The lieutenant finished his oration by spitting at the feet of the magistrate, a man all the villagers admired, according to what Rafael had been able to learn, for fairness and wisdom. How ironic it seemed that, after all that had been done to them and to their loved ones in the name of arrogance and power, these people had still tried to elect a judge who would serve the cause of justice.
Barrett signaled two of his men to remove Covington from the great hall, and even though the lieutenant’s hands were manacled, it still took both of them to drag the prisoner away. Privately, Rafael thought Jeremy ought to be grateful that he’d ended up in the dungeons of St. James Keep during a fairly enlightened time. Many of those who had gone before him had not been quite so comfortable.
After a conference with the magistrate, Barrett announced that the trial was over for the day, and the jurors and spectators alike were dismissed. Other soldiers escorted the remaining prisoners back to their cells.
“I need a drink,” Barrett said, as he and Rafael crossed the great hall in the direction of a passageway that led to a small, private stairway.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rafael caught a fleeting glimpse of a woman in peasant’s clothes. She was familiar in some way, although he didn’t see her face. When he turned his head, she had already gone.
Rafael felt a flicker of uneasiness, but the incident was minor, after all, and he pushed it to the back of his mind. “We still don’t know who killed that university student,” he reminded Barrett, leading the way up the rear stairs.
Barrett sighed behind him. “No,” he agreed ruefully. “We don’t.”
CHAPTER 16
Annie stood at the back of the great hall all through the following morning, listening as more droning testimony was given. For practical reasons, she wore the same plain dress she’d donned the day before, and her hair was pinned into a loose bun at the back of her head. She felt somewhat listless but, like Kathleen, she seemed impervious to the fever raging among the villagers. The malaise had felled a number of peasant women and some of the servants who had been helping when they could, but so far no one had died.
That was a blessing, and not just for the obvious reasons. The village’s sewage system had been primitive in the first place, but now, between the influx of new people and the nature of the fever itself, sanitation was becoming a real problem. There could be an outbreak of typhoid or cholera at any time.
Being preoccupied with these dilemmas, Annie was startled when Jeremy Covington, still manacled, bolted to his feet, shouting incoherently and struggling within his bonds. His eyes were glazed, like those of a wild beast in a snare; his shirt was soaked with sweat, and his face and neck glistened with it.
The young soldier who had been stating his case, as was his right, stared at his commander, openmouthed.
Reluctantly, two of Barrett’s guards moved to restrain Covington, but he was powerful in his rage and fear. He fought so hard that it took four more men to finally subdue him.
He was sobbing wretchedly by then, and Annie felt pity for him. Plainly, Lieutenant Covington’s imprisonment and trial had broken him.
The men would have dragged him back to the dungeons if Rafael hadn’t stepped forward.
“Let him speak,” the prince commanded in a quiet, even voice that carried, nonetheless, to every part of the great hall.
Covington stood trembling. “I don’t want to die,” he said. “I won’t hang for what someone else”—he turned his head and fixed his gaze on one of the other soldiers—“for what he did.”
The soldier went crimson, and then white. He shot to his feet and would have lunged at Covington, manacles and hobbles not withstanding, if Mr. Barrett and one of the villagers hadn’t restrained him.
“Damn you to hell, Covington!” the accused shrieked.
Rafael turned calmly to face the man. “What is your name, Soldier?”
Even from a distance, Annie saw the man’s throat work as he swallowed. “Peter Maitland, Your Highness.”
“Did you shoot that student, Peter Maitland?”
A visible shudder moved through Maitland’s small frame. He looked wildly from Covington to the other men lining the prisoners’bench and finally met Rafael’s gaze again. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Why?” Rafael asked reasonably.
The great hall was silent for a few moments while everyone, peasant and visiting aristocrat alike, awaited the answer. When it came, it caused a furor.
“I was defending you, sir. He was speaking treason!”
Rafael looked sick, as well as exasperated and weary, and Annie barely restrained herself from rushing forward to stand at his side. Instead, she sent a silent message from her heart and he seemed to feel the contact, because his gaze sought and found her in the crowd. For a moment, they were linked, alone in the great hall.
When at last Rafael spoke, it was with disgust and utter despair. “Take him away,” he said. “Take them all away.”
There followed such an uproar that the very walls of the hall seemed to tremble with the force of it. The man appointed to serve as judge hammered at the table before him with the gavel provided for the purpose. “Silence!” he bellowed, and everyone obeyed him, from the lowliest peasant to the visiting nobles who had come to St. James Keep for Phaedra’s wedding.
Annie lingered while the crowd reluctantly dispersed. Finally, only the magistrate, the jurors, Rafael and Mr. Barrett remained. While Annie did not think it would be appropriate to approach the prince just then, she couldn’t bring herself to leave his range of vision, either. It might have been nothing more than romantic whimsy on her part, but she felt that somehow her presence encouraged Rafael, and even lent him strength.
Seeing that her mistress wouldn’t be moved, Kathleen found chairs for them both. They sat in silence while the judge and jurors conferred among themselves. Rafael and Mr. Barrett stood a little apart, listening but offering no comment.
Within the hour, a decision was reached and, though Annie and Kathleen were too far away to hear what it was, Rafael’s expression was grim as he took it in. He nodded and then the small group separated and dispersed.
As Rafael approached, Annie rose from her chair.
Kathleen squeezed Annie’s hand and said, “I’ll be in the chapel, miss.” With that, she hurried out.
Annie swallowed, searching Rafael’s face as he drew nearer. Most probably, there would have been no trial if she and Phaedra hadn’t defied the rules and gone to the marketplace that afternoon. Annie felt a certain remorse for that, although the raid would surely have taken place anyway. In that event, of course, Covington and the others would most likely have escaped punishment.
Finally, Rafael stood in front of her. She wanted to touch him, but resisted the urge and simply waited for him to speak.
“Covington and most of the other men will be held in the dungeons for six months or until the keep is taken over by the rebels, whichever comes first,” he said, in a grave, hollow tone. “Maitland will be sentenced to hang for the murder of the student.”
Annie squeezed her eyes shut for an instant against the images her imagination readily provided, but it didn’t help. She could envision Maitland swinging from a gallows too easily, and knowing that Rafael half-expected to meet the same fate at some point made the thought still worse.
She and Rafael had not discussed his views on the subject of capital punishment, but she sensed that he had serious reservations. “Will you permit the sentence to be carried out?”
Rafael shoved a hand through his already rumpled and somewhat shaggy hair. Annie had the peculiar thought that the prince would need barbering, if he wanted to present a proper appearance at his sister’s wedding. “I have no choice,” he said. “The decision was the peoples’ to make, and they’ve done so.”
Annie was again prompted to touch Rafael, and this time she did, laying her fingers lightly to his cheek. “I’m so sorry that all this is happening,” she said, in a broken whisper. “It mu
st be like wandering in a nightmare.”
He smiled solemnly and turned his head just far enough to kiss her palm, and she felt the now-familiar shock of pleasure race through her bloodstream. “It will pass, Annie,” he replied. And then he stepped back a little way, a wry expression sparkling in his eyes as he took in her servants’garb. “I do believe you are a peasant at heart, for all the money and prestige that accompany the name of Trevarren.”
The sound Annie made was part laugh and part sob; she wanted to fling herself into Rafael’s arms and beg him to forget Bavia and go away with her. She knew he couldn’t grant her wish, though, so she refrained. “Yes,” she said instead. “I guess we Americans are all peasants, at our roots, whether or not we have money.”
Rafael took her arm, and they walked together into the sunlight that splashed over the courtyard and made a spray of diamonds of the water spewing from the fountain. They sat down on the familiar bench, both oblivious to the soldiers, crofters and wedding guests moving busily around them.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you about the fever,” Rafael began, and when Annie started to protest that she was in no danger, he stopped her with a raised hand. “I know better than to tell you to stay away from the village,” he said, with good-natured resignation. “What I want is your assessment of the situation.”
Annie felt a rush of pride, for in her experience, men seldom asked for a woman’s“assessment” of anything. She considered the facts carefully before answering. “The fever doesn’t appear to be fatal. People come down with it quickly, but they also recover in good time. What worries me is the lack of sanitation facilities in the village—there are open pits of sewage, and that could result in another and much more serious epidemic.”
Rafael listened intently, as he would to Mr. Barrett or to his advisors, and Annie was deeply moved. She believed that he loved her, though he might not have realized that yet, and he had treated her with respect for the most part. This was something more than courtesy, however, and Annie cherished it.
“The men can shovel lye into the pits and build temporary latrines farther from the village,” he said. He smiled, looking up at the towering keep and narrowing his splendid eyes against the bright sunlight. “In times of old,” he confided, “the facilities were suspended over the moat.”
Annie shuddered, but his smile was still infectious, if a bit wan, so she returned it. “So there were no alligators guarding the castle, like in fairy tales?”
Rafael gave a comical shudder. “In that water? Even sea monsters couldn’t have lived in that stuff, Princess.”
There was a sweetness in simply sitting in the sun with Rafael, and talking of silly things, that made Annie’s heart ache. The memory of that interlude would be, Annie knew, as precious to her as those of their lovemaking.
Her eyes brimmed with tears, though she refused to let her smile falter. “Being here, in this keep—it’s like traveling back in time or slipping into the tale of some medieval troubadour. What’s happening to us now couldn’t occur anywhere else on earth.”
Rafael took her hand, almost shyly, as though he had never touched her intimately with those same fingers, never driven her into a delirium of pleasure with his caresses. “Therein lies the problem,” he said, in a sad voice. “The days of castles and kings are over. The world is changing, Annie, in ways you and I can’t begin to guess. And Bavia has no place in modern society.”
Annie felt another swell of emotion. Rafael was right—progress was inevitable. Still, Annie didn’t like to think of a world with no castles and kings—and no princes. “It doesn’t seem fair,” she said at last, in a soft and tremulous voice. “There are still dragons, after all. And evil knights. They simply come in different guises now.”
Rafael smiled and kissed the tip of her nose, and the gesture, innocent as it was, sent a soft, unruly passion spinning through Annie’s being. “That’s true of princesses, too,” he said. “Some of them dress like servants and insist on looking after ailing peasants, but they have royal hearts all the same.”
Too soon, the enchantment was broken.
A clamor of excitement exploded within the keep, overshadowing and then drowning out the normal din of creaking wagon wheels, horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, swords clashing as soldiers practiced for war. Even before Edmund Barrett bounded into the courtyard, Rafael was on his feet.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“There’s a rebel battalion on its way, Your Highness, riding bold as brass along the coast road!”
Rafael turned to Annie and she braced herself, expecting him to order her into hiding and therefore ruin the effect of having asked her opinion, just minutes earlier, about the fever raging in the village. He took her elbow and spoke in a low, earnest voice.
“This will probably be nothing more than a minor skirmish, if there’s any fighting at all,” he said, “but if things go wrong, will you look after Phaedra? I don’t have to tell you that she isn’t strong or particularly courageous, despite all the mischief.”
Annie felt a spilling sensation in the region of her heart. She nodded and, though she wanted to touch Rafael’s face or only his arm, she refrained. She was afraid such a contact might weaken him, and for the same reason, she refused to cry.
With that, Rafael turned and strode away with Mr. Barrett, toward one of several sets of stone stairs that led to the battlements. Annie watched their progress, shading her eyes with one hand. Soon, they disappeared into one of the towers.
Annie watched soldiers scurrying back and forth along the parapets for a few moments, wishing with her whole heart that she could see what they saw from their high vantage point. She bit her lip, hands resting on her hips, as she pondered the situation.
Following Rafael and Mr. Barrett up the stairs was out of the question; she would only be underfoot on the battlements, where everyone had a task to perform. Still, she wanted to see the approaching rebels and gauge the danger in her own mind.
Her gaze strayed to the abandoned tower she’d climbed once before, with its crumbling ledge and long, narrow windows. Since the coastal road and the lake lay in opposite directions, there would be no need to venture out onto the parapet this time; she’d be able to see plainly without endangering herself.
Determined, Annie set off for the oldest part of the keep, going unnoticed in all the excitement and confusion, and within five minutes she was hurrying along the passageway toward the tower steps. Breathless with haste, she burst into the round, shadowy chamber, pausing just over the threshold to collect herself. As her eyes adjusted to the change of light, she made out the shapes of objects, which was odd, since she was certain the room had been empty before.
“Hello?” she inquired.
No one answered, but the shapes Annie had seen before solidified into recognizable articles—a pile of blankets, a basket, a water jug and a crude wooden basin. She took a step nearer, crouched and raised the cloth that covered the contents of the basket to see brown bread, cheese and several apples beneath.
For a few moments, Annie’s curiosity was such that she forgot the rebels riding toward the keep. Someone was obviously living in that room, but why would anyone want such Spartan accommodations, when the castle had more bedchambers than most grand hotels?
Annie rose to her feet, frowning, the answer only too clear in her mind. Whoever was using that chamber was doing so because they did not want to be seen.
She glanced uneasily toward the doorway, but it was empty. Though Annie strained her ears, all she heard was the distant shouts of Rafael’s soldiers and the heavy thudding of her own heartbeat. She went to the window and peered out. For an instant, the dazzling dance of sunlight on the blue-green sea practically blinded her. She blinked and then shivered, certain that the unknown occupant of the tower chamber would return while she had her back to the door.
Annie drew a deep breath and let it out slowly in an effort to calm herself. Then, after only one furtive glance back over her shoulder,
she turned her attention to the rebels riding along the ancient track that wound beside the sea. There were over a hundred of them, by her estimate, and while they were plainly a ragtag bunch, most were mounted. Even from that distance, Annie could see that they were armed with rifles and sabers, and several cannon-bearing caissons rolled behind the troops, drawn by mules.
Bitterness burned the back of Annie’s throat, and she swallowed. The walls of St. James Keep were ancient, and there were surely weak places, easily found if one simply walked or rode along the outer perimeter. Her imagination was vivid, and she could picture the cannons aligned on a hillside, hammering away at the old stones until they gave way.
She thought of the secret gate and the cave that lay beyond it. If she, on an afternoon’s lark, had uncovered the passage with such ease, surely a clever rebel could do the same from the outside.
Annie knew, with the clarity of hindsight, that she should have told Rafael about her discovery, so that guards might have been posted, or the gate sealed. In all the excitement, however, she’d never gotten around to mentioning what she’d found.
She went to another window and tried to see the gate, but her view was obscured by the trees in the orchard. As far as she could tell, there were no rebels advancing on the keep from that direction, but they might have been creeping along the outer wall instead of riding boldly down the road like their counterparts.
Gnawing at her lower lip, Annie tilted her head back to gaze up at the conical ceiling, wondering if she’d be able to see farther from the roof of the tower. There were plenty of cracks and crevices in the stone walls, she recalled, that would serve well enough as handholds. If she could just scramble up the roof and get a good grip on the spire …
Annie shook her head, dismissing her own thoughts. The last time she’d made an attempt like that, she’d been fine one moment and frozen with fear in the next, and Rafael had risked his life to save her. There was no rescuer at hand, should her courage fail again—indeed, her folly would probably go undiscovered until after she’d fallen and splattered herself all over the courtyard like an overripe tomato.
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