“But, fair lady,” Bransen said, regaining his composure, “I named a payment.” He started forward, but Cadayle held him at bay with her outstretched hand.
“A kiss is not a payment,” she said. “It’s given by choice. My own choice.”
Bransen stepped back and studied her. “Then it is true,” he said, feigning sudden and complete despair. “There is another man who calls Cadayle his lover!”
“What?”
“Ah, I have heard the rumors, my lady. All about town speak of them.”
Cadayle waved him away dismissively.
“They speak of Cadayle and a queer little man who works with the monks,” Bransen pressed, thinking himself quite clever.
But Cadayle’s face went very tight.
“Yes, a creature they call the Stork,” Bransen went on, not reading the signs. “Cadayle loves the Stork!”
He finished with a wide smile, one that Cadayle’s hand promptly wiped away with a stinging slap.
For a moment, Bransen’s heart fell and broke. Had the mere notion of Cadayle with his other self so disgusted her?
But the truth spilled forth in a burst of venom from her that shocked the Highwayman. “Do not ever speak of poor Bransen in such a manner ever again!” she demanded. “Do not mock him!”
“I—I did not,” Bransen tried to reply.
“I thought you a better man than that!” Cadayle fumed. “Bransen Garibond’s infirmity is no matter of jest, nor is it his fault in any way. You mock me by calling me his lover—but I would be, do not doubt, if he were a healthy man!”
Those simple words nearly knocked Bransen from his feet and had his heart thumping in his thin chest.
“I thought you different from the others,” Cadayle continued, despite the Highwayman’s holding his hand up to try to calm her. “When you fought Tarkus Breen and his bullies, when you slew him, I thought it in defense of Bransen as much as in the defense of Cadayle.”
“It was,” he managed to interject.
“But you mock him.”
“I do not.”
“Then what?”
“I feared that I was walking over a line in trying to court you,” Bransen improvised. “I thought it prudent to discern your true feelings for the one called Stork.”
“I hate that name. He is Bransen.”
The Highwayman conceded the point with a low bow and asked in all sincerity, “Then you do not love him?”
“Perhaps I do.”
“But you will not marry him?”
“Marry him?” Cadayle echoed with obvious incredulity. “He can hardly care for himself. How is he to care for a family? Bransen will stay with the brothers of Abelle. It is the only place for him, I fear.”
“And what for Cadayle, then?”
“That is for Cadayle to decide.”
He dipped another conciliatory bow. In the middle of it, it occurred to Bransen to pull off his mask and reveal himself to her. How he wanted to!
But he could not. He could not so endanger Cadayle as to reveal himself, and he realized that he had not the courage to do so. She had not declared her love for him, after all, but had merely not denied the possibility.
Bransen wished that he were a braver man.
“You are not the only one who cares for Bransen,” he said.
Cadayle didn’t seem convinced, but neither did she remain overtly angry.
“Do you wish me to leave?”
Cadayle paused and stared at him for a long while, then said simply and soberly, “No.”
“But no kiss for the flowers?” Bransen dared to tease.
“Next time, perhaps,” she said, and she managed a smile. When his grin widened, though, she added, “Perhaps not.”
“My lady, do not play with my heart.”
Cadayle laughed.
“You dare to mock me?”
She laughed again, and he joined in.
A moment later, Bransen remembered the monks had planned to begin returning soon after lunch. “I must be on my way,” he said. “But I will visit again, on my word.”
“Day or night, it would seem.”
“A man’s heart forces him to take risks.”
It was tough for Bransen to turn away from that smiling face, but he knew that time was running short. He ran with a spring in his step, flush with hope and joy, all the way back to the river, where he changed back into his woolen tunic and shuffled his awkward way back to Chapel Pryd.
Brother Reandu was already back at the chapel, waiting for him, seeming very afraid and more than a little angry. “What are you doing out beyond the chapel wall?” he scolded, and he grabbed Bransen by the arm and rushed him inside. “And what have you got in that sack?”
A wave of panic swept over Bransen. The game was over, he realized.
But a call from across the chapel’s courtyard caught Reandu’s attention.
“Come along and be quick!” Master Bathelais ordered Reandu. “Laird Prydae has ordered a sweep of the town to collect funds for Prince Yeslnik!”
“You go and finish your chores,” Reandu said to Bransen, and the monk hurried away, apparently forgetting about the small sack.
Bransen breathed a deep, deep sigh of relief.
He made his way back to his room and fell upon his cot. The laird had ordered yet another round of taxes to be collected?
Bransen lay down and closed his eyes, seeking sleep.
He thought that the Highwayman would be busy that night.
Sweet dreams of fields and flowers and Cadayle swept through him. His body felt again the warmth of the peasant woman’s kiss, but his mind substituted his love for the farm woman. Somewhere deep inside, the sleeping Bransen knew that her kisses would be sweeter.
The exertion of the day, the tumult of emotions, and the energy used in maintaining the harmony of his life energy, were more than Bransen had bargained for, and he was awakened not later that night, but the next morning, by the calls of a brother for him to get up and get to his chores.
So he did, and during the course of that day, he learned that Laird Prydae’s collectors had been especially energetic the previous night.
Perhaps the Highwayman had missed an opportunity.
But the visiting Prince Yeslnik still had to get the treasure out of Pryd Holding.
When Yeslnik’s carriage left Castle Pryd to great fanfare two days later, all the monks were in attendance.
And with the chapel emptied yet again, the Highwayman, too, was out and about.
31
The Sparkle in His Eyes
Bannagran tried hard not to laugh, but his chuckles kept slipping past his tightly closed lips.
“Do not underestimate the seriousness of this,” Laird Prydae warned. “Men like Prince Yeslnik do not take well to embarrassment.” Despite his obvious sincerity, Prydae couldn’t help but chuckle also. Prince Yeslnik’s coach had rolled back to Castle Pryd. The angry young man had leaped from it, running screaming to Laird Prydae that he must capture and kill this “Highwayman beast!” Yeslnik had quickly recounted the encounter with the Highwayman, how this mysterious figure dressed in black had leaped atop his royal coach and had robbed him at sword point of all the monies Prydae had just collected.
Princess Olym had added that this robber had initially dispatched the powries who had initially stopped the coach.
“Do not forget that the prince’s wife was quite smitten with the beast,” Bannagran replied. “Or that Harkin, the driver, was quite grateful. Had the Highwayman not arrived, the three of them would have been slaughtered by the dwarves and Harkin’s wounded friend would surely have died—I noticed that Prince Yeslnik made no mention of the powries at all.”
“The man is angry.”
“Wounded pride will do that to you.”
“He will take that anger back to Laird Delaval. That and an additional tax exacted from Pryd.”
“My liege, we cannot go back to the people for more money and goods,” Bannagran warned. “They w
ill not stand for it. Every tax collector would need a band of warriors to accompany him on his rounds, and there would be bloodshed, I warn you. Much bloodshed.”
Laird Prydae considered those words carefully, knowing their truth but knowing, too, that he could not send Yeslnik back to Laird Delaval empty-handed. How he wished that the young prince had just kept going, all the way to the great river. That would have bought him some time, at least, before he needed to go and collect more revenues for his protecting Laird Delaval. Now he understood the truth, and that realization only made him even more angry at this Highwayman. He would have to take the money for Delaval out of his own riches.
“Post a reward,” he told Bannagran.
“The people love the Highwayman.”
“The people love money more. Post a reward, a substantial one. Promise that anyone who provides information leading to the capture of the outlaw will dine at the castle for the rest of his life. Offer a thousand gold coins. Offer complete access for the informant and his family to the brothers of Abelle and their healing gemstones.”
Bannagran raised an eyebrow at that.
“Master Bathelais will not refuse me in this.”
“I will spread the word through every tavern and every road,” Bannagran promised.
Prydae walked over and dropped a hand on the sitting Bannagran’s shoulder. “You have been my friend and companion for as long as I can remember,” he said. “I need you now. I charge you with capturing and killing this outlaw. He is undermining my rule, Bannagran, and this latest theft jeopardizes the very life of Pryd Holding.”
Bannagran’s eyebrow arched again, showing that he thought his friend might be exaggerating a bit on that last point. There was no doubt, however, that the mere presence of this Highwayman was raising the ire of the common folk against Prydae.
“The people will not be pleased when he is dragged in and executed,” Bannagran noted.
“Bernivvigar will kill him for us, I am certain. And the people will forget, soon enough. But we must get him, and soon. He has embarrassed us—could it be that he will attempt to attack me? To murder me in my sleep?”
Bannagran furrowed his brow. After all, the Highwayman had only killed one man in all of his exploits, and that with the man’s own knife.
“Destroy him, my friend,” Prydae ordered. “Use every soldier and every resource at our disposal. Find him and kill him, and very soon.”
Bannagran nodded.
“You should not be here,” Cadayle said. “You should not be anywhere near the town this night. Laird Prydae’s men are everywhere, searching for you.”
“How do you know that I was the one who saved Prince Yeslnik this day?” Bransen asked.
“Saved? Robbed, you mean.”
“Robbed? Nay, I call it a reward, my lady. First I killed all the powries that would have killed the good young prince, then I took a reward.”
“That is not what they are saying.”
“Do you believe that any nobleman would be brave enough to admit that he was rescued? And by an outlaw highwayman?” Bransen said with a laugh. “No, Prince Yeslnik’s pride will not allow him to include that little detail in his recounting of the encounter.”
Cadayle managed a smile—and her smile truly lit up Bransen’s heart!—but she glanced all around nervously, as if expecting Laird Prydae’s soldiers to leap upon her.
“Perhaps I should have let the powries finish him and his wife before taking my reward,” Bransen went on. “But then, of course, the innocent drivers would have been slaughtered as well, and that I could not allow.”
“But you would have allowed the prince to be killed?”
The Highwayman shrugged.
“And his wife?” Cadayle pressed, clearly distressed.
“Well, perhaps not, though I am not very fond of the lairds of Honce and their ignoble henchmen.”
“They are our protectors.”
“They protect themselves,” the Highwayman argued. “I have seen Laird Prydae’s castle, and I assure you, the man wants for nothing.”
“He is appointed by God, so say the priests. His line is blessed, as are the lines of all the lairds.”
The Highwayman laughed at her, but inside, Bransen thought her words no laughing matter. He had come to understand the “sanctity” of the lairds, anointed by both monk of Abelle and Samhaist alike, each trying to gain favor with the powerful noblemen. The Book of Jhest had told Bransen a different story. The Jhesta Tu mystics outright rejected any special relationship between the secular leaders, of tribes and kingdoms and holdings, and God. But the peasants of Honce didn’t see that; not even Cadayle, whom Bransen considered very intelligent and aware—mightily so, compared to the other peasants.
“Then I suppose that God will not be pleased with me for taking…this,” Bransen answered, pulling forth the jeweled necklace he had pilfered from Olym.
Cadayle sucked in her breath, and the glittering of her eyes rivaled that of the stones in the starlight.
“Lady Cadayle,” Bransen began. “Beautiful Cadayle. If you are to try to convince me that Princess Olym Delaval’s neck is more fit for this than your own, I pray you save your breath and your effort. If God has blessed any woman with the beauty to properly complement this necklace, then surely that woman is you.”
She raised her gaze to match his stare, and still she said nothing.
Bransen moved forward slowly, unthreateningly. She was afraid, he could tell; she was even shivering a little, and not from the chill night air. Bransen reached up and draped the necklace about her thin neck, reaching behind with both hands, and even moving closer to look over her shoulder as he worked the clasp.
He could feel her breath on his neck, so warm, and after he had secured the clasp, he stayed in place for a while, basking in the feel and smell of Cadayle.
Finally, he leaned back so that he was right before her, his hands still upon her shoulders.
“I cannot keep this,” she said, and he put a finger to her lips to silence her.
“Of course you cannot,” Bransen agreed. “But wear it this night, and secretly for as long as you desire. No doubt Laird Prydae and Prince Yeslnik will offer a fine reward for the piece. When they do, say that you found it at the side of the road, and collect your due. For your mother, if not for yourself.”
“I cannot.”
“Of course you can,” said Bransen. “I will scatter a few coins near to the oak at the forward end of this very lane. Say you found the necklace there. The fools will believe that I dropped some of the booty.”
“But—”
“What else am I to do with it?” Bransen interrupted. “I have no need of coin, am well fed and well housed.”
“Then why do you steal?”
“Because I know that I am among the few who can so make such a claim of health and comfort. Because I know that Laird Prydae and all the other noblemen live in luxury while the rest toil for their benefit, even die for their benefit.” He wanted to add, “And because it’s fun,” but he thought it better to keep that a secret.
“And I do appreciate beautiful things,” Bransen added, and he stared intently at Cadayle, grabbing her eyes with his own, and he would not let go. “And truly that necklace is a pale bauble beside the beauty I now see. Upon you, it shines so much the brighter.”
She blushed and couldn’t hide her smile, and she started to look away. But Bransen wouldn’t let her. He brought his hand up beside her cheek and slowly turned her to face him directly. He couldn’t resist her, then, her smell, her warm breath, her beauty in the starlight, and so he leaned forward and dared to press his lips against hers.
To his amazement, she did not pull away from him, and her arms came up around his back, pulling him closer.
For Bransen, there had never been a moment as sweet.
Cadayle pulled back after a long and lingering moment. “I should not have done that,” she said, and she broke free of his embrace.
“Oh, but I want t
o do it again!” Bransen blurted, and Cadayle put a hand over her mouth and giggled.
“But I do,” Bransen said, and it was his turn to be embarrassed.
“Have you never kissed a woman before?”
Bransen thought on that for a moment, in light of his encounter with the farm lady. “One kissed me, once.”
Cadayle giggled again. “Only one? A rogue like you?”
“And how many men has Cadayle kissed?” Bransen shot right back at her.
She grew very serious suddenly. “None before like that,” she said.
Bransen felt his legs go weak. “One more kiss before I go?” he asked.
“Just one, and just a kiss, and then you must be on your way, Highwayman.”
Bransen came forward in a rush, but Cadayle held him back long enough to calm him. Then she kissed him, long and soft and sweet.
The taste of her followed him all the way back to Chapel Pryd, all the way back to his dark and dirty hole.
Callen brought her hand to her mouth to hide her gasp, and she felt for a moment as if she would simply fall over. Never in her life had she ever seen any piece of jewelry as fabulous as the necklace Cadayle was wearing.
“You saw him again,” Callen breathed.
“I found it by the side of the road,” Cadayle said. “Along with these.” She held out her hand, showing the few coins the Highwayman had given her to seed the story.
Callen’s eyes went narrow. “You didn’t find anything.”
Cadayle squirmed, the observant mother noted. “Under the tree, mother. There might be more. You and I can go look in the morning’s light.”
“Cadayle…” Callen said in even and controlled tones, her best mother’s voice. “You’ve not ever lied to me before.”
Cadayle seemed to visibly break, then, her shoulders slumping.
“The Highwayman came to you again this night.”
“Yes.”
The Highwayman Page 32