by Traci E Hall
Nicholas was out of his prison before noon.
“Ye stink!” Ed or Ned said as they waved their hands beneath their Montehue noses. The boys were well on their way to being as gigantic as their father. One twin had blue eyes and one had green beneath blond caps of hair.
Joseph tapped his finger against the side of his nose. “Ye’ll have to get clean, but then what?”
Nicholas knew he sounded like a whiner, anything but the heroic figure he wanted to be for his wife, but he pleaded, “Can we start with clean?”
The boys laughed and led Nicholas and Joseph to a stream tucked away at the edge of the forest. Nicholas jumped in with all of his clothes on. He scrubbed his face and hair, then his body. He finally came up for air.
“Yer a funny one, Lord Nicholas. How fares Celestia?”
Ed, the twin with the green eyes, repeated the question. “Aye, how is she?”
“Would that I knew—I must return to her as soon as possible, I feel she needs me.” He had removed his clothing while in the stream, cleaning it as best he could. It was important that Celestia’s tunic not be ruined. Before leaving the water, he donned his linen undershirt. He would not scare his wife’s brothers with the scars on his back. He laid his hose and tunic to dry on a rock.
The gash on his thigh, a gift from Petyr, looked red and irritated.
“If she needs ye, then why did ya come here?”
Nicholas ignored the injury and sat down before the small fire Joseph had built. He warmed his hands. “I was a fool to leave her,” he told them. “I thought that returning a relic to Spain was more important than telling Celestia how much she meant to me. And then, then Petyr convinced me that the baron, my father, was the root of my problems.”
Nicholas scratched the back of his neck. “I was the root of my problems.”
The boys giggled and blushed. “Did ye tell her ye loved her?” Ned asked with an adolescent grin.
“Did ye kiss her before ye left? Hmm?” Ed waggled his lips.
They thought they were so funny that they laughed until they got the hiccups.
Nicholas enjoyed the fire and the camaraderie, content to bask in life while he dried. He’d been afraid of living for too long. “Oh—living—what happened to the knight that you hit over the head?”
Ned shrugged. “Don’t know. When I came back with Ed, he was already gone. And then the baron wanted to see you—I wondered if it was because of the knight.”
“It wasn’t.” Nicholas wondered what had happened to Forrester, or if the knight was safely ensconced within the castle, drinking ale with the baron.
Joseph turned his head so that the twins would not hear his question. “I know you stole my treasure to defeat the baron in battle. When are we going to confront him?”
“Joseph, allow me to apologize for taking the relic. I—you see, I had lost it once, and I thought that by taking it all the way to Spain that I would be able to ask a boon.”
He could see that Joseph did not understand, which was fair, as he did not, either. “I was wrong to steal it.”
“’Tis no matter, me lord. There is something about the treasure that makes me feel good, too.” Joseph poked at the fire nervously. “I found it buried between the stones of the north tower.”
Nicholas thought he heard wrong. “You found it there? Where?”
Joseph would not meet Nicholas’s eyes. “There had been a lot of rain. The stones around the base of the tower came loose, and I found the treasure wrapped in an oiled deer skin and tied with pretty ribbon.” Joseph peered into the fire and continued quietly, “I knew I shouldn’t a been there; me mother told me the place was haunted by Lady Esmerada’s ghost. But I liked the tower fine! I never really heard ghosties, not a once. I just said I did, ‘cause Mother wanted to scare the villagers away from the tower.”
Nicholas closed his eyes. He was going to be sick.
Joseph looked at Nicholas quick, then went back to studying the flames. “Ye ain’t angry at me, are ye? I really would have given it to ye.”
Forcing himself to be calm, he answered, “Nay, Joseph. ‘Tis not you I am angry with.” He patted the simple man on the shoulder. There was stupid, and then there was stupid. Nicholas put himself into the latter category.
He stood and pulled on his damp hose. “Boys, I want you to be prepared to ride with me from this place. The baron is a dangerous man.”
Ned spat. “Leave? We can’t. Our family has an obligation to the baron.” Ed nodded.
Nicholas belted his tunic. “The obligation will be forsworn, trust me.” He found the arrow inside his tunic, pulled it out, and handed it back to Joseph. “Here. Thank you for the thought, anyway.”
His hands slid over the feathers and they caught his eye. He recognized that arrow! Swallowing hard, he glanced at Joseph. Had he been the one to kill the baron’s men? His stomach turned. And Bess? He exhaled. Nay, he did not see Joseph as a murderer of women. The younger man had proven his worth; he would question the rest later.
Joseph accepted it and placed it with the quiver full of others. “I am a good hunter, Lord Nicholas. I will help you beat the devil back.”
Eyeing his group he said, “Boys, this is no game we play. I want you to have Brenin saddled and be hiding in the forest here. I will come to you as soon as I have finished things with the baron, my sire.”
Nicholas recognized the stubborn look that settled over their features. His wife wore an identical expression when she did not get her way.
Ned shook his head. “What? Ye plan on walking through the front doors of the castle? From what ye said, that didn’t work in your favor before.”
Ed made a rude noise through his nose. “Ye want to end up below the stables three times in a row? We will lose our heads as well, and there won’t be a soul left to save ye.”
Nicholas crossed his arms across his chest and said drolly, “You have a better plan?”
Ned pulled out the map of the castle from his doublet. “Aye, me lord, I thought ye’d never ask.”
The problem with plans, Nicholas cursed under his breath as his hand slipped on the ivy, was that they rarely took in all aspects of a situation. He slid down two feet on the twenty-five-foot-high wall. “I am beginning to think that going through the front doors of the castle was not such a bad idea.”
“Not if ye didn’t mind losing yer head,” Joseph agreed. He was quite nimble for a large man and clambered up the ivy-covered walls with little effort. “Need a hand?”
“Nay.” Nicholas blinked against the sting of sweat in his eye. “I’ll get there.”
He looked up at Joseph, who sat on the miniscule window ledge swinging his legs back and forth. “I think asking those boys for a plan may have been a mistake. They think of this as an adventure—the more challenges, the better. They don’t realize that there are enough obstacles already.” Nicholas pulled himself atop the ledge next to Joseph. Exhaling with relief, he turned and peered into the window.
The ledge cracked beneath their combined weight.
“Did you hear that?” Nicholas asked calmly, his gut in his chest.
Joseph’s eyes widened in alarm and he pushed Nicholas on the arm. “Aye! Hurry, man, before we fall to our deaths. Boys—ye never should have listened to them!”
Nicholas slipped his knife from the belt at his waist, quickly sliding it upward between the paned doors of the window. The blade lifted the latch just as a piece of the ledge fell to the ground.
He swallowed and pushed inward. Nothing!
Now what?
“Try pullin’ towards ye, Nicholas,” Joseph suggested.
Nicholas would never refer to Joseph as “simple” again. Using his knife as a lever, he pulled the pane outward. It flew free, knocking him off balance. He tottered on the edge of the ledge, one hand firmly on the window frame. Joseph heaved him forward, and they both flew inside the room. Neither man missed the sound of the remaining ledge falling to the ground below.
“Thanks,” Nicho
las said between pants.
Joseph nodded with wide eyes. “Er, Nicholas?”
“Hmm?”
Joseph used his thumb to gesture behind Nicholas. “Ye might want ta look.”
Nicholas slowly got to his feet. He expected nothing less than a full patrol of the baron’s knights with their swords drawn, all pointed at him. He turned around, trying desperately to think of a way out of this situation and keep his head. “I can explain …”
The baron was sitting in his high-backed chair, his arms pulled behind him and his hands tied. He had a gag in his mouth, and his eyes bulged.
“What the hell is going on?” Nicholas demanded.
The baron kept jerking his head toward the voluminous velvet drapes surrounding his bed. Nicholas flicked his gaze down and saw two boots poking from underneath the curtains.
He searched the room, his eyes lighting on his father’s sword. It lay unsheathed next to his father’s feet, having obviously been knocked to the ground during a scuffle and then forgotten.
Nicholas snatched it up, admiring the blade, before settling the grip in his palm. The baron was desperately motioning for his ties to be cut, but Nicholas was not certain he was ready for that. “Joseph, keep an eye out.”
He turned back to check on the younger man, but realized he had spoken with no need.
“I see you already have the situation under control.” Joseph had his bow pulled back, an arrow notched, and trained on Baron Peregrine. “Good.”
He walked to the draperies and pulled them back with the tip of his sword.
Petyr attacked, sending Nicholas on the defensive. Petyr aimed for Nicholas’s thigh, which had not had a chance to heal since their last skirmish. He slashed, tearing the hose and piercing the skin.
“Agh!” Nicholas dropped to his knee in agony. This was not going to be a friendly fight, then. He shot up and jumped backward, avoiding the downward lunge of Petyr’s sword. He had to find a way to distract him.
Nicholas asked, “Did you really think you would get away with killing a man of such stature as the baron?”
Lunge, parry, slice.
“Aye!” Petyr snorted. “And why not? It will look like you did it. Ye escaped from the stables—I couldn’t have made it any easier for you, Nicholas. Ye broke in through the windows and killed your own father in a fit of rage. ‘Tis perfect!”
Woosh! A lock of ebony hair fell from Nicholas’s head.
Nicholas narrowed his eyes and pushed forward, slashing, aiming for the jugular. Petyr meant to kill him, but he would not go quietly.
“Not so perfect. There is a witness in the room, and the baron, he still lives.”
Baron Peregrine’s eyes popped wider as his son used him for bait.
Joseph’s aim was steady.
“Not for long! What matter will it make if ye die two seconds before yer sire?” Petyr turned on his heel and reached into his sleeve, pulling out a blade. “I’ll not tell and neither will the baron.”
Joseph fired the arrow at the same time he was hit in the side by Petyr’s knife.
The baron screamed, and Nicholas lunged, attacking Petyr fiercely and without remorse. The sound of blades clashing again and again as they met reverberated around the baron’s chamber.
“Enough!” Nicholas shouted hoarsely. He focused on the enemy and whispered, “Enough.” He aimed steady and ran forward, stabbing Petyr through the heart.
Petyr tried to pull the weapon from his chest but he could not move it. He fell to the floor, an odd smile on his face. “You win …” he said with his last breath.
Joseph bravely tried to lift his head, and Nicholas clenched his jaw at the gushing blood pooling beneath the young man. “Ah, Joseph.”
He smiled. “I got the devil, Nicholas. Tell me mother I did good.”
Kneeling beside Joseph, Nicholas clasped his hand. “I will, Joseph. I will tell her. Thank you, friend.”
Joseph died smiling.
Nicholas stood and slipped in the blood and gore that stained the chamber. Was it just today that he had made his peace with God? A thumping noise came from behind and he whirled, weaponless.
The baron whacked his feet against the floor. The sound was oddly muffled, since the chair was sitting in the middle of a large bearskin rug.
“You are alive?” Nicholas went to his father and searched for Joseph’s arrow. Philippe Peregrine was bleeding profusely from the neck where the tip of the arrow had pierced his skin to his chair. Nicholas reached forward and pulled. The tip came loose with an audible pop, and tears of pain filled the baron’s eyes.
Nicholas stepped backward and stared at the man who had been the cause of so much sorrow in his life. There was an eating knife on the table, a halved apple on a plate. Petyr must have interrupted the baron during a snack. Nicholas picked the knife up and shifted it from hand to hand.
“I could kill you easily, and blame it on the others.”
The baron’s black eyes were wild.
Nicholas leaned forward and slit the gag from his father’s mouth. He held up the small knife in warning. “One shout from you, and I will change my mind. I have many questions, Baron Peregrine, that it seems only you can answer. At the end of this, I will demand a boon. And you,” Nicholas waved the knife, “will grant it.”
Philippe nodded eagerly. “Whatever you want! Lands, money, my name—”
“’Tis not so simple as that.” Nicholas gathered his thoughts. Now that he had this man before him, and at his mercy, nothing seemed as important as getting home to Celestia.
But Joseph, he could not let Joseph die for nothing. He hovered over Philippe and said, “Tell me why you stole the relic.”
The baron looked confused. “What are you talking about? I never stole it! King Henry gave it to me to hide, almost a quarter century ago. God only knows where he had gotten it from that it needed to be gifted to Lord Harbotten, in the wilds of England, but after the mess with the archbishop, I don’t think he wanted any more fingers pointed at him for wrongdoing.”
Nicholas shook his head. “But you stole it back from the caravan. You organized the ambush, and you wanted me to die.”
Baron Peregrine flushed with guilt. “Now, Nicholas, ‘tis true that I ordered the arranged ambush. But it was because King Richard had demanded the relic in return for my vassal price. He was collecting holy objects in order to win that damn crusade! He knew King Henry had given it to me for safekeeping.”
Philippe went a deeper shade of red. “When I went to retrieve the relic from Falcon Keep, it was gone. What was I to do? I couldn’t say that I had lost the cursed thing, now could I? So I had a duplicate made, and I was going to foist it off on the king. But then, I realized that mayhap the true relic would have powers, and this duplicate would not. It seemed the easiest thing was to have the relic ‘stolen’ on the way to King Richard. That way it wasn’t my fault.”
Nicholas swayed on his feet. “The fact that I needed to die, it didn’t bother you?”
“Well, a man can always make more sons,” the baron attempted to jest while studying the trees outside the window. “Usually.”
“I’ve spent my entire life believing that I had no father. And then I found out, after a very difficult time” Nicholas deliberately kept his pain understated and was rewarded by his father’s sudden paleness, “that I had a father, and that he was the very same man I’d sworn to kill, as vengeance.”
The baron moved his gaze to the bearskin rug.
Nicholas laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed. When he had himself back under control, he wiped his eyes and shook his head. “You are a piece of work, Baron. I will say that for you.”
His sire glanced at him hopefully.
“Oh, nay. I am not finished with you.”
“What else, then?”
“How about the curse?” Nicholas paced back and forth in front of his father. “How about, once and for all, I hear about this damn curse. You abandoned me, even at the monastery. And why Celesti
a, for marriage?”
The baron raised his eyes. “The curse.”
Nicholas threw the knife into the table so hard that the apple fell from the plate. “You wanted Celestia and I married as a way to break the curse?”
“I wanted her because she is rumored to be a witch. And who better than a witch to break a curse, eh?” The baron chuckled, evidently pleased with his reasoning.
Nicholas sighed. “Celestia is not a witch, and I don’t believe in ghosts or curses.”
“’Tis true—yer mother laid on me the most evil of curses! I have been married three times, and I have buried many children. More than any father should have to. I am a rich man, Nicholas, and the older that I get, the more I want an heir to pass my legacy to.”
“Because I didn’t matter?”
“You were hers.” The baron finally looked Nicholas in the eye. “Your mother was beautiful. I thought that I could come to love her, but she—she loved another.”
Nicholas thought he heard what might be the truth, and told himself to hold on to that and none of the other drivel his sire spouted.
“What was the curse?”
“I would have no surviving progeny until I claimed you as my own. When I had ye knighted, I thought it would count, and then I had a babe who lived a full two years. I didn’t need ye, then, and I thought to have done with the curse by having ye killed.”
Nicholas thought the news should hurt more, but instead, it freed his mind, as well as his heart. He owed his sire nothing.
“The other half of the curse is that you need to have children—I didn’t know that part until you were already on your way to Jerusalem. Esmerada didn’t want her line to die out, either.”
Nicholas let the blade of the paring knife rest against the pad of his thumb.
The baron cajoled, “I went against the promise I had made to a loyal family in order to save you, and us.”
“It was convenient for you to do so–and you are the one who caused the hurt!” Nicholas scratched the back of his neck. “It makes no difference. I am ready to demand my boon. I want the Montehues released of any vassal obligation to you. I want the relic. I will return it to Spain where it belongs.”