Anne Herries - Medieval Brides

At his side, Wilf sucked in a breath. ‘Lufu!’

The name had Adam breathing again, and his guts griping with guilt. Not for the world would he wish harm on Fulford’s cook, but if it had been Cecily…He burned to look into those blue eyes once more, to know that she was safe. The question of whether Cecily had betrayed him or not was a mere trifle compared to that. These past days the fear of betrayal had occupied his mind, but now that the worst had apparently happened there was room for only one thought: Cecily must be safe. The implications of this—hell, he would think about implications later.

Now that he could breathe again, he noticed that Le Blanc’s roan and a mule—the miller’s?—were tethered by the hut.

‘Lufu!’ Wilf hurled himself from his horse.

Le Blanc’s mouth was a thin, angry line. His helm lay on the ground beside him and he was holding the girl’s hand, chafing it. Her lip had been split, she had a nasty discolouration on one cheekbone, and blood in her hair. ‘She’s alive, sir,’ Le Blanc said. ‘But she won’t waken.’

Tossing his reins at Maurice, Adam hurried over.

Wilf had Lufu’s other hand and was stroking it, speaking softly in an English so heavily accented that Adam couldn’t catch the full meaning. But any fool could understand the gist of it. Wilf was fond of her. He was telling her that she would be all right now they had found her.

Staring grimly at Lufu, Adam prayed the man was right. Apart from the bruising to her face, her skin was the colour of bleached linen, and her breathing was alarmingly shallow. ‘God’s Blood, she looks as though she’s been through a mangle.’

‘I reckon she has.’ Le Blanc swallowed and gestured vaguely towards a rocky outcrop. ‘She was beaten. I…I saw most of it from behind that. I couldn’t do anything, sir, there were too many of them.’

‘Them?’

‘Saxons. They would have—’

‘Take it slower, Le Blanc, so Wilf can follow you.’

‘Sir.’ Le Blanc’s eyes found Wilf’s. ‘I…I’m sorry she’s hurt, but the man moved like lightning—’

‘Saxon?’

‘Aye. I thought he was bluffing at first, it never occurred to me that he’d hurt one of his own, and by the time I’d realised what he was about it was over. Besides, there were others with him. They would have killed me, and I still wouldn’t have been able to prevent it.’

Wilf frowned, trying to follow what had been said. ‘You say a Saxon did this?’

‘There were several present or I would have intervened, I swear. But only one of them spoke to her, and only one of them did the beating.’ Slowly, he shook his head. ‘What kind of a man would beat his countrywoman to a pulp like this?’

‘We should move her inside,’ Adam said. ‘She’s soaking. She doesn’t need a chill on top of a beating.’

‘I thought of that,’ Le Blanc said. ‘But it’s possible her ribs are broken, and I was worried about moving her…’

‘If we use your shield and a cloak as a stretcher to get her into the hut, she should be all right,’ Adam said, hoping to God he was right. ‘We have to get her warm. And someone must go for proper help.’ Adam turned to Wilf and asked in English, ‘Is your wife the best person to deal with this?’

‘In Lady Cecily’s absence, yes.’

Cecily, Cecily, where are you? ‘Fine. Let’s get Lufu into the shelter, and make her comfortable, and then Wilf can fetch Gudrun. She’ll be a better judge of whether Lufu can be got safely back to Fulford than any of us.’

Together, they eased the unconscious Lufu onto Maurice’s cloak and Le Blanc’s shield. Inside the hut the light was poor, but to one side there was a low shelf with a mattress stuffed with heather. They placed Lufu on it.

After Wilf had set out for Fulford, and his hoofbeats had died away, Adam made Le Blanc strip off his mailcoat. ‘Leave your helmet behind too,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving mine here.’ Saxons did wear conical helmets, but Adam did not want to present too warlike an aspect. If he and Le Blanc were spotted he’d rather they were taken for huntsmen or poachers.

Uneasy about the idea of continuing up Seven Wells Hill so lightly armed, Le Blanc didn’t scruple to say so. ‘Wouldn’t we be best to wait until Wilf returns?’

A hideous image of Cecily in the hands of the beast who had beaten Lufu flashed into Adam’s mind. ‘No time,’ he said. ‘But I’ll take Maurice instead of you, if you’d rather stand guard over Lufu.’

Le Blanc bristled, as Adam had known he would. Two years Maurice’s senior, Le Blanc had campaigned with Adam in Brittany and Normandy, and was not about to cede superiority to a mere squire. ‘No, sir. I’m your man.’

‘Maurice, stay with the girl.’

‘I’ll not leave her, sir.’

As the grey and the roan climbed towards the summit of Seven Wells Hill, the rain began to ease and the breeze strengthened. High up, a red kite coasted into view. Uncertain of what he was looking for, but praying they would stumble across something, anything, that might lead them to Cecily, Adam found himself envying the big bird its vantagepoint. Perhaps it could see Cecily. Not that the vista was bad from up here, with what must be the whole of Wessex spread out below them on all sides. At the peak, it must be like standing in the middle of a map.

Shivering, grateful for the thick padding in his gambeson, Adam urged the gelding to the summit, and took a moment or two to get his bearings in the hope of seeing something that would tell him what to do next. He was almost at a complete loss, riding on pure instinct—something he never liked to do. At bottom, he was a planner, a strategist who disliked taking unnecessary risks, but today his instincts were screaming at him, telling him that all the planning in the world might not be enough to lead him to Cecily.

Below lay the wooded valley they had ridden through—the one that led to Fulford. Behind him, to the north, lay Winchester, with its acres of cultivated fields. The peasants’ strips were clearly visible, brown stripes marked off by ancient hedgerows, by the twisted trunk of a leafless crab-apple or a lichened medlar. To the south the land rose and fell in soft curves as it disappeared into the distant reaches of the South Downs. Today they were blurred by low-lying cloud and dark with the last of the rain, but on a clear day one might see the sea he had crossed.

‘Take a look at this, sir!’

Adam wrenched his gaze from the undulating waves of downland that he had been scouring in the vain hope of seeing a diminutive figure in a blue cloak and wheeled his horse round.

‘A beacon!’ Le Blanc had pulled up in the centre of a flat, grassy area at the top of the hill. Leaning to one side, he drew his sword and flicked at several turves of grass that formed a mound in the middle. As the turves flipped over, Adam saw they were camouflaging an oilcloth, which in its turn had been flung over a squat metal brazier. Clinging to his pommel, Le Blanc lifted the oilcloth with the point of his sword. The brazier was brimful with wood and ready to fire, assuming that the oilcloth had kept off the worst of the weather.

The brazier had probably last seen use when Duke William’s fleet had been sighted to the east of the Narrow Sea. It would have called out the fyrd, the local militia. With its commanding position, the Seven Wells beacon would be visible in most of Wessex…

‘Do you think it’s still in use?’ Adam said, his pulse quickening as inspiration struck. ‘Le Blanc?’

‘Sir?’

‘Fire it. Fling damp vegetation on it so it smokes like hell, and then gallop back to Fulford. Fetch Herfu and as many men as you can muster.’

Le Blanc blinked. ‘But, sir, Saxon scouts are bound to see the smoke, and every rebel within spitting distance will be on you in a heartbeat.’