Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,22

plan to all, Vitalis?”

“I shall, but I doubt he will heed my warning since much he desires to deny the Normans that wealth and better his chance of doing so with Danish aid. But failing persuasion, I shall make good use of the absence of his and the earl’s forces from the isle.”

“Lady Nicola,” Zedekiah said.

Vitalis sank his teeth into meat, chewed and swallowed. “God willing, ere they return from Peterborough I shall have her back among her own.”

“Then where will we go, my lord?”

Though once Vitalis had considered Denmark, he had little more respect for those led by King Sweyn than men who answered to Le Bâtard. Wales, then? Scotland? Ireland? None appealed, but what did in this world whose broken pieces had been fit back together in the years since the great battle to form a picture so grim it was unrecognizable?

“My lord?”

“I know not, Zedekiah, only that it is best you not follow me.”

“Again you waste your breath, my lord. Where you go, I go, even do I join you in death.”

Wily Saxon, Vitalis thought. Zedekiah knew the one he followed would be more heedful of preserving his own life were another’s bound to his. Such consideration and loyalty I do not deserve, he mulled and took another bite, careful to keep the juices from slicking his beard. But how to shake him loose so he returns to Lady Hawisa’s service?

Continuing to satisfy his hunger, he determined sometime between now and delivering Nicola to Wulfen Castle he would find a way.

Chapter Five

They had done more than secure the abbey’s treasures. They had done worse, and surely under the influence of the Danes who comprised half the men who set out in flat-bottomed boats before the first of day cleared the reflection of starlight from the river’s surface.

Though Hereward had told the monks—all fellow Saxons—he wished only to prevent the riches from falling into Norman hands, the men of God had resisted. It could not be known if they would have done so in the absence of Danes, but they might have been more amenable. Instead, the alliance had burned nearby houses to create a diversion, then set fire to the abbey gate.

Gaining entrance to God’s house, they had taken all that was easily removed, including the gold crown from the figure of Christ, precious shrines and crosses, jewel-encrusted books and robes, great quantities of coin, and relics said to be of the bodies of saints. Then there was that not easily removed, but removed all the same—the prior and senior monks made hostages lest the alliance encounter patrolling Normans during their retreat.

Now as night once more cast itself across the sky, Danes and Saxons celebrated on the broad street near Ely’s own abbey.

Hereward having searched out Vitalis, he drew alongside the one who watched the escalating revelry from beneath an aged ash tree that refused to die though most of it was grey rotted limbs, and discolored leaves on surviving branches curled in on themselves.

As Vitalis waited for the other man to speak, he shifted his gaze to the inn across the street in whose second floor room Nicola remained out of reach. As if the earl had known what was planned during his and his son’s absence, he had increased the guard at the lady’s door and added two men belowstairs and two outside to patrol the perimeter. Either he ensured his son’s prize did not escape the whelp, else he planned to convert Nicola to coin by way of ransoming.

Though the latter would effect the same as Vitalis sought in seeing her returned to her family, he could not rely on it, especially since Nicola might not cooperate.

“Peterborough went as badly as it went well,” Hereward finally spoke. “But the treasure is safe.”

Staring at the seam in Nicola’s shuttered window that was no longer lit its entire length, Vitalis wondered what the lady spying on the merriment thought of it and if she could see him and Hereward beneath the tree.

“You speak not, Vitalis. Is this the silence of disapproval? Of judgment?”

“The silence of listening.” Vitalis glanced at the shorter man, returned his regard to Nicola’s window and saw light once more ran the shutters’ seam top to bottom.

“Had we not strengthened our numbers with Danes and gone to Peterborough when we did,” Hereward said, “what we took would be Turold’s when he arrives with the knights Le Bâtard has given him.”

Vitalis would not dispute that, nor that there would have been no dissuading the