A Man of Value Read Online Free PDF Page B

vellum.”
    The silence stretched between them as he digested what she’d said.
    “Now I can walk, albeit slowly, with some assistance. I want to remember who I am. It’s infuriating, like a tapestry with all the wrong threads. But, enough about me. If I stop trying to remember, it will come back. Tell me how you came to be here while you shave me.”
    She was nervous when she shaved his beard. At first he’d been afraid she might cut his throat, but her hand was steadier now and she’d evidently come to accept she would actually have to look at him while she did it. If he kept her talking while she worked it seemed easier for her, though that was risky in itself. He was strong enough now to shave his own beard, but didn’t want to give up the pleasure he felt when she performed the task.
    Taking a deep breath she wet his face, began the ritual and shared with him in whispers how she came to the nunnery. “My parents and brothers died in a raid carried out by Scots and their Saxon allies. I watched them butcher my father and brothers.”
    She swallowed hard, and it was a few minutes before she could continue. “And then my mother—she—she died too.”
    She trembled, making him nervous. He reached out to still her hand. She pulled away. “I’d nowhere to go. The few villagers who survived were taken in by this religious community where work has been underway for years on the building of an Abbey. The orphans are still here and they’ll become nuns or monks. Most of them are simple folk from the village. I’m the only one of genteel birth, and Mother Superior has high hopes and big ambitions for her protégé.”
    She smiled bleakly. “I’m a young woman alone in dangerous times. The Church will protect me.”
    He wondered why she felt it necessary to add, “I pray daily for a true vocation.”
    “I understand now your deep hatred of the Scots,” was all he could say.
    Agneta nodded, and turned his face to shave the other side. “Here in Northumbria the people are a mixture of ancestries, some Danes descended from the Vikings of the Danelaw, like my mother, some Anglo-Saxons, like my father’s family, the Kirkthwaites, and now Normans after the coming of the Conqueror.”
    He rubbed his hand over his newly-shaved chin, wishing her hands were still on him. “But you said Saxon allies killed your family?”
    She nodded. “They were most likely Saxons who had fled to Scotland after the Conquest.”
    He shook his head. “Northumbria?” he murmured.
    “Alnwick is in Northumbria, in the north of England.”
    “Go on,” he said, wanting to keep her by his side as long as he could. “When did the Normans come?”
    “In the Year of our Lord, One Thousand and Sixty-Six.”
    “And what year is it now?”
    She stopped in her task of gathering up the shaving materials, and thought for a moment. “It’s a score and seven years since.”
    “Seven and twenty?”
    Agneta wiped his face with a drying cloth. “Yes, and now Normans hold all the power. Roger de Mowbray is the Earl of Northumbria. His castle is nearby in Alnwick. The Conqueror wanted to hold Northumbria against the Scots. The Scots consider it theirs. King William Rufus, the Conqueror’s son and now the king, has seemed unable to stop the incursions by the Scots, who are often aided by these exiled Saxons. We’re caught in the middle of the conflict. But we’re not Scots.”
    He admired the pride with which she spoke about her people, her heritage. He regretted she’d suffered such pain and loss and he wished he could offer solace.
    Agneta Kirkthwaite. I love the sound of her name.
    He felt she desperately wanted to impart to him why she had such strong feelings, but none of it resonated with the warrior—though she’d said Rufus . Something about that name niggled at the back of his mind, one of the tangled threads of his forgotten life, but why? “I was obviously involved in this important battle, but on whose side did I fight? And