The Circle Of A Promise

by Helen A Rosburg

  She was relatively safe, even unaccompanied, on her father’s lands. However, it was never wise for a woman to be caught out alone by a group of men; and Mara experienced a prick of apprehension because, in her haste to leave the castle, she had come away unarmed. Then she caught a good look at the lead rider, black cape flapping like a raven’s wings, and the prick of apprehension turned to a thrill of fear that chased up her spine.

  She might, she thought quickly, wheel her mare and make a run for it. But the animal was already winded from before. They wouldn’t make a hundred yards before being caught. Besides, it was against Mara’s nature to turn tail and flee. Especially from a worm like Earl Baldwin.

  She cursed herself for her thoughtlessness in leaving without so much as the dagger she habitually carried in the silver girdle at her waist. But for Trey, she was helpless and soon to be alone with the most treacherous and loathsome man in all of England.

  Mara held her mare steady and turned to face the oncoming riders. Squaring her shoulders, she let the faintest of smiles lift the corners of her mouth. Her enemy would never know she-felt so much as an instant of apprehension.

  The girl’s expression of disdain instantly destroyed Baldwin’s good humor and set him to fuming. But he would soon wipe that smile from her face. He would crush her lips with his and take what belonged to him. In fact, if he did not, wisely, fear the king’s justice and Ranulf’s righteous retribution, he would have done it right there and then.

  Controlling himself with visible effort, Baldwin pointedly avoided a greeting and motioned his men to surround horse, hound, and rider.

  Mara did not acknowledge the movement of the men to encircle her by so much as the blink of an eye. If Baldwin sought to discomfit her, he was going to be sadly disappointed. Trey growled, but Mara silenced him with a wave of her hand. She gazed levelly at her would-be tormentor.

  “So, Earl Baldwin,” she said at length. “What is this, a hunting party? It must be. I’ve heard this is how you bring down both hart and hind, and particularly the doe: Have your men surround her, cut her off. Cut her down. How clever, Baldwin. How courageous.”

  The earl’s knights had the grace to look abashed. Baldwin felt only rage. He knew an unattractive flush rose to his face, and he fixed his glare on the woman who had lit the fires there.

  “I would mind my tongue if I were you, woman,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “My memory is long. And the time till I take you to wife is short.”

  Mara snorted. “Wife? I’d rather be dead, Your Grace. Painfully.”

  The Earl of Cumbria had never been noted for either patience or restraint. What little he had possessed now deserted him completely. With a hard spur to his horse’s flank, he lunged the animal forward and slapped Mara across the face.

  The blow took her by surprise. The anger that swiftly followed, however, was not hot and heedless as Baldwin’s had been. It was steel-edged, cold, and calculated. Ignoring entirely the men who surrounded her, Mara made a grab for the shortsword the earl wore at his side. Her motion was as quick as the strike of a snake, and Baldwin soon found himself vainly reaching for his weapon already firm in Mara’s grip.

  The metallic hiss of steel whispered in the sudden silence as his men drew their own swords. Mara pivoted her mare, blade raised menacingly, threatening each and every man; then she returned her hard, dark stare to the earl.

  It was the moment Tully had waited for most of his young life. As the newest knight in Baldwin’s retinue, he saw an opportunity for rapid advancement. He felt his blood surge as he gazed at the woman’s unarmed back.

  Mara’s warning came from the expression in Earl Baldwin’s light eyes. They widened slightly; then the fear in them was gone like fog before a wind. Years of training took over at once.

  Having recently worked with the heavy and unwieldy broadsword, Mara found its smaller cousin amazingly light, well balanced, and graceful in her hand. She swung it upward in a near-perfect parry even as she pulled her horse sharply to the left. Steel clanged against steel.

  The quickness of the woman’s defense took Tully completely by surprise. The young knight’s grip on his weapon was momentarily loosened. Mara’s next stroke, driving across from the downward parry, sent the blade spinning from his hand. Just as rapidly, the girl’s mare completed its spin, and Mara was once again face-to-face with the earl. She pressed her sword to the hollow of Baldwin’s throat.

  The earl’s natural pallor deepened. His knights exchanged glances, and Mara spoke to them without taking her eyes from their leader.

  “If another of you moves, I’ll put this point home.” Mara smiled. “Do all your men love you as much as that impetuous young knight, Baldwin? Do you trust them? Or do you think another of them will attempt to disarm me and soon find himself looking for another lord to serve so well?”

  “Witch!” the earl spat. “You’ll pay for this. By God, I swear it!”

  “The only payment you’ll get, Baldwin, is further humiliation should you ever think to come near me again. And don’t bother to waste your time importuning my father-if that is, indeed, what you had in mind. His answer will always be the same, Baldwin: There is no bride for you at Ullswater Castle.”

  The woman’s gall was insupportable, the embarrassment unendurable. In spite of the sword pressed to his throat, Baldwin was no longer able to contain his fury.

  “You forget who you are. Who I am,” he rasped, jaw clenched to avoid excessive movement. “I am the Earl of Cumbria. And you will do as I say.”

  Mara laughed. “Will I?” she mocked. Her taunting smile disappeared abruptly. “I will do only as my husband says, the man my father has chosen for me to wed. A real man.”

  Mara was acutely aware her danger had increased. An expression of implacable hatred slowly replaced the outrage on Baldwin’s sallow features. She was not, therefore, disappointed to hear the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats-her father’s men, searching for her. They had to be. Their timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

  “It’s your lucky day, Baldwin,” she sneered, unable to resist a final taunt “I’ve decided not to kill you.” Before he could react, she flipped his broadsword into the air. It rose, then plummeted to earth and impaled itself in the dry ground mere inches from the earl’s mount Well trained, the animal did not flinch. The earl’s indrawn hiss, however, was audible.

  Mara’s icy smile never faltered.

  Purple veins corded in the earl’s neck. He tried to speak, but rage and humiliation had paralyzed his tongue. Lacking orders from their lord, Baldwin’s men drew aside as Mara rode between them. Without a backward glance, she signaled her father’s oncoming riders to come no farther, but to turn and ride back the way they had come. Spurring her horse, hound at her side, she joined the men at a gallop.

  Baldwin choked, gathered what spittle his suddenly dry mouth was able to summon, and spat. To think he had actually wanted that witch as a wife! Mad. He must have been mad to think the woman good enough to wed! What had possessed him? She was nothing more than an ignorant and foul-mouthed shrew, a whore of a peasant who did not even deserve the merciful death she would soon receive.

  Rages had come upon him like this before. He seldom remembered the actions he took once the red veil descended upon him; he simply responded to the heat in his blood. His roweled spurs bit cruelly into his stallion’s sides, and the beast leapt into a gallop. His knights, albeit reluctantly, followed him as he sprang in pursuit of the woman and her small retinue.

  It was Trey who, once again, warned Mara. The hound had been loping at her side when he abruptly veered away, then stopped. This sharp, angry bark halted all three of the Ullswater riders.

  “We are pursued, my lady,” one of Mara’s father’s men said needlessly. “We might stand and fight, but.”

  “But we are outnumbered. Clearly,” Mara finished for him. It went against her every instinct, but there was no help for it-not with Earl Baldwin’s murderous expression so clear for her to see. �
��Ride!”

  The interlude with the earl and his party had lasted long enough for Mara’s mare to catch her wind, and her guards’ larger, stronger animals were yet fresh. It was a small enough fortune, but they had another.

  Though her father’s land and the earl’s lay against one another like lovers, Ranulf’s castle stood near his southern boundary. So did Baldwin’s. He and his men had ridden a great deal farther than had Mara and her guards. And the earl’s mounts had been ridden hard, as well. The distance between the hunters and the hunted closed, but slowly. Ullswater’s formidable walls came into sight with the earl still trailing.

  “Ullswater, to me!” Mara cried, leaning low over her palfrey’s neck. The mare’s light mane streamed backward and mingled with her rider’s own pale hair. “Gates! Close the gates!”

  Hoofbeats thundered on the wooden bridge. The portcullis creaked downward noisily. Baldwin’s stallion screamed as the earl hauled viciously on his reins.

  She was just beyond his reach. She had escaped. Baldwin’s teeth ground together, and his fists clenched spasmodically. Blood dripped from his horse’s mouth, and bloody foam flecked its withers. As the red veil slowly lifted from the earl’s vision, he touched his glove to a red smear on his horse’s shoulder, then raised his fist to the barred gate.

  “It will be your blood!” he bellowed hoarsely. “Ullswater’s blood will be the next to flow. Oceans of it!”

  Night did not fall so swiftly in the chill, early days of spring. The long winter nights were over, yet the evenings were cold enough still to welcome the warmth of a fire.

  As had long been their habit, Ranulf and Beatrice sat by the massive hearth in the great hall and watched the failing light outside. They enjoyed the relative peace before the evening bustle, when all who resided in the castle, knight and vassal alike, gathered peaceably at the long, rough-hewn tables for feasting. It had not always been thus.

  Beatrice closed her eyes and reveled in the warmth and failing light coming through the tall, narrow glazed windows of the hall. The windows had been one of the first gifts from her husband, when they had first wed. Even then he had feared for her fragile health, and he had ordered the costly glass installed to keep the damp and chill winds outside.

  There were other things too that made Ullswater’s hall one of the finest in the land. Tapestries woven by Beatrice and her ladies during the long winter evenings and blustery days of winter blanketed the stony walls. Fine banners hung between the high windows. There was pewterware for the high table; and chairs, cleverly wrought by the craftsmen of the thriving village that sprawled in the castle’s shadow.

  All was perfect. She had everything she ever wished, more than she had ever dreamed.

  Most precious of all, however, was the peace at reign in the land, hard won and cherished. Armor grew rusty from disuse. Swords were unsheathed for sport or training only. But would peace continue? Would Henry’s laws keep men like Earl Baldwin in check? Or had concord visited the land for too long? Was it soon to disappear?

  “Are you chilled, my love?” Solicitous, as always, of the woman he had loved for nearly thirty years, Ranulf hovered over Beatrice when he saw her shudder.

  “No. No, I’m fine. I was merely thinking.”

  “Of our daughter? Where could she be?” he asked, having missed the slight shake of his wife’s head. “What’s taking those fools so long to find her?”

  “Perhaps she simply rode farther than usual, husband,” Beatrice replied. “She was quite. agitated when she left. You know well her temper.”

  “Yes, and her will. When it’s set for or against something, you’re in for a battle.” As if his words had brought the thought to life, Ranulf heard shouts coming from the courtyard.

  “Ranulf.” Beatrice began. But her husband was already gone, running for the door to the great hall. Heart in her mouth, Beatrice followed.

  Mara had flung herself from the palfrey and grabbed a sword from the nearest knight. She ran to the portcullis, but Baldwin was already galloping his bloodied horse away. Trembling, she stood and earl’s watched the retreating party disappear.

  “Amarantha!”

  Mara turned to face her father. He was a huge figure silhouetted against the day’s last light, a giant of a man. She smiled tightly.

  “I apologize for the commotion, Father. I apologize also for my failure to immediately abide by your will, and the wisdom of it.”

  Lord Ranulf and Lady Beatrice, who stood next to each other, exchanged brief glances.

  “I accept your choice of a husband, whoever he is. I accede to your wishes.”

  “Very well, Mara,” her father responded at last, the question in his eyes, if not his tone. “And blessings be upon the union.”

  So why was there no happiness in his heart? Why did a sudden, icy chill run down his spine? In spite of the lingering warmth and his fur-lined cloak, Ranulf shivered.

  He did not notice, as did his wife, the last rays of light that slanted through the high windows: Rusty red, they fell upon the rush-strewn floor, washing the hall in crimson and staining it like blood.

  Chapter Five

  The house, on the edge of town, was small and neat, very much like its owner. Stephen sat across from Millie Thurman in her tidy, cozy living room and forced a nervous smile.

  “Your house is, uh, real nice.”

  “Thank you,” Millie replied. She had a sweet smile, and her tiny hands were clasped on her lap. Lace surrounded her neck, the only decoration on her plain gray dress. The collar was, Stephen mused, much like the antimacassars that graced the arms and backs of the chairs, or the doilies under the lamps and the potted African violets: new but made to look old.

  “My sister’s told me a lot about you,” he offered.

  “She’s talked to me about you as well, Stephen.” That smile again, almost angelic. “She’s told me you’ve had some difficulties the past few years.”

  That would be putting it mildly. Aloud, he said: “I’ve been, urn, battling depression, I guess you could say.”

  “And the medical community has been unable to help you?”

  He thought he should feel more uncomfortable. Actually, he didn’t feel any discomfort or unease at all. “No, they haven’t been able to help,” he agreed.

  “So you’ve come to see me.” There was genuine pleasure in her tone. “Amanda explained to you what I do?”

  Stephen nodded, strangely satisfied to feel at last the smallest prick of disquiet. “I have to tell you, though, I’m not. not too sure I believe in this reincarnation stuff.”

  “A flower doesn’t have to believe in the power of the sun in order to bloom, Stephen,” Millie replied gently.

  “No, I. I guess not.” He sat forward on the edge of his chair and folded his hands. “Sooooo. what do we do?”

  “Well, I think the first thing I’d like you to do is try and relax.”

  Stephen eased back into his chair. It was a recliner, he noticed.

  “Have you ever been hypnotized before, Stephen?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I’d be a very good subject.”

  “Perhaps not,” she agreed pleasantly. “Some people are. Others are not. Would you like to recline your chair a little? It will ease the strain on your lower back.”

  Though his first instinct was to decline, he found himself adjusting the little lever on the left side of the chair. He did feel better.

  “I understand your difficulties have been going on for a number of years,” Millie said. Her voice was extraordinarily soothing. “Can you tell me at about what age they began?”

  “Yes, I can. Definitely. Because it began so abruptly, with no warning.” He liked talking to Millie. “I was twenty-two. I’d just graduated from college. With a business degree. I was ready to go out and conquer the world. Then.”

  “Then what, Stephen?”

  “I. I was just overcome with. sadness. I suddenly didn’t want to live anymore.”

  “And you’ve
been fighting this feeling ever since.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Stephen nodded again. He felt tears crowding the back of his throat.

  “It would be nice at least to be able to relax for a little while, wouldn’t it, Stephen? To be free of this burden for just a little while?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you let me help you try a little exercise?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. Then close your eyes. That’s it Now, I want you to think about your toes. All your toes. I want you to let them relax, totally relax. Feel the tension leave diem. That’s right Now your feet, the tops of your feet, and the arches. Relax. And your ankles.”

  He felt so light, Stephen feared he might float away. Oddly, it was what she suggested.

  “You’re able to move about now, Stephen, even though your body will remain in the chair. You can float up to the ceiling. Just let yourself go.”

  He drifted.

  “Are you there, Stephen? Can you see yourself sitting in the chair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s very good. Now look up, Stephen. Do you see the sky? See the clouds?”

  Yes. It was amazing. He could see it all. He was up in the sky.

  “The clouds are moving, Stephen. They’re moving faster and faster. Do you see diem?”

  Yes. like a film in fast-forward. Faster and faster.

  “They’re moving because time is passing, Stephen. It’s going backward, into the past. The years are falling away. And you can control it, Stephen. Stop it any time you want.”

  Yes. Yes, he could. He wanted to stop it. Now.

  Chapter Six

  The hare, after the fashion of its kind, froze into immobility. Its brown-ticked fur blended subtly with the forest shadows and fallen leaves, rendering it momentarily invisible. Yet the predators came on: lumbering, heavy-footed. The hare was frightened into movement once more. It leapt from its position, ears still flat to its head, and bounded away into the soft and woody gloom.