She closed her eyes and willed her mind to separate from her body. A great nausea was rising within her, and she wondered wildly what he would do if she threw up all over him.
He still had the desire, but the ability to perform was nonexistent. His frustration increased by the minute. He got up for another bottle of wine, then doubled his efforts, demanding that Jasmine kiss him, arouse him.
She had the temerity to suggest that his inability stemmed from the fact that he knew what he did was wrong. He silenced her with a particularly brutal squeezing of her breasts, leaving her gasping with pain. But her words started the wheels turning in his brain. The reason he was having trouble was because she looked so pure and innocent—angelic, that was it. He reached for another bottle, this time not bothering with a goblet. He said thickly, “I must get past this ridiculous barrier of your saintliness. Your pose as the Holy Virgin is all a pretense. Beneath the masquerade you are hotter than other bitches. I’ll have you avid for me tomorrow night. I’ll tie you to the bed and take your virginity.”
“I am not a virgin,” Jasmine said, greatly alarmed.
John’s hand swept up to her buttocks and his finger traced the cleft of her bottom. “There is one place where you are still virgin. None has been before me in here,” he said, pressing home the finger.
Finally his exertions, greatly aided by the wine he had imbibed, took their toll and he fell asleep. Jasmine was also exhausted, yet sleep was the farthest thing from her mind. For a moment she couldn’t stop shaking from revulsion, then she forced herself to slip quietly from the bed. Her skin crawled as if there had been maggots on her and she wondered if she would ever feel clean again, but she forced herself to shake off the horror of the previous hours and like a ghost melted into the shadows and materialized in the east wing at Estelle’s door.
Chapter 42
“My God, child, what has he done to you?”
Jasmine shook her head wearily. “No intercourse. I fed him some hemlock. We must get away from him. It’s so much more abhorrent than I ever imagined, and the night to come will be even worse. I asked Murphy to keep two horses saddled for me. We can’t go now, for soon as he awoke he would follow. The tide comes in just at the hour of noon today. We will ride across the sands at the last possible minute. Then the tide will sweep in and make it impossible for them to follow us. Find out exactly where Murphy will have the horses. I must go back now. I don’t want him to know I ever left the chamber.”
John slept late and awoke with a bad head and a worse temper. Jasmine was most grateful that he almost ignored her. He was incensed, however, that his justiciar had not yet arrived. Jasmine listened to his conversation with his gentlemen intently, and was amazed to learn that the guarded wagons that accompanied him contained the royal coffers and the crown jewels of England. King John was so suspicious of being robbed that he was taking his chests of gold and all the crown’s wealth from London to the Bishop of Lincoln’s massive stronghold of Newark Castle. No wonder he was livid that Hubert de Burgh was not on hand to safeguard the transfer!
As the morning wore on John became ever more agitated. He used every filthy obscenity he could curl his tongue around to describe the miserable, disloyal men who served him. Jasmine poured all the remaining hemlock into a goblet of wine and urged John to drink it to soothe his nerves. She watched him drain the cup and closed her eyes in relief.
The time was getting closer to noon by the minute and she knew she must get out of the room soon if she hoped to escape the castle. In fact, the very tide she awaited was keeping her husband’s ship standing out to sea. Falcon impatiently paced the deck watching for the tide to turn. Once it did so, it would carry his ship into the wash and he would be able to anchor close to Castle Rising where he knew she had taken his two nephews. He experienced fear such as he had not known since her ordeal with childbirth. When he imagined her at the mercy of John’s sexual excesses he nearly went mad. He prayed that he could rescue her while she was still untouched. The only means he had of dispelling his fear was to give his temper full rein. He became angry with Jasmine in the extreme. When he got his hands on her he intended to beat some sense into her.
He anticipated a confrontation such as they had never had before, but when it was over and the dust had settled, there would be no doubt whatsoever who would rule their household from this time forward. His jaw was set, his mouth was grim, and his determination was inflexible. He was outraged that he must risk leaving his Irish holdings vulnerable while he had to come chasing after her. He intended to give her a lesson she would never forget.
King John began to foam at the mouth and to roll his eyes alarmingly. Jasmine immediately took advantage of the moment. “I will get Estelle, your majesty. You need some of her medicine.” He was in a terrible state. She knew that hemlock could be a deadly poison. Perhaps she had given him too much. She had no cloak, but wore the midnight-blue gown from the previous day. She moved as if her feet had wings. She flung open Estelle’s chamber door and grabbed her by the hand. Breathlessly she urged, “Come quickly before ’t is too late!”
Estelle, ever practical, took up her cloak, but did not bother with her bottles and herbs. “Murphy is waiting with the horses,” she said as the two of them ran down the stone staircase of Castle Rising. The faithful Murphy stood quieting two saddled horses. Jasmine mounted immediately and he helped Estelle into the saddle. “Keep away from the king, he is in a terrible state,” Jasmine warned.
He clung to the harness of the two animals, most apprehensive about letting the women ride off on their own. Estelle grabbed his big hand to reassure him. “Years back I had a prophetic vision that is now unfolding. The final page will soon be turned. All things come at their appointed time. You must let us go to meet our destiny, Murphy.”
The first fingers of the incoming tide were stretching across the sands of the wash as Murphy reluctantly let go the reins. Jasmine and Estelle dug their heels into the sides of their mounts to urge them out onto the vast stretch of sand.
As he looked down from above, King John saw Jasmine and Estelle immediately. The bitches were fleeing! He was enraged. He screamed at his gentlemen to follow them and fetch them back immediately. How dare anyone disobey direct orders from the king? Flecks of foam flew from his mouth as he rushed from the chamber to the castle’s bailey. His face was bright red with anger and humiliation. He looked truly demented as he ran raving and screaming and issuing orders. “My horse, my horse! After them, damn you lily-livered, useless, ass-licking parasites.”
His men ran to saddle his horse as well as their own. He waved frantically toward the stables. “Move out, move out.” He grabbed his horse, vaulted into the saddle, and wheeled it toward the sands of the wash. The men who were guarding the treasure wagons became alarmed. The king was waving to them frantically to move out. Were they being attacked? Quickly they harnessed the horses to the wagons to follow the king out of Castle Rising onto the flat sands.
The king led the chase, oblivious of the creeping, swirling water beneath his horse’s hooves. His gentlemen followed and then, lagging behind somewhat, came the treasure wagons.
The de Burgh ship came in on the tide and the men on deck stood aghast at what they saw. A large party of king’s men and wagons were racing across the treacherous sands of the wash. From their vantage point it was obvious that not all of them were going to make it across the salty flats. The tide was devious. It formed large circles that marooned and trapped whatever was unwise enough to be out there on the sand.
The king’s gentlemen became aware of their predicament long before the king. They raced to catch up with their monarch and warn him of the tide that was ready at their heels to swallow them. As they came up behind him, the king turned and to his horror saw his treasure wagons floating. He heard the harnessed horses screaming as they were sucked under and the cries of the drowning wagon drivers.
The king ordered his gentlemen to go back to save his treasure, but they totally ignored
him and sped past in an effort to save themselves from a like fate.
Jasmine and Estelle thundered from the sands of the wash onto dry land, but they were aware that the king and some of his men were in pursuit just behind them. “We are taken, we are taken.” Jasmine sobbed in despair.
“Do not fear, child, it was meant to be,” soothed Estelle, gentling her horse as the king’s men surrounded them.
There was so much shouting and confusion that it took Estelle a few moments to realize that half of the king’s party had not made it to safety across the sands. The king did not seem to care that his men and their horses had drowned in his service, only that the crown jewels were lost to the insatiable sea. It was clear that madness had descended upon him, and his gentlemen tried every tactic in their power to calm him. They lied to him blatantly, assuring him that when the tide went out they would be able to ride back out over the wash and retrieve his fortune in gold.
Jasmine was blue with the cold. She whispered to Estelle, “I knew I gave him too much hemlock. The moment he drank it he began to foam at the mouth.”
“Too bad it didn’t kill him,” whispered Estelle. “It still might,” she added hopefully.
King John had unfurled a long whip from his saddlebow and was lashing any man foolish enough to draw close. His gentlemen, in a panic, did not know what to do. Estelle managed to make herself heard over the pandemonium. “We are at Swineshead. There is an abbey nearby where we may take refuge for the night.”
Three of the men broke away to search out the abbey and prepare its holy residents for the king’s party. The light was fading from the afternoon sky when they dismounted at Swineshead Abbey and wearily ushered the still-raving king inside. The monks made themselves scarce. The man in robes at the entrance who admitted travelers was the only monk in evidence. After lifting his arms to indicate that the available chambers were on the second floor, he melted away into the shadowed cloisters.
Jasmine was not so naive as to think she would go unscathed, and it came as no surprise when John looked about for someone on whom he could vent his spleen and his red eyes alighted upon her.
“Bitch! Whore! You are the cause of all my trouble.” He still held the whip and none of his gentlemen had the guts to take it from him. He cracked the whip and it snaked across the floor, catching Jasmine on the ankle. She screamed and ran. “Upstairs, bitch!” he commanded.
She fled. Upstairs was the only avenue of escape from the madman. His gentlemen tried to appease him, but it was halfhearted since they had learned long ago that a tyrant cannot be appeased.
John ran halfway up the staircase after Jasmine, then turned, remembering Estelle. He pointed a terrible finger. “Hag! Witch! The only reason I let you live is to prepare the decoction I need. Get me some now! The longer you take, the more time I will have to punish the little bitch upstairs.” King John laughed wildly as he moved on up the stairs, brandishing his long whip.
Estelle could not reason with the deranged king that she had nothing at all from which to make a herbal drink. She ran down the cloistered hall looking for the kitchens. At last she found them, but only one monk was in evidence and from what she could see the room was quite bare. Almost no food was being prepared for the evening meal, and there appeared to be no stores of food or herbs from which she could draw.
“My good man, what do you intend to feed the king and his men for dinner?” she commanded.
The monk uttered one word in a low, well-modulated tone. “Peaches.”
“Peaches?” cried Estelle, feeling her heart sink.
Upstairs, Jasmine thought her heart would burst. She had tried her best, but she could not escape the wrath of John. She had struggled and scratched and clawed and bitten him, but in the end he had managed to tear off her clothes and was in the process of tying her wrists and ankles to the four bed posts. Horror of horror, he had tied her facedown. She knew that not only would he use the whip on her naked flesh, but when he tired of the whip, he would rape her in the deviant manner he had promised.
She lay exhausted yet rigid with fear and apprehension, sobbing for every breath. She wished herself dead, then real fear gripped her that before John was finished with her, she could very easily be dead. She had long since blocked out the stream of filth and invective that poured from his mouth as he described in horrific detail what he was about to do to her. He cracked the whip over the bed and its tail end caught her across her pale back and curled under her breast, leaving a thin red stripe of blood.
She heard a woman’s scream followed by a loud pounding on a door. She dully realized the voice was her own, but who knocked? Would someone come to her rescue? John had begun to divest himself of his clothes when the pounding came through to him. He ignored it at first, then realized it could only be Estelle come with his needed decoction. He left the inner chamber door ajar and went into the small anteroom. At the door he shouted, “Dame Winwood?”
“Aye” came the reply.
He opened the door cautiously and saw that she held out a goblet. Beneath her gown, Estelle’s knees literally knocked together. Some half-forgotten knowledge of peaches had surfaced from her subconscious while she had been in the kitchens. She had taken a rolling pin and broken open the peach pits. Then she had pulverized the contents and mixed it with syrup from the peaches, hoping against hope it would disguise the bitter taste until King John had ingested some of the powerful poison. Her ears were cocked for more sounds of anguish from Jasmine, but an ominous silence was all that now met them.
She offered up the goblet and held him in an hypnotic stare. She began to talk; it was almost a chant. “Long ago I had a prophetic vision that has all come to pass. I saw your brother Richard die and knew you would be crowned king. In the vision you were a wild boar. I saw you murder your nephew Arthur and take the crown across the water to England. I saw Philip of France and his cub Louis swallow whole your Angevin possessions, Brittany, and finally Normandy. Then they set their eyes on England because its monarch was weak. I believe your ancestors, all those men you betrayed, reached up from the water and took everything you possessed. You were too vain, caring only for the jewels in the crown, rather than the power it represented.”
John snatched up the cup and drained it. Immediately he went into a seizure. The whip slipped from his fingers and he fell to the floor, drumming his heels and banging his head. Estelle turned and fled. She called loudly for his gentlemen, and one by one they crept cautiously from their rooms.
“He is dying,” she said in a decisive voice. “So that none of you will be blamed for this I suggest you get him to the stronghold of Newark Castle and the Bishop of Lincoln. He is too weak to ride, in fact I expect him to lapse into a coma any minute. Prepare a bed in a wagon, hurry.” She retraced her steps back to the king. He lay still now. He had vomited and his face was turning black. Alarmed, she knelt to see if he was breathing. He was not. Frantically she felt for a pulse … there was none. The king was dead!
She pulled off her cloak and wrapped it about him in a way that covered his face. Immediately she heard his men approaching. She stood up and faced them. “Quickly now, he is in a coma, as I feared. Handle him with care, lest he cease to breathe. At all costs you must see that he gets to Newark where both he and yourselves will be safe.”
They carried him down the stairs and out of the abbey to a mule and wagon. “Let me just check him,” Estelle said with great concern. The men mounted their horses and Estelle drew back the cloak from King John’s face. He was dead; very, very dead. She heaved an enormous sigh of relief and urged the men to hurry. She stood in a trance staring after them long after they were gone from sight.
When a frustrated Falcon finally navigated his ship to anchor at Castle Rising, Murphy told him what had taken place. Falcon had seen for himself the horse-drawn wagons being dragged unmercifully beneath the flood-tide, but when he learned that Jasmine had ridden out across the wash he was filled with apprehension.
He paced about like
a caged animal, waiting for the tide to sweep back out so that he could ride across the sands of the wash and discover Jasmine’s fate. His face had gone white when Murphy told him that after only one night under the same roof as King John, Jasmine had fled.
Before Falcon could continue his journey, Hubert de Burgh and his men arrived back at Castle Rising. He listened with disbelief as Murphy repeated the tale of the king’s men riding across the sands and being trapped by the tides of the wash. All were mounted and ready when the tide retreated sufficiently to allow horses to gallop the damp sands.
Falcon de Burgh spurred his destrier and its strong legs dug deeply into the wet sand, sending clods flying behind into the faces of those who followed. Soon, however, Falcon had outdistanced the others in the race to Swineshead. From the distance he could see a slow party of travelers leave the abbey and decided to pursue it. However, as he drew close to Swineshead Abbey he saw Estelle frantically waving to him, and swerved his destrier in her direction.
“Where is she?” He shouted the words as he dismounted and ran as she waved her arm.
“Upstairs!”
Sword in hand, he flew down the corridor like an avenging angel. As he drew closer to her, he felt her presence and rushed through the small anteroom into her chamber. Falcon de Burgh, who had never flinched from anything in his life, recoiled physically as he saw his naked wife trussed spread-eagle to the bedposts. His legs were unsteady as he crossed the room to the bed. With trembling hands he cut her bonds with his sword. The whip marks on her flesh registered in his brain, blocking out everything save the need for revenge.
Jasmine turned her head, knowing who it was before she ever saw him. She whispered, “Falcon … I—”
“No!” he cried. “I ask no questions … leave it, Jasmine.” He took off his cloak to cover her nakedness, and she huddled miserably upon the bed as her husband left her without even the comfort of his embrace.
The Falcon and the Flower Page 44