Outrage vanquished her nauseating fear. “You did this thing?” she said to Reginald. “Murdered your liege lord and friend? A man who trusted you without question?”
“He was old and would have died soon anyway,” Reginald said defensively. “But you are not old, and I'll not let this happen.”
Edmund threw up his arms. “Should we let her leave and tell her husband what she has learned?”
“She will stay with us and—”
“And he will bring a hundred looking for her. When he does, let him find her, but not able to speak. If you want to take her before we do it, I will not object.”
Reginald hesitated and looked over at her, and Reyna felt her stomach heave. He turned back toward his brother, and the grip on his battle-ax tightened. “Nay.”
A deep sigh issued from Edmund. “I suppose I've known for some time it might come to this.” He stepped away, into the shadows, and emerged sword in hand. “Put the ax down, brother. Go up to the waste where the horses are sheltered, and take one and ride. You are out of this now, and I will deal with it.”
“I can not.”
“Nay, with the way you see the world, I suppose that you can not,” Edmund said regretfully.
He lunged with his sword upraised.
It was a small space, and their battle moved near Reyna while they thrust and swung and paced around the pits obstructing their path. She balled herself up and cringed against the wall, forcing herself to watch so that she might avoid a swinging weapon that came too near. The chill of the stones matched that in her limbs, but she dreaded the end of this contest because whoever won, she would not be safe.
In the end, Edmund's willingness to kill a brother surpassed Reginald's. She watched in horror as the thrusting sword finally brought the bigger man down, the blade piercing the muscular chest. Reginald looked at his brother in shock as his body sagged and fell.
“You did not have to kill him,” Reyna said, breaking the icy silence that followed.
“It is your fault. For coming here. You should have stayed in your knight's bed today. I had convinced Reginald that he could not have you now, not after he had grown impatient and ruined the chance to get you away. In Edinburgh there would have been time to convince you of the logic of it, but once you wed Ian—If you had not come today—”He looked down on Reginald. “I always warned him that his sense of duty would be the death of him.”
His lack of grief terrified her. She clasped her knees to turn her body into a ball of sanctuary. Edmund walked toward her and she shrank back against the wall.
He smiled reassuringly. “Nay, not yet. Not here. Out by the big stones, I think, so that your knight finds you easily. I don't want him coming in here to search.”
“Perhaps he will not search at all. He was forced into our marriage.”
“He will search for you. Forced marriage or not, he is quite taken with his virgin bride.”
Her eyes widened.
He laughed at her reaction. “But of course I knew, little Reyna.”
“Robert said he told no one.”
“He did not tell me, but I knew. On that first visit I guessed what he was. Who he was. I knew for certain when I saw the books.”
“The books? You said that you seek treasure, and not the books. If I am to die, at least explain this to me. What treasure? What gold?”
“Templar gold,” Ian's voice said.
Reyna's heart leapt with relief. Ian emerged from the shadows of the passage, and the dim light illuminated the hard expression on his face. “Templar gold, from the Paris temple.”
Edmund stepped to the center of the space between two pits, his grip whitening on his sword hilt.
“Be careful, Ian. He just killed Reginald, and he killed Robert too.”
“I did not. Reginald—”
“By your instructions, and as surely as if you had thrust a dagger into his neck.”
Ian unsheathed his sword. “Well, Edmund, I have never fought a monk before, but I do not mind the prospect at all. You are a very clever man if the books alone told you Robert's secret.”
“I suspected long before. His time in the East and in France. His sudden appearance here with no history. The books only confirmed it. All the preceptors have a description of the property never recovered from the Paris temple. The gold and the library.”
“So when you saw those rich volumes marked with the device J.M., you knew for sure. The library of Jacques Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars. Why didn't you just confront Robert and claim the property for the Hospitallers?”
Edmund laughed. “And give it to my order if he relinquished it? The monks of Saint John are rich enough. I was meant to have it. It was fated on the day those Templars sent it here with their young knight.”
“They did not send it here for you or for the Hospitallers, and Robert knew that. It is not hard to see what occurred all those years ago. He was sent away to sit out the purge and wait for the order to renew itself. But it never happened, and Robert of Kelso found himself with a treasure that did not belong to anyone. Did he suspect that you knew who he was?”
“Nay, I was careful, and so was he. Too careful, which only piqued my curiosity. He never spoke of the Templars to me, or asked questions. Everyone else does, just as you did. That was how I knew that you had not guessed, despite your wife's virginity and Robert's vague history.”
“Why would I guess? That order is long gone. If it were not for his similarity to you, I would have never wondered.” Ian gestured to the passageway. “Leave now. If you move quickly you can be on the sea before I tell your crimes to the bishop and your preceptor. I give you the chance to walk away with your life.”
The blond head angled back, and Edmund studied Ian with hooded eyes. Reyna's spirit recoiled from the cool evil emanating from the smaller man.
“You know where it is,” Edmund said.
“I think that you are wrong about the gold, and Robert never had it. He would have considered the books treasure enough to protect,” Ian said.
“You lie. You plan to take it for yourself. Do not expect me to let you do so. I told Reyna that I am willing to share. Let us put up our swords and become partners in this. Half for each.”
Ian looked down to Reginald's inert shape. “I see how you deal with your partners.”
“My brother needed to claim honor long after he had abandoned it, but you are not a man who indulges in self-deceit. We will work well together, Ian. With the other sins on our souls, the theft of this gold is a small thing.”
His insinuations infuriated Reyna. “Do not presume to compare yourself with him, Edmund. You are a cold-blooded murderer, and—”
“You have not told her,” Edmund interrupted with amazement. “Did you think to hide her up here and hope she never found out?”
Ian's eyes burned. Edmund grinned. “Should I tell her? I would never betray a partner, but—”he let the offer hang there.
“There is nothing that you could tell me that would make any difference,” Reyna said, catching Ian's attention, trying to tell him that whatever decisions he made about Edmund, they should not be because of this.
“Is there not?” Edmund raised one eyebrow at Ian. “Is there not?”
Ian didn't move or speak, but his jaw clenched like a man expecting a blow. He glared at Edmund, but his silence spoke his response.
Edmund shook his head. “You moved from heaven to hell in your choice of husbands, little Reyna. I learned about this one from one of his own men, a knight who worried that my interest in you was lustful, and sought to warn me off by explaining just how dangerous his captain could be.” A wicked sneer distorted his face. “You damn me because of Robert and Reginald? Then what will you say to a man who killed his own father and bedded his own mother?”
She gasped in shock. She turned to Ian for his denial. An anguished expression flickered over his face, and he refused to meet her gaze.
“At least I committed my sins for a worthwhile goal,�
�� Edmund said.
“A goal worth dying for, I hope,” Ian said. “Leave us, Reyna.”
Edmund took a battle stance. “She stays. If she moves, I will cut her down.”
Ian's eyes flashed. “Then let us be done with it, monk.”
Reyna screamed when they engaged, and her eyes followed each swing of the swords while horror pinned her against the stone. Her mind chanted a reassurance that Ian was strong and skilled, but Edmund's wild determination appeared to double his danger.
Ian fought at a disadvantage, not accustomed to the placement of the pits, and he endeavored to keep the contest away from the wall where she cowered. Then Edmund drew first blood. A curse hissed from Ian as a streak of red blurred into his tunic. His fighting instantly transformed as he unleashed his full warrior's force.
She had never seen him fight before, had never seen the mastery those keen senses and sharp mind and lithe body gave him. Methodically, ruthlessly, he blocked every blow that the fevered Edmund offered. When Edmund tried to move the battle toward her wall, a singing swipe from Ian's weapon grazed his upper arm, shearing off a patch of skin. “Go near her and I will cut you to pieces before you die,” Ian growled.
Ian had several opportunities to end it, but he drew back each time, declining the thrust that would kill his opponent. Finally, two quick swipes incapacitated Edmund's sword arm and one leg. Edmund fell beside one of the pits, pressing hands against the wounds as blood oozed through his fingers.
Ian stood above him, the torchlight making him look like an angel of vengeance facing the damned in the flaming pit of hell. His sword hovered high, ready to take Edmund's head.
Reyna stared, her skin clammy from the hell of fear she had just lived. She watched the decision play out on Ian's furious expression.
If you do it, do it for Robert, and not because of what he told me, she urged with her heart.
With a curse, Ian kicked Edmund's sword aside and lowered his own.
Striding over to her, he grabbed the hem of her skirt and ripped. With the strips of cloth, he returned to bind Edmund's two wounds. Then he found some rope and tied the man's hands and feet.
He looked down at the surprised monk. “The temptation to kill and bury you here is strong, but I will let the bishop deal with you. I'll not be explaining the disappearance of a Hospitaller in these parts.” He reached down and lifted a shovel. “And, aye, I do know where it is. Let your failure to find it be your hell.”
Reyna's mouth gaped. Ian came and took her arm. “Watch the pits,” he instructed while he guided her into the passageway.
“How did you know, Ian?” she asked as they stumbled along. “Robert a Templar—it is too fantastic.”
“It all fits. A vow of celibacy that he kept secret. His arrival here about five years after Jacques Molay was executed and a few years after the order was disbanded. I suspect that he went to other temples for sanctuary first, but the pope's command eventually closed them all. And so he came here and waited to turn over what he had saved, but the day came when he knew it would never happen, and then that treasure became a burden.”
“Why not just give it to the Hospitallers?”
“Most likely Robert did not want the Order of Saint John to have it. The Templars suspected that the Hospitallers had encouraged their suppression in order to enrich themselves.”
They emerged into the sunlight. Reyna blinked up at the stone lintel. No ghost hung there.
“Is it true? You know where it is?”
He did not look at her. “I think so. We will find out soon if I am right.” He propped the shovel against a stone, and withdrew a scrap of parchment from his sleeve. “It was in your Book of Hours. I think that Robert had some moments of lucidity before he died, and drew it. He planned to tell you what it meant. But the day he tried you were not there, and Reginald heard instead.”
She looked at the lines and circles. “What is it?”
“A map. Not how they are usually drawn, but more accurate in its own way. David makes them thus. Look, here is the motte where we stand, and the square is the Black Lyne Keep.” Holding the scrap he moved until Black Lyne Keep was positioned to them as it was to the motte in the map. “He would have needed some markers to know himself where it was later. This large stone perhaps.”
He stood in front of the stone, then walked to the edge of the motte and peered down. “There,” he pointed. “The depression in the ditch. These bisecting lines may either mean it is where they join in the ruins, or where they cross the circle of the ditch. Edmund has disproven the first possibility.”
Taking the shovel, he walked directly down the slope of the motte, and Reyna hurried after him. Checking his position against the stone and the keep, he began to dig.
The hole had deepened considerably before the shovel met resistance. Ian excavated a rotting sack, and hauled it up. A faint glint showed through its worm holes. Reyna helped him pick at its tie, and her pulse quickened as the sack fell away. Her hands shook as she placed the contents on the ground.
Objects. Precious objects. A gold chalice embedded with blue stones, and two heavy gold candle holders. A treasure to be sure.
“From their chapel,” Ian muttered.
The gold flamed in the sunlight. “Oh, Ian, they are beautiful.”
“Aye. And very, very valuable.” He thoughtfully paced away, hands on hips. He looked up at the donjon, where Edmund lay bound. “Hell.”
“No one knows it is here but him and us,” she said. “But if you want to keep it, you will have to give him some, or he will say that he came here to reclaim it for his order and you concocted the tale of his murdering Robert.”
“He will claim nothing if he is dead.”
“You did not kill him in the heat of battle. Would you return and do so now?”
“Why not?” he said harshly. “You heard what he said. A man with my sins is capable of anything. Especially for a prize such as this.”
He looked at her for the first time since they had left the donjon. A blatant challenge burned in his eyes, daring her to react and argue. Daring her to condemn.
“I do not believe him,” she said.
“You should. It is the truth.”
“There is much I don't know about you, Ian, but the man I love never did such things, and it was not as he said.”
“Close enough.”
She had promised not to ask about his past. If he had not brought it up himself, she would have pretended Edmund had never spoken and just trusted her love in the Ian she now knew. But beneath its stony defiance, his expression held a pain that wrenched her heart.
“How close?”
He strode over to a candle holder and kicked it furiously. It flew and fell and skidded along the ditch. She calmly retrieved it. When she returned he was standing with the chalice at his feet, bitter resignation written on his face.
“I am going to tell you, but you are not going to like what you hear.”
“Do you doubt my love so soon, Ian? Are you so sure what I will think?”
“I am sure, but I will tell you anyway, because it was not as he said, and when I lose you, let it at least be over the truth.”
He looked toward the waste, as if organizing his memories and forcing them to his lips. “I told you once that I went to a neighboring lord to squire. He had a young daughter. She had hair like fire and skin like snow, and I worshipped her. All those years we rarely spoke and never met alone, because she was kept close with the women and protected. And so, I didn't really know her, but I loved her with a burning pain anyway. When I got older I would take others, serving girls and whores, and pretend I was with her, and then loathe myself for having dishonored her in my mind. By the time I expected to earn my spurs, she had reached marriageable age, but I knew that was impossible. I was a younger son, and she was not for me.”
He had not said her name, Reyna thought. Nor would he.
“That last year, my father and older brother came to visit on their way back
from Windsor. The estates were not far apart, but they had not seen the beauty she had grown into before that. My mother was dead, and my father not yet forty. He offered for her the first night.”
“Oh, Ian.”
“Aye, a moment of pure hell when I heard. Her family was delighted with the match. I swallowed it, but the notion of having the girl I loved as a new mother, the idea of her sharing my father's bed, made me sick.”
“But you did nothing wrong. We can not be blamed for what our hearts feel.”
“Jesus, but you are such an innocent, Reyna. If that were all—” His words were barely audible. “My father stayed. A betrothal was planned for a week later. I feigned joy for him, but it was an agony. For one thing, the girl who had never spoken to me was speaking a lot, suddenly. The eyes that rarely noticed me seemed always to meet mine. Finally, one day, while our fathers were out hawking, she sent me a message asking to meet me in the garden behind the keep.”
“You went?”
“My legs took me there even while my head told me to stay away. I don't know what I expected, but I know what my heart secretly prayed for, and those prayers were answered, but by the devil. She kissed me, and I had no sense after that.”
He glanced at her, and his look said it all. She did not have to ask what had happened.
“We were found there. The men returned while the hall was in an uproar and her mother was crying. My beloved was frightened and shocked into silence.” His lids lowered. “Even when I was accused of rape, she didn't say a word.”
“How could she remain silent when you were accused? I do not care how frightened she was, she should have spoken. Her great shock makes no sense.”
“It will.” Bitterness dripped in his voice. “My father had a quick temper, and it flared like an oiled torch when he heard. Then and there, in front of the whole household, he challenged me. I pled what innocence I could claim, but within an hour of holding that girl in my arms I found myself in the yard facing my own father with a sword in my hand.”
Lord of a Thousand Nights Page 29