“Get your own war-horse,” Dominic said.
“What about the keep? Who will be in charge?”
“Thomas the Strong will guard it for us. Tell him to call the vassals in from the fields and to draw up the bridge after we leave. This all may be a trick to take the keep.”
“Surely you don’t believe that your own wife—”
“I believe,” Dominic interrupted savagely, “that my own wife could have been stolen in order to be ransomed at a price that would ruin all hope of building Blackthorne Keep into the stronghold it must be in order to survive.”
Simon’s black eyes narrowed.
“And that is precisely the word you will put out around the keep,” Dominic concluded. “Do you understand me? There will be no hint of what I suspect is really afoot.”
“And that is?”
“Duncan of Maxwell and my damned Glendruid wife!”
The silence resonated with all that Dominic had not said, treachery and betrayal and the death of dreams.
“Do you want anyone else to come with us?” Simon asked after a moment.
“Nay. Not my squire. Not yours. Not even the master of the hounds. What is done today will go no further than us.”
“You don’t really believe—”
“I am a tactician, Simon. Treachery from within is the best way to take a keep. If I know it, surely the Scots Hammer does.”
Simon looked into his brother’s eyes and felt a chill of foreboding.
God help the maid if she is with Duncan when Dominic finds her, Simon thought uneasily.
God help us all.
A few minutes later Dominic strode out of the keep wearing chausses and hauberk, helm and sword. In one mailed fist was a crossbow. In the other was the nightshirt Meg had worn and then cast aside in her haste to leave.
The hounds danced and whined their impatience to be off the leash. Long-legged, lean-bodied, narrow-tongued, moving like fanged ghosts, the dogs seethed with eagerness as they waited to be given the scent they would course that day.
Dominic’s squire held Crusader’s bridle, quieting the restive stallion. Simon waited nearby, mounted on his own charger. If he had been in any doubt as to his brother’s lethal temper, it vanished when Dominic literally leaped into the saddle, scorning the stirrup. The maneuver was one every well-trained knight could manage in full battle gear, but few did so when a squire stood nearby ready to give a hand up.
The dark stallion half reared, ears flat to his skull as he caught his rider’s mood. Dominic rode the charger effortlessly, seeming not to notice the stallion’s fiery temperament.
“Harry is at the gatehouse,” Simon said.
Dominic nodded curtly and set off for the gatehouse across the bailey. The huge, muscular stallion crabbed sideways, snorting and prancing, caught between the vise of Dominic’s mood and the iron bit restraining him. Huge hooves beat out a rhythm of throttled urgency as the chargers minced across the bailey’s cobblestones.
Harry was waiting in front of the gatehouse. He touched his forehead and waited.
“When did you last see your lady?” Dominic asked bluntly.
“Before the sun broke over Blackthorne Crag.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“Aye. She seemed to be heading for her herb gardens.”
“Seemed?” Dominic asked sharply.
“Aye. But when the path split, she took the right-hand fork.”
“The gardens are to the left,” Simon said in a low voice.
Dominic grunted. “Why did you think she was going to her herb gardens?”
Harry looked uncomfortable.
“Speak to your lord,” Simon said curtly. “Your lady might be in danger.”
“Meg—Lady Margaret—often goes to her gardens when she is troubled.”
The look Dominic gave the gatekeeper wasn’t likely to make the man feel any more at ease.
“Troubled?” Dominic asked smoothly. “How so?”
Harry looked even more uncomfortable. Before he could choose words to speak, an old woman walked out of the gatehouse. In the late morning sunlight her hair was so white it was nearly transparent.
Dominic turned to Gwyn. For the first time he noticed that the woman’s eyes, though faded by age, were of the same pure, spring green as Meg’s.
“John,” Gwyn said without preamble, “had a heavy hand when he was in his cups. Meg learned to stay out of his way.”
“From the filthy state of the keep,” Dominic said, “I would hazard that he was in his cups much of the time.”
“Aye.”
“I am not John.”
“Aye,” she agreed. “If you were, your horse’s flanks would be scarred from your spurs and his mouth hardened by a cruel bit brutally used.”
“You have a keen eye.”
“So do you, Dominic le Sabre, Lord of Blackthorne Keep. Use it when you ride out. You will see that Meg is but collecting herbs as is her custom.”
“Without her handmaiden?”
Gwyn sighed. “Eadith can be tiresome.”
“Is Lady Margaret accustomed to running about the countryside without a companion?” Dominic asked in a sharp voice.
“Nay,” Gwyn said grudgingly. “Eadith goes with her, or I do, or one of the men-at-arms.”
Dominic looked at Harry. The gateman shook his head unhappily.
“She was alone,” Harry said.
“Take the dogs to the fork in the trail,” Dominic said to the handler.
The man went quickly across the bridge, towed by a rowdy turmoil of greyhounds. When Dominic moved to follow, Gwyn spoke quickly.
“Fear not. Neither man nor beast would harm a Glendruid girl.”
The icy glitter of Dominic’s eyes swept over the old woman.
“Lady Margaret is no longer a girl to run the fields like a cotter’s wench,” he said in a cold, precise voice. “She is the wife of a great lord and the mistress of a powerful keep. She is a prize that any man would be glad to take.”
“There is danger,” Gwyn admitted. Then, so softly that most men wouldn’t have heard, she added, “But not to her. Not quite.”
“What do you mean?”
The old woman looked up at Dominic for a long, silent moment.
“I sense danger,” she said finally. “Meg must have sensed it as well. But the danger wasn’t to her. It was to the keep. There are perilous times ahead, lord. The omens—”
Gwyn’s words stopped abruptly when Crusader half reared and champed fiercely at the bit. Despite Dominic’s coldly running rage, he curbed the stallion without cruelty. Crusader pranced in place, flexing his powerful neck and hindquarters.
“Spare me the Glendruid nonsense,” Dominic said bitingly. “There are always perilous times. There are always omens. There are always betrayals. It is what a man makes of them that matters.”
With that, Dominic released the stallion. The horse sprang forward as though shot from a catapult. Simon followed quickly. The clatter of hooves on cobblestone became a hollow thunder as the two big horses crossed the bridge. Sun struck lances of light from hauberks and helms, making them gleam coldly.
When Dominic reached the fork in the path, the hounds were waiting with an impatience that equalled his own. Like the man, the hounds were disciplined. Despite their whining, seething eagerness, they were well-behaved. They stood ready to respond to voice or horn.
“Give this to Leaper,” Dominic said, handing over Meg’s nightshirt.
The handler took the shirt and held it out to a silver-gray bitch. The hound sniffed, whined, and sniffed again. After a few more moments she lifted her head and whined eagerly.
“She has the scent, lord.”
“Loose her and only her,” Dominic ordered. “If she picks up the scent quickly, keep the others tied. I want no unnecessary noise arousing the countryside.”
The handler took the leather leash from Leaper’s collar. At his signal she bounded forward to cast about for the scent she had been give
n. It took her only a brief time to find it, for the ground was damp, ideal for holding spoor. The greyhound began tracking at a run.
Dominic and Simon followed at a hard canter, their chain mail glittering in the cloud-veiled light. Behind them the leashed hounds howled their disappointment.
SLOWLY Meg stood and stretched, trying to loosen the muscles of her back. She had spent the past few hours on her hands and knees, searching among the heaped rocks and at the base of the standing stones that ringed the haunted place. The small sack she used for gathering herbs was finally plump with the hard-won harvest. It bounced companionably against her hip as she headed out of the sacred oak grove.
It had taken Meg much longer than she had expected to harvest the new leaves and stems and a few of the bitter roots of the plant she called ghost slipper. She had even found a few other useful herbs and some seedlings to take to her gardens. There were others she could have taken, but it would have killed the plants to steal their leaves. The season was early for much foliage. Only the daffodils were fully grown, their yellow faces searching for the sun from every glade and streamside.
The haunted place was well behind Meg when the sun finally managed to pierce the spring overcast. A shaft of pale yellow light lanced down, setting scattered oaks and moss-grown rocks softly afire. Stone and bare branch gleamed darkly, as though freshly made. Far out at the tips of the oaks’ spreading arms, the first green whisper of summer’s leafy bounty swelled.
The silent promise of the buds and sun loosened the tension in Meg’s body. As though the shaft of sunlight was a wild falcon to be tamed, she held up her hands and whistled sweetly, bathing herself in light.
From the crest of the hill, an answering whistle came.
Instants later a greyhound raced toward Meg at a fantastic pace, eating the ground with fleet, graceful motions. When the hound was only a few paces from her, a horn sliced the silence. The hound stopped, spun, and bounded back in the direction it had come.
Heart pounding, Meg shielded her eyes and looked across the mist-swathed vale where sunlight struck fire from drops of water. Two war-horses loomed at the crest of the hill. One of the horses had a rider. The other did not.
Just as Meg recognized that it was Dominic’s battle stallion that was riderless, her husband’s voice came from behind her.
“Where have you been, lady?”
She spun around. “You startled me.”
“I shall do much more than that if you don’t answer my question. Where have you been?”
“Collecting herbs.”
Dominic looked at Meg’s simple clothes. They were stained, rumpled, and showed every sign of having been ill used. They looked, in fact, as though they had been bedding for an illicit tryst.
“Collecting herbs,” he said tonelessly. “Odd. Your clothes look as though you’ve been rolling around on the ground in them.”
Meg glanced down, shrugged, and looked at Dominic again. Despite his carefully neutral voice, she sensed the icy fury in him. It was an avalanche looking for an excuse to come loose on her head.
“That is why I wear these rags,” she said crisply. “It makes no sense to ruin the good tunic I have by grubbing about on my hands and knees in it.”
Dominic made another neutral sound. He looked around the area. Except for the cheerful daffodils, there was a singular lack of growing green things. He turned back and fixed Meg with an assessing gaze.
“Did you collect here?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
Meg was reluctant to discuss the ancient place. She knew that even the vassals who loved her thought the place was at best haunted—and at worst cursed.
“What does it matter?” Meg asked. “I have what I need.”
The rage in Dominic almost slipped free. With great difficulty he kept it leashed.
“Do you?” he asked silkily. “And what was it you were lacking?”
Again, Meg was reluctant to explain. If she discussed the antidote, then she would have to discuss the missing medicine too. She had promised Gwyn not to do that.
Into the silence came the distant trills of birdsong and the much nearer sounds of the war-horses approaching as Simon rode up, leading Dominic’s stallion. The greyhound danced attendance, its long, narrow tongue hanging after the run.
“My lady,” Dominic said in a clipped voice, “what was it you lacked so urgently that you set off alone into the countryside without telling anyone?”
“Seedlings,” Meg said, looking away from his eyes. “For my gardens.”
“You lie rather badly.”
“I am not lying. I collected seedlings for my garden.”
“Show them to me.”
“Not until I plant them. Handling them too much makes them—”
Meg’s words ended in a startled gasp as the harvest bag was ripped from her hands, upended, and shaken thoroughly. Whole plants and dirt showered onto the ground. Small leaves fluttered down like green rain.
“No!” Meg said frantically.
She snatched the bag from Dominic, went to her hands and knees, and began combing the ground for the small leaves as though she were gathering tiny gold coins.
Frowning, Dominic watched. He had doubted Meg’s words but he didn’t doubt her sincerity right now. She plainly valued the greenery in the harvest bag.
“Simon.”
“Yes, liege?”
“Backtrack her.”
“Aye.”
“It will do you no good,” Meg muttered without looking up.
“What Simon can’t see, Leaper can scent.”
“Not in the ancient place. No dog will go there, nor horse.”
“Why not?” demanded Dominic.
“I’m not a hound or a horse to answer that question,” Meg retorted as she put leaves back into the bag. “I simply know ’tis true. Animals sense some things more clearly than men.”
“The ancient place,” Dominic repeated, a question in his tone if not in his words.
Meg muttered something and kept gathering leaves.
An instant later there was a mailed fist beneath her chin, raising it, forcing her to meet her husband’s bleak eyes.
“You don’t fear this place?” Dominic asked.
“Why should I? I’m no long-tongued hunting bitch.”
Simon made a sound like coughing—or muffled laughter.
Without looking away from Meg’s angry green eyes, Dominic gestured for his brother to get on with the backtracking.
“No, you’re neither hound nor horse,” Dominic said distinctly. “You’re a Glendruid witch. What mischief have you been hatching here?”
“I am Glendruid, but I’m not a witch.”
“Yet you come to a place the common folk consider cursed.”
“It doesn’t disturb the cross I wear,” Meg said. “If the ancient place were the evil some people think it is, the cross would burn. It does not. It lies cool and quiet between my breasts.”
Dominic looked at his wife while the sound of hoofbeats faded into a silence disturbed only by birdcalls and a rising wind. When he released Meg’s chin, small marks reddened her creamy complexion where chain mail had met skin. He would have felt worse about even that fleeting hurt if the certainty that she had been with a lover were not lying in his gut like cold, undigested food.
No wonder my bride responded so quickly to the sensual lure last night. She is no nestling newly caught, but a falcon ready trained to a man’s touch.
I will have heirs of her, that is certain. She can no more resist the wild flight in a man’s arms than a falcon can resist the untamed sky. But whomever she belonged to in the past, she is mine now.
And mine she shall remain.
Grimly Dominic looked at the greenery scattered over the ground. Using her fingertips, Meg had gently raked up all but a few seedlings that were rapidly wilting. He was no herbalist, nor was he a gardener, but the seedlings looked common to him. He was certain he had seen their like growing far
closer to the keep.
Expecting Meg to object, Dominic picked up several of the seedlings.
No protest came, not even when he carelessly stuffed the seedlings into a travel pouch tied to Crusader’s saddle. Yet when he bent to help Meg gather the few remaining loose leaves, stems, and tiny roots, she pushed his hands forcefully away.
“Nay,” Meg said. “Your gauntlets are too clumsy. If you bruise the leaves before the potion is prepared, it will be too weak to serve its purpose.”
“Is that why you didn’t bring Eadith or one of the men-at-arms?” Dominic asked smoothly. “They’re too clumsy?”
Meg said nothing.
“Answer me, wife. Tell me why you came into the forest alone.”
Meg’s hands stilled. “I…”
Dominic waited with a growing certainty that whatever he heard next would be a lie.
What he heard was silence.
“How much farther up this way lies Carlysle Manor?” he asked in a carefully conversational tone.
Meg let out a breath of relief at the new topic. While she spoke, she began picking up the last of the tiny leaves.
“It’s more than a hard day afoot,” she said. “It would be moonrise long before you saw the manor from the Old Pass.”
“Less, if you ride the path you just walked?”
“Aye, yet few do, though the way is a shortcut between cart roads,” Meg said, talking quickly in her relief at having a safe topic. “The short way is arduous in places. Most people prefer the cart roads. Before John grew too weak, we traveled by road from the keep to the various manors several times a year.”
“Are the cart roads in ill repair? Is that why you came this way?”
“Nay. Duncan has had men working on the roads since he returned.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. If Meg could have seen him, she would have forgotten the few remaining scraps of leaves and taken to her heels. But her attention was entirely on gathering up each precious bit of green.
“Do all the common folk prefer to go around these hills, walking the extra distance on the cart roads?” Dominic asked.
“Yes. They avoid the haunted places.”
“How convenient.”
The savagery of his tone was like a sword being drawn. Meg’s hands fumbled and went still.
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