Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,54

Rebels of the Pale had narrowly escaped Turold, not so his man.

“Severed his head, they did, and delivered it to the abbot,” slurred the one whose bloated face was every shade of pink.

The hard little apple in Vitalis’s hand began to soften.

“You would not know Turold to be a man of God,” said one who shook his head wonderingly. “They say he himself set the head atop his new gate and returned to his supper.”

All laughed.

It almost sounded a bone snapped in Vitalis’s hand, almost felt blood running through his fingers and over his wrist, but it was the apple and the juice made of it. He dropped the pulverized thing, and beneath his mantle turned a sticky hand around his sword hilt.

“Ye smash it, ye buy it,” said a woman at his elbow.

He cursed himself for not hearing her approach, and again when she of middle years and little height stepped nearer and peered up into his hood.

This Saxon woman did not know him, but as if she saw the rebel, her reproachful face softened. “Naught can be done about this plague of rats,” she said low. “They are too many and rabid.” Then she scooped up two of her wee apples, dropped them in his pack, and opened her palm.

Feeling his heart pound, hearing his breath, he dug a coin from his purse and paid her.

Closing her fingers over it, she glanced past him. As she watched the gloating Normans, he listened and knew the moment they went their separate ways.

The woman’s sorrowful smile missing several teeth, she returned the coin to his purse. “Live, housecarle,” she said and hastened to another table where a customer picked over her vegetables.

She was only guessing, but she was right on both counts—the esteemed housecarle once he had been and the rebel he had become.

Vitalis looked to Nicola playing the foul beggar. Though she kept her head down, she was near enough to have heard the men-at-arms providing she attended to their exchange. Noting her beseeching hand was now limp in her lap and her head lower, he knew she had heard.

The pressure in his chest so great it pushed up his throat into his head, Vitalis struggled for control as he strode the street. Nearing Nicola, he took a coin from his purse. It did not matter her hand was closed. Even were it open, he would not have made the effort to land the coin in her palm, and so it dropped atop her knees.

Having given the signal they were done, he continued past and glanced behind to confirm she followed. As planned, they took a different route than the one that delivered them to Thetford and kept distance between each other to draw less notice.

The minutes he waited for Nicola in the bordering wood, watching her pick her way forward with deliberate plodding to maintain her guise, seemed hours for how large the ache behind his eyes. When she arrived, he allotted only enough time to further confirm she was not followed, then started back to the camp.

Blessedly, she slipped beneath the shroud of his silence, the greatest proof of her presence the odor of her mantle, though it was less repellant than earlier. Because of his inner raging, he knew. There was little enough room in him for all of it, let alone the scents and sights to which he should attend to keep her safe.

Lord! he silently entreated as the pressure increased further, making it feel as if it might crack open his skull. This unworthy warrior falls short. Pray, aid me in keeping watch over her.

Anger. Revulsion. Sorrow. Guilt. All these made the weak of her wish Vitalis had bound and left her behind—even if he never returned to release her. They caused everything to blur as she trailed the warrior between corridors of greens, browns, and the greys of immense rocks.

But no matter how greatly afflicted she was by that causing tears to stream her face and her belly to pitch, it could not compare to the chaos within Vitalis. Were she one of the Normans who had laughed over Zedekiah’s fate, surely he would loose that chaos on her.

What will he do with it? she wondered as she gulped down bile that would not be long in once more ascending her throat. What can I do? Do I possess any words or kindnesses to ease his pain?

Only my absence, she concluded but clung to the woman who counseled her to keep her word