AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
Early Summer, 1277, East Anglia, England
Oxborough Castle, Home of Fawke of Trent,
Earl of Oxborough
HER FATHER DIDN’T LIKE HER, BUT HE WOULD NEVER DO THIS to her, never.
Even as she swore over and over to herself that it couldn’t be true, she couldn’t stop staring at the man. The air seemed to stir in seamless folds about him as he stood utterly still and silent. She knew somehow that he wouldn’t move, not until he had judged all the occupants of the great hall of Oxborough Castle. Only then would he act.
His face was dark, his expression calm and untroubled. Sharp sunlight poured in through the open doors of the great hall, framing him there as he stood motionless. She stared at him from the shadows of the winding stone stairs. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to accept that he was here at Oxborough. But he was here, and he didn’t look like he had any intention at all of leaving.
His eyes were as blue as the sea beneath the bright morning sun, yet they seemed somehow old and filled with knowledge and experience a man his age shouldn’t possess, and distant, as if part of himself was locked away. She could feel the strength of him from where she stood, feel the determination in him, the utter control, the deliberate arrogance. He looked to her like the Devil’s dearest friend.
His finely made gray cloak moved and swelled about him even though there was no wind. The black whip coiled about his wrist seemed to whisper in that thick, contained air. But he made no movement. He was still and calm, waiting, watching.
He wasn’t wearing armor, the whip around his wrist and the huge sword that was sheathed to his wide leather belt were his only weapons. He was dressed entirely in gray, even his boots were a soft, supple gray leather. His tunic was pewter gray, a rich wool, his undertunic a lighter gray, fitting him closely. His cross garters were gray leather strips, binding his leggings close.
No, her father couldn’t mean this. Surely this wasn’t the man her father had brought to Oxborough to marry her. Hastings wasn’t afraid. She was terrified. Marry this man? He would be her husband, her lord? No, surely this couldn’t be the man, more like he was an emissary from Hades or a messenger from the mystical shades of Avalon.
Her father wanted to make this man of his line? Leave him all his possessions and land? Bestow upon him his titles since all her father had produced was her, a single female, of little account in the long scheme of things. Except for this marriage. Except to bind her to a man who scared her to her very toes.
This was the man her father’s longtime friend Graelam de Moreton wanted her to marry? Lord Graelam was her friend, too. She remembered him throwing her squealing into the air when she was naught but seven years old. Graelam was as good as family, and he wanted this unearthly creature to be her husband, too? Indeed it had been Graelam, now striding into the castle’s great hall, who said this man was a warrior to be trusted, to be held in respect and awe, and who held honor more dear than his own soul. Hastings didn’t know what it meant. Of course she shouldn’t have heard his views, but she’d been eavesdropping two months before, bent low in the shadows behind her father’s chair. Now her father no longer sat in his chair. He no longer ate his dinner in the great hall, in his finely carved chair, served by his page and squire, both vying to give him the tastiest cut of beef. Now he sipped broth in his bed, praying it would stay calm in his belly.
The man’s cloak seemed to move again and she thought she’d scream. All the Oxborough people in the great hall were huddled together, staring at the man, wondering what would happen if he became their master. Was he violent and cruel? Would he raise his hand when it amused him to do so? Would he brandish that whip as her father had done when he had found that her mother had bedded the falconer? Hastings hated whips.
The man’s cloak rippled yet again. There was an unearthly shriek. She stuffed her fist into her mouth and sucked herself farther back into the shadows.
The man slipped his gloved hand beneath his cloak and pulled out a thickly furred animal with a bushy tail. There was a low hiss of fear from all the Oxborough people in the great hall. Was it a devil’s familiar? No, no, not that, not a cat.
It was a marten. Sleek, thick-furred, deep brown in color save for the snow white beneath its chin and on its belly. She had a beautiful sable cloak made from this animal’s fur. She’d wager this animal would never have to worry about being a covering for someone’s back. Not held so securely by this man. What was this warrior doing with a marten?
The man brought the marten to his face, looked directly into its eyes, nodded, then very gently slipped it once again beneath his cloak inside his tunic.
She smiled, she couldn’t help it. The man couldn’t be all that terrifying if he carried a pet marten next to his heart.
Graelam de Moreton stepped up behind him and slapped the man on
his back—as if he were just a man, nothing more than a simple man. The man turned and smiled. That smile transformed him. In that moment when he smiled, he looked human and very real, but then he wasn’t smiling, and he was as he had been, a stranger, a dark stranger, with a marten in his tunic.
The two of them were of a size, both taller than the oak sapling she’d planted three summers past, big men, too big, taking too much space, crowding everyone around them. She’d never feared Graelam, though. She knew from stories her father had told her since she’d been small that he was a warrior whom other soldiers backed away from if they could, that her father had once seen Graelam sever a man in half with one swing of his sword and kill another three men with the same grace and power. She had never before considered that a man could be graceful while he butchered other men.
“Graelam,” the man said, his voice as deep and rough as a ship pulling at its moorings in a storm. “It has been too long since I have tapped my fist into your ugly face and watched you sprawl to the ground. All goes well with you?”
“Aye, too well. I don’t deserve what I have, the luck God has bestowed upon me, but I give thanks daily for my life. I caution you never to call my face ugly in front of my wife. She has a fondness for it. She may be small but she is ferocious in her defense of me.”
The man said, “She is a special lady, unlike any other. You know why I am here.”
“Naturally,” Graelam de Moreton said. “I regret that Fawke of Trent is very ill and cannot be in the great hall to welcome you. Hastings should be here to greet you but I do not see her. We will sup, then I will take you to him.”
“I wish to see him now. I wish to have this over with as quickly as possible.”
“Very well.” Graelam nodded to her father’s steward, Torric, so thin Hastings had once told him that she feared he would blow away whenever there was a sharp wind off the sea. Graelam then motioned for the man to precede him up the winding stone stairs that led to the upper chambers. “Then,” he said to the man’s gray-cloaked back, “you will want to meet his daughter.”
“I suppose that I must.”
When they were out of sight, Hastings drew a deep breath. Her future would be sealed at her father’s bedside. Her future and the future of Oxborough. Perhaps the man would refuse. She walked into the great hall. She called out to the thirty-some people, “This man is here to see Lord Fawke. We will prepare to dine.”
But who is he? she heard over and over.
People were whispering behind their hands, as if he could hear them and would come back to punish them. Their faces were bright with curiosity and a tinge of fear. This was the sort of man who would wage a siege and show no mercy.
She said aloud, “He is Severin of Langthorne, Baron Louges. He, Lord Graelam, and their men will dine here. MacDear, please return to the kitchen and keep basting the pork with the mint sauce. Alice, see that the bread remains warm and crisp. Allen, fetch the sweet wine Lord Graelam prefers.” She shut up. They were all staring at her, all filled with questions. She raised her hands, splaying her fingers in front of her. “I believe,” she said finally, “that Lord Severin is here to wed with me.”
She didn’t listen to the babble. She was frankly surprised that everyone, all the way to the scullery maids in the kitchen, hadn’t known who he was or why he was here. A well-kept secret. She knew he had just returned from France to find his older brother murdered, his estate beggared, his peasants starving, nothing there but devastated fields destroyed by marauding outlaws.
Aye, he was here to wed her, the heiress of Oxborough. She’d heard this when her father had asked Graelam what he knew of the man, what he thought of him and his honor and his strength. And Graelam had praised Severin, told him how King Edward had requested Severin ride at his right hand when they had been in the Holy Land during those final battles with the Saracens. He had stood beside Edward on the ramparts at Acre.
He was called Severin, she’d heard Graelam say, then he would add as he rubbed his callused hands together, “Aye, Severin, the Gray Warrior.”
• • •
“Severin is here, Fawke.”
Fawke of Trent, Earl of Oxborough, wished he could see the young man more clearly, but the film that had grown over his eyes was thicker than it had been just this morning, blurring everything, even his daughter’s face, which was good since she looked so much like her mother, and it pained him to his guts to look at her. Too much pain, and now death was coming to him. He hated it, yet he accepted it. At moments like this, he welcomed it, but first he had to see this through.
“Severin,” he said, knowing he sounded weak and despising himself for it.
The young man gripped his wrist, his hold firm and strong, but it didn’t hurt Fawke. It felt warm and powerful, a link to both his past and the future, a future of many generations, and his blood would continue to flow through those warriors who would come after him.
“You will wed my daughter?”
