Daughter of Fire (19 page)

He grimaced, both at her remark and the pain that radiated from the wound at his side with every movement. “She is not spoils of war to be abused and poorly treated,” he grunted his comment. “Her skills are much needed and I would not have her seeking revenge against my men.”

“Aye,” Judith remarked, a tawny brow lifting over pale blue eyes far different from those fiery blue eyes he saw in the heart of every flame he looked into. “I suspect her skills were much needed, yet the little bird has flown.”

She knelt between his legs as Vivian had. Unlike Vivian, there was nothing that could be mistaken as innocent about Judith de Marque as she retrieved the cloth from the bowl at the table and wrung it out. Leaning forward between his thighs, she stroked the cloth up the length of his left arm.

“She is too young and far too simple to comprehend the needs of a warrior,” she purred as she drew the cloth down across his chest.

“And you understand those needs perfectly,” he said, without the least effort to disguise his contempt. She dipped the cloth again in the warm water, continuing to bathe him as he sat before her.

“I know them well, milord. Mayhap you have forgotten.” She leaned closer then, the front of her mantle falling open to reveal that she wore nothing underneath. As she leaned to stroke the cloth across his belly, she gave a faint shrug of her shoulder and the mantle fell to the floor of the tent.

Her breasts were large and pendulous, brushing his arm as she leaned forward. The flat moons of her dusky nipples puckered and hardened at the contact.

“But I have not forgotten,” she said huskily, the bathing forgotten as her fingers stroked across his belly then downward over the hardened ridge of flesh that pressed thickly up against his belly beneath the leather breeches. He watched her through narrowed eyes as she laughed, a deep, satisfied sound, reminding him very much of a cat licking her lips over a bowl of cream.

“Aye, milord, you have indeed remembered,” she said, satisfaction gleaming in her eyes.

“What of your loyalty to William?” he asked, the coldness of his voice matching the wintry chill at his narrowed eyes.

“I am as loyal to him as he is to me,” she said with silken voice, which both knew meant not at all. “He brought me to England to ease the cold nights because his duchess is large with child. He will send for her to join him in London, and when she has brought forth the child, he will again be loyal to her for a while.”

She slid her hand down the front of his breeches to the bulge at the base and her voice lowered to a hungry growl. Then she smiled, and her voice went lower still, thickened with desire.

“I can feel how well you remember,” she whispered as she squeezed with one hand while the other stroked the fullness of her own breast, stroking the nipple as she watched for his reaction, then stroking down over her flat belly through the thatch of pale hair, to the cleft of her body.

Laughter was thick at her throat, her fingers glistening, as she brought them to her lips and licked each one like that hungry cat he had imagined. Judith de Marque had never lacked for imagination or enthusiasm. Then the laughter died and she smiled triumphantly with the last stroke of her tongue.

She slipped her other hand behind his neck and murmured huskily as she pulled him down  for her kiss. “Taste how well I remember.”

The kiss was deep, thorough, as intimate as the physical joining her body craved.

Abruptly, Rorke pushed her away from him, the taste of her thick and redolent with the muskiness of desire at his lips.

“I am tired unto death, Judith, and the wound is like a poker thrust into my side.” His expression was void of any emotion except that cold, empty stare. “Perhaps one of the count de Bayeau’s men would appreciate your loyalty this night.” The words cut like shards of ice thrust deep.

Stunned by his rejection, Judith moved stiffly away. She reached for her mantle, the expression behind her eyes cold as stone. Her features hardened, no longer sultry with invitation but a mask of undisguised hatred. Angrily, she wrapped the mantle about her, then fled the tent as Tarek al Sharif stepped past her.

“That is an expression I have never seen before on the leman’s face,” he commented. “Have you lost your taste for a woman’s charms?” he asked with some bemusement, for it was no secret that Judith de Marque still longed to share the bed of the count d’Anjou, even though she had willingly shared William’s bed. She was a woman of ambition and rare appetite. For a while Duke William had fulfilled her ambition, while the count d’Anjou had fulfilled that rare physical appetite.

Rorke refilled the cup, downed the ruby red contents, and refilled it again, trying to drown the whore’s taste from his mouth.

“I find I have lost my taste for a certain woman,” he said with disgust, at the same time longing to recapture the sweet-burning essence of another.

“What will you do?” Tarek asked, both amused and curious at his friend’s unusual dilemma.

Evading an answer, Rorke reached for a large parchment scroll carefully wrapped in leather. He untied the leather bindings and opened the scroll, spreading it across the surface of the table. The parchment was a map of Britain.

“It is imperative that William take London. Only then can the throne be assured. We shall wait until he is strong enough to travel, fortify ourselves, and strike before the Saxons strike at us.”

Fire hissed at the nearby brazier as the coals feebly struggled to warm the cold air inside the tent. His squire moved about, preparing a late supper, setting out garments for the morrow, including a second mail hauberk. Few were as rich as his lord and therefore capable of affording two such garments, nor were others as needy of two.

Tarek al Sharif, on the other hand, eschewed such weighty trappings, preferring instead to strike first with that deadly curved blade and lightning swiftness his mailed clad companions  were given to envy.

“How is an enemy best taken?” Rorke asked thoughtfully, as though considering strategies of war.

Tarek shrugged with an air of faint boredom, for they had discussed such matters at great length. “Strike hard, strike fast, and then strike again where it may least be expected.”

“Aye,” Rorke acknowledged, studying the map. “With decisiveness, strength, and cunning!”

“Do we speak of England or a single Saxon maid?” Tarek asked, failing to hide his amusement. It was long known that his friend’s only ambition was the bounty offered by William for aligning his army with that of the Conqueror. That bounty would assure him the duchy of Anjou. Was it possible that something had caused his friend’s ambition to waiver.

Rorke’s gaze met his across the table, then returned to the map. “We will make our plans to take Canterbury next.”

Tarek knew of this place called Canterbury, spiritual heart of Saxon England, and saw the cunning of Rorke’s plan.

“Claim the heart of the creature and then capture the soul, and do it when and where none will expect it.” He nodded his appreciation of the plan. “There will be opposition,” he warned. “There are those who will say you overreach yourself, my friend.”

“What do you say?” Rorke asked him.

Tarek grinned with approval as he lifted his goblet. “To London.”

Eleven

V
ivian sat up suddenly at the insistent shaking at her shoulder. The mist of the dream slowly disappeared, sleep clearing from her thoughts as she became aware of the cold that seeped through the thin blanket and her much-mended gown. The hand at her shoulder belonged to Sir Gavin’s squire, Justin.

“What is it?” she asked, since she’d had no foreboding of it. “Has the duke of Normandy worsened?”

“ ’Tis not His Grace, but Mally,” he said with a worried frown that betrayed his feelings for the girl. “She’s fearsome sick even this many days after...” He hesitated to speak of the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of Vachel and his men.

“Aye,” Vivian acknowledged, for the first time realizing that the girl was gone from their meager shelter under the cart where they had sought warmth at night since the journey from Hastings had begun days earlier.

Though Duke William was far from strong enough for the journey, he was determined to press on to London, insisting that it was imperative that the city be taken as soon as possible in able to ensure his claim to the throne. He and Rorke met daily, discussing battle plans, numbers of soldiers lost at Hastings, and the strategy for taking London.

William’s wounds were healing well, the bone and tissue in his leg well mended. She always rose early before sunrise, attended the duke in his tent that was erected each eventide for him, and then left before Rorke arrived with Gavin and his men.

During the day Rorke and his men rode far afield, fanning a protective line out through the forest well ahead of the main column of soldiers, to protect against any surprise Saxon attack as they drew closer to London.

The illness that plagued Mally, however, had nothing to do with bruises or broken bones. She had already suffered the worst that could be suffered at the hands of Vachel and his men. She had found at least temporary safety in Sir Gavin’s care. Vivian had made certain of it, telling the kindhearted knight that the girl was much too ill to be moved elsewhere. He had agreed to allow the girl to remain with his entourage, and Vivian had remained with her to see to her care.

“Where is she?”

“Down by the water,” Justin worriedly informed her.

Vivian gathered the thin shawl about her shoulders. It had been given to her by one of the camp followers out of gratitude for healing the man she traveled with, a soldier in Sir Gavin’s retinue. Justin accompanied her, indicating the place where he’d last seen Mally.

The girl was on her knees by the water’s edge, bent over at the waist, and retching violently into the rocks at the shore. When the spasms seemed to momentarily subside, Vivian gently laid a hand at her shoulder.

The girl turned to look at her. There was such misery in her expression. Her skin was deathly pale, and, in spite of the coldness of the morning, a fine sheen of perspiration beaded her skin and plastered her lank damp hair against her forehead.

“Mistress Vivian?” she said miserably. It was all she could manage before she was immediately seized with another wave of nausea. Vivian gently bent Mally over her arm, holding her, while she held the girl’s hair back with the other.

“Set a small pot to boil over the campfire,” she instructed Justin.

He hesitated, fear warring with indecision in the expression at his face.

“She will be all right,” she assured him. “But I need your help. A fine tea brewed from some of my seedlings will relieve the sickness. Now, please go.” He did, but reluctantly, pausing to take Mally’s hand between his own and squeeze it with undisguised affection. The girl didn’t shrink from his touch as she did others, but instead smiled feebly. He turned and scrambled up the embankment toward camp.

Vivian had seen it coming from the moment she had Mally taken to Sir Gavin’s tent. Justin cared deeply for the girl. If he knew the true nature of her illness, Vivian held no doubt he would have taken up a sword and gone after Vachel and his men single-handedly for what they’d done, for she had come to realize there was a deep contempt and loathing between Rorke’s and Vachel’s men.

“Oh, mistress Vivian,” she moaned. “You must give me a healing potion. I don’t know what’s the matter with me, but I don’t seem to be gettin’ better. And if milord FitzWarren finds out, he’ll have me put out for certain so no one else gets sick.”

Vivian tore a strip from the hem of her linen chemise under her gown, wet it in the clear, cold water of the stream, then wrung it out and folded it into a square. Holding Mally’s hair out of the way, she laid the cold cloth across the back of the girl’s neck.

“They will not put you out,” she said. “Not when your illness is of their own making!”

“Their making?” Mally groaned, her voice small and childlike as she leaned weakly against Vivian. “I don’t understand mistress.”

Vivian hugged the girl against her. “Your sickness is not from disease or fever,” she told the girl gently. “It is from joining with a man.”

Mally was only ten and four, but she was bright and quick. There were seven children in her family. She had assisted the births of the two youngest. She had been raised in a single-room cottage with all the members of her family crowded around the fire at night. With that many children, four of them younger than Mally, it was impossible for her to be ignorant in the ways that men and women came together.

“You haven’t had your monthly flux since we left Amesbury,” she went on to explain.

The girl turned away from her, arms wrapped about herself, as if holding herself together. She shook her head..

“I told myself it couldn’t be true. I didn’t want it to be true. Oh, mistress Vivian. What am I going to do? What will become of me?”

She hugged Mally tightly, anger burning through her like a live flame for what the girl had endured and must now endure further.

“The child is innocent,” Vivian said gently through her own tears. “No matter how it was created. Don’t worry,” she assured the girl. “I’ll take care of you and the baby.” But in her thoughts, silent, where the girl could not hear, she cursed all Norman soldiers.

“You must tell Justin,” Vivian went on as gently as possible. “You can’t let his feelings for you continue and not tell him. It wouldn’t be right.”

Mally jerked away from her, her eyes wide with misery. “I cannot tell him. He mustn’t know. He’ll hate me. I couldn’t bear it.”

“He won’t hate you,” Vivian said with a certainty, knowing exactly where Justin’s hatred would be directed. “You and the babe are innocent in all of this. But you must not delay, for he would be deeply hurt if you deceived him.”

Mally nodded miserably against Vivian’s shoulder. When the girl was better they returned to camp. It was late, the sun was already climbing the sky. Preparations were being made to get under way. She had just finished instructing Justin in the brewing of tea made from anise for Mally that would ease her nausea and make travel bearable, when Sir Gavin arrived to escort her to Duke William’s tent.