The Warrior

by Nicole Jordan

  “No, he will only teach the fool boy a lesson.”

  She shook her head. It washer fault that Gilbert’s life was at risk; that his stubborn loyalty had driven an unskilled youth to challenge a mighty warlord in combat.

  “The boy’s discipline has naught to do with you,” Payn said quietly, as if reading her mind. “He was mad to defy Ranulf like that, especially before his liegemen and serfs. A lord cannot allow his authority to be undermined so flagrantly.”

  “I know,” Ariane whispered hoarsely. “But I am the one Ranulf should punish.”

  “I expect he will, demoiselle,” Payn admitted in a troubled tone. “I have rarely seen Ranulf in so dangerous a mood. When he is angry he bellows and blusters and knocks heads together. When he is furious he is deadly calm.”

  She did not need Payn to tell her that her situation was dire.

  He came to a halt at the head of the stairwell, looking down at her somberly. “I cannot help you, my lady. Your best course is to tell Ranulf what he wishes to know—the full truth. He despises dishonesty, in women most of all.”

  “I have not lied to him,” she said weakly, her heart aching.

  “Have you not, my lady?” Payn replied, his tone cool.

  He lit a rushlight from a burning wall torch and used it to illuminate the descent past the kitchens and down a narrow flight of stone steps. The Claredon dungeon was little more than a dark hole beneath the tower kitchens—cold and damp and crawling with vermin. Ariane shuddered as Payn stepped aside to allow her to enter the tiny cell. She had to stoop to keep her head from brushing the ceiling.

  She sank to her knees and drew the edges of her mantle protectively about her, watching gratefully as he lit a torch for her. At least she would not be imprisoned in the dark.

  “I am sorry it came to such a pass, truly. I had more faith in you.”

  She heard the disappointment in Payn’s tone, the quiet censure, as he turned to go.

  Ariane hung her head in despair, unable to answer. The heavy door slowly swung shut, leaving her a prisoner, alone with the echo of her own thudding heartbeat and her prayers for her foolishly loyal brother.

  Outside in the bailey, Ranulf forced himself to deliver the boy’s punishment. Gilbert had refused to withdraw his challenge, even when offered an opportunity to reconsider his rashness.

  Ranulf had to give the lad credit for courage. Gilbert fought like one possessed, though his lack of skill was pitiful.

  Holding the unfamiliar sword with two hands, the boy swung wildly, most often swishing air instead of encountering steel. Struggling under the unaccustomed weight of the hauberk, he seemed barely able to keep his footing.

  Ranulf had no difficulty defending himself, easily eluding his opponent’s awkward blows. He struck back with the flat of his blade, never cutting, hitting mailed thighs or torso and drawing back swiftly. The boy’s body would be covered with painful bruises on the morrow, but he would live to tell the tale of his armed combat. And this youth deserved to be taught a lesson in obedience to his overlord.

  The confrontation did not last much longer. Ranulf’s overwhelming superiority only seemed to increase the boy’s fury, but he allowed only one concession to pain; he cried out once when Ranulf’s sword struck his ribs. Soon, however, Gilbert was staggering with exhaustion. Eventually he stumbled to his knees, allowing Ranulf to act. In an instant, Gilbert found a sword point pressing at the vulnerable hollow beneath his chin.

  Undeterred by the blade at his throat, he glared with hate-filled eyes as he knelt in the mud, just as Ranulf remembered glaring at his despised father.

  “If you harm her,” Gilbert vowed hoarsely, “I will kill you! I swear, I will make you pay!”

  “Are you an imbecile, boy?” Ranulf replied in an icy tone. “Or mayhap you simply have a death wish.”

  “A death wish, aye. I wish you dead!”

  One of Ranulf’s vassals stepped forward with clenched fists, as if to strike the lad. “Curb your witless tongue, insolent cur!”

  Ranulf pressed the point harder against the boy’s flesh.

  Gilbert grimaced in pain, but kept his blazing eyes focused on Ranulf, his anguish and fury spilling out. “What kind of knight is it that makes war on women? A coward! I have the right to defend my lady sister! You forced yourself on her, dishonored her—and now sentenced her to the dungeon, and all for naught!”

  He practically spat the words, ignoring the dangerous stillness that had come over his lord. Clenching his sword hilt, Ranulf inhaled a steadying breath, knowing he had to shut the boy up or deliver a more severe punishment merely to maintain his authority—if he did not wind up killing the whelp first.

  Before he could decide how to act, though, Gilbert continued his blind tirade. “I tell you she is innocent! She protects no rebels!”

  Ranulf went rigid, his gaze sharply focusing on Gilbert’s face.

  Wondering what the boy knew, he glanced grimly around them. “Leave us.” With a curt gesture, Ranulf dismissed the crowd of gawkers, scattering them like sheep and sending his men about their business.

  Lowering his sword point from Gilbert’s throat, he grasped a handful of the boy’s fair hair and forced his head up. “You know where she goes in the forest?”

  “Aye . . . but I will never tell you!”

  Physical threats would not break the lad, Ranulf knew. Not when he had worked himself into such a frenzy. “Mayhap your tongue will loosen if I flog your lady before your eyes.” His threats to harm Ariane were false, but if the boy believed, he would more readily divulge the secret she was keeping.

  Gilbert swallowed convulsively, his eyes showing fear for the first time. After a long hesitation, he asked, “If I tell you . . . you will spare her the lash? You will bring her out of the dungeon?”

  “Do not think to bargain with me, boy! Tell me what you know and we shall see.”

  “You can take her word as true,” Gilbert muttered, lowering his gaze.

  “Whom does she meet? Rebels or lover?”

  Curling his bleeding mouth, he made a scoffing sound. “She knows no rebels—and you are her only lover.”

  “God’s teeth, how can you possibly make such a claim?”

  “I was the one who brought her the calf’s liver to stain the bedsheets with ‘virgin’s blood.’ ”

  Ranulf stared at him a long moment, knowing instinctively the boy was telling the truth. “Whom does she meet, then?” he repeated tersely.

  “I know not, but ’tis not rebels. For several years she has been making those visits.”

  “How know you that?”

  “I . . . I followed her one day.”

  “You spied on your lady?”

  “I . . . worried for her safety. That day . . . she went alone. Usually our father, Lord Walter, accompanied her.”

  “I am waiting,” Ranulf said warningly when the boy fell silent.

  “I have kept her secret these many years.” Gilbert hung his head. “She will never forgive me if I tell you.”

  “I will never forgive you if you do not,” Ranulf replied grimly. “Or her.”

  A long pause followed. “She goes . . . to a hut in the forest.”

  “To meet someone,” Ranulf prompted.

  Gilbert nodded slowly. “They are women . . . two of them, I think. I was only afforded a brief glimpse. Their faces were veiled, their hands bandaged. Milord, I fear . . .” He looked up, his voice tinged with horror. “I fear they are lepers.”

  19

  The quiet footsteps outside her cell door roused Ariane from a despondent stupor. Her head came up sharply as the heavy bar was lifted. It seemed like an eternity since Payn had left her to her cold prison, but more likely it had been scarcely an hour.

  With her back rigidly pressed against the cold wall, her arms wrapped around her knees, she stared in trepidation as the door slowly swung open.

  The young man who peered through the entrance was a squire of Ranulf’s, Ariane realized with wary relief.
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  “Lord Ranulf bade me bring you to him.”

  “W-What . . .” she began in a croaking voice. Stopping, she swallowed the dryness in her throat and tried again. “What does he want with me?”

  “I know not, my lady. I only know what he commanded. If you will come with me?”

  “Please . . . could you tell me . . . my brother Gilbert. Do you know of his fate?”

  “I do not believe he was harmed, but my lord had him confined.”

  Vastly relieved, Ariane climbed to her feet and followed the young man.

  Preceding her up the narrow stone stairway, the squire led her, not to the solar, as Ariane expected, but through the great hall and outside to the bailey. Ranulf awaited her below at the foot of the tower steps, astride his destrier. She blinked at the sight of him in the bright afternoon sunlight, but forced herself to descend. He looked prepared for battle. He still wore his mail armor, with a sword belted at his waist and a shield bearing his black dragon device attached to the saddle.

  Beneath his helm, his features remained expressionless, enigmatic, as he silently reached down to her. He was offering his hand, evidently expecting her to mount before him. Ariane shivered, despite the warmth of her mantle and the balmy spring afternoon, but she obeyed, not daring to speak as Ranulf settled her sideways before him and set his warhorse in motion.

  He offered no explanation as they rode through the gates and across the drawbridge, but when he turned the charger toward the east, her apprehension turned to dread. The forest! He was taking her there, she knew it. He would force her to betray what she held most dear. Sweet God in heaven . . .

  “My lord . . . please . . . I beg you to turn back.”

  He made no reply.

  “Please, Ranulf . . . Ibeg you.”

  “You beg me?” he repeated softly, his voice edged with ice. “Why should I listen to your pleas after the treachery you have shown?”

  “It was no treachery, I swear! I will do anything you ask, give you anything you ask, if only you will not press this—”

  “What have you left with which to bargain, wench? Your demesne is mine, you are mine.”

  His harsh retort permitted no argument. Her fingers clenching in the horse’s mane, Ariane fell helplessly silent, knowing further entreaties would be futile. She could feel the steel mesh of his hauberk at her back, as cold and rigid as the man himself.

  Tears of anguish slipped heedlessly down her face, tears to which Ranulf paid no heed. He hated the look he had put into her eyes—haunted, agonized—yet he forced himself to disregard it. The witch had deceived and betrayed him, and might very well be seeking to destroy him. He would not let himself soften; he did not dare, or she would exploit his weakness for her.

  He needed no direction from her, but seemed to know precisely where he was headed. They crossed the meadow where Ranulf had discovered her that morn, and plunged into the wood. Sunlight speared through tall oaks and birches, the branches adorned with the new leaves of spring.

  Ariane’s terror grew with each step they traveled, a terror that communicated itself to their mount. The horse snorted and pranced, requiring Ranulf to resort to the sharp discipline of bit and spur.

  The glade grew thicker the deeper they rode, until finally it seemed to close around them. Ranulf pressed on, through a narrow opening in a dense thicket. When the cotter’s hut came into view, he drew the destrier to a halt.

  The hovel was old and shabbily constructed of wattle and daub, with a thatched roof that badly needed patching. Shuttered, it had a look of desertion about it, an aura of death.

  “What is this place?” Ranulf demanded quietly.

  Ariane could not speak. Her breath was trapped in her lungs by a terrible constriction; a vise gripped her heart like a gauntleted fist.

  She was sobbing mutely now, yet Ranulf hardened his heart against her tears. He would not permit her to sway him with such ploys, or to manipulate him into clemency. She could protect herself with such tactics no longer. He drew his sword.

  “You there within the hut! Show yourselves or face the wrath of the lord of Claredon!”

  His demand was met with silence at first. Moments later, however, a hinge creaked as the dilapidated door swung inward.

  Ranulf’s hand tightened around his sword hilt as a shadowed figure stepped out into the light, gowned in black.

  She was tall for a woman, and carried her slender form with a familiar regal grace. Her face was veiled, her hands wrapped in dark bandages.

  “My lord Ranulf,” she said in a sweet, low voice, sweeping him a deferential curtsey. “How may I serve you?”

  Ariane choked on a strangled sob and bowed her head. “Dear God, forgive me,” she whispered.

  “Do not blame yourself, daughter. It was only a matter of time before we were discovered.”

  Raising her hands, the woman lifted her veil to expose her face. The aging features must have been beautiful once, in her youth. Yet her ravaged skin showed the unmistakable signs of leprosy.

  Ranulf recoiled at the sight, feeling as if a fist had plowed into his stomach. Even battle-hardened as he was, he could not be sanguine about the dread disease. And yet it was not the affliction that shocked him to the core, but the identity of the woman herself.

  She had been present at his betrothal five years earlier, seated at a place of honor at the dais. He had known her as the lady of Claredon, then. The wife of Lord Walter, the mother of his intended bride.

  “My Lady Constance?” he breathed when he could find his voice.

  Ariane’s mother smiled faintly. “As you see, my lord. I regret I could not greet you under . . . happier circumstances.”

  “They told me . . . you were dead.”

  “I am—to the world. I live hidden here in the forest, with my tirewoman.”

  “But . . . why?” was all Ranulf could think of to say. His head reeled, not only from the startling truth, but from the implications. Was this the secret Ariane had kept from him?

  Another dry smile touched the Lady Constance’s lips. “Because I would not be welcomed elsewhere. You are aware, I am certain, of the treatment lepers receive at the hands of the unafflicted.”

  Yes, he was aware. The malady was so feared, the unfortunate victims were often hunted from their homes and cast out from civilization, some even stoned to death.

  She gestured graciously at the hut behind her. “I would invite you into my humble abode to partake of a glass of wine, my lord, but such close contact would not be wise. In truth, I usually do not allow Ariane to come as close as you are now, for fear of contamination.”

  Ranulf shook his head mutely in an effort to clear it. All he could focus on was Ariane—and what her forays here meant.

  He stared down at her bent head, but with her sitting sideways in the saddle before him, all he could see was her profile. Catching her chin in his gloved fingers, he turned her face around to his, gazing intently into her tear-filled eyes. “This is your secret?”

  Swallowing a sob, she nodded, trying earnestly to stem her weeping. Yes, this was her terrible secret: that her mother had not perished years before as the world believed, but suffered from a disease that roused horror and dread among villeins and nobles alike.

  “I had to come. They needed food. . . . It had been so long . . . their need was dire.”

  A huge constriction lifted from Ranulf’s chest; the anger, the pain, the bitterness, began to unravel. He felt shock and pity that so lovely a lady as Constance of Claredon had been ravaged by so terrible a disease, yet his relief was greater, more fierce. Relief that Ariane had not betrayed him. She had made her secret forays to this wood to succor her mother, not to consort with rebels or tryst with a lover.She had not betrayed him.

  Forcibly he returned his attention to her mother, recalling the person Constance had once been. He remembered a gracious gentlewoman, a lovely soft-spoken lady whose kind smile radiated a sweetness and warmth he did not think contrived. He had felt then as if he c
ould almost trust her, he who trusted no woman. He recalled foolishly reflecting how different his life might have been had his own faithless mother resembled Lady Constance.

  “How came you to be stricken?” he made himself ask.

  “Nursing my son, my lord. Jocelin returned from the Holy Land with the affliction, and I could not desert him. A mother’s love knows no wisdom, I fear.”

  A mother’s love?He had never known such a thing.

  “Some say leprosy is God’s punishment for mortal sin.”

  Ariane made a choked sound of protest. “Then God is blind and cruel!” she retorted passionately, not caring if her words were blasphemous. “My mother was guilty only of the sin of caring too much. And my brother . . . he went on holy pilgrimage as God’s servant. Wasthat a sin?”

  “Ariane,” Lady Constance said gently.

  “Did Jocelin die of the disease?” Ranulf asked. “I understood he was killed in battle.”

  Pain flickered in the Lady Constance’s gray eyes, so much like her daughter’s. “Yes, in battle. He was a soldier, his father’s son, who chose to end his young life honorably in combat rather than endure his wasted body. Would that I had the same choice.”

  “No, Mother!”

  Constance’s chapped lips curved in a sad smile. “Bless you, daughter, you have been my strength. If not for you, I could not have borne it.” It was said sweetly, without much bitterness. “In truth, it is harder to lose a child than to face one’s own mortality. I have had a good life. I am prepared for God’s kingdom.”

  Ariane’s voice caught on a sob.

  “There are two of you who live here?” Ranulf asked quietly.

  “My woman, Hertha, a loyal servant. Another blessing. If not for her, my life would be very hard indeed. Hertha?”

  An elderly, gray-haired crone, stooped with age, emerged from the hut, supporting herself with a cane, and made a deep curtsey to the new lord of Claredon. She did not seem to be suffering from the dread disease, Ranulf noted.

  Constance explained. “My husband, Walter, was loath to condemn me to a leper’s life. He allowed me to take refuge here, while telling the world I had been slain by outlaws during a journey. And reports were put about of a haunted wood—to protect me from the villeins. They would drive out anyone suspected of being a leper, even if I was once their lady.”