At some point, great iron bars were used to cap the pits, held in with mortar and stone. These pits were in the lower level of the keep but they were accessed in the outer ward by a narrow doorway in the base of one of the keep’s corner towers. A long, cramped passageway led to the former storage vaults, now a prison.
An iron grate covered the access doorway, too, and it was kept bolted. When Blayth and Asmara approached, the Welsh guard from the inside unbolted the grate, pulling it open on sticky hinges. Before Blayth and Asmara headed back into the dark passage, the guard at the gate handed them a torch to light their way.
The passage was narrow and low-ceilinged, as black as pitch if they hadn’t been carrying the torch. The ceiling was black and greasy from the numerous torches that had been used to light it. But the passage was also mercifully short, and they emerged into the former storage area with the big pits sunk into the rock. It was already lit by a torch, but it was hardly enough light to see by, as the space was fairly vast. As Blayth put the torch in an iron sconce, Asmara drifted over to one of the pits.
They were dark and smelled heavily of urine. There were six in total; she could see two men stuffed into one, and then one man in another, but the other four remained empty. They couldn’t have been more than four feet deep, meaning the prisoners couldn’t stand up in them. They remained stuffed into them like corks in a bottle. As she looked at them, she couldn’t help feel that the conditions were rather barbaric. It surely must have been a hellish existence for a man to be rammed into one of these small pits.
Even if the prisoners were English.
Over to her right, Blayth had finished securing the torch and he headed to the pit with the single man in it. Throwing the bolt in the top of the grate that covered the pit, he opened the grate, braced his big legs, and reached down to pull the man out.
There was a good deal of grunting and groaning from the prisoner as his stiff body was moved around. Blayth dragged him across the stony dirt floor until he came to a wall. Then, he propped the man up against it as Asmara came up behind him and unsheathed her sword. When Blayth caught a flash of her blade, he looked at her curiously.
“I told you that you could not kill him,” he pointed out.
Her gaze was on the prisoner, but she tore it away long enough to address him. “This is not to kill him,” she said. “This is to protect you should he try to move against you.”
Blayth couldn’t help the grin. “I see you take your position as my teulu seriously.”
Asmara merely shrugged, her gaze returning to the prisoner. She was quite serious about her stance and Blayth couldn’t help but be flattered. To have the Dragon Princess as his defender made him feel rather important, but it was more than that. Her intention to protect him made him feel as if her feelings on the matter were personal. She wanted to protect him, almost as if he meant something to her.
Was such a thing even possible?
It was difficult not to ponder that very thought as he turned his focus to his prisoner.
The man was in terrible shape. Having been kept in a ball for nearly a month had done awful things to his body. He tried to stretch out his legs, grunting with pain as he did so, and it was apparent that he was a fairly tall man. Asmara stayed out of his range as he twisted and grunted, trying to straighten himself out.
“Tell me your name,” Blayth said in a low, threatening tone.
The man was rubbing the back of his neck. “I respectfully refuse,” he said. “I will not have you ransom my family. I am sure you understand.”
He was speaking the language of the English. Most Welsh in the south spoke that language, as it was important to understand the language of their overlords, so both Asmara and Blayth understood him.
“I do understand,” Blayth said in the knight’s language. “But I do not intend to ransom you. It is my intention to release you but before I do, I want to know your name. I do not address, nor do I show mercy, to men I do not know.”
The man sighed heavily, still rubbing his neck, now trying to straighten out his head and neck. “My lord, I mean no disrespect, but until you release me from this hell, I cannot believe your intentions,” he said. “I have been lied to since the day I was captured and if my lack of belief in your word is slandering your honor, I do apologize. But you can surely see things from my perspective.”
Blayth did. He took a few steps in Asmara’s direction, coming very close to her, before lowering his voice.
“Have the guard at the door send for food and drink,” he said. “Let us show the man some decent treatment because it is an important message I wish to send with him. Mayhap if I show him some kindness, he will do as I ask.”
Asmara nodded, handing over her sword to him. “If he tries anything, kill him.”
She turned on her heel, rushing for the entrance to the vault, leaving Blayth standing there with a smile on his face. She certainly was a no-nonsense lady, unafraid to put a sword between a man’s ribs. He went over to the torch he’d stuck in the wall, removing it from the brace and bringing it closer so he could look at his prisoner. There was a sconce in the wall over the man’s head, so he pushed the torch into it, securing it.
“I am looking at things from your perspective, but you must look at them from mine,” he said to the captive. “You are my prisoner. I can do anything I wish with you or to you, as is my privilege. A captor is not honor-bound to tell a captive the truth, but if you give me your name, I shall give you mine. That shall establish trust, and I say to you that I lie to no man, especially a man with whom I have trust. Would you agree with that statement?”
The prisoner stopped rubbing his neck and moved to his shoulders, trying to rub the kinks out. “I would,” he said. “Give me your name first and I shall consider giving you mine.”
Blayth didn’t hesitate. “I am called Blayth.”
The man slowed the hand rubbing at his shoulders. “Blayth,” he repeated, drawing out the word. “That means wolf in your language.”
“It does.”
“Then my name is Corbett.”
“Do you have a surname, Corbett?”
“Do you?”
“I am a bastard. It would do no good to give you my surname.”
It sounded like an honest answer, so Corbett continued. “My surname is Payton-Forrester,” he said. “My full name is Sir Corbett Payton-Forrester. Now, I will hold you to that promise of not ransoming me to my family.”
“You have my word,” Blayth said. “Will you tell me what you were doing at Gwendraith?”
“I am the garrison commander for the Earl of Pembroke, William de Valence,” he said. “You do know that this is a Pembroke property?”
He was speaking rather easily for a man who hadn’t told Morys anything for an entire month, but Blayth was pleased that he’d been able to coerce the man’s trust, something Morys would have believed beneath him. He folded his big arms across his chest.
“It is not a Pembroke property anymore,” he said. “Now it belongs to the Welsh. A castle in Wales should belong to the Welsh, don’t you think?”
Corbett snorted ironically. “In theory, I suppose,” he said. “But, much like you, I serve a higher power. I go where I am told to go and fight whoever I am told to fight. My presence at Gwendraith was not a personal insult to the Welsh. I am here because I was ordered to be here.”
Blayth’s gaze lingered on the man; he was tall, and he’d been better fed in his life because he looked rather pale and weak. He had hair to his shoulders, some dirty shade of blond, and very large hands. Blayth could see that as the man continued to rub the knots out of his damaged body. As he stood there, Asmara came rushing back into the storage area and he turned to her, noting her serious expression. As she came close, he held out the sword to her, giving it back.
“Did he try anything?” she asked.
Blayth’s lips creased with a faint smile. “I do not think he is in any condition to,” he said. “We have simply been having a convers
ation. This is Sir Corbett Payton-Forrester, the garrison commander of Gwendraith Castle for the Earl of Pembroke. Sir Corbett, this is Lady Asmara. Treat her with respect or you shall have to answer to me.”
For the first time, Corbett looked up. His neck was straighter now and he was able to hold his head up, looking at the man and woman standing before him. But his gaze was on the woman, a long and shapely lady with the face of an angel. But she was dressed like a soldier. He simply nodded his head.
“My lady,” he greeted.
Asmara wasn’t sure how to respond. The man was an enemy, but Blayth’s tone hadn’t suggested anything hostile between them. She looked at Blayth, confused, but his impassive expression told her nothing at all. Her focus returned to the English knight, sitting against the stone wall.
“Sir Corbett Payton-Forrester,” she repeated. “You were in command of this castle, then?”
Corbett’s eyes were adjusting to the light. He’d spent so much of his time in the darkness that the torchlight was like bright and blinding sunlight. He blinked as the light hurt his eyes.
“Aye, my lady.”
“Why?”
“Because Pembroke honored me with the command.”
“Why should he honor you? Who are you to him?”
Corbett could see a very sharp-minded and very hostile lady behind the questions. “My father is a great knight, much decorated in the service of King Henry,” he said evenly. “Because of my father’s service, Pembroke accepted my fealty.”
Asmara’s gaze moved over him, seeing a very dirty and very beaten man. She cocked her head, a thoughtful gesture. “Then you come from a legacy of great English knights,” she said. “But you do not look so great to me at the moment.”
Corbett grinned, his dry lips cracking. “I am positive that I do not.”
“Are you married? Was your wife here at Gwendraith?”
“My wife died a few years ago, my lady. And before you ask, I do have children, but they were not here with me. They live in the north of England, with my parents.”
An English knight with a dead wife. Asmara thought on that a moment, fighting off the pangs of both curiosity and pity. As she’d told Blayth, she’d never seen an English knight before and it was a rare and interesting event.
But she was quickly coming to see something else – that Payton-Forrester wasn’t the omnipotent, fire-breathing Saesneg knight she’d heard tale of. He was human, not super-human, and she saw nothing in the man that suggested he was any better than the Welsh warriors she had ever known, Blayth included. He seemed rather… ordinary. After a moment, she simply shook her head.
“This is the English knight we are all afraid of?” she asked, almost rhetorically. “I see nothing terrifying about you.”
Corbett’s gaze was fixed on her. “Mayhap not,” he said. “But you have yet to see me in battle, my lady. In spite of the fact that I was captured, it took a very long time for the Welsh to do it. I held them off until I could hold out no more.”
Asmara looked at Blayth to confirm the boast. He caught her expression. “I will admit, he was fierce until the end,” Blayth said. “He held us off and then was captured when he tried to escape down the castle walls on a rope. It was only by luck that he was captured.”
Blayth was honest in his assessment and it was clear that there was some respect for the man, from one warrior to another. That made the situation not so tense, which was a brilliant move on Blayth’s part. He wanted Corbett to feel more comfortable so their communications would go more smoothly. An irate or rebellious prisoner wouldn’t be of any use.
His tactics worked. Corbett appreciated the compliment, especially from his enemy. That was the greatest compliment anyone could pay him.
“Thank you, my lord,” he said. “I did my best. I more than likely would have gotten away with it had the rope not unraveled and dropped me on my back.”
“And yet, you are here,” Blayth said. “I know that you have been interrogated repeatedly by my lord, but that has come to an end. You are my prisoner now and we are to have a discussion.”
Corbett was happy to hear that the interrogations by that loud-mouthed Welshman had ended, as uncomfortable and painful as it had been at times, but he was wary of the suggested “discussion”. He was concerned that if he didn’t tell this enormous Welshman what he wanted to hear, then there might be repercussions. He couldn’t even really see the man because of his sensitivity to light, so he couldn’t see his expression to see if there was anything to read into it. He went back to rubbing his neck, his eyes closed.
“Very well, Blayth,” he said. “What do you wish to discuss? But you must know that if you are going to ask me about English future plans for Wales, I will not tell you. In truth, I do not know anything. I am simply a knight; I am not in Pembroke’s inner circle and I do not know what he is planning.”
Blayth moved closer to the man, crouching down a few feet away. “I was not going to ask you that,” he said. “But I am going to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
“I told you that I am going to release you. But when I do, you are going to take a message back to the English on my behalf.”
Corbett sighed faintly, wondering just what kind of message he would be charged with. “I see,” he said. “Then I am to be your messenger?”
“You are.”
“What would you have me deliver?”
Blayth didn’t say anything for a moment; he didn’t want to speak to a man who wasn’t looking at him. The longer he remained silent, the more perplexed Corbett became until he finally opened his eyes and looked up, squinting against the torchlight with bloodshot eyes. Their eyes met, and Corbett blinked rapidly, several times, because his eyes were paining him so.
“Well?” he asked. “Will you tell me?”
Blayth nodded. “I will,” he said. “But I will not speak of something so important to a man who will not look me in the eye. What you are to tell your English overlords is simple – you will tell them that a new rebellion is rising in the south of Wales, led by the bastard son of Llywelyn the Last. Surprised? I can see by your expression that you are. This new prince has led the Welsh to capture three smaller castles in the past few weeks – Gwendraith, Idole, and Llandarog. Soon, we will be moving on more castles kept by the English, and we will not fail. I want you to tell the English who control the south of Wales now. Soon enough, we shall capture Pembroke and all of the large castles as well. Then, we shall move north, where we shall purge the English from our country. Do you understand what I am telling you so far?”
In truth, Blayth wasn’t sure if Corbett understood at all because, suddenly, he wasn’t blinking his eyes so much. He was staring at him with his crusty, red eyes, and his pale face seemed even paler. His mouth was hanging open now, too, and he was clearly shocked at the mention of a bastard son of Llywelyn the Last. At least, that’s what Blayth thought until Corbett uttered one word.
“James?” he hissed.
Blayth had no idea what he meant. “Nay, the bastard son’s name is not James,” he said. “Do you understand what it is I have told you? Acknowledge that you do.”
But Corbett wasn’t listening; he was quite obviously astonished by something, so much so that his hand flew to his mouth as he stared at Blayth.
“James,” he breathed again. “My God… is it you? My God… I hardly recognized you!”
Blayth was increasingly baffled by the man’s reaction to what he’d been told. It was as if Corbett didn’t understand him at all. It didn’t occur to him that the man thought he was someone else, someone he recognized, but the way Corbett was looking at him was making him feel awkward and confused.
“I do not know what you are saying,” he said. “Who is James?”
“You are!” Corbett gasped. “James… do you not recognize me?”
“My name is Blayth. I told you that.”
Tears were filling Corbett’s eyes, his hand still over his mouth. “Aye… it me
ans wolf,” he whispered. When his hand came away from his mouth, he was smiling. “It means de Wolfe! James, it is me – Corbett! You know me! Surely – you know me! My God, man, we were told you were dead!”
De Wolfe. Blayth had no idea why, but hearing that name hit him in the chest, like a physical blow. He could hardly breathe. De Wolfe, de Wolfe… have I heard that name before? Blayth didn’t know, but something about it sounded… familiar. Oddly familiar. In fact, it made him feel quite unsettled and he stood up, off-balance by the course of the conversation.
“I know not what you mean,” he said. “My name is Blayth. Whoever you think I am, you are mistaken. Now, will you take my message to your English overlords or will I lock you back in your hole again? If I do, I promise you that you will not make it out of this place alive.”
Corbett was weeping, overcome by the sight of a man he thought was dead. A man he knew. Or, at least, he thought he knew. James de Wolfe was standing in front of him, looking as if he’d been chewed up and spit out by some great, terrible force, and he had to admit that it didn’t look like the James he remembered. He was bigger, battered, and his head – so scarred. But… he knew that face. He knew those eyes, sky blue in color and a sort of cat’s eye shape.
Aye, he knew them well because he’d fostered with the man for seven years. They’d been squires together, and their families were close friends and allies, but swearing fealty to Pembroke had separated them those years ago. He hadn’t seen James de Wolfe in years before the man had been killed in Wales, and Corbett had been devastated when he’d heard of it.
But now… dear God, now the dead was rising.
James de Wolfe in the flesh.
But he was a man who evidently had no memory of who, or what, he was. Above Corbett’s shock, he could see that the man who called himself Blayth, wolf, either had no idea who Corbett was referring to – or, better still – perhaps he couldn’t acknowledge it. It was possible that the news of James de Wolfe’s death was a cover and James was, perhaps, invested in the rebellion in Wales, perhaps even an agent of Edward in an attempt to control the Welsh. The House of de Wolfe was heavily invested in Edward’s wars, so it was possible that James was deeper than anyone realized.
The Original de Wolfe Pack Complete Set: Including Sons of de Wolfe Page 254