The Shielded Heart

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“Recently I’ve been part of Lord Ian’s—the Dragon’s—” he added at her look of confusion “—household. ‘Tis an honor I hold dear.” He rose and helped her raise the body to remove Pawl’s tattered shirt. “But my real home is in Bergen, in Norway. My family are merchants there. We haven’t quite the same ranking of nobility as the Normans or Welsh. My family is well-placed and has some power, but we are not noble.” He shrugged.

“‘Tis proper to call you by your Christian name?”

“Aye.” In truth he cared little whether ’twas proper; he simply wanted to hear his name from her lips.

“You must call me Anna, then,” she suggested with a hint of a smile.

“You honor me, Anna.”

They worked together in companionable silence until the time came to close the winding sheet over Pawl’s face. “Should I fetch his mother and daughters?” Anna asked. “Or should I wait and ask Father Michael when he arrives to lay the men to rest?”

“The abbot is coming here?” he asked.

“William sent for him as soon as we arrived in Murat. He should be here tomorrow, to give them the last rites and to say a Mass for their souls.

“Mayhap I should ask the girls’ grandmother,” she murmured. “I don’t know—is it right for his daughters’ last sight of their father to be thus?” She gazed at the body for a moment. “I don’t believe I’d want to remember my father like this.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I cannot remember the last time I saw my parents,” she said, letting her tears fall unchecked as she met his gaze.

“You must have been very young when they died.”

She looked away and swiped at her wet cheeks. “My parents aren’t dead.”

“Do they never visit you?” Swen asked, horrified at the thought of any parent disregarding so lovely and talented a child. He avoided his family for long periods of time by his choice, ’twas true, but despite the pain he always felt when he saw them, he still could not bring himself to ignore them completely.

And knowing they were in Bergen, alive and well, brought him a sense of comfort, no matter how strained their relationship.

“Nay, I don’t think it’s permitted.”

How could anyone keep a parent from their child? “Permitted? By whom?”

“When they gave me to the abbey, I think that the abbot—not Father Michael but the old abbot—said they could not see me ever again.”

The biting remark Swen had been about to make died on his lips when he saw the pain in Anna’s eyes. She took a step back from the workbench and raised her hands to her face. “Why have you made me remember?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper. “I hadn’t thought of it in so long. I had almost forgotten…’Twas better that way.”

He hadn’t meant to cause her such pain! Swen reached for her, but she shrugged away from his hand. “Nay.” She spun on her heel and hurried to the door, her shoulders slumped forward as though she sought to protect herself from further harm.

“Anna, please—I would never intentionally cause you harm.” He pushed away from the workbench, intending to go after her.

“I think you’d better leave, milord Siwardson.” The determination in her words stopped him in his tracks. She straightened and turned to him, her tearstained face composed once more. “I thank you for your help, but I require it no longer.” Pulling the door open farther, she held it wide in silent invitation. “Mayhap I’ll see you at the funeral, if you’re still here.” Her voice and her expression both told him clearly that she hoped he’d be long gone by then.

Not a chance, he thought as he crossed the room. He paused before her, took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. “You can count on it,” he told her. His gaze holding hers captive, he bowed, then turned her hand over and kissed her palm. “Adieu, Anna.”

Chapter Seven (#ulink_ed1c979a-880a-5c9d-bdd3-fb0743925daa)

Anna sat alone in the darkness of her workshop after the villagers had come and taken the bodies to the church. There, they’d keep vigil over them until Father Michael arrived from the abbey to lay them to rest.

Her tears had dried up earlier, but still the ache in her heart—over the guards’ deaths, as well as her confrontation with Swen—kept pace with the tide of confusion whirling through her head. So many memories, blessedly pushed aside by the passage of time until they lurked like creatures of the night, hidden deep where remembrance would not find them.

She had not allowed herself to feel for so long! But now that the walls surrounding her childhood had crumbled into bits, she felt awash in all the emotions she had hidden away for so many years.

The sensations were almost more than she could bear.

She blamed Swen Siwardson, though she knew his innocent questions had not been intended to cause her hurt. But even before they’d spoken—aye, by his presence alone—he had caused the initial breach in her defenses.

She could pinpoint it to the moment, that instant when a tingle of awareness had snaked its way along her spine and made her turn to see what had caused it.

Groping for a flint, she struck a spark and kindled the wick of an oil lamp. The priests were wrong to blame Eve for seeking the fruit of knowledge and destroying Paradise, she thought as she stared into the tiny flame. ’Twas not the knowledge the apple gave Eve that caused her fall from grace, ’twas her curiosity about what the apple could give her.

Just so had Anna’s curiosity about Swen Siwardson caused her own downfall. If she’d never turned to face him, never touched him, never spoken more than a civil word of greeting to the stranger in their midst, would the walls around her heart still protect her?

She stood, picked up the lamp and made her way to the ladder leading to the loft. Weariness dogging her every movement, she gathered up her skirts and climbed the steep treads to her chamber.

It seemed days since she’d slept, but even after she’d undressed and said a prayer for Ned and Pawl, she could not settle. She lay upon her bed, staring at the lamp, until she thought she’d go mad.

After a time visions came to fill her mind as they had so often in the past, but these were not the usual visions of a beneficent God that she might use in her work. These scenes showed her a God of vengeance, sights to put fear in the hearts of those who would not believe.

Had even her gift been tainted?

Desperate to escape her morbid thoughts, she rose and tossed on her clothes. She knew of only one thing that could give her the respite she craved.

Taking up the lamp again, Anna descended to her workshop, tied her leather apron about her waist and immersed herself in her craft.

It seemed to Anna that the group gathered in Murat’s small church late the next morning for the funeral Mass wore sorrow and exhaustion upon their faces in equal measure. The sun shone bright through the open doors and windows, glinting off the plain silver cross, pyx and chalice that adorned the altar. They had no elaborate gold and enamel embellishments here; the objects Anna created were commissioned through the abbey. Since all the materials to make them were provided by the abbey—and Anna had no coin to purchase her own—she had not been able to create anything for the village’s own chapel.

She felt the lack most keenly today. Ned and Pawl deserved better than this simple church could provide.

The bright sunlight made her want to crawl back into the darkness of her workshop to escape its glare. She’d labored alone for most of the night, hammering copper ingots into thin sheets with a vigor that would have surprised her assistants, to whom that mindless chore usually fell.

Despite the fact that they lodged at the opposite end of the village, far from the racket she’d made in the night, they didn’t appear to have slept much either, she noted as she scanned the chapel’s occupants. The attack had not just taken away two members of the community, but it had heightened the sense of threat to everyone in the town as well. The villagers wore their concern drawn tight about them, like a mantle held close against the cold.

Father Michael must have journeyed through the night to have reached the village so quickly. He’d come well guarded by a troop of seasoned fighters, men who seemed as frightening to her as those who’d attacked her party.

As Siwardson had warned, he was still here. He stood with William and Bess near the rear of the chapel. He met her gaze and nodded to her, sending a chill down her spine. She drew in a sharp breath and spun on her heel to face the altar.

She let the words of the Mass flow around her, the soothing cadence lulling her overburdened mind into an almost dreamlike state. Here was the peace she sought.

Too bad it would not last.

She started when she looked up and found the abbot standing before her, ready to give her Communion. Her mind still adrift, she opened her mouth to accept the Host, then drank from the chalice he offered. Lowering her gaze, she attempted to bring her thoughts back in line with the solemn ritual.

For the remainder of the Mass she focused her attention on her surroundings, hoping that she could regain the sense of well-being she’d lost the past few days. Mayhap listening to Father Michael might help her regain her gift. His faith in God and the Church was deep and true; she could not help but be inspired by him.

William came up to her outside the church once the Mass had ended. “Will you join the abbot and me at my house, lass? Everyone’ll be there. Bess and some of the other women have made enough food for an army, been slaving away at the hearth since daybreak. Father Michael wants to speak with us alone before he heads back to the abbey. We can go up into Bess’ solar and be private there.”

“Does he want to see us right now?” she asked, sensing a reprieve from the villagers’ questions and expressions of concern. They meant well, she knew, yet her emotions felt too new to run that gauntlet now.

“Aye, he wants to leave as soon as he can after the ‘pleasantries,’ as he calls ‘em, are over.” He hitched up his belt and looked behind him, sending a fiery glare at one of the abbot’s guards who stood nearby. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “I’d just as soon have the men he brought with him out of here, at any rate. I don’t trust ‘em at all.” He took her arm in his meaty fist and led her toward the street. “I’d just as soon see you safe to my house, mistress, if you don’t mind.”

With William at her side Anna made it through the crowd gathered in his hall with little difficulty. Bess passed them as they headed for the stairs at the back of the room, gifting them with a smile and a promise to bring food and more drink to them so soon as she could.

Bess’ solar was at the top of the house, a long, narrow chamber fitted under the eaves, with shuttered windows, now opened wide, at either end of the room. Seated in simple chairs at opposite sides of the trestle table in the center were Father Michael and Swen.

Anna hesitated in the doorway, grabbing at William’s sleeve to keep him from entering the room. “Why is Siwardson here?” she whispered. “He has no business with us, nor with the abbot.”

“Actually, lass, he does, a proposition that could affect us all. Be a good lass, now, and come along.” Since she still held his sleeve in her hand, William tugged her right into the room with him.

Swen stood and offered her his chair. Anna glared at him, but could see no way to refuse it without appearing churlish. She nodded her thanks, sat down and settled her skirts about her. With her hands folded on the table, Anna waited for someone to explain what this was about.

William pulled a bench up to the table for Swen, then went around the table to sit opposite him. “Shall we get started then, Your Eminence?”

“Of course.” Father Michael toyed with the goblet in front of him on the table, but he did not pick it up to drink. Anna stared at him, impatient to learn what he had to say.

And why Swen Siwardson had to be present to hear it.

Swen watched as the abbot squirmed beneath Anna’s expectant look. He couldn’t decide if the elderly cleric was afraid of her, or if a woman’s presence made him uncomfortable. Despite Father Michael’s calling, he was still a man, after all.

Lord knew, Anna made him uncomfortable, Swen thought, stifling a chuckle.

But more likely ’twas the way Anna stared at Father Michael, as though waiting for some word from God Himself, that played havoc with the man’s composure. That was more than anyone should have to bear.

The abbot was not at all like Swen had expected, after hearing Anna’s tale of how she’d come to be in the abbey’s possession. Although she’d told him that it was the previous abbot who’d accepted her—as their chattel, from the sound of it—he’d assumed Father Michael must be of a similar disposition, most likely a worldly, venal man.