Boadicea's Legacy Read online

  Catching up to the man wasn’t hard, not with the noise he was making as he and his stallion splashed across a tiny stream. She came close enough to hear him mutter, “A witch? Impossible.”

  She grinned and crossed the stream by hopping from rock to rock. He was wet, she was dry. She almost felt sorry for him.

  Witches. Was Ela’s ability to heal a mark of the devil? It didn’t seem right that such a gift wouldn’t be blessed by God—her grandmother always said so. It didn’t feel wrong when she used her powers to lift a cough or ease an ache.

  Another curse echoed through the trees.

  Should we let him wander the forest all night?

  Henry snuffled in protest, his breath warm against her neck.

  I can’t bring him home, and poor Meg is sleeping.

  He wore a cross on his cloak. What if he was a heretic hunter, working for the church? True fear, the first she’d felt all night, worked its way through her body. Her eyes narrowed as she crept closer to him, close enough to see the leather thong tied around his neck. Not gold chain, nor silver … he wasn’t rich. His only wealth was in his horse.

  We’ll have to catch him.

  Henry’s tail fluttered.

  If he’s a poor, lost knight, then come morning, I can apologize and send him on to the village for food. If he’s bent upon mischief, then a few hours tied to a tree won’t hurt him, and it will give me time to come up with a better plan.

  Henry clambered around her neck so that he was able to look into her eyes. Nose to nose, he chuffed and seemed to shake his head.

  Ela realized that the forest had grown quiet.

  No more splashing or branches breaking or cursing.

  Oh no.

  Where did he go?

  Henry leapt from her body to a tree trunk where he scrambled up to a higher branch just as Ela heard a snapping twig to her left. She jumped to the side and barely avoided being crushed by the stranger’s charging body.

  They each stumbled on the slippery forest floor, then righted. Ela stared at him, not really seeing him in the dark, just the outline of his broad shoulders. He hadn’t seemed so big up on the hill. His breath came in harsh pants, and hers echoed just as loud. She heard the beating of his heart in tempo with hers, and it made her dizzy. Oddly, she was compelled to reach out and caress his face. She could touch him—if she dared.

  Ela dared not. What is the matter with me?

  She turned and ran for the trails she knew by rote, her breath caught in her throat as she dug her bare toes into the dirt and pine needles. She ignored the pain of the occasional pointed rock, intent on losing the man behind her.

  As they’d stared at one another, she’d felt something more powerful than the storm raging over the glen. This power swelled from within, surrounding them both. Her instincts urged her to run faster, yet at the same time a part of her wanted to stay. Move!

  He kept on her heels.

  She was fast, aye, and he was too. What would happen if he caught her? This was her forest, these were her trees. But he didn’t know that. Her leg muscles burned as she flew through the woods, taking trails and forging new ones until finally coming to the dense heart of the forest.

  He wasn’t far behind, but she bent at the waist and breathed in deeply through her nose. Air. She needed—ew.

  Pungent and earthy, the stench of boar was unmistakable. She lifted her head, slowly, cursing her thoughtlessness. The stranger’s crashing footsteps were magnified as she searched the brush for movement. Not his—but the boar she sensed was on the periphery of the clearing.

  She straightened and called a low-pitched warning to the stranger. “Slow down. Nay, stop where you are.”

  The man never paused but kept running, his voice triumphant as he said, “I’ve got you now, witch, and you’ll be sorry you led me for such a merry chase.” He kept coming at full speed, through the underbrush, through the bushes, and straight for her. Just when Ela was certain that she was going to die by either the man’s hands or the boar’s tusks, the man disappeared with a cracking of dried branches.

  She hoped it wasn’t his bones she heard snapping.

  The bushes behind her rustled, and she stayed still until she was sure the boar was truly gone. She dropped carefully to her knees, crawling across the ground. Ela peered over the edge of the boar trap, her pulse thudding in her ears.

  “I told you to stop,” she said softly.

  The still form of the man down at the bottom of the deep hole gave a pathetic groan.

  “Blessed be, he’s still alive,” a quavering voice said from behind her.

  Ela peered over her shoulder, flicking a rope of hair from her face. “Meg. I was going to let you sleep.”

  “With all that racket ye made tearing the trees down? I’m old, not deaf.”

  Relief scattered the remnants of fear. The wisewoman had a way of appearing just when Ela needed her. “He scared the boar away.”

  “And who is he?” Meg slowly got to her knees next to Ela, and they both stared down into the pit.

  She shrugged. “I was summoning Andraste, just like you instructed me, and the next thing I know, this …” She remembered the way he’d stared at her naked body and flushed. “This fool came riding over Abner’s Hill. I ran, he chased me, and here we are.”

  Henry chittered from a treetop close by, as if confirming her story.

  “He had a horse?” Meg looked around.

  “Aye. But he chose to chase me on foot.”

  “Stupid man.”

  “He’s fast, Meg.”

  “But you know the forest, and now he’s in the bottom of a boar pit.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose!”

  The old woman arched her brow. “It doesn’t matter now—we have to decide what to do with him. How will we get him out?”

  Ela scrambled backward, knowing that her friend wouldn’t like what she had to say. “We have to leave him there.”

  “Ela, shame on you …” Meg clucked her tongue against her teeth.

  “He has an aversion to witches, and he’s wearing a cross on his cloak. What if he’s a witch-hunter?”

  “Your ‘what ifs’ always get you into trouble. I say we get a rope and help him out before he dies in there.”

  Stung by the rebuke, but knowing that Meg was right, Ela crossed her arms over her waist. “It will be your fault then if I’m burned at the stake.”

  “They don’t really do that. You might have to pay a fine, but what of it? The people that matter know that you’re no witch.”

  Reminded of why she needed to hide her identity from the stranger strengthened her resolve to do the wrong thing. “For certes, tomorrow Thomas de Havel will ask for my hand—but not if this stranger tells everyone he saw me naked in the glen.”

  Meg sighed. “Oh no.”

  “I say that we leave him ‘til morning, and then we can remind Father that it has been ages since he’s checked his traps. The man will be saved, and I will be far removed from the evidence.” Ela rubbed her chin and ignored the building guilt. “It is a sound plan.”

  “You would treat an animal with more kindness than you offer this stranger,” Meg said.

  Ela’s hands trembled as she thought of what could happen to her family if she didn’t convince Thomas that she’d be a good wife. Her desperation deepened. “I have to marry Thomas de Havel—I’ve almost got him, I can tell. I cannot have my reputation smirched any more than what it already is.”

  “Pah. You are making a mistake there, Ela. Thomas is not your destiny.”

  “You’ve been telling me I’m destined for someone special since I was a little girl. I listened, and now look at me. Alone, with dirt beneath my fingernails.” She looked down at the figure of the man at the bottom of the pit, her eyes filling with rare tears of defeat. “He may as well be my destiny, for all of your promises.”

  “He hasn’t moved since I got here. What color is his heat, child? Ye can’t let him die.”

  “As if I
would?” Ela blinked, then leaned farther over the pit. Something was very, very wrong. She listened and heard the sound of his short breaths so she knew he wasn’t dead. She swallowed, her mouth dry as dirt, then cleared her throat. “Ah, Meg. He has no aura.”

  Os roused to a rough tongue licking the tip of his nose—the breath smelled like fish. Dead fish.

  Flat on his back, he opened one eye, then the other. It was exhausting. His muscles ached as if he’d participated in ten tourneys in two days. After gazing upward for a time, he realized that he was looking at a face. It was out of focus, and he couldn’t decide if he was seeing a woman with a weasel face … or was it a weasel with a wrinkled face? His brow furrowed.

  “I know I’m not much to look at, dearie, but ye’ll thank me soon enough, aye, for tossin’ a rope down. Are ye hurt?”

  He took stock of his body parts—all were there. Sore, but accounted for. “Where am I?”

  “England.”

  He closed his eyes and prayed for patience. “I meant, where am I, right now?”

  “Ach. In a boar pit.”

  “And how did I come to be here?”

  “That’s not important. Have ye the rope? Will you be strong enough to climb up the sides of the hole?”

  “Tell me how I came to be here, at the bottom of this stench-filled pit!”

  The old woman shook her head. “Shouting won’t get answers for ye. Now, I have to go before I’m caught out, helpin’ the enemy.”

  Os struggled to his feet, touching the rough dirt walls at his sides. “I’m the enemy?” That didn’t seem right. “I am a knight, sworn to honor and protect. I am not the enemy.”

  The old woman disappeared from view. He shouted again, but she stayed gone. He clutched the rope she’d tossed down and growled his frustration. The rope did no good without someone up top to hold the other end.

  He slipped, his booted feet losing purchase as he tried balancing on a pile of sticks. Something cracked beneath his weight. Not sticks. Bones. God’s blood, and some of them still had fur attached. The old woman had said he was in a boar trap.

  Are you a lad, then, by Christ? Os gulped, then grabbed the dry bones and used them as leverage to climb up the side of the pit.

  With each step, he remembered how he’d come to be in the rotting hole. He’d been tricked by a red-haired witch. She’d been naked, aye, but resourceful. She must have led him to the trap with magic and then pushed him in.

  Os reached the edge and pulled himself over the side before scrambling to his feet. His pride twitched as he brushed fur and bone from his leggings and tunic. He smelled like a tanner’s yard. Bartholomew was nowhere to be found, and he was lost in the middle of a stinking forest.

  He had resources of his own, praise Christ. He closed his eyes and prayed for guidance while listening to his surroundings. Blundering through the unknown was a good way to be killed. Os identified the gurgling sounds of a nearby stream. A stream would lead out of the forest.

  He started walking, noting each broken branch and each bent fern. She’d been fast, the witch. But if she was a witch, then why hadn’t she flown away?

  A sense of caution warned him before he stepped in another trap, this one with metal teeth designed to snap a leg in two. Os jumped back and added another injury to the list he planned on giving to Lord Robert Montehue, along with a recommendation, as well: burn the forest and everything in it.

  He found the stream in the small clearing and paused. Logic won the moment, and he discarded his boots, tunic, and leggings before diving into the chilled water. He scrubbed away the dirt of the pit and the taste of failure.

  Dunking his head below the cold surface, he washed the twigs from his hair, then stood and shook like a wet dog. Os heard a chirruping sound, much like laughter, and looked around. He saw nothing.

  It was a reminder that he had a chore to do. It was a wild goose chase, aye, but the prize was one he coveted. Nay, not coveted, he thought with quick sign of the cross. Wanted. He’d earned his own land, by the sword—and that was the honest truth. With one last shake, he climbed from the stream, putting on his stinking tunic. He didn’t have time to clean his clothes too.

  The earl had said nothing about looking like bleeding royalty when he’d charged Os with finding the old Iceni queen’s spear.

  Determined, he straightened like the disciplined knight he was. He calmly deduced how to get outside the forest, following the foliage as it became less lush and the leaves a lighter green. He had faith that his horse, Bartholomew, would be waiting for him—and he was, munching grass as if he hadn’t a care or worry that his master wouldn’t come out on top.

  He always did.

  Chapter

  Three

  Men roared battle sounds from the backs of raw throats, blood freshly spilled and copper-tasting, the feel of leather straps holding her small shield in place. All around her, men and women were fighting as if their lives depended on it.

  Ela woke when her spear clashed with a Roman warrior’s flesh and his arm fell to the dirt with a wet thump. There was no more sleep to be had after that.

  She rose from her bed, gathering the down-stuffed quilt around her shoulders, and lit a candle so that she could study the ancient tapestry in her room. It had belonged to her grandmother, who had bequeathed it to Ela on her deathbed.

  The scene was similar to her nightmares. The small stitched figures battled valiantly. Roman. Briton. The red-threaded hair of Boadicea was vibrant, even after hundreds of years. Ela reached out to touch the warrior, wondering why she was plagued with these awful dreams. Did they come from Boadicea’s last battle? She’d had them since she was a little girl. Her grandmother had been the only one who could soothe her.

  It would be a terrible irony if she married Thomas and lost her gifts, and yet remained haunted by the same powerless dreams.

  Filled with guilt over last night’s folly, Ela knelt down and said her prayers as the sun came up. She was used to being caught out in various scrapes, so she had a fair idea of what Father Harold would recommend for punishment.

  God in heaven, forgive my act of cruelty. I never should have left that poor man to spend the night in the boar pit to save my own skin. I vow to say four—nay, forty—Our Fathers and give double in the tithing bowl on Sunday. Amen.

  Next she took special care with her bath and dress. She pinched her tanned cheeks so they’d have a rosy hue and tightly braided her hair into a coronet on her head. She capped it all with a detested wimple. Her long-sleeved dress covered every inch of her skin, and she wore two under-gowns for added bulk.

  She knew in her heart that she would be meeting the strange man face to face this day, and he must not recognize her, or her plans to save her family would be destroyed.

  Bertha bobbed into the cool chamber. Ela was reminded that it was May Day by the wreath of spring flowers on her maid’s head.

  “My lady Ela? Is that you?” Bertha’s tray of water and rolls trembled.

  “Aye, and ye needn’t look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Ye’re the image of yer grandmother, God rest her soul.” Bertha dipped her head reverently before setting the tray on a small table. She straightened the bedcovers, plumped the bed pillow, and bent to pick up the gown Ela had worn through the forest last night. She lifted the garment, scrunching her freckled nose. She didn’t bother asking questions. “I’ll donate this to the poor. Or make rags of it.”

  “Fine.” Ela swallowed over the lump in her throat as she thought of her grandmother. Evianne had been a kind, generous, and loving woman who had helped Ela sort through her healing abilities. Ela’s mother had been the sister who’d gotten beauty without magic, so only Lady Evianne could pass down the family lore. Ela’s eyes ached with unshed emotion.

  “I’m sorry, my lady. I spoke out of turn.” Bertha finished tidying the room. “Can I bring ye a cup of cider?”

  “No thank you.” Ela reached out to touch Bertha’s arm. “‘Tis just that I miss her.
I’m proud to be in her image.” She didn’t think her grandmother would approve of the mess she’d made of last night’s spell. Lady Evianne had been a devout Christian, with a wicked sense of humor. She’d insisted that the abilities passed down through the generations since Boadicea were blessed by the all-knowing God.

  She’d said that if He had disapproved, He surely would have smote one of them by now.

  I miss you.

  Don’t waste your time doing that—clean up your mess. Staring at the tapestry for answers she’d never been able to find, Ela heard the door shut as Bertha left the chamber. She strode to the window, looking out to the line of forest off in the distance. What if the stranger had died in the night?

  He’d been well built and strong, with a voice of steel. She imagined that he had a purely masculine strength to go with his hair that curled when wet. Her stomach clenched.

  What if he was simply an innocent man lost in the forest and she’d overreacted, as was her wont?

  She had to get him from the pit and heal his injuries. I should have found a different way to protect my secret.

  Secrets. But if he was innocent, then why hadn’t she been able to see his aura?

  The truth hit her with such impact that she dropped to her knees, her hand to her lips to stop a cry.

  What if Andraste had answered her plea last eve and taken her gifts?

  Her gaze rested on the faded tapestry. What if that was all she had left of Boadicea’s legacy? Regret blurred her vision.

  I’m sorry, Gram.

  Osbert circled around the manor fields, noting the knight’s yard where men were already awake and practicing their sword work. Lord Montehue had obviously done well under King Richard’s benevolence. New stone walls marked the property, and a road to the left teemed with serfs either coming from the village to the manor for work or the other way around.

  Such a manor, prosperous land in a time of uncertainty, was sure to come to King John’s attention. Os shook off the whisper of unease and reached for his pouch, withdrawing the letter of introduction. The Earl of Norfolk was a powerful man. Lord Montehue—and through him, his lady wife—would have no choice but to answer his questions.