Dream of Me/Believe in Me (59 page)

So did the meal progress though Krysta managed to eat very little of it. She was too vividly aware that Hawk's people were weighing her in the balance and prayed they would not find her too wanting. Only Daria dared to make her opinion known and then only because the bitter woman seemed unable to contain the waves of anger rising off her. Father Elbert tried to whisper to her but she waved even him off and continued glowering her way through supper.

It was over finally, leaving Krysta all but limp with relief. Hawk remained at table with his men but signaled the servants to accompany her to her quarters. He rose as she did, bowed over her hand, and wished her a cordial good night, all in the full view of their fascinated audience, who could not resist putting their heads together over that. Sleep seemed an impossibility yet it had come so suddenly as to take her unaware. Scarcely had she laid her head upon the pillows than she woke to the glare of morning.

Late morning, it seemed, when she peered more closely at the light. Shocked to discover that she had slept much longer than she had ever done before, Krysta jumped from the bed and began looking for her garments. She found her mother's dress at last, folded carefully away in a large wooden chest at the foot of the bed. In the same chest were all of Krysta's garments. With a start, she realized that other of her belongings—her precious books, the water-polished stones brought from the bay in front of her cliffside home, even a small box holding pressed flowers from that same cliff—were set out about the chamber.

Wondering at the thoughtful hand that had made her feel just a little at home, Krysta drew a chemise, stockings, and a simple day gown from the chest. She found water in an ewer on a table beside the windows. Halfway through
scrubbing her face, she realized that the water was warm. A servant must have come in while she slept. Worried that she be thought a layabout, she hurried her ablutions and was quickly dressed. But before she could summon the courage to open her door, there was a soft knock. At her invitation, a young woman bearing a tray entered and gave Krysta a cautious smile.

“Good day, my lady. I hope you slept well. My name is Aelfgyth. So it please you, I am to be your maid.”

“My maid?” So surprised was she that Krysta almost blurted out that she had never had a maid. Servants, to be sure, but Raven and Thorgold both were independent souls who still tended to see her as the child they had nurtured. They were as likely to do as she said simply because she said it as they were to fly to the moon. In truth and all things considered, less likely. Still, she did not think it wise to parade her lack of experience in such matters.

“I am sure we will get on well together, Aelfgyth.” With a glance at the tray the young woman had set on the table, Krysta saw with pleasure that it held fresh baked bread, berries, and a round of cheese—food she would have selected for herself.

“Your serving woman says you do not eat meat,” the young woman said, a little anxiously as though conversing with Raven had been no easy matter. “Else I would have brought some of the sausage Cook made this week. It is very good.”

“I am sure it is.” Krysta smiled and gestured at the tray. “This suits me very well. Be assured though that I do not expect my meals brought, nor do I usually sleep so late. Indeed, I don't believe I have ever done so in my life.”

“No doubt yesterday was eventful,” Aelfgyth murmured diplomatically. She hesitated a moment before adding, “When it pleases you, my lady, the steward Edvard is waiting to attend you.”

The redoubtable Edvard was waiting on her? Krysta's surprise must have shown, for Aelfgyth said, “His lordship is on the training field with his men but he left instructions for Edvard to show you about the manor and answer whatever questions you might have as to the running of it.”

Edvard was to show her the domestic side of Hawkforte, not Daria. Doubting though she did that the steward was pleased with such an assignment, she was grateful to be spared the company of her future sister-in-law if only temporarily.

Reluctant to keep the steward waiting any longer than he already had been, Krysta made short work of her meal and hastened from the royal chamber. She found Edvard on the steps to the main hall, where he was going over his accounts. At her arrival, he rose quickly, stuffed the roll of parchment into his tunic, and bowed. As he straightened, he and Aelfgyth shared a look so swift it might have eluded Krysta had anxiousness not made her unusually alert. At sight of Aelfgyth's smile, his brows rose but he lowered them swiftly and gave prudent attention to his master's soon-to-be bride.

“Good morrow, my lady. I trust you slept well?”

“Well and too long. Aelfgyth tells me you are to show me the manor.”

“As my lord has directed.” Edvard paused, frowning. Confronting the remarkable creature who had appeared suddenly last eve bearing no apparent ill effects from having deceived a man known the length and breadth of England for acting with ruthless speed against any who displeased him, the steward thought some further explanation might be in order. “For certain, the Lord Hawk would see to the matter himself were he not engaged in training his men. That task must take precedence over all others in our unsettled times. Hawkforte may appear a
peaceful burgh, but the appearance and the reality both are earned only through constant and devoted diligence to duty, which we are most fortunate to receive in the person of the Lord Hawk himself.”

Having worked her way through this thicket of words and concluded that the steward was trying to assure that she should feel no slight at being escorted by him rather than by Hawk, Krysta made swift to reassure him that she had no objection to his company. Inwardly, she admitted that she was just a little relieved not to have to face her formidable betrothed right then.

Edward said not a word of Daria, nor was that specter in evidence anywhere they went at Hawkforte. From the cool stone interior of the dairy half-buried in the ground through the dozens of dependencies—where wool was spun, woven, and dyed; food smoked, pickled, or stored; iron heated and bent; wood sawed, soaked, and shaped; grain ground; leather tanned, and on and on ending finally with the pigeon coops perched high above on the towers—Hawkforte's residents greeted her with cautious curiosity. Edvard maintained a stern demeanor that served to remind people of who and what she was, as though any needed reminding considering the banquet of gossip with which she had provided them. Yet did she find herself looking over her shoulder from time to time, just in case the Hawk should appear. No sign of him was to be had, and as the hours passed in diligent perusal of her new home she found herself impatient for some sight of him. Surely he was not … avoiding her?

“Is the Lord Hawk often so long occupied on the training field?” she asked as pigeons fluttered in their coops and the small boy who tended them peered at her through the tangle of his bangs.

The question startled Edvard. He gave off elaborating on the merits of the locally grown grapes still cultivated
in the ancient Roman vineyards versus those native to the sunnier climes of the Mediterranean and looked at her cautiously.

“Training is very important. Lord Hawk maintains a sizable garrison and it would not do for the men to have too much idle time.”

“I suppose not….”

She turned away, looking out over the walls. Between her high perch and the sea whence she had come lay golden fields, plump orchards, orderly vineyards, and timber-rich forests. To eyes bred for harsher climes, such blatant plenty seemed a skald-spun dream.

Edvard spoke at her shoulder. “It was not always as you see it now. There was a time when those fields were trampled and lifeless, the town a tiny burnt shell, and those huddled within this fortress clinging to only the faintest hope that the Danes could be driven from the land.”

“All this before King Alfred rallied the fyrd and gave battle to the Danes?”

“Yes, before men such as the Hawk rode with him, fighting at his side through more battles than anyone could count, living days in the saddle with scarcely any food or rest until it must have seemed to them that there was nothing left in the world save blood and death.” The wind whispered in a moment's silence. It died away as Edvard went on. “He never speaks of it, not a word. Others will brag of their exploits in battle, but the Hawk says nothing. He was only a boy yet he fought with the strength of a grown man and he saw things no boy should ever see. Alfred himself hailed him as the greatest warrior of our age. He offered him any prize short of the throne itself. Do you know what Lord Hawk said he wanted?”

Krysta shook her head.

“To go home, to heal the land, and hopefully to have the land heal him.”

“You were with him?” Her voice was tight with emotion.

“No, I was little more than a mewling babe hidden with my parents in the forest, my mother boiling bark and roots to try to keep her milk coming so that I might live. The Lord Hawk brought peace to this land and its people but that same peace eludes him. He knows full well it is the fierceness of his reputation that keeps the Danes at bay. So does he drive himself on the training field, at the hunt, in all ways that the spies of the Danes can see and report.”

“Spies?”

“Of course there are spies here, did you think not? The Danes are not reconciled to their loss of these lands. They paw the ground like tethered bulls, awaiting the first sign of weakness to gore us yet again.”

“I had not thought of that,” Krysta admitted and felt foolish for so obvious a lapse. The land might look prosperous and at peace to her, but to other eyes it would appear all that
and
a prize to be coveted.

“Then think on it now, my lady,” Edvard said. “It is the dread repute of the Hawk that protects us. Any hint of weakness is the door through which catastrophe will enter.”

Her shoulders stiffened. She faced the steward proudly. “I see no weakness in Lord Hawk.”

Edvard did not relent. “And surely you would never seek to prompt any.”

“I seek only to be a good and loyal wife.” She spoke gently in deference to what she recognized as his true loyalty to his lord.

The young man's expression softened slightly. “Then we will all hope you succeed, my lady, for there is not a man or woman or child here who does not wish the best for Lord Hawk.”

Thus on notice that the people of Hawkforte expected
her to prove herself, Krysta was relieved when the tour of the manor concluded a short time later. She thought to seek the relief of solitude in her quarters until the supper hour so that she might reflect on all she had seen and learned. But when she passed through the great hall on her way to her chamber, she found Daria lying in wait for her.

So suddenly did she emerge from the shadows that she took Krysta by surprise, prompting a small, startled cry.

“Oh … Daria. I didn't see you.”

The older woman's thin face bore two stark patches of color high on her cheeks, emphasizing the flat glitter of her gaze. “No doubt your mind is too full of frivolous thoughts to take note of your circumstances.” She sneered, her mouth twisting in derision. “You are a fool. The only sensible thing you can possibly do now is leave.”

Coming from another, such rudeness would have surprised Krysta. But from Daria it seemed as natural as the curl of smoke from a wood fire, a reminder of embers lurking just below.

“I don't think that would be sensible at all,” Krysta said.

“Don't you? Then you don't understand the situation. You have
enraged
Hawk. Do you understand? He is so consumed with fury that he cannot trust himself to be anywhere near you. He's already had one stupid, selfish little wife and she did not live long. He is not a man who suffers fools gladly. He is in love with another woman, a lady of true nobility and worth whom he wishes to make his wife. Indeed, he would already have done so were it not for this idiotic alliance.”

Before the barrage of so much that was new and shocking—a previous wife, dead … another woman he loved?—Krysta felt as though she had been plunged into a turbulent sea, both cold and smothering. Yet did a life-line
seem to beckon, disputing Daria's claims at least in part.

“Hawk is not angry. Certainly he gave no indication of that yesterday eve.”

Daria dismised that with a snort. “Of course he did not. He never shows his emotions before his people. But he's been out on the training field all day barely restraining himself from hacking his own men to pieces. You truly have no idea of the havoc you've wreaked, do you?”

“I have done nothing so severe as to merit this. You are exaggerating—”

“Nothing? God's breath, you are even stupider than Adda!”

Daria's poison tainted the very air around her, yet even recognizing that, Krysta could not stop herself from asking, “Who is Adda?”

“Who
was,”
Daria corrected triumphantly. “She was Hawk's first wife, that sniveling child. Her death was a relief to us all.”

“How did she die?”

“She fell from a cliff, that same one right out there.” Daria pointed toward the sea. “And good riddance to her, she deserved no better. We weren't even able to recover her body. Denied proper burial, her soul is condemned to wander forever. But of course that wouldn't worry you as you are not a Christian.”

“I
am
a Christian. My father saw to it that I was reared as such.” She did not add that she suspected him of doing so as an antidote to what he perceived as the dangerous influence of her vanished mother.

Daria looked taken aback but she recovered quickly. “No matter. You may call yourself what you will but your heart is pagan. The Norse can never be anything else. That is why you dwell in the frozen wastelands beyond the grace of Our Lord.”

“Our land is as God willed it to be. However, I doubt
He willed you to be so ignorant and prejudiced. If that had been His wish for anyone, He would not have sent His Son with tidings of love and redemption for all.”

For a moment, mounting fury held Daria in thrall. She did not move or speak but stared at Krysta with unconcealed malice. The silence drew out between them like a rank fog. Daria's mouth worked for some moments before she could manage sound from it.