The Night Side
Page 9
The Master of the Gowff smiled slightly and nodded, either in agreement with the assigned task or in approval of her plan to seek out the place of egress. As he accepted the broom without complaint and said nothing about the weapon she clutched in her hand, she supposed it could be both.
Frances waited for him to suggest that he lead the way in her stead, but when he did not she nodded back, picked up the lantern and started for the door, weapon poised to strike at anyone who might leap out at her.
Colin did not laugh at her alarmed posture. Frances decided that there were most certainly previously unconsidered benefits to being with a man who did not react in a typical overbearing manner when surprised by new circumstances. Her father would most certainly have taken the dagger from her and then selfishly turned out the exhausted household to search for the beast while he ordered her back to bed. He would never have understood the pride that demanded she personally confront the danger that threatened the people in her care. He thought pride and courage were things known only to men. Women were for rutting, nothing more.
There were, however, limits to her courage, and she was not sorry to hear Colin lifting a mace down from the wall before he joined her. Of course the intruder had departed, but a little caution was never a bad thing. A mace would be better suited to stopping an attacking dog than her tiny dagger. She wished she had thought to bring a gowff club with her. With that she might defeat the devil himself.
“Mon Dieu,” she muttered. “Your wits were surely gone.”
“What is wrong?” Colin asked, stepping up swiftly beside her. His eyes scanned the room.
“It is only that I should have brought my gowff club instead of this dagger.”
He smiled a little. “Here. You’ll feel better with this.” He offered her the mace.
After a moment of silent surprise, Frances again nodded and they exchanged weapons. The mace was unfamiliar and very heavy, but she felt more confident having a stick in her hand. She did not doubt that she could accurately strike anything she wished with the longer-handled weapon and loft its evil head out the door.
“Something has been gnawing at the door frame,” Colin said, as he bent at the waist.
“The hound?”
“Nay, I suspect a rat. There is no slobber here, and marks are quite low.”
“Oh.” Frances swallowed. She did not like rats, but a mace would take care of any impudent rodents as well as hellhounds. “Well then, let us take the broom and depart. If it does not clean well enough we may return and fetch some water.”
Colin merely nodded.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For he suddenly smote the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:
“—Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
—Walter de la Mare, “The Listeners”
Though she knew it was foolhardy bravado on her part, inspired by shame at her initial credulity the night before, a just-awakened Frances nevertheless took up her favorite gowff club and a lantern, and started off on her own for a morning exploration of the dungeons of Noltland.
It was highly unlikely, she told herself, that her enemy would come into the castle during the day when he might be easily seen and his hound would look like the earthly creature it was. And if Colin were correct in his assumptions of the previous evening, then the animal could well have gained entrance through the privies, whose outer wall was not far off the ground and had deteriorated over the years of corrosive onslaught. She was therefore in no real peril. After all, who would send a spectral hound to the old dungeon where no one resided or even visited? There was also the matter of passing through a heavy, barred door to enter the castle proper.
Unless, of course, it was a real spectral hound and it lived there as the legend said. Then doors of any weight would be no obstacle for an infernal beast.
Frances shook herself. This was no time for foolishness—at least not imaginative foolishness. Going to the dungeons was another matter. She had a responsibility to her people, and she would feel redeemed for her cowardice if she explored on her own all possibilities of where the beast might have gained admittance to the keep. She could then go to Colin and announce that he needn’t spend his days exploring the dungeons because she had already done so, and they would then repair the privy wall and everyone would be safe, and her self-regard would be intact.
Frances paused in the corridor while her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. Temporary courage and lantern light eventually carried her forward, but she found that it did nothing to ward off the chill of the lower floors, which smelled strongly of the cold sea and something rather sour. Slowly but certainly, the miasma of old death seemed to creep beneath her tucked-up skirts and crawl over her legs, making her long for a hot bath by a blazing hearth.
Underfoot, brittle things crunched and snapped as she walked, causing echoes to flee up the passage and then return, an unpleasant noise which sounded a great deal like a stealthy pursuer creeping up on her from behind. Frances did not look down into the shadows or over her shoulder more than once. She scolded herself for her fanciful thoughts that drained her resolve, and decided that if it were bits of bone instead of the husks of insects she trod upon with her thin-soled shoes, she did not want to know.
She paused again outside the door that led from the basements into the dungeons proper and took a few deep breaths. Of course she had never been in the dungeons before. Her mother would never have allowed it when she was a child. But when they last had been cleaned out, in the year of her fourth birthday, there had been stories about the bits and pieces left carelessly behind in the room used for questioning prisoners.
There was also something worse down here than the cast-off bones of the tortured and imprisoned. The sea hole was one of them. It was a natural shaft carved by the sea when it had made its inland cave, over which the keep had been built. The castle’s occupants used to drop prisoners down into it and then leave them to whatever fate the sea chose. Those poor moaning wretches with their broken bodies were completely ignored. No food, no water—except the sea at high tide lapping at them—they must have died screaming, maddened by pain from their injuries and by fear of the dark and drowning in the encroaching waves.
Frances shuddered, this time shaking so hard that the lantern light wavered. She didn’t believe that her father had ever used the sea hole to punish prisoners, and therefore any lingering ghosts should not hold her responsible for their demise. But even with this rationalization, it still took all her will to draw back the door’s heavy, grimed bolt and push against the warped panel.
The stubborn old door held fast against her. For an awful moment, Frances wondered if there was something leaning against the far side of the heavy panel—something large and hostile to the notion of invasion! Perhaps the hound itself!
But, non!She was allowing herself to be influenced by the bad air below stairs. She had to remain calm and think. It might be that a hinge had broken. Or, so near to the sea, it could be that the door had deformed. Old wood in the castle always warped. Every few years, doors had to be taken down and their bottoms planed smooth so they would open without dragging. That was all this was. More force was needed.
Reassured, Frances set down her lantern and club and returned to the obstinate blockage. The thought of placing her hands upon the filthy panel was not a pleasant one, but she had not thought to wear gloves or even a mantle on this expedition, so it would have to be done if she were to prove her mettle and complete her quest.
The door was cold, shockingly so. It made the tips of her fingers tingle when she touched it. She pushed, but naked fingers and palms could not move the chilled door more than a few groaning inches, and she feared she was driving splinters into her hands.
Growing ever more assured by the grinding noise of disuse that no intruder had actually taken this route into the castle, Frances happily laid her shoulder to the door and pushed with all her might.
Above her, the door was pulled, protesting, back into place and the bolt shot home. She found herself sealed inside the dungeon without her lantern or her club.
It took a moment for Frances to regain her breath and reassure herself that she was undamaged. The only bones broken had been in her stays, and her bumroll had saved her hips from great harm. Loathing for the cold, filthy floor helped her regain her feet, though she found it necessary to lean against a chill stone wall while she waited for her cartwheeling senses to stop.
Equilibrium eventually restored, she felt her way along the wall, carefully climbing the shallow stairs until she had returned to the door. Of course it was closed and there was no handle on her side. Ignoring the fact that she had heard the bolt shut, Frances tried to find purchase around the edge to pull it back open. But of course there was none. She found only deep grooves, which might have been caused by a dirk or some other tool applied by an ancient prisoner who had managed to smuggle a weapon into his jail.
Frances let her hands fall away from the door. She was suddenly very calm. Tiny sparks of anger were igniting inside her. It was too cold, and the atmosphere too frightening, for them to blaze into a full rage, but the small lights of anger served as an internal lantern of reason and kept the panic at bay.
Her circumstances were not as horrible as they might have seemed. True, she was locked in a dungeon, which no one frequented. But Colin would note her missing presence by the noontime meal, or certainly by the time they gathered for dinner, and it would occur to him just where she was. He and MacJannet would mount a search for her and would effect her rescue immediately. He might even come sooner if he explored here before the privies.
All she had to do was remain calm and not wander away from the door. The sounds of the sea were audible now that the thundering of her heart had subsided. She could smell the brine in the air. Probably there was some sort of grate over the sea hole, but it might have been left open, or rusted away over the years. She had to be cautious about wandering in the dark.
Trembling with cold, Frances closed her eyes against the terrible, pressing darkness, pretending it was only her closed eyelids that prevented her from seeing her surroundings.
For a while she counted the splashing waves, noting that every seventh crash was louder than the previous ones had been. And then she let her fingers take a second inventory of the stone around the door.
Eventually, she grew numb to the cold and even a little bored. It was then that she began to speculate about whose hand she had felt on her back. She did not for one moment doubt that it had been a human agent who had shoved her into the dungeon and then barred the door. A spectral hound would have no need to use doors to restrain her.
It took an act of will to not let the idea that it had been Colin himself who locked her in the dungeon do more than flit briefly across her mind. Colin was a stranger, but not a cruel or evil one. Of course it was someone else who had done this—most likely the inept person who had tried to frighten them with the fake hellhound. And this person had come in through the damaged privy wall, not the dungeon! Therefore there would be no cause for him to return to the basements. And no danger of her being closed in with the chalky hound. She was quite safe, if a bit cold and hungry. All would be well.
Frances began to hum, swaying to her own music as she rubbed her hands up and down her freezing arms.
Colin exhaled in partial relief when he spotted the lantern and the golf club near the dungeon door. He and MacJannet had been searching the castle since breaking their fast, delaying his friend’s departure. One of the women had approached them at the table and told him that her mistress seemed to have gone missing.
“I should have guessed that this would be her destination,” he muttered, hurrying to the door, where he stared unhappily at the thrown bolt.
“Frances!” he called, forgetting formality as he drew back the bar and shoved on the ancient door.
A voice, heard only faintly over the grinding of the door, answered. Reassured, he put his back into the effort, slamming the door into the wall with a clamorous bang.
Before he had even straightened himself, a freezing bundle of dirty woolens came hurtling out of the dark and into his arms. A strangling vise encircled his waist and he found his nose buried in dark hair.
“I knew you would come!” she declared in French.
Overcoming his surprise, Colin closed his own arms about the tiny body and returned the embrace, though with slightly less force than Frances was using.
“I was pushed down the stairs,” she said indignantly, her words muffled by the folds of his cape. “Some vile person crept upon me and shoved me when I was opening the door.”
“Bloody hell!” Involuntarily his arms contracted further, drawing a squeak from the dirty bundle as something cracked beneath her clothes. Colin immediately loosened his hold and stared at her in consternation. “Are you injured from the fall?”
“I am cold and filthy and have a great bruise upon my ribs, but ‘tis only my stays which are broken instead of me.” Frances turned her grimy face up toward his. Her eyes were filled with pooling tears, which leaked upon her pale cheeks. Tiny, smudged hands clasped the front of his cape. “I want you to find the person who did this and punish them. I want them castrated and beheaded and thrown into the sea. I want them burned and strangled and torn apart by horses and lions.”
Colin didn’t even smile at her extremes of passion. Feeling the broken corset stays grind beneath his hands was a demonstration of what serious consequences the prank could have had.
“Be assured that I will find whoever did this, and they will be punished. But come along now. We need to get you to a fire. You are very chilled.”
Her hands tightened momentarily, speaking of her lingering fear and desire for comfort. Knowing they were vulnerable to a second attack in the near dark, it still took an effort of extreme will for Colin to set Frances from him when she was so upset and needing reassurance.
“My dear, we need to leave at once. I did not even bring a sword.” Muttering imprecations at his own carelessness, Colin leaned over and took up the abandoned golf club, putting it into her dirty hands. He noticed that they immediately stilled their trembling. Her posture also straightened. It seemed that golf did indeed have some uses as a calmative.
Some men would have found this action alarming, to be honest, but he was not one of them. Many males preferred their women purely sweet and decorative, but he had always liked some salt to go with the treacle. Frances’s strength and courage were assets, not something to be deplored. He would never want her spirit broken by fear.
Frances retreated another step, allowing him access to the dungeon door. Colin closed the panel into the dungeon and put the bolt back in place. He picked up her lantern and then his own. His movements were unhurried, allowing Frances plenty of time to recover herself before they went back upstairs.
“Are you ready to see everyone?” he asked.
She wiped a sleeve defiantly over her cheeks and nodded regally. “Oui. I am again calm. But let us depart immediately. Tomorrow I am going to send the scullery maids to clean down here. The floors are a disgrace.”
Finally Colin had the urge to smile, but he was careful to do no more than nod. “I think it might be a very good thing to have these basements thoroughly inspected.”
“And then I shall order the door to be bricked up. George will never need to use such a beastly place. I will not permit i
t. We are not barbarians.”
Colin nodded again, not pointing out the inconsistency of cleaning a floor that would soon be closed off from the rest of the castle.
“But first we shall repair the privy wall so there are no more evil persons sneaking about the castle and pushing people into dungeons. Tearlach shall do it. That should keep him occupied so he does not complain all day of cobwebs growing on his useless unmentionables,” Frances remarked with satisfaction as she brushed past Colin, collecting one of the lanterns on the way.
“A most sound strategy,” Colin replied, following Frances closely, though she clearly was in no danger of fainting or hurling herself into his arms now that she had regained her poise.
Colin carefully didn’t mention his belief that it hadn’t been an intruder who had pushed her down the stairs and closed the dungeon door upon her. There had been no chance of anyone slipping into the castle with MacJannet and his unshakeable companion, George, keeping watch at the privies. Brave as she was, Frances needed a while to fully recover her calm before discovering that they likely had a traitor living in their midst. And that this someone was willing to commit acts of malicious mischief, and perhaps worse, to force the keep’s mistress into surrendering her castle to the wrong man—or keeping it for herself. It was rare that females turned to violent crime, but when they did, it was Colin’s experience that they were proficient. He had to wonder which of Frances’s relatives was trying to hurt her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Go fetch me water from the desert,
And blood from out the stone;
Go fetch me milk from a fair maid’s breast
That a young man hath never known.
—“The Unquiet Grave”
Frances found it difficult to concentrate on her weaving. Her continuing absentmindedness at the loom was understandable to the other ladies, given her recent ordeal in the dungeon. They did not have the entire story, Colin having only relayed that she’d had a tumble down the stairs while searching for a whisky cache her father was thought to have hidden somewhere in the castle. However, it was not her aborted search for the spectral hound, nor even her bruised ribs rubbing against the uncomfortable oak straw chair, that plagued her thoughts that afternoon. Rather it was the lingering, strange sensations that being held in Colin’s arms had provoked.