LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Am I Judhael’s keeper?’

      ‘He wouldn’t hurt Lufu…would he?’

      Shaking his head, Edmund led the ponies to a low branch and tethered them. ‘Cecily, you can’t save the world.’

      A shelter had been set up under the trees—a tented affair, made out of canvas. Under the awning, several people were sheltering from the rain. Dour-faced warriors with swords at their hips were sitting on split log seats—about two dozen all told. It was hardly the vast rebel army that Cecily had been expecting. Their resources were pitiful: a few stacks of wood; a deer carcase slung between two poles. The bole of a tree was their conference table, and their shelter had no walls to keep out wind or rain. Or wolves. She shuddered.

      ‘You thought Philip would be safe in this place?’ Though fear had its grip on her, she was pleased her voice was steady. ‘I think not. He was born before his time, and needs more care than you can offer him here.’

      Edmund’s face closed. ‘Your brother is where he belongs. With Saxons. We’ll look after him.’

      Cecily recognised that set expression. Her father’s face had worn just such a look on the day he had announced that she was to go to St Anne’s. All her weeping, all her pleading had availed her nothing. She bit her lip. She knew immovable mule-like stubbornness when she saw it.

      Briefly, she shifted her attention from Edmund towards the men under the awning, hoping against hope to find a chink in their armour. But the faces that gazed out were equally stony, equally without fellow-feeling. There was no sign of Emma—no one she could appeal to. She hid a sigh. Perhaps an oblique method might succeed where direct confrontation would fail…Perhaps if she adopted an approach she had been too young to try four years ago…

      Fixing a light smile to her lips, she looked back at her father’s housecarl. ‘I suppose your mind is made up?’

      ‘It is.’

      She kicked a foot free of its stirrup. ‘Then I had best help, hadn’t I? Edmund, help me down. I’ve Philip’s swaddling bands in my pack.’

      ‘I’m sorry you do not see eye to eye with us, my lady,’ Edmund muttered as he helped Cecily dismount. The silver bracelets that her father had given him jingled on his wrist. He waved at Wat to lift her pack down and, leading her through the rain towards the shelter, added, ‘Judhael was insistent Philip should be our figurehead, and you must see that our cause needs a focus.’

      Cecily shot him a sharp glance and snorted her scorn before she could stop herself. ‘A babe? Your cause is so desperate you needed a baby?’

      ‘Aye.’ Edmund smiled, but his grey eyes remained sharp and hard as flints. ‘The men’s spirits were at a low ebb. Your brother—the legitimate heir to one of the largest holdings in Wessex—will act as a banner around which they can rally. More men will join us. We only want a fighting chance to overthrow the bastard before he gets fully entrenched.’

      He’s entrenched already, Cecily thought. If he’s tearing down good folks’ houses unopposed in Winchester; if he’s throwing up mounds to build castles. But she wasn’t about to alienate Edmund further by saying as much. ‘How are you feeding him?’

      ‘Found him another wet nurse—Joan.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘Come and meet her.’ Edmund ducked his head under the awning. ‘Joan? Joan?’

      The people in the shelter—all eyes—fell silent as they entered, and the only sound was the rain drip-dripping on the canvas. A woman in grey homespun stepped forward. She had a baby over her shoulder and was winding him. Her face was careworn and raddled with grief. She was pitifully thin.

      ‘Philip! Oh, let me—please.’

      The woman Joan released her brother without protest and watched blank-faced and silent while Cecily reassured herself that he was well. Philip had just been fed, his sleepy, sated expression attested to that, but a dampness about his wrappings told her that his linens hadn’t been changed all morning.

      ‘Wat, please pass my bundle…my thanks,’ she said, as Wat thrust it into her hands.

      ‘You see, Cecily,’ Edmund cut in. ‘It is as I said. Your brother thrives.’

      Biting back the reply that Philip would have been better off if he had been left in Gudrun’s capable hands, and not dragged across the Downs like a sack of meal and left in wet swaddling bands, Cecily bent over the baby and set to work changing his clothing.

      Conversation resumed about them. When she had finished, Edmund was seated on a nearby log, honing the edges of his seax on a stone. Was he guarding her?

      ‘Your leg seems to have healed rather miraculously,’ she said, speaking softly to mask her anger.

      Not only had Edmund kidnapped her brother from Fulford, but in this too her father’s housecarl had deceived her. He had lied, and he had called her healing skills into question. It was true that when examining him at the Hall she had wondered at the length of time it was taking his leg to heal, but how foolish to take him at his word when he had said it continued to pain him. Why had she not questioned him further? Certainly she had had other, weightier matters on her mind that day, but her instincts had told her his leg should be fine, and she had ignored them. How stupid. Adam would see her in her true colours. Lightweight. Naïve. Stupid.

      Edmund had the grace to flush—a sign, she hoped, that he was not completely lost to her. ‘I’m sorry I deceived you, Cecily. Judhael thought it best that way. He needed me at the Hall.’

      ‘You were spying!’

      ‘Watching out for your brother.’ His jaw tightened. ‘It was easier if that foreign brute you bed with thought him harmless…’

      ‘I married Adam so I could watch out for Philip! For all of you!’ Cecily reminded him tartly. The rush of rage she felt at Edmund naming Adam a ‘foreign brute’ had her bending over Philip and fussing with his blanket. Adam—what were the rebels intending to do about Adam? The answer was swift in coming. They would kill him if they could.

      Hoping Edmund hadn’t noticed her sudden intake of breath, Cecily managed to nod. ‘Th…this is not a healthy place for Philip,’ she said, turning the conversation away from Adam with only the slightest tremor. She did not want Adam dead. The very thought made the blood freeze in her veins. But there was not a hope that Edmund or any of these desperate Saxons would sympathise with her view. As a Saxon who had married one of Duke William’s men, she was in this camp on sufferance, thanks only to past allegiances. If she put so much as a toe out of place they’d slit her throat and toss her in a ditch as a collaborator.

      ‘Not healthy for him here?’ Edmund was saying in an irritated tone. ‘Among his own people? I should think it’s the very place for him. When I swore to fight for your father, Cecily, I made that vow for life. To a man, King Harold’s housecarls died at Hastings; they gave their lives for him, honouring vows like mine. Why should it be any different for me and these men here?’ He gestured at the others sheltering with them under the awning, and the jingling of those silver bracelets he had earned from her father underscored his words.

      Settling Philip in a basket, Cecily took a place on the log bench next to Edmund. He had sheathed the seax, she noted, breathing a little easier. ‘Loyalty is admirable,’ she murmured. ‘But please, Edmund, take care. What does loyalty become when a cause is lost?’

      Edmund scowled and folded his arms. She took heart that he had not stormed away. If she could reach anyone here it would be Edmund, and for pity’s sake she had to try…

      ‘Edmund, what does loyalty mean to you?’

      Rain dripped on the canvas.

      He frowned. ‘Why, it’s when a warrior swears to uphold his Thane…’

      ‘Why? Why are such oaths necessary?’

      He made an impatient

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