Chapter 6 #2
“It carries a condition, of course. I would expect you to come at my call if ever I have need of your sword. Mayhap when the castle is completed, you might finish your courtship and we could celebrate both the castle and a wedding. Does the timing appeal?”
“Yea, Ren, it does.” Geoff fairly glowed with his fervent ardor for the young widow. “If the lady could be made willing, I would make her mine. Her husband was nay killed by Normans, so it is possible I do not offend with my interest.”
“In time I’m certain you can charm her from her widow’s state, but before you leave to see Eawyn, I have a few tasks for you, my well-fed friend. And, mind your sudden taste for bread spread with honey. Maggie tells me someone has been sneaking into the kitchen at night depleting her supply.”
Geoff looked down at the bread, thick with honey, still in his hand. Renaud detected a look of guilt. Neither said a word, for no words were necessary.
Renaud finished his meal and with Geoff trailing behind, stepped into the yard.
The day promised to be fair after the night’s rain.
Renaud spotted the boy with the pale blond hair and ruddy cheeks he had spoken with at the archery contest. The lad was sitting on a cask next to the manor poking a stick into the soft dirt.
“Jamie.”
The boy looked up at the sound of his name then leapt to his feet, dropping his stick.
“Is not that your name, lad?” Renaud asked, stopping in front of him.
“Aye, m’lord. May I be of service to ye?”
Renaud smiled at the boy’s eager desire to please and reached down to muss his curly blond hair. “Jamie, I might be in need of a page. Would you like the position?”
“Yea, m’lord! I would!” The boy was nearly dancing he was so excited. The look on his face told Renaud he had offered the lad a much-desired prize.
“Can you point out your parents so I may speak to them?”
“I have no parents, m’lord,” the boy said with downcast eyes. “Sarah watches out for me and sees I am fed and have clothes.”
It was as he’d suspected. He had seen the boy with the servant girl but no mother or father. So, Sarah had a young charge whose needs she met. She might hate Normans but she could be kind to young English lads.
“Well then, I will speak to Sarah, but I am certain she will approve. Being a page is the first step to becoming a knight. Go see Mathieu, my squire, and tell him of your new position. He will assign you tasks and see you have proper clothing. Unless you are in work clothes, you will wear the wolf on your tunic.”
“Thank ye, sir!” The boy’s eyes shone as he turned and ran toward the armory.
“Do you know where you are going lad?” Renaud called after him.
The boy stopped and turned. “Aye, sir. I watch yer squire clean yer armor each day.”
“Well, then, be off with you.” Renaud’s eyes followed the boy as he hurried off.
“That was kind of you, Ren,” said Geoff. “You bestow an honor on the lad far above his station. Better take care or the people will think the Red Wolf has a soft heart.”
“I have watched him each day with nothing to do but a few chores, and no one to care for him except Sarah, who walks with him to the stables. If he can be groomed to become a squire, one day he might be a loyal knight. I like the lad. And he seems intelligent enough.”
* * *
Serena looked into the yard from the roof walk where she observed the knights talking to Jamie.
She could not hear their words but she noted the Red Wolf run his hands through the boy’s sun bleached locks as if teasing him.
The Norman was proving to be different than the cold, cruel knight she had envisioned.
Often arrogant, and at times short with his words, he held to a code of honor she grudgingly admired.
Though his coming had stripped her people of their freedom and their rights under Anglo-Saxon laws, he had not taxed them overmuch.
At least not yet. She knew when the work on the castle began he would compel Talisand’s men to build it.
Such a task would not go down well with her people.
She grew angry at the reminder he had all of Talisand under his thumb.
Yet she remembered his gentleness when he’d kissed her, a kiss she was trying hard to forget.
She remembered the heat of his powerful body when he held her close.
She had wanted him to touch her. Yet she hated her attraction to the powerful Norman knight for he was her enemy.
And now he was being kind to the boy she loved.
* * *
“Would it be so bad to be the Norman’s wife, to again be the Lady of Talisand?
” Cassie asked softly, looking at Serena with hopeful eyes.
Serena had gone to help her friend in the folding of linens in the back room of the washing area where they were alone for the moment.
“He seems an honorable knight, even if he is a Norman, and a bit…fearsome. He’s so tall. Even Sir Maurin is nay so tall.”
Serena stared at her friend, disbelieving.
“Cassie! That ‘honorable knight’ you find frightening is among the men who killed my father and our King Harold and ravaged half of England. I cannot believe you would have me wed one of them. Have you forgotten they have taken our land by force? Slain thousands of Saxon men and women? And now he claims the people of Talisand as his serfs!”
“Nay, I havna forgotten, but ye canna change the past, m’lady.
Ye must look to the future. I say this as yer friend.
The Red Wolf is the new lord and there be a new king in England who, though he is a Norman, seems to be staying whether we like it or no.
Ye’ll want bairns one day, no?” Not waiting for Serena’s answer, the handmaiden continued.
“Talisand will need an heir, and it willna come from Steinar as we had thought.”
“I’d not have a Norman heir for Talisand, Cassie.”
“Would a bairn of yers born in England be a Norman?”
Serena pondered her handmaiden’s words. “He’d be at least half Norman.”
“If the tales we heard be true, there will be many bairns born in England this year who are only half English. At least ye would have the status of wife—and a countess. Many of those mothers have no husbands at all and will bear only Norman bastards.”
“Oh, Cassie. I am still hoping to escape to Scotland and join Steinar. Rhodri tells me many English have fled across the border, waiting to fight the Normans. Good and true men who have not surrendered all. He says it was fear of an uprising that brought the Norman king back from Normandy late last year. Why should I give in if there is still hope? The Red Wolf’s knights do not even speak our language! ”
“They are making an effort,” insisted Cassie. “Sir Maurin’s understanding of English has improved much.” Setting down the cloth she was folding, the handmaiden said wistfully, “He has been verra kind to me.”
Though the Norman knights and men-at-arms were making an effort to learn the English tongue, mostly to speak to the young women and give orders to the old thegn’s men, Serena recalled they spent evenings in the hall drinking Talisand’s ale and telling jokes in their own language.
Her knowledge of the Norman tongue had given her the ability to understand much of what they said.
Many times she had grimaced at their ribald jokes and their slurs against the Saxons they had defeated in the south.
Each night she tried to convince herself it was England, not Normandy, she was living in.
“I have seen Sir Maurin smile at you, Cassie…would you marry one of them?”
Cassie looked off into the distance. “I might. I, too, want bairns, m’lady.
Sir Maurin is older than the others, ’tis true, and his face shows signs of a hard life, but he is a man with a good heart.
And though he is a knight, he does nay seem to mind I am not high born.
Besides, there are nay any others at Talisand left that I would wed. ”
“But there are many who would have you as wife, Cassie.”
With the death of many of Talisand’s young men at Hastings, her lovely handmaiden had fewer choices, though many who remained lusted after the redhead.
That her father was the beefy blacksmith kept them at bay.
Serena wanted to see her friend wed and happy.
Raised together, they were more like sisters than lady and servant.
She enjoyed Cassie’s honest bantering. Very much her mother’s daughter, Cassie freely spoke her mind.
Serena stared at the dust motes in the sunlight pouring in through the open door while her hands worked independently to fold the drying cloths.
Her mind drifted to the past and to a time when a tall English guard who worked for her father had captured her interest. For a while, they had walked the river bank together in the afternoons.
He’d even stolen a kiss once. Oswine was killed at Hastings defending his thegn.
Though it had been the love of a young girl, it might have grown into more in time. Alas, she would never know.
She thought it was probably inevitable that some of Talisand’s women would marry Normans.
God knew there were widows enough. But if she were to accept the fate the Norman king had willed for her, it would be a sign to all she had given up the fight for England and for Talisand.
She shook her head and set her lips in a thin line. No, I will not do it.
“If ye willna have a Norman, m’lady, even the new lord, what about young Morcar? When he was still Earl of Northumbria, wasna he one of the men yer father was considering for yer hand? A most handsome and charming man to me memory.”
“Aye, Morcar is fair of face and charming, but he is only a few years older than I.” She was thinking of the Red Wolf who was older and more virile than the younger Mercian, whom she remembered with fondness.
The Mercian had paid several visits to her father before he had gone to fight against the King of Norway but her father had not promised her hand to him.
Morcar laughed easily and his people loved him, but she did not.
Even if she had wanted to wed him, could she do so when she had been given to the Norman lord?
“And he lost his lands with the coming of the Normans.”
“I often wonder what might have happened,” said Cassie thoughtfully, “if he and his brother had not been so eager to rid themselves of King Harold. They held back their men, hoping, I believe, the Normans would defeat Harold at Hastings. With the men Morcar and his brother could have called to fight, we might have driven the Normans back into the sea.”
“More important, Cassie, would they fight now?”
“Sir Maurin told me that Morcar and his older brother, Edwin, still the Earl of Mercia, have submitted to the Norman king.”
“If ’tis true,” said Serena, “I doubt Edwin is sincere. He cannot love serving such a one.”
“I suppose ye are right,” Cassie said sadly.
“Even if Morcar were to defy the Norman king,” Serena speculated, “I cannot imagine him taking me to wife with Talisand given to the Bastard’s knight. I no longer have a dowry.”
“But he cared for ye, m’lady. I remember the way he looked at ye.”
“So much has changed,” lamented Serena. “While an English woman cannot be forced to wed a man she’ll not have, it is not so with the Normans.
The Norman king can force me to accept the Red Wolf if I am discovered.
He has only to consummate the relationship.
” The thought caused Serena to shiver. “Then, too, Morcar is young and impatient. He may have set his eyes on another.”
“Morcar is a Mercian,” Cassie encouraged. “That has to mean something. It was his brother Edwin who posed the idea of a match between the two of ye to yer father. Me mother heard them talking.”
“It was to make me happy my father delayed a betrothal.”
“Yea,” said Cassie, “and to satisfy a lonely man’s heart. Me mother told me he’d not send ye away before he must.”
Serena had thought little of Morcar in the past months.
In truth, with the coming of the Red Wolf, thoughts of any other man rarely came to her mind.
She had not forgotten the kiss the Norman had stolen.
Or the feel of his hard chest pressed against her breasts.
He was a seasoned warrior, virile and strong.
By his sword, the Red Wolf had gained a place of favor with the Norman king and was admired by his men.
He seemed so much more a man than the young Mercian earl or even Oswine.
The handmaiden’s eyes suddenly grew bright. “What about Eadric? Yer father liked him well enough. I have heard our men talking about him. They say he was able to keep his lands in the south since he wasna at Hastings.”
“I have heard the Normans speak of him in the hall, too,” said Serena, thinking of the conversation she’d overheard.
“They call him Eadric the Wild since he stays in the woods with his men, fighting some Norman to the south. The Welsh king supports him, according to Rhodri.” Serena remembered Eadric, the wealthy Saxon thegn from Shropshire, who had come to Talisand seeking her hand.
A tall warrior with broad shoulders and a full beard.
“Though I cannot imagine Eadric would want to take a bride if he is living with his men in the woods. And, Cassie, if I were to come out in the open, as I must to wed Morcar or Eadric, think how the Red Wolf would react. He would be incensed at losing what he sees as his. Pride would demand he hunt me down, even if only to hold me prisoner. No, it would not do for me to marry a Saxon while still in England for I have been given by the Norman king to one of his own. You see? I must leave and seek my future in Scotland.”
“Yea, I suppose ’tis true. I dinna want ye to go. But it seems yer only future at Talisand is as the Red Wolf’s bride.”
“I shall never choose to be his wife,” Serena insisted, all the while shivering at the prospect, whether from anticipation or dread she could not say.