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Prologue
Thaxted Keep north-eastern England— June AD 1067
Bishop Obert pounded his fists on the thick wooden table in a most inappropriate gesture for a man of God. The muscles in his cheek began to twitch and he fought to keep control over his completely human temper. ‘Twas times like these when he wished he’d never taken Holy Orders or represented the king. ‘Twas times like these when he would like nothing more than to raise his fists and react to the words spoken to him. The scarred warrior came closer to the table, undeterred by his friends’ furious whispered warnings. Obert could not help but flinch as he approached.
First, the man’s size would give any man pause for he stood more than six feet tall and possessed the muscular build, power and menace of a man of war. But his face, half-torn apart by an axe’s blow and half still the one that earned the man the title of the ‘Beautiful Bastard’, gave him pause for another reason and drew some other emotion from him.
Obert thought fear the likely cause, for no one but a fool would look on Soren Fitzrobert and not offer up a prayer for their own soul and his. And no one who knew him before the fateful blow struck him down in the Battle of Hastings would ever look on him now and not feel pity for all he’d lost. But Obert had dealt with enough proud men in his life to know that pity would make things worse.
‘These are the king’s orders, my lord,’ he said, using the title he knew the man wanted and craved almost as much as he craved a return of his appearance. ‘Surely you would oblige the king and carry out this one task before taking your own lands?’
‘Why can Brice not see to this task for the king?’ Soren demanded. ‘Eoforwic was his kin by marriage,’ he offered, ‘at the order of the king.’ Obert observed his glare and heard the sarcasm in his voice. The anger was subsiding and acceptance had crept in, whether the warrior recognised it yet or not.
‘The king has asked this of you,’ Obert said calmly. ‘Since Alston sits in the north, you can travel by way of Shildon and handle the matter. He does not wish for the rebels to gain a stronghold while our attentions are elsewhere.’
Lord Giles tugged his friend back from the table and spoke to him quietly. Lord Brice stood silently,
but watched with grave regard for his friends. Finally, Soren nodded to Obert.
‘Very well, my lord bishop,’ he forced through his teeth. ‘I am ever the king’s loyal subject.’ Soren tilted his head in a bow that was neither respectful nor meant to be.
Obert watched as the warrior’s friends offered their help in the endeavour and as the man begrudgingly warmed to the thought of fighting Saxon rebels. Though Soren accepted it, Obert knew that he was different, changed irreparably by the blow that had nearly killed him. Never again would he be the carefree, beautiful young man who drew women to his bed like a bee to honey. Never again would any man look at him without wincing in pain or in sympathy … or in pity at his condition.
God help the woman meant as his wife! The pity filling Obert’s heart in that moment was for Sybilla of Alston. The king’s declaration ordered Soren to marry her if she was alive, but gave him the discretion to marry elsewhere if she did not please him. Watching the three friends talk, he wondered if their advice would temper his anger.
Obert had overheard Soren’s intentions to destroy anyone related to Durward of Alston, the man who’d wrought the terrible damage to his body long after the battle was called. Would his vengeance take the life of the innocent young Sybilla or could Soren be directed away from his path of darkness before she was destroyed? And before his soul was damned?
Offering up another prayer, Bishop Obert announced that he would present Soren with the king’s charter after Mass. Leading Lord Giles and Lord Brice and their wives into the chapel, he noticed Soren’s unease at being surrounded by so many people. As he prepared the altar and donned the garments necessary for celebrating the Mass, Obert prayed as he’d not done in many, many years.
Mayhap God could influence this knight when his friends and others had failed?
But, as he watched over the next weeks as Soren prepared to head north and saw the darkness in his spirit and in his heart, Obert doubted that anything, mayhap even God’s intervention, would be strong enough to help in the knight’s battle to become the man he should be.
Chapter One
Shildon Keep, north-east England— July AD 1067
The acrid stench of fire and death burned his nostrils and his eye. Soren Fitzrobert blinked quickly and surveyed the devastation before him.
Crops and outbuildings yet burned in the late daylight of midsummer, the smoke darkening the sky more effectively than the setting sun could. The dead lay in pools of their own blood as it seeped into the ground. The silence crushed him, for not a sound echoed across the yard or the land surrounding it now. Stephen approached—from his good side, he noticed—and waited for his orders.
‘They are cowards,’ Soren said as he lifted his helm off and rubbed his head. ‘Look, they burn their fields, kill their own people and run.’
‘For certain, these were Oremund’s orders,’ Stephen answered, disdain for the man involved clear in his voice.
‘If he was not dead, I would kill him again, slowly, for something like this,’ Soren declared. Lord Oremund had been in league with the rebels who sought to overthrow the king’s rule and return the old Saxon lords to their place in England. He’d been killed in the battle to secure his friend Brice’s claim to Oremund’s half-sister’s lands.
Oh, vengeance ran hot in his own blood and this bit of sympathy for the slain did not cool it. He had cause to seek out and destroy those responsible for his condition, but these villagers—men, women, even children—deserved not the fate of being massacred by their lord’s men. Soren even understood how innocents could be caught up in the throes of war, but this was not warfare.
This was slaughter.
‘Seek any who live and gather the dead for burial,’ he ordered. ‘Burn the bodies of those who fought against us,’ he added.
Stephen hesitated, but did not speak. Soren turned his good eye to gaze at him. The flinch in the man’s gaze lasted less than a heartbeat of time, but it happened and Soren saw it. Worse, though, was the glint of pity that passed quickly through the battle-hardened warrior’s eyes for him.
His stomach clenched in a way now familiar to him when faced with this constant and unfailing reaction to his face. Fear or horror or revulsion followed quickly by pity. By Christ, he was sick of it! Soren turned away and walked off, not waiting to see if his orders were obeyed or not.
His blood boiled with hatred then. He would seek out the get of Durward of Alston and destroy any of them who yet lived and wipe his very name from the earth. The skin over his eye and the ragged scar down his face and neck itched then, reminding him of the damage wrought by the coward Saxon after the battle had been called. Soren fought the urge to touch it, for there were too many watching him now.
Another of Brice’s men called out to him and Soren nodded for him to approach. In tow, the halting shape of a priest walked behind, head bowed, prayers whispering