It was a starry night deep in the fens, those wild borderlands between England and Wales. Two dozen men graced their camp, nestled in the crook of a timbered hillside. Many were sleeping, their snores a steady punctuation to the night. One played a flute, the sound lonely, nostalgic, melancholy. Occasionally hoarse laughter broke the low hum of whispered conversation.
Morcar rose, hands in the folds of his mantle. It was chill in the evening. He kicked a twig. Edwin turned to him. “I am going, Morcar,” he said, low.
“You cannot! ’Tis too dangerous. By God, man, look what happened to me! My head was almost served up to that Bastard Conqueror on a silver plate!”
“I am going.” There was only authority and resolution in Edwin’s voice, and something else, something Morcar had never heard until recently, a tone he hated, and feared. Resignation.
“You are the thinker, the logical one. Surely you, of all of us, know this to be insane!” Morcar protested, blue eyes flashing. He meant every passionate word.
“I cannot stay away,” Edwin said wearily. “’Tis my heart I am separated from.”
A silence ensued. Edwin turned away, to stare up at the stars. Morcar watched his brother’s back for a long while before he spoke again. “Wait yet a few more days, Ed. You still limp when fatigued or put to the test. If we go, you must be in full strength of limb.”
Edwin almost smiled. “We? No, dear brother, I go with Albie, alone.”
“No,” Morcar said, warning in his voice. “We shall not be separated, nothing will keep me from following, I swear it. The Norman is a dangerous, deadly man, Ed, but the two of us together can prevail—if we must.”
“I have no intention of locking horns with Rolfe the Relentless,” Edwin said. The darkest of shadows flitted across his face. “Not yet.”
“You cannot take him,” Morcar said bluntly. “I am better with the sword than you, admit it, and he took me.”
“I will take him,” Edwin said slowly, his dark gaze steady. “When I must. Anyway”—he sighed—“this time ’tis moot. I go to spy.”
“We go to spy.”
Edwin gave in with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “It must be done. I must know, for myself, what passes, and if the rumors are true. By God, to think he’s moved the village?” Edwin’s voice rose in uncharacteristic temper. “He’s moved my village?”
“’Tis the Norman way; we’ve seen it time and again,” Albie offered from the shadows of the trees.
“But when ’tis seen in one’s own home, one’s patrimony …” Edwin trailed off.
“What else does our network say, Albie?” Morcar asked eagerly as the young man entered the glow cast by the firelight. His chausses and mantle were covered with dried mud, testimony to his hard riding earlier and his recent arrival at the camp.
“The marriage is done,” Albie said, hesitating. “And he builds new fortifications in the Norman style.”
Morcar cursed, Edwin grew grim. “Damn Alice,” Morcar said vehemently. “She thinks nothing of betraying us!”
“How is Ceidre?” Edwin cut in.
“My lord, there is a terrible rumor …” Albie trailed off.
“Out with it,” Edwin demanded.
“She is not hurt?” Morcar gasped.
“There is a rumor she was punished for your escape, Morcar. Flogged.”
Morcar cried out in frustration and outrage, Edwin clenched his fists. “’Tis only a rumor, and you know how a story can change through the telling of two dozen or more different tongues. Mayhap ’tis not true.”
“Why did I not take her with me?” Morcar cried in anguish. “I did not think, I never think!”
“Do not blame yourself, we do not know if it is the truth,” Edwin said, a hand on his brother’s back. But his lips were curled into a feral line. “We need Ceidre where she is.”
“There is another rumor,” Albie offered. “But not a better one.” Edwin’s look made him continue. “’Tis said the Norman openly lusts after Ceidre, his looks are so hot just to watch them is to get burned.” Albie shrugged. “So mayhap he did not flog her.”
“If he touches her!” Morcar shouted, enraged. Edwin restrained him, absorbing this before continuing.
“And news of Hereward?”
