Knight Triumphant

by Heather Graham

  Had he ridden here . . . ?

  “You’ve taken English soldiers?” Father MacKinley said, frowning.

  She wondered if Eric was bluffing. She feared that he was not.

  “It’s time for you to leave the cell,” Eric said.

  “And where will I be going? I don’t believe that I can have my chambers. They have been taken. By the new master,” she added dryly.

  “Actually, they have not,” Eric replied. “I am not fond of your rooms. So you are free to claim them once again.”

  “I am free to reclaim them?”

  He smiled, a hard smile, filled with impatience. “Are you aware that you are the most argumentative woman alive? Fine. You will return to your chambers.”

  She smiled harshly in return, turned so that her back was to him, and walked to the rear of the cell.

  “Igrainia,” Father MacKinley murmured softly. “Eric has taken Sir Robert Neville’s room. You can be completely comfortable in your own rooms.”

  “Call the guard,” Eric said to Father MacKinley. “He carried the key.”

  “I’m eagerly awaiting the company of English soldiers,” Igrainia said.

  “I’m sure you are,” Eric replied.

  A moment later, she heard the heavy key twist in the lock. She was about to turn and sigh and go willingly—more willingly than they would ever know—but she wasn’t given the chance. Hands she was beginning to know far too well descended on her shoulders and she was spun around to face her nemesis.

  “I—I won’t fight!” she assured him.

  She realized then that he wasn’t listening. He had stopped walking. They were in front of the large stone monument that sealed Afton, Margot and Aileen into their tomb.

  She held her tongue.

  A moment later, he started walking again.

  And when they reached the great hall, footsteps ceased abruptly behind them. Father MacKinley and another man had been following them from the cell.

  She thought that the burly, kilted Scotsman must have been the one with the heavy key—her most recent guard, near her in the dungeons all along, keeping watch, but never being seen.

  “See the lady to her room, Jarrett,” Eric said and swept past her to the stairs, moving up them quickly.

  “Come, my lady!” the man called Jarrett said pleasantly. He was a very big man, possibly taller than Eric, and heavily muscled, as most of these men seemed to be, but his features were surprisingly fine and he was quick to smile at her. “Thank the Lord, my lady, that you’ve chosen better ground!” he told her. “The dungeon is no place for a woman.” He made a face. “And even the guard’s room at the juncture of the crypt and gaol was not a pleasant place to sleep!”

  “The bowels of a castle are always damp,” she murmured.

  “Ah, and the cells are the worst.”

  “You were—one of the prisoners in the cells,” she said, studying his face. These men were so different now. Though many seemed fond of beards and facial hair, they were no longer the pathetic straggle of humanity they had appeared after their capture.

  “A long time, so it seemed,” he agreed, but continued to offer her a rueful smile. “Still, I had company. I did not have the hours alone here . . . of course, there were the hours when the dead were entangled with the living, but the plague. . . there’s not a man alive who does not fear it, and thank God if he survives it.”

  “Perhaps we should get to the room,” Father MacKinley said, looking upward at the top of the stairs, as if he feared Eric would reappear.

  “Aye, come along now, my lady, to your fine chamber above the stairs!”

  Igrainia knew then that she would have a guard outside her bedroom door as well, but she nodded. This man was courteous. And held no bitterness against her.

  And, at least Eric had removed himself from the room she had shared with Afton.

  As they passed on through the hall, it was empty. She shuddered at the memory of Eric holding her silver goblets, her wedding gift, and laughing with irony that they should be a gift from one king to another.

  It wasn’t that she cared so much about belongings. It was that she and Afton had used the goblets, together, the night of their wedding.

  She went on up the stairs, followed by MacKinley and the rebel. When she reached the door, the guard took up a position down the hall.

  “Jarrett, you are a fine escort. I wish I had known in the night that you were near.”

  “I’m close, if you need me,” he said.

  She smiled. She wasn’t supposed to have known that he was near. She was supposed to have suffered with the darkness and memories of the death that occurred in the lowest level of Langley.

  She pushed open her door, then stopped, talking softly to Father MacKinley.

  “Can you arrange a bath?” she asked him.

  “I—I believe that I can.”

  “Will you try for me, now?”

  He nodded, pleased to do what he could. He seemed relieved. She was out of the dungeon.

  Igrainia stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. And it was then that she saw how the room had been changed.

  Every single sign of Afton was gone.

  The great shield that had hung over the bed had been replaced by another. A great bird, it seemed, trampling down on another. Latin words were inscribed around it.

  The crossed swords Afton had once won at a tournament were gone from the side wall. The tapestries had been changed, and what hung there now depicted the battle of Stirling Bridge, where William Wallace had been victorious. Another wooden carving of Afton’s name and coat of arms had sat on the mantel over the fireplace.

  It, too, was gone, replaced by the wretched bird piece.

  Infuriated, she didn’t think, but turned, bursting back into the hallway. She didn’t know where she was going to find Eric and express her rage, but she felt as if she could pummel her way through even a man as large as Jarrett to reach him.

  She didn’t have to go through such an effort. The door to what had been Sir Robert Neville’s room, just down the hall, was ajar. And within the room, standing by the broad oak desk, was the object of her rage.

  “My lady!” she heard Jarrett calling after her—but he was too late.

  She had entered the room and faced Eric. He had heard her and turned. His expression was nothing more than impatient.

  She would change that.

  “Usurper!” she charged. She came to a halt just inside the door, staring at him, shaking, burning, her breath coming in great gasps.

  “Bastard! Ass!”

  “Eric!” Jarrett said in dismay, reaching the door. “She moved so quickly.”

  “It’s all right,” Eric said. He stepped past Igrainia, his eyes cold. “It seems the lady wishes to address me personally.”

  Jarrett nodded and stepped back.

  Eric closed the door, turned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at her.

  “You were saying?”

  She trembled so that it seemed difficult to form words. They came, halted at first, then streamed from her lips without stop. And as she spoke, she found herself walking the few steps between them. “I called you a bastard, an ass and a traitor. How dare you, how dare you touch his things, you low-lying snake in the grass of a traitorous ass! You aren’t fit to kneel at his grave, and you have the audacity to take his things, to touch his things!”

  There wasn’t enough to say. He might be tall and imposing in his stance against the door, but at that moment, his size was no warning, only a further aggravation.

  And he was just staring at her impassively.

  She raised a hand with the swiftness of a sudden wind and slapped him as hard as she could. And even then, she didn’t see the danger in his eyes, but brought both fists up against his chest, and thundered them against him with a strength borne of pure fury.

  She was so incensed that she wasn’t prepared for retaliation. She gasped, stunned, when his hands suddenly clasped like th
e bite of wolves around her wrists, and her mad action was halted. She looked into his eyes, and saw the mark on his cheek, and felt the heat of the wrath she seemed to have infused into him. Her jaw locked, and then, no words came at all. She was shoved back, back across the room. Her knees buckled as she came against something . . . the bed. But that she fell back wasn’t good enough. He lifted her, threw her further up against the length of the bed, and a second later was straddled over her, long fingers so tightly wound around her wrists, knees so tight against her ribs, that she could scarcely breathe.

  For a moment she thought that he would release her wrists and bring his death grip to her throat.

  He looked as if he would say so much.

  Exact terrible violence against her.

  But he didn’t speak.

  And she couldn’t find words.

  Then after a moment he said, “Don’t ever, ever, lift a hand against me again.”

  She felt the remnants of anger drain from her as if she were a bird, fallen from the sky, wings completely clipped.

  And then, she was startled that she could talk at all.

  “I loved him!” she said softly.

  And he replied, “I know.”

  “It was his room.”

  “But he is gone. And we are here. And for whatever time we hold it, the castle is mine.”

  She closed her eyes not wanting to look at him again.

  He rose, caught her hand, and pulled her to her feet. “Go. Go back to your room.”

  “It is mine no longer.”

  “It is where you will live.”

  “The bars below are truly much better.”

  “Go now, my lady, because I am trying very hard to remember that you did love your husband, and forget the welt forming on my face.”

  She shook her head, fighting tears. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

  Yet, as he took a step toward her, she squared her shoulders and turned toward the door. Her fingers faltered as she tried to open it.

  He obliged her. She didn’t look his way, but walked across the hall, desolate.

  And not at all aware of just how dignified.

  CHAPTER 10

  The first several days, she remained in her room; only Jarrett came to see her, bringing her food, trying to be cheerful, but leaving quickly. Each day, at some point, the monotony was broken as a group of kitchen lads—strangers, rebel Scots—brought the heavy bath, with steaming water, and took it away again.

  By the fourth day, she stared at the new coat-of-arms on the wall so long that she couldn’t bear it. Despite the strength and effort required to remove the heavy plaque, she got it down.

  She slept better that night, only to waken and find that it had been put back. She was alarmed to realize how deeply she had slept—that someone had entered her room when she was sleeping.

  She took the plaque down again.

  That night, she was stunned when a tap sounded at the door, and then Jennie entered. She leaped to her feet with joy, racing across the room to embrace her maid.

  “Jennie, Jennie! How are you? Tell me, what is going on? I haven’t seen Father MacKinley of late. Have Merry and John returned, and the fellows I met along the way? Are the people well, do they fight or protest, or wait in fear?”

  Jennie, who had embraced her tightly in return, drew back with a sniff. “The people! They all claim that this is Scotland, and has been Scotland, and it’s God’s judgment that we accept Robert Bruce. They’re fools. The king’s troops will come here and butcher us all for such treachery!”

  “Aye, that could well happen,” Igrainia murmured. “What of John and Merry?”

  “They are here, well, and working. And I haven’t seen much of the men who returned with them. They train in the courtyard during the day—train with the rebels!”

  “What about you, are you all right?”

  “I’m well, yes, thank you. But it took Father MacKinley all this time of asking, arguing, and pleading to get our new lord to let me near you. One would think that the two of us could get together and bring down an army.”

  “Well, you’re with me now.”

  “I’m allowed only a few minutes. To see to your most important needs.”

  Igrainia hesitated. “I’ve written a letter. To my brother. I wonder if there is any way at all to get it to him.”

  “I can try,” Jennie said quickly. “I’ll have to be very careful.”

  Igrainia nodded, hurried to her writing desk, and picked up the letter she had written, sealed with wax and imprinted with her family ring. Jennie slid it into the folds of her skirt, looking at the door, which remained closed, as if she expected it would come to life and attack them both.

  “Have you heard anything from the outside?”

  “Of course, I hear things,” Jennie said. She gripped Igrainia’s hands. “Other letters have gone out. Apparently, Robert Bruce is to the north, but messengers have been sent back and forth, and then onward . . . they’re trying to exchange you for none other than Robert Bruce’s wife!”

  Igrainia felt her heart sink. She might be the daughter of a once great earl, but her father was dead, and not able to put pressure on the king, and her brother had yet to prove himself. Edward would never consider her a possible exchange for the wife of the man who was now his greatest enemy.

  “I am lost,” she murmured.

  “Perhaps not!”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Sir Robert Neville has not forgotten or abandoned us! He went straight to the Earl of Pembroke, who has his hands full, but from there, he went to Cheffington Castle, where your father’s dear friend Lord Danby holds a vast estate. And there, with Danby’s assistance he is raising an army of his own. Pembroke will supply him with some troops as well, once he has proven that he can raise men on his own.”

  Igrainia was silent for a moment. It was not going to be easy for anyone to lay siege here. She feared that her husband’s cousin would only manage to get himself killed.

  “I believe that he has sent word to your brother as well, who can also raise men.”

  “He owes his men to the king, and they will be ordered to join Pembroke. Under my brother, I’m afraid.”

  “What matters is that there is hope. And there is the fact that though this Scottish knight holds Langley, in the lowlands, he is surrounded by enemies.” Jennie looked nervously at the door, then back at Igrainia with tremendous sympathy. “They’ve not harmed you, have they? With everything that has been done . . . what the king has commanded for Robert Bruce’s women ... it’s frightening, so frightening!”

  “No one has harmed me.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Jennie said. “That huge guard dog is in the hall. I don’t want to be stopped from coming back to you again.”

  “Of course,” Igrainia said quickly.

  She hugged Jennie tightly, then her friend departed.

  She stared angrily at the plaque she had taken from the wall.

  As she did, there was a knock at her door. Afraid that it would open without her assent, she made a dive for the heavy plaque and dragged it behind the trunk at the foot of her bed.

  The tap came again. She opened the door. It was Jarrett. “My lady, it’s the time you usually summon me and ask for the bath. I’ve had it brought for you now.”

  He seemed so pleased with himself for having thought to bring her something that she might desire without having to be asked that she smiled. “You’re very kind. Thank you.”

  He smiled.

  She walked over to the mantel and stared into the fire while the parade of people entered, bringing the heavy wooden tub and kettle after kettle of water. At the end, a pretty young woman entered with soap and a linen bath sheet, setting both at the foot of the bed, and then departing with a little bob.

  “Is there anything else?” Jarrett asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. What a lovely young girl. I’ve not seen her before.”

&n
bsp; “Ah, well, the lass is my daughter. And you have seen her before. She told me that you had nursed her, when her mother, when they were . . . with the sickness. She believes that you kept her alive, and she is pleased to help you when she may.”

  Igrainia lowered her eyes. “She is lovely, and I’m grateful that she lived. Thank you, Jarrett, and you must thank your daughter again for me as well. And your wife . . . ?”

  “She died.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Aye, for she was a gentle soul, as sweet as young Amy. If you require anything—”

  “You are down the hall. I know.”

  He started to leave.

  “Jarrett,” she said, calling him back. “You’re a very good man.”

  He seemed startled. Then he grinned. “Thank you, my lady.”

  The door closed. She stared into the flames burning in the hearth for a moment, then realized how quickly the water in the bath would grow cold. She disrobed and sank into it, thinking that indeed, this was her one great pleasure in life.

  She leaned back, feeling the water surround her.

  After a moment, she became aware of a tremendous noise in the courtyard below. She tensed, wondering if the English had returned to take their retaliation against the Scots. Jumping up, she wrapped the linen sheet around her and hurried to the window and looked out. She heard a tremendous clanging of steel, as if a vicious battle ensued. But, she saw quickly, there was no battle, only training. Men had been set in pairs to skirmish with one another, to practice their swordplay.

  To the left of the combatants was another group of men. She saw Eric striding among them, shouting instructions. The men were handling long, spiked poles. His voice carried to her as he gave his commands. The men moved forward with great precision, came to a sudden halt, and formed a human arrow of the deadly poles, the “schiltron” the Scots were becoming famed for using against cavalry charges.