Chapter 3
The priest!
Lily’s heart stopped, and started again. Father Luc! Here was danger in full measure. She had always liked Father Luc, and she thought he liked her. She prayed desperately that he had his wits about him and would not give her away.
“Must I see him now?” Radulf sounded weary as well as annoyed.
“You’ve been seeking him, Lord Radulf; don’t you want to speak with him?”
Stephen seemed puzzled by Radulf’s resistance, and at any other time Lily might have found it amusing. As it was, she watched in tense silence as Radulf reached for his shirt.
“Very well,” he growled, “but he’d best be quick. I’m hungry.”
Stephen’s gaze skimmed over Lily but didn’t linger. He bowed and gestured to someone beyond the entrance to Radulf’s tent. “Come,” he said, the authority in his voice somewhat marred by its tendency to waver up and down the scale.
“My lord will do you the honor of speaking with you.”
“He’ll do me the honor, will he?”
Lily stepped back into the shadows and stayed there unmoving as Father Luc waddled into the candlelight.
A small, rotund man in a coarse brown gown, his bald melon head was pink with anger, his eyes a vivid blue.
Before the Normans came, Father Luc had had a wife and children— the English church saw no harm in its priests marrying.
Afterward, Lily heard that the wife and children were sent away to safety, and Father Luc took on a solitary existence more in line with the Norman idea of piety.
“My lord,” he puffed now, “your men are rough and uncouth. What mean you by this disrespect?”
“What mean you?” Radulf growled softly, long legs splayed out before him. He did not bother to get up. “You have been well hidden, priest. I have been seeking you.”
“There have been many people seeking me since you came north, my lord,” Father Luc replied tartly. “Plows and farming tools have been broken, and crops burned in the fields. Animals have been slaughtered. The people are starving. They turn to me and God, and I give them what help I can.”
“I want you to help me, priest.”
Father Luc frowned, trying to read Radulf’s face. “In what way, my lord?”
“I am looking for Vorgen’s wife. Do you know her?”
The priest nodded cautiously, his eyes still fixed on Radulf, but Lily had the distinct impression he was very well aware she was there. “You seek the Lady Wilfreda?”
“Have you seen her recently?”
“She fled, Lord Radulf. Fled when she heard the King’s Sword was coming. Your name is a powerful one. Only a fool would stand and fight.”
Radulf snorted. “Vorgen fought.”
“Aye, lord, and he was a fool.”
“And you take me for one, too, old man?”
Radulf leaned forward threateningly. “I’ve heard too many rumors that Lady Wilfreda is still in Northumbria. I don’t believe she’s gone north.”
Father Luc shrugged.
“Perhaps you could be persuaded, priest?”
Radulf sneered. “The men of God I know are always short of gold.”
Father Luc’s amiable face seemed to pinch upon itself. “She has fled. Best you resign her to her fate and go home. Go home, my lord, and take your gold with you.”
He was brave, thought Lily, but foolish to antagonize Radulf. She glanced quickly toward the Norman, expecting him to show his anger, but Radulf appeared unmoved by the priest’s words.
“When I have found Wilfreda I will go home,”
Radulf replied mildly. “Until then I will hunt.”
The priest’s rosebud mouth tightened, but his eyes remained steady.
“However, you may be able to help me in another matter,” Radulf added. He turned and stared over to where Lily stood. “This lady was hiding in your church. She says she is Edwin of Rennoc’s daughter, returning home from the border. Do you know her?”
Father Luc allowed his eyes to flick briefly to Lily and away again.
Lily’s heart squeezed within her chest. He must recognize her, must have recognized her as soon as he entered the tent, and yet there was nothing whatsoever in his face to show it.
“I do not know Edwin of Rennoc’s daughter, my lord. ”
“And yet the villagers know of her.”
“Ah, that is a different matter, my lord. I know he has a daughter, fair-headed and fair of face, but I have never met her. And you say this is she?”
The priest nodded in Lily’s direction. “She looks weary. Have you hurt her?” he asked with a frown. “Her father is the Earl of Morcar’s vassal, and Morcar is the king’s man. Surely the king would be angry if he knew his Sword was striking at his friends as well as his enemies.”
Radulf stiffened, and Lily held her breath. Father Luc had questioned Radulf’s integrity. If this had been Vorgen, the priest would be dead by now, and she had no reason to think Radulf was any different. But before she allowed such a fate to befall the little man, she would speak the truth.
She would not allow another to suffer in her stead; there had been enough suffering.
To her astonished relief, Radulf’s shoulders eased back and the frown smoothed from his brow.
Contrarily, the sense of strength and power that surrounded him increased rather than diminished.
Lily knew then that a man like Radulf did not need to kill and maim to build on his consequence, and admiration mingled with her relief.
“You are a brave man, priest, but take care with your tongue.” Amusement curled Radulf’s lips, but there was a warning in his dark eyes.
The priest gave him an innocent smile.
“Boy!” Stephen hurried to obey his master’s call, eyes wide as he looked from the priest to his lord. “Let him go. He’s of no use to me after all.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Father Luc straightened his gown, smoothing its sleeves and shaking the mud from its hem. His face remained impassive, but his blue eyes twinkled as he turned to Lily. “Be of good cheer, my lady of Rennoc,” he told her gently. “You will soon be among friends.”
Lily stared after him as he left, wondering what he had meant, and if, indeed, the words had contained any meaning beyond the need to comfort.
“A priest who cannot be bought or bribed,” Radulf said with a shake of his head. “A rarity.”
Lily frowned, moving slowly forward until she faced him across the table of uneaten food. “You are cynical, my lord.”
“I have grown so, Lily.” That look was in his eyes again, as if beneath the battle-hardened warrior lay a wounded soul.
“Perhaps it is the company you keep.”
Radulf laughed briefly. “Perhaps it is. Come sit down, my lady. We will eat, and this time there will be no interruptions.”
His eyes promised much more than food, but Lily avoided his gaze. “I find I am weary rather than hungry, my lord. I would sleep now.”
The silence grew heavy, but still Lily refused to look up. She heard Radulf sigh.
“Very well, lady. I will have Stephen take you to Gudren’s tent.”
Lily’s stiff bearing eased with relief, and yet there was a traitorous sense of disappointment.
She had liked it when Radulf kissed her, liked it very much indeed. She would not mind if he kissed her again. But kisses would lead to other things, and Lily was not sure she had the strength to resist. Radulf might be her enemy, but he held an attraction for her that was well-nigh irresistible.
Radulf swallowed the last of a chunk of mut-ton, and reached for more.
His body was burning, but this was no ordinary fever.
He gulped down half a goblet of wine, refilling it immediately, as if the sour red liquid might somehow quench the fire Lily had started in him.
He forced himself to chew more of the meat, then bit into the hard brown bread.
Radulf wondered wildly if he should send his squire to bring him one of the whores who were a permanent part of any soldiers’ camp. But he didn’t want a whore.
He wanted Lily.
He had wanted her as soon as he walked into the tent and saw her lying asleep on his bed, her pale hair spread across the covers, her mouth curved in a secret smile.
If Stephen hadn’t been there, he might have been tempted to caress her to wakefulness, to befuddle her with kisses so that she would not remember who and what he was.
Until it was too late.
Instead he had ordered her to tend his wound, suffering agonies of lust as her scent teased his nostrils and she touched him with her gentle fingers, each brush of her skin another twig upon the pyre of his need.
Radulf sighed, impatient with himself. He was a fool.
He had seen the terror in those gray eyes when she woke and saw him.
What woman could fail to fear him? And yet she had tended his wound and met his eyes straightly when she spoke to him.
She had courage. Perhaps her gratitude would overcome her fright long enough for him to make her forget he was Radulf.
He remembered his mouth on hers, the sweetness of it, the heat as she opened her lips to his tongue, and clenched his jaw on a groan.
She had been in his arms, her lashes dark crescents against her pale skin, her long, fair hair curling in wild tendrils about her back and shoulders.
Her breasts had swelled beneath the red wool of her gown, rising and falling quickly with each breath—already he knew their size and shape, as if God had made them precisely to fit into his hand.
Radulf gave up trying to eat.
He knew he should have questioned her further about Morcar and Rennoc.
He should have questioned her in regard to her journey from the border.
He should have asked her about the ambush in the wood and how she alone had escaped the attackers.
And why three of his men, sent to investigate that same wood, had found no sign of any fighting.
Was she a liar?
He didn’t care.
Nothing seemed to matter anymore but the heat in his groin and satisfying it with her.
Radulf did not know how long he sat, staring at nothing, before the sounds penetrated his mind.
The clash of swords and the shouts of men, the unmistakable noise of battle.