May 1067, Tutbury, Staffordshire
Conan!” Alaric shouted as he mounted his horse. Wheeling the beast in Tutbury’s bailey, he ordered, “Get the slaves and villagers up here. No one leaves the hilltop. No one!”
While Alaric’s captain gave orders, Johan limped hurriedly toward the inner palisades circling the tower’s earthen mound.
“What happened?” Marguerite asked, running up to Johan, pulling Clare along with her.
“Armed men, possibly rebels, are moving through the woods.”
“Again? Can they breach the castle?”
“Only if they learn how few walls we have. Take Clare and go to Alaric’s quarters. You’ll be safe there.”
“But—“
“Go! Alaric will clear them from the woods.” He turned and ran to the tower.
When Johan reached the ramparts, he braced himself against the chilly, gusting wind. He followed the arm of a sentry pointing out the trail Alaric and his knights had taken into the woods. In the village, he saw Conan’s men herding villagers away from their huts hugging the base of the crag and up Castle Road.
A few soldiers searched the huts for stragglers or rebels—or weapons. Some kicked over pots cooking on open fires. Others circled the plowed fields. Johan stayed atop, even after everyone returned to the castle. Leaning into the wind, he watched the trees swaying wildly, the flames of still burning cook fires whipping furiously.
He had been watching the woods for signs of Alaric’s return when shouts drew his gaze to a woman racing down Castle Road. A few villagers followed, and soldiers afoot chased after the group. Startled, he recognized Clare of Wolenbroth in the lead. With one hand bracing her pregnant belly, another holding her skirts high, she ran awkwardly through the village. Her gait staggered as other villagers heading toward the woods passed her. Beside Johan, archers shot at the runners. An arrow hit the ground before her. A villager, a pace ahead of her, screamed and dropped, tripping her. She fell and rolled against one of the carts, out of sight. Simultaneously, a ragged band of armed men ran into the village from the woods. They cut down the villagers fleeing toward the woods and hacked at the foot soldiers pursuing the villagers. Archers released a cloud of arrows. A shed burst into flames. From the castle, knights galloped into the village, trampling downed villagers and driving attackers into the thickets. Leaving the dead, they gathered the wounded and marched those unhurt back to the castle.
Johan ran down from High Tower and met Conan and the others entering the compound. A roar of fury arose from those gathered in the bailey. Conan, clutching Clare’s arm, pulled her toward the tower, through the enraged throng.
“Maim the slut! Blind her! Chop off her feet!” Normans chanted.
“Slay the traitor!” English voices shouted.
Another horn blasted, signaling Alaric’s return. The mob surged and demanded Alaric punish Clare. Soldiers pushed them back, and Alaric took Clare and Johan to his quarters.
Johan turned on Marguerite. “Why didn’t you keep her here?”
“I’m not—”
“—Why, Clare?” Alaric asked. “Why did you leave the castle?”
“I thought . . . ,” she glanced at Marguerite and away. “I thought my sisters were with the rebels. I went to find them.”
“Why did you think they were here? Did they send you a message?”
“It does not matter now.”
Alaric stared at Clare a moment before turning to Johan. “Have Marguerite escorted safely to the tower and wait for me outside.”
When Alaric later emerged from the longhouse, Johan recognized his contained fury. Scanning the courtyard, seeing the curious and resentful English, the contemptuous gaze of his Norman soldiers—some many years his senior, holding higher ranks in Normandie, Alaric’s cheek throbbed.
As Seigneur de Tutbierrie, Alaric administered justice. As William’s agent, he upheld the king’s laws. As Dreux’s friend, he had promised to keep Clare safe. But Clare had disobeyed orders. She had endangered others. She was English, and her action caused Norman soldiers to die. Johan watched Alaric look over the angry crowd awaiting his decision.
“Shackle Clare to the tower so all can see her atop the motte,” Alaric ordered Conan, “but do not let anyone get to her! I will deal with her when I return. In the meantime, secure the periphery as best you can. We’ve found an encampment. Roddy and Gilbert are destroying it, but there may be other bands in the denser woods. Go!”
He explained to Johan. “Clare told me that her sisters had fled with soldiers escaping Hastings. In London, she’d learned from an English noble that they traveled with Mercians, that they knew Dreux kept her, and that they would come for her. But someone here told her they had come for her today. Find the fiz a putain and cut out his tongue. If we find Clare’s sisters, we’ll bring them in.”
Buffeted by fierce winds, Dreux Marchand de Ville and six of his soldiers rode toward Tutbury. Alaric’s betrothal documents, and his own, were rolled tightly and stuffed into a leather satchel belted at his waist. He also carried William’s orders that immediately after Alaric’s wedding, he and Alaric were to leave on another joint mission.
Impatient to see Clare again, Dreux had not minded crossing the rough sea or the cold days riding through rainstorms and mud. He would ask Alaric’s priest, Father Pierre, to marry them right away rather than wait a few weeks for Alaric’s bride to arrive.
If Clare would have him.
He had not told her of his intent when he’d seen her in March, and now nearing Tutbury, the more apprehensive he became. She might not want him.
During the two weeks he’d spent with her last Christmas, she had become as essential to him as breath. It seemed the more they coupled, the more fascinating she became. At first, he thought her merely grateful for keeping her to himself, for, despite the king’s admonition against fornication, other captives were traded and shared like group property, abused, and demeaned for amusement. Clare’s innocence and curiosity convinced him her attention was more than gratitude.
As she grew more comfortable with him, she delighted him with her stories, accurately describing everyone in the household, imitating their lisps, the tilt of their noses, the swagger of their steps. She exaggerated his broken Saxon and teased him in broken French about his men, who scurried when he gave them orders. She made him laugh.
“My lord, your . . . form,” she said in French, “is as graceful as . . . le,” she paused for the French word. “Le . . . shovel.”
“Cheval,” he laughed. “A horse?”
“Oies.” she nodded, meaning to agree but using the French word for geese instead.
Now, with the recollection, he smiled at the joy she had brought into his life. And he felt grateful that, unlike his peers’ mistresses, she did not exploit her new status or demand special privileges. More importantly, she did not blame him for her family’s destruction, for the condition of her life, or for the complete loss of all she had once known.
He had seen her two months ago, in March, after subduing York with Alaric. As he had hoped, Clare was pregnant. They had two days together before he sailed to negotiate Alaric’s betrothal. He had restored the jewelry he had taken from her that first day, along with the jewels found in her family’s home before it was fired, and a torc made especially for her. She ran a finger over the twelve gold circles, each depicting a month marked by intricate nielloed designs, and linked together with twisted silver bands.
“I will wear this every day until you return, Dreux.”
He remembered holding her and breathing as if for the first time in months. He was glad he had sent Clare to Hereford to meet Alaric. He had wanted to remove her from other English captives who derided her or called her a traitor for being a Norman’s whore.
Now, as he rode to her under the weak sun he wondered uneasily if he should have mentioned marriage when he saw Clare last. No. Better to have waited until he had permission to marry her and the covenants to her family’s estates. With their marriage, she would become the noblewoman of her ancestral lands. She should be about five months along now, he surmised. His castle at Thetford would not be ready yet. But Dreux had time to rebuild the hall where their child would be born.
At the top of a ridge, he and his soldiers reined in their horses. Chaos met them across the basin. Tutbury’s tower was aflame. Dreux spurred his horse forward and raced across the valley.
Galloping through the main gates, he scattered screaming people running through the bailey in every direction. Instinctively, he rode toward the blazing inner palisade surrounding the mound and tower. He saw Clare chained to the timber tower beyond the acrid black smoke.
He fought his horse to leap through the fiery inner gates. His horse’s frightened cries were lost in the hissing and crackling sounds as beams burned overhead. Black smoke and crimson flame made day into hellish night, and the shifting wind hid Clare from his view.
His horse reared. At Dreux’s vicious kick, his steed lunged past the gate and up the planked steps of the tower’s mound. The fire roared and licked up the tower walls. He heard Clare’s inhuman scream, undulating low to its grating depths, then screeching higher and higher. His mount threw him, and he lost his helmet. He crawled toward her through whirling flames and saw her completely ablaze, like a torch’s well-soaked rushes. Her eyes, roasted in their sockets, glared at him.
Standing, he raised his arm to block his face from the heat, and watched in horror as the skin of her face bubbled, then split and peeled in curls, exposing the raw flesh, which shrank from the bone. Yet still, she lived. Dreux heard his name upon her lipless mouth, the teeth exposed in a skeletal grin. Her howl above the din silenced only when his thrown dagger pierced her heart. She fell against her chains. He staggered toward her until his men tackled him and dragged him from the burning ruins.
Afterward, beside a shaded bank of the River Dove, Dreux leaned on the burr plate forming the pommel of his wooden saddle, staring. His man kept guard nearby. Dreux stared into a soft green, clear pool of water as it slipped ever so quietly over a broad, flat stone and whirled into a foamy funnel. The eddy should have calmed him, but instead, each swirl felt like a rope around his neck, pulling tighter and tighter until there was no breath.
He closed his eyes and saw her again as she had been only a few hours ago. The vision twisted inside his hollow soul as the sound of water seeped back into his mind. From the moment he first saw the blazing tower, he knew she was trapped within. Now he sat here beside the tranquil river, alive. And Clare was dead.
Dead.
Merciful God, he pleaded as the vision began again, and he shut his eyes to force it away and groaned aloud when the images sharpened in his mind’s eye. God has no mercy!
He dismounted and stumbled to the creek. As his knees fell into the soft, damp bank, he gagged. The smoke of her burning flesh and the stench lingered within him—a bittersweet taste infused with the bile of his hatred. He spat and nearly vomited. He was covered in soot. His hair and eyebrows were singed, the skin of his hands and face were blistered.
He plunged his red hands into the cold water and sluiced water over his head.
As if a spell were broken, the vision fled. Dreux raised his dripping head and looked beyond the river to the valley at the base of Tutbury, from horizon to horizon through dark green woods and pale fields, to blooming hillsides. The blustery wind had ceased. He watched the soft white clouds, swans gliding upon a blue lake, listened to the birds atop the nearby tree, and the water gurgling gently before him. A breeze, as gentle as Clare’s touch, lifted a forelock and fluttered his scorched cape. His eyes swept to Alaric’s castle and his gaze hardened like tempered iron into a cold black void, more dangerous in intent than even the fire that took Clare from him. Nothing ever happened without the knowledge and consent of a castle’s lord. Alaric had her chained like an animal and left her to die like that.
I shall avenge you, he whispered to her in his heart. I shall destroy him that destroyed you and our child. I shall kill him slowly—slowly, he vowed, envisioning Alaric’s bloody heart in his hand, the hand bearing the scar of their blood bond.