not do well to say the king’s reasons for bringing him here. He continued, “I should at least meet all of this village’s inhabitants.”
Without waiting for an answer, Stephen strode up the lane toward her. The guard led the horses, but Stephen also heard the slow scrape of steel leaving a scabbard. The man had freed his sword.
Stephen’s courser whinnied loudly at the sound so akin to war. And at both harsh noises, the woman ahead spun. Again, Stephen was struck by her hair as it flowed with her movement. Aye, Saxons were towheaded, thanks to their northern ancestry, but never had he seen hair so free and so pale. This Rowena hadn’t even braided it yet, something that would have appalled his mother.
She looked up at him and he found her eyes were almost too light to look upon. A blue as delicate as in the stained-glass window in his home church in Normandy. Stephen watched her body tense. She twisted the broken root she held into a deadly grip one might reserve for a dagger.
“Planning to bury that parsnip in my chest?” asked Stephen as he opened the short gate of the hut’s small fence. Then he halted, shocked at the disarray. The pen at the far end had been tossed on its side, its door hanging by one hinge. Roots and vegetables were strewn about, some crushed as if a furious giant of lore had turned his wrath upon this garden.
Rowena said nothing, only keeping her grip on the parsnip tight as she backed away. Immediately, Stephen regretted his sharp tongue. He had no desire to frighten her.
Still in English, he tried a lighter tone. “’Tis not the best way to preserve your crops for winter, or to keep your fowl from escaping.”
She tossed the root onto the ground. “You think I do not know this?”
“An animal in the night?”
“Ha! Only one who wears boots,” she snapped. She quickly brushed the back of her hand across her glistening cheek, leaving a smudge of tear-dampened dirt in its wake.
“Who did this? Did you see them?” Stephen asked.
“Nay. I heard nothing, so they must have done this late into the night. Cowards!”
Stephen stepped gingerly around the garden, close to the door of her hut, to survey the mess. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”
Rowena said nothing. Stephen watched her. Though silent, she carried a wealth of information in the way she stood. She knew the reason for this vandalizing, he was sure. “Have you any enemies?” he asked.
She stiffened. “I should not have any! I have been here a month at best, and tried to speak with the other women, only to be treated like an outcast. That I can deal with, but this? I shall surely starve this winter because of their evil!” Her voice hitched slightly.
“I’ll see to it that doesn’t happen.”
“Who are you that—” Her gaze flew up and then narrowed. “You’re Baron Stephen.” Rowena’s cold whisper scratched like brambles, leaving it to feel more of an accusation than a statement.
“Aye. And you are Rowena, late of Dunmow.”
“I did not live in Dunmow. I came from a farm in the west, near Cambridge.”
Relatively close. Stephen pursed his lips. Most of this county had suffered greatly under William’s scorched-earth policies when he’d marched north to fight after taking London. But Cambridge had fared moderately better, for ’twas nothing but a backwater village as rude as any wild moor that lay to the south. Though the manor houses in the king’s path had been razed and the holdings would suffer much for years to come, the most isolated farmers, those with little contact with civilization, had escaped total destruction. Had she come from one of them?
Rowena threw her arms out to the mess around them. “We Saxons live hand to mouth here, barely affording a grain of barley. You offer food where you should be finding who did this!”
Aye, ’twas exactly his reason for being here. “’Twill be easy enough to discover. My experience in London has taught me several techniques of extracting the truth.”
She gasped. His calm answer was guileless, although he was not one to employ brutal punishment to acquire information. ’Twas better to keep one’s eyes and ears open and, for the most part, one’s mouth shut. A calm manner was more apt to lure out subterfuge than a harsh beating.
“So, tell me, how did you end up in Dunmow, as guest of my friend Lord Adrien?”
Rowena remained stiff. The breeze dropped and her hair fell, a single flaxen curtain of sword-straight locks. She went still, and if ’tweren’t for the light breath that streamed from her lips, he’d have thought she’d turned to stone. Finally, she said, “I was not his guest, milord.”
Stephen didn’t want to know what she wasn’t. Odd that she wouldn’t answer his question directly. Was there a hidden reason, or was he seeing intrigue where only shadows of Saxon distrust lay?
Then, from within the hut, a babe cried loudly. Lifting the damp hem of her cyrtel, Rowena swung past him, her chin tipped up and her mouth tight. Her eyes, too wide set and too large for her face, turned icy blue, adding to the chill of the morning. Yet, by their sheer size alone, they offered only innocence.
Stephen reached forward to open the door for her. ’Twas not required, but his mother’s training had been drilled into him long before his promotion to baron.
She flinched at his raised arm. ’Twas merely a blink and a slight jerk back, and so swift he would have missed it had his gaze not been sealed to her face.
Then ’twas gone, replaced by wariness. But he knew what he saw, and though not uncommon in a land where women had few rights, he disliked seeing fear in any woman’s eyes.
Aye, Rowena was scared. Hurt, also, but mostly frightened. Stephen stepped aside as she ducked into the hut, her cloak wafting out as she passed. The youthful screams within were soon replaced by soothing murmurs.
Wandering from the door, Stephen looked again at the vandal’s work. He bent several times to study and measure the boot prints he spied, while noticing their tread. The clear imprints of heavy boots all the same size told him that only one man had done this. The cur had crushed an egg, had laid waste to late-season herbs and had trampled the roots until they were completely inedible. Not just any man’s boots, Stephen noted as he straightened again. A Saxon man’s boots. The simple style was unmistakable.
Why would a Saxon destroy this young woman’s food stocks? Because she was rumored to have allied herself with the Normans? She was far too young for such subterfuge. It had been two years since William’s victory at Hastings. This Rowena would have been barely into womanhood back then. But still, a Saxon? One from the village, too, for the boot prints retreated toward the huts rather than disappearing into the forest to the north. This attack made no sense.
The door behind him opened again. Stephen turned to watch Rowena step outside with a babe in her arms.
The babe had dark hair and olive skin, and only one lineage with men of that complexion was in England right now. For some reason, his heart sank.
So that was how she was aligned with the Normans.
