Chapter 11
Eleven
WULFRIC
By nightfall, I had counted the living four times, and although the number remained stubbornly unchanged, I could not bring myself to trust it.
I had counted men after battles before, standing ankle-deep in mud while blood dried black upon shields and the wounded called for mothers who had been dead twenty years.
I knew how easily a name might be spoken once, twice, five times before someone finally admitted the man who bore it would never answer.
Yet here, beneath a ridge thick with beech and oak while smoke from the camp stained the southern sky, the number held.
Three dead.
Seven badly wounded.
Others were cut, bruised, burned, or shaken badly enough that they would wake screaming for many nights to come, but the children had survived, as had the old folk and nearly every man and woman who had entered the forest camp that morning believing it might keep them safe.
Behind me, what we had built was burning.
It was not Ashford itself, though I knew better than to take comfort from that, for the Normans had come too near and would almost certainly search farther before they were done.
The hall might still stand, along with the houses and byres, Aelfwyn’s herb patch beneath the southern wall, the carved lintel my grandfather had set over the door, and all the hundred small things a man never thought to cherish until he imagined them blackened by fire.
Yet the first camp was gone. The shelters my people had raised with their own hands, the stores we had carried from Ashford, the pots, blankets, tools, and winter grain we had been forced to leave behind had become flame and smoke before sunset, and now people who had already fled one home were huddled beneath trees, trying to make another before the cold settled fully over the forest.
“My lord.”
Godwin came to stand beside me, his gray beard darkened with soot and one sleeve torn nearly from the shoulder.
I looked him over. “You look terrible.”
“So do you.”
Glancing down, I was forced to concede the matter.
My mail was streaked with mud and blood, my cloak had vanished somewhere during the retreat, and the front of my tunic bore a fresh tear where a Norman spear had come near enough to remind me that death sometimes missed through carelessness rather than mercy.
The old man lowered himself onto a fallen trunk with a groan, and I sat beside him in silence while the cold deepened and the sounds of the people drifted up from the camp.
Small fires had been hidden between banks of earth, their flames kept low lest the Normans see the glow through the trees.
Women wrapped children in wool blankets as men hauled water from the stream.
Somewhere a baby cried, someone else cursed over the proper place to dig the latrine trench, and an old woman loudly informed anyone willing to listen that she had survived sixty winters without sleeping on the ground and saw no reason to begin now.
Life, I had discovered, was remarkably stubborn. Kingdoms could fall, armies could burn homes, and men could die with songs unfinished upon their lips, yet someone would still complain about the bedding.
A sudden commotion rose near the northern path, and I turned just as a boy came racing through the trees.
“My lord! My lord, we found her!”
Wystan followed several paces behind, carrying something carefully in both arms as I stared.
It was a chicken. Not the black hen Hild had insulted, but a small brown bird with a crooked comb and one missing tail feather, which suggested it had survived the battle through either extraordinary luck or a refusal to understand what was happening.
Wystan stopped before us, flushed and grinning. “I thought her lost.”
Godwin slowly closed his eyes.
“You went back,” I said.
The grin disappeared as the boy petted the fowl.
“Not far.”
“How far?”
Wystan looked down at the chicken, perhaps hoping she might provide a useful answer. “Far is difficult to judge in a forest.”
“Wystan.”
His shoulders sagged. “Only to the stream.”
“The stream was beyond the retreat line.”
“Aye, but she was there, I heard her.”
“You risked your life for a chicken?”
“She lays large eggs.”
Beside me, Godwin coughed into his fist, although the sound bore a familiar resemblance to laughter.
I gave him a warning look before turning back to the boy. “You crossed ground where Norman soldiers might still have been searching because the bird lays large eggs?”
“Large delicious eggs,” Wystan said.
The chicken chose that moment to foul the front of his tunic.
Godwin doubled over, his laughter carrying through the trees so loud and helpless that several people turned to stare, and though I fought it for the sake of discipline, a snort escaped.
Wystan looked wounded. “She was frightened.”
“So was half of England,” Godwin managed, wiping at his eyes, “yet England did not shite on your clothes.”
“Take the bird to Hild,” I said, before I disgraced myself by laughing outright.
Wystan walked away muttering to the chicken, who appeared perfectly satisfied with the outcome.
When the laughter faded, I let out a breath. “Three dead.”
Godwin’s expression sobered. “Aye.”
“I gave the order to abandon the camp.”
“Aye.”
“My father would not have.”
“Nay.”
There was no comfort in the answer, and I was grateful for that, because false kindness had always irritated me more than truth.
I looked south again, watching the fire fade behind the ridge until only a red stain remained beneath the smoke. “He would have held the ground.”
“And buried thirty more people when he lost it.”
My jaw tightened.
Godwin rested his forearms upon his knees. “Your father was a good lord, but when battle fever took him, he could be the most stubborn fool in Sussex.”
“I am the first man of my line to abandon Ashford.”
“You did not abandon anyone.”
Godwin nodded toward the camp below, where children clustered near their mothers and wounded men drank watered ale while pretending not to grimace.
I followed his gaze. My people were cold, frightened, grieving, and alive.
I thought of Darcy in the smoke, shouting men away from abandoned shields and sacks of grain while arrows struck the clearing around her, calm and steady.
A child shrieked somewhere below, and I was on my feet before the sound turned into laughter.
Godwin gave me a long look.
“What?”
He stood and brushed leaves from his hose. “Go find Darcy.”
“I did not ask where she was.”
“Nay, but your eyes have searched for her every few moments since we came here.”
I found Darcy beside Gilda, who had been settled near one of the low fires with her wounded arm bound in fresh linen and tucked close against her body.
The older woman’s face was pale beneath the soot, and although exhaustion had deepened every line around her mouth, her tongue remained as sharp as ever.
“I told her I am well,” Gilda said as I approached.
“And I told her she’s an appalling patient,” Darcy replied.
“She fusses.”
“You tried to carry water.”
“I have another arm.”
I stopped beside them. “You were cut nearly to the bone.”
Gilda looked up at me. “And yet, as I have explained to this tiresome woman, the other arm remains perfectly serviceable.”
Darcy pointed at her. “You see what I’m dealing with?”
“Aye.”
Gilda’s eyes moved between us, narrowed, then brightened with the unmistakable pleasure of a woman who had discovered something of import.
“I have remembered something.”
“No,” Darcy said at once.
Together we settled Gilda beneath another blanket, and once the older woman finally closed her eyes, Darcy sat back on her heels with a weary sigh.
She looked as though the battle had dragged her through every bramble in Sussex. Smoke tangled in the dark strands escaping her braid, soot marked one cheek, and the hem of the wool gown was torn and muddy. Dried blood stained her hands.
I held out a wooden cup.
Darcy eyed it suspiciously. “What is that?”
“Ale.”
“How bad?”
“Very.”
After one swallow, her face twisted. “You weren’t exaggerating.”
I sat beside her, and for a time we watched the camp without speaking.
Someone had found the goat. I did not know who had brought the beast to the second camp, and no one admitted responsibility. It now stood tied to a young oak while chewing contentedly.
Darcy nodded toward it. “Did we own a goat this morning?”
“Nay.”
“Good. I was worried I’d overlooked him in the head count.”
The laugh escaped me before I expected it, rich enough that Darcy turned toward me with surprise softening her face, and for one breath I simply looked at her.
“They lost a lot today.” She gazed over the villagers and refugees.
“Aye.”
“I’m sorry.”
She did not tell me the shelters were only wood, nor that pots could be replaced and barley planted again, because whatever place had shaped Darcy, it had taught her that a thing need not breathe to leave an empty place when it was gone.
“My hall may already be lost,” I said quietly. “My father built part of it, and his father before him. Aelfwyn planted herbs beneath the southern wall.”
I had not meant to speak her name, but Darcy did not stiffen or look away.
“What kind?”
“Feverfew. Mint. Sage.”
“She sounds practical.”
“She was.”
The silence that followed was not painful, merely full, and when Darcy handed the cup back, our fingers brushed. Neither of us moved.
It was such a small thing, the touch of her fingers against mine, and yet I felt it more keenly than I had felt the spear tear through my tunic that morning.
Her hand was cold from the night air, the skin roughened in places, and there was still dried blood caught beneath one nail despite all her washing.
I should have taken the cup, but instead, I let my fingers remain against hers.
Darcy looked down at our hands, then slowly lifted her eyes to mine.
“You saved them today,” I said, though the words had little to do with what had suddenly passed between us.
“We saved them.”
She always did that, refused praise as stubbornly as she refused rest, taking whatever burden was placed before her and carrying it as though the weight belonged to everyone except herself.
I thought of her in the smoke, her face blackened with soot while arrows struck the clearing, shouting at men twice her size to leave sacks of grain and keep moving.
I thought of her standing over Gilda with blood to her elbows, of frightened children reaching for her hand, of the strange fierce woman who had arrived from nowhere and somehow become part of every future I imagined before I had realized I was imagining one.
There had been a time when I believed wanting nothing was the same as being safe.
Aelfwyn’s death had taught me how quickly love could become an empty place inside a man, and for two years I had guarded that emptiness as though grief itself were a vow. I had thought that to want again would be to betray her.
Yet Darcy was not standing where Aelfwyn had stood. She had made another place entirely, and God help me, I wanted her there.
The knowledge should have sent me to my feet, instead, I turned toward her.
Firelight moved across her face, catching in the dark strands that had escaped her braid and warming the soot along one cheek. She looked exhausted, and so unbearably alive that something in my chest tightened.
Darcy’s breath caught. Neither of us spoke. There was no wound to tend now, no battle waiting beyond the trees, no excuse for the way I looked at her or the way she looked back.
I lifted my hand slowly, giving her time to turn away. My fingers touched her cheek, and for one heartbeat she went still, then leaned into my palm.
All day I had watched people run toward her for help, reach for her strength, ask her to carry one more fear, one more wound, one more thing.
This was different, she was choosing to come closer.
I bent my head. The first touch of my mouth to hers was almost careful, because some foolish part of me still believed I could stop there, could take only enough to know what I had spent so many days trying not to want. Then her fingers curled into my tunic.
The restraint I had been so proud of vanished as I kissed her again, deeper this time, and she came toward me with a soft sound that went through me like an arrow finding the gap beneath my mail.
My arm closed around her waist, drawing her nearer until the cold air no longer fit between us, and for one moment there was no Norman army, no lost hall, no smoke staining the sky.
There was only Darcy. Her mouth warm beneath mine, hand fisted over my heart, the faint taste of ale and the softer warmth beneath it.
I had kissed my wife beneath summer trees and beside winter fires. I knew what it was to love a woman, knew what it was to lose her, and had believed that part of my life buried so deeply no living soul would ever touch it again.
But this was not memory, Darcy was not memory. She was here, stubborn and warm and alive in my arms, and the wanting that moved through me was not grief dressed in another face. It belonged wholly to her. That frightened me enough that I almost pulled away.
Then Darcy rose onto her toes and kissed me back, and I forgot fear.
My hand slid into the loose hair at the nape of her neck as I held her there, not because I thought she might leave, but because for the first time in longer than I could remember, I wanted something with no thought of duty attached to it.
I wanted this woman. Not because she had saved my people or because she had stood beside me in battle, and not because I owed her anything at all. Simply because she was Darcy.
When at last we drew apart, I did not go far. Neither did she. Her fingers still gripped my tunic, and her breath warmed my mouth while mine came far less steadily than I would ever have admitted to another man.
For a moment she only looked at me. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, and the astonishment in her face pleased me more than it should have.
“Well,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
Her smile had barely begun when Gilda groaned behind us.
Darcy turned so quickly she nearly knocked the ale over. The older woman was shivering beneath the blankets. She pressed the back of her hand to Gilda’s forehead, then reached for the bandage, and I saw the instant everything changed as she peeled away the linen.
The flesh surrounding the cut had swollen, angry and hot, while a thin red line had begun creeping upward along Gilda’s arm.
“Wulfric.”
For the first time since I had encountered her, I heard fear in her voice.