Once astride and with her fellow captives moving toward their mounts, she looked to Guy and raised her eyebrows.
He inclined his head and glimpsed hurt before she averted her face, doubtless believing this was as far as he would keep the word given her. But soon she would understand he had not come merely to see her away. And some time between this day and the next, they would speak for the last time.
Was Hereward out there? She hoped not—that he was as far from here and Ely as he could get.
“But you are not,” Vilda whispered. “You are enraged as you have cause to be, determined as ever you have been. If you are not near me, you are near him, plotting to take back what he took from you. Do not. Though God has not answered prayers in accord with our will, they are not without answer. These answers. Pray, do not, Hereward.”
A moment later, she heard the footsteps of one who had kept watch from a distance.
She sighed. She had hoped that in being quick to relieve herself and reappear, she would be left alone providing she stayed in sight. Dreading her return to the cramped tent where she had taken her evening meal so she not suffer sight nor sound of Theta—more, of Guy who had not drawn near all day—tighter she gripped the lapels of her mantle and said across her shoulder, “I am counting stars. Pray, just a few minutes more so I may know their number.”
“An impossible feat, Vilda.”
The autumn night was cool, but it was less responsible for chill bumps rippling across her skin than he who she had accepted would not come to her.
Pressing her feet more firmly to the ground to keep them pointed forward, she said, “Just as I believe Normans are not without number, though I have heard that bemoaned, neither do I believe it of stars.”
He halted alongside her, though not so close she could savor his warmth.
This is enough, she told herself. He is here. As she knew from talk among the warriors during the ride and breaks to water the horses, when they cleared the last of the Fens on the morrow and Taillebois turned east, Guy and his friend would continue south.
Though tempted to ask him to finish what he had left unsaid on the night past as to what she should do with a love he had named honest, especially if his answer also saw done what he had left undone, she knew she would only hurt more. And so silence in which she strained to feel the heat of his body crossing the space between them.
“How many have you thus far?” he asked.
She turned her head and peered into his moonlit face. “How many?”
“Stars. What number have you reached?”
A small laugh escaped. “Very few. You are right, too many occupy that canopy. Even could I remain here with you a hundred days—nay, a thousand—still I would be counting. And for what?”
She did not expect an answer, but there was one in his lowering eyes. “Do not, Guy.” When his gaze swept back to hers, she said, “I must stop loving you. Do you do what I want far more than you, it will make the morrow more difficult.”
Seeing his nostrils flare, she returned her regard to the heavens. “You surprise in coming here. Having expected you sooner, this eve I accepted our farewell would be a distant one.”
“That would hardly be keeping my word since rightfully you believed my intent was not merely us looking upon each other. Had there been an opportunity to seek you sooner, I would have. However, not only are you Taillebois’ charge, but just as it was the duty of Baron Pendery and his men of the vanguard to forge a safe passage, it was the responsibility of me and mine to keep watch over our backs.”
“Hereward.”
“Aye, no sight of any of the resistance, not even by advancing and trailing scouts, but one must believe we are watched. To think otherwise, especially of desperately vengeful men, could mean slaughter.”
“Desperate,” she breathed. “Ely was the end of our bid to take back our country, was it not?” A dramatized eulogy, she named it as soon as spoken, knowing many would say Hereward’s stand was but the rebellion’s death throes.
“The end came well before the siege,” he said, “but there should be no doubt of it now.”
Following the invisible lines of a constellation from one star to another, she said softly, “As few of us could see ahead to that end, we clung to the possibility of ousting our oppressors. In the absence of God making His voice known directly or through a prophet in whom we could believe, we were guided by the roll of the past, the present, and certainty our next attempt or the one after would land high since earlier attempts landed so low. Had we known…” She shrugged. “Perhaps it would be different as your king wishes me to believe and all the suffering and lives lost after Hastings would not have been—that there would be a better peace than this one forced on us.”
“Perhaps, but have no doubt that had the English invaded Normandy, neither would Duke William and his people have accepted a yoke. No matter how ill-fated their resistance, they would have proven themselves kindred with Hereward.”
When Vilda slid her gaze to him, he continued, “Faced with aggressors, a warrior cannot do nothing, the duty to protect what belongs to him and his followers having been woven into his being even before a wooden sword was placed in the hand of a boy required to become a man capable of wielding iron. As far as possible, he must defend what he is given to defend. And as you say, few can see ahead to the
