by Tamara Leigh
Cyr halted over Vitalis. “Where did they go?”
“Behind the tapestry.” His eyes moved to the one most distant. “Hidden passage. Stop them!”
Zedekiah started to rise, but Cyr said, “Remain to ensure none finish him.”
“I will not be…your prisoner again,” Vitalis called to Cyr’s back.
“Not this eve,” Cyr said and thrust aside the tapestry and entered the passage.
It was dark, the only light provided by the solar and muted by the effort required to bend around the side of the tapestry and slip beneath its hem.
Cyr cursed the delay that required him to return to the bedchamber and retrieve a torch, but the light that would allow him to proceed without great stealth to ensure the one who had stuck Vitalis did not stick him would make up for time lost. Unfortunately, it would sooner alert the ones he chased that the predators were also prey. But at least one of them already bled, which was how Cyr knew not to explore the stairs ascending from the level of the hall.
Following the spots of blood on the floor and streaks on stone walls, Cyr was surprised they did not end on the steps he guessed led to the storeroom beneath the kitchen.
The passage did not confine itself to the castle walls. It went underground and quite distant he realized as he followed the trail. To the wood, he guessed and marveled at the undertaking that required so many timbers to keep the passage hewn more of dirt than rock from collapsing.
As Cyr approached a bend, he caught the scrape and thud of footsteps and, more distant, the murmur of voices. Guessing the former was Jaxon and his man, the latter those fleeing them, Cyr halted and peered around the corner. Though he held back the light, enough swept past to reveal this next section of passage was narrower, at best allowing two of slight build to walk shoulder to shoulder.
Ahead, moving toward the distant flickering light of a torch borne by those of Wulfen Castle were the two who felled Vitalis. Within minutes they would reach their prey—unless Cyr reached them first. And he must, especially if Aelfled was down here.
He set the torch at the center of the passage where it would burn itself out amid dirt whilst casting enough light around the corner to allow him to more quickly overtake the rebels.
“Lord be with Aelfled, Lord be with me,” he rasped. And ran.
Progress was slow, there being two score to move through the ever-narrowing passage whose timbers creaked and groaned, causing dirt to sprinkle down each time a shoulder or foot jarred a support.
“We are close,” Isa said. “I smell the falls, feel the wet on the air. Soon we shall be above ground.”
Aelfled peered past her to the housecarles who led the way with a torch borne high, then behind at those following single file. Placed at regular intervals among the castle folk were soldiers to ensure all proceeded as instructed and put down panic when it arose. Thus far, there was only one instance, that of an elderly man who feared being buried alive and demanded they turn back. Before he could rouse others, he was knocked unconscious and put over the shoulder of a man-at-arms.
Center of that long column was another torch, this one held aloft by Ordric, and a third was carried by one of two housecarles bringing up the rear.
“There,” Isa said.
Aelfled followed her lady’s gaze and nearly asked the purpose of the rope wrapped around the bottom of a post, but when she tracked its length tucked against the base of the wall and saw it extended thirty feet ahead and was wrapped around each successive timber, she guessed here was the means of bringing down this section of tunnel to ensure any who discovered the passage would have to turn back, giving Isa and her people more time to escape.
Doubtless, the task of toppling the timbers would fall to the housecarles behind.
“Will it work?” Wulfrith asked. Sounding more curious than concerned, the boy reminded Aelfled of his namesake and made her question how far Isa had gone to present him as her husband’s heir. He would have received some training at arms alongside lessons in speech and gentility, but perhaps his facility with weaponry had progressed to the strategy of warfare, so at ease did the commoner seem in the skin he now wore—even absent being displayed before Normans.
“I have been assured it will bring down the walls.” Isa looked over a shoulder at where he walked behind Aelfled. “And possibly those ahead lacking sufficient support. Thus, all must be well clear of the passage when it is sealed off.”
Assuredly they would be, Aelfled told herself, and once above ground she would slip away, returning to her husband and grandmother. Hopefully, in the midst of so many, she would find the opportunity and Isa, aware her maid was now joined for life to another, would not try to stop her.
A shout from behind startled all, and the shower of dirt evidenced one or more reacted violently enough to jostle the supports.
“Calm!” Ordric shouted from behind. “Though pursued, we must consider each step. Move quickly but remain center, and do not touch the timbers. As soon as all are clear, we shall collapse the passage atop those who follow. Go!”
Heart straining against her ribs, Aelfled complied but was shoved forward by those who feared they would breathe their last underground.
“Fear not!” shouted a housecarle ahead. “The warriors at our backs will keep us from their blades.”
Another shout sounded from deep in the dark behind the last torch, and it was of one who should not be here.
Aelfled spun and collided with Wulfrith who grabbed her shoulders to steady her.
Isa pulled her back around. “For what do you endanger all?” she demanded and without awaiting an answer, said, “Come!”
Aelfled strained backward. “Pray, do not collapse the passage. My—”
The slap never before dealt landed, and she dropped to her knees.
“Get up!” Her lady yanked on her arm, attempting to drag her forward as the press of those behind threatened to trample her.
Aelfled wrenched free, scrambled to the wall opposite the one whose posts were bound together. And glimpsed more alarm than anger on her lady’s face before Isa had no choice but to continue forward.
Aelfled rose and pressed herself flat to the dirt wall so she would not impede the progress of others. Though several stepped on her toes, they seemed not to notice her—except Em.
The young woman’s eyes, less startling in so little light, met Aelfled’s. With a bitter bend to her mouth, she said, “The Normans must die. One and all.” Then she was past.
Soon Ordric at the center appeared, but though Aelfled feared he would try to drag her along, he was too occupied with keeping order to more than flick his frowning gaze over her.
After he passed, there came the sound of blades at the rear and shouts amid which she heard that familiar voice again.
Though she longed to push through those who moved too slowly, she forced herself to remain still and once more found herself seeking proof of the ring gone from her hand. Pressing her fingers into her palms, she told herself that even if she could aid her husband in battling the housecarles seeking his death, any attempt to reach him before all were safely past could sooner collapse the passage and brand her a murderer of many.
“Please, Lord,” she whispered. “Please be here…be now…be merciful.”
Each clang of the sword and shout jolted, but more she was struck by what the torch at the rear now borne by a gangly youth revealed. It was not Cyr whom Isa’s warriors fought thirty feet back but a good-sized man whose hair was bound at his back and beard at his front. Jaxon.
Might Aelfled have been wrong in believing she heard Cyr’s voice? Considering how unlikely he was at Wulfen, she must be. But then he shouted again and she glimpsed well beyond the battling housecarles two other figures trading sword blows. It was him.
She struggled against shoving past the last of Isa’s people, and a moment later saw a housecarle collapse, leaving Jaxon only one other to defeat—unless Cyr prevailed against his opponent who must be one of Jaxon’s men.
She snapped her head around and saw him cautiously push through the people toward the rear. Did he not see the housecarles were unable to carry out his order, one likely dead, the other struggling to remain alive beneath Jaxon’s vicious blows?
“Do it, Aelfled!” Ordric bellowed.
She startled. He did see and believed she possessed the strength to topple the timbers. Did she? Regardless, she could not test her ability whilst Cyr was on that end, as was the housecarle who might prevail against Jaxon.
And if others of Jaxon’s men are coming? reason countered. Men who will slay all in their path to reach Isa?
Aelfled looked to Cyr, knew him from the height and breadth that differentiated him from one who seemed equally matched at arms, then swept her gaze to Jaxon and the housecarle—just as the latter flew back against a timber and collapsed in a heap.
For a moment, she thought his blood sprayed her, but it was the dirt loosened from the ceiling as told by the creaking and shuddering of timbers and beams threatening to collapse. And bury her husband.
“Cyr!” Aelfled called and regretted it when he shouted again, not only with anger but what sounded pain.
“Run, Aelfled!”
In the next moment, she better understood his urgency that was not all to do with the passage’s collapse. Jaxon sprang toward her, what remained of torchlight streaking his blade.
She ran, though it was surely too late to escape.
As if Cyr also realized it, he commanded her to do as Ordric had done. “Collapse the passage!”
Then he would die to keep her safe?
She peered over her shoulder, and there was hope in seeing her husband was now a lone figure running toward Jaxon and her. But lacking wings, he would not reach her ahead of the rebel. The collapse of the passage was the only hope for Aelfled and those of Isa’s people bringing up the rear, and it was a thin one.
Just past the support where the last of the rope lay between wall and floor, Aelfled snatched up its end and swung around to face the men advancing on her. As feared, Jaxon was too near.
With a sob, she wrenched on the rope and the timbers creaked and gave slightly. Far more effort was required to bring them down. But then, as if slapped by the hand of God, Jaxon stumbled and dropped to a knee, and when Aelfled swept her gaze to Cyr, she saw he no longer carried a sword. Had he thrown it?
“Collapse the passage!” he roared.
Surely there was no need now Jaxon was down. However, the rebel was rising, and though he clasped his left hand over his shoulder as if pained, once more he set his sword before him and lunged at her.
“Do it, Aelfled!”
“Lord, preserve him!” she cried, then hearing her husband’s name sobbed over and over, gripped the rope tighter and threw all of her weight backward.
Something slammed into her from behind, knocking the breath from her, and yet she possessed strength she should not, and as she was propelled backward, saw the timbers fall inward and beams crash down before the haze of dirt and sting of flying rubble stole all from sight.
Amid receding consciousness, Aelfled sent pleadings heavenward that Cyr survive what she could not, these lands know peace under his rule, he care for Bernia to her end days, and he find happiness that might have been for them.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
She thought it rain, but there was no wet upon her face. The sound had to be the nearby waterfall. She thought it sunshine, but too much it flickered. The light penetrating her lids had to be of torches.
Aelfled opened her eyes, flung up a hand to shield them, and from beneath its shadow saw standing around her those who had departed the passage ahead of her. It would be a miracle were Cyr among them, but she had to believe he had made it past Jaxon, and it was he who carried her from the collapsed tunnel.
Cool fingers settled on her shoulder, and she shifted her narrowed gaze to where a woman had lowered beside her. “Cyr?” Aelfled rasped and coughed against the dirty saliva cast down her throat. “H-he made it out?”
Though her eyes were too gritty to clearly focus, she saw her lady’s frown deepen. “What say you, Aelf?”
“D’Argent was in the passage, my lady,” Ordric said, and Aelfled knew without moving her gaze from Isa he stood alongside.
“You say it was not Jaxon down there?” Isa exclaimed as Aelfled coughed again.
“The traitor was there, my lady, but giving chase was the Norman who stole your lands, and it was the throw of his sword that slowed Jaxon enough for us to collapse the tunnel on both.”
“Both,” Aelfled gasped, then a wail rent the air—immediately stifled by a hand over her mouth. She did not fight it, instead let the pain trapped within pierce her insides.
And more bloody they became when her lady demanded, “Aelfled aided in collapsing the passage?”
“Though I commanded her to it, she did not until D’Argent ordered the same. When I reached her to give aid, she…”
He trailed off as if to spare Aelfled the humiliation of others knowing how over and again she had sobbed Cyr’s name as she dragged on the rope.
I die inside, she thought, and remembrance of the hollowed-out Em rose to mind. This is how one becomes like her. This is how one empties out. This is how one loses what little faith remains. This.
Still holding a hand over her maid's mouth, Isa bent near and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Brave Aelfled.”
Body continuing to spasm with trapped cries, Aelfled was almost moved to shame that she who had lost less than Isa should grieve in this woman's presence. Almost, for did she not have the right to express pain over love lost no matter how recently gained? Even though it was love for a man with whom she had wished to make a child and not love for a child stolen away? Even were that love not returned?
In some measure it was returned, she corrected as her thumb probed the base of her ring finger. And were it but a sip, still I would savor it.
“It seems we are not all the fools of men,” Isa continued. “You did what had to be done, Aelfled. I know there is pain in that, but there is joy in having saved so many—and of your own.”
Aelfled’s chest heaving over the next stifled sob, her lady removed her hand from her mouth. “It is much to ask, but you must be strong again. Can you?”
Again? Emotions so tossed Aelfled could not reconcile how being responsible for the death of Cyr made her strong rather than weak and self-serving, she could only stare.
Isa looked to those gathered around. “We dare not return to Wulfen. Though Jaxon is dead, some—perhaps many—of his followers live. And of greater threat is the usurper. After what was wrought this eve, he will question my allegiance and if he does not remove me from Wulfen shall take steps to better control me, forcing me to wed one of his own. And I will not…” She cleared her throat of what Aelfled knew was great emotion. “Never will I, the daughter of Wulfrith, be the prize of a Norman, valued only for bedding and making children to bear his name. Thus, elsewhere we shall gather our strength and prepare for the day we take back what belongs to us.”
Then she yet believed it possible to rout the Normans? For Saxons to reclaim their country though among them were men like Jaxon who had sought to take from Isa the same as Normans?
Aelfled knew she was not right enough of mind to make a good guess at what the future held for her people, but one word pressed against the backs of her lips—hopeless. And all the more were Cyr dead.
If. That word slammed into hopeless with a force nearly as great as that which had slammed against her back in the underground which she now knew was Ordric, he whose strength added to hers had brought down the passage. But had it come down on Cyr? Was it not possible the ceiling above him remained intact? That even now he made his way back to the donjon? Would soon mount a horse and find his way to her?
There was the word hopeless again, bu
t when Isa said, “It is time to depart, Aelf,” she knew she would not leave Wulfen. Perhaps later she would join her lady, but only if Cyr were truly lost—and they had not made a child.
She did not resist when Ordric lifted her to her feet, and it would have done little good she discovered when an ankle went out from under her and she was surprised by pain she marveled she had not felt sooner.
“I feared that,” Ordric said as he steadied her. “Your foot was pinned beneath a timber.”
She looked up, guessed her clothes, face, and hair were as ravaged as his—torn, nicked and bruised, fouled.
“You shall have to carry her through the wood, Ordric.”
“Nay,” Aelfled countered Isa. “I do not go with you.”
Her lady’s eyes widened, then she ordered those gathered around to prepare to depart. As they dispersed, she said, “There is naught for you here, Aelfled.”
“If Cyr is alive, there is much for me.”
Isa made a sound of disgust. “Tell her, Ordric.”
When Aelfled shot her gaze to him, he said, “You must know there is little chance he survived.”
“Little, meaning not impossible,” she countered.
His eyebrows pinched. “The passage is down, so filled with rubble that were there light on the other side one could not see it.”
Pressing a thumb hard to the base of her ring finger, Aelfled said, “That does not mean he is buried the same as Jaxon.”
“Jaxon is not buried—not entirely. He was near us when the passage came down.” At her sharp breath, he continued, “Dead, but as D’Argent was not far behind, I wager the Norman is well enough buried he could remain there were it consecrated ground.”
Such cruel imaginings had Aelfled of Cyr in a grave she helped make for him she feared all the bones would go out of her. “I wager against you,” she retorted and needed none to tell her how petty her argument nor the odds such a wager would see her lose all.