“And I?” Gunther asked, keeping in stride. “Will I be going with you?”
“You will accompany Lady Blackwell back to Strathfeld and make sure she stays there. You are given permission to use any means necessary.” Brant finally turned his eyes fully to her. “Even if you must lock her in her chamber with irons.”
Della gasped and paled. Brant let a hard smile tilt his lips.
“Yea, m’lord,” Gunther acknowledged. He looked helplessly at Della when Brant’s back was turned to yell a fast order to the men.
When Brant finished, he continued speaking with his eyes forward. “She is not to be alone at any time except while in bed. I want a man posted at her door. Make sure he knows that she goes to sleep late and wakes early. I will not have him asleep at his post. And she is not, under any circumstances, to see Sir Stuart. I hear the man is in the area as of late.”
“Yea,” Gunther said. Della knew Brant’s words were just a show. Gunther was his friend and would know that her cousin was not to be let in. The detailed orders were meant to scare her. It was working.
Della turned her eyes and ears away from him, not wanting to hear more. The humiliating punishment he planned was chastisement enough. She let her mare slow until she trailed the men. Without having to be told, two of the soldiers rode forward, giving her their silent protection as they built a shield of human and horse around her.
* * * * *
It was late morning when they arrived on the west section of Strathfeld land. The party moved in relative silence, aware of the grimness that was awaiting them. The earth was charred black from the recent fire and the cotters’ homes had been burned to the ground. Only a few cottages’ frames stood amidst the destruction. The raiders had killed a half dozen families and the smell of their charred flesh floated on the breeze. Brant recognized the stench immediately.
His wife hadn’t said a word regarding her impending imprisonment inside the walls of Strathfeld. In fact she had said little. Gone completely was the light mood of sport between them, to be replaced once again by the icy barrier of her countenance. Brant was sorry for it. He knew her reasons for hardening herself against him and also the reasons she felt compelled to naysay him at every turn. Knowing didn’t make it easier to live with. He was her husband and it was his duty to protect her, but beyond that, he had given his word to Lord Strathfeld before his death. And if locking her away was the only means he had to keep her safe, then so be it.
“You dismount,” Brant commanded a group of men to his right. Then, circling his horse, he pointed to another nearby group, and said, “You ride. Search the area.”
The soldiers were well-trained and obeyed his orders immediately.
“Della, get back here!” he yelled. His wife had swung from her horse and was running full tilt to the nearby destruction. He quickly dismounted to fetch her.
Della skidded to a stop in front of a burned cottage frame. Her mouth fell open in fright, trapping the silent scream that died in her throat. She heard the vicious howl of her husband through the fog in her head, but ignored it. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, so savage a rhythm she thought it might explode from the constraints of her skin. She shivered in dread.
Walking forward, she tripped over a metal lock covered in ashes. It was still bolted to a piece of charred doorframe. Inside, where the walls of the dwelling had once stood, the scorched figures of a mother holding her child sat amongst the ashes. They were burned into an eternal embrace. She again looked down at the lock, realization dawning on her. The family had been locked inside to burn. Brant caught her as she stumbled backward, her twitching hand on her throat as if the action could keep the bile from coming up. She looked at him in horror.
“Dead.” Her breath came in great open-mouthed pants and her eyes widened in alarm as she took in more slain bodies that littered the nearby ground. “All…dead.”
“I know, Della. Why do you think I didn’t want you to come?” He moved forward and tried to hug her to his chest.
“Who would do such a thing?” Tears spilled over her cheeks, as she stepped away from Brant. The image of the mother and child would not leave her. The smell in the air had been oddly familiar and, seeing the bodies, the memory came back to her in a rush.
“They burned her,” she whispered, backing away from Brant in dazed terror. “The Vikings burned my mother with a candle from her trunk. My mother had just bought it the night before from a poor beggar woman. She didn’t even want the thing. It was so ugly and it smelled like rotted cream, but she bought it to help the peasant so her family might eat. And they laughed… They laughed at her when she screamed for help. I was tied to the bed so I could not make them stop what they were doing. And they just kept laughing.”