That seemed of great interest to Henry as well as his advisors. The great Earl of Canterbury, Daniel de Lohr, happened to be in London at this time and had been visiting with Henry at Westminster. Patrick had known the man since childhood and he liked him a great deal. The House of de Lohr and the House of de Wolfe went back generations and were great allies. It was Daniel, standing on Henry’s right, who spoke.
“Who told you this, Patrick?” Daniel asked calmly.
Patrick turned his attention to the big, blonde earl, still powerful and agile in his sixth decade. “Her nurse, my lord,” he replied. “An old nun was also captured by the raiding party and she told me of Bridey’s true identity. It has been kept secret for many years.”
Daniel’s eyebrows furrowed. “The lass has been raised by nuns?”
“Aye, my lord.”
“A daughter of the king of the Northmen?”
“Aye, my lord.”
Daniel looked at Henry, greatly perplexed by the story that was coming forth from one of the most reasonable young knights he had ever known. It sounded like madness to his ears but he knew there had to be a complex reason in there, somewhere. Henry, equally perplexed, held up his hand to silence both Daniel’s questions and Patrick’s replies. He was only growing more confused by the moment.
“Patrick,” he said with quiet insistence. “I think you had better start from the beginning, my son. You have married a woman who is the daughter of the king of the Northmen and a Scottish mother?”
Patrick nodded, feeling some of the nervousness drain out of him as he realized that Henry was truly interested in what he had to say. So was Canterbury. These were two men he greatly respected. There was so much to tell he hardly knew where to start. With a sigh, he focused on the beginning of his tale, going back to that night that changed the course of his life. He hadn’t known it then, of course, but he certainly knew it now. And he wanted nothing more than to head back north to Northumberland, to the borders between Scotland and England, where his family ruled.
Where Brighton was.
Fixing the king in the eye, he began his complicated tale. “I have, my lord. And I did not have permission to do it.”
“I see. And now there is trouble?”
“Possibly, my lord.”
“Then start this story from the beginning. And leave nothing out.”
Patrick complied. “It was a dark and stormy night….”
CHAPTER ONE
† The Tale Begins †
Five weeks earlier
Whiteadder Water, near Foulden
England/Scotland Border
They had been waiting for them.
Hidden by a grove of black, shadowed trees beneath a crystal-cold night sky following a violent rain storm, the reivers from Scotland never had a chance. The English overlords from Berwick Castle had been alerted by their patrols that a raiding party of Scots was heading away from the coast after having ransacked an English settlement.
The English patrols had kept track of the reivers as they’d headed inland, sending word to their lords at Berwick because they knew that the castle, held by the House of de Wolfe and a garrison for the English king, would send a highly-trained squad of men to intercept the Scots. Rumor had it that they had a woman with them. Based on the accounts of the village that had been raided, the woman had been a spoil of war.
Fearing it was an Englishwoman that had been abducted fed the bloodlust of the English from Berwick. By anticipating the movements of the reivers, the English had been waiting for them as they’d passed through a lesser-traveled road heading south. Once the group passed into England, those in the trees swooped on them.
The Nighthawk had found his prey.
The fight had been chaotic. Somewhere along the line, the reivers had picked up more men. So by the time they hit the trees where the Nighthawk and his men were waiting, they had nearly doubled in number.
But it was of little matter; the men waiting in the darkened trees were English knights of the highest order, men born and bred for battle. Sons of de Wolfe, de Norville, Hage, and a few others rushed to the road to engage the Scots, who had been startled by the confrontation. Mostly, the reivers were men who raided and ran. They didn’t necessarily go looking for a fight.
But the English did.
The reivers were well-armed and, quickly, the English found themselves in a heavy battle. But they, too, were prepared for the fight with a myriad of weapons. Beneath the three-quarter moon, maces struck, swords chopped, and flails swung. Men were grunting with effort, groaning in pain. Because the reivers wore cloaks covering their dirty bodies, the English were aiming for the cloaks as sort of a broad target-practice. Hitting a cloak meant hitting a Scotsman and, soon enough, the Scots began to go down. Some of them were even running off, heading north from whence they came. But most were scattering as the English gave chase.
The Nighthawk wanted no man left alive. He wasn’t known for his mercy in a fight. Sir Patrick de Wolfe was the man known as the bird of prey, mostly because he was cunning, swift, and merciless, all glowing attributes as far as the English were concerned. But as far as the Scots were concerned, the man was a vicious predator and someone to be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, on this night, there had been no avoiding him.
He was out for blood.
One man’s blood in particular. Patrick had led the charge from the trees into the group of raiders and he had singled out the man in the lead, the one that seemed to be driving the rest of the group. That was the man he wanted to subdue because he was sure if he eliminated the leader, the reivers would fall apart. But the man he’d singled out had proved wily. He’d kept himself buried back in the roiling mass of men during the battle but Patrick hadn’t lost sight of him. It had been something of an effort to kill others in order to get to him, but like a dog with a bone, Patrick hadn’t let go. He’d gone right for him and when the man realized he was being pursued, he’d broken off from the group and headed back the way he’d come.
Patrick’s heavy-boned war horse was fast because the animal had enormous strides so he could cover a good deal of ground in a charge or in a chase. He put that talent to work as he closed the gap between him and the man he was pursuing, which made his target panic. Things began flying off the horse to lighten the load on his strained horse, including a large burden that went flying off, landing somewhere along the side of the road. Patrick wouldn’t have thought anything of it except he swore he saw a pair of legs as it went flying. A man, he thought, although they’d been slim legs. Mayhap a woman. In any case, he couldn’t think about it now. He had a target to catch.
It hadn’t taken him long to catch his victim because the man’s horse simply wasn’t faster than Patrick’s. He caught up to the man, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him off of his horse. As the man struggled and kicked, Patrick dragged him back to the outskirts of the skirmish where two of his knights waited. He tossed the man to the knights, massive men with powerful bodies and powerful weapons. The last he saw, Kevin Hage and Apollo de Norville had made short work of the prisoner, acting upon Patrick’s standard order in a situation like this.
Leave no man alive.
With the leader evidently killed, the fighting had died down a great deal with dead reivers on the road and only a few others showing futile resistance. Patrick could see one of his knights, Sir Hector de Norville, in a fairly nasty fight with a big Scotsman. Patrick kept an eye on the fight, not wanting to help Hector because the man would undoubtedly view any assistance as an insult. The de Norvilles were arrogant that way. So he backed off, looking around to see if there was any other clean-up he could help with.
And then, he saw it.
Back down the road where his target had thrown the body off his horse, Patrick could see something moving in the moonlight. The man who had been thrown was staying close to the ground, crawling away from the road. Patrick spurred his war horse towards him. He didn’t want the man to get away so he was fully prepared to
take a second hostage. Reaching the edge of the road, he could see that the figure had entered the tree line. It was quite dark in the trees at this time of night and, frustrated, Patrick didn’t want to lose his quarry. Dismounting his steed, he charged off into the bramble.
The trail wasn’t difficult to follow, mostly because of the sounds. He could easily follow simply based on the sounds, which were decidedly female. Intrigued, he plowed through a hedge, across a creek, and through a bramble of trees on the other side. There was quite a bit of foliage, making it difficult to see in the three-quarters moon, but he happened to catch a glimpse of something moving off to his left, along the ground, and he grabbed it. The object turned out to be a foot. He yanked hard.
With a scream, a woman was pulled from the bushes she had been trying to hide beneath. Patrick couldn’t really see her, but he knew it was a woman because men didn’t make that kind of sound, – high-pitched and breathy. Once he’d yanked the woman free of the concealing leaves, he grabbed her arms and hauled her to her feet.
“Name, woman!” he boomed.
The woman was very light in his grasp, small, with fragile bones. He could feel it in his grip. She was gasping with fright.
“Bri-Bri-!”
He shook her, hard. “Speak!”
“P-please do not hurt me!”
A Scots accent, he thought with disgust. It was faint, but detectable. He’d heard stronger. Surely she was complicit to whatever the reivers had been up to. Although merciless in battle, he wasn’t one to kill a woman, no matter if she was the enemy. Therefore, without another word, he bent over and threw the woman upon his shoulder easily, marching back the way he had come.
The battle on the road had died down considerably by the time he returned. There were at least two dead men along the side of the road that he could see. Still more men, wounded or dead, were lying on the actual road itself. He could see his knights milling around, making sure their enemies wouldn’t rise up again to attack them. The wounded were being put out of their misery. They were still feeling the rush of battle, their movements edgy and their voices sharp. When men on the road tried to move, they were kicked back down.
Patrick made his way across the road and over to his knights, dumping his load onto the ground next to the dead. She landed with a grunt.
“Secure this one,” he told the knights. “She will return with us.”
It was a surprising command given the fact that they didn’t normally take prisoners. As the knights moved in to do his bidding, the young woman held up her hands.
“W-wait!” she cried. “P-please, m’lord – I am not with them! T-they took me from Coldingham!”
That terrified plea gave Patrick pause. Having heard there were captives among the reivers, he was coming to wonder if there wasn’t some truth to that rumor.
“Coldingham,” he repeated. “The priory?”
“Aye, m’lord.”
“What is your name?”
“B-Brighton de Favereux, m’lord.”
Patrick’s gaze lingered on her. He couldn’t see much in the moonlight, but one of the things he could see was an enormous pair of eyes gazing back at him. He could make out the shape of a delicate face, but little more.
“These men abducted you from the priory?”
“T-they did, m’lord.”
She had a bit of a stammer in her speech, but it was hardly noticeable. She had a rather sweet voice, somewhat husky. The more she spoke, the more he realized that the Scots accent wasn’t too terribly strong, either, at least not enough to offend him. It was just a hint of a lilt.
“Can you prove this?”
The woman faltered. She looked down at herself as if searching for some proof upon her person. Then, she lifted her arms.
“Y-you can see that I am wearing the garb of a postulate, m’lord,” she said. “If it is proof you seek, it is all I have to offer.”
Patrick snapped his fingers to his knights, pointing to the young woman, and they swarmed on her, checking out what she was wearing beneath the dirty, smelly cloak. They pulled at it and sniffed, inspecting the fabric. When Kevin lifted his head to Patrick and nodded shortly, that was all Patrick needed as confirmation.
“She will return with me,” he commanded quietly. “Make sure there is no one left alive and then gather the men. We must return.”
The knights were on the move, one of them physically lifting the lady off of the ground and carrying her away while the second knight went forth to carry out the remainder of Patrick’s order. Seeing that the battle was finished for the most part, Patrick followed the knight carrying the lady. When the man set her to her feet, Patrick was standing right next to her, waiting.
“So the Scots violated the sanctity of the priory,” he said quietly. “That is not their usual target. What was their purpose?”
The woman was flustered and unsteady on her feet. “I-I do not know. They did not say.”
“Then how did they manage to wrest you from the place? It is fairly fortified, as I recall.”
The woman shook her head. “I-I do not know, to be truthful,” she said. “I-it was at Matins that they came. We were moving from the church to the cloister when they swept through. I could hear shouting, with men on horses racing through the garden. Sister Acha was running towards me and calling my name. Before I could go to her, men took me from the abbey. I believe they took Sister Acha, as well, because I saw a man on horseback claim her. Y-you must make sure she is safe, m’lord. Please.”
Patrick turned in the direction of the road where there were several bodies on the ground. He had a rather ominous feeling that a nun might be among them. Word of a dead nun spreading among the English would put every Scotsman on the borders at risk for the priests of the north would rally the vengeance cry. English lords would take up that cry and send out men whose sole job would be to exact revenge on behalf of the church. Patrick had seen that before. Now, the circumstances surrounding the raiding Scots was taking an ominous turn.
“You will remain here,” he told her. “Do not move. My men, who do not know you, might mistake you for an enemy. Stand here and wait for me to return.”
The woman simply nodded her head, nervously, pulling the smelly cloak more tightly about her as Patrick headed off to the road.
Still muddy from the storm they’d had only a few hours earlier, Patrick began to move through the dead on the ground. He counted at least twelve of them and there were probably more who had fled and were cut down by his men. In fact, none of his men were on the road any longer, either lingering on the edges of the road or missing altogether. He knew those men must have gone after reivers who had fled so he wasn’t concerned about them. But the litter of bodies on the road did concern him; he was concerned there was a wounded or dead nun among them.
His concern was well-founded. Bunched up between two dead Scots was a tiny body. He thought it had been just a cloak at first, perhaps something that had fallen off of one of the men in the heat of battle, for it sincerely looked to be just a piece of clothing. But he poked it with his boot on a hunch and heard it groan. Bending over, he rolled the body onto its back.
A small face, covered in mud, was the first thing he saw. Then, two eyes became evident, although it was difficult to see because of the darkness of the night. He could see eyeballs glittering and that was the only way he knew the eyes were open. In fact, he might have thought the person to be one of the reivers except for the fact that he or she was truly tiny. That seemed odd to him somehow. He couldn’t help the sense of foreboding in his heart that continued to grow.
“Speak,” Patrick said quietly. “Who are you?”
The person, sunken cheeks heaving in and out, took a few gasping breaths. “Bridey? Is she injured?”
It was a woman. His heart sank. That was when Patrick received confirmation that he had, indeed, happened upon the other woman in this equation. It was clear that she had been badly injured in the fight that had gone on, a helpless victim torn bet
ween the reivers and the English knights.
“Are you from Coldingham also?” he asked.
The woman tried to move her head but she couldn’t quite manage it. “Aye,” she muttered. “I am. Is Bridey well?”
“You mean the other woman? She is well.”
That seemed to ease the old woman a great deal. In fact, she let out a hissing sigh that was long and unsteady. Then it seemed as if she didn’t draw another breath for a very long time after that. Patrick thought she might have passed away, in fact. But she resumed breathing after a time, reaching up a weak hand to grasp at him. She ended up grabbing the hem of his wet, muddy tunic.
“Time is growing short, my lord,” she breathed. “Thou must listen to me. It is important, for the sake of Bridey.”
Patrick shifted so he was kneeling beside the woman, one mailed knee in the mud. He wasn’t particularly interested in a deathbed confession, for he had a good deal to attend to already and listening to a nun’s final words was not among those tasks. But something in the woman’s glimmering eyes caused him to take pause. For in spite of his deadly reputation, Patrick was a man with a heart. It was close to the surface, unlike others, which was something of a dangerous trait. He wasn’t as hardened as most when he probably should have been. Therefore, a dying old woman had his attention. He tried not to feel foolish for it.
“Quickly, now,” he said with quiet firmness. “Tell me what you must.”
The woman didn’t let go of his tunic. “Brighton de Favereux is the woman in your possession.”
“She gave that name.”
The old woman tugged on his tunic. “That is only what others must know of her,” she whispered. “They must never know the truth. To know the truth about her would cause strife and war as thou cannot comprehend. I have been with her since her mother brought her to Coldingham, and it ’tis I who have tended her every need. Bridey is as a daughter to me, my own child.”
Patrick was torn between curiosity and impatience. “You are her nurse,” he said. “I understand. What is this truth you speak of?”
Nighthawk: Sons of de Wolfe (de Wolfe Pack Book 7) Page 2