“Look,” she said to Maude. “Most of the water is coming from that big vent, the one we could see in the bailey. If something came through that vent, and it was heavy enough, don’t you think that it would fall straight to the ground and not move? It would be buried by the earth coming in after it.”
Maude shrugged; she was intimidated by the task Annalyla wanted to undertake. “Possibly,” she said. “Annie, let’s simply tell Tenner about this. He should know, anyway, considering this is his castle. Show him the hide and tell him what Mawgwen told us. Mayhap, he will help us dig this up.”
Annalyla shook her head. “He does not believe in ghosts,” she said. “He has told me so. How can I tell him that I saw a ghost today, not once, but twice?”
“He will believe because I was there, too. I saw it at least once.”
Annalyla sighed heavily. “He will think we are hysterical women. I only just married the man, Maude. I do not wish for him to think he has married a fool.”
Maude could understand her position. “Is that why you have not told him any of this?”
Annalyla didn’t say anything for a moment. When she finally did, her tone was soft. “Our marriage was almost over before it started,” she said. “Tenner and I have had to endure some unpleasantries, and now we are at a place where things are calm and kind between us. I do not wish to disrupt that with talk of a ghost, Maude. He will think me daft.”
Maude reached out, putting a hand on her shoulder. “He will not think so,” she said. “I have seen the way he looks at you, Annie. There is something in his expression I have never seen before. Tenner is a man of deep feeling, though he does not wish for anyone to know that. But I have known him for four years. I have seen his compassionate and understanding side.”
“You have?” Annalyla looked up at her. “Tell me of this husband I have. I have never asked you to tell me anything, so do not speak on him if you feel it will betray a confidence. But you have known Tenner far longer than I. He speaks so highly of you.”
Maude smiled. “It is not betraying a confidence to tell you that you have married a man of character and quality,” she said. “I suppose the best example of compassion that I can give, that I witnessed, is when Lady Jane injured her head. As the days and weeks passed, it was increasingly clear that she would not recover. Her betrothed, Beau, is a close friend of Tenner’s. While Ivor was cruel in breaking the betrothal with Beau, Tenner showed a great deal of compassion about it. Beau and Jane were in love, you see, and Tenner knew it. He snuck Beau into the keep so he could say farewell to Jane, even though she was not in her right mind at the time. But Tenner made sure that Beau and Jane said their farewells. He was quite sad for Beau.”
Annalyla smiled faintly. “He did not tell me that,” she said. “He told me about Beau and Lady Jane and how sad he was because Beau was his friend, but he did not tell me the lengths he went to so that they could be together.”
“I fear that Tenner de Velt is a secret romantic.”
Annalyla laughed softly. “He would be the rarest of all creatures if he was,” she said. “Even so, he showed great understanding in the situation.”
“And he will show great understanding with you,” Maude said firmly. “You do not give him enough credit for his response. He will be reasonable.”
Annalyla sighed. “Very well,” she said after a moment. “I shall take your advice. But first, let me dig around a little. Just to satisfy my own curiosity.”
Maude wouldn’t stop her. She held the tapers closer to the pile directly under the main vent. “Dig at will,” she said. “Mayhap there is something there worth finding.”
Annalyla got a good grip on the shovel. Trying to keep the hem of her surcoat out of the mud, which was a fairly impossible task, she began to hack at the debris right under the main vent where water was still pouring in. In fact, the water softened the debris, which came apart with surprising ease. It was very wet, and moldy, and smelled terrible once she started breaking it apart. But she hacked at it, loosening it up and shoveling it away, as Maude stood there and held out the light with one hand, pinching her nose with the other.
The more Annalyla plowed into the dirt with the old iron shovel, the more determined she seemed to become. She was almost frantic in her movements, poking and chopping with the shovel one moment, then scooping up dirt the next and tossing it into another pile.
Soon, decades of earth began to fall away. There were leaves from the old Davey Elm tree outside, and sometimes they would come across nails from a horse’s shoe. They discovered more than one decomposing rat, which Annalyla tossed away with disgust. They found shoes, spoons, and even a dagger. So much debris as Annalyla carved away the layers of time, looking for a lost amulet that probably wasn’t even there. But she had to try; for the sake of a man who had been wrongly killed, she felt very strongly she had to try.
“Maude,” she said as she hacked away at a section just beneath the vent. “Did you know Arlo before you married him?”
Maude nodded her head. “Aye,” she said. “I met Arlo when we were both fostering at Berkeley Castle.”
“And you knew you loved him when you met him?”
Maude grinned. “Mayhap not at the first, but certainly shortly thereafter,” she said. “I wrote to my father and told him that I wanted to marry him. It was my father who then offered Arlo a betrothal.”
“And he took it right away?”
“He took it gladly.”
Annalyla paused. “I have been thinking what it must have been like to have loved a man and watched him die,” she said, her movements with the shovel slowing. “The woman, Anyu, who wore the horse amulet had to watch her husband die. I cannot imagine what madness I would feel if I had to watch Tenner die.”
Maude sobered. “It must have been horror beyond belief,” she said softly. “I would pray for death as well if Arlo was killed before me.”
Annalyla resumed chopping away at the hardened earth. “I suppose that is why this is important to me,” she said. “I have a new husband. I am not ashamed to say that I adore him. But for Anyu and Faustus, they were helpless against the people that killed them. It is not fair.”
“Nay, it is not.”
“And the ghost… he wants what belonged to his wife and I feel strongly that I must find it for him. Now that I have experienced such happiness… I cannot explain it better than that. I must help him.”
Maude watched her as she hacked away at the mud, tossing aside shovelfuls of it. Looking around, she found a place to perch the sconce on a dividing wall near the middle of the vault.
“I shall find something to dig with and help you,” she said quietly. “Mayhap, we will find what we need to find faster.”
Annalyla smiled gratefully at her as the woman disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a long iron spit, one used to roast meat over the open fire. As she used the sharp end to hack into the mud, Annalyla shoveled it away. Maude would loosen and Annalyla would shovel it away.
They went on like that for quite some time. In fact, the tapers began to burn lower, which told them they’d been at it at least a couple of hours. Annalyla’s arms told her much the same; they were beginning to ache. Maude moved over to a rather deep hole that Annalyla had dug out earlier, one that was almost directly beneath the vent, and began jamming the iron rod into the sides of it to break up more mud. Annalyla scooped up a shovelful of earth and as she dumped it in the corner with the rest of the softened dirt, something caught her eye.
Setting the shovel aside, she knelt down, pawing through the dark, wet earth until she came to what she’d seen. It was small and white, and as she brushed the dirt away, she quickly realized what it was.
Part of a tooth.
Horror and shock swept her, but she kept her head. “Maude?” she said. “Come quickly.”
Maude hustled over the slippery mud until she came to Annalyla’s side, kneeling down next to her. “What is it?”
Swallowing hard, Annalyla hel
d up the object. “Look.”
Maude took it and she, too, paled when she realized what it was. “God’s Bones,” she hissed. “A tooth.”
Annalyla nodded. “Do… do teeth burn?”
Maude shrugged, looking to the area she had just come from. “I do not know,” she said honestly. “Let us see what else is in there.”
It was a gruesome thought, but Annalyla followed Maude back over to the pit that was directly below the vent. The two of them got down onto their knees, resigned to the fact that they were dirty and muddy, and began to dig around in the pit with their fingers. They became even dirtier and muddier. At one point, Maude went to retrieve the tapers so they would have better light in the depths of the hole.
Then, they began to see all sorts of things.
Pieces of burned wood and mud that smelled faintly of rot. The exact scent was difficult to describe. They were pulling out a great deal of burned wood, setting it aside and then digging down for more. Annalyla then began pulling out pieces of something hard, something she wasn’t quite sure what it was until one of them had a knuckle on the end. Sickened, she handed it to Maude, who looked equally distressed.
“It’s a bone,” Maude said softly.
“It could be an animal bone,” Annalyla suggested.
Maude nodded and set the bone aside, but they both knew that the chances of it being an animal bone were slim. It made their stomachs roll, but they couldn’t stop now. They were on to something. They began pulling out more and more pieces of bone, some of it large, some of it small, setting it all aside. When Maude began digging at something stuck in the earth, trying to dig around it, both she and Annalyla realized that it was the round part of a skull.
They stopped.
Maude stood up and moved away, feeling ill and frightened, but Annalyla couldn’t give up. Without saying a word, she found her shovel again and started to dig again. She dug furiously, her hair falling over her face, sweat beading on her brow. She was possessed with her determination to find something of legend, something that had belonged to a woman once loved by a man who was wrongly killed.
Perhaps it was all madness; perhaps she would never find it. But she wasn’t prepared for that. Had this situation, or this legend, become known before she married Tenner, maybe she wouldn’t feel so determined to find what, perhaps, could not be found. But all she could think of was the writing on the hide, and how Faustus de Paura spoke of his dear Anyu. He had loved the woman; Annalyla could sense it. She could feel it. All of the legends and curses in the world couldn’t speak to her heart the way a few small words on brittle hide had.
Now that she had married Tenner, and now that she understood what it meant to be consumed with someone, she felt great pity and compassion for Faustus and Anyu, and the wrongs committed against them. Death had separated them, yet Faustus was still at Baiadepaura, still lingering. If it was because of the amulet, then Annalyla wanted to help him. Perhaps, that was what was really behind all of this… now, she understood what it was to love someone for, in truth, she loved Tenner.
She couldn’t remember when she hadn’t.
It wasn’t even a startling revelation; the thought entered her mind gently and she accepted it, as natural as anything on earth. She loved the man, and all was right in the world. Therefore, all she could think of was what it would be like to have been cruelly separated from Tenner, watching him die and being unable to help him. The very idea ate at her, so that was why finding the amulet – if it even existed – was so important to her. In fact, there were tears in her eyes as she chopped and dug, shoveling out dirt until her arms were sore and shaking.
Shovelfuls of bones came out, and the partial skull that had been buried in the mud. As horrifying as it was, she pushed past the horror of it, aiming for the ultimate goal. She set everything aside in a careful pile, keeping it all together, and soon enough, Maude rejoined her, helping her dig a little more. But time was passing, and the tapers were burning lower. Maude’s soft voice finally filled the air.
“Annie,” she said. “It is time to stop. We have many other things to do, including an evening meal to oversee, and this will simply have to wait. Annie? Do you understand me?”
Annalyla did. Gradually, she slowed down, but only because her arms were badly aching. She could hardly raise the shovel any longer. Discouraged, and saddened, she sat down next to the pit, looking down into the darkness of it and seeing that more water from the rain was trickling into it. Soon enough, the pit would fill again. All of her work would be for naught. Wiping at the tears on her face with the back of her hand, she set the shovel down.
“I so wanted to find it,” she whispered tightly. “I wanted to help this ghost, this man, who has waited two hundred years to find a part of his wife he has been missing all of these years.”
Maude looked at the pile of bones against the wall where they had carefully placed the piles. “But I think we found him, and that is something,” she said gently. “What you have done today is very noble, but it is time to tell Tenner. Show him the hide. Tell him what we found down here. Those bones deserve a Christian burial.”
Annalyla nodded, turning to look at the bones as well. “They must be Faustus and his wife,” she said. “Don’t you think? They were washed down here by the years of rains, the only pieces left of them after being burned to death. I wonder… I wonder if we do not find the amulet, if the ghost will be satisfied that we’ve found his bones? Mayhap he’ll be satisfied if we bury him.”
Maude could only shake her head. “I do not know,” she whispered. “I hope so. Come along, sweetheart. Get up. Let us find Tenner and tell him our story.”
Resigned and saddened, Annalyla nodded. She passed once last glance at the pit as she prepared to rise and, as she did so, something glistened in the weak candlelight. Curious, she reached her hand down into the pit. There was something shiny sticking out of the side of the hole, partially uncovered, and she put her fingers on it, trying to pull it out. It didn’t come easily, so she dug around it with her fingertips, finally able to pull it out.
It was something gold.
But the gold was dark and twisted, and Annalyla looked at it curiously. In fact, Maude saw it, too, and she held up the iron sconce so they could both get a better look at it.
“What is it?” Maude asked.
Annalyla shook her head. “I am not sure,” she said. It was caked with mud so she splashed it around in the runoff water to wash it off. Then, she held it up again. “It is gold, whatever it is, but it looks broken, like part of it has been destroyed. It is twisted and…”
She suddenly stopped and her eyes widened as she rubbed her fingers across the gold, trying to clean out the little grooves that were caked with dirt. She rubbed it on her skirts, cleaning it further, before holding it up into the light again. Then, her face lit up when she saw what looked like half of a horse’s face.
“Look!” she said, excitement filling her tone. “Maude, it’s a horse’s face! I see a nose, an eye, and an ear. Do you see it?”
Maude grabbed it from her, holding it next to the candlelight. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she, too, saw what looked very much like a horse’s head.
“My God,” she gasped. “It… it does look like a horse’s head. I cannot believe it!”
“It’s the amulet!” Annalyla cried. “Maude, it’s the amulet!”
Maude could hardly believe it. “Is it possible?” she breathed, looking at the pit they’d been digging in with utter astonishment. “Is it really possible that we found it in all of this mess and madness?”
Annalyla was almost delirious with joy. “What else could it be?”
Maude was trying to be logical, but it was difficult. “A coin,” she said. “A charm. A man’s charm? Men carry pieces for luck, you know.”
Annalyla refused to believe that they’d found anything other than what they’d been looking for. She began to laugh with excitement.
“It is Anyu’s horse,” she insiste
d. “It is, I know it!”
Maude wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. “It does not look like an amulet,” she said. “It is broken and twisted, and it does not look as if it belonged to a woman.”
Annalyla was still staring at the horse’s head. “If it fell into a fire, then the fire would soften the metal, wouldn’t it?” she said. “Mayhap, the fire damaged it. It is only a small piece of something, but how could it be anything else other than the amulet? We found it with the pile of bones that have char marks on them!”
Maude didn’t have an answer to that. Annalyla’s excitement was catching and she reached out with her dirty hands, pulling Annalyla to her feet.
“Come on,” she said. “We must find Tenner. The man needs to know what is happening, Annie. We can no longer keep it from him.”
Annalyla was the first to agree. She no longer had any fear of telling Tenner about the hide, and the ghost, and most of all, the horsehead amulet, not when she had the proof in her hands. In fact, she was more than eager to tell him.
With the broken amulet tucked into her dirty palm, she was the first one out of the vault and through the kitchen, racing for the keep to tell her husband what she had discovered. Perhaps, the curse of Baiadepaura was about to be lifted once and for all. And perhaps, a wandering ghost was to finally know satisfaction.
She could only hope that was true.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I told you that I do not believe in ghosts or curses.”
Those were the first words out of Tenner’s mouth as Annalyla and Maude faced him in the master’s chamber that faced south, overlooking the turbulent sea. For Annalyla, who had raced into the chamber so gleefully to tell him what she’d discovered, his words were like a punch to the gut.
“But…” she said, shocked. “But Maude told you what she saw. I saw it, too. We both heard it. And we have been digging in the vault all afternoon. We found burned bones and we found this – the amulet.”
Bay of Fear (Battle Lords of de Velt Book 3) Page 16