Anne Herries - Medieval Brides

Evie turned her head away, chewing her lower lip.

‘Evie? Please…’

Evie spun back, and with little more than a swift headshake stopped Leofwine ejecting Cecily into the street. ‘Cecily…my lady…in the past your family were more than good to mine. Would that we could help you…’ again her hand rested upon her belly ‘…but we have our own family to consider—’

‘Aye,’ Leofwine all but growled. ‘Years without her quickening, then now, of all times, when the saints have deserted us and the world is in turmoil…’

‘Babies choose their own times,’ Cecily murmured, and sent Evie a warm smile. ‘I am happy for you.’

Evie inclined her head. ‘I thank you. But you must see how difficult it is for us. I will tell you what I told Emma—’

‘So she did come here. I knew it!’

‘Evie—’ Leofwine’s face darkened ‘—be wary.’

Evie placed a hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Think, love. Since Judhael told us less than nothing of his plans, there’s not much we can tell. But we can at least put her mind to rest on one score. Emma is with Judhael, Lady Cecily.’

‘They have left Winchester?’

‘I believe so.’

‘But you don’t know where they’ve gone?’

‘No—and we will have no part in any scheme of yours. As we will have no part in any of Judhael’s. I told both him and your sister as much. We are ordinary working people, my lady, and even at the best of times we walk a tightrope. Now—’ she lifted her shoulders ‘—we have to tread even more carefully.’

Cecily’s shoulders drooped, and she scrubbed wearily at her forehead. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. I’d hoped to see Emma—to convince her that flight is not the only road open to her, to persuade her to come back to Fulford with me.’

‘She’ll never do that. Not while a Norman is suing for her hand.’

Cecily met Evie’s gaze, thankful that the poor light hid the hot colour that rushed into her cheeks. ‘Adam Wymark is from Brittany, not Normandy.’

Evie shrugged. ‘What’s the difference? Breton, Norman—marauders all. Your sister will have none of them.’

Cecily swallowed. She had heard similar words from Emma’s own lips. And if Judhael was Emma’s lover, Emma’s flight was all the more understandable. ‘Emma need have no fear of Adam Wymark. Not now,’ she said. ‘Evie, if you should see her again, I’d like to leave a message—’

‘No,’ Leofwine broke in curtly. ‘No messages.’

‘A few words only—should you chance to meet her.’ Suddenly it was vital that Emma knew of Cecily’s betrothal to Adam. ‘Please tell her that the Breton knight has agreed to marry me in her stead.’

Evie’s jaw dropped. ‘You, my lady? You’d marry one of them?’

Cecily lifted her head. ‘Aye. I am returning to Fulford. Please tell her.’

‘You’re mad. Being cooped up in that convent’s sent you mad.’

‘You may have something there,’ Cecily said quietly. ‘I loathed it.’

Evie’s face softened, and impulsively she took Cecily by the hand. ‘You poor thing. It must have been bad to make marrying one of them a better choice.’

‘Adam Wymark is not an evil man,’ Cecily said, knowing it to be the truth, but wondering how she knew this.

‘No?’ Evie patted her hand, her face the image of disbelief. ‘You poor thing.’

‘He’s not!’

Another pat. ‘I’m sure he is not.’

But Cecily intercepted the look Evie sent her husband, and she knew that Evie did not believe her. In Evie’s mind all the Duke’s men had souls as black as pitch. But life was not that simple. It would be easier if it were, for then she would not feel so guilty. It was as if, merely by talking to Leofwine and Evie, she was somehow betraying Adam. But there was no time to examine her guilt—which was misplaced anyway—she had a newborn brother and the villagers of Fulford to look to. They must come first.

‘If you please, I will leave now.’

Leofwine gave her a mocking bow and pushed open the door. A stream of sunlight rushed into the room. Momentarily blinded, Cecily picked up her skirts and stepped over the threshold.

‘Don’t fear for your sister, Lady Cecily,’ Evie called. ‘Judhael will look after her.’

Cecily nodded, though she had to push aside a nagging memory of the cold, almost callous expression on Judhael’s face when he had been talking to Emma in the Minster.

‘He will—I swear it.’ Evie smiled through the doorway and opened her mouth to say more, but Leofwine swung the door shut and cut off her words. The bolt scraped home.

Hunching into her cloak, Cecily glanced swiftly to left and right. At the southern end of Golde Street the sullen workmen were receiving their orders from a crop-headed Norman overseer in a scarlet tunic. The overseer’s shoulders were wrapped in a purple velvet cloak the emperor of Byzantium would have been proud to call his own. The booty of war, perhaps? By comparison the Saxon workmen were dull, in their brown and grey homespun. At their backs, the oxen were being roped to a series of metal grappling hooks that glinted menacingly in the sun.

Not that way. Turning on her heel, Cecily retraced her steps, hoping to be back before any of Adam Wymark’s company marked her absence. If questioned, she had a story ready, may the Lord forgive her for the lie: she would say she had been visiting Nunnaminster, the nunnery founded by KingAlfred’s Queen Ealhswith.

In the sunless alley running along one side of Leofwine Smith’s workshop, Adam Wymark and his captain exchanged glances. They were standing under the eaves, two men who had stood still and silent for some time, cloaks firmly wrapped about them to ward off the chill.

‘My apologies, Tihell, I should not have doubted you,’ Adam murmured, a grim set to his jaw. Since Félix Tihell, like him, came from Brittany, he was speaking in his native Breton. ‘Emma Fulford must have come here. You say you saw her leave the city afterwards?’

‘Aye, sir. She left by the Hyde Gate—the one that bypasses the abbey.’

An overwhelming surge of emotion was building inside Adam. It had been building from the moment he had heard Cecily in the workshop. Struggling to contain it, for a cool head was needed here, he lifted a brow. ‘So the Lady Emma does go north?’ He was furious: he wanted to tear the workshop apart plank by plank; he wanted it never to have existed. Cecily Fulford had come here. Cecily Fulford was a devious, lying witch. Damn her—damn her and her betraying blue eyes—damn her to hell.

‘So I believe.’

Adam’s hands were curled into fists. He forced them to relax. ‘I wonder…We thought that before and were wrong. Was Lady Emma on her own or did she have an escort?’

‘One Saxon man accompanies her—a groom, I think. I’ve a man tracking them. Told him to send word back to the garrison from her next stopping place.’

‘Good lad.’ Adam scowled at the workshop’s rough wooden planking. It was green with damp. ‘You say that the man who lives here is a goldsmith?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why should both Fulford ladies come here? What is the connection?’

‘As yet, I don’t know,’ Tihell said. ‘Could you make out what they were saying?’

‘No, damn it. My English is not yet up to it. Yours?’

‘Sorry, sir. Mine is no better. I caught a name or two—Emma, Judhael, your Lady Cecily…’

‘My Lady Cecily.’ Adam’s tone was bleak.

‘What will you do, sir?’

‘Do?’

Tihell peered round the corner of the workshop and looked meaningfully down the street, the way Cecily had gone. ‘About her. I doubt she was exchanging recipes for pancakes.’

Adam’s mouth twisted. ‘Hell’s teeth, Tihell—’