The Circle Of A Promise

by Helen A Rosburg

  She shook her head. It was too horrible. What she had done was too horrible.

  But she had to tell him. The burden of guilt was crushing. She could no longer bear it alone.

  Mara’s hands dropped to her lap. She took a deep breath and looked Stephen in the eye. “It was all my fault,” she said evenly. “Every death is on my conscience.”

  Stephen had protested, but Mara had continued with her tale. She told him of the secret passage, her disobedience, the peasant she had seen. She told him of her confession to her father, and the precautions that had been taken.

  “But it was too late. Too late. Whoever that man was- and he must have been one of Baldwin’s-he surely followed me back through the passage. It’s the only way he could have gotten through so quickly, before the tunnel was sealed.”

  Mara recalled the incredible sound of the gate as it rumbled open. “It must have been him who opened the gate. Baldwin was able to ride right in.” She had been unable to say more.

  Both Stephen and Jack had tried to dissuade her from her guilt. It was Baldwin, they said, who was responsible.

  No one else. Stephen had even tried to console Mara by assuming his own burden of guilt. If only he had come sooner. If only.

  But her heart was too heavy with sorrow to hear the reason in their words. Mara had not even been able to cry. Once again, she was numb.

  It was a blessing, Mara told herself. How else was she going to pass beneath Ullswater’s gate, return to the scene of the massacre? How else was she going to be able to withstand the terrible guilt?

  She had tried once, briefly, to persuade Stephen to take her on to Bellingham. He had been gently firm.

  “Bellingham is too far, Mara. You need food, proper shelter, and clothes.”

  He had gone on to assure her that Thomas and the other loyal knights would have put all in order. He did not elaborate, but Mara knew what he meant.

  The bodies would be buried. The blood washed away.

  Something had moved in Mara then, something huge and terrible. It had threatened the fragile stability she had been able to erect She could not let it take over, could not allow the tears to fall. She had to be strong. She had to return to Ullswater and face the consequences of her actions. She had to return and atone for the tragedy she had brought upon her family. She must never cry.

  For the tears might be a balm. They might wash away the guilt she must bear forever. It was her penance.

  In the end, she had agreed to return to Ullswater, and now they made the grim journey. Even Hero seemed affected by his rider’s mood, and the beast hung his head dispiritedly as he plodded northward. Stephen, at Mara’s side, rode the brown cart horse. Jack was mounted on an aged red roan they had bought along the way.

  No one spoke, mindful of Mara’s sorrow and the ordeal she had to face. Stephen would have done anything to help her, anything to ease her awful burden, but he was helpless. If only she could cry, he thought, the tears might cleanse her soul and ease the pain.

  But Mara remained upright in the saddle, gaze fixed on a horizon only she could see. She was silent, her eyes dry.

  They continued on through the somber day. Clouds lowered and thunder rumbled. Mara did not look up when a raindrop splashed beside her nose and ran down her cheek. It was followed by another, and another. The sprinkle dampened the coarse tunic Jack had managed to obtain for her. Her hair matted and tangled about her shoulders. The grime that coated her fair skin became streaked.

  Then the rain stopped. Branches drooped. The birds did not resume their singing.

  The three riders continued onward. They were almost home. Although she tried not to look, the familiar countryside registered on her senses. They neared the castle, the castle where her family and friends had been butchered. All dead. Murdered. Betrayed. The litany played in her mind.

  It was Jack, ever alert, who held up his hand and shouted, halting them. “Look there! What is it? A wolf?”

  Stephen squinted and edged his horse closer to Mara. His hand went to the hilt of his sword. All three horses snorted and moved their feet nervously as the lean gray body hurtled in their direction. Stephen’s sword was halfway out of its sheath when Mara gave a startled cry.

  “What?” Stephen threw himself off his mount when he saw Mara slip from Hero’s back. Had she completely lost her senses? A wolf that size-

  But it was not a wolf. It was a deerhound, and it ran straight at Mara, planted its giant forepaws on her shoulders, and madly licked her face.

  Something within Mara was desperate to be free. It was enormous, and it hurt terribly. She squeezed her eyes shut and clung to her dog, fingers wound into his shaggy fur. Alive! He was alive!

  The thing inside her moved. It surged like a tide, pushed at the very fiber of her being as it sought to escape and flow free.

  A light rain began to fall. Neither Jack nor Stephen noticed.

  The tears started slowly. They squeezed from under Mara’s eyelids. A sob issued from her trembling lips, as if torn from her soul. Then the dam was broken, the torrent loosed. She wept until she choked on the sobs caught in her throat. She wept until the force of her weeping drained the strength from her limbs, and she sank to the ground. Trey no longer licked her face but nuzzled her, big head between her breasts, worried by her grief. She clung to him until the strength had gone from her fingers as well, and her hands dropped weakly to her lap.

  Stephen did not realize he had clenched his fists. He did not know his own cheeks were wet until Mara’s weeping had eased. When he looked up, at last, from the woman and the dog huddled on the road, he saw his friends, Thomas and Walter. Their eyes, as well, had a peculiar brightness.

  Unable to speak, Stephen acknowledged their presence with a nod. They stood, silent and respectful, as their lord approached his heartbroken lady.

  Stephen knelt at Mara’s side. He stroked the shaggy hound and noted the blood-matted fur and swollen eye. “Another hero,” he whispered.

  A bright memory flashed through Mara’s mind. The mounted knight who had struck down her father, murdered her mother. Her defensive position atop the table. The angel of death in his shining armor riding down on them. Trey’s brave attack. The red rage that had engulfed her. The vengeance in her heart. Her own savage attack.

  She had tried. Oh, God, she had tried. Her breath hitched on a broken sob.

  She had not meant to be the author of all those appalling deaths. She had tried to avenge them.

  The tears ran anew, but Mara’s exhaustion was so great she could only manage a gentle weeping. This time it was not a raging storm of grief and guilt, but a summer’s cloudburst that cleansed the earth and brought new life.

  Mara did not resist when Stephen took her into his arms. His fingers twined in the tangled hair at the nape of her neck, and he drew her head against his shoulder.

  His mail tunic was cool against her flesh, but his embrace was warm. So warm.

  Stephen felt her arms steal around his neck. He held her, rocked her, and the healing rain continued to fall.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Stephen woke to the sound of cars speeding past his window. Used to the sound of birds, it disoriented him. He attempted to sit up and realized how weak he was. He rolled to the edge of the bed and dropped his legs over the side.

  He was in a motel room. He remembered now.

  He remembered other things as well.

  He had to pull himself together.

  Like most motel rooms, this one had an excess of cardboard cutout advertisements for local restaurants and other attractions. The one closest to him was for a pizza joint. He dialed the number and ordered a large deluxe and a liter of Coke. Then he stripped, left his clothes where they fell, and took a shower.

  An hour later only grease was left in the pizza box, the plastic bottle of Coke was empty, and Stephen felt better. He wondered how long it had been since he had eaten. Five days, maybe. He couldn’t let that happen again. He had too much to do. He lay back down on
the bed, arms crossed under his head.

  It had been smart to walk to the bus station and take a taxi from there. If Amanda called the police, which she probably would, no one would recall an anonymous fare from the depot.

  No one would remember him, especially in the shape he was now, thin, bearded, and haggard. The motel clerk had been half asleep in the middle of the night when he’d checked in. The man wouldn’t remember a thing. He was safe, for a while at least. Until the money ran out.

  That was Stephen’s only worry. The cash had to last until he got where he needed to go, and he didn’t know how long it was going to take. Things were good now. Better anyway. Mara would heal. He was going to take care of her.

  It was why he had to take care of himself. Mara needed him. He had to be there for her. He had to return. He couldn’t get back to her if he starved to death. Or if they locked him away and put him on drugs. He had to stay healthy. And free.

  The lethargy was coming on him again, but it was all right. He had better control now. He could come back to the present whenever he needed to. He’d let hunger and thirst be his alarms. He and Mara had a long road to travel together.

  Stephen’s eyes were heavy-lidded. The sound of the traffic faded away.

  He wasn’t quite certain exactly where he was headed with her yet. Or how the dream figured into it all. He only knew he had to continue on down the road.

  The sound of rain came faintly to his ears.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  It rained and rained. The gray clouds hung low, hugged the earth, and the earth accepted the moisture as a gift. Spring crops flourished. Grass grew green and thick and the livestock fattened. Peasants who had fled Baldwin’s destruction returned and rebuilt their homes. Ashes and blood were washed away.

  Eventually the rain ended. A breeze sprang up and the clouds were torn asunder. The world was new again, the sky blindingly blue. The bright, fragrant days of spring moved toward summer. Mara moved on, as well.

  Although it had taken almost a full day, she had managed to comb the tangles from her long hair. She no longer wore it in plaits, however, but in a single braid wound around the crown of her head. There were other changes, too.

  Her step was slower. She did not hurry everywhere. She was not as quick to smile, and her smile was not as wide. Her laughter was not as joyous, if more profound, and when she spoke her voice was softer. Her posture, while always correct, was now more graceful than imposing, her carriage elegant rather than severe. More importantly, Mara felt different: more balanced, at peace with the child who was, at ease with the woman who had become. She healed.

  Ullswater, too, had changed. When Mara had recovered enough to notice, she was immensely grateful to Thomas and the rest of Stephen’s men-at-arms. They had done her and her family a great service. Their caring and assistance gave honor to the dead. All traces of the massacre had been removed, each body respectfully buried, every grave marked.

  But in spite of its new inhabitants, the courtyard still seemed empty, the great hall lonely and abandoned.

  Once she had her own life in order, Mara tried to restore the castle as well. She had the newly cleaned rooms freshened with the dried herbs and flowers her mother had preserved. She harvested summer’s blooms from the garden and arranged them on the hall tables, as her mother had done. She tended the garden with the aid of a clever youth, the new cook’s son, and it bloomed and blossomed with renewed fervor. Her parents’ graves were neatly kept, and a new kennel rose from the ground.

  But it was not the same. It never would be.

  The realization had been slow but inexorable. Mara was at peace with it now, as she was with herself. The horror was behind her, the future ahead.

  But what future? What did fate intend?

  Stephen had been nothing but kind and caring. He had helped to tend the graves, and he’d offered his aid in every task she set for herself. He had been solicitous, alert to her every mood, compassionate, and attentive. And he had rescued her. Almost single-handedly he had breached Baldwin’s castle. Alone, he had come for her. He was a bold, brave, noble man. His integrity was unmatched.

  But what did he feel for her? What did he truly feel?

  For that matter, what did she feel for him?

  The day neared its end, and the sunset was crimson. Like her parents, it was Mara’s favorite time. She descended the steps of the great hall and headed toward the stable, as had become her habit at each gentle dusk.

  Mara knew she had changed on some elemental level. She was able to recall, clearly, the anticipatory joy she had felt in Stephen’s presence. She remembered how light her heart had been, how full of expectation and sensual delight she could only imagine. But what lay within her now? What did she feel for the man who would yet be her husband?

  Something was hidden deep inside, something she could not quite touch, could not name. It was only waiting to be drawn forth from her. Did it lie within Stephen as well? Was it there, waiting, curled within his soul?

  Trey padded at Mara’s heels. She crossed the courtyard, nodded at Walter when they passed, and entered the stable’s cool, fragrant gloom. Hero nickered a greeting.

  Stephen had been closeted with Thomas in the newly erected kennels. He had had a hound bitch sent from his castle in Bellingham, and had bred it to Mara’s loyal companion, Trey. A new generation was on its way.

  Finished with his discussion, he glanced out the doorway and noticed the ruby light of day’s end. Mara would be in the stable, as had become her wont. She visited Hero twice a day, without fail, at dawn and dusk, to bring him a tidbit from the garden, or a sweet bun from the kitchen. Stephen strode into the courtyard.

  Over the passage of many days, Stephen had watched Mara heal. He had observed the changes in her. He had seen her not only resurrected but metamorphosed- from a glorious, exuberant girl into a stunning woman. The girl he had come upon at the lake was gone. In her place was a startlingly different human being.

  Stephen had been infatuated with that girl. Her beauty, her bravery, her wit and charm had enchanted him. Now?

  Now, he couldn’t deny it; he found himself afraid to approach the woman Mara had become. The flower that had blossomed before his very eyes was perhaps too rare, too exotic, to pluck from its stem. Who was he, after all? A northern baron her father had deemed it politically necessary for his daughter to wed.

  So he had come, and had been mesmerized by Ranulf’s daughter. There had been a bond between them, of that he was certain. But it had been so new, so delicate and fragile. She had suffered much since then, and was no longer the person she had been. Did she still feel for him what had been in her eyes, her words, her laughter, that first day they had spent together?

  Or was it gone, as dead and buried as the bodies of her friends and family?

  There was only one way to find out, one way to know if she held in her heart what he knew he held in his.

  Mara was unaware of Stephen’s presence as he watched her stroke Hero’s neck. She no longer started as easily as she once had, and turned slowly when she felt the hand on her shoulder. The sight of Stephen’s familiar features, shadowed in the pleasant gloom, filled her with quiet joy.

  “Walk with me awhile, will you?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Of course.”

  At Stephen’s signal the gate was raised, and they walked together out and down the road toward the Ullsmere. They had no fear of Baldwin at the moment Stephen’s men constantly patrolled the castle lands, and the loyal tenants who populated them were eyes and ears as well. No one, not a single stranger, could approach Ullswater without notice.

  The low sun glinted brightly off the surface of Ullsmere’s dark water. Tiny waves lapped at the rocky shore, and birds chorused in the surrounding trees. Mara sat on a boulder at water’s edge and smoothed an errant wisp of hair from her cheek.

  “Ullswater recovers well,” Stephen began without preamble. He wasn’t good at small-talk and didn’t believe i
n it. “Your father was a good man, his tenants loyal. Thomas has overseen the estate matters for me and tells me there are no problems. The vassals will remain loyal to Ranulf’s daughter and. and her husband.”

  Mara felt the first butterflies stir their wings in her stomach.

  “Baldwin has been quiet. So far,” he continued, arms folded across the mail tunic he habitually wore. “But we have absolutely no reason to trust him. While I doubt he’d try another direct assault on Ullswater with the bulk of my force here, I’d feel a little safer up north. Bellingham is remote, and I know I have the support of the other northern barons, as well as the Earl of Northumberland. I just, well. I wonder if you. if you’d be happy up there. In my home.”

  Mara inwardly sighed. There. He had said it. Or almost. He still, apparently, wished to marry her.

  But why? The political necessity still existed, of course. United, they could stand against Baldwin.

  But what was in his secret heart? She had to know. Mara raised her eyes to Stephen.

  “I am still willing to marry you, as my father wished,” Mara murmured. “If it is as you wish.”

  She seemed so calm, so serene. What was truly in her heart?

  “If it is as I wish?” Stephen blurted.

  The sun’s last light haloed Mara’s silvery hair. Her eyes shone like gems. Her pale, sculpted lips parted to reveal the tips of her white and even teeth. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And more. So much more.

  Stephen was no longer able to bear the enforced restraint of the preceding days. He had nurtured her, cherished her, given his all to the process of her becoming. He could not stand it any longer.

  He banished the distance between them, then abruptly halted.

  Mara gazed up at him, so tall and broad and handsome. His thick, straight black hair stirred softly in the breeze, brushing the tops of his muscular shoulders. She recalled how he had looked that day she had first laid eyes upon him, and had realized he would live in her heart forever.

  The memory surged in her, powerfully. Mara’s lips parted and she brushed them with her tongue.