Page 2

Two

Tate

The Normans didn’t come.

All that evening, past vespers and into compline, Tate waited.

And as the moon rose, Tate waited.

She waited as she and Leofgifu and Judith—a sister who had a demon which tormented her with a terror of leaving the abbey walls—tended to their eldest sisters and the two remaining pilgrims. And before she’d allow herself even the hope that they might make it through the night without the Normans reaching their gates, she took the twisting path out of the valley and up the hills and then searched the dark horizon.

And there she waited too.

Sutreworde still burned, judging from the red-orange glow on the horizon, but Tate could make out nothing else. No torches, no dark shadows resolving themselves into riders on the road. People talked about the Wolf as if he were magic, a demon, something more than human, but Tate was too practical for all that. She knew that he had to move and attack as a normal man would.

Mother Ardith, too, had scoffed whenever she heard people spinning each other into a panic about the Wolf’s uncanny ability to strike villages and churches unawares.

As if being Norman weren’t bad enough , she’d said. He doesn’t need to be magic if he’s clever, and he doesn’t need to be a demon if he’s greedy. Ordinary human evil will do the rest.

Tate tended to agree. People would be surprised at the evil ordinary people were capable of, even people who seemed normal and good and innocent. There didn’t need to be a supernatural reason for violence. Or murder.

Tate knew that truth intimately, thoroughly. She traced its shape at night with her thoughts; it covered her face like a shroud while she slept.

It crouched over her constantly, the lid to a coffin only she could see.

The good news was that Far Hope was safe from demons and ordinary men alike, hidden in its valley as it was. Steep hills sheltered it on three sides, and the way into the abbey was shielded with high walls and a thick wooden gate. The abbey had a good spring and plenty of provisions, and for those reasons, Tate could hold Far Hope for a while, at least. The Normans would have to get through the gate, which would take time to arrange, and they’d need tunnels to breach the walls, which would take time to dig.

There was the private way down to the back of the abbey from the moors, of course, but it was hidden with rocks and heather, and too steep for horses or anyone carrying heavy weapons—or wearing mail shirts. Even if the Normans did find it, they’d have to tether their horses, strip off their weapons and armor, and make their way down one by one. Hardly the way to keep speed and surprise on their side.

What Tate would do before the Normans breached the walls or starved them out, she didn’t know. She supposed she would try to negotiate, or maybe she could pay them off with the few treasures that weren’t currently trundling their way to her childhood home. But damn it all, she’d been trusted with Far Hope, however mistakenly, and she would defend it with everything she had.

Tate went back down to the dormitory, thinking of the last conversation she had with her mentor before the old abbess had died.

It can’t be me, she’d whispered to Mother Ardith as her abbess lay dying on a pallet stuffed with dried herbs and flowers to freshen the room. It can’t be me.

Daughter, whyever not?

You know why. You know what I’ve done. I’m here for penance, nothing more.

A wet, wheezing laugh. If you don’t think leadership is penance, then you have much still to learn.

And now Tate could see what Mother Ardith meant. It was up to Tate to keep the abbey and the people inside it safe by any means possible. No matter the cost.

And with the Wolf practically at her door, she had to consider that any cost might be necessary.

There’d been no sign of the Normans long after the world had gone dark, and so Tate had allowed herself a few hours of sleep before matins. The sleep was fitful, fretful, and filled with half-dreams of the Wolf. A giant man, she was sure, on account of the Viking blood in his veins. And he looked like a monster, that was certain. He couldn’t look otherwise with the tales they told about him.

In her dreams, she saw every village he’d slaughtered, every house he’d burned. Every drop of blood dripping from the edge of the axe they said he favored. And when she woke up, blinking in the dark, her breath lodged in her chest like it was stuck there with glue, she knew he was here.

She just knew .

She rolled off her pallet and slipped into her soft leather shoes, and then crept out of her cell. Their dormitory was made of only a few rooms, and typically she shared her cell with Wynflaed and four other sisters, but they were gone now, and so she didn’t worry about waking anyone as she slung her mantle over her shoulders and stepped into the chilly night.

The stars glittered overhead, but she barely noticed because there were dozens of tiny suns burning outside the wall guarding the abbey from the rest of the valley. They disappeared from view as she drew closer to the wall, but she found the chink between the gate and the stone and then caught her breath.

Yes, those were torches and fires. Close enough that she could see the small, pale hillocks of the tents, but far enough away that she couldn’t count the men or the horses. They must have come quietly. Silently. She would have thought that impossible for any band of soldiers, much less ones known for rapaciousness and marauding.

“I didn’t hear them at first,” Leofgifu said quietly from next to her.

Tate didn’t turn. “Nor I.”

“Why have they made camp?” Leofgifu asked. “Surely it would have been better to catch us unawares.”

“Maybe they didn’t know about our wall and wanted to wait until daytime to search for its weaknesses. Or maybe they were tired from a long day of looting, and they know we’re not exactly going to fortify ourselves while they rest.” Tate closed her eyes and tried to think how Mother Ardith would think. The trouble was that her own thoughts—her own feelings , the ones she’d come to Far Hope to escape—were so loud . She was furious, hopeless, terrified. She wanted to scream, to cry, to fight.

God help her, she even wanted to run.

“At least we know they’re here now,” observed Leofgifu. “They can’t surprise us.”

Surprise.

A very stupid idea occurred to Tate.

She looked at Leofgifu and then back at Far Hope, its stone structures as solid as the moors, as fixed to this place as the hills.

If you don’t think leadership is penance, then you have much left to learn.

Tate took a breath. “I’m going to their camp. Now.”

“ What ?” Leofgifu looked aghast. “Tate, you cannot. You know you cannot. They might hold you for ransom. Or they might kill you! They might…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but neither did she have to. They both knew what invaders did. What the Normans had done, and the Vikings before them, and even the Saxons before them. On and on until one got back to the books of Deuteronomy and Numbers.

“I know what they might do,” Tate said firmly. “But neither can I sit here and wait for them to decide. The Wolf is but a Norman, after all. If I can’t trade on his devotion to God, then perhaps I can trade on his greed.”

And perhaps , she didn’t add , I can trade on other things. Whatever sin she might have to commit to keep her abbey safe, it was a far worse sin to do nothing. God would forgive her. And if he didn’t?

Well, then, she was already quite used to that.

Leofgifu didn’t like it one bit, but she helped Tate dress properly in her habit and wimple, and then draw her heaviest mantle over it all. She didn’t take any kind of light with her, although even she struggled on the moors when it was full dark. But they were only a few hours from dawn, and if she did get lost, it wouldn’t last long.

After Leofgifu promised to take care of the others and charge Judith with leading prayers in Tate’s absence, Tate took the path from behind the abbey up to the moors. It twisted up the hills surrounding Far Hope and then ended near a cluster of granite boulders, which were only visible by the way they blotted out part of the sky as one approached. Tate could now look down the length of the Hope Valley and see the single burning light in the abbey dormitory, and then, past the walls, the small lake of torches belonging to the Normans.

It wasn’t easy to stay quiet when the path was a sheep trail through the heather, and also when she couldn’t see, but she did a commendable job as she walked along the lip of the valley until she was above the camp itself. She counted fifteen tents but many more horses, and saw two guards at either side of the camp—two facing the abbey, two facing the rest of the valley. None facing the hills. And why would they? They were far from any settlement that could give them real trouble, and there were no English soldiers left to chase them off. They were all either sworn to William, or sworn to people who’d sworn to William, or dead.

Besides, the steep talus of the valley wall didn’t make for an easy vector of attack. It was the kind of slope that accommodated gnarled twists of heather, stubborn moss, and little else. Even Tate, short, slight, and unencumbered as she was, nearly tumbled to her death a few times.

But finally, she made it, and she paused just outside the glow of the flickering torches and tried to remember how to breathe. She could see piles of weapons inside some of the tents—quivers full of arrow shafts as thick as thumbs, swords as tall as she was. And all around the fires were the sleeping forms of soldiers, long and massive. Far Hope saw plenty of men—priests and pilgrims and the occasional monk—but none of them were soldiers . None of them looked like they could snap Tate in half with their bare hands.

Stepping into this camp was beyond foolish; it was practically begging for death.

Which I’m sure many of the Wolf’s victims did before he finally let them die.

That was not going to happen to anyone inside Far Hope, and with that thought, Tate set her shoulders and lifted her chin the way she’d seen Mother Ardith do when they were visited by princes and kings. Like they had no authority over her, the keeper of a secret older than Rome itself.

And then Tate walked into the camp.

She strode over to one of the guards facing the abbey, who was huffing and shifting his feet dramatically as if he’d never been this cold before in his life, and she tapped him on the shoulder.

He jumped like Jacob’s angel himself had come down to wrestle him, and his partner spun around, drawing his sword and his dagger at the same time. But then the hand holding the dagger dropped a little.

“No camp followers,” the guard said shortly in Norman French. “Go back home.”

Tate flashed him a look that made him shut his mouth.

“I’m here for the Wolf,” she said, also in Norman, her voice as cool as the night around them. “Not coin.”

The first guard laughed. Laughed. Oh, that pissed Tate right off.

“The Wolf isn’t taking guests right now,” he told her, his clean-shaven face in an ugly smirk.

“I’m not here for pleasure,” Tate said. “I’m the abbess of the abbey you’re about to pillage.”

Another laugh. “And I’m the princess of Bohemia. Fuck off.”

Tate had known this since she was sixteen, but she learned it all over again in that moment: Sometimes, fear felt like courage. Sometimes it didn’t even feel like fear at all, but cold, bright fury.

“I will see the Wolf,” she said calmly, “either with your escort or without it. One way will displease him more, I’m sure.”

“Not if we tie up those pretty praying hands and keep you right here with us,” the second guard said. He didn’t lift his dagger, but Tate saw his grip shift.

She made herself shrug, like it made no difference to her. “Then I’ll scream and the Wolf will hear, and I’ll have my audience.”

They didn’t seem to like that option either—probably judging it better to wake the Wolf with a request rather than a scream splitting the night. They gave each other a look.

“Come on then,” the first one said gruffly, taking her by the arm through her mantle. “Let’s get you what you came for. Much though you may regret it.”

They walked to a tent in the middle of the camp. The flap was down, but a small brazier clearly burned inside, and Tate could hear the shing-shiiiing of metal against stone. Like a weapon being carefully, methodically sharpened.

The Wolf was awake.

The guard hadn’t even tugged the flap aside when an irritable voice from within said in Norman, “Can I not get a moment’s rest?”

Tate could not have said what voice she’d expected the Wolf to have, precisely, only that it was not this one. Rich and husky. Pitched lower than hers, but still not a voice that Tate would hear and ascribe to a legendary soldier.

Or even to a man at all.

“Apologies,” the guard said, sounding truly contrite. And a little afraid. “But there is someone here. She says she is the abbess of Far Hope.”

There was movement inside the tent, and then the flap twitched aside. The Wolf stepped out into the night, illuminated by a torch set outside the tent and the brazier from behind. And despite the whispers and tales, the Wolf was not a monster at all.

There was pale, freckled skin and hair partially braided back in small plaits that then came down to mingle in the Wolf’s loose strawberry tresses. There was a full pink mouth and gold eyes; there were cheekbones as high as the Devonshire sky and a jaw as finely wrought as the gold and enamel crosses inside the abbey.

The Wolf was beautiful, and Tate felt her heart tumble abruptly inside her chest.

“You’re the Wolf,” Tate said, mostly to herself, and the Wolf regarded her with a piercing, cool gaze.

“I am.”

“You’re—you’re not…”

“A man?” the Wolf asked in Norman-accented English. She turned to go back inside the tent, gesturing for the guards to bring Tate in after her. “You are very deep in the hinterlands, aren’t you?” she asked over her shoulder. “The east and south of your country know me well enough. Adelais of the Maine, at your pleasure.”

Tate shuffled unthinkingly into the tent behind the warrior, her mind recalibrating to this new information.

Adelais of the Maine.

In every story she’d heard, the Wolf had been a man, a vicious, murdering he. But every story she’d heard had passed through many mouths before it had been spoken to her—and in any event, who would believe this without seeing it with their own eyes? That William’s most terrifying warrior was a woman so beautiful she put literal treasures to shame?

“Leave us,” Adelais said to her guards in Norman. “And do not disturb me for any reason. I want the abbess all to myself.”