Needle in the Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

breathless, shouted exchanges in French. “They’re here.”
    The two Normans look as surprised to see Gytha and the maimed man as she is horrified to come face to face with them. Rounding a bend in the wall, they skid to an uncertain halt, exchange doubtful looks and begin muttering to one another in their barbarous language. Though Gytha cannot understand their words, she can tell from their gestures they are debating something to do with her companion. Whether to kill him most likely. One of the soldiers slides his hand toward the dagger in his belt.
    “No! Non !” she yells, thrusting herself protectively in front of the invalid. “Can’t you see he’s a cripple?”
    The soldiers shrug, look blank.
    “ Blesse , blesse ,” pleads the man, gesturing at his stumps with his one good hand, but the Normans look unimpressed. Now both have their daggers drawn and are advancing on the crippled Saxon, yet he has done them no harm, lying helpless in his eyrie on top of the wall. And he clearly cannot defend himself against them. She could not forgive herself for standing by and letting them kill him, yet she has no weapon, and she is a small woman, no match for two well-fed Normans. A woman. Of course she has a weapon, the most powerful of all.
    “Go, quick as you can,” she whispers to the man as she lets go his arm and steps forward, hips swaying, pushing back her cloak with one hand to reveal the line of her breasts beneath her gown. Though loose, the wool is very fine and falls close to the curves of her body. Swallowing her fear, licking her dry lips, she lets a smile spread slow as a summer sunset across her mouth.
    ***
     
    By the time she arrives back at Lady Edith’s house the city is quiet again, its rabble of low buildings squatting sullenly beneath a false twilight. There is no wind to disperse the smoke from the fires set by the Normans around the square, and it hangs, settling over roofs beneath the weight of the rain, loitering in back streets and the narrow alley by which Gytha makes her way, squeezed between the city wall and the back courts of the merchants’ houses lining the main street.
    It was not so bad, she reflects as she wades through the smog, coughing, scarcely able to see more than a step in front of her. No worse, really, than lying in the marriage bed with Adam, stiff backed, eyes squeezed shut as he toiled above her, his cock rasping in her dry fanny, his sweat soaking the front of her night gown. At least the soldiers were quick and she didn’t have to sleep beside them afterwards or wake to their sour morning lusts. At least by these acts she has saved a life, rather than creating a new death, another baby too weak to survive. At least, if a child were to result from what she has done, she might strangle or drown it without demur; her body already knows well enough what it is to be tricked out of a baby to suckle. She touches the bronze and enamel locket she wears, a gift from Lady Edith last Christmas, and thinks of the four twists of dark, downy hair she keeps inside it. How it can be that God should have so punished her for submitting to her duty as a wife, yet inflict no sense of guilt upon her for what she has just done?
    Opening the narrow gate, she slips from the alley into Lady Edith’s back court and squats behind the moult house to take a piss, grabbing a handful of straw to clean between her legs. She cannot enter Lady Edith’s presence still sticky with Norman spendings. As she rises and straightens her gown, she hears a clatter of hooves and harness, and voices. Men’s voices. French voices. She shakes her head. She must be mistaken, her ears still full of the hot, panting breath of the soldiers, playing tricks on her. She is exhausted, wanting nothing more than to warm herself beside the fire in her lady’s company, to tell her tale then drowse with a cup of mulled wine while her clothes steam gently dry and someone picks out sad tunes on a lute. But the voices come