The Novice Bride. Carol Townend

were used mainly by the peasantry; they were cheap, and they spat and sputtered and gave off cloying black smoke. The room was full of it. To make matters worse, the Prioress had had all the dry wood bundled into the sisters’ solar and had insisted they used green wood for the guest house fire. The result was inevitable: a spitting fire and yet more smoke.

      Sir Richard coughed and waved his hand in front of his face. ‘It’s worse than the Devil’s pit in here,’ he said. He spoke no less than the truth.

      Cecily shot a covert look across the trestle at Sir Adam. He was leaning on his elbow, quietly observing her. He murmured noncommittally to his friend, his eyes never leaving her.

      Flushing, she ducked her head and hurried over to the cauldron of pottage. She concentrated on ladling out the broth into shallow wooden bowls and tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore him. To think that she had proposed marriage to him…What must he think of her?

      ‘Where’s Tihell?’ Sir Richard murmured.

      Intent on her ladling, Cecily missed Sir Adam’s swift headshake. ‘Oh, just a small errand.’

      Sir Richard lowered his voice further, and Cecily thought she heard her sister’s name. She strained to hear more, but Sir Adam’s response was inaudible, and out of the corner of her eye Cecily thought he briefly touched his forefinger to his lips.

      Maude slapped the mouldering cheese and several loaves of that morning’s baking on the trestle.

      Sir Richard took a sip of his ale and grimaced. ‘Saxon swill,’ he muttered. ‘Never wine. Even mead would be better than this.’

      Aside from Sir Richard’s comments about the lack of wine, Cecily heard no other complaints. But when she put a steaming bowl of broth before Adam Wymark she distinctly heard his stomach growl. Acutely aware of the lack of meat in the pottage, and the fact that they had been ordered to offer novice’s portions, which would not fill her stomach, let alone that of a tall, active man like Sir Adam, Cecily finally met his gaze.

      ‘Mother Aethelflaeda’s generosity knows no bounds,’ he said dryly, breaking off a hunk of bread and dipping it into his bowl.

      ‘Mother Aethelflaeda bade me tell you that our order has been impoverished by the warring,’ Cecily said. ‘She conveys her apologies for the simplicity of our food.’

      ‘I’ll lay odds she also said that since we are God-fearing men we will not mind Lenten fare instead of a meal.’

      Sir Adam’s assessment was so close to the truth that Cecily was hard put not to smile. Demurely, she nodded. ‘Aye, sir. Mother Aethelflaeda also said that in the case of you and your men such fare would be especially apt, as every man who fought at Hastings should do a hundred and twenty days’ penance for each man that he has killed.’

      He stared at her, chewing slowly; Sir Richard choked on his ale; a man-at-arms guffawed.

      A dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Did you know that His Holiness the Pope did bless our cause over that of your Earl Harold the oath-breaker?’ Sir Adam asked.

      ‘I did not.’

      ‘No, I thought your Prioress would keep that interesting titbit to herself.’ He reached for the cheese platter, and eyed the cheese for a moment before sliding it away, untouched. ‘Tell me, Lady Cecily, do all the nuns eat this…this…fare?’

      ‘We novices do, sir—save for the cheese.’

      ‘You call this cheese?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      Unexpectedly, a grin transformed his face. ‘You save that for special guests, eh?’

      Cecily hid a smile. ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Do all in your order eat like this?’

      Thinking of Mother Aethelflaeda’s chickens, roasting on the spit, Cecily was careful to avoid Maude’s eye, but her burning cheeks betrayed her.

      ‘Aye,’ he murmured. ‘A proud Saxon lady that one. One who would deny us what she may. I could swear I smelt chicken earlier.’

      Cecily shot him a sharp look, but he met her gaze blandly.

      Mumbling a reply, Cecily beat a hasty retreat and returned with relief to ladling out the pottage.

      By insisting that Maude hand out the remaining platters she managed to avoid talking to Sir Adam for the rest of the meal. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him converse with Sir Richard. Not long after that, as soon as she decently could, Cecily murmured her excuses and left the new Lord of Fulford to bed down for the night. She had a few hours left in which to accustom herself to the idea of placing herself at the mercy of the man who had come to take her father’s lands. She prayed that it would be long enough.

      What had she done?

      Chapter Five

      Next morning, Adam woke when the day was but a faint streak of light in the east. The guest house floor was unforgiving, and the cold had seeped through to his bones. Grimacing, he stretched, noted that his squire Maurice Espinay was up before him, and that the tantalising smell of fresh baked bread was floating in from the cookhouse.

      His stomach grumbled. Hunger had been his constant companion since Hastings—the more so because he did not permit his men to ravage the countryside. Most Norman commanders saw it as their right, but Adam could not see the sense in looting and pillaging a village if one ever planned to rule it. Hopefully, when he and his men were settled, they could leave hunger behind.

      AsAdam unwound himself from his cloak, he saw in his mind’s eye the lively dark eyes and the smiling mouth of Gwenn, his dead wife and his love. He thought about her most on waking. In the early days of his grief he had tried to discipline himself not to think of her, but as a strategy that had proved useless. Grief was a sneaky opponent. On the rare mornings he had succeeded in pushing Gwenn’s memory away, the grief had simply bided its time and crept up on him later, when he had not been braced for it. So, sighing, Adam had given himself permission to think about Gwenn first thing, since that was when he woke expecting to find her at his side.

      Some mornings were more bearable than others. Even though it was two years since Gwenn had been laid to rest in the graveyard at Quimperlé, there were times when the grief was as fresh as though she had died but the day before; times when it was impossible to believe that never again would he look into those smiling, loving eyes. Ah, Gwenn, he thought, relieved that this looked as though it was going to be one of the more bearable mornings. Today he was going to be able to think of her sadly, to be sure, but without the lance of pain that had so crippled him in the weeks immediately following her death.

      Briskly, Adam rubbed his arms to get his circulation going. His stomach growled a second time and his lips curved into a twisted smile. Gwenn was spared further suffering—she was safe beyond cold, beyond hunger—but he most definitely was not. Wryly he wondered what crumbs Mother Aethelflaeda would throw them for breakfast.

      Shivering, he washed in the icy brackish water Maurice carried into the guest house in an ewer. Then, after eating a meagre nuns’ breakfast of bread and honey, washed down with small ale of a bitter brewing, he left the lodge with Richard to arm himself for the ride to Winchester and thence to Fulford. His stomach still rumbled. The poppyseed bread had been mouthwateringly good—fragrant and warm from the oven, not the crumbs he had feared being given—but there had not been enough of it. Not nearly enough.

      Daylight was strengthening by the minute, and a light frost rimmed the horse trough white. As the two knights walked towards the stable their breath huffed out like mist in front of them. Glancing skywards, Adam noted some low-lying cloud, but thankfully the rain was holding off. Rain played havoc with chainmail, and his was in sore need of an oiling. It was not Maurice’s fault. Emma Fulford’s precipitous flight had left them with no time to pause for such niceties.

      Where was Cecily Fulford? he wondered. She should have put in an appearance by now. Prime could not be far off. He conjured up her image in his mind and her blue eyes