Daughter of Fire (21 page)

The bishop reached out, touching the edge of her sleeve. “These are precarious times, mistress. Be careful that you do not overstep yourself.”

It was a simple gesture, yet inexplicably a great coldness swept over her. The falcon screeched in alarm at her perch. When Vivian would have calmed her with a gentle word she immediately leapt into the air, powerful wings sweeping low, talons outstretched as she swept past Vivian.

A look of genuine alarm appeared on the bishop’s face and his hand went to the sword as the falcon swept so close with those deadly talons that he felt the brush of a wing at his cheek. 

The falcon angled low under the canopy of the trees and sought a distant perch. She sat on an outstretched limb, wings unfurled, that lethal beak open, golden eyes reflecting the gleam of the flames from the campfire. Across the encampment dozens of voices called out, swords were drawn, and soldiers descended on their encampment.

“Stand away!” The order was given amid the gathered soldiers and they stepped aside. Rorke FitzWarren quickly strode through the circle that had gathered.

“What is amiss?”

“That creature attacked me!” the bishop gestured to the falcon that now sat calm and watchful on a low-hanging limb nearby.

“If she wanted to attack you, ” Rorke assured him, “she would have done so and there would be no doubt of it. But as all can well see, you are unharmed.”

The bishop’s expression eased as he gazed about him.  “I have been too long at war,” he said by way of explanation. “I have forgotten the finer points of falconry. I assure you I will not forget them again. I would not care to lose an eye or find myself flayed open for my carelessness.” He then turned to Vivian with a wary eye toward the falcon.

“You have reminded me, mistress of a valuable lesson about wild creatures. They can never be completely brought to hand and must be guarded against constantly.” Then he smiled, as if to make a jest of the entire matter.

“I will take my leave, before she decides to go hunting again. And I suggest that you keep her to tether about camp,” he added. “My brother, the duke, has brought his own hunting birds. They are fierce creatures. Your small falcon would be no match for them. You would not wish to find her maimed, or killed.”

“I will remember.” she murmured.”

The soldiers sheathed their weapons and left to return to their own campfires when they realized the cry of alarm was not over Saxon rebels attacking the encampment.

As Rorke also turned to leave he saw the blood that dripped through fingers clasped tightly over her arm.

“You’ve been injured,” he said with more than a little alarm.

“ ’Tis nothing,” she responded and tried to pull away, but he prevented it.

“ ’Tis more than nothing,” he remarked tight-lipped as he stared down at her bloodied hand. “Did the falcon strike you?”

“No harm was done,” she insisted.

“You said the falcon has never wounded you,” he reminded her, prying her fingers apart.

Just the simple contact of his fingers against hers recalled the touch of his hand in her hair and the feel of his mouth against hers.

“It has never happened before,” she explained. “It was not intentional. She was startled was all. ’Tis only a scratch.”

“ ’Tis more than a scratch, Vivian,” he insisted. “I’ve seen my share of wounds and any that bleed like this are indeed serious.”

He was not to be persuaded otherwise and succeeded in prying loose her fingers. He stared at the sleeve of her gown, shredded by the falcon’s talons as she had swept too close, and the pale, unmarred flesh at Vivian’s arm.

“There is no wound,” he said. “Not even a mark.” He gently inspected her arm unable to find any wound or even a scratch.

“I saw the blood. How is it possible there is no wound?”

She refused to meet his gaze as she finally pulled her arm free and stepped past him. “You were mistaken.  The falcon hunted in the forest while I gathered herbs,” she explained. “No doubt the blood was from some prey that was captured.”

Twelve

“I
t seems,” Rorke said reluctantly, “that I must accept that you have told the truth. By your own words, you are incapable of a lie.”

“What other truth could there possibly be?” Vivian asked.

“What other truth indeed.” he countered.

Tarek appeared on the other side of the campfire, and Vivian let out a sigh of relief for the end of the uncomfortable silence that had closed around them, and the disconcerting scrutiny of those gray eyes that saw far more than she had told him.

“William has asked to see you,” Tarek informed him. “Plans must be made for the march to London on the morrow.”

“Aye,” Rorke nodded, his gaze never leaving hers as if he still sought some other truth there. His mouth curved into a frown as he wrestled with new, far weightier matters.

“This might well end in a bloody siege because of foolish decisions. And this army cannot survive another siege, fragmented as it is across the whole of England because of ill-advised decisions.”

Both he and Tarek knew the bishop had advised just such a decision—split the army into a dozen smaller forces, spread like pearls along a golden chain—a very thin chain capable of being broken. Vivian heard the undercurrent of disdain that flowed through the words and sensed Rorke was not pleased with the decision made days earlier.

“Perhaps,” Tarek suggested, his tone filled with unspoken meaning, “it was an exceptionally ingenious decision.”

Rorke’s gray eyes sharpened as he considered that exact possibility. Vivian’s senses sharpened. What she could not discern about Rorke FitzWarren, she succeeded in sensing from Tarek. They suspected some sort of danger from within.

“Perhaps,” Rorke speculated as some undercurrent of understanding seemed to pass between the two men. He turned to leave, but not without another long, speculative look at her apparently uninjured arm.

“Be careful in handling the falcon,” he cautioned. “It would be best if she was tethered until we reach London.” As he turned to follow Tarek to the duke of Normandy’s tent, he assured her, “We will speak of this again.”

~ ~ ~

Vivian discovered, that like King Arthur five hundred years earlier, William’s army was made up of generals, trusted knights, and fellow noblemen who had proved themselves in battle at his side over the years. Still too weak to lead them in battle, Duke William reluctantly relinquished command for the forthcoming march on London. She learned that he entrusted his brother, the bishop count de Bayeau, with matters of faith. But in matters of conquest, he entrusted his army to Rorke FitzWarren.

That dangerous dichotomy was not lost on Vivian who attended William and daily became more aware of the undercurrent of resentment and enmity between Rorke and the Bishop.

It was rumored the bishop considered command of the army his by right of blood. But over the days and weeks, as she learned more about Rorke FitzWarren, she realized that he had more than earned that right, by a much different rite of blood in battle.

He had been apprenticed as a squire at the age of fourteen and earned his knighthood by the age of sixteen. When his father, the Count d’Anjou, had refused to support his knighthood, he had blackmailed the old man into sponsoring him by threatening to pledge his sword to the king of France, a longtime enemy of Anjou. Though his father eventually sponsored his knighthood, Rorke refused to take the crest of Anjou for his shield. Instead, he took the mythical phoenix rising from the flames—a creature born in fire and blood, destroyed, and then reborn in the flames.

Gavin revealed little about Rorke’s relationship with his father though she was aware the two men had fought together for nearly a full score of years. She knew only that the old man had been a cruel, forbidding man who had sacrificed one son for another and lost both in the bargain. More than that Gavin would not say. But with what little Rorke had shared with her that day in the Saxon encampment, she knew the hatred was deep and painful and whatever had separated father and son had never been forgiven.

It was on the battlefield at San Cristabol in the Mediterranean provinces when he was but a score of years, that Rorke met William of Normandy. Their friendship was forged in blood and common ambition, and Rorke had pledged his loyalty to William.

Now, fourteen years later, London was surrounded with legions of William’s army, like the links of a massive chain. Canterbury had fallen to the Norman army two weeks earlier. Just two days before, with the whole of the Norman army encircled about London, the sheriff of London had finally negotiated for peace.

The city was a sprawling warren of hamlets all clustered together at a mouth of a massive river that emptied out into the sea.  As the city had grown with shipping commerce and trade it spread to the south and west.  To the north it was rimmed by the king’s forest.

Mist rolled in from the sea and mingled with smoke from thousands of cook fires as the city that hadn’t been conquered in five hundred years wait in terrified expectation for the invaders that were rumored to be at the gates ready to lay waste to the city and every living soul within it. 

Outside the city, carts, wagons, and litters with the wounded, camp followers, squires, and retainers, had moved to the back of the Norman line. There was no place for them among a fast-moving,  invading army.

Because there had been rumors for weeks about the fall of King Harold at Hastings that had no doubt preceded them, any weakness would be seen as vulnerability, and possibly a final  opportunity for the Saxon barons to rise up against him.

It was a cold night. The Norman campfires rimming all of London were no doubt clearly seen by the inhabitants of the city. Deep in her heart, Vivian wept for the outcome that she had foreseen and was powerless to stop.

A bitter wind swirled in from the sea, making Tarek al Sharif wish for the warmer climes of Antioch, that distant home he had not seen since boyhood but which he remembered in his blood. A sharp gust guttered at a nearby campfire, sending clouds of smoke into the bleak night sky.

He found her at the edge of the encampment, one of Rorke’s guards hovering nearby. The wind whipped at the flaming ribbons of her hair as she stood staring into the night. Clad only in the worn gown and woolen shawl, her slender figure was outlined by the glow of the campfire. Haunted shadows played over delicate features as she stood with arms folded about her as if she were trying to hold something in rather than hold the cold out. He made no sound as he approached, yet somehow she sensed his presence, her head turning slightly in acknowledgment. It was not the first time he had noticed that uncanny ability, almost as if she had a sense of things where others did not.

“What do you see in the darkness?” Tarek asked, coming to stand beside her.

“I see death, loss, and change that no one can stop.”

He smiled. “William would be pleased that you see the success of his ambition.”

“Success bought at the cost of human suffering?” she asked sadly, still without looking at him.

“William merely claims what is his by right.”

“By what right?”

“By right of a deathbed promise from the old king, so I am told,” Tarek explained. “That promise then broken by the king’s counselors when they held the witan and elected Harold, king of England.”

Poladouras had spoken of the promise and the inevitability of war that might come when and Harold was made king. “And if the promise had not been made”—she turned to look at him—“Would William have been satisfied with Normandy?”

Tarek shrugged. “It is said that England was his by right of blood, through his grandmother. There was none other who had equal or greater claim.”

“Aye, right of blood,” she murmured, closing her eyes as she did so and still seeing the eerie, bloody images behind closed lids as the portent of things to come.

Lust. Greed. Betrayal.

“Come back to the tent,” he said, feeling the coldness deep in his bones in spite of the heavy robes he wore. “It is cold here. And there are no answers to be found in the dark. I know, for I have searched for them.” He gently touched her arm to draw her back to the main camp. Her skin was warm to the touch,  as if some wild, untamed fire burned through her and he thought again of the legendary Jehara, who inhabited the world between the worlds.

“The answers are there,” she said softly, as if she hadn’t heard him but spoke to someone else.

Beware the faith that has no heart, the sword that has no soul.

The words she first heard that long ago day at Amesbury whispered back to her on the wind. But she could not discern who spoke them, any more than she could see beyond the growing darkness that closed around them.

“Will it be tomorrow?” she asked of the impending invasion of London.

“I do not know. He tells few of his plans. Tis safer the fewer to know. When the time is at hand it will be done.”

“Will Milord FitzWarren be merciful?”

“He will be just.”

She prayed she could believe that, for he had shown himself to be a just man in other things, which was far more than she could say for the bishop.

It didn’t come the following day, or the next. Nerves were drawn taut, as the waiting continued and Vivian knew it must be far more difficult for the inhabitants of London.

Another emissary arrived from the sheriff of London, in whose care the defense of the city had been left upon the death of Harold. No answer was given and still the waiting continued, and it occurred to her that William played a waiting game until he was ready to claim London

Finally, the morning of the third day past the agreed-upon date for the surrender of London, with nerves drawn to the breaking point, Rorke FitzWarren gave the order for the march on the city. Soldiers, both mounted and afoot, and all heavily armed, were to enter London from a dozen locations. The duke of Normandy would not be among the first to enter, a decision that did not sit well with him.

“I will lead my army into London!” he roared his disagreement with Rorke’s decision as they all met in William’s tent. His brother stood quietly within the inner circle of his knights and advisors.