‘And this building? What is the English word?’
‘The word is church.’
‘Church,’ Adam murmured. ‘Church.’ He reverted to Norman French. ‘It’s wooden, like the cottages and the mill. There are no stone buildings in Fulford. At my home in Brittany it is the same; in the main only great lords’ castles and cathedrals are built in stone.’
Absently, Cecily nodded. Her eyes were drawn to the glebeland next to the church, to the graveyard. And there, through the split-rail fence, she found what she was looking for—a wreath of evergreens someone had placed on some freshly turned earth. Her mother’s grave?
Her hands jerked on the reins; her eyes filled. Quickly averting her head, she forced her gaze past the cemetery, on to the priest’s house and Fulford Hall, which stood facing each other on opposite sides of the village green.
Tears ran hot down her cheeks once again, and the sheep-nibbled grass of the village green, trampled and muddied as it was by many horses’ hoofs, blurred and wavered like a field of green barley in a March wind. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Cecily tried to speak normally. ‘As you may guess, the cottage next to the glebeland belongs to the priest. He lives off the tithes everyone brings him. Father Aelfric—’
Adam gave a snort of laughter. ‘I’ve met Father Aelfric. And his wife.’
Forgetful of the tears drying on her cheeks, Cecily whipped her head round. ‘I…I did not know that Father Aelfric had taken a wife.’
As Adam’s green eyes met hers his expression sobered. ‘Ah, Cecily, what a fool I am.’ He reached across and gently traced a tear-track with his finger. ‘Your mother…my apologies.’
Fiercely Cecily shook her head and batted away his hand. ‘Don’t. Please. Not here. Not now.’ She would break down if he offered sympathy, and she would not be so shamed—not in front of his men and the whole village. She was her mother’s daughter.
Adam took up the reins again, and perhaps he understood her need for distraction, for he went on conversationally, ‘Father Aelfric has two small children.’
Cecily dashed away her tears with her sleeve. ‘Oh?’
‘Is it common in England for priests to have wives?’ Adam asked, and she realised that, yes, he was giving her time to compose herself before they reached the Hall. He was not a complete boor.
‘Sometimes they do.’
‘Duke William does not approve of such practices.’
Cecily shrugged. Monks, nuns and priests all took the vow of chastity, but priests, and even bishops, did sometimes make their housekeepers their ‘wives’. She wondered who Aelfric had ‘married’. He had always been fond of Sigrida, and she of him…
Fulford Hall. Finally she was home.
The Hall overlooked the village green. It was a long building, taller and wider than any for miles. On either side of the door unglazed windows with sliding wooden shutters stared across the green towards the church opposite. The thatch was weathered, grey in parts, mossy in others—in short it looked to be in no better condition than the thatch on many of the serfs’ cottages. Smoke made a charcoal smudge in the sky above the roof. Ordinarily, Cecily’s heart would have lifted to see it, but today…
They drew rein by the door. Maurice and Geoffrey were leading their horses towards the stables, swapping jokes. Inside, by the fire, Sir Richard was tossing his cloak at one of the men, laughing with another. Shadowy silhouettes moving about in her father’s hall. Normans. Bretons. Conquerors.
She could hear the murmur of conversation, the snicker of a horse, the honking of geese. Where was Philip? Where was her brother? Gripped by a sense of unreality, Cecily focused on the wooden carvings around the doorframe of the Hall, on the snake winding up its length, at the trailing vine, the flowers and twisting patterns she had traced with her fingers so many times, and she felt…she felt nothing. Her father’s hall was in the hands of a stranger from Brittany and she felt empty, scoured of emotion.
The stranger was looking her village over with a proprietorial eye. In the middle of the green, under the branches of an oak that had been ancient when her father had been born, stood the village stocks and the pillory post. The stranger, the invader, frowned and pointed at the stocks. ‘We have these in Quimperlé. What are they called in English?’
‘The stocks.’
‘And the other? Is it the whipping post?’
‘That is a pillory. Sometimes my father used it as a whipping post.’
He repeated the words under his breath as he dismounted, and Cecily watched his mailed figure, wondering whether he would be as stern a judge as her father had been. Thane Edgar had once removed a serf’s hand for stealing. He had occasionally used the branding iron, and both the stocks and the pillory had seen regular use. The stocks and the pillory, however, were usually effective enough as deterrents.
But Philip…where was baby Philip? Her gaze glided over Godwin the reeve’s house, on past the sheep-pens, the piggery, over the cookhouse. Someone was swinging towards them on crutches, scattering hens before him, silver bracelets chinking on his wrists. ‘Edmund!’
The same age as Judhael, Edmund had been another companion of her brother Cenwulf, and a housecarl of her father’s. The bracelets would have been gifts from her father to a favoured warrior, in return for loyal service. He looked thin and haggard. His light brown hair hung lankly about his shoulders, and his grey eyes seemed to have sunk into his sockets.
‘Cecily?’
Cecily dismounted and flung herself at her brother’s friend, almost unbalancing him. ‘Oh, Edmund, I’m so glad to see you! I feared that you too might be gone.’
Edmund grunted, adjusted his crutches, and glanced coldly at Adam. ‘Have a care, Cecily,’ he said in English. ‘You’ll have me over.’
‘Speak French, will you?’ Fulford’s new lord asked, frowning.
‘He can’t. My apologies. Oh, Edmund, it is so good to see you.’ She drew back, smiling, for the moment ignoring the man she had agreed to marry. Adam stood slightly to the side, his horse’s reins in hand, and that watchful look in his green eyes.
The hose of Edmund’s left leg, instead of being bound with braid, had been slit, and his leg was in a splint. He looked as though he’d not slept in a month, but he was alive. ‘What happened to your leg?’
Leaning on his crutches, Edmund lifted his shoulders. ‘Fell from my horse. Bad break, or so your mother said. Otherwise I’d have been at Hastings with your father. Every housecarl went but me.’ He let out a bitter laugh. ‘Even Alfred went.’
‘As home guard?’
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘None returned.’
Unable to speak for the knot clogging her throat, Cecily nodded.
‘Gudrun splinted my leg for me.’
‘Gudrun?’
‘Under your mother’s supervision.’ Edmund met her gaze directly. ‘Cecily, I’m so sorry about Lady Philippa. We all are. The day she died—’
Swiftly, lest Edmund let fall anything about her brother that Adam might understand, Cecily leaned forward and pressed a kiss on his mouth. Placing a hand over his, she squeezed it meaningfully and ignored Adam’s gaze boring into her back. ‘We will talk later. We have much to catch up on. But I am more than glad to see you whole.’ She turned towards the hall. ‘Gudrun?’
Edmund’s grey eyes met hers. ‘Within. With your…with the new babe. You know about that?’
‘Emma told me the news.’
Edmund shifted on his crutches, moving his splinted leg so it was bearing more of his weight. He winced, and immediately repositioned himself.