Page 1

Outside Lincoln, in the Year of Our Lord Eleven Hundred and Forty-One, February

B eing a cook in Empress Maud’s camp wasn’t so bad, Bronwyn decided. It was even exciting. Except when a knife was aimed at her throat.

Bronwyn Blakenhale was one of hundreds of refugees living in the empress’s camp.

She helped cook, clean, wash clothes, and hem garments—a bit of everything.

With each day that dawned and she awoke, not from the straw pallet she’d known in her family’s bakery in the city of Lincoln, but from a rolled-up bundle of cloth on the ground, it was a constant reminder that her life had changed, and not for the better.

She knew the land well, down to the trees by the brooks where she used to gather water for her family’s bakery, to where the ground was loose underfoot from where she’d run and played as a girl. But unhappiness grew like a weed in her heart.

Rumors flew that soon they would travel to Gloucester, to the empress’s court, and leave Lincoln—the only home she’d ever known—entirely.

Earlier that month, King Stephen had been captured at Lincoln, along with a handful of his knights. Those who’d stood by his side and hadn’t fled for their lives in the face of the Welsh fighters the empress had hired to win her the day.

Bronwyn had grown up to the ripe age of eighteen and had thought she would have led a quiet, ordinary life.

She might have, had she not faced her father being accused of murder.

And then, after having cleared his name and dealt with the battle ravaging her hometown, then trying to assume a quieter life as best she could, she came to the empress’s attention a few weeks back.

One afternoon she had been washing her hands in a stream, when she had come across a woman urinating.

Bronwyn would have left the woman to her privacy but for the armed man she’d spotted coming out from behind a tree, a dagger in his hand. Without thinking, she’d lunged at him.

He hadn’t been expecting a young woman to come at him.

They’d tussled, only for him to die by accident.

The fight had ended with him dead, and Bronwyn surrounded by guards, their spears pointed at her throat.

It had been a bit awkward as the man had collapsed on top of her, and he’d been heavy.

Bronwyn had grunted and shoved him off, then swallowed at the many pairs of eyes narrowed at her.

As it had turned out, the woman she’d saved had been no ordinary person. In her hurry to save the woman, Bronwyn had overlooked her fine dress, plaited hair, delicate veil, as well as the circlet atop her head that had shone in the afternoon sun, in the face of the more immediate danger.

“Back off, you’ll kill her,” the woman snapped. She stood and arranged her skirts, standing to her full height. She surveyed Bronwyn with hard eyes. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Nothing. I’m Bronwyn Blakenhale. I’m nobody.”

The woman wore a dark-crimson dress, and she had a veil and circlet over her hair and a thin belt to accentuate her waist. She was very finely dressed and stunningly beautiful. Her skin was clear and fair, her eyes sharp with intelligence. For a moment.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, her mouth pursed.

She took in Bronwyn’s long, blonde hair, tied back in a kerchief.

The ordinary clothes that marked her as a peasant.

The work apron tied around her waist, the plain, brown woolen dress she wore that was laced up to cover her bosom.

And her skin, once pale and free of blemish, now slightly tanned and spotted from weeks on the road and by the hazy, English winter sun.

Bronwyn’s gaze darted to her hands, which had once been frequently covered in flour but now were dirty from the tussle with the man, covered in mud, dirt, and his blood. Sharp rocks and pebbles bit into her skin, and she wiped her hands nervously on her apron, not that it helped.

The well-dressed woman raised her chin. She looked down her nose at Bronwyn, her round jaw set in an arrogant tilt.

Her skin was clear and fair, her eyes sharp with intelligence. For a moment. Before she snorted and said in French-accented English, “I’ll be the judge of that. Your name. Welsh?”

“No, I’m English. But the name is.”

“Good name. The Welsh are good fighters.” She felt at her pockets but had no coin purse.

Her face darkened. “What were you doing there? Were you spying on me?”

Bronwyn shook her head. “No. I saw the man start to sneak up on you. It looked like he was going to attack, so I jumped him.”

The guards exchanged uneasy looks. The woman shot them all an annoyed look.

“That is what happens when you’re not alert.

” She tossed a long, thick, light-brown braid over her shoulder.

“God, I hate the outdoors. Give me a castle any day. You, Bronwyn Blakenhale. Come along. You’re with me.

” She snapped her fingers and walked off.

Bronwyn watched her go and got to her feet. She asked one of the guards, “Uh, what?”

One guard glanced at the woman departing and said quietly, “You’re not nobody anymore, not now. That was the empress. You just saved her life.”

And that had been her first meeting with Empress Maud.

Since Lincoln had fallen in February, Bronwyn had lived a nomadic life.

The city had been razed to the ground, and she had joined the camp of refugees for weeks now.

She had been lucky to fall in with the company of the cooks and staff who accompanied the empress’s entourage.

No one had known where the camp was going until word came, like a whisper through the ranks.

They were due to head south, to Gloucester, but tarried as the empress rallied her forces in Lincoln.

The camp filled as armed men, fighters, and a few noblemen arrived or traveled in great carriages and on wagons.

Ladies never lower themselves by walking on foot , Bronwyn thought as a wagon passed by, ladies chatting as they looked out the windows.

Bronwyn had to watch her footing as she stepped around dung; the horses had come through here too.

Her shoes were not made for this and she soon developed hard blisters on her feet.

At night, she stayed with the other cooks and servants: the potboys, the scullery maids, the men who cooked with pride and specialized in sauces and soups.

So different from her brief time working in the royal kitchens of King Stephen and Queen Matilda, she realized now how privileged a life they’d lived behind those stone walls.

She missed her father. Back in January, they had sold some expensive bread rolls to a nobleman and brought them to court, only for Bronwyn to see a stranger messing with them, adding some suspicious topping.

She had raised a fuss but was ignored. The rolls had ended up poisoning the nobleman and an unlucky cook, and had been considered an attack on the king and queen.

It had landed her father in prison, despite his innocence.

Bronwyn had worked in the castle kitchens to make up for the loss, and had been tasked by the queen privately with finding out who really had been behind the poisonings.

She had succeeded, just as the siege of Lincoln had taken place.

A little over a month ago, she had made the acquaintance of Lady Alice, a noblewoman of similar age to Bronwyn who’d been a spy in King Stephen’s court, unbeknownst to most. Lady Alice had taken her into her service as Bronwyn had looked to prove her father’s innocence and find the poisoner behind the nobleman’s and cook’s deaths.

Theirs had not been a friendship, per se, but they had respected one another.

But since their separation at the Battle of Lincoln, as people were calling it, Bronwyn had not seen her again, or Rupert Bothwell, the squire about whom she’d thought often, thinking of his golden hair that shone in the sun.

With her father and friends—Lady Alice, loyal to the empress with pale skin, shining, jet-black hair, and a haughty demeanor, and Rupert Bothwell, whose caring ways and golden hair had captured her heart—they had been lucky to escape with their lives, but Bronwyn and her father had been separated, and she’d seen nothing of her stepmother, Margaret, and their apprentice, Wyot, a lad of ten years old, either.

Since then, Bronwyn had slept beneath a starlit sky, baked and cooked what she could find in the woods that morning, and had never been so happy to rest after a long day’s work.

She slept like the dead. The daylight and working hours did not change, but she felt an exhaustion creeping over her limbs like a bad dream.

Her arms, legs, and feet ached from all the walking, cooking, and scavenging, and she felt bone-tired at night.

She did not dance or join in the revelry that took place in the evenings, or admire the bonfires that offered a much-needed warmth in the cold February nights. She kept to herself, mostly.

This resulted in her not making many friends on the journey, and she did not share laughs or jokes with the other men and women at camp.

She didn’t know what it was that kept her from joining in the others’ revelry.

It was not for lack of feeling or coldness.

She simply felt empty and dull inside. How could she give flirtatious glances and smiles at other men when Rupert had captured her heart but was unavailable, and her family might well be dead?

Bronwyn had searched amongst the camp for her father and stepmother, but there among Empress Maud’s retinue, and the sheer number of people who had fled the city and had nowhere else to go, were more than she could count. There were hundreds of them, possibly more.

Did her parents miss her? Were they even alive? She didn’t know.