as their earl commanded, or he feared it himself, she did not know. All she knew was the earl’s affection for his son was great.
“I remember, Bjorn.” Having every intention of not being the cause of further discord between father and son, silently she renewed her vow to keep her mouth shut and remain near Bjorn.
Shortly, a dock came in sight around a bend, and standing on its sparsely treed bank were a score of men given advance warning of their arrival.
“Keep that woman quiet, Bjorn, else I shall,” the earl warned.
Tongue pressed to her palate, she turned her face aside and surveyed those beyond the dock. There had been some armed men among the Fenlanders who provided transport across the marsh, but every one of these carried weapons, and though surely few were born to the sword, nearly all looked warriors and held themselves as if comfortable with the weight of armor and blades.
And their leader? He was not the one standing at the center, that short balding man among the few who did not present as one who fights. A coarse wool robe covering him neck to ankles, he appeared more a man of God than a taker of lives.
“Sire, which do you think Hereward?” Bjorn asked.
“The big one to the right of the little one.”
Having long observed the training of warriors, already Nicola had considered and dismissed that man. He projected the confidence of one who had killed and would kill again, but there was too much of the brute about him rather than honed, disciplined force as trained into those from a young age whose nobility presaged they might one day hold lands and govern people in need of defending.
Once more picking her gaze over the rebels, she decided if Hereward was among them, he was the stout tattooed Saxon with long blond hair loosely bound at his nape. His muscular frame exuded brute strength but also disciplined force, and it was not merely interest in his eyes. There was calculation there as of one who gives rather than receives orders—and takes that charge seriously lest he prove the cause of unwarranted deaths.
I am quite good at this, Nicola congratulated herself. And to prove I am due more respect than mere chattel…
She popped open her mouth to submit her own candidate, and hesitated. Though she had assured Bjorn she would behave, she had greater cause for gulping down the opportunity to best his sire.
Better delayed gratification than rash revelation of what you hold behind your back, Hawisa had instructed.
Nicola D’Argent was no mere troublesome woman, but the more evidence she provided of that, the closer the watch on her.
And so you behave, the voice within reminded, and she thought how silly to resent it for commanding her to abstain from what she knew would feel wonderful only in the moment. Then a thought struck. If she wished to keep hidden what was behind her back, better she speak.
All wide-eyed innocence, she said, “I think you are right, Earl. It must be the big Saxon. Very fierce that one.”
Dismissively, he shifted his gaze to Bjorn. “Perhaps not the big one. More likely Hereward is absent Ely—playing his little games of strike-and-flee against Normans caught out in the open.”
Not the response expected, her woman’s opinion having caused him to rethink his own. But it served since his estimation of her would lessen when she was proven wrong the same as he.
The boat carrying the earl was the first to dock, and she had to suppress a squeak of delight when the one she believed the rebel leader broke from the others and strode the damp, creaking planks to receive his visitors.
“Earl Asbjorn, you and your men are well come to Ely,” he said as the older man stepped from the boat. “I am Hereward, son of Asketil, enemy of Duke William, defender of England of the English, friend of the Danes.”
Nicola lowered her chin in the shadow of her hood lest the earl’s stiffening grow a smile too big for her to contain.
“I thought it you, Hereward,” Bjorn’s sire said.
This time a squeak escaped, and though she disguised it with a cough, Bjorn squeezed her arm—a kind warning that made it difficult to believe he and the earl were kin. Of course, he was still very young and much could change a man in all the years his sire had lived.
Hoping when he reached the earl’s age there would still be lightness about him, Nicola startled when Hereward