Boadicea's Legacy Read online

  His goodwill faded as he remembered the sorrowful tears in the priest’s eyes. “The kind Father didn’t mention that when he was praising her attributes. She was a great healer, he said, and loved by the entire village, despite her uncommon height and red hair.” Os dug a knuckle into his brow, but the ache remained. Talk of witches and witchcraft brought back last night’s chase through the woods as he followed his own vision of a witch.

  What if he’d seen Nan’s ghost last eve? He clenched his fist, knowing that he shouldn’t give in to superstition—despite the lure of the fantastic. The female in the glen had long red hair, and she’d been naked and wet. Didn’t witches melt in the rain? “Such talk is heresy and could get you into trouble.”

  “With who?” Robert asked menacingly.

  “Uh.” Os swallowed. “The church.”

  “And who would tell them? You? And what would ye say? That my wife’s dead sister, who lived in Wales, was a witch? They’d laugh you from the pews.”

  “Me?” Os sat up straight. “I would say nothing.” Until I was far from here, he silently added as he crossed himself.

  Ela snickered. “Such courage.”

  Os rose to a standing position. He much preferred it when Ela adored him and thought him a hero. “If you don’t mind, could we get back to the dilemma at hand? If you know nothing of Boadicea’s spear, and there was no such thing among Nan’s possessions—according to the priest—then I have another solution. If I can’t bring the Earl of Norfolk the spear, and you won’t come, then how about I bring him your daughter?”

  Lord Robert stood, bumping Deirdre forward. “Nay,” they chorused.

  Ela turned to him, her eyes wide and green, and mocking. It stung.

  “What good would it do to bring me? I can tell you nothing.” She returned to the chaise where she’d been sitting. “And it doesn’t matter to me if you have land or not.” She challenged him to come up with something more compelling. What else did he have that would make her want to join him?

  Not a single thing came to mind. He sighed, taking out another piece of paper from his inner pocket. “If you don’t do as I ask, then the earl has given me permission to take what I need. By force, if necessary.”

  Lord Robert frowned. “You would take my daughter from her home by force?” His blue eyes filled with mirth, and he burst into loud laughter. “I think not, knave.”

  Osbert shrugged, his own carefully controlled temper rising. “I would offer a full escort, and she would be welcome to bring a chaperone. Mayhap your lady wife?”

  He didn’t heed Lord Robert’s negating growl.

  “I can guarantee that she would come to no harm, my lord. I would return her to you in the same pristine condition she is in now.”

  Ela snorted—Os found it unbecoming of a young lady. Face tight, he flexed his honed muscles. “I pledge upon my honor as a knight of God that she will be returned.”

  “Pledge all you like. Ye’ll not touch a hair on her head.”

  “I am too fast for the likes of you,” she said.

  Too fast? He looked closer at her beautiful face. The air between them grew heavy, and he shook his head, wondering if something had been put in his drink. That was two times today that he’d forgotten to take precautions.

  He got to his feet, drawn toward Ela. He’d felt this way last night in the rain, and then again in the forest. “You,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  She stilled, as a deer before the hunter’s bow.

  What closed the matter was the small, rodentlike nose peeking out from beneath the veils of her wimple. Os blinked, distracted from his purpose, and the next thing he knew, he was out of the comfortable family solar and lying on his back in the front of the manor. Dazed, he noted the stars above twinkling in the dark spring night. Lord Robert bellowed for Jemison to get his horse. Then the letter from the earl was thrown after him.

  “If you know what is good for you, you won’t be back.” Lord Robert stayed at the stairs until Os left, humiliation thudding with each step Bartholomew took.

  He’d never really known what was good for him. Two weeks later he returned with the Earl of Norfolk’s army.

  Chapter

  Five

  I told you he would be back.” Ela paced the floor of her chamber. Bertha followed, her hands outstretched to catch the pins that fell from Ela’s hair with each step.

  “That ye did, my lady.”

  “And now there is an army outside, and half my father’s knights are out on patrol on the other side of the forest. This isn’t good.” Ela turned, catching the scared yellow aura of her maid. “You’ll be fine.”

  “How so?” Bertha squeaked.

  “I plan to sneak past Father and offer myself in sacrifice to Os before he tears down the manor.”

  Bertha stopped short. “Oh? The last time ye thought to sacrifice yourself, ye got into a heap of trouble.”

  Ela strode faster around the room. “Yea, but this will be different. It will be glorious and an adventure worthy of one with my wild reputation.”

  “But miss, ye’re an innocent!”

  “I’m a virgin, Bertha, not naïve.” Ela huffed and switched Henry to her other shoulder. “And what better way to stop a curse than to find Boadicea’s grave site and demand an end to the torment with her own spear? Hmm? Just think—an end to my nightmares. You know, they’ve just been getting worse.”

  Bertha made a sympathetic sound at the back of her throat.

  As the weeks had passed since Beltane eve, she’d grown more and more exhausted. Meg refused to help her with another spell, saying it was too dangerous to play at magic. Ela was unable to get a decent night’s sleep because her dreams were of detailed battle scenes—or Osbert. It was as if Boadicea herself wanted answers, and Ela was charged with finding them. Her gifts to heal had remained, as had her ability to see auras.

  Only Os had been veiled to her, and she wanted to know why.

  When she wasn’t fighting the Roman army in her sleep, she was dreaming of Os’s face—his lips, eyes, his cool demeanor, his surprised laughter. He was a complex man, filled with honor. She was sorry that her father had thrown him from the manor.

  Os never would have left her to spend the night in a boar pit.

  She sighed. “The Earl of Norfolk is bound to know more about Boadicea than what Osbert does. I will go and see what I can.”

  A chosen few of the Montehue servants knew the Montehue secrets, and Bertha was one of them. “Aye, my lady. But be careful … you’ve not been far from home before. And Sir Osbert is a handsome man, eh?”

  Her face flushed. “I don’t recall.”

  Teasing, Bertha said, “A strong knight such as that could make a woman fall in love.”

  “Love?” Ela huffed. “There is more to a match than that.” She paced the floor. “Love. If I hadn’t seen Gali and ‘Tia have it, then I wouldn’t believe in it at all.”

  “Not just your sisters, my lady,” Bertha chided. “But yer folks too.”

  Tense, Ela fed Henry a piece of chicken left over from her morning meal. “All right, let us be clear. I am surrounded by fools in love, and yet I’ve never felt the spark. It is not meant for me.” She thought of Osbert’s dark gold hair and blue-gray eyes and sighed. He was handsome, but he would never suit. Not if he was afraid of witches.

  “But what about children, my lady?”

  “There’s the problem with the curse, see? This is why I must end it with me. I would marry for children alone, but I lose my powers if I don’t wed for love. Pah. I would wed to gain Father security—but then I lose my abilities that make me me. It is a ridiculous curse, and I am tired of it.” She snapped her fingers to Bertha’s pity-filled gaze. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  Henry chittered and then jumped from her shoulder to the bed.

  Ela took a deep breath, patting her pockets to make sure her small knives were there, and then her leg, where she’d tied her short sword to her garter. “It is time to go before Osb
ert and my father start fighting in earnest.”

  Taking the stairs down two at a time, she peered out over the window casement. She expected to see her father and Osbert negotiating terms, since the battle between them hadn’t yet consisted of anything more than words.

  Neither man really wanted bloodshed.

  Yet neither man was willing to give ground. It would be up to her to save peace. “Oh no.” With mounting alarm, she pulled her maid to her side and pointed out the window. “Bertha, are those Thomas de Havel’s colors?”

  The maid scooted in and peered out. “Aye, my lady. What could that bugger want? Ye’ve turned down his offer for marriage three times now.”

  “Would he join forces with the Earl of Norfolk against my father? Nay—oh, pray tell me that he didn’t just sound the charge to battle? Oh dear!”

  Not waiting for Bertha to answer, Ela picked up her dress and grabbed Henry in a tight hold to her chest as she raced back up the flights of stairs to the balconies around the manor. She shaded her eyes against the bright afternoon sun. Her heart thudded against her chest as she searched for Osbert’s golden head. She sighed with relief when she found him unhelmeted and unharmed.

  By contrast, Thomas de Havel wore a shining black helmet with a fox crest in red on the side. He led around fifty men—ten more than Osbert had arrived with that morning. Her father was dressed handsomely in white and green, and her mother waved a scarf from the top of the gate tower, a small figure in the distance.

  Her father was in the middle formation, Osbert was to his left, and now Thomas de Havel was on his right. Fear trickled down her back. If the two men went against her father, then Montehue Manor would be lost.

  I should have married that imbecile, just to stop this from happening.

  Deciding that he wanted to marry her after all, Thomas had sent flowers and gifts of jewelry—he’d even sent a minstrel with a poem about her tan skin. But Ela—bolstered by her parents’ warnings that they could take care of themselves—hadn’t given in. Now look where that had gotten them!

  So far there had been no fighting between Osbert and her father, just taunting and threats. Her father would never willingly give her up to Os, even though she would willingly go.

  She had to choose. Now. Thomas de Havel had lands that butted against theirs. He could be an ally in court intrigue … but she just couldn’t bring herself to bed a man who loathed her. Indifference would be kinder, but she had the feeling that he was the type of man to pull wings from butterflies. He’d poke her just to see her bleed. She couldn’t bring children into a viper’s nest such as that.

  Osbert, on the other side of the coin, would do his best to see her safely returned to her father after he was rewarded with his land for bringing her to the Earl of Norfolk. He didn’t want anything from her but her company.

  She kissed Henry on the nose. “I’m still doing it. You stay here and wait for me to return, aye? Bertha’s promised to give you treats and—hey!”

  Henry was torn from her arms and tossed to the floor like an insignificant pest. Bertha fought against the attackers, but was felled by a gloved fist. Ela struggled as the men in black and red wrestled a burlap bag over her head and body and dragged her out of the manor. She screamed and kicked, but it did no good.

  Nobody came to rescue her.

  Osbert had a terrible feeling. He didn’t like invading Lord Montehue’s lands, and he’d warned his men to cause no physical violence, unless he said otherwise.

  Robert Montehue had a stubborn streak as wide as his own, and the older man refused to back down, despite Os’s assurances that his daughter would be treated like fine porcelain. All logic pointed to the two men eventually coming to a reasonable agreement without death.

  Nay, the foreboding dealt with something else. A warning from God, mayhap? If so, Os required a clearer message.

  “Why don’t you come too?” Osbert finally asked, sweat pouring from his brow in the heat. “Bring your lady wife and daughter and make a trip of it. I can show you around, bring you to Thetford where Boadicea is supposed to have lived. The women would feel the history that is theirs alone. Surely that is a compromise worth considering?”

  Lord Robert Montehue, his face as red as a cooked ham, jerked his stubborn chin in the air. His blue eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say no. Osbert wanted to pump his fist victoriously in the air. I’ve got him.

  And then Thomas de Havel and his men came riding over the fields, ruining the new crops just beginning to thrive, destroying the compromise that he’d been working so hard toward.

  Robert looked at Os and spat to the ground. “Ye sided against me with that toad? Pox on you.”

  Os tightened the grip on his sword handle. “Never,” he promised. “I’d rather be dead than have my good name besmirched by joining forces with him.”

  Lord Robert raised a suspicious brow as they watched de Havel march closer. It seemed as if de Havel’s men took pleasure in ruining the new sprouts in the once neat rows. It infuriated Os, and he clenched his knees around Bartholomew’s middle—prepared to surge forward and kill the bastard, if need be. A joustmaster had to learn patience and calm, else he would be injured.

  There was no money in injuries.

  Thomas came close enough to be a threat. But to whom, Os couldn’t tell. He braced for bloodshed and saw Robert do the same.

  Then he heard Ela scream. He knew it was her, the red-haired temptress who’d toyed with his dreams for a fortnight. It resounded in his soul, a cry that pierced him in the heart. Never again, he thought wildly. Nobody will ever touch his woman so brutally again.

  He shook his head, not understanding his thoughts. He and Lord Robert exchanged a glance as Lady Deirdre shouted and pointed toward the back of the manor with her green and white scarf.

  “The forest.” Os grabbed Bartholomew’s reins in one hand and drew his sword with the other. Thomas de Havel chose that minute to spring his men forward, ready for battle. Without thought, Osbert signaled for his men to join with Lord Robert’s against the common enemy. Somehow, de Havel seemed to have an army of fifty or more.

  “I must save my daughter,” Lord Robert said, fighting his way free of the melee. A soldier in black and red let loose a mace, and it knocked Robert to the ground with a horrifying thud of spiked metal hitting flesh.

  Os reached down his hand to lift the bleeding man up, but Robert gritted his teeth against the pain and shook his head. “Don’t waste time—just go get my daughter. And I hold you to your damned oath to bring her back as she was when she left this place.”

  In other words, Os thought as he searched for Albric, Warin, and St. Germaine, find Ela before she was a victim of rape. Just the word left a foul taste in his mouth. Or—and God help him, because this was even a worse thought—before Thomas de Havel took her maidenhead and forced her hand in marriage. The king would approve in haste, once the damage was already done, and consider it to be fair.

  His friends gathered around him, their horses stamping to return to the thick of the fight. “Our alliance is with the Montehues, against de Havel. I’ll be back. If I’m not, go to Norwich.” They were all three strong Earl of Norfolk knights, and he knew they would treat this mission like it was their own.

  Os urged Bartholomew in the opposite direction. They raced around the side of the manor and toward the forest. This time, he had no fear of what was in the deep heart of the wood. He’d been there and survived it.

  He vowed that Ela would too.

  Ela breathed in the foul horse taste of the burlap bag, then bit the fabric, tearing at it until she had a hole she could poke her face out of. Her teeth cracked together with each uneven hoof step, and she vainly hoped she didn’t break one in the front.

  She never doubted that she’d find a way out of the trap she was in—if not by her father’s or Os’s hand, then by her own.

  Ela was resourceful, aye, and the dagger in her boot was sharp. Her eating knife was in her waistband, and her short sword tied to h
er garter beneath her tunic. The fact that the leather sheath sliced into her thigh with each jostle just assured her that it was there. She would eventually find a way to free her bindings and use her weapons on her captors.

  She couldn’t think about the sound poor Henry’s body had made when he’d hit the floor. Or Bertha’s stunned cry as she was hit. She stuck her head farther from the bag and looked around. Thomas de Havel’s army had torn the fields on this side of the manor, and the smell of horse manure streaked the air. How had he gotten so many knights willing to fight against her father? Did the king know? Were they mercenaries? Her father said that knights for hire were dangerous because they had souls that could be bought for coin.

  Ela ignored hearing her internal voice ask what if and concentrated instead on wiggling farther from the bag.

  Her captor’s horse slipped, and Ela accidentally bit her tongue. She tasted blood and her fury grew. She’d not been raised to be powerless at the hands of men.

  What type of cur was Thomas de Havel, to have her kidnapped from her own home? To go to battle against her father because she’d refused to marry him?

  She didn’t understand—unless he thought to kidnap her and marry her against her will. What had changed his mind? Ela couldn’t imagine being bound forever to him, especially now that she knew where his preferences lay.

  She had a feeling that he was a man who wanted rough sport, and a woman was too easy a victim—another thing she’d been taught to never be. Shuddering with revulsion, she squirmed until her shoulders were free from the bag. Unfortunately, her hands were still tied behind her.

  Eyeing the ground as it flew beneath the horse’s hooves, she swallowed hard and banished fear to somewhere it couldn’t touch her. This is going to hurt.

  Os leaned over Bartholomew, gaining great speed over the trail leading to the forest. He could see two horses up ahead and two men in de Havel’s black and red, almost at the tree line.

  His gut ached and his insides writhed with frustration, but he kept his head clear as a trained knight ought.