Chapter 6
Six
DARCY
The morning came far too quickly, though I suspected that was partly because I’d slept maybe five hours out of the last seventy-two and had reached that stage of exhaustion where the body carried on through habit while the brain wandered off somewhere quieter.
What I wouldn’t have given for a pot of strong tea. From what I vaguely remembered, tea wouldn’t reach England for another few centuries, give or take, which was depressing this early in the day.
I stood in the middle of Ashford with a wooden tally board in one hand and a piece of charcoal in the other while Wystan tried, with the stubborn confidence of a young man who had recently acquired both a spear and an opinion, to convince me that thirty-eight people had returned from the forest.
“There are thirty-seven.”
“There are thirty-eight.”
“Excellent. Count them again.”
His expression suggested I’d asked him to number every blade of grass between Ashford and Scotland, but he turned toward the cluster of villagers waiting beside the lane and started over.
Around us, Ashford had changed. It wasn’t quiet, because I was beginning to suspect medieval villages were incapable of anything resembling silence, but the sounds had taken on a sharper edge.
Axes struck wood near the edge of the fields, hens clucked, men shouted to one another from the storehouses, and somewhere the blacksmith hammered iron.
Yet beneath all those ordinary noises lay something new. Everyone listened between them.
A horse whinnied, and three people looked toward the southern road.
A dog barked beyond the last cottages, and a woman carrying a basket slowed long enough to search the tree line before moving on.
Fear hadn’t stopped Ashford, but it had changed the rhythm of the place, slipping into every silence and waiting there.
The morning rain had turned the lane to brown muck, and the hem of my gown was wet nearly to the knee. The dress itched, the cloak weighed approximately as much as a six-year-old child, and the leather shoes Anya had forced upon me had already begun to rub against my heels through the woolen socks.
I missed my waterproof jacket with a depth of feeling I hadn’t known clothing could inspire.
“Thirty-seven,” Wystan admitted at last.
I looked up from the board.
He frowned at the villagers as though one of them had deliberately vanished to embarrass him. “Who is missing?”
“That,” I said, tapping the charcoal against the wood, “is why we count people instead of assuming everyone is where they should be.”
Within moments, half a dozen people were calling names while the others checked their groups.
We found Osric Reeveson behind his mother’s house, arguing with his brother about a spear.
By the time I returned to the meeting house, after explaining to Osric that a weapon dispute was not an acceptable reason to disappear without telling the person responsible for counting him, Wulfric had already been there and gone twice.
He moved through Ashford with the relentless purpose of a storm that knew exactly where it was going.
One moment he was speaking with the hunters about the southern roads, the next inspecting the ditch beyond the western edge of the village, then sending two men to reinforce a section of fence I’d barely noticed.
He knew where horsemen would struggle, where men on foot might approach unseen, which ground became treacherous after rain, and how far a bow could carry from the rise beyond the barley field.
I knew that thirty-seven people were not thirty-eight, and between us, we had a system.
“You have not eaten.”
I startled badly enough to drop the charcoal.
Wulfric stood behind me, a dark wool cloak thrown over his mail, damp fair hair tied at the nape of his neck. Rain had darkened his shoulders, and there was mud on one boot almost to the knee.
“You walk remarkably quietly for a man wearing half a kitchen’s worth of metal.”
His gaze dropped to the tally board. “You have not eaten.”
“Yes, you mentioned that.”
He held out a piece of bread spread with something pale and lumpy as I stared at it.
“What’s that?”
“Cheese.”
It didn’t really look like cheese, but I was hungry so I took the bread, also because arguing with Wulfric before breakfast required more energy than I currently possessed.
The bread was dense, the cheese sharp enough to make my eyes water, and together they were the finest meal ever served to a woman standing ankle-deep in the mud.
Wulfric watched until I finished.
“There. I’ve eaten. Do you feel powerful?”
“A little.”
I almost laughed as I turned back to the board.
“The first group reached the forest safely. The second came back for more grain. Anya says the old ones who refused to leave yesterday are still refusing today.”
“They have refused me for twenty years. You will not fare better.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of irritation.”
“I have met you.”
My head came up, and as I looked at him, his expression didn’t change.
“You made a joke.”
“Nay.”
“You did.”
“You are overtired.”
“I’m putting this in the records.”
That almost-smile appeared, the one he tried to hide beneath the beard and battle scars as though amusement were an embarrassing weakness.
“Walk with me.”
Those words shouldn’t have made me aware of the fact that he was tall, broad-shouldered, and standing close enough for me to smell rain, leather, woodsmoke, and the faint metallic tang of mail.
Exhaustion. Definitely exhaustion to be noticing a hot medieval lord instead of focusing on the coming war. I handed the tally board to Wystan.
“If anyone disappears, find them.”
“What if they disappear because the Normans come?”
“Then find me first.”
Wulfric led me past the last cottages and along the rise overlooking Ashford.
Below us, people moved between the timber buildings, carrying bundles, barrels, sacks of meal and strips of salted meat.
A cart creaked toward the northern path with two older women wrapped in cloaks, both complaining vigorously enough to reassure me they would survive the invasion through spite alone.
Wulfric stopped beneath an ash tree.
“You need a name.”
“I have one.”
“A proper name our people may understand.” He shifted his stance. “A story, then.”
I looked at him as he folded his arms.
“You came from the shore alone, dressed in odd clothing, speaking strangely. You have no husband, no servants, no baggage, no horse, and no place you name as home.”
“When you say it like that, I sound suspicious.”
“Sooner or later, men other than mine will ask who you are.”
The amusement had gone from his face entirely.
“And you think they’ll care?”
“I think armed men care greatly about what does not fit where they expect it.”
He wasn’t wrong. People liked things labeled. Fire. Flood. Accident. Enemy. Unknown was where panic grew.
“What do you suggest?”
“You are a widowed kinswoman of mine.”
I choked on the last bite of bread.
“Your what?”
“A widowed kinswoman.”
“Surely there are less alarming possibilities.”
“You came from a distant household across the sea. Your home was destroyed in fighting, your people scattered.”
“And when someone asks which sea?”
“The western one.”
“That seems conveniently large.”
“It is.”
“Which household?”
“One no longer standing.”
“Very efficient.”
“I thought so.”
I hated how good he was at this. The story explained my accent, my lack of possession, and my ignorance of local customs. More importantly, it placed me under his protection.
“You’re lying for me.”
“I am preparing for eventual questions.”
“That’s a very lordly way of saying lying.”
His blue eyes held mine.
“Then answer mine truthfully, and I shall have less need.”
The air seemed colder all at once.
“Where is your home, Darcy?”
I looked down toward Ashford. Smoke curled from the thatched roofs.
Tova ran across the lane after a hen, her little wool skirts flapping around thin legs.
Godwin stood outside the storehouse arguing with Gilda, who had apparently found a third spinning wheel and was attempting to make a legal case for it.
Somewhere beyond everything I could see lay London. Not my London, not for another thousand years.
“Far from here.”
“Across the sea?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
His brow furrowed.
Not my best answer.
“Do your people live?”
My family. Everyone going on with their lives while mine had simply stopped.
“Some of them.”
Something in my voice changed his face.
“Was your home destroyed?”
“No.”
“Then why can you not return?”
He meant roads, or distance, or the Norman invasion, but I’d wondered the same thing every hour since I’d been tossed into the past without a by your leave.
“I just can’t.”
“Is someone hunting you?”
“No.”
“Did someone cast you out?”
“No.”
“Then tell me where you came from.”
“I can’t.”
His jaw tightened.
“Can’t, or will not?”
“Both.”
The wind pushed damp hair across my face. I tucked it behind one ear, buying myself a second I didn’t need.
He waited, and that was the worst thing about Wulfric. He could wait longer than any man I’d ever met.
Except perhaps Watch Manager Ellis, who could sit through a silence until you confessed to crimes you hadn’t committed.
“If I told you the truth,” I said, “you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You have not given me the chance.”
For one wild second, I almost did. I imagined saying it all. The antique fair. The old woman. The brooch. The beach. The year 2026. Cars and phones and planes. Electric lights. Fire engines. Sirens.
Wulfric would look at me the way people looked at someone standing too near the edge of a roof.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
His face closed and the loss of that almost-smile bothered me more than it should have.
“You stand with my people,” he said after a moment. “You work until you cannot stand. You ask nothing for yourself. I have seen you frightened, angry, cold and weary. I have not seen you act cruel.”
“That may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”
“It was not meant kindly.”
“Still taking it.”
His mouth twitched despite himself. Then he looked toward the village.
“If anyone asks, you are my widowed kinswoman from a household beyond the western sea.”
“You do realize I know absolutely nothing about being a widow.”
“That has not stopped many women.”
I laughed before I could help it.
His gaze came back to me, and the laughter faded slowly. He was standing very close. Close enough that I could see the pale line of the scar across his cheek and the darker gold in his beard. Close enough that I noticed the rain caught in his lashes.
This was not my life. I had been in 1066 for three days. Three days. I’d lost Brian months ago, lost my own time, and was currently preparing to survive an invasion with a Saxon lord who brought me breakfast.
“Your story needs work,” I said.
His gaze stayed on mine. “Does it?”
“Yes. I need details for consistency. People ruin lies by making them too vague.”
“You have experience lying?”
“Firefighters meet the public.”
He gave a slow nod, as though that explained every failing in human nature. Below us, a horn sounded from the southern watch. Wulfric changed instantly. The warmth vanished. The warrior remained. He turned toward the sound, listening. One call. Then another. A scout returning.
“Come,” he said as we ran.
And because there was danger ahead and work waiting for me, I followed without looking back.