Chapter 16
Sixteen
WULFRIC
By the time the Norman riders reached us, I had decided that I would not let them burn the settlement, that I would not waste the lives of my people defending ground we could not possibly hold, and that, should their commander prove to be one of those men who valued pride above profit, I would kill him before the others had time to cut us all down.
It was not, in truth, a particularly good plan, but after the past month I had learned to appreciate a plan merely for existing.
The settlement lay within a shallow bend of the stream, no longer the desperate collection of shelters we had thrown together after fleeing the first camp, though not yet anything a generous man could have called a village.
Huts of timber and woven hazel stood beneath the trees in rough rows, their roofs patched with turf, thatch, and whatever else had survived the flight from Ashford, while paths had been worn between the cooking fires, work areas, animal pens, stores, and the larger shelter Darcy had insisted we keep clear for the sick and wounded.
She had also insisted the latrines be dug downhill and downstream.
The arguments over that had lasted two days, during which I had learned more than any sane man should ever need to know about the proper distance between drinking water and human waste, and Darcy had nearly struck Osric with a shovel after he suggested that the old ways had served us well enough.
“You are alive by accident,” she had told him.
Osric, who possessed the remarkable ability to take offense at facts, had drawn himself up.
Darcy had looked him over and added, “A deeply unfortunate accident.”
He now dug wherever she pointed.
I thought of that as I stood at the edge of the clearing, watching the Norman riders emerge between the trees beneath a pale autumn sky.
Their horses were dark with sweat and mud, the weak afternoon sun catching here and there upon mail and helmet rims, and though I counted only twelve men, I had no doubt others waited beyond sight.
No commander with sense rode into a strange settlement without enough men hidden nearby to answer potential trouble.
Godwin shifted beside me, rolling one shoulder beneath his cloak.
“How many do you reckon?”
“Enough.”
He considered this. “A useful number.”
“I have always thought so.”
On my other side, Darcy made a sound that seemed to contain an entire opinion.
She wore a brown wool gown belted at the waist, its hem dark with mud despite Anya’s increasingly hopeless attempts to make her respectable, while a heavier cloak was fastened at one shoulder with a plain iron pin.
Her hair had escaped its plait in several places and curled damply around her face, and a faint streak of ash remained along one cheek from the morning fires.
She looked tired, as she had for days. The knowledge vexed me more than it should have, because every time I told her to rest she found something else that required counting.
People. Grain. Blankets. Tools. Bowls. The woman might have counted leaves had anyone suggested we were in danger of running short.
“What?” I asked.
“You two sound like old men outside a pub, pretending you can tell how many horses are coming by the sound of their hooves.”
Godwin frowned. “What is a pub?”
“A tavern.”
“Then why not say tavern?”
“Because that would be too easy.”
Godwin snorted as she turned upon him. “You can leave.”
I might have smiled, had the first Norman not chosen that moment to ride into the clearing.
He was not the largest man among them, nor the most richly dressed, though his cloak was good wool lined with fur and the sword at his hip bore silver upon the pommel.
His face was narrow, his dark beard cut close, and his eyes held the calm, assessing look of a man accustomed to entering other men’s homes and deciding which parts would soon belong to him.
I disliked him immediately. That was useful. A man should know where he stands.
The man surveyed the settlement before dismounting, taking in the shelters and stores, the animals penned beneath the trees, the people gathered at a careful distance, and the armed men standing near me.
Then his gaze settled upon Darcy. Men’s gazes often did, which had begun to irritate me for reasons I preferred not to examine too closely.
“I am Raoul de Brienne,” he said in French.
I answered him in the same tongue. “I am Wulfric of Ashford.”
His brows rose.
“Of Ashford?”
“What remains of it.”
Raoul glanced toward the western ridge, beyond which the faintest stain of old smoke still marked the sky. Something shifted in his expression then, not sympathy, certainly, but interest.
I had seen the same look among soldiers. Men understood defeat because every warrior expected to meet it eventually. Survival, however, particularly survival that came from choosing retreat rather than glory, confused them.
Raoul removed his gloves one finger at a time. “You shelter rebels.”
“I shelter farmers, children, widows, old men, and several goats.”
As though summoned to testify, one of the goats bleated behind me.
Darcy murmured, “Excellent timing.”
I ignored her, but Raoul did not as his eyes moved back to her. “And this woman?”
“Also difficult to control.”
Darcy’s head turned sharply.
I kept my face solemn, though it cost me.
Raoul’s mouth almost curved, and I took the small victory for what it was. A man who had been made curious, or better yet amused, was often easier to bargain with than one who arrived already insulted.
“You have gathered people without Duke William’s leave,” Raoul said. “You occupy land that will soon belong to another lord, if it does not already, and men hiding in these woods have attacked Norman patrols.”
“We have attacked those who attacked us.”
“That distinction may not matter.”
“It matters to those still alive.”
Silence followed, and I allowed it to remain between us.
There had been a time when I would have filled such a silence with threat, because young men often believed the loudest voice must belong to the strongest man.
My father had taught me otherwise, though it had taken war, grief, and one woman falling into my life before I learned how useful the lesson truly was.
Raoul turned his head slowly, studying the settlement once more.
“You will disperse.”
A murmur moved through the people behind me, low and uneasy, but I did not turn toward them.
“No.”
Beside me, Godwin went very still and Darcy did not move at all, which I found considerably more alarming.
Raoul’s face hardened. “You misunderstand your position.”
“I understand it plainly. If we disperse now, many will die before winter.”
“That is not my concern.”
“Then taxes will be.”
For the first time since entering the clearing, Raoul looked at me without the faintest trace of condescension.
“We have grain.”
“Little.” He sniffed.
“We will have more.”
“You have burned all the fields.”
“Not all.”
His gaze sharpened, and I knew I had him listening now.
I moved aside and gestured toward the settlement, toward the shelters built from salvaged timber and the stores protected beneath oiled cloth, toward the men repairing tools beside the fire and the women who knew exactly how much food remained hidden in abandoned villages for three days’ journey in every direction.
“The people here come from Ashford and the surrounding lands. We have millers, smiths, woodworkers, hunters, men who know every road between here and the coast, and women who know where grain was hidden before your armies passed through.”
Somewhere behind me, a child began to cry and was hushed almost at once.
“We can scatter,” I continued. “You may spend the winter hunting us through the woods, losing men to arrows, sickness, and weather while farms rot and the roads remain unsafe.”
His jaw tightened. “Or?”
Darcy shifted beside me as I looked at her and found her watching Raoul with the expression I had come to know very well.
Calculation.
I turned back to the Norman.
“Or you speak with the woman who built the system you mean to tax.”
That earned everyone’s attention, Darcy’s most of all as her gaze snapped toward me. “I’m sorry?”
Raoul frowned. “What system?”
I almost smiled, because Darcy looked ready to murder me, which meant the nervousness was already leaving her as I gestured in her direction.
“You may bargain with the woman who knows how much food we possess, how many mouths we feed, which roads remain passable, which villages have been abandoned, and how much labor we can spare without starving ourselves.”
Raoul looked at Darcy, then back at me.
“And if I bargain with you?”
“You will receive a poorer answer.”
Godwin coughed into his fist.
Darcy closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, the woman who had been nervous was gone. I had watched that change take place before, though it still fascinated me.
Raoul addressed her in French. “You speak my tongue?”
Darcy looked at me as I translated, then she nodded once. “All right. Ask him whether he wants numbers or theatrics.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“I am not saying that.”
“Fine. Ask him what he actually needs.”
I translated a version less likely to get us killed.
“Food,” Raoul said after a moment. “Labor. Safe passage upon the roads.”
Darcy listened as I repeated the answer, then glanced toward the stores, her mind visibly moving ahead of the conversation.
“How many men?”
Raoul answered. Then she asked how often his patrols passed through the region, how many horses required fodder, which roads the Normans meant to hold through winter, and whether they intended to rebuild the bridge south of the ridge.
By the third question, Raoul no longer looked amused. By the fifth, two of his men had dismounted and moved closer. By the seventh, Godwin was grinning openly.
I stood and translated while Darcy bargained away everything we could spare and nothing we could not. Three measures of grain now. More after harvest, provided the fields remained ours to plant.
Labor to repair the southern road. No forced quartering within the settlement. Safe passage for women and children moving between the nearby villages.
No burning.
Raoul refused that demand immediately as Darcy folded her arms.
The Norman commander rubbed one hand across his beard. “You ask much.”
“So does he.”
Raoul did not understand the words, but he understood the tone, and for the first time he laughed.
The sound startled everyone, even Darcy.
At last he held out his hand. His grip tightened around mine, a reminder and a warning both.
“Do not mistake tolerance for freedom.”
“I do not.”
That, more than anything else I had said, seemed to satisfy him, perhaps because conquerors expected hatred and submission, but understood clear eyes.
The terms were not a victory. England remained conquered, Ashford had been burned to the ground, and we would give grain to men who had crossed the sea with horses, fire, and steel.
Someday a Norman lord might still arrive to claim every bit of ground beneath our feet, and there would be new bargains, new threats, and perhaps battles we could not yet imagine.
But the children would sleep beneath roofs that night. Fields could be planted, bridges could be rebuilt, and people who had spent weeks running might finally remain in one place long enough to set down their tools and make something that would still be there tomorrow.
I had once believed a lord’s duty was to hold the ground his fathers had held, no matter the cost.
Now I looked at the settlement we had all built and understood that land was not made sacred because dead men had owned it. It became home because living people stayed.
When the Norman riders finally disappeared beneath the trees, silence held over the clearing for several breaths, as though no one quite trusted the fact that the danger had truly passed.
Then Gilda spoke loudly from near the fire. “Does this mean we have to feed them?”
Darcy turned toward her. “Yes.”
Gilda scowled. “I liked them better as enemies.”
Wystan appeared beside her, as boys often did when food or trouble was mentioned. “You said the pottage was too thick.”
“It is.”
“We could give them that.”
Darcy pointed at him, a smile on her face. “An excellent idea.”
Laughter moved across the settlement, quiet at first, then gathering as one person passed it to another until even Godwin was wiping at his eyes.
I looked at Darcy. She was laughing too, her head tipped back slightly, the last tension of the afternoon leaving her face, and something in my chest eased at the sight.
I loved her.
The truth no longer arrived as a shock. It simply lived in me now, as steady as breath.
“What?”
“You did well.”
Her smile softened. “So did you.”
For a moment neither of us spoke, though much seemed to pass between us all the same.
There were too many people nearby, too much work waiting, and too many things we had not yet dared put into words, but for the first time since the Normans landed I allowed myself to imagine something beyond the next danger.
Tomorrow.
A roof repaired and a field planted. Darcy arguing with someone over onions. The image was so ordinary that it frightened me more than battle ever had.
One of the children tugged at her skirts and with a smile she went to see what was needed as I watched her go.
Later, Wystan came running, a tear at the knee in his hose.
“My lord!”
I turned, and the sight of the boy’s expression made me expect another escaped chicken, injured goat, or minor disaster of the sort that seemed to follow him through life.
Instead, he held out a mud-covered object.
“Found it near the stream,” he said. “Thought it might be silver.”
I took it from him. The thing was round and heavy in my palm, caked thickly enough with mud that I could make out little at first except the shape and the glint of dark red stones beneath the dirt.
I rubbed my thumb slowly across the surface, wiping the mud away. Bright silver gleamed beneath it, untouched by age.