by Speer, Flora
Chapter 8
The squire whom Royce had sent to Hythe for new clothing returned to Richton Castle late the next morning. The gown he brought for Lilianne was of blue wool and Alice's gown was russet wool. Both fit remarkably well, perhaps because the style was simple, with wide, rounded necklines and long, loose sleeves. Soft leather sashes cinched any extra fabric at the waist. Two woolen shawls, linen shifts, combs, several pairs of stockings, and a bowl of scented soap were also included.
“I have three sisters,” the squire informed Lilianne as he handed over the baskets, “so I made free to add a few items I thought you'd like.”
“Thank you,” Lilianne said, wishing she dared express her pleasure by kissing him on his cheek. From her own sibling experience she knew that wasn't a good idea. Boys his age didn't like to be smothered with sisterly affection, so she contented herself with a smile, adding, “Lady Alice and I are in your debt for the thoughtful choices you've made.” The squire went away blushing.
When Lilianne tried to thank Royce, who had been watching the scene, he brushed the matter off as something of little import. But fresh clothing was no small thing to Lilianne, or to Alice.
“How nice it is to be clean and neat again,” Alice said. In her self-designated role as temporary chatelaine of Richton Castle, she had commandeered a small pantry just off the kitchen and a large metal tub of hot water, so she and Lilianne could bathe and scrub their hair.
“It is lovely,” Lilianne agreed, smothering a yawn.
“You came late to bed,” Alice remarked. “Were you with Magnus?”
There was a faint smile on her lips and no chiding in her tone. Lilianne supposed Alice was thinking of William and of how she would like to be with him. The last vestiges of the unwilling novice nun had disappeared like the soapsuds from Alice's light brown hair. With a sigh of pleasure she spun around in her new gown, making the full russet skirt flare out and looking very much like any other young noblewoman who was eager to face her future life.
“I was not with Magnus,” Lilianne said. “He was busy with Royce.”
“While they were both busy I trust you did not go to the west tower to visit Count Erland?” Alice turned serious. “I am not a fool, Lilianne. It’s clear to me that all of these men are engaged in dangerous matters, and you and I don't know half of what they are doing. William says they have locked up Count Erland for good reasons, though he refuses to tell me what those reasons are. I know you are impatient, but I beg you not to interfere in what you don't understand.”
“I haven't seen Uncle Erland.” Lilianne put an arm around her friend's shoulders and squeezed affectionately. “I do swear to you, I am being as patient as I can. Now, what chatelaine's chores do you have planned for today?” she asked, hoping to keep Alice diverted from the subject of where Lilianne had been when she should have been in bed.
“The linen closets,” Alice answered. “There’s much sorting and mending to be done before any more guests arrive. I do believe the only decent sheets at Richton are on our bed.”
“How shocking.” Lilianne laughed. “Lead me to the linens.”
To her relief, Alice let the matter of her midnight absence from bed drop. Lilianne spent the rest of the day working dutifully by Alice's side. When night came she retired when Alice did, and she waited until her companion was fast asleep before she crept out of their room and made her way to the solar entrance, to keep watch again as Magnus and Royce tried to decode Erland's documents. She kept to the same routine the next night, and on the nights that followed.
She sympathized with Magnus and Royce in silence while they tried one method after another, always without success. Lilianne longed to confront Erland directly, but she made no attempt to see him. Her impatience and Erland's wicked temper were likely to make her angry enough to reveal that Magnus had taken the documents and that she wanted to know what they contained. She didn't think Magnus, or Royce, wanted her uncle to know just yet that they had those documents. And she certainly didn't want Magnus to know she was spying on him.
Aside from her nocturnal observations she rarely saw Magnus. Though he appeared at the midday and evening meals, he stayed well away from her and spoke to her with impersonal politeness. He had said he didn't want to hurt her and she understood his reticence, but each time he avoided her glance or sat at a distance from her at the table in the solar, her heart ached with an unfamiliar pain.
The days passed much too slowly for Lilianne. Magnus and Royce grew ever more grim, no doubt from lack of sleep and lack of success with their efforts at code breaking. Even Braedon became quiet and unsmiling.
The only cheerful note in those days was the increasing warmth between William and Alice. Lilianne never saw them embrace. The most she had seen them do was touch hands occasionally and briefly. But they were often together and when they were, they smiled a lot and gazed into each other's eyes. Occasionally, Lilianne detected fear in Alice's eyes. She knew the cause, for the same concern ate at her, too, for Magnus's sake.
Alice was right to say they were engaged in a dangerous game. Sooner or later, the three men who had visited Manoir Sainte Inge to abduct Erland would leave Richton Castle for France, there to exchange Erland for Magnus’s captured brother. It would be a mission undertaken far more openly than their first voyage across the Narrow Sea and, given the French predilection for treacherous dealing, it would be a more perilous venture, from which they might not return.
Late on the seventh night of her vigils, Lilianne wearily trudged along the corridor, wishing she could enjoy one full night of sleep. But, fatigued or not, she wasn't willing to forego the chance of learning what was encoded in Erland's writings.
Magnus and Royce were already at work, with the parchment documents spread across the table. Though she was wearing her woolen dress and had wrapped her new, warm shawl about her shoulders, for the sake of quietness she was barefoot. Soon the cold of the stone surrounding her seeped into her very bones, making her shiver. She pulled the shawl tighter, burying her hands in the woolen folds, seeking a bit of warmth. Time crept by with excruciating slowness.
She judged it was nearly dawn and she was smothering a yawn, wondering how many more nights she could stay awake, when Royce uttered a soft exclamation.
“What?” Magnus asked, sounding as weary as Lilianne felt.
“There it is!” Royce said, tapping a finger on one sheet of parchment. “That's the key.”
“So simple?” Magnus questioned, leaning forward to see better. “So easy to understand, yet we've missed it until now? Despite all the hours of concentration?”
“We missed it because it is so simple,” Royce said. “Simplicity is the trick of it. Erland’s clever; I'll give him credit for that much. Unless a man knows how to look at what he's seeing in these documents, the code is secure.”
“Yes, I take your meaning,” Magnus said slowly, his gaze fixed on the place Royce was indicating. “When we saw Erland yesterday, I was surprised by the way you framed your questions to him. It was for this reason, so you'd be able to see the correct pattern in what he wrote. And he never guessed at your intentions.”
“Why should he?” asked Royce. “He doesn't know we have these documents.”
“Now we can read them.” Magnus smiled grimly. “We can uncover Erland's secrets.”
“So we will, though slowly and with care.” Royce began to separate the leaves of parchment into two piles. “You take one; I'll work on the other. We can confer on any questionable passages.”
“I will not put a mark on any piece that I think you may decide to send back to France,” Magnus said, pulling the inkwell nearer.
“Good man.” Royce spoke almost absently, his attention on the largest sheet of parchment. “The key to this code will prove useful to English agents working in France. Yes, keep these leaves free of extraneous marks. We don't want any but our own people to know we have solved the cipher, lest the code be changed.”
They fell silent, eng
rossed in their work. Lilianne waited impatiently, shifting from one foot to the other to try to stave off the cold, but failing. Chilled or not, she couldn't leave now. She had to know what the men were uncovering. Surely, some of it would be about Gilbert.
“Merciful God,” Magnus muttered, shaking his head over a slip of parchment that appeared to be a narrow strip trimmed from the edge of a larger sheet. Such small pieces were often used for making notes, then scraped until the ink was erased, so the piece could be reused to save on the cost of expensive parchment. “Our prisoner suffers from a serious lack of conscience.”
“What have you found?” Royce looked up, his brows raised at Magnus's angry tone.
“It's nothing to do with Erland's activities as King Louis's agent,” Magnus said. He waved the slip of parchment in the air as if trying to cleanse it of a foul odor. “This is the first draft of a note to Norbard, commanding him to arrange a fatal accident for Paul de Sainte Inge.”
“That’s not beyond Erland's character, as I know it,” said Royce.
“Perhaps not. But the note is more than four years old. Why would any man keep an incriminating document on his desk for so long?” Magnus asked.
“So he can read it from time to time, to remind himself how clever he is,” Royce answered. “The minds of men like Erland move in peculiar ways.”
“If I committed such a crime, I'd burn my notes about the order before the deed was done, and I'd make certain that Norbard had burned his copy,” Magnus said.
“You would never commit such a crime.” Royce spoke with absolute certainty. “Ordering a brother's death is beyond the scope of a decent man's thoughts.”
“Not entirely beyond a man's thoughts, given enough provocation,” Magnus muttered, glaring at the scrap of parchment he still held. “But beyond a decent man's doing, yes. And beyond ordering, too. That's part of the horror I feel over this crime. Erland did not have to wash Paul's blood from his own hands. He left it to another man to commit the deed, and to make the murder seem to be an accident.
“Royce, I don't want Lilianne to know of this. It will break her heart to learn the true manner of her father's death, and she’ll be convinced that Erland has ordered her brother's death, too.”
But Lilianne already knew. She was standing with her back against the stone corridor wall for support, with her hands pressed to her mouth to stop the sound of her sobs. Tears poured down her cheeks and her shoulders shook with the force of her grief.
“Lilianne is stronger than you think.” Royce's voice reached her as if from a great distance. “Nor can you protect her if these documents do reveal that Erland ordered his nephew's death, too. You may hide the manner of her father's death from her; that's a sorrow consigned to the past and best left there undisturbed. But she has been most insistent about uncovering Gilbert's fate. If the information is here, locked in Erland's code, we must tell her as soon as we discover it, however dreadful the truth is.”
Lilianne could bear no more. Still with her hands over her face she turned away from the open arch to flee back to her bedchamber. Blinded by tears as she was, she didn't see Alice until arms caught and held her.
“Lilianne!” Alice cried. “My dear, what's wrong?”
“Who's there?” Royce exclaimed.
From within the solar came the sound of scraping wood as the bench was pushed away from the table. Within the next instant Royce and Magnus were in the corridor where Alice was restraining Lilianne despite her efforts to break away and run.
“This is where she has been going every night,” Alice told the men. “At first, I thought she was meeting Magnus in secret. I was wrong. Lilianne has been coming here, to spy on you. Please don't blame her, for I'm certain she was eavesdropping out of fear for Gilbert's sake. I heard a little of what you were saying just now, enough to understand that the terrible knowledge of the way her father died has overset her.”
“Lilianne, I am so sorry you overheard us.” Magnus pulled her away from Alice and swept her up in his arms. “And you in your bare feet, too. It’s a wonder you aren’t confined to your bed, quaking with the ague.”
“I was right,” Lilianne cried, burrowing her face into his shoulder, seeking warmth and comfort from him. “Uncle Erland wanted my father dead. He wants Gilbert dead, too. He’s determined to have Manoir Sainte Inge for his own.”
“I wish you hadn't learned it this way,” Magnus said, holding her closer.
“I needed to hear it. I had a right to know. Let me go, Magnus. I’ve stopped crying.”
“Put her down,” Royce ordered quietly. “Ladies, come into the solar. We will talk there.”
“My lord,” Alice said, “this is horrifying news. Knowing it, what will you do with Count Erland?”
“Lord Royce will give me a sword,” Lilianne said, “and I will see to Erland.” She stood with feet apart, hands fisted at her sides, knowing her murderous fury showed on her face, and not caring who saw it.
“I cannot allow you to seek personal vengeance,” Royce told her. “Erland holds much useful information. We need him alive.”
“I need him dead for what he has done.” Lilianne lifted her chin, glaring at Royce with firm resolve. “Vengeance is my right as the daughter of Lord Paul de Sainte Inge. More than a right; it is my duty.”
“Kill Erland now,” Magnus said, “and you will never learn what he has done with Gilbert.”
It was the one argument that could stop her rage. She knew killing a boy was nothing to Erland after having arranged his own brother's death. Part of Lilianne's heart feared that Gilbert was already dead and that same fear fueled her desire to see Erland punished. No one would fault her for demanding retribution from him. Yet, amazingly in the face of her new and terrible knowledge, another part of her – the devoted sister – dared to hope that Gilbert was still alive.
“I know you and Royce visit Erland every day,” she said to Magnus.
“To question him,” Magnus admitted. “As Royce just told you, Erland knows a great deal about King Louis's secret activities.”
“Perhaps you should have tried a bit of torture,” Lilianne said, still smoldering with outrage. “Or at least tried the threat of it.”
“We have asked Erland about your brother,” Royce said. “Repeatedly, and in many ways. Erland tells us nothing. As for torture, information learned by it cannot be relied upon. Apply enough pain and a man will say whatever his torturers want him to say in hope of making the pain stop. Such admissions are not dependably truthful.
“If you like,” Royce continued, “you may join Magnus and me after the midday meal tomorrow, when we speak to your uncle again. Perhaps your angry presence will inspire him to reveal something interesting. Now, I suggest that you and Alice return to bed while we continue our work of decoding Erland's writings. Since we’ve broken his code, I want to read all of these documents before confronting him. Armed with information he’s not aware we have, we stand a better chance of making him talk enough to tell us what we want to know about his spying activities.”
“He is no longer my uncle,” Lilianne said, coldly and clearly. “Not after what he has done.”
“I understand,” Royce said gently.
“Lilianne,” Magnus offered, “I'll gladly carry you back to your room.”
“No.” She put up both hands to forestall his advance. “Don't touch me. Nor you, either, Alice. No one touch me. I don't want help. I can walk on my own.”
Magnus noted the way she squared her shoulders. He saw the proud line of her spine as she walked away with Alice hovering at her side. To his physical desire for Lilianne he now added a deep appreciation of her courage, her loyalty, and her strength of character. If Royce had given her the sword she wanted, she'd have made Erland pay for the havoc he had wrought on her family. Lilianne was a woman whom any man would be honored to serve with respect and devotion for a lifetime.
With a sigh he tore his gaze from her departing figure and rejoined Royce, who was already back a
t work on Erland's documents.
* * * * *
The Lilianne who came to the solar for the next midday meal was pale, composed, and much too quiet for Magnus's liking. Only a slight puffiness of her eyelids betrayed the tears she had certainly shed for her father and her brother. In keeping with her self-controlled demeanor, her thick, curly hair was slicked back and bound into a single tight braid. The severe style revealed the beautiful shape of her skull and emphasized the lines of sorrow on her lovely face. Even her bright blue gown seemed to have lost some of its cheerful shading out of respect for her terrible grief.
Alice, looking equally somber, entered the solar at Lilianne's side, and Magnus felt warm gratitude for the girl's unfailing support of her friend.
“My lord,” Lilianne said the moment she saw Royce, “have you finished decoding Erland's documents? Have you learned anything more about my brother?”
“Please, Lord Royce,” Alice spoke up quickly, “if you possess any information, I beg you to bribe her with it, to make her eat. Lilianne scarcely slept last night, and she has eaten nothing since rising at dawn.”
“Alice,” William said, seizing her hand and drawing it to the crook of his elbow, “you look worn out, too. I insist that you ride with me after we've eaten. Leaving the castle for an hour or two will refresh you. I have convinced Royce that you will be safe with me, especially with Braedon coming along for chaperone and several men-at-arms to protect us.”
“I am the very best of chaperones,” Braedon said, turning his familiar grin on Alice. “I know all the naughty tricks that young men play on fair maidens. I've tried them myself, you see, and I won't allow William to work them on you.”
“I cannot leave Lilianne when she’s in such distress,” Alice protested, blushing a little at Braedon’s remarks.
“Yes, you can,” Lilianne said. “Later, I’ll tell you everything Erland reveals. For I am holding Lord Royce to his promise that I may attend his daily questioning of that miserable villain.”