Page 3

Three

The Wolf

Adelais of the Maine had never enjoyed being the Wolf as much as she did in this moment.

The abbess stepped backward now, practically falling onto the low cot at the back of the tent, her green eyes wide as she stared at Adelais. As she caught her balance, Adelais smiled at her—a smile she knew had made grown men piss themselves—and then she sat on the stool a few paces away.

Either the abbess would have to stand while Adelais sat, or she’d have to sit on Adelais’s cot, which meant she’d have to look up at Adelais while they spoke. Either way put her at a disadvantage, and Adelais could see that the abbess understood this too. But to Adelais’s surprise—and pleasure—the abbess didn’t hesitate. She sat on the neatly made cot, her shoulders lifting ever so slightly under her mantle.

A deep breath.

She was nervous. Or scared.

Adelais’s smile grew even wider.

“How old are you?” she murmured in her own tongue, more to herself than to her unexpected guest. She spread her feet and reached for the axe she’d been sharpening before she’d been interrupted. It was plenty sharp already, but she liked the way the little nun’s eyes warily traced the edge. Adelais felt like a cat watching a very pretty mouse.

“Twenty-five,” the nun answered in flawless Norman.

Fascinating . Adelais had met a handful of diplomats and courtiers with passable Norman—since the reign of Aethelred, the English court had been connected by marriage to Normandy, with plenty of family and trade ties knotting the two shores together—but it was remarkable to find someone so far from London or Canterbury able to speak it fluently.

It was also fascinating that the nun hadn’t elaborated on her unusual age for such a high station. Granted, Adelais was mostly among soldiers and warriors, but it still struck her as strange that her visitor didn’t boast about reaching such a position while being so young. As a greener woman, Adelais might have chalked it up to this person being in the church and therefore humble, but she knew better now. Holy people put soldiers and kings to shame with the tales they told about themselves and their calling from God.

But she also remembered what the archbishop had called the abbess when telling her about the abbey. Tate the Pious.

Perhaps that piety was real. Adelais couldn’t decide what interested her more: the idea that this lovely flower before her was truly saintly, or that she’d somehow fooled the entire West Country into thinking she was.

“Twenty-five is young for your position.”

“It’s uncommon for someone my age to be an abbess, yes,” the nun acknowledged.

Indeed. “Let’s be direct, Mother Tate,” Adelais said, thoroughly enjoying the surprise flitting across the nun’s face as she realized that Adelais knew her name. “What did you come to offer me not to break down your abbey walls and burn everything I find?”

Tate’s gaze was level, direct. There was no cowering; neither was there any bluster. Which made her rise a few notches in Adelais’s estimation. It was a rare thing to find someone willing to trade in objective truths with Adelais’s axe between them.

“I can offer you prayers,” Tate said.

“Prayers are cheap,” mused Adelais. “What about masses instead?”

The abbess didn’t reveal anything by expression or posture, but that itself was revealing enough. “We are currently without a chaplain,” she said. There was a careful neutrality to her voice when she said the word chaplain, almost as if she were trying to compensate for an internal lack of calm . “But once we have one restored to the abbey, then yes, I could promise you masses.”

Adelais set the axe down on the thin carpet rolled over the grass, the double-edged head planted between her feet. She leaned forward over the handle as if to tell the abbess a secret. “You could promise them, but unfortunately for you, I don’t require them. My late husband already commissioned masses for his soul and mine before his death.”

Tate nodded, once and a little crisply. Her composure now was interesting to Adelais, especially contrasted with the deep breaths and the wide eyes earlier. It wasn’t sangfroid, not really, but the calmness mingled with the agitation beneath made Adelais want to see how deep the control ran. Most people were cowards, and it was hard to believe that an abbess in the middle of nowhere would have more courage than King Harold’s soldiers defending their home from Adelais’s men. But the possibility of being surprised was even better than the possibility of a good fight, and Adelais leaned back, mind filling with very delightful ideas about how to provoke this woman further.

“Far Hope has some valuables,” said Tate. She spoke so calmly and steadily that Adelais suspected that this was what the abbess had really come to offer: a sort of modernized version of the Danegeld. Pay off the raider with some of what they’d planned to steal, saving time and bloodshed for everyone.

Adelais had come to raid the abbey, that part was true. But she’d come to Far Hope for two reasons, and only one of them had to do with helping herself to Far Hope’s treasures. And even then, she wasn’t interested in the offering box or the church silverware.

She’d heard the name of Far Hope long before she’d come to England, as a girl of ten at her father’s side. They’d traveled from Angers to the court of Henri for yet another interminable visit having to do with their province, Maine, being squabbled over by Normandy, and Blois, and the Angevins. Adelais had never cared much for politics unless it meant fighting later, but she did like games, and sometimes politicking was like a game. However, there was one thing she liked even more than games, and that was a secret.

Late one night, when everyone but her father and the king were asleep, she’d heard them whispering. She’d been allowed to stay near her father, curled behind his chair on a thick blanket, partly because he was fond of his fierce little daughter—his only child and the one into whom he poured all the martial aspirations he’d stored up for a son that never came—and partly because tensions around Maine were high enough that a viscount’s child was at risk of being taken and held hostage as leverage somewhere. He didn’t let her out of his sight whenever they left home.

They’d thought she’d been asleep as they started talking of a place in England, a place the king had been to visit—secretly—the year before.

The spies say King Edward goes three times a year , her father had murmured.

I do not blame him. I would go again if I felt I could leave Paris and not come back to my brother trying to steal it , the French king had said. It is the greatest ecstasy I have ever known, what I found at Far Hope.

Her father had paused, and then had said with the casual inflection of someone trying not to sound too interested. What did you find there?

The king had not answered right away, and when he finally did answer, his voice hadn’t sounded devout, or even joyful. But almost haunted.

They keep old ways at Far Hope, you must understand. And a treasure even the pope himself could only ever wish to see.

A treasure even greater than what the pope had? In the Holy City itself? A treasure so great that a king spoke of it with more emotion in his voice than when he spoke of his own crown?

Adelais’s kin were a hundred years removed from being pillagers and raiders, having adapted quickly to the territorial land warfare that dominated France, becoming a people of castles, horses, farms. It was a shame in Adelais’s mind because she wanted nothing more than to be a shield-maiden, sailing off to far-flung shores for loot and glory.

And so when she heard of this treasure, her whole being had come alive with light and color, like the sun shining through a stained glass window.

Far Hope . The English name had stuck in her mind, engraved itself. Far Hope . Her pagan ancestors had raided Lindisfarne and Iona, every vulnerable holy place they could find, and though Rollo’s people were all Christian now, it didn’t dim Adelais’s urge to go there and snatch this treasure for herself.

And when she’d come to England eighteen years later, as part of William’s attempt to seize his stolen crown, she knew it was her destiny to go to Far Hope and find this treasure at last. It had taken a not-insignificant number of sly threats to squeeze more information out of Stigand, England’s corrupt archbishop, but she eventually learned the abbey was in Devonshire, hidden in the hills near an ancient wood. From there, she’d only needed a reason to come to the West Country—which the Exeter rebels had so handily provided—and for the locals to tell her which roads to take. Wild, rough roads that she was surprised King Henri would have deigned to use.

But perhaps for a treasure without compare, any road was worth taking.

Here in the tent, Adelais studied the young abbess, who sat as still as one of the granite tors standing sentinel in the hills. Immutable, rooted so deep that only lifetimes of wind and rain could hope to shift it, bit by invisible bit.

She was small, which Adelais had noticed right away, used to gauging how much of a fight a person would put up if pressed to it. And she was not only slender in a way that suggested prayerful fasting and abnegation, but she was short, barely coming to Adelais’s shoulder. Adelais was a tall woman, another gift from her Northman ancestors, but Tate would be diminutive by anyone’s standards.

And while Tate was strangely pretty, she wasn’t beautiful. Not beautiful like people said Adelais herself was. The nun had forgettable brown hair, dark brows which were thick and straight, and elfin features. Delicate but too grave for loveliness.

Despite that, Adelais found her gaze drawn again and again to the holy woman’s lips. It wasn’t a lush mouth, not the kind of mouth you’d look for in a mistress, say, but it had the most fascinating downward curve to it whenever the abbess let her mask slip. As if someone born to pout had been made to frown instead.

Adelais wondered what it would look like in its natural shape—or in a gasp. She even wondered what it might look like in a smile , which was unusual. She didn’t often find herself caring if someone smiled or not, with the two exceptions of her father, when he’d been alive, and her son, now a young man being fostered in Caen.

But there it was: She wanted to see this abbess smile.

More typically, she’d also like to see Tate’s mouth swollen, panting, wet. But Adelais set that aside for the moment.

“I have plenty of valuables already,” Adelais told the nun frankly. Her husband Gérald had been a wealthy castellan of William’s and a favored warrior, and her own dowry had been substantial.

And she’d pleased William enough with her marauding that he was planning to gift her with estates here in England as a reward—in her son’s name, of course. Because while William was happy enough for her to be his pet Amazon, his kept nightmare with which to torment the English, some walls were unbreachable. She could be William’s tool, a story meant to strike terror into the hearts of his conquered people, and she could murder and pillage on his behalf.

But she could not have a house in her own right, even though it wasn’t that uncommon in this new English land of theirs.

“I don’t need coins and candlesticks,” Adelais continued. “Come on, little nun, what else can you offer me?”

A flush spread anew over Tate’s cheeks, and Adelais tilted her head. She wanted the abbess to speak of the treasure , the one that had so thoroughly haunted the king. But now the abbess almost looked—well, Adelais wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that look. It could have been embarrassment, or it could have been nervousness.

But there was something secret -like in the way the abbess dipped her gaze and swallowed. And ah, how Adelais loved secrets.

“I’m aware there is more to plundering than taking gold, and I would offer it freely. Only myself, though. The other sisters would stay untouched.”

As in a good fight, Adelais’s body knew the answer before her mind, and heat pooled in her belly. “So it’s true what they say about the English church,” Adelais said, her voice a little huskier now. “Merry monks and married priests. A shame the Wolf is not what you expected, for it would have been a very pretty offer.”

The abbess met her stare, her eyes shining in the light of brazier. “You misunderstand me. I’m still offering it.”

A log in the brazier popped, and the wind nipped at the flap of the tent. Adelais couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woman in front of her, couldn’t stop staring at the fascinating little elf with her plain habit and her mouth made for pouting. Adelais felt for a moment like she had as a girl on King Henri’s floor hearing about Far Hope for the first time: filled with light and color and curiosity. Filled with a bright, sharp hunger.

“You’re offering to fuck me,” Adelais said bluntly, meaning to shock the abbess perhaps, but also needing to be sure. Because abruptly, she couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t having Tate squirming underneath her.

If Adelais had offended her, Tate didn’t show it. “Yes,” she said. “One night, and then you’ll leave.”

Adelais could have laughed. Here was the most interesting creature Adelais had ever found—here was the most fun that she’d had in years and the seat of twenty years’ worth of curiosity—and this sweet nun thought one night would be payment enough to send her away for good.

“But I don’t want to leave,” Adelais said with a wolfish smile. “So you’re going to have to do better than that.”

Tate briefly rolled her lips inward, took a breath. “Two nights.”

“Even two very good nights are not that much payment, little mouse. I can find two good nights anywhere in the kingdom.” In fact, her last lay, a barmaid in Langport, had been one of the finest fucks she’d had—and that included Adelais’s late husband, who, despite being a vainglorious prick, had been incredible in bed. “How about this—for every night you give me, I shall grant you a day’s worth of reprieve, and I won’t attack your abbey.”

Tate’s dark brows lifted. “What, in perpetuity? Am I to pleasure you for the rest of our earthly lives?”

“Don’t tempt me, mouse.” She was still smiling, but she knew Tate could hear the danger in Adelais’s voice by the way she tensed. “I have half a mind to carry you off like I would a bag of candlesticks as it is. But I want what’s inside this abbey too badly to leave it.”

Tate seemed to regain control. “It’s an abbey like any other.”

“So the pious women here lie as well as fuck,” observed Adelais. “Because I’ve known there is a secret here at Far Hope since I was a child. A treasure. And I want it. I want whatever brings princes and kings here to behold.”

Tate’s lips parted. Closed. When she spoke, her words were careful. “Those are ordinary pilgrimages. To pray near our relics and see our holy spring.”

“Bullshit,” Adelais cut in. “You think Henri couldn’t find a pilgrimage to make in France or that your King Edward wouldn’t have been satisfied by making a pilgrimage somewhere more convenient than an abbey in the middle of a vast and weathered nowhere? You’re telling me that whatever saint’s knucklebone you have in your church is more important than any other saint’s chunk of rib or bitten-off fingernail? I know there’s something here, Tate, and I want it. I’ve wanted it for twenty years.”

“It can’t be stolen,” Tate replied, lifting her chin.

Can’t be stolen .

Not that it shouldn’t be; not that it would be wrong to steal it. But can’t .

Interesting.

“How about a little game, then?” Adelais said, leaning over her axe once more. “A bet, if you will.”

“A bet,” Tate repeated.

“You fuck me for the next three nights, and I give you three days of peace. And if I cannot learn what I want by then, I will leave.”

Tate’s eyebrow lifted the slightest amount. “That’s it? Three nights and you will leave?”

“ If I don’t learn the secrets of this place.”

“You would only learn them from me, and you must know that I will never tell you,” Tate said plainly. “This seems like a step back in your negotiations.”

Adelais shrugged. It would hardly help her agenda to explain to Tate why it wasn’t.

Tate seemed to suspect a trap, searching Adelais’s face with an intensity that pleased Adelais. She liked having Tate’s attention. She wanted more of it.

All of it.

Tate looked down at her hands as if thinking, and then finally nodded. “Yes. Yes, we have an agreement. Three nights in your bed, and if you cannot learn what you want to know, then you’ll leave.”

“And if I do learn…” Adelais smiled again. “Then I’m taking it.”

Tate’s mouth flickered with something that could have been a smile. “You could try.”

Adelais laughed. “I’ll teach you not to doubt me, sweet thing. Now,” she said, placing her axe on the floor behind her and reaching for the ties at her waist. She needed that strange, pretty mouth between her legs like she needed to draw breath. “Let’s get started, shall we?”