The hall itself stood where the forest opened toward the eastern stream, larger than the shelters we had built after fleeing Ashford, although calling it a hall suggested considerably more grandeur than it possessed. Timber walls had been packed with clay and straw, the roof pitched sharply enough to shed the winter snow, while fresh rushes covered the floor and smoke from the central hearth continued to discover inventive ways of avoiding the roof opening and settling into everyone’s clothes instead.
Still, it was warm and mostly dry, and large enough for nearly half the settlement to eat together, provided nobody objected to being elbowed, stepped on, or seated beside one of the Reeveson brothers while they argued about livestock.
Outside, the settlement had changed so completely that there were moments I stood at the edge of it and forgot how temporary everything had once seemed.
Roofs rose between the trees now, proper ones made of thatch or turf instead of cloaks stretched over branches, while animal pens, workshops, and a larger storehouse had gone up along the paths worn solid by months of feet going back and forth. Beyond the stream, men had cleared fields that would be planted when spring came, and the repaired southern road brought enough traders that I had started keeping careful records of what we exchanged, what we owed, and which merchants needed watching because they had a suspicious habit of counting the same sack of barley twice.
We still paid grain to the Normans, that part hadn’t changed. England hadn’t healed because I decided to stay, and William hadn’t returned to Normandy in defeat because Wulfric and I kissed beneath an oak tree. Norman patrols used the road now. Saxon land farther north and east had already changed hands. News arrived of oaths, seizures, rebellions, punishments, and men discovering that conquest looked considerably less glorious when winter mud reached your knees.
Yet the settlement lived and thrived. Perhaps survival was not victory, at least not the kind men wrote songs about, but more and more I thought the songs had been wrong all along. Sometimes victory was the child who lived through winter, the roof repaired before the next storm, the field cleared in time for planting, or the stubborn little place built by people who had every reason to disappear and chose not to.
“Darcy.”
I turned.
Wulfric stood behind me wearing the expression of a man who had asked a question more than once and hadn’t enjoyed being ignored.
His wedding tunic was dark blue, almost black where the winter shadows touched it, with embroidery at the neck and cuffs, while a leather belt sat low across his hips beneath the sword he’d refused to remove because, according to him, a man did not stop being lord merely because he married.
I’d informed him that if he wore a sword to the ceremony and accidentally cut anyone, I would consider the marriage cursed.
He asked whether injured wedding guests were a particular custom in my time.
“Yes,” I had told him. “We try not to have them.”
His hair had been combed back from his face and the sight of him standing in the light made me wish for my phone so I couldcapture his face in this moment, and as Gilda said, his very fine backside.
Before I finished thinking about his backside, he bent, slid one arm behind my knees and the other around my back, and lifted me from the ground as I yelped.
“This is abuse of lordly power.”
“I have only lately discovered its benefits.”
“Put me down.”
“Nay.”
“People are watching.”
“Aye.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Not greatly.”
Over his shoulder, I could see Gilda wiping tears from her eyes, Wystan cheering as though Wulfric had won a tournament, and Godwin drinking from a wooden cup despite the fact that it was barely past midday.
“Wonderful,” I muttered.
Wulfric carried me three yards away from the offending benches and set me down beside Anya.
“There.”
“I can always move them later.”
Anya took my arm before I could make good on the threat.
“You are coming with me.”
