‘I will think on it, Giles,’ she offered.
‘There is not much time, Fayth. Soon the choices will be taken from me and others will see to it.’
He walked to the door then. ‘I will send Emma to you, but I wish you to stay here today. Eudes is still at the keep and I want you out of his path. If the bishop wishes to speak to you, I will summon you.’
She nodded, knowing he was trying to protect her. She felt as though she wanted to say something more, but dared not upset the tentative balance they’d somehow achieved.
He left, pulling the door closed, and she collapsed back on the bed. She’d expected far worse, but a glimmer of hope pushed into her heart then. He did not force her to betray her dearest friend.
No, instead he simply asked her to do it, putting the burden on her. Now she understood what he meant about how being forced to do something lessened the guilt involved.
It would have been easier if he’d forced her. Fayth did not know if she was strong enough to take that step on her own.
Whatever her doubts were, by the noon meal that day she faced the consequences—and they were of the most horrible kind imaginable.
Chapter Nineteen
Fayth heard the yelling begin a distance away from the keep and grow closer and louder. Putting down the tunic she mended, she opened the shutters of her window and tried to find the source of it. Recognising the voices then, she knew that Sir Eudes was in the middle of whatever was happening. Standing on her toes, she leaned up as far as she could, but still could see nothing.
Giles had asked her not to leave her chambers this day, but surely he did not mean she could not go into the storage room next to their room. Opening the door to that room, she went to the window and looked out of it. Unfortunately, she could see everything that was happening from her place there.
Sir Eudes and his men surrounded a bound and gagged man who lay twisted on the ground. As he struggled, to get up or to get away, she knew not which, they kicked him and pushed him down. When he fell on his back, she got a glimpse of his face.
Siward!
She nearly fell from the shock of seeing him there, but she knew that if Lord Huard captured him he would die a slow and painful death. Looking around, she prayed that Nissa was not caught as well.
Fayth needed to get down there, needed to stop this from happening. Giles must…he must…She paused for a moment and thought on what he could do.
Siward was marked as a slave, a serf, someone attached to the lord’s lands and not free to move about. He’d been found on Giles’s lands. As a Norman lord, Giles had to comply and allow the man’s return to his rightful owner. With the bishop here, observing and noting everything for Duke William, Giles had no choice.
The thought made her sick. Fighting against the choking feeling, she knew she must do something. Opening the door, she rushed to the steps, but Giles’s voice, asking her to stay within, came back to her.
A man’s life was at stake, she decided in that moment, and she would have to face his anger later.
Racing through the keep, she ran to the steward’s closet and grabbed one of the parchment scrolls that listed her father’s tenants. She prayed there was a name close to Siward’s that she could find to make the case to the bishop. Pushing her way through the growing crowd, she arrived in front of the spectacle just as Giles did. His anger was obvious when he noticed her.
‘My lord,’ she called out to him.
‘Lady, you do not belong here. Return to your chambers now,’ he ordered.
‘My lord bishop, I have the rolls of tenants…’
He reached her then, caught her hand as she held out the scroll and dragged her aside, stopping her from saying anything more by squeezing her arm.
‘Get you gone from here,’ he ordered through clenched jaws. ‘Now.’
‘I can help in this,’ she began.
‘You are the cause of this. Now get back inside and let me see to it.’ She was about to do as he said when Sir Eudes called out to them and the bishop.
‘There is no need for her records and lists, my lord bishop,’ the knight said. He reached down and tore Siward’s tunic and shirt open, revealing his skin. ‘He is Lord Huard’s legal possession.’
Skin into which the letter H had been burned.
Fayth gaped as she realised that it had not been done with one iron carved with the letter, but by applying a long one three times against his skin to form it. As the one on Nissa’s bottom had been done. Before she could do anything, Giles whispered to her that all would be well, pushed her into Roger’s arms and loudly ordered her taken inside. He walked off without ever looking back at her.
She would not have made it back inside or up to her chambers without help, and she barely made it even with Roger’s assistance. Fayth knelt there on the floor until Emma came in and helped her to the chair.
