“Time’s up, Alesander,” Felsteppe said and held his arms away from his sides, his hand still dripping thick blood, as the sounds of boots pounded on the stairs.
“I think that you are right.” Valentine flipped the dagger in his hand and flung it at Glayer Felsteppe.
It sank to its hilt in his upper chest with a sick thunk. Felsteppe staggered back, his eyes wide. He dropped his sword with a clang and raised his bloody hand to the dagger.
“For Stan,” Valentine growled.
And then he whirled and seized Mary’s hand. “Up, yes?” he said, shaking her from her horror.
They dashed past Felsteppe’s crumpling form to the rear of the hall, Mary leading, and leaped onto the stairs. Behind them, the shouts of soldiers swelled, and Valentine flung the door closed behind them. Once on the third floor, they ran through the columns to the opposite corner of the keep, where another staircase nestled. They whipped around and charged up. But the flat trapdoor was stuck, and they spent precious moments trading positions while Valentine threw his shoulder into the wood.
In moments they burst into the bright sunlight of the palisade and clambered out. Valentine dropped the door and slid the bolt home. Then he spun around in place, taking in their surroundings. He pointed a long arm toward the blue water of the harbor.
“Look, Maria,” he said with a grin.
She saw a familiar ship not far from shore, and although the telltale flag was not raised, Mary knew it could only be—
“The Azure Skull,” she whispered.
“We must only reach it.” Valentine glanced over the side of the battlements at the village, some fifty feet below. “Too high,” he said. “Damn!”
“Wait,” Mary said, “There’s another stair! This way!” She grabbed his hand and they sprinted between the battlements ringing the angled roof below; one side, two sides, to the corner of the walk opposite where they had come up. Mary stepped aside while Valentine wrenched open the heavy hatch and then she climbed down.
“Where does it lead?” he asked, coming after her, lowering the door over his head.
Mary paused and looked up. “The garrison.”
Valentine growled. “Why can it no lead to the kitchen? Go, go, Maria!”
They zigzagged down what seemed to Mary to be ten flights of steps, until at last they burst into the room at the dungeon level. There were indeed soldiers within, perhaps a score, but they only looked up in surprise as the lady in the fine gown and the bleeding man dashed through to the opposite flight.
They came up from the garrison in the main hall, only steps from the door that led outside, but they were halted by the formidable bulk of none other than the dowager countess.
“Mary! There you are!” Lady Elmsbeth’s talons sank into her arms. The old woman looked up at Valentine, taking in his bleeding side. “Good heavens, it’s you!”
Valentine conceded, inclining his head. “It is I.”
“There’s no time to explain.” Mary gasped. “Tell Father Braund: Glayer Felsteppe is the traitor. He has murdered Lady Mary Beckham.”
“What are you talking about, Mary?” Lady Elmsbeth demanded. “You’re standing right before me!”
“Tell him,” Mary insisted. “Tell him Maria Alesander told you. I will send word when it is safe.” Mary leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Lady Elmsbeth’s plump cheek. “Thank you again for everything.”
Valentine swooped in and kissed the old woman squarely on the mouth. “Gracias, señora.”
Lady Elmsbeth gasped and whooped. “Oh! Oh my! Oh, good heavens, go! Go! They’re coming!”
Mary and Valentine rushed from Beckham Hall through the guardhouse and down the stairs. They ran from the keep straight into the milling crowd of villagers, drawing curious stares but no pursuers.
Yet.
Valentine pulled Mary to a halt near a line of horses tethered to a rail. He loosened the reins of one and then threw Mary onto its back, swinging up behind her.
“Ho, there, fellow!” an older man shouted, coming toward them with his hand raised. “That’s my horse!”
“It is indeed a fine beast, friend,” Valentine called, and then turned the horse toward the harbor and spurred it into a gallop down the street, sending peasantry diving for the gutters.
“How are we to get to the ship?” Mary asked over the pounding hooves.
“We will worry about that if we reach the docks,” Valentine said, glancing over his shoulder.
Mary peeked under his arm past his flapping cape. Waves of soldiers were rushing from Beckham Hall into the street. “They’re coming!” she shouted.
“I know!” Valentine shouted back.
They weaved among the merchants carrying their loads from the docks, leaving numerous broken crates and ribald curses in their wake.
They were running out of road.
“Valentine, look!” Mary pointed past the horse’s neck to a small boat bobbing perhaps only one hundred feet beyond the end of the closest dock. Three men were aboard, one of them standing and raising his arms to signal. “It’s Roland!”
Valentine yanked his mount to a sharp halt where the dock met the land, causing the horse to dance and toss its head in protest. He looked behind them, and Mary heard the shouts of the soldiers swelling as they neared. Valentine looked back to the boat, still too far away.
Roland was standing in the bow, and he waved a long arm, his meaning clear: Come on!
“Mi amor,” Valentine said calmly, “I do apologize for no mentioning it sooner—you look lovely today. But I am afraid your gown is going to get wet.” Then he kicked at the horse’s sides, causing it to rear with a scream before charging into a full gallop down the wooden dock.
“Valentine?” Mary asked in a shrill voice. And then her screams matched the horse’s as the mount leaped from the end of the dock into the bay.
She felt Valentine’s hands around her waist as he threw her away from the falling beast, and they landed in the water with a great splash. Mary came up sputtering and flailed at the water with her arms.
“Vamanos, Maria.” Valentine gasped, wrapping his arm around her chest and dragging her through the water on her back while she clung to his wet sleeve. “There is no time for drowning.”
It seemed only a moment later that she was hauled from his grasp with a great wash of water and tossed unceremoniously into the bottom of the small boat as Valentine clambered over the side.
“Heave!” Roland shouted. “Heave, you dogs!” Then Roland leaned over Mary’s gasping form, his face and his grin upside down. “We keep meeting this way, you and I.”
Mary laughed even as she coughed.
But there was little time for levity. As she sat up in the bottom of the lurching boat, the two men at the oars straining and moving the vessel through the water swiftly, the first wave of soldiers gained the end of the pier. A moment later, a whipt of sound rushed past Mary’s left ear, and she saw the archers.
“Get down!” Roland shouted, and Valentine dove on top of her while Francisco’s first mate commanded the men. “Heave, me hearties! The Skull shall cover us!”
And Roland was right. A great roar of men echoed across the water, but it was coming from the direction opposite the dock. Valentine sat up, and when Mary followed and turned her head to look up, she saw the hulk of The Skull looming behind them, the black and blue flag snapping high on the mast.
Francisco’s crew lined the rails, their own bows raised.
A shower of arrows moved the air over their heads, and an instant later, the screams and calls of retreat from Glayer Felsteppe’s soldiers answered the attack. But retreat was not forthcoming, for those who were struck, nor for the remainder of them when the overburdened dock collapsed into the bay, dumping the lot of them into the sea.
Something hairy and rough brushed Mary’s dripping face and she screamed, swatting at the thing, until Valentine reached past her and seized the knotted rope. They both looked up to see Francisco Alesander smiling down
at them, his boot on the rail, his arm stretched high in the rigging.
“Coming aboard?”
Valentine’s grin was wide as he hoisted himself up onto the rope and then grasped Mary around her waist. It was so like the last time they had parted, only now they were leaving together.
They spun slowly through the air once more until Francisco pulled them onto the deck. “I am sorry to inform you, cousin, but The Skull does no employ women. Buenos días, Maria.”
Valentine pulled Mary into his arms again, this time nothing between them. “I’ll no be joining the ranks of pirates, Francisco,” he said over his shoulder, his eyes crinkling at the corners and searching Mary’s face. “No for a while, any matter. I have more important work yet to do.”
“That is a shame,” Francisco said with a tsk. “But I know that you will be back this time, yes?”
“Yes,” he said. “If my wife will allow it.”
Mary swallowed. “I go where you go.”
“Maria, my sweet, lovely Maria—I have been a fool. I thought to protect you by letting you go, but I know now that there is no safer place for my love than at my side.” He brushed her dripping hair from her eyes. “There is no bounty so high as to keep us apart, no law of man that can ever separate us. You have no home now, and I regret that I have none to offer you at the moment. But still, I beg you—please say you will be mine forever. I will never let you go again.”
“Oh, Valentine.” Mary smiled, reaching up to stroke his face, and then she placed her palm over his heart. “This is my home now.” She took his hand and placed it on her own chest. “And this is yours. We are both home, at last. Because I have been yours my entire life—I only didn’t know who you were.”
He kissed her, then, with the crew of The Skull cheering around them, the sharp sea breeze whipping at their cold, wet clothes. They clung to each other as they sailed away from the setting sun toward the night, their lonely pasts and Beckham Hall sinking into the horizon behind them.
Epilogue
Mary waited in the luxurious library of Melk, unceremoniously barred from the secret room Valentine had disappeared into with his friends and Father Victor. It was the middle of the night, and they had only just arrived at the abbey, but Valentine could not wait, and Mary understood. She sat at a table, the light from the single candle left to her reflecting on the gleaming wood, casting the thousands of volumes around her in eerie, flickering shadows.
It was so quiet here—but not peaceful. She didn’t know what Valentine’s and her future held. Were they to make a temporary home at Melk? Would Father Victor allow it?
Would Valentine’s friends accept her as one of the group? Especially now that she suspected she carried Valentine’s baby?
A muffled roar from beyond the secret shelves pierced the unnatural stillness and made her jump; it sounded like a beast, mortally wounded. Mary’s hands flew up to cover her face.
The cry could only have come from Constantine Gerard.
Mary drew a shuddering breath and sent up a silent prayer of thanksgiving that at least Glayer Felsteppe was dead.
“I will kill them all,” he murmured to himself, looking out over the cold gray sea.
“What’s that, milord?” the deckhand asked.
Glayer Felsteppe turned his fierce gaze toward the man, who flinched reflexively. Glayer’s arm was still in a sling, his shoulder bound tightly beneath his rich clothing, else he would have strangled the scrawny man and tossed him overboard for his impertinence in daring to think Glayer had spoken to him. But the deckhand moved away without further comment, leaving Glayer in solitude, if not peace.
He was being exiled in a way. That damned priest and the fat old dowager had managed to bend the king’s ear, and now unless Glayer could prove his usefulness, his claims of Chastellet would henceforth go unheard. There would be no further bounties. No Beckham Hall to draw from, now that it was suspected that Mary Beckham was dead. That lying, sneaking, thieving bitch.
He watched the foggy islands drift past, their piney, ice-crusted shores shrouded in a mystical haze, trying to calm his thrashing heart lest the wound in his chest begin to seep again.
Soon he would have all the gold he needed. Perhaps then he could petition a certain ruler on the far side of the earth for assistance in gaining his final revenge. Saladin was always eager for wealthy allies, and for useful spies. Once Glayer had earned back King Henry’s trust by adding to the monarch’s realm, he would court the sheik as well, and use the alliances to eradicate his enemies, one by one.
“Coming ashore, General,” the first mate advised.
Glayer Felsteppe turned toward the bow to see craggy castle spires piercing the fog and snow. A strange blue-colored light seemed to emanate from the structure, like the glow of a mystical flame. Somewhere inside that ancient pile of stones lay an incomprehensible fortune and, some said, power greater than any human ruler had ever known.
Power that would soon belong to Glayer Felsteppe.
He smiled. “I will kill them all.”
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Heather Grothaus’s
ADRIAN
the next novel in her Brotherhood of Fallen Angels series,
coming in December 2015!
Prologue
August 1179
Damascus
He fell to his knees on the packed road and swayed toward his long, black shadow, his bound arms affording him no leverage. At least they had finally fallen numb. His vision blurred, the pebbles and sand and slivers of dry vegetation all seeming to melt together. He expected a blow to the back of his head at any moment. Adrian Hailsworth only hoped he would be hit hard enough to kill him.
“Get up, Adrian,” Constantine Gerard ordered as he marched past. Only Constantine could still act the general with a pair of Saracen guards walking leisurely behind him.
Adrian tried to raise his head in time to catch Constantine’s gaze—he wanted to say goodbye, here, on the road. But he was too slow, too weak, and the Saracens already blocked his line of vision. They looked back at Adrian with knowing smirks, commenting to each other in chuckling voices.
A wide, hulking shadow eclipsed Adrian’s own.
“Have no worry!” a jovial voice called out from somewhere above Adrian’s head. “I will allow your friend the use of my own horse so that he might join you in the city!”
Adrian let his gaze drop back to the road, his cheek twitching, the ragged strips of his once-white undershirt fluttering in the arid breeze. His chest and stomach were crusted with his own blood where Saladin’s soldiers had laid beaded whips to his belly, and the hot wind tugged at the cloth where it had dried against his wounds.
The Saracen’s horse clip-clopped closer so that Adrian caught a glimpse of the delicately shaped front hooves out of the corner of his right eye. Such fine horses they had here. Adrian’s father and older brother would be mad to claim a pair for their stables back in England.
“Have you had enough?” the dark general asked, his voice almost kind. The tone stung Adrian’s pride, as it had been none other than this very man who had ordered him whipped, bound. “Will you call out for your god to save you now?”
“I told you,” Adrian rasped, his throat so dry and pinched together that the words were like blades crawling up his insides. “I am no Templar, no soldier. I am a schol—”
“I witnessed your prowess with my own eyes,” the general interrupted. “It takes great skill to remove a man’s head with one blow. You must have much experience.”
“It takes only a sharp blade and a strong arm,” Adrian choked. “My experience is limited to this day.”
“Is that so?” the Saracen mused, but his words were tinged with heavy sarcasm, indicating that he did not believe Adrian’s claims. “Then you should know that a soldier never forgets the face of the first man he ever kills. It pleases me to know that he will haunt your dreams. You will remember him forever.”
Adrian’s v
ision threatened to darken completely as the screams in Chastellet’s bailey filled his ears once again, the sight of the wall of robed and belted Saracens advancing toward him and Constantine and the handful of Templars left standing. He felt in his numb hands the heavy hilt of the sword pressing into his flesh, slick with sweat. His friends had swung, slashed, yelled; Adrian had stood very still, his sword held before him in a two-handed grip, as the brown face rushed at him, its mouth twisted in a battle cry. The curved scimitar rising, rising . . .
One swing.
Adrian blinked, bringing himself back to the present. “Your men came into a house I built and slaughtered my friends,” he rasped. Then he tilted his head and looked up at the mounted general. “I couldn’t pick his head from the pile, even now.”
The Saracen’s boot connected with Adrian’s temple, sending him into the sand at the edge of the road. He felt a faint pulling somewhere between his shoulder blades, but it was eclipsed by the blinding pain of the late sun cutting into his dry eyes.
“Though you may in time find it rather unfortunate, I remember exactly who you killed,” the man said in a low, contemptuous tone, and Adrian noticed he was feeding a long coil of rope from the back of his saddle into a loop beneath his hands. “Look around you, infidel—this is my house. Allah’s house. We are only ridding our pallets of vermin. With the help of one of your own,” the soldier added slyly.
“That’s how you knew when best to strike,” Adrian commented as he struggled to come back to his knees, not in the least surprised. Adrian and Constantine had figured out as much on their own the day Chastellet had come under attack from Saladin’s army—when King Baldwin and half the fighting men were away to Tiberius. “It was Felsteppe, was it not? The man who aided you?”
The Saracen clicked his tongue and shook his head, the rope in his hands now fashioned into a circlet at one end, swaying with the horse’s even breaths. “So eager to turn on your brother. But no; the man who gave us the detailed plan to bring Chastellet to its knees is not called Felsteppe.”
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