The Redeeming (21 page)

He stared at the psalter, the delivery of which he should have expected. How long did she intend to hold on to it—more specifically, what it secreted? Was the missive so dear she would risk its discovery by keeping it near?

“What welcome, husband?”

It was a good, albeit difficult, question, for the last time he had crossed words with her he had warned her not to include him in her plans to start anew until after her menses. Until that event, he could hardly act the husband returning home to his wife, no matter how often he recalled the sweetness of her lips.

He stepped around her and considered the garments and accessories strewn across the bed. There lay the hooded mantle she had worn to the chapel at Wulfen, also the gown of dark-blue cloth. “You are pleased to have your belongings?”

“I am.”

He looked across his shoulder. “You know your brother’s men also delivered your palfrey?”

Her eyes brightened. “I did not.”

“It has been stabled.”

She clasped her hands at her waist. “I thank you.”

Christian wearied of their stilted exchange, though he knew he had turned their talk this direction by ignoring her question.

“’Twill be good to ride again,” she surprised him. “Mayhap…” She shrugged. “…you could take me around the barony.”

Feeling the grit and grime of two days in the saddle upon the grounds of his demesne, he said, “Abel told you our search for the brigands yielded naught?”

“He did.”

“Then you know Sir Robert is still out there.”

She inclined her head. “With your father.”

Providing Aldous yet lived. “Though you are just the temptation to bring them out of hiding, I will not offer you up as bait, Gaenor. Hence, until they are—” He frowned, then glowered. “How know you my father is with Robert?”

She blinked. “Garr told me ere he left for Stern.”

Christian turned his hands into fists. “It was not his place to do so.”

She put her head to the side. “’Twas your place, but do you recall, when I asked after your father, you denied me.”

He had told her he would discuss Aldous at a time of his own choosing. And he had intended to, but after what had happened between them in this chamber, then the sighting of the brigands that he had been grateful for beyond the possibility of their capture…

“You are right,” he said. “I should have told you.”

Her lips parted. He had surprised her—and himself, for though he had determined through prayer these past days to seek some semblance of peace with her, that was before Sir Durand’s missive stole into his home. And into their bedchamber.

Anger seeking a new level, he forced his clenched hands open.
Leave it be, Christian. Soon enough you will know whether she carries his child. Then you can determine how best to proceed with this marriage.

Wondering what darkness cast about her husband’s mind that made his struggle so palpable, Gaenor said, “I am grateful you would not use me as bait, but I beseech you not to allow your brother to make of me a prisoner. Even if you will not take me riding, I am sure Abel—”

“I will think on it,” Christian said sharply, then less so, “How fares your ankle?”

She sighed. “Better.”

“And John?”

He was another matter altogether. Though she had hoped the boy would be a diversion from the weightiness of her marriage, he was only tolerably less difficult than he had been that first day. “He is angry and confused by the loss of his mother, so much that only today did I see anything near a smile upon his face, and only when Abel came to the donjon.”

Remembering the boy’s sighting of the man who had scoured him clean and how he had scurried after him when Abel departed, she smiled. “I fear that, as long as my brother is at Broehne, he will find himself in possession of a short and unrelenting shadow.”

Seeing Christian’s gaze was drawn to her mouth, she remembered when, in the guise of Sir Matthew, he had said she was most becoming when she smiled. And the fool she had been had told him he gave her much to smile about. She eased her lips. For nothing would she give him further reason to accuse her of seduction.

His eyes returned to hers. “It seems I no longer give you much to smile about.”

He remembered too. Before she could think better of it, her thoughts wished themselves into words. “’Twas Sir Matthew who made me smile, and you are not…he.” That last came out on a breath of regret.

Again she caught the folding of his fingers into fists. Though he had vowed he would not raise a hand against her, there was comfort in having the chest between them—and it was that to which he next directed his gaze. As he stared into its depleted depths, she wondered if he gauged it as an obstacle to retaliation.

“Neither am I Sir Durand,” he said, almost with resignation, and once more turned his regard on her. “I am Christian Lavonne, and the sooner you reconcile yourself to that, the better it will go for us.” He came around the chest, strode past her, and out of the solar.

Gaenor released the breath she had not realized she was holding, retrieved the psalter, and hugged it to her. “Lord, help me think through my thoughts ere I let them onto my tongue.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “’Tis too late for love, but surely not too late for peace between us. Aye, peace is all I ask.”

H
e knew it would end badly for him. There was little question of it, certainly not with the king also set on his demise. Nevertheless, it would also end badly for others, and that made Robert’s failures tolerable and discomforts bearable. Today, however, success. Or something near it. After all, it was not a Wulfrith his men had taken, but a Wulfrith knight—and at a high price.

Though the three men-at-arms accompanying the knight on his journey to Wulfen Castle were now well on their way to hell, the bloody skirmish had taken the lives of five of Robert’s men, left two so severely wounded their injuries might prove fatal, and laid down a half dozen in need of the healer’s needle and thread. Unfortunately, Wulfrith’s man must first be given the benefit of the woman’s ministrations, for his value—whatever it might prove—lay in keeping him alive. For now.

At the center of the camp, Robert dismounted with the others, bent to the belly of the horse tethered to his own, and applied a dagger to the rope that bound the Wulfrith knight over the saddle. With a shove to the shoulder, he sent the man off the other side.

A grunt of pain sounded from the knight when he hit the ground.

Robert knew he should not have done that, not with his prisoner so injured, but the impulse had been too satisfying. “Helene!”

As if she had been awaiting his summons, she pushed back the flap of Aldous’s tent and stepped out. Pretty little thing, and if not that his accursed father objected, he would have found other uses for her.

Frowning over the bloodied knight, she advanced with short steps accompanied by the clink and clatter of metal. The next time she tried to run, she would not get as far as she had two days past.

“Tend him well so he does not die on me,” Robert said, “then see to my men.”

She narrowed her eyes on him before dropping to her knees beside the knight.

The temptation to strike her never far, Robert took a step toward her, but no more. The problem with Helene of Tippet was that she hit—and bit—back, which led to the greater problem that if he gave the wench what she deserved, he might find himself without a caregiver for Aldous. The thought was enough to sour his stomach and make him question, as he did more and more of late, why he had not left his demanding sire at Broehne.

Helene eased the Wulfrith knight onto his back, only to have the neck of her bodice seized by the injured man.

“Ho!” one of Robert’s men crowed and was echoed by others who drew near as if to enjoy a rooster fight.

Feeling no need to aid the healer, for she had well enough proved her size was not proportionate to her strength when they had stolen her from Tippet, Robert looked between the two.

She cupped a hand over the knight’s where he held her. “No ill do I mean you, Sir Knight,” she said in Norman French, the language of the nobility that set her apart from most commoners. “I am a healer and, if you allow me, I will see to your injuries.”

“They are not mortal,” the man ground between clenched teeth.

But they were surely painful, every burn, throb, sting, and twinge well deserved for the thinning of the brigands’ ranks, Robert mulled with satisfaction. As with each time he encountered a Wulfrith-trained knight, including his departed brother, Geoffrey, resentment surged anew that Aldous had not sought such training for his eldest son. This knight, now at his mercy, should have died thrice considering the number of men Robert had set on him.

“Your injuries may not be mortal,” Helene said, “but if infection sets in, you will likely share the fate of those who did not survive this day. Pray, let me aid you.”

The knight released her, turned his head opposite, and scanned the faces of the brigands until he found Robert. “You know you will gain naught by holding me.”

“I do not know that.” Robert pulled his newly acquired weapon from its sheath, stepped forward, and dropped to his haunches. “Hence, rather than slit you navel to nose with your own dagger, a coveted Wulfrith dagger, no less”—he grudgingly admired the superb workmanship that had been denied him—“I will keep you around for a while.” He smiled and lowered the blade to the knight’s crimson-stained chest. “The only say you have is whether or not you must needs be staked to the ground that Helene may tend you.”

“’Twill not be necessary,” the healer said, bending nearer Wulfrith’s man. “Tell him, Sir Knight.”

He held Robert’s gaze. “If the illegitimate issue of Aldous Lavonne fears for his life, as well he should, his only course is to stake me.”

Anger burned a jagged path through Robert. He did not fear anything, not now that he accepted his circumstances would eventually conspire to see his blood flow more freely than this knight’s.

He snorted, stood, and slammed the toe of his boot into the man’s ribs. As Helene gasped and the knight groaned, Robert motioned two men forward. “Secure him however the healer deems best and keep a guard over him.” He pointed the Wulfrith dagger at the first man’s face, then the other’s. “Do not fail me.”

The men nodded.

Robert stepped past them. As Aldous would want to hear of the day’s success, his one worthy son would deliver the tidings. He threw back the tent flap, ducked inside, and crossed to where his father huddled amid a gathering of blankets and furs.

To his surprise, the old man was asleep, his scarred and melted face flaccid but for the slight puffing of his cheeks as he expelled breath.

The need to stay ahead of their pursuers forcing them to move camp almost daily was depleting Aldous as Helene was so fond of arguing. But that was not Robert’s concern. His father had agreed to leave Broehne. Of course, had he protested, he would still be here. Regardless how ill unto death the old man fell, he was not going back, for the little monk who had usurped Robert’s place as surely as Geoffrey had done was more vulnerable with his father’s wellbeing to consider.

Robert laughed. “Little monk,” he murmured as his words went to stand alongside the broad, towering image of Christian. “I like that.”

“A Wulfrith…dagger.” Aldous rumbled.

Gripping the weapon tighter at his side, Robert followed his father’s heavily lidded gaze to the distinctive hilt. “Aye, taken this day from a Wulfrith knight.” He waited for an exclamation of surprise…praise…anything but the words Aldous next spoke.

“My Geoffrey was awarded one—an honor that told he was the worthiest of those deemed worthy.”

Anger again. More jagged. Before it could set a course for his trembling hand, Robert subdued its physical expression. “Yes, and he is dead, Father.”
And your little monk is next.
“Much good the Wulfrith dagger did him, eh?”

Something like a whimper sounded from Aldous. “Oh, beloved Geoffrey, all my hopes, my dreams…”

“Will die with you,” Robert snarled.

Whether the old man heard was not apparent, for he turned his face into a fold of fur and continued to besiege his eldest son’s ears with moanings over Geoffrey—until Robert had to decide between availing himself of the Wulfrith dagger’s keen edge or taking his leave.

H
e had been in their bed last night. Nevertheless, if not for the state of the bedclothes and the impression in his pillow, she would not have known he had been there, for she had slept through his coming and going.

Gaenor lifted her bowed head and once more peered over her shoulder. Of the scant dozen who had come to the chapel to hear morning mass, Christian had yet to appear among them.

Why? Not only had he been of the Church in that first life of his, but he was now lord to those for whom he ought to set a godly example. She had been so certain she would find him here, had hoped…

The priest’s closing prayer returned her attention to him, and with silent beseeching she sought God’s favor in helping her and Christian mend whatever bent and broken things could be rendered workable between them.

The priest blessed them all, but as Gaenor joined the others in exiting the chapel, he overtook her. “You grace our chapel with your attendance, my lady.”