“You are right, but a group slows me and I cannot tarry.”
“Ride them hard, Geoff,” Will demanded. “Better to go prepared with a force, than lose before you have begun the battle.”
Geoff ran a hand across his mouth. “Five days without food or water, six, seven at the most, and a human dies of starvation. You remember that from our days with Richard in Acre and on the shores of Joppa.”
“Aye, when Saladin’s forces tried to bottle us up along the Mediterranean and we nursed the dying with olives, wheat and wine. You must be careful, too, how you begin to feed her. She’ll be in pain from lack of nourishment.”
Geoff’s mind spun with plans. To feed her, he’d need milk, untainted water and a thin gruel of oats. To save her mind, he’d need a priest. To save her body from more of John’s savagery, he’d use his friend the priest in novel ways. And in the doing, he’d ask his old comrade in arms to act in all ways holy and not. “I pray that she will not kill me for the service.”
“Oh, John would like that. Two of you dead in one blow,” Will declared with disdain for their King. “I have sent word to Simon and his countess of your need for his support to save Katherine. He has the ear of the northern lords and you may well need their friendship, along with my own friends in the mid country.”
“You know John will not take lightly to my meddling in his plan to let Katherine die.”
“Aye, he will be on you in a fortnight or even less if he can summon local allies to capture you.” Will smirked. “I always thought you liked the Tower too much.”
Geoff’s frequent internments in the King’s dungeons had marked his body in ways he was reminded of whenever he stretched his shoulders. He did now and the scars of John’s lash still smarted. For the King’s treachery to friend and foe and family, Geoff vowed the man would now pay for his perversity to helpless females. “To put our King in the Tower is now my fondest ambition.”
“Treason falls too easily on all our tongues these days,” Will mourned. “What future have we if we cannot persuade our ruler to govern us with justice?”
“A question John must answer. Now or in hell.”
Chapter Two
Wild with impatience to be gone, Geoff left with his men within the hour. He had more than seventy miles to cover, a ride that would normally take seven or more hours, keeping his horses at a steady trot. But he could not drive his mounts like that without a break. Nor could his men survive such an ordeal without hazard to their health. Geoff knew he would need gold coin and plenty of it. Plus he’d need a thief’s hardiness to make that distance in cloak of night and preferably before dawn. But he tried.
None of his fine Arabian horses served him or his men as well as he wished. By dawn, with a downpour soaking through his layers of clothing, he urged his men onward. His nine knights, drenched to the bone, had left their own exhausted or injured animals tethered to tree limbs near a farrier’s hut as gifts in trade for the poor man’s steeds. When songbirds filled the morning air with news of a sunny day, Geoff sent out Reginald, the sergeant of his guard, in advance to gather any news of raiding Welshmen or supporters of John. Thankfully, he returned, reporting to his retinue that he had met none.
The path unimpeded, Geoff led them into the town of Bath at breakneck speed to the Benedictine monastery where Henry Gervais presided. The man had once stood by his side on the battlements of Acre and on the sands of Joppa in the Holy Land. He had fought like a heathen and afterward, had given up his warring nature for the love of God. This short, jovial man with a plump face looked even rounder with his hair shaved in a tonsure. Once he had answered to the name of Henry and was now known as Domine James.
Geoff did not reveal much to James. The fewer who knew of his aims the better. But he told his friend of his need for him to accompany him to Bristol, then paid him well for ten sets of white robes and black cloaks. James, eager for the bright gold, had readily turned ten of his flock nude. Then Geoffrey and his men, attired in their new guise as monks, looked their part save for their long and unruly hair.
Geoff led his band and James northward towards Bristol and the Abbey of St Augustine. Here as they sat at the crossroads into the town, James told him that the nuns were a secretive bunch who feared Welsh raiders. Since the last invaders had come a few years before and massacred half the order, the remaining nuns had taken a perpetual vow of silence and toiled sunrise to sunset in their cloistered garden. James surmised that the reason they had taken in Katherine to do the King’s dreadful bidding was to earn gold coin.
“Poverty,” Domine James told Geoff with a rueful scowl, “eats at one’s integrity.”
“And favour from a king can cure it, no matter the crime they must commit,” Geoff added with sarcasm and spurred his horse towards the town.
Geoff and his men, girdled with leather belts, carried their short swords and their daggers, items no friar should possess. But Geoffrey rode on with the furies at his back. His guiding vision was of a slim, chestnut-haired beauty whose doe-eyed innocence had captivated him decades ago, but who now, by her Sire’s orders, gasped for water, yearned for bread and lay dying of neglect.
At each fork in the road, at each priory, to each yeoman he met, he asked for local gossip. At dusk as he and his men rode through the town of Bristol and drew nigh to St Augustine Abbey, he stopped to talk to a carter and ask about the good nature of the nuns.
The man tipped his cap to the flock of men he thought were priests and proclaimed the women bewitched. “They hold a lady chained in the nunnery’s cellars. How can they do that and call themselves the brides of Christ?”
James agreed with the man, then asked if he knew who the prisoner was or why she was there.
“She’s a witch, Domine. Why else do we have floods? The crops are washed out this spring. This lady is a curse on us by our King and when she dies, there’ll be an end of days.”
* * * *
“What do you think, my lord, of the villagers’ superstitions?” Reginald, Geoff’s sergeant at arms, queried him as he pulled his steed next to James and him. Their cloaks high over their heads at Domine James’ instructions to hide their shoulder-length hair, the group slowly walked their horses past the porter at the Abbey Gatehouse. Inside the enclosed gardens, black-robed women looked askance at their visitors, then quickly bent to their spindly plants, picking and pruning. None of the women looked younger than fifty. All appeared stooped, eagle-eyed and wary of the eleven men who rode in double file towards the abbess’s main door.
Geoff fixed the scratchy Benedictine robe at his neck, then eyed Reginald who looked as uncomfortable as Geoff felt. “Natural of them to blame the nuns. No godly woman starves another. Let’s see. I’d count twenty of them. They are in such poor health, we will have no fight.”
“We hope no more patrol those cellars.” Reginald slid his gaze to the far corner of the cloisters where a small door led down to a lower level. “The carter in Bristol told me more than forty nuns fled when Prince Llewellyn came to call four years ago to claim the land for the Welsh.”
Geoff shivered in his sopping wet clothes. What must conditions be in that dark and morbid cellar? “Did they not return?”
“No, my lord. Off they went, he said, some to marry and forsake their vows.”
“So easily they renounce their calling?” Domine James exclaimed, his face drawn with sadness.
“The church starved them and taxed them,” Reginald said so quickly that he looked sheepish when James shot him a reproving glance.
Geoff shook his head in misery. “Then John came along and did the same. No life to be a woman.”
Reginald frowned at his master, giving no remark, for Geoffrey and he had oft exchanged comments about the abuse of women by church, state and men.
Geoff scanned the buildings. “I see no guards here. Go in. Find the abbess. Tell her we are the King’s priests come to rest for the night.” Geoff checked James’ expression. “No objection to the lie, I hope.”
/> “I serve God, Geoffrey. If what you say is true and we find a woman starving here, then the man who put her there deserves no loyalty or honour.”
Reginald spurred his horse forward. A tall lean man who resembled a raven, Geoff’s steward was a man of humour and cunning. Reg had been but a boy of ten when Geoff had taken him from John’s household as his page. In the ensuing twelve years, the lad had learnt how to parlay with rogues and nobles alike. Geoff had only to wait for Reg to work his clever tongue.
Within the hour, the man rode back, his thin face grim.
“What say you?” Geoffrey prodded him.
With a nod of sad apology to Domine James, he said, “Harpies, all.”
The news burned Geoff’s stomach like bile. “And?”
“The abbess invites you in but demurs to say she cannot keep us longer than a night.”
“Because?” Geoffrey asked his man, his eyes on two fat nuns who scurried down the pebbled lane to meet him.
“They have not means. Little food. No money.”
“I’d say they have more sustenance than they let on. Lies avail them little.” He smiled down at the two women like a man with all the authority of his sovereign. “I bid you good evening. I am Dom Gregory and this is my brother in Christ, Domine James—God’s prelates to the King’s courtiers and to that noble man himself. We travel on business and seek lodgings with you for the night.”
The older woman, head high, cast speculative eyes upon him.
“I am most sorry, dear sirs,” said the older and fatter of the two. “I am abbess here. Your man has told me of your needs, but I have no pallet to give you. We are so poor. If you but travel one more mile to—”
“We cannot, good lady. I am most weary, soaked through from the rains, and need the rest now. A few of our brethren are very ill.”
“But Dom Gregory, if you but ask at the monastery, they will host pilgrims of your import. And men.” She pulled her cloak tighter at the neck, a protective measure from men’s prying eyes. “Whereas we are only women who—”
He could have laughed at her fear that his men might desire the nuns for a bit of pleasure. “I assure you my retinue are too tired to think of anything more than rest. If you can put us near a good fire, we have our cloaks to comfort us on your dry stone floors. But I can share our flagons of red wine and if you share your bread and oats, I have coin to offer in gratitude.”
Both nuns fluttered their lashes, sparkling at the offer of money and spirits.
The abbess smiled, her yellowed teeth a ghoulish sight. “You are most kind to compensate us.”
Geoff tossed her a gold piece from his purse. “A token of my appreciation.”
She caught it with agility and bit the precious metal to test its validity.
“Fetch what we need,” Geoff demanded. “We require fresh water for one of my men who needs a wound cleaned. For the rest, we want a bath. Near your hearth. Be quick about it, will you?”
The old abbess could not get enough of admiring the coin. “Of course.”
“Your name, righteous lady? I shall be pleased to tell our King how kind you were to aid us in our hour of need.”
“Thank you, Dom. I am Sister Ursula.”
“Lead on, kind Sister,” he urged her and they followed behind her and her companion, assessing the size of the nunnery, the path to the front entry and that side entrance accessed by stone steps to the cellar.
“What crops do you grow in your little yard?” he asked with a congenial curiosity.
The abbess glanced back at him, her good nature now ensured with the purchase. “Vegetables and herbs. Whatever we might get the soil to yield, which is not much.”
“You grow no vines for grapes?”
“We have tried. Alas, it is too cold in these climes.”
“Pity. Wine fetches good coin.”
Her companion glanced back at him, her round face alight with her response. “We have four cows. Milk is our sustenance.”
How wonderful to learn. He smiled at her, building a friendship that he would use to his own ends. Within the hour, when the women took to their beds, Geoff would milk those cows and feed the lady whom these witches kept in chains.
“Put two men to stand guard at the door of the cloister, two at the porter’s gate and two with the horses,” Geoff told Reg and James in a whisper. He led his band towards the main door. To a third young man, he was particular. “Matthew, do not spill that milk. We’ll need every drop.”
Geoff exited the front door of the abbey, Reginald, James and Matthew close behind. His skin crawled with anxiety. He had hastened, fought all the elements of weather and distance to find her, and now, if she had left this earth before he could claim her? What then? He pushed away the horror of it.
He ran across the cloister garden. Clouds obscured the light of the moon and the soil was a sodden mess, sucking at their boots. At the door to the cellars, Geoff tried to open it. As he had prayed, the door had no lock. Yet it was swollen shut by the recent rains, a more effective means to lock a portal than any iron lock might be. The thick rough-hewn wood would not give. But Geoff saw the ill-fitting bars sat in a frame that was rotten and would dislodge with pressure.
“Get me two horses and have them pull out the bars,” he ordered Reg and Matthew.
He waited, the time interminable. Yet his men were efficient and just as useful, quiet.
The horses were neither and yet their efforts brought results. As the wall gave way along with the bars, Geoff rejoiced, stepped over the rubble to the inside. “Light your braziers now. This is a hell-dark hole.”
“My lord,” Reg offered, “let me lead. We know not what awaits us here.”
“She knows you not, Reg. I go first. Besides, no guards are posted in this miserable place,” Geoff told him, a lump in his throat for the loathsome creatures they would find here, biting and crawling and swimming in this mire.
He stepped inside, his boots slopping in water to the ankles. Kat, dear God, do you sit in this? I swear from now on you will sit before a blazing fire every day of your life. Just live. Live and I will treasure you.
He marched forward, sloshing in the muck, the floor surprisingly even until he stumbled down a stone step. “Careful here. We descend.” Like walking into hell. Blind in the barren depths, he felt his way along, one hand to the slimy wall, down more stairs, hearing the trickle of water, feeling the ooze of walls too rough, too cold for human habitation.
Suddenly, the ground flattened and a faint ray of light from a hole in the stone wall above shone on a huddled mass in one corner. Silent, still, the dark creature reached out a limb. A hand. And put up a palm to ward him off.
“Katherine?” he asked of the filthy heap burrowed into a niche.
Reg moved closer with a light.
Matthew groaned at the sight.
The being stirred. Two dark eyes stared at Geoff from a wizened face, once oval, now taut from torment. “Katherine,” he whispered and rushed to her, bent over to reach into the alcove where she hunched.
A low animal’s moan met his ears. Not a word, yet all her meanings to him were clear.
“Nothing to fear. Not from me, Katherine. I won’t leave you,” he promised, at once turning to wave Matthew closer with the pitcher of milk and the clean cloth with which to feed her.
Geoff put a hand to her shoulder, sank his fingers into her matted hair at her nape. She was soaked through, her flesh thin, her bones frail, and at his touch, she flinched. Not dead. Not past saving, yet requiring all his delicacy to rescue her.
“I know you do not wish my touch. That it is painful. But you must permit me, Katherine. I have milk. Matthew, douse the cloth as I taught you. Press out any excess so we lose not a drop. Hand it to me. Here, Katherine. Let me put this to your lips.”
She growled, low and feral, turning her head away from him.
Geoff had once administered the same aid to Richard’s men trapped by Saladin and his army along the shores of Joppa. He had
used goats’ milk then from local shepherds, and fresh water that his men had brought from farther north in Caesaria where a palace once built by King Herod still yielded untainted water. For more than one hundred starving Angevins and English fighting for Richard, Geoff and his retinue had pressed wet linen to the mouths of weak knights for two days before many had revived enough to eat gruel and smile. But here with Katherine, Geoff had no such wealth as days to save her. He had to revive her enough to move her—and do it within hours.
“Part your lips, Kat,” he urged her, as he pressed the milky cloth to her mouth and squeezed a few drops along the seam. “Let me nourish you, my dearest.”
She turned strangely quiet. Though he could not see her face, shadowed as it was against his tunic, he felt her caution and her wonder as she scratched two fingers along his thigh. Her awareness he would take as a sign that she knew someone was here whom she might trust. If she could not fathom that it was he, her oldest friend and lover Geoffrey of Chepstow Castle who had returned to her, he could understand her disbelief. After the heartache of loving her and losing her over and over again, lo, these many years, he was himself astonished that they had come to this hideous pass.
“We will do this many times,” he told her as he handed back the cloth and took another from Matthew. “You will lick this off your lips. Yes. Like that. Again. And more.”
He tried to bring her more firmly into his embrace, attempting to give her more liquid with each ministration. But her mind and her actions were scattered, alternately clamping her teeth shut and opening her mouth to suck on the cloths. If she had been deprived days longer than her maid had told Will, then she most certainly would not have responded to Geoff at all. If, too, she had been slowly starved by her neighbour, Ferrer, she stood a better chance of surviving this more drastic incarceration and deprivation. Better a slow starvation than a quick one. So much of her imprisonment was unknown to him. So much was left to hope alone.
Geoff cursed beneath his breath and traded milk-soaked cloths with his knight.
With Her Kiss (Swords of Passion) Page 3