“Fools!” she hissed and shoved the end of her torch in soft earth, stepped forward, and kicked one man then the other.
The former slid to the side, and as he gave a yelp of surprise, the latter sprang upright and came around with a drawn fist.
Though she jumped back, she would have suffered a blow had not torchlight identified her to the commoner transformed into a defender of England.
“Lady!” He dropped his arm. “That is not the way to bring a fighting man up out of sleep.”
Though she longed to denounce his claim to being a warrior, she reminded herself it was hard to go from living a relatively gentle life to a violent one—in his case, fighting battles not against hunger when crops yielded too little but against Normans who took those crops and all else to which they could lay hands.
Looking to the other man who had also arisen, she said, “I am sorry for that indignity, but methinks you will agree better a kick than a Norman’s blade.”
“Aye, Lady,” they said.
She snatched up the torch and hastened toward the next fortification.
“You will not tell our commander, will you, Lady?” one called.
As she reported only repeat offenders, she turned and said, “Providing you do not fail your fellow defenders a second time, I will say naught—and if you cease naming me a lady.” She did not know how many times she had reminded him and others not to speak a title that chafed for how mocking it sounded under these circumstances. “Until England is ours again, that I will not be.”
“Apologies,” he said, then added, “Alvilda.”
Resuming the duty she had assigned herself months past when warming weather made it easier for Normans to seek a way onto the isle, she traversed the shore. Keeping to the firmest footing where grass and reeds rooted, often she glanced at the distant boats bobbing on still water when one of their occupants moved greatly.
The blockade sought to isolate this interior isle from the rest of the Fens, denying the resistance supplies and reinforcements. With regard to supplies, it was effective only insomuch as it prevented rebels from coming and going in great numbers. Still they continued to break through the lines, and most disastrously for the enemy when the aim was to relieve Normans of lives and weapons. Of course, sometimes that disaster turned on the resistance as done the night she accompanied her cousin across the river.
Seeking to cast out memories of the five slain left behind and the one dead who returned to Ely in the bottom of the boat, Vilda moved her thoughts to the matter of reinforcements that, before the blockade, steadily delivered fighting men to the isle. Now they trickled in, most who sought to join the resistance unable to get past the Normans unless Hereward personally led them over. In this the enemy succeeded though, God willing, not to the extent they would take the isle. For that, Vilda was here. She could never come close to counting herself God’s right hand, but if she could serve as a portion of a knuckle on His smallest finger, it would be worth whatever she must sacrifice.
A quarter hour later, discovering no others sleeping at their posts, once more she shoved the torch into soil, then continued past the last fortification of this stretch of western shoreline. Once she was distant from men watching the waterway and shore opposite, she abandoned the quick of her stride. Since twice more before dawn she would do what already was done thrice, she would rest a short while.
Unconcerned the second of only two gowns she possessed would be dampened and dirtied by silt and grass, she lowered to sitting, gathered her knees to her chest, and dropped back her head.
It was a beautiful sky, the black made deepest blue by a half moon, the stars near that great light winking shyly, stars farther out staring boldly without blink.
Was God staring as well, no blink about him no matter how great His Saxons suffered?
“How much longer?” she whispered. “What do You require to make it end? Could this not be just a terrible dream—a portent of things to come do we not turn opposite the way we go? Will You not open our eyes upon the year 1066, allowing us to do different whatever offended?”
She lowered her lids. “Aye, 1066. Away from here, back to Lincolnshire ere my grandsire was slain…ere my husband was slain…ere my wedding…ere the Normans came…ere the Norwegians came…” She drew a tremulous breath. “…ere that star dragged its long, forked tail across the dark.”
Recalling what had been said of the persistent smear of light that appeared every cloudless night for weeks, some believing it a sign of good, others a sign of bad, Vilda eased onto her back as done many nights to marvel over the star long gone.
“Back to Lincolnshire, before that light came and went,” she murmured.
For a long time, she remained in the dark behind her lids and imagined arising from this dream as if pushing off the bottom of the river and gliding toward the surface. But when she opened her eyes, still she was on Ely, far to the right the torch left behind and beyond it dimly lit fortifications.
She blinked away tears. “Mayhap You will be more accommodating on the morrow, Lord.”
Breathing in air that tasted of summer near the side of autumn, she reflected on the harvest ahead that would supply Ely’s inhabitants throughout the winter, though likely there would be some scarcity due to how greatly refugees and those of the resistance inflated the isle’s population. But no matter how many times Hereward and his men had to defy the blockade, he would provide.
It was good
