So, if he now held all he’d ever wanted within his grasp, why did his heart pound with fear?
Chapter Seventeen
The next weeks passed too quickly for Giles, for they represented all the good that he’d thought having a wife and lands and responsibilities would be. Fayth worked along with him and, in that time, supplies were accounted for, moved to and stored in the keep. Once the inventory was taken, she turned her efforts to restoring the keep to the home it had once been. The wall was removed and their chambers were expanded as Giles had suggested, and he used some of the additional space for a tub after discovering the many joys of a wife assisting her husband in his bath.
Those who lived in the village were permitted back to their lands and cottages when the attacks from the north stopped. He noticed a number of villagers, tenant farmers, returned once the area was safe and patrolled by his men.
He did not look too closely or ask many questions. He simply accepted their return and their pledges to pay rent as they had before. It was lax, he knew, but he needed farmers to care for the lands and the woods and, without connections, he would have difficulty finding many free men to do so.
Brice’s reports caused him to search his soul and his mind for a solution to the problem and danger that faced them. Allowing runaways refuge was against the law and Giles could be punished, or even forfeit these lands, if he was found guilty of such a charge. But he walked the thin line, balancing between trying to be the honourable man Lord Gautier had made him and honouring the laws of his duke.
Brice finished his work with Fayth, for he was no longer needed as overseer as Giles had given his trust to her and did not need his friend to watch her actions now. Brice’s restlessness increased as his grant of lands was delayed and he spent more of his time away from the keep than inside it, sometimes on Giles’s business and sometimes on his own.
Fayth still visited the village, checking on the injured woman until she could be moved and following the progress of their weavers and tanners. Her visits seemed to leave her less haunted than those first ones, but her eyes were always duller when she returned.
She was reticent about their growing affection only in front of her people, and rarely did she take his hand or touch him outside their chambers, but once they entered their rooms nothing stood between them. She both accepted and gave during their bedplay and they discovered many ways to seek and find pleasure between them. And, if the tenderness he felt for her was something more than just the desire and fondness a man felt for his wife, he was not unhappy about it. He looked forward to the long nights of winter when he could keep her to himself and make her realise that she was safe with him.
The only darkness in their contentment was the presence of Lord Huard’s men on a frequent basis. Eudes always asked permission, but he made all of the Saxons nervous and most of the Normans and Bretons Giles had brought with him liked him little more.
He would show up reporting missing serfs and ask permission to search for them in the village. Giles had allowed it once, but even with his men standing watch over the process his people were handled roughly and a few injured. When Eudes and Roger came to blows over a not-so-sly insult, Giles denied him permission to enter the village.
Instead, Eudes and his men would sit on the road leading in and out of it and accost anyone travelling there. It took but a few incidents before Giles withheld permission for even that, and Eudes was restricted to travelling only to the keep and back to Huard’s lands.
With the dislike and tensions growing between him and this Norman lord, Giles should not have been surprised when a group of men wearing the duke’s livery arrived at Taerford Keep.
Giles had entered the hall when he received word that the duke’s men waited for him. Roger stood at his back, his place now since Giles had appointed him captain of his guard. With Roger in charge of the men, Fayth in charge of the keep and Hallam newly named manor reeve, Brice spent more time on his own and gone from Taerford, as he was this day.
Giles moved forward to offer greetings and was surprised to find a bishop in his hall. Walking to him, Giles kissed his ring, the sign of his Holy Office, and then knelt for a blessing. When rising to his feet, he welcomed him, still not recognising the man or knowing what would bring a bishop there.
‘My lord bishop, welcome to Taerford Keep,’ he said. Holding his hand out to Fayth, who stood watching against the wall, he brought her forward. ‘This is my wife, Lady Fayth.’
‘Lord Bertram’s daughter?’ the bishop asked.
‘Aye,’ Fayth replied, as she curtsied before him.
It was not until the bishop looked squarely at him that Giles recognised him after all. ‘Father Obert?’
Father Obert had been the duke’s clerk and had handled all the details when Giles received his grant of lands.
‘A bishop now?’ he asked.
‘A reward for my faithful service to God and King,’ Bishop Obert replied, with a wink at him. ‘Many are rewarded in the same manner, eh, my lord?’
Giles noticed the words used by the bishop and asked him as he led him to the table, ‘Has William been crowned king, then?’
‘Nay, I but spoke in haste. He has been at Canterbury these last weeks and will move on London soon.’ He lowered his voice then, after noticing there were other than loyal Normans in the room. ‘We must speak.’ Giles dismissed everyone, but asked if Fayth could remain.
‘Can she understand our tongue?’
‘Aye, my lord bishop, she understands and speaks it…and reads it as well.’
‘Send her away, Lord Giles. I would speak to you in private first.’
When everyone but he, the bishop and the other of the duke’s men remained, the bishop bade him to sit and moved the soldiers away from where they sat.
‘The duke has received complaints about your conduct here in Taerford,’ Obert began quietly with little prevaricating. ‘Serious ones about sheltering escaped serfs and not allowing another lord’s men free passage through your lands.’
Giles tried to remain calm as he listened to the bishop. Obviously Lord Huard was unhappy that Giles was not respecting his wishes on how to handle the growing problem of managing serfs and villeins, and had appealed to the duke to force Giles into accepting his incursions onto Giles’s lands.
