No sooner did the thought occur to her than she dismissed it. La Ferté-Bernard lay some five to six days’ ride to the east, beyond Le Mans, in Maine; she could never travel so far alone. The roads were infested with thieves and outlaw bands of mercenaries; a woman traveling alone risked not only robbery but rape, torture, death. She felt her skin crawl at the very idea.
She thought, fleetingly, that she might make up some ruse, something to tell Yvette so that she might lend Attica a small party of knights to escort her on a visit to her brother. Except, if she was right about Yvette, if she knew something of Olivier de Harcourt's mission to Brittany, then she might very well guess at Attica's sudden interest in La Ferté-Bernard and refuse to let her go. Worse, she might take steps to make certain that Attica couldn't leave Châteauhaut at all.
Which meant that if she was going to leave, she would have to do it alone, and by stealth.
She thrust her splayed fingers through her disordered hair, tipping back her head as she combed the heavy, tangled mess from her face. So often as a child she had wished she'd been born male. Now she thought it again: If only I were a man. …
Her gaze fell on the Parisian courtier's clothes, folded in a neat pile beside his saddlebags on the high oak chest near the window. She rose stiffly from the stool, the thought still only half-formed in her mind. Lifting the fine velvet tunic, she shook it out and held it up against her. The Parisian had been a slim man, and tall, but no taller than she. His clothes would fit.
She lowered her arms, crushing the tunic to her in a fierce grip. I can't do it, she thought, practically trembling with a rising spiral of panic. I can't. I can't travel so far all alone.
And then she realized she had no need to travel the entire distance to La Ferté-Bernard. A day and a half to the east lay the cathedral city of Laval, on the road to Le Mans and La Ferté-Bernard. She had only to make it that far, to her uncle, the castellan of Château Laval. She could trust him to send her warning on to Stephen.
A day and a half. Some ten leagues. She told herself she could do that. She had no choice, really. To save Stephen's life, she thought, she would ride all the way to Jerusalem if she had to, no matter how afraid she was.
She shook out the woolen tunic, looking almost black now in the dimly flickering light of the dying torches. She would have to leave tonight. And she would need to hurry, for in another two hours the castle would begin to stir. Already she could sense that faint lifting of the atmosphere, that breathless hush of wonder as the world awaits a new day.
Ignoring the still, lifeless form in the bed, she crossed the room swiftly to where the scissors they'd used to cut up strips of cloth gleamed dully in the torchlight, beside the basin. Her hair had always been her one vanity; it was long and thick—the color of sunstruck honey, Stephen had once told her with a teasing smile. It made her ill to think of cutting it. But she knew she'd never make a convincing boy if she simply tried to shove the heavy mass up under a cap. Without giving herself time to think about it too much, she grabbed the shears and raised them to the nape of her neck.
Then she paused, letting the scissors go slack in her grasp. She would find it much easier, she realized, to bully her way out of the castle as my lady Attica d'Alérion, future wife of the heir to the viscomte de Salers, than as some unknown lad. Moreover, if she waited to cut her hair and change into Olivier's clothes until after she'd left Châteauhaut, then her disguise would serve two purposes. Not only would it help protect her from any men she might meet on the road, but it would also help to hide her from pursuit, should Yvette chance to guess where Attica was going, and why, and send men after her. Especially if she could find some way to dye her hair, to alter her appearance even further.
Walking swiftly back to the oak chest, she bundled the scissors up in the courtier's clothes and thrust them into his saddlebags, along with a long strip of the cloth to bind her breasts. She couldn't risk going to her own room, she decided; she would have a hard enough time getting out of the castle without being seen.
It occurred to her, suddenly, that if she left the castle now, in the dead of night and without explanation, everyone would assume she fled her marriage to Fulk. She stiffened, hideously torn, but she could not see that she had any real choice. She had to do this, even if it meant destroying her own coming marriage and the valuable alliance it sealed.
At the thought, she knew a quiver of dismay mixed with a shameful spurt of hope she quickly squashed. The alliance between the houses of Salers and Alérion was too important to be ruptured by the headstrong actions of a mere female. Even if she were, in truth, attempting to flee her betrothal, she would simply be brought back. The marriage contract would endure.
It was a reassurance that, oddly, brought her no comfort.
Catching up the courtier's cloak, she swirled it around her shoulders. It seemed strange and vaguely alarming, wrapping herself in the cloak of a dead man. She pushed the thought from her head, seized the saddlebags, and slipped out the chamber door.
The keep of Châteauhaut was rectangular in form, with four round turrets at each corner. Built of brooding gray stone, it soared three stories above its ground-floor storerooms, with the guest chamber and chapel occupying the top story overlooking the central bailey.
Attica crept down the spiral stairs in the southeast turret, the fibers of the rope banister digging into her fingers as she felt her way through the gloom. She had just reached the second floor when a low, bulky form loomed out of the shadows and a voice said, “Attica? Where are you going?”
She recoiled so violently, she almost tripped on the steep stone steps. “Fulk,” she said with a gasp. “You gave me a fright. What are you doing?”
“Visiting the garderobe.”
The dim light from the fading torch in the nearest wall bracket showed her a faint line of embarrassment riding high on his cheeks. He wore only a cloak, thrown hastily over a pale fleshy expanse of naked chest and stomach. After that one quick glance, she was careful not to look at him again.
“You're going somewhere,” he said, his voice high-pitched and accusatory. “You're leaving.”
She clutched the betraying saddlebags against the front of the courtier's cloak, her mind racing. “It's my mother. She … she's been visiting her brother, only now she's taken ill. Very ill. A messenger came late last night to bring me word. They think she's dying.”
Attica's voice quivered slightly on the lie, because lying was an offense to God and already tonight she'd had to be less than honest in her dealings with the dying Olivier de Harcourt. She could only hope Fulk would mistake her agitation as a sign of worry and grief.
He leaned into her, as if studying her closely. “Mother knows of this?”
Attica deliberately made her face go bland. She might not be a good liar, but before she came here, to the household of the viscomte de Salers, Attica had spent six long years at the courts of Aquitaine and Poitou. And at court, even a little girl learns quickly how to hide her feelings and maintain an outward appearance of serenity.
“Yes, of course Yvette knows,” she said. “I wanted to set out for Laval last night, when I first heard, only I couldn't leave your mother to deal with Olivier de Harcourt's illness alone.”
“He is dead, then?”
“Yes.”
Fulk plucked at the brocade edging of his cloak. “I don't understand why you can't wait until morning to leave.”
“It will be dawn soon,” she said, anxiously aware of the minutes slipping past.
A sleepy voice came to them from out of the darkness. “My lord? Is something wrong?”
Attica glanced beyond her betrothed, to where a tousle-haired page of about ten had appeared in the open doorway of Fulk's chamber.
Fulk turned. “No, Lady Attica but leaves on an early journey.” He tugged his cloak closer against the morning chill. “You will go with her and lend her whatever assistance she requires in her preparations.”
“Oh, but I don't—” Attica broke o
ff as she realized, suddenly, that she didn't need to make this journey quite alone after all. She said to the page, “Run ahead of me, please, and awaken my groom, Walter Brie. Tell him to meet me in the stables.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She caught the boy's shoulder as he rushed past. “Be careful to awaken Walter Brie and no other, do you hear?”
The boy ducked his head, murmured, “Yes, my lady,” and disappeared down the winding steps. The wind gusted up, sending an icy draft whistling down the turret. The sputtering torch flickered and almost went out; Fulk sneezed.
“Now look what you've done,” he said, his voice turning back into a whine. “You've made me catch a cold, standing here. Mother won't like that.”
“Then you'd best hurry back to bed.”
She tarried long enough to hear his chamber door shut with a snap. Then she turned, her feet flying down the stairs. It would be dawn soon.
And she hadn't even made it out of the castle.
Attica paused with one hand splayed against the glossy warmth of the gelding's flank, her head tilted anxiously as she strained to catch any distant sound, afraid Fulk had changed his mind and gone to his mother anyway.
Beyond the half-opened door of the stables, the ward of Châteauhaut-sur-Vilaine lay bleak and empty in the thin, ghostly light of the dying night. From here, the massive new stone keep seemed no more than a black hulk rising menacingly above the smaller shadows of the wooden buildings that hugged the curtain wall—the bakery and alehouse, the armory and blacksmith's and kitchens, all shuttered and quiet now in sleep. She heard only the restless movement of a horse in its stall and the rustle and squeak of mice in the hay.
Turning, she grasped her saddle with both hands and swung it up onto the gelding's back. The chestnut snorted, its shod hooves clattering and ringing on the cobblestones as it danced away. She leapt to lay a restraining hand on its white-blazed nose. “Easy boy,” she whispered, stroking, nuzzling. “Easy, Chantilly. Please.”
She staggered as Chantilly butted her with its head, lipped her fingers, then swung back to drop its nose into the pail of oats she had brought to keep it quiet. Still caressing the horse's satiny withers, she stooped to reach with her free hand for the girth. She had just thrust the strap home when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching in the ward and the low murmur of Walter's voice.
“If this is a hoax, boy,” grumbled Walter, pushing the stable door wide with one out-thrust hand, “the lady Attica d'Alérion might forgive you, but as for me, I'll nail your hide to the—” He broke off, his step faltering as the shaft of faint light cutting through the open doorway fell upon Attica. “My lady.”
“Well come, Walter,” she said, a smile of relief trembling on her lips at the sight of his familiar craggy face and solidly reliable form. A Norman like herself, Walter Brie had served Attica since she'd been a child barely old enough to walk and he a young man in his twenties. It had been Walter Brie who lifted Attica up onto the back of her first pony, Walter who taught her to handle a dagger as well as any boy, Walter who dried the tears on her cheeks as he rode beside her the day she was sent away from Normandy, a lonely girl of twelve, to serve in the courts of the Langue d'oc.
For a long, intense moment, Walter's gaze held hers. She turned to put her hand on the shoulder of the shivering page and give him a warm smile. “You can run back to bed now. Thank you.”
“Yon young lad might believe this tale you've spun,” said Walter, standing with his legs spread wide, his arms crossed at his chest as he watched the page dash across the bailey, “but you'll never convince me Lady Blanche is dying, or that you'd be setting out at dawn with none but me even if she was.” He turned to regard her with narrowed eyes and an impassive face. “Do you flee your betrothal, then?”
“No.” Attica reached to buckle the courtier's leather bags to her saddle. “We go to Laval, but not, I admit, to see my mother.” She reached for the bridle. “It's Stephen. There's treachery afoot, and I'm afraid he's in danger.”
Walter turned to lead his own gray out of a nearby stall. “Ah. And we're riding to his rescue, is that it?”
Attica went to help Walter saddle the gray, smiling as her gaze met his over the horse's broad back. “That's it. I'll explain the rest later, after we've left the castle.”
Grunting, he gave her a boost into her saddle and scrambled up onto his own palfrey.
They crossed to the gatehouse slowly, the clomp of their horses’ hooves on the cobbles echoing alarmingly in the empty ward. In the kennels behind them, a dog began to bark, then another. Attica held her reins in a tight, sweaty grip and forgot to breathe.
Beside the open door to the guardroom, a torch fitted to the wall flared and danced in the night breeze, the hissing flame filling the stone archway with a somber glow. At the far end of the passage, the castle's great iron-bound wooden gates stood dark and locked fast against them.
“You, there,” called Walter, reining in his palfrey. “Porter!”
A tall, lanky man-at-arms appeared at the entrance to the guardroom, his blond hair rumpled, his jerkin awry. “Who goes there?” he demanded, his thin, bony face closed and suspicious.
Attica thrust her horse forward into the light. She might be inwardly quaking with fear, but all those years of court training had taught her how to keep her features composed, whatever the circumstances. “Mother of God, man,” she said with just the right note of imperiousness. “Do you not recognize me?”
The man peered up at her, his pale eyes widening in astonishment. “My lady?”
“Why do you stand there gawking?” she demanded as the gelding sidled nervously in the narrow archway, its big hooves clattering as he danced near enough to the man-at-arms to make him step back warily. “Open the gate and be quick about it.”
“But my lady—”
“You dare?” said Attica, doing her best to assume the expression of the comtesse d'Alérion, who had a way of staring down her nose at servants as if they were insects or patches of slime. “You dare to say me nay?”
He didn't, of course. No humble man-at-arms would disobey a direct order given him by the woman betrothed to the future viscomte de Salers. The guard gulped and sputtered, “Never, my lady,” and tripped over his own feet in his haste to unbar the gates.
The screech of the great beams being drawn drove away all thought. She glanced nervously over her shoulder and saw, across the open space of the ward, a light show suddenly through a window slit on the second floor of the keep.
The frightened hiss of her quickly indrawn breath brought Walter's head around. She saw his gaze fix on the flickering light, his jaw tighten. Then the iron-bound gate swung slowly inward, and Attica urged her horse forward.
The quick tramp of the gelding's hooves rang hollowly on the wooden drawbridge before being muffled by the dust of the road. Attica drew in a deep breath of air scented with the fragrance of ripening fields and dew-dampened earth. She had never ridden at night like this. As she emerged from the lee of the walls, the full force of the wind slapped into her, whipping loose strands of hair about her face. She hugged the dead man's cloak tighter.
From where Châteauhaut stood, high on the rocky crest of its hill, the river valley below seemed only a distant mosaic of pale meadows and black clumps of trees shrouded in star-studded darkness. Without a moon, the steep, rocky track downward would be treacherous. But she waited only until Walter drew abreast of her before she dug her heels into the chestnut's sides and sent her horse away at a canter.
She kept listening for a shout of alarm behind her, kept waiting, tensely, to hear the crash of the gates being thrown open again, the bustle of men, hurrying in pursuit. She leaned low over the chestnut's withers, urging it on, faster, faster. Not until they reached the stand of trees growing partway down the hill, out of bowshot of the walls, did she hesitate long enough to throw a quick glance back at the castle.
But by then, even the jagged outline of the walls had been swallowed up by t
he night.
CHAPTER
TWO
The morning mist crept up from the marshy banks of the river to spread like a thick, sodden blanket over the fields. It brought with it an odd hush, oppressive and unnatural.
Without the sun, the colors of the glade seemed muted and blurred, the pale gray-green of grass and leaf running into the gray-brown of the earth. The only trace of brilliance came from the crackling flames of the burning cottages, tingeing the mist with an orange glow that showed the crumpled, bloody form of a dog lying dead and, beyond that, the lifeless limbs of a woman sprawled in an ungainly tableau of violation.
The knight stood motionless, the reins of his graceful black Arab held loosely in one gloved hand. He wore a leather broigne, but no hauberk or helm, for on this day his mission was one that required speed and intelligence, not arms. Yet he was no stranger to the carnage of the battlefield or the horrors of a sacked town. The flickering flames shone over a sun-darkened, powerfully boned face devoid of all emotion. Only for one brief instant did his nostrils flare as he sucked in a deep breath and smelled the fecund scent of tilled earth, marred by the stink of burning wet timber and freshly spilled blood.
This had been a small village of no more than half a dozen mean dwellings. It had yielded to its attackers—what? A few pigs and cows? A cartful of grain? An iron cooking pot or two? The mist roiled up, so heavy now, he could feel it against his face. Damion de Jarnac's mouth tightened into a hard line and he turned away, gathering his reins. “We can do nothing here,” he said, swinging into the saddle.
Beside him, the lithe, light-haired boy who served as his squire made no move to mount. “Shouldn't we bury them?” Sergei asked, his dark, exotic eyes troubled as he glanced around the clearing. “Or at least cover them up?”
Damion shook his head. “I need to get to La Ferté-Bernard. If this conference goes badly, you'll be seeing this scene repeated a hundred times over, boy. From Normandy to Aquitaine.”
Still Sergei hesitated, his brooding gaze fixed on the scattered dead. It wasn't an army that had descended on this village, of course. Only a small band of routiers— unemployed mercenaries. But Philip and Henry both filled out their armies with mercenaries, and in war, it was usually the villages that burned. Not the castles.
The Last Knight Page 2