loved as well as believed. Indeed, he should not have loved her at all, though he had wanted her as much as she seemed to want him.
Elan had been spoiled, demanding, temperamental, guileful, and—Lord help him!—beautiful. And more beautiful when her tears were genuine as when first they met and it was revealed she carried Harwolfson’s child. Months later, stars swam in her eyes again as she cradled the son whose well-being she unexpectedly placed ahead of her own and broke her betrothal to Guy to wed Harwolfson after he bent the knee to William.
In one way, Guy had been glad she turned from him—that it proved she was not as self-centered as feared. But vying with relief was greater sorrow he would not better know that side of Elan that evidenced she could have loved the children made with Guy as well—if not more than—the one made with that rebel.
Though the pain in his heart no longer felt a lance gone through one side to the other, its point remained sharp, its reach long. “Leave me be, Elan,” he rasped.
“Be of good care, Chevalier,” drawled the knave who believed himself Guy’s superior.
He was, though only because he was more favored by their liege who valued men lacking conscience over those who sought to remain true to their faith. At this time in William’s reign, he who was desperate to keep hold of his kingdom believed he was better served by grasping men, but eventually he would reap the treachery whose seed he allowed to be strewn far and wide.
Guy shifted shoulders weighted by chain mail, glanced left and right at where the men he had stationed along this stretch of shore were cloaked in shadows, then looked behind.
The Sheriff of Lincolnshire, who was the first sent to the Fenlands to quell the uprising, had appeared a half hour past. All stagger and slur, Ivo Taillebois had shouted curses across the water, belched, slumped down the trunk of an ash tree, and begun to snore.
Doubtless, he was well-sated by drink and possibly the carnal, a sennight having passed since last he reported what was learned from his spy—his favorite for what he boasted he also got from her besides information that occasionally provided the Normans time to defend or move camp before an assault.
Though her reports would be more valuable if they provided a way for William’s forces to take Ely, they saved lives this side of the river, in their absence many the isolated groups of Normans caught unawares and slain. The rebels who dared venture here were not without their own
