by Tamara Leigh
The pain was terrible, but not as much as Elias made it appear across the mask he slapped on. Lurching back, putting space between him and his opponent, he glanced at the man-at-arms. No help from that quarter, nor from Theo who, it seemed, had been unable to track the woman in the doorway. Or perhaps he had found her and now lay dead…
“Leave, Inès!” Jake commanded again. “I am near done with him.”
“But the light!”
“Go!”
The door slammed. The only light that of the clouded moon and the glow cast by Sevier’s torches and the camp fires, all became little more than shadow and would remain so until eyes once more adjusted to the dim.
Hence, again I go to the cellar, Elias told himself and consciously engaged all his senses as taught him by Everard in that darkness beneath Wulfen’s hall.
Aching in too many places, he readied himself, but then a shout of pain sounded across the meadow.
Was it of death? And whose?
Unlike Theo who commanded Honore to stay put when they came around the tent beside which more beads were scattered, she could only stare at the scene across the meadow. The wagon and battling bodies in the light cast from its doorway were no longer visible, but the men had been there and still were as evidenced by the cry of one in pain.
“Not Elias,” she gasped. “Pray, not him!”
Light again, but less intense where it shone from the front of the wagon and lasting only seconds. But it was enough to count three men—and the fourth that was Theo moving toward them.
Then the snap of a whip, the whinny of horses, and the bump of wheels moving over uneven ground.
“Hart!” Honore snatched up her skirts and ran. If Elias yet lived, he surely fought to remain so, and his squire would aid his lord before the children in the wagon. Thus, it fell to her.
“Please, Lord,” she gasped between breaths needed to drive her body forward over unseen ground. Though her eyes were fairly accustomed to the dark, it was more the din of men battling and the rumbling wagon that guided her forward—and the cries of frightened children.
Her heart leapt when she heard a shouted command from one who sounded like Elias, but knowing she would be of more use to the children than a warrior, she veered away.
“Non, Honore!” That she heard clearly, and though she rejoiced it was Elias’s voice, she did not slow.
Moments after skirting those who grunted and cursed amid the peal of blades, the clouds let the moon be. The light it cast provided enough to see the shape of the wagon picking up speed. And a man in close pursuit.
One of those Elias had fought? Or Theo, Elias having commanded him to the wagon? That possibility nearly caused her to give heart and lungs the respite they demanded. But she would not lose her boy again.
The figure well ahead drew alongside the wagon, and moments later he was at the front leaping onto the seat.
The wagon lurched, slowed, and Honore heard a woman scream.
Theo then, but still she ran. And loosed a scream of her own when the wagon careened opposite and tilted onto two wheels before slamming back to earth.
The cries of the children louder and pitched higher, Honore found more strength she had not known she possessed and reached her legs longer. Still, if not for Theo’s efforts to slow the wagon, she could not have overtaken it.
She closed one hand around the rail alongside the steps, reached with the other, set her teeth against the pain of splinters sliding into her palms, and cried out when her shins slammed into the lower step.
As the wagon tilted again, she held on and swung to the side.
“I am here!” she called to the children.
When the wagon righted and slowed further, she got a foot on the step, then the other, but as she wrenched herself forward, she glimpsed a rider coming from the wood.
Ears filled with the children’s cries and the woman’s screams, Honore ascended to the landing. Keeping one hand on the railing, she reached for the door with the other, turned the handle, and pulled. It gave, but only at its middle and lower portions. It was fastened at the top where a child could not reach.
“I am here, Hart!” she called through the seam and yanked at the door. The ribbon of light widened, but the latch held.
“Help us, Honore!”
She wrenched again, heard the crack of wood, but she had not enough strength nor time. The rider came alongside, and as he leapt off his horse onto the landing, she recognized him.
Chapter 35
THAT WHICH IS SOUGHT
The big man was dead. The injured man-at-arms’ opponent was dead. Jake the Jack bled out his last. And God willing, the one who fell upon Honore would soon meet his end.
Fearing the miscreant would take her with him into death, Elias cried out to the Lord as the woman wound around his heart flew off the landing with her attacker atop.
The two hit the ground and rolled apart. When one scrambled upright, moonlight confirmed his identity.
“Arblette!” Elias shouted as the man lunged to where Honore lay unmoving, but the miscreant did not alter his course.
Knowing he would reach her first, Elias halted and drew back the Wulfrith dagger. “Fly true!” he beseeched. A moment later, it knocked Arblette backward.
When Elias reached Honore, the man writhed on the ground ten feet distant, clutching at the dagger’s hilt as he tried to drag the blade from his chest.
Dropping down beside Honore, Elias heard shouts, and a glance over his shoulder revealed soldiers running through the encampment. Costain’s men. At last.
Gently, Elias raised Honore to sitting. “I am here. How badly are you hurt?”
Her eyes blinked open, and she choked, “The children.”
“How badly, Honore?”
“Only my breath. The children—”
“The castle garrison are coming, and Theo has stopped the wagon.” Elias had seen it lurch to a halt before he loosed the dagger and heard the last of Inès’s screams. “I will go to them if you will give me your word you will stay here—not go anywhere near Arblette.”
She looked to the man who lay dying. “I will stay.”
He pressed his lips to her brow, then ran toward the wagon once more lit at the front. Whether Inès was alive or dead, Theo had gone inside. And still the children cried.
“Ere she was a whore, she was mine. Sweet and pure, and pretty.”
Honore ceased breathing where she sat with knees gathered to her chest, eyes on the wagon whose door Elias had ruined. Though from where she had landed she could not see inside, the voices of Elias, Theo, and Hart heard above the distress of the little ones assured her she was not needed, tempted as she was to break the word given Elias.
“Mine,” Finwyn gurgled past what she guessed was blood.
She did not want to look at him, it being enough to keep him in the corner of her eye, but she turned her head and seeing no movement about him, said, “You speak of Lettice?”
“The same—the angel who became a whore.”
Honore glanced at the wagon, tried to make sense of the shadows moving amid lantern light slanting over the landing, down the steps, and across the grass. “You made her that,” she said.
“Not I, though I profited from her ruin when it was complete.” He tried to clear his throat. “After her troubadour left her with a babe in her belly.”
Honore drew a sharp breath.
Finwyn made a sound that aspired to laughter. “Not my son. Not possible, though I wished it until she gave birth to that abomination.”
Even as Honore winced over what he named Hart, hope clambered through her. Rising to her knees to better see Finwyn, she said, “Then Sir Elias is Hart’s father.”
“Sir Elias,” he drawled, then coughed. “Mayhap. Mayhap not. As told, she was a whore, but I did not…make her one, though she said I did.” That last was little more than a whisper.
It was hard to stay put with the tale unfolding and the din from the wagon making it difficult to he
ar him, but she dared not draw nearer.
“Why would she accuse you of such if you did not lie with her?”
“I made a babe on a friend of hers.” More gurgling. “Thinking to force me to break my betrothal and wed her instead, the witch told Lettice of our tryst.” He sucked air, rattled it out. “Though Lettice broke our betrothal, I refused to wed the trollop who betrayed me.”
“But she carried your child.”
“Mayhap, mayhap not. She was a sinner ere Lettice, and no matter how oft I look into that boy’s face, never do I see mine. Still, when the lad was of an age to be useful, I took him from his aunt who had raised him following her sister’s death.”
Cynuit, Honore realized. “You are saying Lettice began selling her body because you were unfaithful?”
“Her mother was useless, a burden.” He drew a wheezing breath. “Had she wed me, my grandsire would have provided for all, but instead of forgiveness, Lettice sold her body for extra coin.”
“Out of desperation,” Honore said. “She—”
“Nay,” he snarled, “out of pride, spite, vengeance.” He turned his head to the side and spat blood. “Then that troubadour came to Forkney and she thought their love would save her, but once fornication is in a woman’s blood, no cure for it.” He groaned low. “When she could no longer hide her pregnancy and lost her position at the castle, I saved her. I told my grandsire she carried my child and I wished to provide for her until the babe was born and she could find work. We kept her in coin enough that none starved, but then she birthed that devil-licked thing.” Another attempt at laughter. “To dispose of an undesirable, she became further indebted. And there was much satisfaction in aiding her in prostituting herself.”
“You are the vengeful one!”
“I am, and she is—was—to blame.”
Refusing to argue, she said, “Why murder her?”
“Not intentional.”
“You strung her up like a chicken for the pot!”
With what seemed sincerity, he said, “In that I found no satisfaction.”
“You make no sense.”
“Difficult when one is dying,” he slurred. “Imagine my surprise when Lettice finished her night’s work and was approached by a nobleman I recognized. Had he years past been a knight disguised as a troubadour? Or was he now a troubadour disguised as a knight?” He coughed. “The former, I guessed when it was not her services he sought but to learn if she had birthed his son. More proof was given by the size of the purse he gave her. After she departed, deciding to relieve him of more coin I told him his son lived and I could deliver the child.”
“Thus, you summoned me.”
“And you came, also like a chicken…to the pot.”
Honore looked to the wagon. Still only shadows spilling out, but the children’s cries were less anguished.
“But I did not mean to kill her,” he said and sounded nearer.
Tensing for flight, she shot her gaze to him a moment ahead of the clouds once more covering the moon. Still, the light from the wagon told he had not moved.
“Of course you meant to kill her.”
“I did not. She refused me the purse—money owed me—and ran for the door. I caught her, and she slapped and bit me.” He arched his back, rolled his head side to side. “Lord, the pain!”
“What did you do to her?”
Just when she thought he would not answer, he said, “I flung her from me, and she hit a wall support…snapped her neck.”
Honore swallowed to keep her supper down. “For which the witch you sought to make of me was to be blamed so suspicion would not fall on the one who sold her body.”
“A good plan had you cooperated.”
“Forever you will await an apology,” she said and, hearing chain mail, looked across her shoulder at the half dozen garrison who neared.
Finwyn coughed up more blood, and she knew his forever could not be more than a few minutes.
“Honore!”
Hart’s voice brought her head around, and she saw he had come onto the landing with Elias.
Lest he run to her and see the horror of Finwyn, she sprang upright.
“Remain here,” Elias commanded. “I will bring her to you.”
More aware of aches that evidenced it was not only loss of breath she had suffered, slowly she moved toward him as he leapt to the ground.
“Did you tell him?” Finwyn called.
She nearly halted for fear that though he professed he could not have fathered Hart, once more he would assert his claim and reveal what she had withheld.
Lord, she silently appealed, if You are going to take Finwyn, do so now. Let me tell Elias of Finwyn and Lettice. Let me be the one to reveal the month of Hart’s birth as already I should have done.
But would she be here now, Hart and the other children delivered had she trusted Elias to keep his word to save Lettice’s son? Though she tried to argue herself down to justify her lie, she knew Elias would have kept his vow. Still, she had not known it when first she withheld Finwyn’s claim on Hart.
“Of course not,” Finwyn taunted. “Had you told him, he would not—” He choked as if it were his neck in a noose.
Fear crawling up her at the realization death had drawn its carriage alongside him, she halted.
A moment later, Elias was at her side and bracing her arm. “I pray you are no worse than sore.”
Seeing crimson on his tunic, abrasions on collarbone and throat, cuts from jaw to cheek and brow to hairline, she caught the scent of his exertion—and blood. “Only sore. You?”
“All will heal. Now come, there is a boy who misses you.”
Why it should bother he named Hart that, she was too muddled to make sense of, but she would try. Later.
As if death had poured its passenger a bowl of silence, no further sound issued from the one who had taken a dagger to the chest. Answered prayer.
But the greatest answered prayer was the boy—her boy—who sprang off the landing into her arms.
Hugging him, she kissed the top of his head to which she did not have to bend as far as she had six months past.
“I knew you would come!” His tearful voice warmed her through the material of her gown. Then he began to cry and burble, “I am sorry, I am sorry. I will help more with the little ones. I promise.”
She stroked his head, shushed him, called him Hart of her heart.
From a distance, Elias watched. As Honore and the boy no longer needed him, he had returned to Arblette to identify himself to Sevier’s men and assure them the danger was past.
The explanation they had demanded he had given only as far as pointing them to the injured man-at-arms and saying an accounting would be provided their lord after his guests were settled for the night. Unwilling to offend Costain’s friend and ally, they had gone to aid Otto’s man who would surely apprise them of the reason he shared the ground with three dead performers.
Now, once more alone with Arblette, Elias turned the Wulfrith dagger into moonlight. It had done its work. The scourge of the one it had felled was no more.
As he wiped the blade on the hem of his tunic, he looked to the wagon and saw the boy catch up Honore’s hand.
“Come see my little ones!” His voice was raw from the letting of emotions. “I took care of them as you would, kept them safe as you would, even gave them names as you would.”
As he drew her to the steps, she looked around.
Knowing there was enough light for his expression to be seen, Elias smiled. And was ashamed by the false turn of his lips. All the children were safe, no good lives were lost, Thomas Becket had escaped France with none the wiser he was aided by a De Morville, and Honore would soon return to her work at Bairnwood. With Hart.
His mood further dampened. He had not wanted nor been prepared for the journey with Honore, even resented it lest it harm his family, and yet now he did not want nor was prepared for her return to England, especially if she took his heart with her.
&n
bsp; As he watched the two step past Theo in the doorway and go from sight, he wrestled with disappointment he should not feel. Having convinced himself Hart was his, and now having witnessed the boy’s courage, he wanted it more. But Hart was not his, as seen when the boy spun around and used his body to shield the child in the crate as Elias came through the doorway. Hart was another man’s son, and Elias knew the one.
He returned his regard to the corpse whose blood he now wore, pondered Arblette’s taunting of Honore, then set his shoulders and returned his dagger to its scabbard.
Life was about to resume its usual pace. Likely, a year from now it would be as unsatisfactory, perhaps more so when he delivered on his promise to Otto. Would he still be trying to forget the woman of honor who was as unattainable as Lettice? He feared so.
More curious. And most entertaining.
Neville chuckled.
“What is so humorous?” Desmond grumbled. “Still Becket’s savior is out of reach.”
So he was, though until his squire and that woman appeared, then the garrison and the one those watching from the wood had not known shared that place with them, it had seemed the knight was about to come into their hands.
Neville sighed. “Oui, but such a fun chase he leads, hmm?”
“Fun?” Raoul scorned. “I want a hot meal, fresh ale, and a pallet.”
“Because you are soft, and for that the Lord punished you with common birth and rewarded me with noble.” Neville raised his eyebrows. “Hence, I lead, you follow. I order, you obey.”
That silenced him.
“How are we to get hold of De Morville?” Desmond asked.
“We bide our time.” Ignoring the roiling of the two who sat their horses on either side of him, Neville smiled at the prospect of commanding more than these misfits. But were that day to come sooner rather than later, this biding must find its end before another delivered the archbishop to Duke Henry.
I come for you, Elias De Morville, he silently vowed as the one who would make him wealthy strode from the man he had put through with a Wulfrith dagger. It was good to know how excellent his aim. Not that he would fall to it. For that, men like Desmond and Raoul existed.