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  Severin felt the blood pound in his temples. “No, you would not do this to me, would you, Graelam? Tell me you did not kill that damned whoreson. You did, didn’t you? You dared to kill my enemy. He wasn’t your enemy, Graelam, he was mine, and yet you had the gall to kill him. And you said nothing to me about it. Nothing, Graelam, you bastard.”

  Hastings heard Graelam laugh. She saw the fury on Severin’s face. She knew he was enraged even though his voice was low and steady and he did not move. Her father had always yelled his head off when he was angry, always. It gave everyone time to run because right after he yelled, he struck. But not Severin. Would he strike?

  Northbert had told her what had happened. Men, she thought, were they born wanting to hack and maim and destroy? Well, mayhap it was wise to destroy Richard de Luci. She eased closer. Severin was red in the face, the pulse in his throat pounding so furiously she could see it, but that was all.

  “He is dead, his holding is without a master, and he has a daughter, I am told, who is now his heir. There are no sons.”

  Severin said, as he clutched the wine goblet so hard his fingers showed white, “You were wounded. There is a binding around your arm.”

  “Aye, but ’tis nothing. I imagine Hastings has already seen to my men. I lost no men, but four were wounded.” Graelam leaned back in Hastings’s chair, drank down the rest of his wine, wiped his mouth, and grinned hugely. “Ah, it was good. We ambushed the whoreson with the information Osbert gave us. They were eating their dinner. There were naught but twenty of them. We took the guards, then the rest was easy.” Graelam rubbed his hands together. “Aye, it was good to exercise my arm. Bloodletting always clears a man’s brain and makes him forget any pains he has.”

  Severin rose, calmly and slowly, took the end of the trestle table in his large hands, and upended it, sending it crashing into the silver laver that stood close by. The laver sent scented water flying on the sleeping wolfhound, Edgar, whose eyes flew open. He leapt up, growling, ready to tear out an enemy’s throat.

  “Enough, Severin, enough! Hold your temper. I do not want you to destroy the keep.”

  Severin turned to see his wife of two days on her knees, picking up the laver, that thick hair of hers cascading over her shoulder nearly to the rushes. She looked up at him even as she cradled the damned laver against her chest. “You have dented the silver. It belonged to my grandmother. I prized it. I polished it, I—”

  He cursed long and loud, then shouted, something Graelam had never heard him do, “Shut your mouth, Hastings! This has nothing to do with you. Fetch my sword. I will gullet this mangy villain, this villain I believed my friend.” The wolfhound growled. Servants and men-at-arms were standing silent along the walls, wondering what would happen, wondering if they should do anything.

  “Why?” she said, rising to her feet, righting the laver. “Because he acted without your lofty permission? Because he knew you would demand to fight and he feared you would become fevered again? Tell me, my lord, why are you angry? Are you not an intelligent man, a reasonable man?”

  He was on her in an instant, his hands under her armpits, lifting her and shaking her. “You will hold your tongue else I will take you right here on this trestle table and that damned wolfhound can smell your blood and howl.”

  She turned whiter than the soft bread she had eaten to break her fast. He shook her yet again.

  “Let her down, Severin.” Graelam’s hand came down on his shoulder, his wounded shoulder, and squeezed. “Let her down. What mean you? Would you shame her here in the great hall amidst her people? Would you wound her so that she bled? Is that what is in your mind?”

  Hastings couldn’t bear it. She would kill him. She went completely limp. The wound in Severin’s shoulder ripped pain through him at shaking her, that and the weight of Graelam’s hand on his shoulder. He lowered her slowly to the rush-covered stone floor.

  She looked up at him, her eyes nearly black with rage. She kicked him as hard as she could in the shin. He sucked in his breath, jerking back, leaning down to scrub his hand over his shin. “You will pay for that, madam,” he said between teeth gritted so tightly she barely understood him.

  She knew she probably would pay, she just didn’t know him well enough to judge the manner of payment. She turned on her heel and ran from the great hall.

  “Severin, you will sit down now and you will close your eyes and think about your shoulder and your shin. She could have kicked you in your groin but she didn’t. She spared you.”

  “She didn’t kick me in the groin because she knew I’d kill her if she had. Besides, I move quickly, I would have turned away from her knees in time.”

  “Possibly, but Hastings is fast.” Graelam sighed. “You know you wouldn’t have killed her. I doubt you would have raised your fist to her, would you?”

  Severin brushed his palm over his hair. He was tired. His shoulder hurt. Damn her, he had feelings. He was not a toad. “I would have made her believe that I would have crushed her beneath her herb garden. Sometimes she does believe that. However, as each day passes, she grows more brazen, more bold. And it has only been two days. What will she do when a fortnight has passed? I will not tolerate it, Graelam.”

  “You are weaving where you stand. Sit you down, aye, that’s it. Now drink the wine. It will calm your ire. I wonder if I fell into rages as do you when I had six fewer years to my life?” Graelam paused a moment, then nodded. “Aye, I believe that I did act the outraged fool. And that was only three years ago. My dear wife left me, I was such a bastard to her.”

  “Kassia left you?”

  He had gained Severin’s full attention. Now was the time to deliver his small moral. The younger man was staring at him as if he’d found a snail in his broth. “Kassia? She truly left you? I do not believe that.”

  “Aye. I had to go to her father’s keep, Belleterre, in Brittany, to fetch her home.”

  “Did you thrash her?”

  Graelam smiled and shook his head. “Nay, I begged her to forgive me. If I had ever struck her, why, it would have killed her. Certainly you know that you cannot strike a woman, Severin. A woman is slight, weak, helpless. Nay, Severin, tell me you have never struck a woman.”

  “Damnation, Graelam, this is all nonsense. You are weaving a fine tale. I believe you not. No, I have never struck a woman. All I have known have obeyed me without hesitation, without question. But now I am married and what I fully expected I did not get. My wife is ordered by God to obey me. She ignored God’s will. Will I discipline her? Aye, I doubt that not. The how of it, however, I have not yet decided on that as yet.”

  That was something, Graelam thought.

  “What am I to do now that you have taken my manhood and hunted down de Luci yourself?”

  “You will take your men to Sedgewick Castle and put Sir Alan in charge. He is a good knight, a fair man, and more than that, you can trust him. He can be your castellan until the king decides what is to be done with de Luci’s daughter and his property. I would also suggest that you remove the girl child and bring her here. Hastings can look after her. I think that King Edward might make you her guardian, to protect her from greedy men, just as you married Hastings to protect her. On the other hand, the king might well appoint himself as her guardian and send his own man to control Sedgewick.”

  “Aye, it depends on the wealth of the property. The king is no fool. Did you kill Richard de Luci yourself?”

  “Actually, he slipped on a pile of rabbit bones and fell, striking his head against the rock upon which he’d been resting. He died right there. We left some of his men alive to see to him and the others that we killed.”

  “I would not have let him slip on a rabbit bone. I would have fought him, knife to knife, and I would have slid it into his belly.”

  Graelam just smiled. “I suppose these things happen and we must swallow our wounded vanity and be relieved that we are alive to tell the tale of our dead enemy. Think you, Severin, do you believe this Richard de
Luci is pleased to be in hell, dispatched by a rabbit bone and a rock rather than fighting to the death with an equal?”

  There was no hope for it. Severin grinned. Then he laughed. He righted the fallen trestle table. He looked up to see the servants talking again, not in whispers now, not since they heard his laugh. Edgar snored again on the hearth, his huge head resting on his folded paws, paws the size of bowls. The silver laver was dented. He frowned at it. She said it had belonged to her grandmother. It was old and now it was dented. He would ask the armorer if he could pound out the dents.

  His shin hurt.

  Yet he laughed until Graelam said, all sober and cold behind him, “You lied to me, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have really forced her here in the great hall? You wouldn’t have really hurt her so that she bled?”

  “No,” Severin said, and turned on his heel. He said over his shoulder, “It was the only threat I could think of that would bring her to heel. I would not have wounded her. The blood is hers. It is her monthly flux.”

  “Ah. Your threat to bring her to heel. It worked. I had wondered why she fled. How is your shin?”

  7

  HASTINGS DIDN’T TOUCH THE LITTLE GIRL, JUST CROUCHED down in front of her. “What is your name?”

  The child just stared up at her, pale as a bolt of undyed cotton, her blue eyes wide and unblinking.

  “My name is Hastings. Come, what is yours?”

  The child’s lashes fluttered. “My name is Eloise,” she whispered, her eyes on Hastings’s neck, no higher.

  “A lovely name, much nicer than mine, but Hastings is a good name, the name of the firstborn girl in my family since Lord William’s famous battle.”

  “I know about that,” Eloise said. “Mama said that Lord William was sent by God to redeem the savage Saxons.”

  Hastings had never before heard that particular opinion on God’s use of William. Her knees hurt. She rose and held out her hand to the little girl. “Would you like a cup of milk? Gilbert the goat has blessed us today. And you can taste some of MacDear’s almond buns. They’re quite delicious, you know.”

  The thin little girl with large blue eyes just stared up at Hastings and slowly shook her head. Her skinny brown braids didn’t move. “My mama said gluttony was a special sin.”

  St. Osbert’s elbows, what was this? “I won’t let you eat more than just one of MacDear’s almond buns. No, just a small bite of one, all right?”

  The child looked very worried. She tugged on her ugly, faded green wool gown that was several inches too short on her, showing small scuffed slippers and baggy woolen stockings that had been mended many times. “I can’t ask my mama if it is all right. She went to Heaven.”

  “Aye, I know, and I am sorry, Eloise. I don’t think she would think just one almond bun would be gluttony.”

  “Aye, your mama would quickly pronounce it gluttony, and you know it, Eloise. I’ll thank you, my lady, not to tempt the child.”

  Hastings turned to the older woman who wore a very ugly black gown, her black hair pulled back in a severe knot at the back of her head. Her face was severe, a black mustache on her upper lip, her expression cold. She gave the woman a look she would give to a servant who had spoken out of turn. “You are?” One of her eyebrows arched up. That was always a good effect, one her mother had taught her so many years before.

  The woman fidgeted. That was a good sign. She fidgeted some more, saying finally, “My name is Beale, my lady. I am Eloise’s nurse and was Lady Joan’s nurse as well.”

  “Then you will go with Dame Agnes. She will show you Eloise’s chamber. It is small, but no matter, so is Eloise. As for you, Beale, you will sleep with the other female servants.” She nodded and turned back to the child. “Come, Eloise, let us look at MacDear’s almond buns.”

  She heard the woman Beale suck in her breath. She waited, but the woman held her tongue.

  Severin came into the great hall some minutes later to see Hastings seated at a trestle table, the girl child seated beside her, staring at an untouched bun. Her fingers seemed to crawl toward the tray then stop and back up. The child was pale and skinny. Severin frowned. She was a child, she should be stuffing those buns into her mouth.

  He’d left Sir Alan, his own man, and a good dozen of Trent’s men-at-arms at Sedgewick Castle. No. He had to remind himself that they were his men now, every last one of them. They’d all sworn fealty to him the day he’d wedded Hastings. Three days ago.

  He’d had his men bring the child and her nurse back here to Oxborough.

  “Let her eat, Hastings,” he said, striding up. The little girl’s fingers fell away and she seemed to shrink in on herself. Very slowly, as if hoping Severin wouldn’t notice her, she slid off the bench and crawled under the trestle table.

  “Eloise, what are you doing?”

  There was no sound from Eloise.

  Hastings frowned at Severin. “How very odd. At first she was frightened of me but at least she didn’t crawl under the table. Did you perhaps yell and rant when you were at Sedgewick?”

  “Of course not. There was no need. Everyone was glad to see me after they realized I wasn’t going to butcher all of them. Besides, I don’t frighten women and children.”

  “Ha. Nay, don’t yell at me, you’ll just scare her more.” Hastings got off the bench and went down on her hands and knees. The child had wrapped herself in a tight ball, pressed against the far leg of the table.

  “It’s all right, Eloise. Come, Severin is very big but he is also very nice. He won’t hurt you.”

  The child seemed to tuck herself into an even smaller ball.

  Hastings looked up over her shoulder to see Severin, standing there, looking baffled and impatient. Then Trist slithered out of his tunic and jumped onto the table. He smelled the buns, then backed away.

  “He doesn’t like sweet buns like that,” Severin said.

  “Eloise, would you like to meet Trist? He isn’t a man, he’s a marten.”

  The child lifted her head. “What is a marten?”

  “He is an animal, long and furry and very soft. He likes to eat eggs that are boiled just enough so that the insides are clingy.”

  Slowly, the child inched out from under the trestle table. Severin had sat himself down so as not to frighten her. He was eating an almond bun. Trist was sprawled out next to his hand, his head on his front paws.

  “That is Trist. He belongs to Severin. Isn’t he beautiful?”

  The child stared at the marten. As if he knew he was being watched, Trist cocked an eye open and looked at the child.

  “Does he eat almond buns?”

  “Nay, he does not,” Severin said, as he reached for another one. “But he would like to see you eat one. He just said that you didn’t eat your breakfast.”

  The little girl blinked and took a step back, bumping into Hastings’s knees. Hastings lightly laid her hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “Eloise, this is Lord Severin. He is my husband and the master of Oxborough. He will protect you. You are not to be afraid of him.”

  “My father hit me.”

  “Severin isn’t your father. He will see that no one will ever hit you again, I swear it to you. Severin will swear it as well as soon as he has swallowed the last of his bun.”

  “I swear it, Eloise. You will remain here at Oxborough until King Edward decides where you will live. My lady will look after you.”

  “She is very young,” Eloise said, staring hard at Trist. “Beale said she was too young to know anything at all about children.” Trist stretched out his full length, which was nearly a foot and a half. Then he stretched out his paws. He looked at the little girl. She said in a whisper, “Beale won’t like it. She won’t like any of it.”

  “Beale has no say in it,” Hastings said. “I was a little girl like you not at all long ago. I’ll wager that Beale can’t even remember when she was a little girl.”

  “Is she that sour-faced old woman dressed in black with the black hair on her lip?” Severin
asked.

  “Aye,” Hastings said shortly. “Here, Eloise, try a bit of the bun.”

  But the child backed away. Even Trist at his most charming didn’t move her now. Hastings could feel her retreating even though she was standing very still now.

  “I cannot. Beale is right. Mama will look down from Heaven and curse me.”

  So be it, Hastings thought. She said matter-of-factly, “Then what would you like to eat? Surely your mama would not want you to starve.”

  “Bread and water. That’s what Beale said I should eat.”

  “Why?”

  The child hung her head. She twisted her foot about in the rushes. “Because I am not good.”

  Hastings looked at Severin. He was staring hard at the little girl. She saw he would speak and shook her head. She smiled at Eloise. “Very well, I shall have Alice fetch you some bread. But the milk is better than water, particularly Gilbert the goat’s milk. After you drink the milk you will feel very virtuous. I remember Father Carreg told me that.”

  Eloise blinked up at her.

  Trist mewled. He stretched out a paw toward the child.

  But Eloise didn’t move. She swallowed. “You are right. Trist is very beautiful. My mama said that beauty was sinful.”

  “Trist is not beautiful,” Severin said. “He’s an ugly varmint.” He rose. The marten looked up at him, stretched again, and leapt gracefully onto his arm, scurried up to his shoulder, and wrapped his thick tail around Severin’s neck.

  Severin said to Hastings, “I know not what has been done to the child but I do know that Richard de Luci was an animal. You will fix it, Hastings.”

  He nodded to the little girl and strode from the great hall, Trist’s tail swinging around his neck.

  “Ah, here is your bread.” Hastings added, “Eloise, this is Alice. She is very virtuous. You will like her.”

  Alice enjoyed the men-at-arms, and surely that must hold virtue for she made them smile and sigh.

  Hastings waited with Eloise until she had eaten a thick slice of MacDear’s bread smeared with butter and thick honey. She thought to leave her and work in her herb garden, but she chanced to see the woman Beale standing in the shadow of the solar stairs. No, she wouldn’t leave the child to that horrible creature.