Anne Herries - Medieval Brides

Lufu looked mutinous. ‘No, he wouldn’t. Not Thane Edgar.’

‘Don’t delude yourself. He most certainly would! Why, he sent me to the convent when I—’ She bit off the rest of her sentence. Though her father had treated her harshly, he had done no worse than most men in his position would have done. She took a deep breath. ‘This punishment is not entirely undeserved. You must know you’ve been neglecting your duties. When I arrived yesterday and went to the cookhouse…Lufu, the state of it! It wasn’t fit for pigs to eat food from there, never mind people.’ She eyed the malodorous rubbish around them, and flicked at a brown shrivelled apple peeling. ‘This has all come from your kitchen.’

Lufu flushed, turned her head away, and muttered under her breath.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing. I’m sorry, my lady, but—’ Her voice broke on a sob, and she began crying again, in earnest.

Cecily put her hand on Lufu’s arm. ‘Tell me. Lufu?’

‘I can’t, my lady! I’m sorry, but I can’t!’

A heavy stone lodged in Cecily’s belly. Not another secret to hide from Adam? She kept her voice steady. ‘Calm yourself. You’re already in trouble, why not make a full confession? What is it?’

Lufu gulped. ‘Can’t. Sergeant Le Blanc would take my hand!’

‘Your hand? I think not.’ Cecily smiled. ‘We need our cook to have both her hands.’

Lufu hung her head and her hair flopped forward, screening her face. Her shoulders were hunched. ‘He would, an’ all,’ she muttered. ‘Leastwise Edmund said so.’

Cecily drew back. ‘Edmund? What does Edmund know of the Sergeant’s mind?’

Lufu blew her hair out of her eyes and gave her a sharp look. ‘As much as you know of your betrothed, most like. How long have you known him? A couple of days?’

‘Lufu, none of them would take your hand,’ she said confidently, hoping to God she was right. Lufu folded her lips together and looked away. ‘Lufu, they wouldn’t.’ Impatiently, Cecily took Lufu by the chin and turned her face to hers, forcing her to meet her gaze. ‘I know they wouldn’t.’

Lufu shuddered, and finally whispered, ‘But it’s the punishment for stealing.’

‘For stealing? Heavens, Lufu, what—?’

‘A baconflitch. I hid it. After they—’ Lufu jerked her head at the armoury ‘—rode up the first time. Was going to take it to Gunni’s shelter, up on the downs.’

‘Gunni?’

‘My man. He’s a shepherd, my lady. His summer shelter is way up on the downs, near Seven Wells. He took himself off there when these foreigners arrived. I thought Saxon meat should go to Saxon men. But now…’ Her voice rose to a wail. ‘If Sir Adam really is to be lord here, he’ll take my hand!’

‘He will not.’ Cecily spoke with as much emphasis as she could muster. ‘He may not even need to know you have taken the bacon, but you must tell me where you have hidden it.’

Lufu’s expression brightened. ‘You will speak for me?’

‘I will. Provided, of course, you swear not to neglect your work in future?’

‘I won’t, my lady, never again! I swear!’

‘To say that Thane Edgar’s armoury is a disappointment would be to understate the case,’ Adam said.

Richard grunted agreement.

Adam eyed the Saxon weaponry that Maurice had laid out on the workbench for his inspection: a rusty hauberk, the links of which were coming apart; a couple of cracked shields; a sword so clumsy that it would have taken a giant to wield it—the list ran on. True, there were a couple of dozen arrows, but they were unfletched, and the two bows were of ashwood and not yew. He picked up one of the bows, weighing it in his hand. Some idiot had left it in the damp—it was warped and would be impossible to sight.

Sighing, Adam met Richard’s sympathetic gaze. He thrust the bow at his friend and took up the other, which seemed equally twisted. Without a word, they set about stringing them.

Nocking one of the unfletched arrows, Adam stepped outside the armoury and drew the bow, sighting along the arrow. ‘God’s blood!’ he said, exasperated at the wanton waste of what had once been a reasonable practice weapon.

‘No good?’ Richard murmured, and, drawing his own bow, pointed it round the edge of the Hall towards the green, where the bedraggled cook was sitting amid her vegetable peelings.

‘You’d not hit an ox at five paces with this,’ Adam said, unnocking his arrow.

‘Hmm.’ Testing the drawing power of his bow, Richard sighted it at the mead hall roof ridge.

Cecily hurtled round the corner and stormed straight for them, skirts lifted out of the mud, veil flying. To his great annoyance, Adam’s heart lurched just at the sight of her. Hell, had he ever mooned over Gwenn like this? He did not think so. But then he had known Gwenn all his life, and no one, not even the little novice, could ever replace his Gwenn. As she stalked up to him his gaze sharpened. A blind man could sense the fury in her—it was rolling off her in waves. So, Cecily Fulford kept a temper hidden beneath all that golden beauty, did she? Interesting.

Matty hurtled round the corner, running to keep up. The girl took one look at Richard, aiming the bow at the roof-ridge, and squealed.

Richard grinned and lowered the bow. ‘My apologies, Mistress Matty.’

‘My father never permitted weapons of any sort to be drawn near the Hall unless it was an emergency,’ Cecily said stiffly, a pleat in her brow. ‘He said accidents happen without our help.’

Adam made a non-committal noise. He couldn’t argue with that. She was slightly out of breath, and he had to make a conscious effort to keep his eye on her face, not the enticing shape of her breasts. That blue dress…it revealed so much more of her than her old habit.

Cecily looked directly at him, blue eyes cold as the sky above them. ‘The practice field is at the back of the stables, Sir Adam. We walked directly into your line of fire.’

Sir Adam. Had he done anything in particular to incur her wrath? he wondered. Or was she was only now showing the natural anger that she must feel against the Duke’s regime? ‘It’s overrun with sheep,’ Adam said, more defensively than he intended. ‘But in any case you weren’t in our firing line, because we weren’t going to fire. The arrows are not fletched and the bows are impossible to sight.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘I had hoped to find something worth saving in here.’

Huffing out a breath, she stepped past and poked her head into the armoury. Leaning on the doorjamb, bow in hand, Adam watched her look at the piles of his men’s arms arranged on the left, and the meagre selection left behind by Thane Edgar on the right. He had dealt gently with her thus far, on account of the grief she must be feeling. He knew that she had had some time to come to terms with the loss of her father and her brother, but the grief she must feel for her mother was fresh, the wound very recent, and he had been trying to respect that. She had such a fragile, delicate appearance. But at this moment, with a muscle jumping in her jaw and her fists clenched, she looked as though she could take on the world and emerge victorious. She was magnificent in her anger. He wondered what she would do if he kissed her. Hit him, most likely.

‘My father,’ the magnificent girl said, slowly and with great clarity, as though she were a queen talking to peasant, and a simpleton at that, ‘will have taken the best weapons with him to support our King Harold.’

Yes, she would definitely hit him.

Behind him in the yard, Richard was talking to Matty in French, his voice light and teasing. Matty muttered something about not understanding him, and then her voice faded as she moved off—probably back to the Hall or to the stables, where her brothers were meant to be mucking out the horses.