Edwin had her hand. There was no time to talk, not even to ask him how badly he was hurt. He hustled her into the inner bailey, down the steps, and across the courtyard. Men lay dead and dying around them; men fought in isolated pairs around them. He suddenly froze at an open door, one Ceidre had not known existed. She was frightened and her blood coursed with the primitive need to flee and escape. She did not understand why he had stopped. “Go,” he suddenly shouted, shoving her through. “I will follow. Go with the fleeing men across the bridge and into the woods. Go!”
“Why do you wait?” she screamed from the other side.
“Go!” Ed shouted, shoving her. “Go!”
Ceidre’s hand was grabbed by a Saxon she recognized, and she was pulled down the hill and to the rope bridge that was swinging precariously as the Saxons fled over it, beneath a hail of arrows from the archers on the walls. She tried to look over her shoulder, but Edwin was gone.
Edwin dropped to his knees beside the utterly still body of his brother. His heart had stopped, as had his mind. There were no thoughts, other than please God. Gently he rolled him over to his back.
Morcar groaned.
“God!” Ed shouted in relief. And then he saw the gushing torrent of blood spewing from his brother’s chest, and, crazed, he jammed both hands down hard on the wound to dam the flow.
“Ed.” Morcar choked weakly.
“Don’t speak,” Ed cried. “Save your strength—don’t speak!”
“Can’t.” Morcar panted.
Furiously, desperately, Ed put all his power into his hands as he pressed them on Morcar’s chest. “You will be all right,” he said, panting. “You will not die!”
Morcar opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He choked on the torrent of his own blood.
Weeping, Ed put more effort into stanching the flow.
“Betrayed,” Morcar said, and for an instant, his blue eyes blazed. “We have been betrayed, Ed,” he whispered hoarsely.
Edwin started to protest, to tell his brother not to talk, when he met his sightless stare. Vacant, when a moment ago it had burned with intensity. Lifeless.
“God, no!” Edwin shouted to the heavens above, fist raised, and then he lifted his brother into his arms and rocked him, sobbing.
He knew, as he wept, that he must get up and flee or be captured. Yet his grief was so unbearable he could not find the will to leave Morcar. He tried to look at his beloved, handsome face through his hot, thick tears. Morcar was angry and grim in death—not the laughing, handsome rogue he truly was. Oh, God, Edwin thought, the pain unbearable, ballooning in his heart, hurting, hurting … he had been slaughtered not moments after he had bravely led his men into their enemy’s stronghold.
Betrayal.
Edwin’s tears stopped with this comprehension— and the knowledge that the rest of his life would be dedicated to finding the man responsible for his brother’s death.
He rose, Morcar in his arms. He could not leave him, just as he could not have left Ceidre. He took one step, when the cold voice of Rolfe de Warenne halted him in his tracks.
“Halt,” the Norman ordered, sword raised. “You are my prisoner.”
Edwin stared into the cold blue gaze of his worst enemy.
Then he looked at the Normans surrounding him as he cradled his dead brother to his chest. His arms tightened protectively around Morcar, and he fought the fresh urge to weep. It was over.
He had lost; Aelfgar was lost. It was over.
“Can ye come, my lady?” the old woman asked anxiously.
Ceidre wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. It was early January, and here in Wales in the tiny village of Llefewellyn, there had been a dusting of snow one night past. She barely understood the native tongue of the villagers, but this phrase had become familiar. Once her skill with herbs, her ability to heal, had been revealed, she had received many requests like this one. “Of course,” she said softly.
The woman, gray and thin, looked at the beautiful Saxon and wondered, as they all did, at the sadness that never left her eyes. ’Twas a shame, they all agreed, for one so comely to grieve so endlessly. They knew little of her story, only that their native son, Hereward, had brought her here and left her in his cousin’s cottage, the cousin long since deceased, then ridden out again to fight his endless wars. She was clearly pregnant, her belly and breasts straining her garments. Her eye made them all fearful and wary, but with time she had shown that she was good and kind. Hereward was something of a hero to the villagers, so his woman, pregnant with his babe, was received without too much consternation, despite the eye, and with a degree of hospitality. Mayhap, the villager thought, if her man would come home for a while the sadness would leave her.
Ceidre walked with the woman to her cottage and tended her husband, ailing from a chronic cough. She accepted a loaf of fresh bread and some smoked tongue in return for her services, then started home.
Home. A lump gathered in her throat as she saw the tiny hut she now called home. She hugged her mantle more tightly to her breasts, sore now in her seventh month of pregnancy. Would she ever see home again?
She knew she wouldn’t.
