The Lawless Land by Boyd Morrison

Author:Boyd Morrison
Format: mobi
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2023-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

44

July, 1351

SAINT -JACQUES

Willa had been dreading this moment since the day she met Gerard Fox, but in a way it was a relief. She’d been pretending to be someone else for weeks, and the constant fear of being discovered weighed on her every minute.

“It is true,” she said to Fox. “My name is Wilhelmina, but everyone calls me Willa. You have to understand that I would never do anything to dishonor Isabel. My mother was maid to her mother, and I grew up with Isabel, first as her playmate when we were young girls, then as her attendant. We became even closer when her parents died in the Great Mortality. She was everything to me.”

“And you dare pass yourself off as her?” Claire snapped. “You thought you could fool me?”

“She almost did,” said Fox, who seemed to be taking the revelation in his stride. “She convinced everyone between Canterbury and Paris that she was a noblewoman.”

“I suppose it helps that she was raised with one. She seems to have fooled you as well.”

“I had my suspicions.”

“What do you mean?” Willa said, shocked.

“The day we met, you braided and arranged your hair very easily, as if you’d done it that way all your life. A noblewoman would have little experience braiding her own hair. Very little experience doing anything for herself, for that matter. And from what I’ve seen, you are quite capable.”

“So you are practiced at deception,” Claire said. “Where is Isabel?”

“Lord Tonbridge’s men killed her,” Willa said, tears streaming down her cheeks. The anguish at being unable to grieve Isabel’s murder properly for so long finally poured out. “It really was her idea to flee. I only wish I had devised a better plan of escape. Instead of being buried in an unmarked grave in an abandoned village, she might be alive to see you herself if I had.”

“You’ve lied once already. Why should I believe you now? Why shouldn’t I call for my husband this instant?”

“You know how much Lady Isabel and I loved each other. Why would I come here and risk capture if not to carry out her last wish in protecting the Hodegetria?”

Claire stared at her. “How can I know this terrible news is true?”

“I saw her body myself,” Fox said. “I was the one who laid her to rest.”

“You may have been the one to kill her for all I know.”

“To what end? To steal from her? If we were thieves, we would have fled, not crossed the Dover Narrows to come to the house of her cousin. Lady Isab… Willa is right. We would have no motive to come here other than to safeguard this manuscript.”

Willa was touched by Fox’s support despite his knowledge that she had been deceiving him. Once he had revealed to her what had happened to his family, and how he had suffered as a result of his excommunication, she had felt even worse keeping her true identity from him. Now at least they knew each other’s greatest secrets.

“All I want is for the Icon to remain safe and out of the hands of Cardinal Molyneux,” she said.

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