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In the black hours before dawn, she lingered in the shadows outside the church as the brothers prayed their nocturns. The rise and fall of their voices was soothing, though the sound barely reached her. She waited until an answer came to her, finally, in the little silence between prayers.
Be selfish.
She had promised it years ago. Somewhere along the way it had become the only course she trusted in moments of uncertainty. To swear fealty to no one, to serve no one and nothing unless it be the leading of her own heart.
But her heart was divided. It told her to go ahead without delay and finally find word of her sister. It told her also to stay with Sir Gerald, care for his wound, take him safely back to Morency to heal. Two duties, two urgent needs. How to choose between them?
Be selfish. She did not want to return to Morency, or tend Sir Gerald’s wounds. He would fare as well without her, and she did not want to lose another day that might be spent in finding her sister.
It was her haste that had led them to travel in so small a party on the main road, vulnerable to attack. Nine men dead, eight by her hand and one because she had been too slow. As soon as she thought it – too slow – she could hear Gwenllian contradict her. Not too slow. No one could be that fast, her teacher would say, not even you. Still she felt her heart pulled in two directions again: remorse on one side, cold indifference on the other.
It was necessary. They were villains. None would mourn them.
They were men. They were alive. Now they were not.
Be selfish. Guilt changed nothing, served no one. It was a luxury she could ill afford, and so she would let it go. She would confess, say her penance, and move forward with a spirit unencumbered.
There was the ragged man, little more than bones and beard and filth. Dark eyes and desperation. It had been years since she had seen hunger so deep. In her memories, it wore her sister’s face. But even more than the hunger was the way he shied from shadows that were not there, how he shrank from any contact with others, how even now when he was safe he could not sleep soundly.
She saw herself there, the girl she once was. The girl she would be still if not for the selfless care of a kind stranger.
And he was Welsh. That was not easily dismissed. Of all things, a Welshman in need. It felt like God’s own hand had put him in her path.
What was owed? Everything, her heart answered. Nothing, said her mind.
Be selfish. The brothers would care for him. Her task was more important. Her dog did not like his hawk. It should be an easy thing to turn her back upon.
But even to think it caused her pain. It would disturb her dreams. Already it disturbed her dreams – why else was she here, surrounded by prayers in the dead of night? For years she had prayed too, every day, giving thanks for her own rescue from a fear that had nearly swallowed her. In spite of her promise to swear fealty to no one, she had loyalties that were bound by love if not by her word: her sister, her lady, her teacher, her friends. She did not need another.
Yet she could not banish the memory of his eyes fixed on the bread in her hands. He looked at it like it was his own heart she offered to him, cupped in her outstretched palms.
He woke to find her leaning over him, her cool hand laid along his cheek. Slowly the dream dissipated, screams fading and fire dwindling to darkness. Her brows were drawn into a frown of concern, and he knew he must have cried out in his sleep. She meant to soothe him, but it was like waking into a different kind of nightmare. Instead of sharp terror, it was the slow press of reality – this new life, this changed body.
He could feel every knob of his spine where it pressed against the pallet, the product of long hunger. Her hand moved to the scarred mess at the side of his head, her fingertips outlining his ruined ear. At least enough of his hair had grown back to hide the worst damage, leaving only the edge of the scar visible. It would always be there, though, a permanent reminder. He could ignore the memories until they faded into nothing, but there would always be evidence of it. It had happened. He lived now in the aftermath, where beautiful women looked on him with pity instead of desire, and visited his bed only to quiet his ravings.
“The pain is gone from it,” he said even though he did not know if she could hear it, because it seemed to him that was the question in her eyes. “I buried my face in the snow to stop the flames.” He was lucky it had not taken half his face and scalp. “In my dreams the snows are not there, and I burn.” He licked his lips. “I burn and burn.”
Her beauty was even more unearthly in the candlelight. It was overwhelming, to be so near to a woman after so many years. Near enough that, beneath the mingled fragrance of wood-smoke and fresh bread on her sleeve, he caught the scent of her. The salt sweat and musk of her skin.
It made his mouth ache, a ravenous hunger that had been dulled by the more urgent demands of survival. With a vicious suddenness, he wanted to devour her, to slide his hands beneath her skirt to find bare flesh and push her thighs open, to put his mouth on her skin and thrust into her. His breath came short, so vividly did he imagine the feel of her tight heat around him.
There was only silence from her as she withdrew her hand and stood. He watched her feet as she walked to the door where her little dog was stationed. The feet paused, stopped, turned back to him, and waited. He raised his eyes to her. The flame of the lamp she held flickered in the draft from the door, but he saw her perfect face, perfectly clearly. Her look told him she had seen the lust in him. As clearly as though she had spoken it directly in his ear, that look told him: No.
He dropped his eyes to the knife that hung at her belt. A simple eating knife, like any common woman would carry. But what she could do with it spoke more loudly than any words or any look. It made the lust in him curdle into nothing.
He turned his face up to contemplate the ceiling, and listened to the even breaths of the wounded knight who slept only a few feet away. Such easy, deep, unbroken sleep.
There was a faint sound at the door, a little rustling. Then the dog was at Gryff’s side. It looked at him, then back at her where she still stood in the doorway. She made a gesture, gently patting the air with her hand and holding her palm up, and the dog came closer to Gryff. It curled up next to him, the warm little body pressing against his ribs as the girl left.
“Bran,” he said, and put a hand to the dog’s head. It gave a very big sigh for something so small, and settled in to sleep.
It was day when next he woke, which seemed miracle enough. He had not slept so many hours together since...before.
Almost as miraculous was the still intact meat pie that was wrapped and set near to his head, while patient little Bran sat inches away and stared longingly at it. It smelled heavenly.
“It is pork,” he informed the dog. “And you are well trained.”
Bran only looked at him hopefully, restraining himself from leaping on the pie as Gryff picked it up and broke off a bit of the crust. The smell made his mouth water painfully. He put the bit in his mouth and blinked back the rush of tears. So pitiful had he become that he was unmanned by a pork pie.
He broke off another piece and held it out to Bran. The dog came forward slowly, never taking its hopeful eyes off Gryff as it took the most careful, gentle bite he’d ever seen from man or beast. Laughter escaped him, jagged and rusty, stabbing the quiet. He kept laughing as the dog nibbled almost daintily from his hand until the portion was gone. Then Bran retreated to a spot several feet away and sat, watching solemnly while Gryff ate the rest.
Just as he finished it, two brothers came. One examined Sir Gerald’s wounds while the other merely handed a bowl of bread soaked in broth to Gryff, and left. More food. It did not look to be a very wealthy priory, but they were generous.
“By God’s grace there is no fever, and you will mend in good time,” the brother was saying to Sir Gerald. “But to journey ahead to Lincoln or back to Morency would be foolhardy.”
Morency. Lincoln. Gryff gripped the bowl, assailed by memories that he could not seem to sort fast enough. They were somewhere on the road between Morency and Lincoln. He should avoid Morency; he might have a friend in Lincoln.
“I am told you are Welsh.” Sir Gerald had managed to sit upright and now held his own bowl of sop. The monk was exiting, leaving them alone.
“I was,” Gryff answered, taking as much of the Welsh out of his voice as he could. He had not realized how much of it had crept back in. “I have not dwelt there since I was a boy. I called Monmouth my home these many years.”
It wasn’t true, but it was close enough. Monmouth was near to Lancaster’s keep, and he had visited enough times to know it well. It was something he must remember, now, another little lie to commit to memory: he came from Monmouth.
In the next minute, he wished he had chosen anywhere else.
“Monmouth is near to Ruardean, whence comes the lady of Morency. Do you know that place? Her brother rules Ruardean now. Lord William, I think his name is.”
William, whom he had taught to fly a hawk. Will, who had been so amazed when his beloved sister had married Morency. Little Will was a Marcher lord now. His father must have finally died.
“In those days, it was not a William who ruled,” was his only reply.
“Five years then, at the least, that you have lived away from there.”
It was a simple statement of fact that answered the nagging question: five years since Wales had fallen. Five years since he had run in fear of his life.
“What task sends you and your party to Lincoln?” Gryff asked, to turn the conversation away from himself.
“Alfred journeys only as far as Godmanchester, for the market. My business in Lincoln is at my Lord Morency’s command.” He looked ruefully at his injured leg. “Now it falls to Nan alone.”
Gryff fought against the urge to repeat her name aloud, to feel the simplicity of it on his tongue. It was such a humble name. Nan. Achingly beautiful Nan. Deadly Nan, who could guarantee safety from any dangers on the road.
“If she journeys on to Lincoln, I would join the party,” he said between bites of the sop. “The goshawk I will sell, but the falcon I keep for my own. I would take her to a man I know in Lincoln.”
A friend who might tell him everything he wanted to know: if anyone still searched for him, if it was safe to go home to Wales, if there was anything left to go home to. Sir Gerald would likely know these things too, but unless the world had changed very much in five years, it would be the gravest mistake to trust a Norman knight who served the king’s bosom friend.
“Nan goes first to a village near to Lincoln, and then on to the town as it please her.” The knight leaned his head against the wall, overcome with weariness. “She has her own business and will not wait for a party to gather, so impatient is she. And she needs her no companions to keep her safe from harm.”
“I will be glad to leave this place even today. This minute, if I must.” A stop on the way to Lincoln was no hardship. “I will pay her if she requires it, to act as guard on the journey. The hawk will fetch a good price.”
The thick mustache twitched a little, a quick smile. “She goes where she will and as she likes. Nor will she travel with you if she does not wish it. Your coin will not change that.”
Gryff did not reply to this, privately musing that a woman who went where she would and as she liked could decide for herself whose coin she would or would not take. There seemed to be nothing ordinary about her. “Strange though it be, I can believe she is as much protection against rogues as any king’s guard. How comes it that a lady has such a skill?”
This produced a short grunt of a laugh. “She is no lady, but servant to Morency. It is a rare villain who will come through his lands, for they have learned it is well guarded. Few know it is a woman who is most like to be their reckoning.”
All these words spoken, and still he had not answered the question. But to learn she was servant and not lady was a relief. Little chance, then, that she would know anyone from his old life.
Gryff looked over to find that the dog had gone – slipped away to find his mistress, no doubt, or another bit of pork pie. The guarded tone in the knight’s voice told him it was pointless to ask why Morency sent a woman more lethal than a band of thieves to Lincoln with a dog in tow.
“She was trained by Lord Morency’s own hand?” he asked. She must be. There was no one else in all of England with both the skill and the disregard for what anyone might think of the strangeness of it.
But Sir Gerald had put his head back against the wall and drifted to sleep that quickly, exhausted by the effort of eating. Gryff poked at the sodden bread with his spoon. His belly would not stand more, but he could not make himself loosen his grip on the bowl. He would want it later; he must just keep it near until he could swallow more. Another reason to curse Baudry and his men, that they had made him worse than a dog with a juicy bone – or a bit of pork pie – jealously hoarding every morsel.
Within the hour, he managed it, then made himself rise and go to the hawk-house. He found Tiffin sunning herself outside, her feathers spread out in the sunlight while Ned looked on from a perch. Gryff had flown them both two days ago, and they were in as good health as he could hope for. The monk who kept birds for the priory informed him that the market at Godmanchester would be a likely place to sell the goshawk.
He should sell the falcon too. He knew it. It was a miracle he had kept both birds alive and well, that they had not flown away and abandoned him the many times he had struggled to keep them fed. He knew it was foolish to think he could keep it up with Tiffin, especially while he journeyed to Lincoln and even more when he could not guess what the future would bring. But she was like a piece of home. She had calmed and comforted him through these months of despair. He could not bear to part with her unless he might give her into the hands of a friend.
“We leave at first light,” said Alfred, who was waiting for him back in the guest house some hours later.
The girl Nan was there, too, kneeling over Sir Gerald to carefully put some kind of salve on his wound. She did not look up when he entered, but her dog immediately began to bark. It did not stop until she made that noise again, the quick huffing hiss of a sound that reduced the barking to little more than a canine grumble.
“Godmanchester is but a day’s journey on the old north road,” Alfred said when he could be heard again. He held out a length of rough wool. “You will find finer cloth there, but this I give you gladly to keep off the chill of morning, until you may purchase better.”
Gryff took it and thanked him. He supposed this meant that Nan had agreed to let him accompany her to Lincoln. She did not look up at him, though. She only went about her business, sharing out a portion of the unguent into a smaller jar. Gryff looked away from the sight of her smoothing the knight’s hair from his brow, the fond look she gave him, and turned to his own pallet.
Alfred talked on – about the road, the market, the need to bathe here as the inn at Godmanchester never seemed able to provide any but the filthiest water. Gryff sat, exhausted at the thought of walking for a full day tomorrow. He had taken his evening meal of porridge outside, after an afternoon of exercising the goshawk had left him too tired to make his way back here.
The dog appeared at his feet just as Alfred was bidding them goodnight.
“Will you sleep with me again, Bran?” He whispered it, ashamed of how much he wanted it. Embarrassing enough to crave the comfort and warmth of it, but he knew what he wanted most was the security in knowing the dog would act as guard and wake him if anyone entered while he slept. Just for now, he promised himself. Soon he would be himself again.
Bran stayed where he was and it was a long time until Gryff realized the girl had left without his noticing, as silent as ever. He looked to find a small sack of almonds waiting for him in the place where he would lay his head.
“None for you, little Bran,” he said, and turned his attention to eating all that he could while there was still food to be had. Then he slept.
In the hour before dawn he woke with a jerk of alarm and struck out at the figure that hovered over him. It was instinct, and a bad one – if he were still tied to a tree among the thieves, they would have beaten him bloody for lashing out. But he was not among the thieves, nor tied by rope. It was the girl again. Nan.
He had not touched her. She was too quick, and had leapt away before his fist could land. Now she stood over him, a lamp in her hand, her startling blue eyes locked on his until his breathing began to calm. Then she blinked and gave a small, apologetic nod of her head before looking down at his pallet, just a few inches from his head. He followed her eyes to the spot and found a strip of dried meat there, and a bit of bread.
It took a moment for him to realize that she had put it there – that she, and not the monks, had left all the other little gifts of food. It took longer for him to realize that she had already slipped away before he could find words to thank her.
