Page 4 of The Conquering of Tate the Pious
Surprise.
A very stupid idea occurred to Tate.
She looked at Leofgifu and then back at Far Hope, its stone structures as solid as the moors, as fixed to this place as the hills.
If you don’t think leadership is penance, then you have much left to learn.
Tate took a breath.“I’m going to their camp.Now.”
“What?”Leofgifu looked aghast.“Tate, you cannot.You know you cannot.They might hold you for ransom.Or they might kill you!They might…”
She didn’t finish her sentence, but neither did she have to.They both knew what invaders did.What the Normans had done, and the Vikings before them, and even the Saxons before them.On and on until one got back to the books of Deuteronomy and Numbers.
“I know what they might do,” Tate said firmly.“But neither can I sit here and wait for them to decide.The Wolf is but a Norman, after all.If I can’t trade on his devotion to God, then perhaps I can trade on his greed.”
And perhaps, she didn’t add, I can trade on other things.Whatever sin she might have to commit to keep her abbey safe, it was a far worse sin to do nothing.God would forgive her.And if he didn’t?
Well, then, she was already quite used to that.
Leofgifu didn’t like it one bit, but she helped Tate dress properly in her habit and wimple, and then draw her heaviest mantle over it all.She didn’t take any kind of light with her, although even she struggled on the moors when it was full dark.But they were only a few hours from dawn, and if she did get lost, it wouldn’t last long.
After Leofgifu promised to take care of the others and charge Judith with leading prayers in Tate’s absence, Tate took the path from behind the abbey up to the moors.It twisted up the hills surrounding Far Hope and then ended near a cluster of granite boulders, which were only visible by the way they blotted out part of the sky as one approached.Tate could now look down the length of the Hope Valley and see the single burning light in the abbey dormitory, and then, past the walls, the small lake of torches belonging to the Normans.
It wasn’t easy to stay quiet when the path was a sheep trail through the heather, and also when she couldn’t see, but she did a commendable job as she walked along the lip of the valley until she was above the camp itself.She counted fifteen tents but many more horses, and saw two guards at either side of the camp—two facing the abbey, two facing the rest of the valley.None facing the hills.And why would they?They were far from any settlement that could give them real trouble, and there were no English soldiers left to chase them off.They were all either sworn to William, or sworn to people who’d sworn to William, or dead.
Besides, the steep talus of the valley wall didn’t make for an easy vector of attack.It was the kind of slope that accommodated gnarled twists of heather, stubborn moss, and little else.Even Tate, short, slight, and unencumbered as she was, nearly tumbled to her death a few times.
But finally, she made it, and she paused just outside the glow of the flickering torches and tried to remember how to breathe.She could see piles of weapons inside some of the tents—quivers full of arrow shafts as thick as thumbs, swords as tall as she was.And all around the fires were the sleeping forms of soldiers, long and massive.Far Hope saw plenty of men—priests and pilgrims and the occasional monk—but none of them weresoldiers.None of them looked like they could snap Tate in half with their bare hands.
Stepping into this camp was beyond foolish; it was practically begging for death.
Which I’m sure many of the Wolf’s victims did before he finally let them die.
That was not going to happen to anyone inside Far Hope, and with that thought, Tate set her shoulders and lifted her chin the way she’d seen Mother Ardith do when they were visited by princes and kings.Like they had no authority over her, the keeper of a secret older than Rome itself.
And then Tate walked into the camp.
She strode over to one of the guards facing the abbey, who was huffing and shifting his feet dramatically as if he’d never been this cold before in his life, and she tapped him on the shoulder.
He jumped like Jacob’s angel himself had come down to wrestle him, and his partner spun around, drawing his sword and his dagger at the same time.But then the hand holding the dagger dropped a little.
“No camp followers,” the guard said shortly in Norman French.“Go back home.”
Tate flashed him a look that made him shut his mouth.
“I’m here for the Wolf,” she said, also in Norman, her voice as cool as the night around them.“Not coin.”
The first guard laughed.Laughed.Oh, that pissed Tate right off.
“The Wolf isn’t takingguestsright now,” he told her, his clean-shaven face in an ugly smirk.
“I’m not here for pleasure,” Tate said.“I’m the abbess of the abbey you’re about to pillage.”
Another laugh.“And I’m the princess of Bohemia.Fuck off.”
Tate had known this since she was sixteen, but she learned it all over again in that moment: Sometimes, fear felt like courage.Sometimes it didn’t even feel like fear at all, but cold, bright fury.
“Iwillsee the Wolf,” she said calmly, “either with your escort or without it.One way will displease him more, I’m sure.”
