“Where is the dagger that gutted my man?” he demanded, continuing his search down her hips and thighs.
She did not answer, but need not, his left hand encountering the ridge of a strap at her calf. Raising that side of her skirt, he removed the dagger.
Vilda’s bones feeling more liquid for the brush of his fingers across her flesh, she had to lock her knees to remain upright as Guy straightened with proof that had she not killed one of his own, she had severely injured him. As revealed by his deception in reaching to her as if to offer comfort, then his rough search, she had trespassed too far for him to continue championing her.
It hurt, and yet it was for the best since otherwise he could thoroughly compromise his standing with Le Bâtard.
Remaining so near she felt the brush of his body at her back, he bent his head, causing breath to sweep her neck and turn about her ear. “You should have left Ely,” he said for her alone. “God help you for deceiving me.”
She shuddered, not from fear of what sounded a threat but the restraint required not to turn into him and hold tight. Even if only for one moment, she longed to believe he was where she belonged.
“Listen to me, Vilda. You must—”
“Sir Guy!” shouted someone near the chapel’s entrance.
They were not alone. Of course they were not. However, that acknowledgement made her reconsider Guy’s behavior. Rightfully, he was angry, but perhaps he exaggerated for the benefit of those who saw her only as the enemy, especially Taillebois who had been—and perhaps remained—Theta’s lover.
Guy gripped her arm. As he turned her to face the one striding down the nave’s center, sidelong she saw him slide her dagger beneath his belt—and to her left, the warrior she had struck down rise to sitting with a hand to his head and mouth a grimace of pain.
“You break faith, Taillebois,” Guy called.
The man snorted. “You have the murderess in hand, and as she is alone, no longer must I heed one who has not earned the right to tell me which way to turn.”
Murderess. The word resounded through Vilda. Were it true she was that, it was unlikely he referred to those who had fallen beneath the flight of her arrows and stones. That had been battle. Those who slew during such confrontations were said to have killed, both sides accepting the inevitability of death as other than unlawful and premeditated. Unlike murder…
Hence, Taillebois referred to the one whose blood she wore, meaning he was dead.
“Lord, forgive me,” she breathed and again locked her knees though she knew Guy would support her if she crumpled.
“Be silent,” he repeated and called a name she did not know, then came the tread of one earlier heard in the passage.
A glance confirming it was a Norman who had eschewed his weighted step to steal upon her, Vilda whispered, “I am tired.”
“Quiet,” Guy growled.
Only when she looked up did she realize they moved toward the nave, her feet having obeyed him without consulting her mind.
“I did not mean to kill him, Guy. I only—”
The tightening of his hand silenced her, providing more evidence of anger. He did not wish to suffer her excuses, and it was wrong to ask it of one who surely felt responsible for the death of his fellow Norman for making it possible for her to wield that dagger.
Whatever came after they left the chapel, she could not recall. She knew only she did not suffer the humiliation of being caught up in arms that did not wish to hold her and carried to whatever place she found herself some time later.
A monk’s cell, she guessed from its humble size and austere furnishings—a pallet stuffed with straw, a stool, and a basin for the body’s unmentionable needs.
Had Guy said anything to her before parting? she wondered as she turned onto her side to consider the door with a grate at a height that allowed one to peer inside by opening a hinged cover. All she could remember of him being here was his back in retreat and Ivo Taillebois in the doorway.
“Matters not,” she whispered and shifted her thoughts to Le Bâtard’s judgment—death for death. When the accusation of murder was leveled, she would offer no explanation, only admitting to putting the dagger in Sir Guy’s man. She feared the punishment to come, but hopefully the matter would be resolved immediately so she not suffer long.
I am done here, she assured herself of what ought not be a lie. Truly, I am. Even if denied heaven, this place I leave behind has become its own abyss.
Her next thought nearly expelled bitter laughter. Might the Lord feel the same—wanting to be done here? If so, why was He not? Why persist with so much evil in the world and growing even before the conquest? Why not draw all to a close now, rather than later?
She knew what her grandsire’s priest would say—that as God would have none denied the chance of genuine repentance, allowing them to reach the place Jesus prepared for believers, the greater the trials, the greater the opportunities for those not yet in His will to seek, choose, and follow Him.
“This I know,” she whispered, “but even if not by my own will, by another’s I am done here. That I accept, just as I must accept Guy is not lost to me for having never been found.”
Memory of him reaching to her outside the vestry arising behind her eyes, she shook her head, but when the scattered pieces reassembled, she yielded to them.
In his eyes she had seen what she hoped was not anger though she knew it must be. In the space between them, she had sensed strain to keep that
