Cecily jumped to her feet. ‘Emma!’
‘Cecily!’ They embraced, Philip between them. ‘They didn’t hurt you? I made Judhael swear—’ Breaking off, Emma pulled away and stripped off her kid gloves. Cecily noticed they were split at the seams and a greyish brown rather than the cream they had once been, and the boots that peeped out from under Emma’s bedraggled skirts were not the beautifully stitched riding boots that Cecily remembered. They had been replaced with heavy workaday ones, similar to those she had worn at the convent. The transformation took her breath away.
‘What?’ Emma asked, seeing her expression.
‘Nothing. It’s just…you…you’re so changed.’
Emma lost her smile. ‘We’ve all changed.’
‘That’s true.’
Tossing her gloves aside with an echo of her old arrogance that tugged at Cecily’s heartstrings, Emma drew Cecily onto the bench and gazed at the baby in her arms.
‘I wondered if he would bring you here. I hoped…’ Emma’s voice trailed off.
‘What? That I would join you?’ Firmly, Cecily shook her head. ‘This is no place for our brother, Emma, you must see that.’
Unhappily, Emma sighed. She lowered her voice. ‘Of course I see that. It’s just that Judhael…he…he can be so very persuasive. He always knows he is right, you see.’
Cecily made an impatient noise. ‘This is an instance when Judhael is not right.’ She drew breath to say more, but a warning squeeze on her arm had her glancing towards the opening of the shelter. Judhael was there, watching them.
Emma scrambled to her feet so quickly that Cecily frowned. Was her sister afraid of him? After seeing them at Winchester, in the Cathedral, Cecily had assumed they were lovers, but it was beginning to look as though she feared him…
‘You got plenty of wood?’ Judhael demanded, in a most unloverlike voice. He shoved his thumbs in his belt, and as he did so Cecily noticed that the back of one of his hands was scored with a deep scratch, the blood on it recently congealed.
‘Aye.’
‘And the beacon? You checked that?’
‘Yes. The cover’s not been touched, so the wood’s quite dry. I put fresh kindling there too, just in case.’
‘Come here then, wench, and give me a kiss.’
Wench? Open-mouthed, Cecily watched in astonishment as her prim sister, her butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth sister, let Evie’s brother sweep her into his arms in front of his men, in front of everyone. And she didn’t even blush. The world might have changed, but her sister had changed even more.
As Judhael angled Emma’s head to him, so she could receive his kiss, Cecily found herself staring at the dried blood on the back of his hand. It looked odd—as though—a shudder ran through her—Judhael had not scratched himself, he had been bitten, and the bite looked very much like a human bite!
Wilf took Adam and Maurice directly through the woods to the chalky rise which led to Gunni’s hut. With worry about Cecily’s welfare a cramp in his guts, Adam thanked God that the man did not waste time with delaying tactics or pointless deviations. He simply pointed through the rain up a slippery track and said, ‘There it is, sir. Gunni’s hut.’
At the top of the rise Adam saw a rough tumble of stones that had some order to it and was roofed with dried bracken. A man in chainmail had beaten them to it. Le Blanc. He was on his knees by the wall of the shelter, bending over the body of a woman, tucking his cloak around her like a blanket.
Adam stopped breathing. He could scarcely bring himself to look. It couldn’t be Cecily, it couldn’t…
At his side, Wilf sucked in a breath. ‘Lufu!’
The name had Adam breathing again, and his guts griping with guilt. Not for the world would he wish harm on Fulford’s cook, but if it had been Cecily…He burned to look into those blue eyes once more, to know that she was safe. The question of whether Cecily had betrayed him or not was a mere trifle compared to that. These past days the fear of betrayal had occupied his mind, but now that the worst had apparently happened there was room for only one thought: Cecily must be safe. The implications of this—hell, he would think about implications later.
Now that he could breathe again, he noticed that Le Blanc’s roan and a mule—the miller’s?—were tethered by the hut.
‘Lufu!’ Wilf hurled himself from his horse.
Le Blanc’s mouth was a thin, angry line. His helm lay on the ground beside him and he was holding the girl’s hand, chafing it. Her lip had been split, she had a nasty discolouration on one cheekbone, and blood in her hair. ‘She’s alive, sir,’ Le Blanc said. ‘But she won’t waken.’
Tossing his reins at Maurice, Adam hurried over.
Wilf had Lufu’s other hand and was stroking it, speaking softly in an English so heavily accented that Adam couldn’t catch the full meaning. But any fool could understand the gist of it. Wilf was fond of her. He was telling her that she would be all right now they had found her.
Staring grimly at Lufu, Adam prayed the man was right. Apart from the bruising to her face, her skin was the colour of bleached linen, and her breathing was alarmingly shallow. ‘God’s Blood, she looks as though she’s been through a mangle.’
‘I reckon she has.’ Le Blanc swallowed and gestured vaguely towards a rocky outcrop. ‘She was beaten. I…I saw most of it from behind that. I couldn’t do anything, sir, there were too many of them.’
‘Them?’
‘Saxons. They would have—’
‘Take it slower, Le Blanc, so Wilf can follow you.’
‘Sir.’ Le Blanc’s eyes found Wilf’s. ‘I…I’m sorry she’s hurt, but the man moved like lightning—’
‘Saxon?’
‘Aye. I thought he was bluffing at first, it never occurred to me that he’d hurt one of his own, and by the time I’d realised what he was about it was over. Besides, there were others with him. They would have killed me, and I still wouldn’t have been able to prevent it.’
Wilf frowned, trying to follow what had been said. ‘You say a Saxon did this?’
‘There were several present or I would have intervened, I swear. But only one of them spoke to her, and only one of them did the beating.’ Slowly, he shook his head. ‘What kind of a man would beat his countrywoman to a pulp like this?’
‘We should move her inside,’ Adam said. ‘She’s soaking. She doesn’t need a chill on top of a beating.’
‘I thought of that,’ Le Blanc said. ‘But it’s possible her ribs are broken, and I was worried about moving her…’
‘If we use your shield and a cloak as a stretcher to get her into the hut, she should be all right,’ Adam said, hoping to God he was right. ‘We have to get her warm. And someone must go for proper help.’ Adam turned to Wilf and asked in English, ‘Is your wife the best person to deal with this?’
‘In Lady Cecily’s absence, yes.’
Cecily, Cecily, where are you? ‘Fine. Let’s get Lufu into the shelter, and make her comfortable, and then Wilf can fetch Gudrun. She’ll be a better judge of whether Lufu can be got safely back to Fulford than any of us.’
Together, they eased the unconscious Lufu onto Maurice’s cloak and Le Blanc’s shield. Inside the hut the light was poor, but to one side there was a low shelf with a mattress stuffed with heather. They placed Lufu on it.
After Wilf had set out for Fulford, and