Anne Herries - Medieval Brides

He’s entrenched already, Cecily thought. If he’s tearing down good folks’ houses unopposed in Winchester; if he’s throwing up mounds to build castles. But she wasn’t about to alienate Edmund further by saying as much. ‘How are you feeding him?’

‘Found him another wet nurse—Joan.’

‘Oh?’

‘Come and meet her.’ Edmund ducked his head under the awning. ‘Joan? Joan?’

The people in the shelter—all eyes—fell silent as they entered, and the only sound was the rain drip-dripping on the canvas. A woman in grey homespun stepped forward. She had a baby over her shoulder and was winding him. Her face was careworn and raddled with grief. She was pitifully thin.

‘Philip! Oh, let me—please.’

The woman Joan released her brother without protest and watched blank-faced and silent while Cecily reassured herself that he was well. Philip had just been fed, his sleepy, sated expression attested to that, but a dampness about his wrappings told her that his linens hadn’t been changed all morning.

‘Wat, please pass my bundle…my thanks,’ she said, as Wat thrust it into her hands.

‘You see, Cecily,’ Edmund cut in. ‘It is as I said. Your brother thrives.’

Biting back the reply that Philip would have been better off if he had been left in Gudrun’s capable hands, and not dragged across the Downs like a sack of meal and left in wet swaddling bands, Cecily bent over the baby and set to work changing his clothing.

Conversation resumed about them. When she had finished, Edmund was seated on a nearby log, honing the edges of his seax on a stone. Was he guarding her?

‘Your leg seems to have healed rather miraculously,’ she said, speaking softly to mask her anger.

Not only had Edmund kidnapped her brother from Fulford, but in this too her father’s housecarl had deceived her. He had lied, and he had called her healing skills into question. It was true that when examining him at the Hall she had wondered at the length of time it was taking his leg to heal, but how foolish to take him at his word when he had said it continued to pain him. Why had she not questioned him further? Certainly she had had other, weightier matters on her mind that day, but her instincts had told her his leg should be fine, and she had ignored them. How stupid. Adam would see her in her true colours. Lightweight. Naïve. Stupid.

Edmund had the grace to flush—a sign, she hoped, that he was not completely lost to her. ‘I’m sorry I deceived you, Cecily. Judhael thought it best that way. He needed me at the Hall.’

‘You were spying!’

‘Watching out for your brother.’ His jaw tightened. ‘It was easier if that foreign brute you bed with thought him harmless…’

‘I married Adam so I could watch out for Philip! For all of you!’ Cecily reminded him tartly. The rush of rage she felt at Edmund naming Adam a ‘foreign brute’ had her bending over Philip and fussing with his blanket. Adam—what were the rebels intending to do about Adam? The answer was swift in coming. They would kill him if they could.

Hoping Edmund hadn’t noticed her sudden intake of breath, Cecily managed to nod. ‘Th…this is not a healthy place for Philip,’ she said, turning the conversation away from Adam with only the slightest tremor. She did not want Adam dead. The very thought made the blood freeze in her veins. But there was not a hope that Edmund or any of these desperate Saxons would sympathise with her view. As a Saxon who had married one of Duke William’s men, she was in this camp on sufferance, thanks only to past allegiances. If she put so much as a toe out of place they’d slit her throat and toss her in a ditch as a collaborator.

‘Not healthy for him here?’ Edmund was saying in an irritated tone. ‘Among his own people? I should think it’s the very place for him. When I swore to fight for your father, Cecily, I made that vow for life. To a man, King Harold’s housecarls died at Hastings; they gave their lives for him, honouring vows like mine. Why should it be any different for me and these men here?’ He gestured at the others sheltering with them under the awning, and the jingling of those silver bracelets he had earned from her father underscored his words.

Settling Philip in a basket, Cecily took a place on the log bench next to Edmund. He had sheathed the seax, she noted, breathing a little easier. ‘Loyalty is admirable,’ she murmured. ‘But please, Edmund, take care. What does loyalty become when a cause is lost?’

Edmund scowled and folded his arms. She took heart that he had not stormed away. If she could reach anyone here it would be Edmund, and for pity’s sake she had to try…

‘Edmund, what does loyalty mean to you?’

Rain dripped on the canvas.

He frowned. ‘Why, it’s when a warrior swears to uphold his Thane…’

‘Why? Why are such oaths necessary?’

He made an impatient movement. ‘Hah! That you—a thane’s daughter—should ask me that!’

‘Tell me, Edmund. I want to understand.’

He shrugged. ‘A thane needs his warriors to stand by him through thick and thin. It’s the ancient way. Without warriors backing up the law the world would dissolve into anarchy.’

‘And if a warrior were to go back on his oath?’

‘He would be made nithing, an outcast.’

‘I am told that King Harold himself swore a solemn oath in Normandy, when he promised to uphold Duke William’s claim to the English throne.’

Edmund sprang to his feet. ‘That is a lie! Norman propaganda! Harold was tricked.’ He brought his face close to Cecily’s, and the pupils of his eyes were small as pinpricks. ‘If you swallow everything that foreign husband feeds you, you’ll choke.’

Cecily folded her hands together to stop them shaking, and sat very straight on the makeshift bench. ‘I’m sorry, Edmund,’ she said, as meekly as she could. ‘I’m trying to understand. Now, do hush—you’ll waken Philip.’

To her relief, Edmund subsided at her side, and tentatively she touched his arm. ‘I fear that by remaining loyal to my father you and Judhael do these people no good service. Look around—you’re living like animals, and the people of Fulford need your strength…’

Edmund glowered. ‘The oath I swore to your father was sacred…’

‘So sacred it will lead you—and these—’ she jerked her head at the others ‘—to an early grave?’

‘If need be.’

Cecily shook her head. It was hopeless. Edmund was as intransigent in defeat as her father would have been, and Judhael was too, no doubt. Was the male mind always so inflexible?

Adam flashed into her brain. He was holding his hand out to her in their bedchamber on their wedding night—she remembered that slight vulnerability in his eyes as he had offered himself as her husband, as he let her decide. Adam was something of a riddle. Hadn’t he married her at her suggestion, even though he had set out to marry Emma? Her husband’s mind was neither fixed nor rigid…

In fact, Adam and his compatriots had shown remarkable openness, considering that they had come to Fulford as conquerors. She could picture Adam and Richard with their heads together, hunched over a wine flask at the trestle; she could see Adam talking with his squire Maurice in like manner, and with Brian Herfu also…At the time the significance had escaped her, but in each of these cases hadn’t Adam been discussing before he made his decisions and issued commands? He was in the habit of assessing Sir Richard’s comments and those of his men, of amending his plans in light of them…

Her father would have deemed it a grave weakness to consult others. Not so Adam. And if any were to ask her, a woman, which of the two—her father or her husband—were the stronger, she would say her husband. Adam’s strength was a new kind of strength; his leadership was a new kind of leadership, one which went far beyond the old oaths that led men blinkered to their deaths. The time for such oaths was past; the world was changing, and unless Edmund and Judhael changed too, they would be left behind.