It was for their very survival.
The sounds of a carriage hit his ears and he shook off his wandering thoughts, now turning his attention to the west. He could hear the creak and groan of the wheels and the hoof falls of horses. In the surrounding foliage, he could see the heads of his men pop up as they, too, heard the sounds of the coming carriage. The Greenhead Ghost motioned to them to take their positions and they did, waiting for the moment when the carriage would reach the optimal spot for them to leap from the shrubbery and begin their assault. The tension began to mount and they waited….
And waited….
Finally, the carriage came into view, bucking along the rough road and splashing through the rain. It wasn’t moving very fast because of the weather but also because there seemed to be a plethora of guards around it. They were moving in a suspicious bunch. The Greenhead Ghost could see helmed men, heavily armed, riding fore and aft of the carriage as well as on the sides of it. It would make no difference, of course; he’d handled more guards than this. Once, he’d even stripped twenty soldiers and four knights from Jedburgh, men who had been chased off once he’d confiscated their horses as well as their money and clothing. The horses had been sold, as had nearly everything else. He kept very little for himself, only those things his mother or brother might want to keep, but everything else was sold and the coinage used to feed his household for nearly two months.
With this coming conquest, he hoped for at least that kind of haul.
His men saw the knight and they tensed, preparing for the coming fight. The rain was coming down in buckets now, creating a kind of mist, which would make it very difficult for the guards in their bucket-like helms to see when it came down to the fight ahead. All would work well to the Greenhead Ghost’s advantage. Lifting his hand to his archer, who would shoot an arrow in the air to signal the moment to spring from their hiding places, he prepared to give the signal.
The carriage drew closer and the wind was beginning to pick up. It buffeted the tall, windowless sides of the carriage, causing it to rock about. The rain was lashing the horses and they were unhappy, making for a very bumpy ride for whomever was in the carriage. The Greenhead Ghost kept his eye on the target, watching it lurch closer and closer. His hand didn’t flinch, not yet. The archer was watching him closely and his hand held steady. But the moment the carriage moved to the road just in front of him, the hand dropped and the arrow flew.
Chaos ensued.
The Greenhead Ghost had a measure of rope in his hand and he looped it over the line that stretched over the road, from branch to branch, at least twelve feet off the road. It was sagging now because of the weight of the water, but that didn’t deter the Ghost. He was still determined to use it so, looping the rope over the line, he hung on to both ends as he threw himself from the tree he had been hiding in. He sailed out of the foliage, sliding along the rope line, until he reached the carriage. Neatly, he dropped down onto the roof.
There was fighting all around him as his men kept the guards busy. Lying down on the roof of the carriage, there was, indeed, an escape hatch and he used the iron tool to rip it open. It came open rather easily and he reached down into the hole, grabbing the first thing that he could, which happened to be a wimple. He yanked at it, listening to the woman upon whose head it was perched yelp with fright and, perhaps, some pain. He was yanking rather hard. The woman was holding on to his wrists, fighting him, trying to keep him from pulling her head off.
The Greenhead Ghost wrestled with the woman for a few moments, trying to pull her up to him, but he was having a difficult time lifting her. He didn’t want to go down into the cab and possibly find himself trapped, so he was trying to lift her to him. But that wasn’t working and he couldn’t figure out why. Frustrated, he pulled forth is razor-sharp dirk, let go of the woman, and dropped down into the cab.
The cab was being buffeted back and forth from the fighting going on around it as he struggled to gain his bearing in the dark and confined space. There were sconces on the interior of the cab, very unusual, and there were two lit tapers, enclosed in an iron frame so they would not become dislodged. They gave off minimal light and the Greenhead Ghost found himself looking at a woman, collapsed on one of the benches and fanning herself furiously.
The woman was elderly, extremely well dressed, and quite overweight. That explained why he hadn’t been able to lift her to him. He had the dirk in his hand but did not lift it.
“Madam,” he said politely. “I have come for your valuables. You will kindly comply.”
The woman continued to fan herself. “Thieving wretch,” she said, breathless. “It is a goodly lesson to you that all of my valuables were sent on ahead with my servants. I do not carry them with me. Your ambush is for naught.”
He looked at her, cocking his head. His gaze, although she could not see it, roamed her head and round body. “I beg to differ,” he said. “You have bejeweled clips. I shall take them.”
She stiffened and stopped fanning herself. “You will not!”
He didn’t argue with her. He simply reached out and ripped them from where they fastened to her high neckline. She gasped in outrage, slapping at him as he ripped off the ruby clips. As she slapped at him, he caught sight of a ring on her hand, very large, and he grabbed her fingers to take a look at it. She tried to yank her hand back but he held it fast as he inspected the stone the size of a sparrow’s egg.
“What is this?” he asked. “It looks very old.”
She was trying to kick at him now, trying to push him away. “Let me go!”
He ignored her, now trying to pull the ring from her fat finger. It wouldn’t budge. “You can either give me this ring or I can cut your finger off,” he said. “It makes no difference to me but it will make a good deal of difference to you.”
The woman stopped kicking at him and scowled. “You vile creature,” she hissed. “I cannot imagine your mother is too proud of you for the profession you have chosen.”
He cocked an eyebrow beneath his mask. “My mother likes to eat,” he said. “Therefore, she has no say in my profession if she wants to continue eating. Are you going to give me this ring or must I cut your finger off?”
The woman was torn between defiance and fear. “You do not want this ring.”
“Aye, I do.”
“But it is cursed.”
He snorted. “I applaud you for using a new tactic against me,” he said, “but it will not work. I do not believe in curses. Give me the ring.”
He was yanking on it again, causing her pain, and she tried to pull her hand back. “It is a genuine curse, I assure you,” she said, grunting in pain. “And it is not for a man to have.”
He stopped pulling and flashed his dirk. “I will not tell you again to remove it,” he said, flashing the blade in her line of sight. “Remove it now or I cut it off.”
The old woman could see that he was serious. Feeling sick to her stomach, she did the only thing she could do. She nodded her head, briefly, and he let her hand go. Her fat fingers were swollen as she tried to work the ring off.
“At least listen to me before you take it,” she said. “You may not want it when I am finished.”
“I am waiting.”
He was impatient. She didn’t blame him. Truth was, she wasn’t entirely reluctant to give him the ring. In truth, she really wasn’t reluctant at all. What she had said was the truth – the ring really was cursed. It had been cursed for generations of her family, the maternal line, and every eldest daughter in every generation had to assume the ring and the same curse. Sometimes families only had boys and then the mother who had the ring, who had intended it for her daughter, had been forced to pass it down to a niece or cousin, but the family tradition remained the same. And so did the curse.
Now, she was facing the prospect of handing the ring to a robber. She had the chance to rid the family of the ring and the curse, forever. In fact, she had been heading to Newcastle to deliver the ring to her grandniece,
to burden the poor girl with such a ring now that she had come of age, but the highway robber was now giving her a chance to rid her family of the burden. To forever rid the family of the ancient curse.
Nay, she wasn’t reluctant to give him the ring at all.
“Very well,” she said, tugging it as it slipped along her finger. “You may have it. But you must understand the curse that goes along with it. This ring has been in my family for two thousand years. It is very old, as you have noticed, and it is not particularly valuable. The gold is very old and the stone, I was once told, is a carnelian that came from the gods of old. It was a ring that belonged to Aphrodite herself.”
He was listening impatiently. “The stone is black,” he said. “Carnelian is not black.”
The old woman was straining to get it over her knuckle. “It is black because I am an unhappy spinster,” she said. “But once I give it to you, it will turn to its red shade within a matter of hours and that is wherein the curse lies. Listen to me and listen well; this ring, once given, lays a curse upon the owner. It will be red upon her finger, shining and full of hope, but if the owner does not find love before she has seen twenty-five summers, the ring will turn black and she will never find love, ever. She will die old and lonely, just as I will. You see, the ring was once red upon my finger when I was young. I found my love at an early age but he died before I had seen my twenty-first year. Given the family legend, I knew I had four years to find another love but I never did. On the eve of my twenty-fifth birthday, the ring was red when I want to bed. In the morning, it was black. It has been black and I have been alone and unhappy ever since. If you are to take this ring, understand that you take the curse with you. It becomes your burden now. But give it to no lady unless you want the curse to become hers. You will doom her.”
The Greenhead Ghost was listening with more interest than he cared to admit. He thought the woman was only trying to discourage him from taking the ring but something in her eyes bespoke of truth. She believed what she was telling him. Whether or not the curse was real was another story. Still, he didn’t want to become the owner of a cursed piece of jewelry.
But he wouldn’t back down. He wouldn’t let her make a fool out of him. He held out his hand. “Give it to me.”
The old woman, seeing that he didn’t give any credit to her tale, gave one final yank and pulled the ring off, nearly breaking her finger in the process. Angrily, she plopped it down in his open palm.
“Take it and welcome, you blackheart,” she said. “The curse of The Lucius Ring now becomes yours.”
He frowned. “The Lucius Ring?”
“It is the name of the ring.”
His gaze lingered on the woman a moment before glancing at the ring; it was big and heavy, and quite valuable from the look of it. It was an excellent piece of goods.
“Your purse,” he said. “Give me your purse, too.”
The woman stiffened. “I carry no purse.”
He looked up from the ring, his dark eyes finding her. “It is beneath your cushion,” he said. “I can see the ties hanging out. Give it to me.”
Outraged, the lady looked down on her bench to see that, indeed, the strings of her purse were sticking out. Grunting unhappily, she yanked the silk purse forth and threw it at him. He caught it, deftly; it was quite heavy. Pleased, he peered inside.
“Many thanks, my lady,” he said. “You have made this event most profitable.”
The woman was furious. “Get out,” she snarled. “And don’t you go thanking me!”
Beneath his mask, the Greenhead Ghost grinned. “You’re a feisty one,” he said. “I might like to have a drink with you sometime and hear your story. You seem like you’d be a good conversationalist.”
The woman’s face turned red with anger. “Get out!” she said. “Get out or I will forget I am a lady and beat you about the head and throat!”
The Greenhead Ghost laughed. The woman certainly wasn’t afraid to threaten him. Pinching her cheek, he fled out of the open hatch, listening to the lady’s grunts of anger. He even felt her slap his legs before he could pull them through. Once on the top of the carriage, he collected his piece of rope, swung it over the rope that was still strung over the road, and slid to safety on the downhill slope of the rope, disappearing into the trees.
Once away from the road, his feet hit the ground and he ran as fast as he could to the horses that were tethered about a quarter of a mile away. His men were starting to follow as the fight dwindled and he could hear them coming through the trees behind him.
Finding his swift Spanish Jennet, the bay horse that he’d stolen from a traveling merchant the month before, he made haste to put distance between himself and the ambush. He knew his men would follow and lead any pursuers on a mad chase so they could not follow them to their lair, which in any case, happened to be a very obvious landmark to the north. No one would suspect that Bardon Castle, seat of a very old barony and home of the much-respected de Dere family, was the same place that harbored the Greenhead Ghost.
As the rain fell and the thunder began to roll, the Greenhead Ghost disappeared as if he had never existed at all.
Chapter Two
The Truth Begins
Fourstones Castle
Seat of the House of de Velt
“You are fortunate to have escaped with your life, Auntie,” a beautiful young woman said. “I am thankful for small mercies.”
The fat, old woman had reached her destination not a half-hour before, spewing tales of robbers with giant knives who had threatened her life. Rich Aunt Cassia had come to Fourstones Castle for the coming celebration of her niece’s eighteenth birthday but, instead, had found herself swamped by a thousand men, all of them trying to do her great bodily harm.
At least, that was her story as she lay on a lounge in her brother’s richly appointed solar with her niece, Lady Valeria, to tend her. The old woman had been close to swooning ever since she had arrived, now breathless and faint upon the lounge.
“What manner of horrible lawlessness is happening here?” Cassia demanded, hysterical. A nervous servant stood a few feet away with warmed wine in hand and Cassia threw out a hand in the woman’s direction. “Wine me!”
The servant dashed to the old woman, putting the wine in her hand as the old bird shakily drank. Valeria watched her aunt with concern, finally shooing away the servant who was still hovering.
“Breathe easy, Auntie,” she said calmly. “You are safe now. All will be well.”
Cassia drained the cup in several big gulps, rivulets of red wine running down her chin. She tried to put the cup on the nearest table but it was sloppily done and the cup tipped over. She wiped at her chin.
“All is not well,” she said, glaring at her niece. “He stole from me. Clips and my mother’s ring. My ring, Valeria! I was going to give it to you!”
Valeria gazed back at the woman, finally going to sit next to her on the lounge to try and comfort her. A tall girl with black hair and bright green eyes, Valeria de Velt was an exquisite vision of femininity. She was calm, wise, and had an oddly deep voice that was as smooth as honey. She would become eighteen years of age the following day but she had a maturity about her that was far beyond her years.
It had been a necessity, this maturity, for it seemed that she was the only person in her immediate family who had a good head on their shoulders. Her father, Mars de Velt, was Cassia’s older brother. He had been a mean man on the best of days but that nastiness had always been focused on his son, Valeria’s older brother, Romulus.
Mars believed that the only way to raise a son was to beat him daily to toughen him up, and the result was a son who had nearly killed his father the day he’d come of age. It had been an epic battle between loud, boisterous Mars and his considerably larger, quieter son while Valeria and the servants had huddled in fear. Romulus had emerged the winner and had promptly left Fourstones for parts unknown, leaving a badly beaten father in his wake and a sister who had been very sad
to see her brother go.
Even though Mars had treated his son poorly and had never lifted a hand to his daughter at all, Valeria and Romulus loved one another. There was no resentment there because one sibling was spared over the other. Romulus had a mean streak in him and everyone but Valeria was afraid of him. But deep down, there was a softness he kept buried. It was something only his sister saw and, even to this day, she missed her brother. Rumor had it that Romulus had become a mercenary and, even now, had a small army of men, well paid and brutal, who were wreaking havoc somewhere over near Lancashire.
But that left Valeria in charge of Fourstones, a heavy mantle for a young lady, but one she had no choice but to rise to. Her father, well after Romulus had left, had suffered a paralyzing seizure that left him unable to move his right side. Even now, he was in his bower, tended to by two burly male servants, kept clean and fed like an animal because he was unable to do it for himself. He wasn’t even able to speak.
And that was the dark secret of Fourstones Castle.
No one knew of Mars’ physical condition, not even his sister. If God was merciful, she never would. Mars wanted it that way. As Valeria sat next to her aunt and patted the woman’s shoulder, she found herself wondering how, once again, she was going to keep Aunt Cassia from coming to know Mars’ secret. Since Aunt Cassia had only visited twice over the past three years, it hadn’t been difficult to avoid the woman’s questions about her brother. But this time, Cassia was here for Valeria’s eighteenth birthday celebration. Valeria wasn’t quite sure she could still keep the secret from her nosy aunt but she was going to give it a sincere effort.
“I am very sorry to hear that your valuables were stolen,” Valeria said. “But papa is Warden of the Tyne Vale and I am sure he and his men will catch this terrible man and reclaim your valuables.”
Ever My Love: The Lore of the Lucius Ring (The Legend of the Theodosia Sword Book 2) Page 3