Chapter 1
“How am I to know that your daughter didn’t conspire with her husband to overthrow me?” the Norman lord asked the old man.
“I beg your pardon, sir, she is not my daughter. I am her grandfather. Her father died some time ago. But she is like a child to me and, if you just look at her, sir, you can see she is an honest woman.” The old man held out his hand, gesturing to the girl, who was held by two of Lord Robert’s men, at the back of the castle courtyard.
“Bring the woman here,” ordered Lord Robert.
The guards walked her forward. She came willingly, her head bowed. Her long, chestnut hair, worn loose ordinarily, had been ordered into two long, thick plaits by her mother that morning.
“Raise your head, woman,” Lord Robert told her when she stood before him.
Emma lifted her head and looked into Lord Robert’s eyes.
But his gaze rested on her stomach. “She is with child,” he said.
“Yes my lord,” the old man confirmed.
“Is it the traitor, Alaric’s child?”
“Of course, Lord Robert. No granddaughter of mine would bear a child out of wedlock.”
“And you suppose that I will let this woman live to bring the son of a traitor into the world?”
“I have heard you are a just man, Lord Robert,” said the grandfather. “I do not believe you would put an innocent child –and its innocent mother– to death out of spite. The traitor Alaric is dead. I give you my word, Lord Robert, that if you spare his widow and child, they will remain under my roof, and be to the King subjects as loyal as myself and my good daughter, this girl’s mother.”
Lord Robert was silent.
“If you will permit me sir,” continued the old man, “I would ask you to consider how you would feel if your own wife were to be condemned to death, carrying, as she is, your child–”
“You over-step the mark,” the Norman lord cautioned angrily. “The circumstances of my own lady bear no resemblance to those of this common woman–”
“But they are both soon to have children–” the old man stated, unable to stop himself.
Emma glanced anxiously at her grandfather, fearful that his plain speaking would be her undoing. For her part, she hardly cared whether she lived or died, so wretched had her life become since the death of Alaric. But for the sake of the unborn child inside her, she wanted to be pardoned. She could hardly bring herself to look at Lord Robert, but look she must to know her fate.
Emma raised her eyes to Lord Robert’s face. He was looking her up and down. Emma surveyed the powerful man, in whose hands her fate rested, in a confusion of fear and self-consciousness.
Lord Robert lifted his gaze and looked piercingly into Emma’s eyes. “Very well, old man,” he said quietly, “she shall live.”
Emma fell to the floor, faint.
Chapter 2
Emma’s courtship had been brief and no sooner, it seemed, had she married Alaric than he’d been killed in the uprising against Lord Robert. Alaric had never told her he was a rebel but, if Emma was honest, she had suspected it from the start. Nobody wanted the Normans here. Men like her grandfather, weakened by a life of toil and strife against the various invaders to their lands, accepted Norman rule out of fear and a desire for a peaceful existence. But Alaric, like many of his young friends, had wanted to regain power over his homeland. Emma couldn’t blame him. Secretly, she was proud of what he had tried to do – he died a hero, fighting to win back the land from Lord Robert.
In public, of course, Emma went along with her grandfather’s story of her ignorance and naivety. She referred to her dead husband as a traitor and a fool, and she described herself and her son Oswald as poor victims of Alaric’s folly.
It was only after Alaric’s death in the rebellion that Emma had discovered herself pregnant with his child. It had been a traumatic pregnancy, her
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