by Tamara Leigh
Garr worked his fingers into his temples as the tidings delivered this morning once more distracted him from Stern’s journals. He knew what he must do. Had known since that night at Wulfen when Annyn, disguised as Jame Braose, had come to him in the chapel. And Garr’s overlord, the indecisive John Newark, from whom the Wulfriths held their barony, awaited the determination. This day, Garr would send a missive.
“My lord!”
Garr looked up from the journals that had suffered his divided attention these past two hours. Squire Samuel’s expression saved him the sharp rebuke for not having knocked before entering the solar.
Garr thrust up from the table. “She has escaped?”
“Nay, though she attempts to.”
Garr strode forward. “What do you mean?”
Squire Samuel retreated to the corridor to avoid being trod upon. “Squire Warren bid me to tell you that he follows her so you might know her end.”
Redemption. Though it would have been easier for Warren to halt whatever she planned, he remembered the lesson that, before acting, one gather as much information as possible about an opponent’s intent. Assumptions could be deadly. Of course, so could Annyn’s disregard for the physician’s order that she stay abed. Fool woman!
“Your mantle, my lord?”
“Nay!” Fortunately, Garr had dressed fully despite the physician’s order that he stay abed. “How did she get past?” He descended the stairs with Samuel close behind.
“In the clothes of Lady Isobel’s maid, my lord.”
First Jame Braose, now Josse. But did it mean Josse betrayed? Nay, Annyn must have overpowered the young woman. “Return to Lady Annyn’s chamber and aid Josse in whatever she requires.”
“Aye, my lord.”
There was an expectant quiet about the hall when Garr stepped into it, and he realized its occupants knew something was afoot. They had seen what Annyn had not—Warren following her.
Isobel rose from the hearth with her daughters. “’Twas she?”
“Aye.” Garr strode hard across the hall.
“Your shoulder!” she called.
Garr grunted. His injury was healing fine—would support his sword arm before the fortnight was done.
The porter swung the door wide, and Garr stepped onto the landing. In a moment, his eyes found Squire Warren. Allowing the figure of Annyn Bretanne a lead of thirty feet where she passed beneath the inner portcullis, the young man held alongside the well, then crept after her.
Garr overtook Squire Warren as the young man neared the portcullis.
“My lord, I—”
“I am pleased with you. Now return to the donjon.”
“But—”
“I shall follow.” Garr watched as Annyn moved through the outer bailey trying to look as if she belonged among the many who worked the stables, the smithy, the carpenter’s shop, the piggery, but she did not belong, even garbed in simple clothing.
Knowing she would be called to account for herself before she reached her destination, Garr waved an arm to draw the gaze of a man-at-arms on the outer wall. Gaining it, he pointed to Annyn and shook his head.
When she veered toward the outer tower, Garr was surprised only in that she believed she could escape with Rowan. Even with her training, she could not possibly think to knock the guard senseless, but it seemed so. Not that she would be given the opportunity, for there was no longer a guard over the outer tower.
Feeling like a hunter about to gain his prey, a thrill shot through Garr. However, when Annyn suddenly stopped, he had only enough time to gain the cover of the falconry before she swung around and peered up from beneath the head veil.
Annyn held her breath as she considered the workers in the bailey and the men on the walls who continued on as if her presence was of no consequence. Did she merely imagine being watched?
Praying so, she turned back to the outer tower. As she neared, she dug the vial from her bodice. The guard would likely be in the room at the base of the tower. If all went well, he would ask no questions when she told him the physician had sent her to deliver medicine to the prisoner. If all did not go well, a rock would serve. She gripped tighter that which she had scooped from the inner bailey. Unfortunately, the tower’s guard was a large man and one thump to the head might not suffice, but it ought to rattle him enough for her to strike a second time.
When she entered the tower, the guard room was empty. Where was the man? Surely not delivering Rowan victuals, for it was two hours before the nooning meal. With foreboding, she considered the stairway that wound to the bowels of the tower where she had shared a cell with Rowan. It was no longer lit by torches.
Refusing to believe what whispered through her, she carefully picked her way down the steps that, unlit, soon turned to pitch. Hands to the walls, she stepped off the first landing and felt her way down the corridor to the cell where Rowan waited.
“Rowan?” She directed her voice through the grate set high in the door. “’Tis I, Annyn.”
No answer, and though she strained, she heard no movement. No breath.
“I have brought you something.” She pulled out the vial. “Come to the door and I will hand it through.”
Silence. Refusing to listen to the whispers gathering voice within her, she shook her head. “Pray, Rowan, be quick ere someone comes.”
Mayhap he was asleep? She dropped the rock and thumped a hand on the door. “Rowan?”
The door creaked open.
No longer whispers, the voices told what she could not bear. “Nay,” she breathed. The guard was remiss in his duties, that was all. When she stepped inside, the stench was as bad as when she had passed those first days here.
A scuttle to the left brought her head around. “Rowan?”
The scuttle came again. Blindly, she followed it to the corner where Rowan had laid his pallet. When the straw mattress came underfoot, she dropped to her knees and felt across it. Something warm and furred brushed her fingers and, with a squeak, scampered away.
The slender thread of delusion snapping, Annyn grasped at the frayed ends and told herself Rowan must have taken her pallet for himself since the walls on that side of the cell did not weep as badly. She crossed the cell on trembling legs, but when she lowered to her knees again, she found the pallet was gone.
She sank back on her heels, dropped the vial, and put her face in her hands. While she lay abed in a warm chamber, being fed fine food, her ailments tended by a physician, Rowan was dying. All because of her, because of what she had asked of him. For her he had forsaken his allegiance to Henry, escorted her to Wulfen, and suffered this cell. For her he had died, for one who had betrayed him.
“Forgive me,” she gasped. “Pray, forgive me, Rowan.”
“You must love him very much,” said a harsh voice.
Wulfrith had followed her, but she did not care. Not any more. Though she longed to strike out at him for putting Rowan here, it was she who had done it.
She scrubbed at her damp eyes and opened her lids onto the light of a torch that told the whole truth of the hideous cell.
“Aye.” She looked over her shoulder at where Wulfrith filled the doorway, a torch in hand. “I loved him.” And she did not care how he construed that.
His eyes narrowed, and on his face was something she would have named jealousy were it cast by any other. “Come.”
She looked to her hands in her lap. “When did it happen?”
She heard the rub of the torch as it was placed in the sconce beside the door. Raising her gaze to the wall on which Wulfrith’s shadow moved, she saw things in the oozing cracks that would have made all of her creep if not for grief. First Jonas, then Uncle, now Rowan.
Wulfrith halted at her back. “You should not be here.”
She turned her head and peered up his imposing figure. “If you recall, I was here, as was Rowan.”
“And now he is not. Come.”
She drew a deep breath. “If you can find it in your heart, and I know
you have one, I would ask that you allow me to be alone.”
A muscle in his jaw jerked. “You need to see what I have to show you.” He reached a hand to her.
She looked at his large palm and fingers and hated herself for remembering the feel of them in so terrible a circumstance.
“Now, Annyn.”
Resenting that he should deny her such a small thing, she ignored the hand he offered and stood. As she turned to face him, her foot sent the vial rolling across the floor.
Wulfrith picked it from the filth. “’Twas for this you came to the tower? To bring him medicine intended for you?”
Incensed that he should begrudge Rowan relief—a chance of survival—she stepped forward. “You speak God, you pray God, but do you live God, oh mighty Wulfrith?”
His nostrils flared and lips thinned, but she did not care. Why should she when there was nothing left in this world to care about?
“Do you?” she demanded.
She felt his breath on her face, the air trembling between their bodies as if it feared to be near them.
“Answer me!”
Black was the color of his eyes, the grey and green having fled in the wake of anger. But he said nothing.
She slapped a hand to his chest. “Are you in there?”
Still as stone. Would one more push unhorse him? Two? “A warrior,” she scorned. “Nay, a man who allows others to choose his path.”
That should loose him, but it did not.
She squeezed her hands into fists and pounded his chest.
He stood through her assault as if it was her due. However, when her fist struck his shoulder and he jerked, she realized what she did. Cheeks wet as if she had turned her face up to rain, she blinked at where he hunched with a hand to his shoulder.
“I...” What words would not sound hollow? She shook her head. “It seems I do harm to all I touch. Pray, forgive me. ’Tis grief that makes me behave so.”
He lifted his hand from his shoulder and considered it.
Was there blood? Had she caused his wound to open?
“You have naught to grieve,” he said, cold as the dead, “not this day.”
What did he mean? That Rowan was not worth grieving? Or...
“What do you say?” Annyn called as he strode from the cell, but he did not answer.
She hastened after him, not realizing she should have brought the torch until she was on the darkened stairs. Hand to the wall, she felt her way up and found light at the top.
Wulfrith was not there. She hurried past the guard room into the bailey where he strode toward the drawbridge of the inner bailey, his large form moving past the others as if he was the only man among boys. Then he passed from sight.
Ignoring those who stared after her, Annyn ran. As she came out from beneath the portcullis, she caught sight of Wulfrith, but only for a moment before he disappeared into one of two towers flanking the drawbridge. She entered moments later and drew up short before a man-at-arms whose broad face was spread with a nose nearly as broad.
“The topmost floor, my lady,” he said, stepping aside.
She snatched up Josse’s skirts and mounted the stairs.
It was four floors to the top, four that made her weakened lungs nearly breathless. And there was Wulfrith alongside the guard who had stood watch over her and Rowan in that hideous cell.
“See for yourself.” His voice was nearly emotionless.
She looked to the door that lay to the left of him. “Truly?”
He stared.
She hurried forward and pushed the door inward. The room was dim, though compared to the cell, it glowed. A glimpse was all that was required to see it was comfortably settled with fresh rushes, table and basin, a chair, and a bed.
“Rowan,” she breathed and crossed the room.
He slept, his face turned to the narrow window from which the oilcloth had been removed to let in fresh air.
She touched his brow. It was cool, meaning the fever had passed. Realizing her prayer was answered, she shuddered. God had not denied her—had moved Wulfrith to bring him out of the cell as she had asked. Had she any remaining doubts about Wulfrith’s innocence, they blew away like leaves in the wind. He was a man of honor. A man who, in spite of the anger she provoked, lived God as she had told he did not.
Tears squeezed out from beneath her lids. She had wronged him, from the beginning had put sins upon him that, if they belonged to any, belonged to her.
“Annyn?”
She opened her eyes.
Gaze muddied from sleep, Rowan said, “The physician told me you were well. I am...pleased to see it.”
Then he had put aside his anger over her betrayal? She pressed her lips to his weathered cheek. “How do you fare, old friend?”
“Better than I did in that accursed cell.”
“I am also pleased.” She reached to the gaping tunic that fell off his shoulder, but when her gaze fell upon a familiar mark beneath his collarbone, she stilled and touched the V-shaped mark of birth.
“Do not!” Rowan thrust her hand aside and dragged the tunic over it.
Annyn took a step back, blinking as the past sprang to the present, all that was known to her scattering such that she feared she might never know it again.
“Ah, nay,” she breathed. Mere happenstance that Jonas had also carried the mark? Only a fool would believe that. She met Rowan’s urgent gaze. “You and Jonas? My mother?”
Chest rising and falling rapidly, he stared.
It had been there all along—in Rowan’s utter devotion to her brother, his love for Jonas that had come no nearer her than kindness, his jealousy over Uncle’s feelings for her mother, his feelings for her mother revealed, the arrow he had put through Wulfrith as a father would have done to one he believed had murdered his son.
Rowan groaned, and the hand holding his tunic to his throat flopped to the mattress. “’Tis true.”
Beyond Rowan, she saw the doorway fill with Wulfrith, but it was Rowan who held her, Rowan who had known her mother as Annyn’s father had known her, Rowan who had sought Lady Elena’s attentions and, it seemed, never received more than a grateful nod. But at least once he had lain with her.
She retreated until the backs of her knees came up against the chair. Clenching her hands, she said, “I do not understand.”
He momentarily closed his eyes. “You do not understand because your mother, like you, never knew.”
“How could she not?”
“Always she drank too much, all for love of a man denied her by marriage to your father.”
“Uncle Artur.”
“Aye,” Rowan growled. “And none knew, none but your mother and him.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “Do you know how long I have hated the Wulfriths?”
What had they to do with this? Annyn glanced at the doorway from which Wulfrith had not moved. Did Rowan know they were not alone? That the one of whom he spoke listened? Likely not, for the bed was positioned such that he would have to turn his head to see Wulfrith. And his attention was all on her.
She reached behind and gripped the chair with one hand.
“I have hated them since Drogo—and Artur—came to the castle that long ago winter day while your father was absent.” He looked to the window beyond her and cleared his throat. “Time and again, Elena called for her goblet to be topped, leaned near Drogo, smiled and laughed, touched his sleeve. I was near mad with jealousy, and so I also drank.”
He fell silent, and time interminable passed. Finally, tears wetting his eyes, he said, “That night I went to the solar to tell her of my love, but ere I could raise a hand to the door, I heard her laughter—and Drogo’s, I thought.”
Annyn felt herself into the chair.
“Telling myself she was but a harlot, I returned to the hall and filled my tankard, how many times I do not know.” He jerked his gaze to Annyn, causing a tear to slip onto his cheek. “I was drunk when I did it.”
Lord, not that. Pray, not that. “W
hat?”
“I returned to kill Wulfrith for having her as only a husband should.” Gaze imploring, he pushed to sitting. “But when I entered the solar, she was alone. She was smiling in her sleep, and it was then I...determined to have her myself.”
Not Rowan who had cared for her, protected her, soothed her fears, taught her to hunt, to ride, to swing a sword. Not Rowan whom she loved as she had not loved her own father.
“I put out the torch and went to her.” His voice was muffled where he spoke behind the hand gripping his face. “She whispered words of love that I told myself were for me.” He braved her gaze. “She never knew, Annyn, and I never told, not even when Jonas was born bearing the mark that most males of my family bear.”
Annyn felt ill, her mouth so dry it was a long time before she found her voice. “You violated my mother.”
Regret turned down his mouth. “I did, and I have lived every hour of every day repenting.”
Had she the strength, Annyn would have fled, but she did not. All lies, nothing to hold to in a storm. She squeezed her arms against her sides. Only minutes ago, such gratitude she had felt to discover God had answered her prayer for Rowan, that He did hear her. But for this? That she might know such pain and loathing?
“Though I hated myself,” Rowan broke into her thoughts, “I exalted in knowing Jonas was mine, that the strength of my manhood had surpassed the all-powerful Wulfrith.”
“But not Drogo Wulfrith,” Annyn spoke low. “Uncle Artur.”
“Aye, Artur who must have believed all these years that Jonas was his.”
Rowan and Artur, Artur and Rowan, both loving Elena, both loving Jonas. “Did my brother know?”
Rowan’s eyes snapped. “And have him look at me as you do? I could not have borne it.”
As she was to bear all that was revealed this day. She considered her hands in her lap.
Refuge in God, she reminded herself, though she longed to rail at Him, even to deny Him. The Lord is my light and salvation.
“Now you know why I could not love you as I did Jonas.”