Danger’s Promise

by Marliss Moon

  She would try to contact Alec one more time. Alec owed her a boon for abandoning her at the altar. As soon as she got word to him, Alec would raise an army on her behalf and challenge Ferguson’s right to Heathersgill. Alec would be her champion yet. She had not given up on him.

  It was well past dawn when Clarise awoke. She had missed the morning meal. She had slept until the sun rose high enough to leap the outer wall and pierce the crack between the bed drapes. She opened one eye and groaned. Alas, it was not a dream.

  She was dwelling in the castle of the Slayer. The welfare of the future baron rested on her narrow shoulders. She had her work cut out for her, given the number of times Simon had awakened for a feeding.

  And if that were not enough, her virtue was also at stake. The memory of the Slayer’s caress made her groan again. He’d made it shockingly clear that he desired her. And though she knew in her heart that she could never poison him, she had no intention of becoming the Slayer’s lover. The mere thought made her break out in a sudden sweat. She kicked off the covers to relieve the heat.

  There was no denying reality. She had wedged herself into a situation from which there was little chance of escaping unscathed, unless she dared admit who she was. To do that was sheer foolery. Given the antipathy between the Slayer and the Scot, she would quickly become the Slayer’s hostage. He would think he had the upper hand until he learned that Ferguson wouldn’t pay a shilling for her return. Ferguson would then do what he’d threatened in the first place—hang her mother and sisters in the courtyard.

  Since forcing her mother into marriage a year ago, the Scot had taken all that he wanted from Jeanette, and then cast her aside. The marriage had given him the legitimacy he needed to rule Heathersgill without the peasants’ revolting. Now that he’d established his foothold, Jeanette and her daughters were dispensable.

  With her eyes still closed, Clarise drew her strength from the knowledge of their desperate plight. Jeanette was likely in her rose garden this morning, where she drifted like a wraith among the bloodred blooms. Since her beloved Edward’s death, she’d been mad with grief, scarcely sparing a thought for her three daughters.

  Merry, of course, would be hiding in the woods outside the castle walls, where she would not fall prey to Ferguson’s men-at-arms. In the forest she sought poisonous herbs for her herbal. Clarise was not the only one who plotted Ferguson’s demise, but the wily Scot had all his food tasted before a morsel ever passed his lips. Merry had only succeeded in poisoning a number of men-at-arms.

  Kyndra, who was six, was the only daughter who seemed oblivious to the changes in their lives since Ferguson first killed their father. Covered in filth and grime, Kyndra would be playing in the buttery with the servants’ children.

  Clarise drew a deep breath and let it out again. Somehow, some way, she would find a means to save them all. But she would not sell her soul to the devil to do it. She would not poison the Slayer of Helmesly.

  Nor could she tell him who she was. As long as the warrior believed she nursed his son, she was safe. She would stick to her flimsy disguise and pray that he would question her no further. Simon seemed content to drink the goat’s milk, and all she had to do was ensure a steady supply for him while endeavoring to reach Alec.

  Clarise whipped back the bed curtain and put her feet to the floor. The sight of a tray inside her door gave her pause. It was laden with cheese and bread and—God be praised—milk for Simon. She rubbed a grain of sleep from one eye. The necessity of finding the source of the goat’s milk could be put off for a little while. First she would tend to the matter of reaching Alec.

  The baby awoke at the sounds of her stirring. She fed him the milk until he burped with repletion. Then she changed his soiling cloth, adjusted his swaddling, and viewed her own reflection in a square of hammered steel.

  Dark circles rimmed her eyes. Her hair was a tangled mess and her gown wrinkled from wearing it to bed. While her vanity protested, she knew she would be safer this way. She looked the part of a harried nurse, not a tempting female. The Slayer would look elsewhere to assuage his amorous needs.

  Thrusting aside the memory of his tongue at her breast, she left the room with his baby in her arms and hailed the first person to cross her path. “Good morrow,” she called to a girl staggering under a load of clean linens.

  Rays of sunlight poured through the crossloops, splashing warmth onto the folded sheets. Blue eyes set in a pretty face peered around the pile. “Ye art the new nurse!” the girl exclaimed in the English tongue.

  “Dame Crucis,” Clarise supplied. “You may call me Clare.” Instantly she saw the resemblance between this girl and the one who’d tended Simon earlier.

  “I am Nell,” the girl said eagerly. “Me sister Sarah gives thanks that ye haffe come.” Her gaze fell to Simon. “Sarah raised all eight of us when oure mum and da died. But not e’en Sarah knew how to comfort the wee master. ’Tis a miracle ye haffe wrought. Ye saved me sister from a fate most dire.”

  The word dire hung in the air between them. Clarise glanced down the deserted hallway and stepped closer to the girl. “What happens when the Slayer is angry?” she whispered, recalling the sharpness in the warlord’s eyes. “Does he . . . maim his servants?”

  The color drained from Nell’s round cheeks. “Sarah tol’ me ne’er to speak on it!” she whispered back. “Pardon, madam. Dame Maeve wille be sore vexed with me, do I tarry longer.” She slipped past Clarise with her teetering load.

  Struck by the girl’s palpable fear, Clarise nearly forgot her purpose in questioning her. “Just a moment,” she called out, halting the maid at the stairs. “Can you tell me the way to the chapel? I missed matins this morning.”

  Nell cast her gaze to the floor. “The chapel is in the forebuilding, but it hast ne been used since Our Ladyship wed the lord,” she admitted, clearly crushed by that circumstance.

  Clarise kept her disappointment guarded. “You mean, there’s no priest here?” She required a priest to convey her message to Alec. Merry’s blood! Her spirits took an abrupt downward turn.

  The girl sadly shook her head.

  “Well, how do you confess?”

  Nell brightened. “The Abbot of Revesby visits Rievaulx once a week. We confess to him.”

  “The Abbot of Revesby comes to Rievaulx? But there’s already an abbot at Rievaulx.”

  “Aye, but he ne speaketh English like the Abbot of Revesby doth.”

  Clarise had doubts about enlisting an abbot’s help. “Is this Abbot of Revesby a kindly man?” she asked, recalling the malignant glimmer in the Abbot of Rievaulx’s black eyes.

  “A truly holy man, he be. He hath many differences with the Abbot of Rievaulx,” Nell added, seeing her wary expression. “Would ye like to come with us on Friday? Most folk walken to Abbingdon to hear his words.”

  So there was a way to contact Alec, but it would take some time. “I would like to come with you,” Clarise replied, though she had doubts that the Slayer would let her go. Hadn’t she sworn to keep vigilant watch over Simon?

  Thanking the laundry maid, Clarise bid her good day and followed a wing of the castle toward the east tower. With no luck in enlisting the aid of a priest, she tackled the next most pressing need: finding the source of the milk Simon drank. She couldn’t ask for a mug every time the baby hungered.

  The more Clarise wandered, the more the size of Helmesly impressed itself on her mind. It had been built to house the king and all his men, should the baron be blessed by King Stephen’s presence. Yet as she peered into the guest chambers, she found them all wanting. The beds had been stripped of their drapes. The embroidered cushions had been plucked from the chairs. The chests were gutted. The torch holders were devoid of torches. Had the goods been sold to pay for weapons? she wondered.

  She found herself comparing Helmesly with her own ravaged home. Ferguson had set fire to the hall one day while brawling with his second-in-command. The roof now had holes that the rain poured through, a circums
tance that pained her heart whenever she thought of it.

  In her father’s day Heathersgill had been a lovely stronghold, built at the highest point of the Cleveland Hills, making sieges almost impossible. The only way to take the keep was by trickery. And that was how Ferguson had come to claim it for himself.

  If her father could see what had become of their home, she thought, her heart compressed with grief. If he saw his lovely wife, wasted to a skeleton, her hair cut to jagged lengths, his ghost would haunt the wall walks.

  If something should ever happen to me, he’d often told Clarise, protect your mother and sisters as best you can. He’d raised her much like a son, which explained why he had laid such a burden at her feet. And he could never have predicted that his death would come so soon, while Clarise was yet a maid with no husband to call upon for military might. Nonetheless, she felt that she had failed him. Oh, she’d failed him.

  If there had been any way to stop Ferguson from overtaking the keep, she would have done it. But with a false smile and a humble request for shelter, the Scot had wormed his way into the gates. No one had suspected his intent to poison the lord, then sever Edward’s head from his body. Ferguson had raped Clarise’s mother, then laid claim to the castle himself. No one could have stopped him. Still, Clarise blamed herself for the ruination of her family and her home.

  Simon mewled in her arms, rousing her from such painful reflections. She hurried toward the eastern tower, hoping it would speed her to the kitchens. There, she would feign an interest in livestock and discover where the nanny goat was housed.

  Clarise had almost reached the ground level when the jingling of keys alerted her to Dame Maeve’s approach. The grim-faced servant drew up short at the sight of the nurse in the dim stairwell.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, clutching her chatelaine as a sign of her power.

  Clarise quelled the impulse to check the woman’s tone. The steward’s wife was a superior servant. She would be wise to establish a friendship with the woman.

  “Does this tower lead to the kitchens?” she meekly inquired.

  “Nay,” said Dame Maeve flatly. “Why? Have ye need of aught?”

  “Actually, I missed the morning meal,” Clarise lied. She would determine if Dame Maeve were responsible for the tray in her room or someone else.

  “Then you should get up earlier,” the woman snapped.

  “The lord has instructed me to eat well—”

  “He is seneschal, not the lord,” Dame Maeve corrected her.

  Clarise wondered if the woman’s gray hair dared escape the knot on her head. “I see,” she said. “The Slayer has instructed me to eat well.” She used the taboo sobriquet to fluster the old woman. “I was hoping for a bit of bread and some milk to stave off my hunger.”

  The woman turned as still as stone. Her eyes hardened to match her frame. “You are a fool to use that name lightly,” she muttered. “Do you know how this babe came into the world?” With a long bony finger she made to prod Simon in the belly, but Clarise turned her body to protect him. “He was cut from his mother’s belly while my lady yet lived.”

  A chill swept through Clarise. She’d been told that Simon’s mother died in childbirth. No one had mentioned such butchery.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, rubbing the baby’s back to comfort herself as much as Simon.

  “Ask anyone,” insisted the steward’s wife. “We all saw the blood on his tunic. Her body was still warm when I went to clean the chamber.”

  “None of this is my concern,” Clarise insisted, thrusting aside the horrific image. “But the baby is. I must have nourishment to feed him. And I must have it now.”

  Dame Maeve drew herself up. “Your request will be relayed,” she said, glaring at her.

  “And bread and milk brought to my chamber?” She was pressing her luck now.

  The steward’s wife pushed past her, muttering commentary on the sin of sloth as she stormed up the stairs. Clarise listened to the click of her efficient footsteps. She had meant to make a friend of the steward’s wife. Instead, she’d likely made a foe. With no hope of reaching the kitchens by this avenue, she turned back the way she had come, seeking her chamber, for Simon showed signs of getting hungry.

  The light repast was brought to her door with impressive speed. The page who’d brought it also conveyed a message from the master-at-arms, enjoining her to share the midday meal with him.

  Clarise declined Sir Roger’s offer. We will speak again, the Slayer had warned her. And I will have honest answers from you next time. Not if she succeeded in avoiding him, he wouldn’t. She refused to be caught between the two of them at the noon repast. Instead, she fed Simon with the milk and nibbled at the loaf, hoping to make it last.

  The sound of a horseman leaving the stables spurred her to the window. Looking down, she caught a glimpse of the warlord’s black hair as he guided his mount through the gate. The sight of the Slayer in full armor made her stand at attention. She held her breath, waiting for him to reappear on the road outside the castle walls.

  As he thundered into view, she watched with silent awe. He was armed to the teeth and striking out with purpose.

  Where was he going at midday? And why did she feel disappointment to see him leaving? The more distance between them, the safer she was. And yet she wished, perversely, that he would stay where she could keep an eye on him.

  Dressed in armor, he looked every inch the warlord. The chain mail that girded his broad chest was hewn from dark iron links that nullified the sun’s rays. The leather scabbard across his back was black, as was the hilt of his sword and the knee-high boots. Even the shield that she couldn’t see was black—or so she’d heard—with a small white cross on the upper left corner.

  She’d always thought his device a sacrilege. Now that she knew his name, she understood the cross, in part. Yet the man had no priest in his castle. He was anything but devout—though Sir Roger had insisted to the contrary.

  Still, she knew in her heart that she couldn’t poison him. Warlord or not, he was still Simon’s father. Helmesly would be lost without his iron rule, just as Ferguson desired. And she would not be party to such violent destruction.

  She caught up the pendant that hung from her neck and studied it. The gold globe seemed to symbolize Ferguson’s power over the lives of the DeBoise women. Clarise curled her lip in scorn. She would not be subject to Ferguson’s whim any longer.

  Very deliberately she pulled the chain off over her head. With a flick of her thumb, she unhooked the clasp that kept it closed and swung the chamber open. Lethal powder sat in the silk-lined interior, looking as harmless as a pinch of salt. Clarise extended her arm and held it out the window. With a twist of her wrist, the powder slipped free and sailed lightly into the wind.

  Clarise felt a great weight ease from her shoulders. She snapped the locket shut and looped the chain over her head once more. Then she turned to inspect her lonely chamber. It solved nothing to sequester herself with Simon. She would eat with the master-at-arms, after all. Perhaps Sir Roger knew a priest who could bear a message to Alec.

  Chapter Five

  After hurriedly feeding the baby, Clarise placed Simon in his cradle and hefted them both. Though the burden was heavy, she struggled to carry both the baby and the box down the tower stairs. After all, she had promised the Slayer her vigilance.

  Sir Roger hastened to her rescue the moment he saw her on the gallery. “Dame Crucis, you should summon a servant,” he scolded as he took the cradle from her hands.

  They descended the broad stairs together, drawing the gazes of servants who scurried under Maeve’s stern eye.

  “Where would you have me put this?” the knight inquired.

  “As close to the dais as possible. Let us pray that Simon remains asleep.”

  “I trust you are rested,” he huffed as they neared the high table.

  Clarise murmured something to the affirmative. She took approving note of the r
eady table, the neat appearance of the pages, the freshness of the rushes under her feet. Maeve performed her husband’s duties with daunting skill.

  “Lord Christian looked for you again this morning,” the knight confided, putting down the box. “But I advised him to let you sleep.” He straightened and looked directly at her face. “You still look tired.”

  Clarise turned away from his probing gaze. “The little baron woke me more than once,” she told him. For all his chivalry, she sensed a search for answers in the knight’s silvery orbs. She hoped she could put his suspicions to rest.

  “Come and sit by me,” he invited, gesturing toward the high table. “My lord is gone from the castle for the day, and there is no one but the minstrel to entertain me.”

  As if by cue, the discordant twang of a lute rose toward the rafters. Clarise glanced toward the source of the discord and saw the minstrel she had seen once before seated at a bench on the far end of the hall. He burst suddenly into song, plucking an accompaniment that might have belonged to a different tune altogether.

  Apprehension stirred the hairs on her forearms. There was something familiar about the man, she thought, staring at him harder.

  “Fear you not,” Sir Roger said, mistaking her expression for disdain. “These are his last hours at Helmesly,” he divulged. “I will send him on his way after supper, with coin enough to speed him to his next destination.” He tipped her a smile and helped her up the dais steps.

  She was glad to hear it. The last thing she needed right now was to run into someone who knew her. She turned her attention to the two men already seated at the table. Sir Roger introduced them as Hagar, guardian of the dungeons, and Harold the steward, husband to Dame Maeve.

  When neither man acknowledged her polite greeting, she looked to Sir Roger for an explanation. “Hagar is deaf,” he informed belatedly, “and Harold lives in his own world. Your gracefulness denotes breeding, however,” he added lightly.