by Tamara Leigh
Finwyn’s curses resounded around the wood, and more loudly when she reached less treacherous ground. Now she had only to outdistance him.
Or so she thought until halfway between cradle and rise something pierced the air alongside her. Certain it was an arrow, she continued to run toward moonlight. A fool thing for the target it made of her, but this way was Bairnwood—and De Morville’s squire who could prove an ally if she could reach him first.
Pain. Above his eyes.
Throbbing. At his shoulder.
Voices. Scornful. Threatening. Angry.
A woman’s laughter. Triumphant. And yet not.
A lightening about his waist. The loss of his purse.
A clatter. Metal on wood.
Snarling and cursing. Finwyn Arblette.
As Elias struggled to regain senses so staggered he felt as if he had imbibed much, he suppressed the impulse to thrust upright by dragging forth a lesson taught by Sir Everard. He could not think where it numbered among those learned to gain a coveted Wulfrith dagger, but its import was not forgotten.
Should you find yourself beneath your enemy’s boot, let not pride tempt you to show your hand ere reason and strategy are given their due.
In this moment of increasing clarity, both urged him to remain still whilst his vulnerable back was exposed to the one who had landed him among tree roots. And that was surely Arblette.
The huff of a loosed arrow made him tense. Was that what had knocked him into the woman? It was. He had heard it before his head struck the root.
More curses. Then boots scrambling, accompanied by the jangle of coin.
Tensing in readiness to gain his feet, Elias silently commanded, Hold!
With his left eye unhindered by the obstruction to which his right was blinded, that side of his forehead intimate with the humped root, he peered through the mist at the ground and listened.
The footsteps grew distant, and no matter how hard he strained, he heard no movement or drawing of breath to indicate any remained near.
Slowly, he raised his head. Grinding his teeth against pain shooting to the back of his skull and down his spine, he turned in the direction of those who left him for dead.
He glimpsed a figure wearing a gown before she disappeared over the rise but gained an eyeful of the one who followed with bow in hand.
Elias sat up. Blinking against blood trickling in his right eye, he dragged the back of a hand across it and assessed his surroundings. He was alone but would be keeping company with Arblette and Honore soon.
It was difficult to stand, his head reeling and shoulder aching.
That last a reminder of what had knocked his feet out from under him, he reached around and found the shaft stuck through his mantle. He pulled it free, not from flesh but material and the links of chain mail that had not failed, though they might have at the close range with which the arrow was loosed had he not swung to the side when the woman turned his dagger on him. Regardless, all he must suffer beyond questioning if he was worthy of a Wulfrith dagger was an aching head and shoulder.
He turned to negotiate the roots, then continued toward the mounts his squire and he had brought to the wood.
It was slow going, his stride uncertain and vision partially obscured by blood he wiped away several times, but at last he was atop his destrier. He took the reins of Theo’s mount, guided both horses out of the trees, then becoming predator to the one who had made him prey, put heels to his destrier.
Chapter 7
THE ARROW FLIES
Two more arrows, but her jagged run kept her to the left and right of the deadly shafts. Unfortunately, her less than straight flight allowed Finwyn to quickly close the distance between them.
There. The log across the stream. Once over it, she would be aided by cover of the trees before the abbey. God willing, soon she would be inside the walls where she prayed Jeannette awaited her.
She veered again, heard the hum of another arrow, saw it impale the stream’s bank.
“Witch!” Finwyn cried, and she was shaken by how near he was. She glanced over her shoulder at where he gave chase a dozen paces behind and saw him cast aside his bow. He had fired his final arrow, then. Providing he had not retrieved his dagger before setting after her, she would have the advantage of being armed should he overtake her.
Gripping the knight’s dagger tighter, she drove herself toward the fallen tree and found purchase on it. Unlike Finwyn, she knew its every soft, rotten, and broken place, but he did not need to know she realized when she heard him splash into the water. There having been little rainfall of recent, the stream ran shallow, the only reason to go by way of the log to prevent slippers and hems from becoming sodden.
Creature of habit! she silently rebuked, but before she could avail herself of the faster means of fording the stream, she was snatched off the tree.
She landed on her side in water no deeper than the span of her palm. Whimpering over the burn in her hip, she maintained her hold on the dagger and pressed her free hand to the stream’s gravel bed. But as she levered up, Finwyn thrust her onto her back, straddled her, and caught the arm sweeping the dagger toward him.
“Nay!” he shouted, flecking her with saliva as he forced that arm down, then the other that reached to rake his face.
Water trickling into her ears, Honore cried out, “Lord!”
Moments later, she was in greater peril when Finwyn repositioned himself, settling his weight just beneath her collarbone and pinning her upper arms with bent knees. It rendered her unable to slash, slap, and scratch while allowing him the use of both hands to try to take the dagger from her.
She had not known she possessed the strength necessary to thwart his prying and gouging, but eventually her grip would fail. And it nearly did when his fist struck her nose and knocked her head sideways.
Hold! she commanded quaking fingers as the stream’s water slid over her tongue. Else all ends with silence and blood filling your mouth, a stake against your spine, fire devouring your flesh.
His grip on her thumb threatening to break it, she pressed its length harder against the nails of her fingers, turned her face up, and coughed past the blood running from her nose into her mouth—spraying him with crimson.
He released her hand and reared back, though not enough to free her arms. “I will have that dagger,” he snarled and reached to her throat.
Honore gulped air lest he determined he did not need her alive after all and it proved her final breath, but it was the prayer beads to which he turned his attention.
“Would not want any to know you for a Christian,” he said and wrenched them off with such force she was surprised the string did not snap.
“Worth little. Indeed, so plain as to be ugly.” He dropped the necklace over his head.
It sickened her to see upon him the beads she had not been without since the abbess gifted them to her at the age of nine. Never think you do not belong, the older woman had said. By these prayer beads know you have family.
So she did—the abbess who was as near a mother as possible, several nuns, a few ladies of the convent, and her foundlings. Family, though sometimes she ached for something deeper. Something forever.
Certes, something you shall never know if this eve you die, she returned herself to Finwyn.
“Poor Honore,” he said. “See what comes of doing good?” He sighed so heavily his breath nearly made her gag. “But soon all will come right.”
“What did you do with the joined twins?” Though it would be further torture to die this night informed of what ill had befallen them, she had to know. Too, the longer she delayed the taking of her tongue, the greater the chance of being rescued by whomever the Lord sent—quite possibly De Morville’s squire. Hopefully, Finwyn had forgotten about him and that it was in this direction the young man had chased Jeannette.
A snort. “Such atrocities, their chests sewn together by the devil himself. But of value to those who like the peculiar.” He shrugged. “Sick o
f head such men and women may be, but of good profit to me.”
“Then the rumor of the traveling troupe is true. They exploit children—put them on display.” Realizing all of her shook, she wondered how only now she felt the chill water soaking her and the rough gravel into which her back was pressed.
She swallowed bloody saliva, tasted iron.
“The rumor is no rumor.” Finwyn shifted his weight farther forward, grinding his knees into her arms. “Is that the only one you have heard?”
“You sold others?”
“Indeed, a babe born with webbed fingers and toes. She did not bring as much as the twins, but more than you would have paid me.”
“How many have you sold?”
“Since my grandsire’s demise, four.”
“What other babes? What were their afflictions?”
His eyebrows rose. “One was not a babe.”
One year aged? Like Jeannette when Honore first delivered her to the abbey? “How old?”
“Seven years.”
Orphaned, then? Or had the parents done their best to raise the child and determined it was too difficult? “Its affliction?” she asked again. “Why was the child not wanted?”
He reached forward, and she feared he had sufficiently recovered to once more wrestle her for the dagger, but he patted her cheek. “Devil-licked. Here.”
Honore was so stunned she had to remind herself to hold tight to the dagger.
“Hart!” she choked. “You took him.” It had to be how he had known Jeannette was no Jean. Though she knew not how he had gained entrance to Bairnwood, he must have been inside and seen the young woman whose size made it impossible to overlook her.
“Hart,” he drawled. “You speak of the babe born to Lettice of Forkney, the same that knight came looking for, he whom my grandsire told had upon his face as near a map of Britain as can be had.”
“You stole him!”
“Not possible.”
“I am to believe there are”—her teeth clicked so hard she had to clench them and speak between them—“two boys with the same mark?”
He laughed. “I did not say the one I sold to the troupe was a boy, but were he this Hart who no longer wished to make his home at the abbey, I could not be said to have stolen what belongs to me.”
“He does not belong—”
“You think not?” He leaned nearer. “Would you not say he resembles me—well, one side of him? That other side was surely given by his mother to mark the sin of conception.”
Honore could hardly believe what he told. This eve, De Morville had sought to claim Hart. Now Finwyn, whom she had never looked so near upon, claimed him.
Though she did not see a resemblance, she said, “It was you who made a babe on Lettice of Forkney?” In the next instant, she gasped at the realization of how she knew the name Lettice beyond Sir Elias’s naming of the mother of the boy he sought. Was it ten years past old Arblette told his grandson was enamored of a girl by that name and said she would do better to look elsewhere for a husband? Had she, it seemed she had done so after making it possible Finwyn fathered Hart.
Dear Lord, Honore silently appealed, let not Hart suffer more for her sins. She swallowed, said, “You tell you are Hart’s father? And your grandsire knew?”
“Of course he knew. Of all the babes sold to you, was it not Hart he most often asked after?”
It was. With the old man, the exchange of coins for babes was most often done face to face, and she could not remember a time he had not asked after Hart. But even if he believed the boy was his great grandson, it did not mean he was. Hart could as easily be De Morville’s. Would sunlight upon the knight’s face reveal resemblance moonlight had not? Not that she would look upon De Morville again. Just as there was little chance she would escape Finwyn’s plans, there seemed none the knight had.
“So you and Lettice of Forkney are Hart’s parents,” she stalled.
“We are—well, I am. She was.”
Wondering if the chill she had taken was responsible for the confusion pressing in on all sides, she said, “Was? But yestereve De Morville spoke with her and gave her coin.”
“And a most generous purse it was.”
She drew a sharp breath. “What did you do to her?”
“Not I—you. The sins of the one who steals innocent babes for her own devices are great.”
She did not wish to believe he had killed Hart’s mother, but it sounded what he owned to. “If he is your son, I cannot believe you would sell him. Where is he?”
“Mayhap the troupe. Mayhap my home. Mayhap the grave. Mayhap I know not at all. But God can tell better than I, and this night you may ask Him.”
Though that was all the warning she had before he once more set upon the dagger, she had enough time to strengthen her hold. But the struggle nearly ended when Finwyn slapped her hard across the face.
“It seems I must gain it by other means,” he said and rose slightly, flipped her onto her belly, and resettled atop her.
Water rushing into her mouth, she whipped her head to the side. But he gripped the back of it and, nails gouging her scalp, pressed her face into gravel-pocked silt.
“Loose it!” he yelled.
She writhed and kicked, but for naught, just as she would gain only temporary reprieve if she exchanged the dagger for air. And just as a blade to the back was preferable to being burned at the stake, so was drowning, though in that moment the latter was so terrible she was tempted to pay the price for a single breath.
“Release it!” he commanded again, and she realized her struggles would soon be little more than muscle spasms.
No harm in yielding the dagger, apathy assured her. You will not rise again. It is over.
Not so long as I have thought in my head, countered the fear of being shorn of tongue and set afire. Were that to happen, better first she was dead.
Dear Hart, she silently called to wherever he was, be safe. I would rather be long without you in heaven than too soon meet you there.
Chapter 8
THE DAGGER PLIES
A shout heard above the pound of hooves drew Elias’s regard. Amid moonlight, someone crouched in the stream near a fallen tree. Then that one’s head came around, he thrust upright, kicked at something, and splashed through the water toward the opposite bank.
Pained head increasing its efforts to dim his consciousness, Elias bellowed, “I come for you, Arblette!”
The man made for the trees. If he reached them ahead of his pursuer, he would be fortunate. Regardless, the wick of that good fortune would soon be trimmed past all hope of flame.
That belief proved false when the figure face down in the stream took form, skirts and mantle splayed in the shallow water.
Elias was tempted to leave the woman to a fate likely decided, but he could not were there a chance of reviving her. He reined in the horses, sprang from the saddle, and nearly dropped to his knees as ache rimmed his skull.
With his world tilting side to side, he strode into the water, thrust an arm between the woman’s abdomen and the stream’s bed, and dragged her upright.
Honore of no surname was soaked through and limp as the dead where she hung over his arm, but before he could regret not pursuing Arblette, she convulsed and began spitting up water.
He maintained his balance and support of her, but nearly lost both when her heaving and spluttering ceased and she began to struggle.
“Miscreant! Devil! Knave!” she cried, doubtless thinking him Arblette.
He braced a leg behind, turned her to face him, and pulled her against him.
She snapped her head back. Though moonlight revealed hair too wet to know its color and a gravel-bitten face and blood running from nose to chin, he could see she was as lovely as her upper face foretold. Though perhaps ten years beyond the age at which most maidens plighted their troth, she was not as old as his twenty and eight.
“You will not take my tongue,” she gasped, then her eyes widened. “You!”
Head beginning to come right, he said, “Me.”
“I-I feared you dead.” The stiff went out of her, her chin dropped, and her forehead fell against his shoulder. “Where is…?” She coughed. “…Finwyn?”
“You speak of your accomplice who set upon you?” Elias scorned as he carried her from the stream.
“Put me down!”
He obliged, and her knees buckled and she landed on her rear. Shaking and coughing, she drew up her legs, positioned the gorget beneath her nose, and secured the ties. Then she dragged the wet wimple up from her shoulders and over her head.
“I am not his accomplice,” she said, muffled voice and chattering teeth forcing him to strain to catch her words. “I am as much a victim as you.”
“I am to believe you were not party to relieving me of my coin—and my life?”
Wrapping her arms around her knees, she gathered them close. Only eyes and nose visible, she said, “You pulled me from the w-water. You must know he put me there.”
“It would not be the first time one partner in crime turned against the other to avoid sharing ill-gotten gain. I am sure drowning you presented the most expedient means.”
“That was to subdue me. Had you not come, he would have c-cut out my tongue and given me to the villagers to be burned as a witch—a thief of babes the same as he tried to convince you.”
“Why would he cut out your tongue?”
Her head bobbed against her knees. “He intended to say I did it myself so I could not be made to reveal the devil’s schemes. But it was so I could not reveal he is the devil.” She coughed harshly as if to clear water from her lungs. “For that, I would not yield your dagger.”
He examined her words, asked, “Where is it?”
“He must have…” She shook her head. “Nay, had he gained it, he would have spared the seconds required to cut my throat lest you revive me. Search where you drew me from the water.”