CHAPTER SIX
‡
A Man Lost
They’d taken the horses as far as they could go before leaving them in a thick copse of trees about a quarter of a mile from the Saxon encampment.
But they didn’t move on from there, at least not immediately. Gaetan and his men, dressed in clothing that blended with their surroundings – faded greens, browns, natural colors – and certainly none of the brightly colored heraldry that the Normans tended to favor – took pieces of the bushes and trees around them and shoved them into their clothing so that they blended in with their surroundings even more. It was a stealth operation and given that they were going in daylight, they wanted to take every precaution not to be seen.
In truth, it was impressive to watch. Ghislaine had seen her own people do such things, especially when hunting, and this was hunting in a sense. They were hunting for their comrade, and for Alary, and they were trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. But it wasn’t simply the manner in which they were dressing – it was also their attitude in general. There was a professionalism that Ghislaine had never seen before. They worked as a unit and acted like a unit, each man looking out for the man next to him as well as himself. She knew virtually nothing about these men but she could see how much they cared for one another. They were quiet, efficient, and swift.
Impressive, indeed.
Ghislaine was already dressed in a manner that made her blend with the land and trees – she was wearing a long tunic made from wool that had been dyed with onion, making it a dull shade of brown. She crouched in the bramble that smelled heavily of earth and compost, away from the men who were preparing to stalk the Anglo-Saxon encampment, alternately watching the camp in the distance and the men around her.
If they felt any trepidation, they didn’t show it, which kept her from showing any as well. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that she was genuinely frightened to have returned to her own encampment.
Alary was here, somewhere, and she wasn’t looking forward to seeing the man.
But she was also alternately watching de Wolfe in the midst of all of this or, at least, trying to pretend like she wasn’t. Even if she hadn’t known he was the man in command, simply from the way he dealt with his men and the way they reacted to him would have told her that he was. He wasn’t heavy-handed. In fact, she’d not heard him raise his voice or give any real measure of direction, but a word here or there and his men knew exactly what was expected of them. She’d heard of men commanding simply by their sheer presence but she’d never seen it before until now. De Wolfe literally commanded simply by being there. Men obeyed.
But it was more than his overwhelming presence that had her impressed; it was his appearance as well. The more she looked at him, the more she realized that he was unlike any man she had ever seen. The men she knew, for the most part, were pale, with light or dark hair, a few of them muscular, or tall, and, on occasion, she had come across a man she thought was handsome.
But de Wolfe looked like he’d stepped out of some other world. He was a big man, bigger than any man she’d ever seen, with fists the size of her head. He had a square-jawed face that was handsome enough but when he smiled – and she’d only seen it once, just a flash to one of his men – his face changed dramatically. It was enough to make her heart skip a beat.
But those were foolish thoughts, to be sure, and she was frustrated at herself for thinking them. She refused to admit that her Norman enemy had her intrigued. Therefore, she returned her focus to the encampment in the distance, watching men move about, trying to single out anyone she knew, especially Alary. It was mid-morning by now and she knew he would be up and about, prowling, scheming. What worried her the most was what had become of de Lohr. She couldn’t see him from where she sat. It was imperative she locate him.
“Lady Ghislaine.”
Startled by her whispered name, Ghislaine turned to see de Wolfe standing behind her with one of his men alongside. It was the same man who had offered to negotiate for de Lohr, as a man of the church, although she didn’t know his name. She didn’t know any of their names. De Wolfe and the man crouched down a few feet away to be more on her level.
“This is Jathan,” de Wolfe said quietly. “He is my priest. Jathan offered himself up as a prisoner once before and he has done it again, so I have agreed. I believe the best plan of action would be for you to enter the encampment with Jathan as your captive. If your absence has been discovered, you can simply say you were hunting for Norman prisoners on the battlefield. Is that something your men would believe?”
Ghislaine nodded. “I believe so,” she said. “I mentioned that it is possible my absence has not even been noticed, but if it has, it will make it seem as if I am telling the truth when I bring a Norman captive with me.”
De Wolfe lifted an eyebrow in agreement although he didn’t seem to be overly enthusiastic about his priest offering himself up as a prisoner. That much had been obvious earlier in the tent when the same discussion had come up, but clearly, de Wolfe had reconsidered that. He glanced at the priest as he spoke.
“It is hoped that Jathan will be taken to where de Lohr is so he can help Kristoph when the time comes to free him,” he said. “Mayhap, you can tell your brother you have brought him another prisoner. A gift, as it were. Surely he would take him to where his other prisoners are being held.”
Ghislaine looked at the priest. “That is a reasonable certainty,” she said hesitantly. “But Alary will not care that he is a priest. He will treat him like any other prisoner.”
De Wolfe nodded. “That is the hope.”
Ghislaine cast him a long look. “You must be careful what you hope for. You do not know how my brother is.”
De Wolfe cocked his head. “Nay, I do not, but I have been a warrior my entire life and I have seen the wicked souls of men. Jathan knows the risks.”
Ghislaine’s focus settled on the priest, who seemed resolute about the situation. There was no fear in his eyes and Ghislaine was sure the man had no idea what he was getting in to, but she didn’t argue. It was a plan that made sense and now it was time to act, for time was growing short. The longer they waited, the more chance there was of Alary leaving the camp and taking de Wolfe’s knight with him. Rising to her feet, she brushed the dirt and leaves off her leather hose.
“Then I shall take him and discover where my brother is keeping your man,” she said, pulling the leather cap that de Wolfe had yanked off her head, now tucked into the belt at her waist. “I will return as soon as I can.”
De Wolfe and Jathan stood up, too, and de Wolfe’s other men began crowding around now that the first move on the Anglo-Saxon encampment was about to be made. Ghislaine gathered her long hair in one hand and wounded it up sloppily on her head, pulling the cap down over it. Hair stuck out all over the place even as she pulled the ties down around her neck and secured it. Then, she unsheathed a long, sharp dagger that had been tied to her belt and pointed it at Jathan.
“Come with me,” she said to the priest. “And you’d better make it look as if you are afraid of me and my dagger, or this will not go well.”
“Pretend I’m holding a dagger on you, Priest,” Wellesbourne growled from behind de Wolfe. “That should make you scared enough.”
Jathan gave him a rather droll look. “The only thing that scares me about you is your lack of piety, Wellesbourne,” he muttered. “God is going to strike you down one of these days and when he does, I do not wish to be anywhere near you lest we both go up in flames. Shall we depart, my lady?”
Ghislaine could see that the threats bouncing about weren’t serious. Wellesbourne had a hint of a smile on his lips, as did a couple of the other knights, but de Wolfe had no humor on his face. He simply pointed through the bramble.
“Go,” he commanded quietly. When Ghislaine moved forward, he suddenly grabbed her by the arm. “And if you think to betray me and my men by telling your brother that we are gathered in the bramble, know that I will have St. Hèver in the trees with an arrow pointed right at you. He can kill you from quite a distance, so do not make any foolish moves.”
Ghislaine looked at him, a hulking presence in the shadowed trees, and her irritation rose. “So we are back to threats, are we?” she asked, offended. “The fact that I came to you with information about your knight wasn’t enough. The fact that I have risked my life and continue to risk it for a Norman enemy still means nothing to you. Then, by all means, keep your man trained on me and if you believe I am betraying you, then kill me. But you had better make sure you kill me with the first shot because if you do not, I am fairly good with a bow myself and you will be the first one I will come for.”
With that, she shoved Jathan forward, her dagger at his back, and pushed him right through the trees. When he stumbled, she pushed him again, kicking him right in the arse when he turned around to see why she was beating on him so. Together, they burst through the trees and into the clearing beyond, in full view of the Anglo-Saxon encampment about a quarter of a mile away.
Gaetan and his men watched them head off and St. Hèver moved into position with his crossbow, using a tree trunk to steady himself and his weapon. He was aiming right at the lady and her prisoner as the rest of Gaetan’s men slowly moved up to gain a better view of them through the trees.
“I do believe she threatened you,” Luc de Lara muttered to Gaetan.
He snorted. “Aye, she did,” Gaetan replied. “But no more than I threatened her.”
Luc simply nodded, his gaze tracking the woman and the priest, as they all were. “Do you really believe she will betray us?”
Gaetan lifted his big shoulders, vaguely. “We shall soon know,” he said. “You and Denis flank them as they move. Stay to the trees, however, and stop when it is no longer safe to travel. Keep an eye on the pair for as long as you can.”
Luc nodded, moving through the other knights until he came to Denis. Young and excitable, Denis was more than agreeable to the orders and the two of them suddenly took off into the foliage, pushing through the heavy bramble and trying to remain silent as they moved. Gaetan watched them head off until he lost them in the shadow. Then, he moved up beside Téo and Aramis, standing between them as the men watched the Saxon warrior lady and the priest head towards the enemy encampment.
All they could do now was wait.
Ghislaine knew they were being watched as she and the priest headed into the Anglo-Saxon encampment and it was difficult to choose just who she was more afraid of at the moment – her brother or the Norman knight pointing an arrow at her back. None of this venture had gone as she had hoped but the problem was that she couldn’t stop the forward momentum now. She couldn’t simply walk away; she was becoming more and more entrenched in a situation of her own making and struggling not to lose control of it.
She was in it until the end.
As she and Jathan came to the edge of the encampment, several exhausted men around a weakly-smoking fire caught sight of her and began gravitating in her direction. Seeing that she was now noticed, she took action. She grabbed Jathan by the back of his tunic and shoved the tip of the dagger into his back.
“I am sorry if I hurt you,” she whispered to him. “But I must make this convincing.”
Jathan could see the enemy soldiers heading in their direction and he kept his eyes on them. “Understandable, my lady,” he murmured. “Good luck to us both.”
With that, the conversation died but Ghislaine’s apprehension was full-blown. The blade pressed into Jathan’s back was trembling so that she suddenly kicked his knees out and forced him on to the ground so her men would notice the prisoner and not her quivering hands. Besides… she didn’t want her shaking hands to jiggle that sharp blade right into the priest’s back.
“Look what I have found!” she said triumphantly. “Another Norman dog!”
Men were gathering around her, peering at the man on his belly, his face pressed into the cold, wet grass because Ghislaine had her foot on his head. She was beaming from ear to ear, as if genuinely happy with her captive, but it was all for show – she wanted her men to see how hateful she was towards the Normans and how gleeful she was in the capture of one. She had to be convincing.
And it worked.
Men began to congratulate her, peering down at Jathan only to spit on the man when they looked their fill of him. They had a Norman in their midst now and it seemed to rejuvenate whatever defeat had settled in their hearts and minds. A few of them even kicked Jathan as they circled him, like vultures going in for the kill.
“Another Norman bastard!”
“Kill him! Harold demands it!”
“Wait!” Ghislaine threw up a hand to stop the mob mentality before it truly started. “I will not kill him. I would put him with the other Norman prisoner, the one my brother took from me. Where is he?”
A man with dark dirty hair went to stand with her. He was one of her own soldiers, sworn to her, as were most of the men standing around her. In an age where men controlled the army and the country, it was extremely rare for a woman to command men but Ghislaine did. These men were gifted to her by her brother, Edwin, because he wanted her protected in battle. He knew he couldn’t keep her out of a fight so he had gifted her with about a hundred men and the means to support them.
Ghislaine’s men were extremely loyal to her, as evidenced by the fact that they’d remained in the encampment even when she’d turned up missing. A few had even gone out to look for her, but most of them were certain that Lady Ghislaine would return. She tended to be a loner at times, and a wanderer, but they knew she would not leave them. Even if she was a woman, she understood the heart of the warrior and the mentality. She would never leave her men if she could help it.
They had been correct.
Therefore, the man with the dirty hair was glad to see her and not surprised she’d brought back a prisoner. Lady Ghislaine was brave that way.
“Alary took his men and left just after dawn, my lady,” he told her. “That was a few hours ago.”
Ghislaine’s smile of triumph turned into something of a grimace and it was a struggle not to openly react to the news. “He left?” she asked, unable to keep the astonishment from her tone. “He… he is gone?”
“Aye.”
“And he took his army?”
“Those who could move, aye. At least two hundred men, mayhap a little less.”
“But… but what of my Norman prisoner? Did he take my knight, too?”
All of the men were nodding to varying degrees. “He was searching for you before he left, my lady,” another man said. “He would not wait for you to return.”
So Alary knew I was missing, Ghislaine thought. “So he took my prisoner and ran off?” she asked. “Did he not know I would return?”
The man with the dark hair shrugged hesitantly. “He did not say, my lady,” he said. “He looked for you. But when he could not find you, he took his men and his prisoner, and he left.”
It was unhappy news, indeed. It wasn’t as if Ghislaine could have stopped Alary had she been here, but to run off while she was away seemed underhanded somehow. Still, she was astute enough to realize that there was an unspoken question hanging in the air between her and her men at the moment – the fact that she had gone missing for quite some time. Yet, she was not troubled by it. The answer was on the ground at her feet.
“My brother is a fool,” she said, her disgust real. “Had he only waited, I would have had another Norman captive. Did he think I had run off? He knows me better than that.” She started to look around, realizing that there weren’t as many men around as there had been the night before. In fact, the area seemed rather empty and her disgust turned to puzzlement. “Where did everyone go? Has everyone fled for home?”
The men were looking around because she was. “Most,” the man with the dirty hair said. “Lord Leofwine’s men departed before the sun rose to return home to his wife in Kent. And everyone else… there is no reason to remain, my lady. It is best to return home and brace for what is to come.”
Ghislaine looked at the man. He was young and she could hear the fear in his voice. He’d suffered through the worst of the battle, just as they all had. It made the situation a bit more heady for her, a bit more sad. Beyond her scheming to have the Normans kill Alary lay the very real defeat of the Anglo-Saxon army and the destruction of her people.
And there was nothing any of them could do to stop it.
“It is the Normans that will come,” she said, feeling somewhat hollow and depressed even as she said it. “The Normans are already here.”
“Aye, my lady.”
“And my brother… he had fled them.”
“Aye, my lady.”
She cast him a sidelong glance. “I would assume that Alary is returning to Tenebris?”
The man shook his head. “He did not say.”
Ghislaine sighed faintly, her thoughts moving from the defeated army to her brother’s departure. It was what she had feared but honestly hadn’t believed would happen, at least not until tomorrow. She had believed they had time before he left the encampment but she’d been wrong.
“Alary had many wounded,” she said, looking back over to the east, through a debris field of cold fires and the remnants of makeshift camps. “You said he took those who could move with him? What about his wounded?”
The man pointed off to the east. “He left them,” he said grimly. “They are over beyond that row of trees. Brothers from the small priory at Winchelsea have come to take them back to the priory for tending.”
So much hopelessness in the dead, the wounded, and the departed. Looking out over the makeshift encampment was like looking at a graveyard. Ghislaine couldn’t help but feel more grief. This was what was left of her people, her country. It would never be the same again. But her focus soon moved to the men who were standing around her, men that were loyal to her, men waiting for her orders. While others had fled, they had remained. She knew they were waiting for direction from her and she took a deep breath, summoning the bravery that she was known for. She couldn’t let her men down.
“Wytig, have the men pack what possessions they have,” she said. “We will go back to Tamworth Castle. Edwin will want to know what has happened and he will want to hear it from us.”
Wytig, the young man with the dirty hair, nodded. “Aye, my lady,” he said. Other men had heard the order and they were already starting to move, to collect what little they had in preparation for going home, but Wytig was looking at the prisoner beneath Ghislaine’s foot. “What of him? Do we take him?”
Ghislaine looked down at the priest. It reminded her that she needed to return to de Wolfe and tell him what had happened. Taking her foot off of the priest’s head, she yanked the man to his feet.
“Nay,” she said. “I will do what needs to be done with him. Gather the men and, once they are ready, go. I will catch up to you.”
Wytig nodded and turned to the dirty, beaten Anglo-Saxons, encouraging them to gather their possessions. As the men prepared to depart, Ghislaine put her knife in Jathan’s back and turned him back in the direction they had come.
“Go,” she barked.
Her men heard her, watching as she marched the prisoner back towards the trees in the distance. They all assumed that their lady was going to execute the prisoner but no one wanted to interfere. Ghislaine of Mercia could be rather unpredictable and deadly, especially when questioned, so they returned to their task and continued gathering their possessions for the march home. It was time to leave this place of defeat and destruction, and there wasn’t one man who wasn’t eager to do so.
But she wasn’t going to execute the prisoner. She was going to tell de Wolfe that Kristoph had already been taken away. Alary’s departure had been unexpected but he was only a few hours ahead of them, at most. Moreover, most of his men were on foot so it would be slow travel for the most part, time enough for Normans on horseback to catch him. Even if Alary had two hundred men, nine Norman knights on horseback could do a good deal of damage, especially if they first removed Alary with the same arrow de Wolfe had threatened her with should she betray them. Once Alary was dead, his men would be leaderless and it would make it very easy to take back their comrade and depart.
At least, that was her theory, one that Ghislaine wouldn’t hesitate to put to de Wolfe when she told him that her brother had left and had taken de Lohr with him. Alary of Mercia would be no match for angry Norman knights who wanted their friend back.
Would Ghislaine feel any remorse that she had instigated her brother’s demise? About as much remorse as he would feel if the situation was reversed. But one thing was certain; Alary had to die soon or the Norman knight’s life would be forfeit.
So would hers if Alary realized what she had done.