Linda Barlow

by Fires of Destiny

  “Don’t talk like that.” He had sat down on the mattress of the big four-poster, his tall, powerful body in dramatic contrast to his father’s shrunken form. Leaning over, he lifted the baron’s head and rearranged the pillows. His hands were gentle, Alexandra noted. As gentle as they were on her own body during the act of love.

  “Why not? You faced your own probable death with courage and dignity this morn; I ought to be able to do the same.” He paused a moment. “I am glad you returned. I did not expect to see you again, and my greatest regret would have been to die without first making my peace with you.”

  “Is that what you wish to do?”

  “Aye, my son. Tis rather late to ask for your forgiveness. But when you lie abed all day and all night, your body a traitor to a mind that is still vigorous, you have nothing to do but review the past and note—too late—all your mistakes. The things that seemed to matter no longer do: power, position—they are chimeras. Religion doesn’t even matter—I haven’t been lying here contemplating God. Instead I am thinking about my family, and how I have failed them. You, Roger, in particular. And your mother.”

  Roger hesitated, and then said in a low voice, “She used to come to me and complain of her unhappiness. She used to rage, and cry, and charge you with violence toward her, a charge I had every reason to believe, since I was the victim of your violence on such a frequent basis myself.”

  Richard Trevor’s head shifted restlessly, and his eyes, when they opened, were dark with pain.

  “Roger,” Alexandra interrupted. She noted the way the baron was pressing one hand to the center of his chest, the obvious lines of agony about his mouth. “Perhaps you shouldn’t… it is too much—”

  “No,” the baron said, sounding almost fierce. “We must have this out.”

  “Would you like me to leave you alone together?”

  “No.” Roger’s voice was equally emphatic. “Stay.”

  And so she pulled up a stool and sat down beside him, close by, to offer what support she could.

  Roger steeled himself for what was to come. When he spoke, his voice was carefully expressionless. “If you would make your peace with me, you must explain why you treated me as you did. Why you gave me hatred instead of love. Why you beat me—not Will, not Alan, only me. And what it had to do with my mother.”

  “You are hard, Roger,” the baron said, his lips curling in a smile. “I had hoped to get off more easily.”

  “I am like you.”

  “Aye, that you are. Like me you are stubborn and passionate, ridden hard by your emotions, quick to jealousy and anger. Catherine was the same. Both your mother and I were very wrong—poor parents, if you will. We were too selfish to realize what we were doing to you. She made you her confidant, something no adult should ever do to a child. And I, resenting the way she turned you against me, made you a scapegoat, a whipping boy. You are justified in hating me for that.”

  “What I don’t understand is why. A scapegoat for what? When you beat me, you were hurting her. I well remember how she used to cry and plead with you in my defense.” Roger shuddered. It was no easy task to talk about these memories; it made all his bitter resentment flare up again. He had to focus hard on the frail, dying man before him in order to drive out his mental image of the fierce, violent giant roaring after him with a leather strap.

  “What did she do that you had to punish her so? Was my mother unfaithful to you?”

  The baron blinked at him. He passed his tongue over his bluish lips and did not answer.

  “Father, forgive me, but it has occurred to me to wonder how much of your anger toward me sprang from doubt that I was indeed your son.”

  The baron smiled thinly. “You are my son. You resemble me in looks as well as in passions.”

  “That is apparent now. When I was a lad, it might not have been so obvious. Is that what you meant last summer when you referred to the ‘truth about my mother’? Was she adulterously involved with another man?”

  There was a long pause. The baron’s breath was coming hard. “Catherine died wretched and unhappy. Whatever wrong she may have committed, she dearly paid for.” Richard Trevor’s hands folded themselves into one another, unfolded and folded again. He met no one’s eyes; he seemed to be staring into the distance, seeing something that was not actually in the room. He did not speak.

  Roger and Alexandra exchanged glances. It had been a guess on his part, but it seemed that he had guessed correctly.

  “Beware a jealous heart, my son. Suspicion can destroy love, especially when it is unjust and unfounded.”

  “Was it unfounded?”

  “I do not know.” It was clear that this doubt still tormented the baron, even after all these years. “At the time, I believed she had a lover. In the last weeks of her life, in particular, Catherine behaved wildly. But I drove her to it, I fear. For years I suspected her of faithlessness. I do not know why; I had no cause. But she was beautiful, high-spirited, and willful, and I never quite believed that such a woman could be in love with me.” He seemed to be looking into the past. “She did not wish to wed me; she was enamored of another, a handsome young knight of whom her parents disapproved. She came to me grudgingly, and I was jealous from the start. Even when passion bloomed between us, I continued to mistrust her.”

  “Surely if you loved one another, you could have learned to trust,” Alexandra put in. She was appalled at the note of tragedy in the baron’s voice.

  Roger shot her an ironic smile. “You are adept at that, I suppose, Alix?”

  She flushed to the roots of her hair. For an instant she was angry; then the feeling left her so completely that she sagged on her stool. “You are right. I ought not to criticize someone for the failing I share.” Her voice sounded ragged as she added, “Forgive me.”

  He reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s my failing too.” To his father he explained, “I nearly killed Alix because I believed she had betrayed me and given herself to another man. And the crimes she has suspected me of committing over the past year would truly boggle the mind.”

  The baron looked from one of them to the other and nodded faintly. “Still, you are well-matched. She is more open-spirited than your mother was, Roger, and you are more tolerant and less of a tyrant than I. You do have my blessing, you know. Whether you wish it or not.”

  “We do wish it,” Alexandra said. She glanced at Roger, then added, “We shall marry, and you will have a grandchild. I am already carrying Roger’s babe in my womb.”

  “Praise God,” the baron murmured. “And what a child it will be. Thank you for telling me. I will go to my rest more easily now, knowing that despite my mistakes as a father, my line will continue.”

  She bent over and kissed him. His lips were cold, his pulse an irregular flutter. His fist, once again, was pressed against his chest. She trembled slightly. He was very ill. Theobald could well be right that he would not survive the night.

  She rose, touching Roger’s shoulder gently. “I’m going to fetch Dorcas.” She slipped quietly out of the room.

  As if he sensed the need for haste, the baron’s eyes darted up at Roger. “About your mother. I didn’t finish.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Aye, it does.” His voice was low and he had to pause frequently to catch his breath. “I want you to know, to understand. Catherine and I were at court the winter before you were born. We were not on the best of terms. There were several young gallants who enjoyed her company—one in particular, a musician, whom I suspected her of meeting clandestinely. When she became pregnant, even though I myself had taken her nightly, I wondered if he might be the father of the child. She denied it fiercely. Your mother was quite a devout woman, and she insisted that she would never break her marriage vows. But she was lovely, and I could not control my mistrustful nature. I brought her home, refusing to allow her to visit the court again. And although she swore on the Holy Scriptures that you were my true son, for years I was tormented by the
suspicion that she had betrayed me.”

  “A musician? That, I suppose, explains why you were so enraged every time I tried to learn to play my mother’s lute.”

  “God forgive me. I was a blackguard and a fool. I treated you badly, and naturally enough, you grew up with such an obvious preference for your mother that I only resented you all the more.” He sighed. “Things seemed to grow worse and worse. In the end, Catherine must have decided that since she was suffering all the recriminations of adultery, she might as well know the pleasures of it, too. She took to riding out alone, without a groom. She was gone sometimes for hours, and would return sometimes with her clothing in disarray. I could only assume she was meeting a lover. When I confronted her, she did not deny it. But her guilt must have been heavy. She had always believed that infidelity was a terrible sin. She punished herself far more than I could have punished her. Indeed, she took her own life.”

  Roger made a faint sound in his throat and rose to pace the chamber. The death of his mother had haunted him for years, all the more because he himself had had some trivial argument with her on the morning of the day she had flung herself from Thorncroft Overhang. He had had no idea then of the terrible pressures she had been under.

  “You accused me of killing her. It was not true. Yet I hated you for saying it, because I did feel responsible. I had hounded her for years. I had destroyed the love she felt for me and driven her into the arms of another man. And even so, I could not find it in my heart to forgive her. I threatened to divorce her and publicly expose her licentious behavior. She could not live with the shame of it, I suppose. She left no note, but that must have been why she died. She could not bear the thought that her sons would know, that you in particular would grow up to condemn her. So you see, you were right: her blood was on my hands.”

  Roger groaned. He was remembering his dark-eyed, wayward mother, her laughter, so joyful sometimes it bordered on wildness. He had adored her, yet she had frightened him a little, he realized now. She was so intense. She burned like quicksilver—bright and beautiful, but impossible to hold. He suddenly had an inkling of the pain his father must have suffered on her account.

  Before either of them could say more, the doer opened and Alexandra reentered with Dorcas, who rushed to her husband’s side. “My father and his company are at the gate,” Alexandra said, low. “You must go now, Roger.”

  He stopped at the window, which looked out on the Whitcombe road. In the dim light of dusk he could see the horsemen demanding that the gates be opened to them. George Dawes and the baron’s men-at-arms were stalling, but that would not last long. There could be no fight, of course. The castle’s defenses were not what they had been a few hundred years before, and Roger had no intention of allowing men to die for his sake.

  He was about to turn away from the sight of the red-haired leader when another of their besiegers caught his eye. Golden hair and a languid body. A serpent’s mouth seemed to smile at its cornered prey, and Roger knew he was trapped.

  Sir Charles he could have dealt with; he was, after all, the grandfather of the child in Alexandra’s belly. They were far from London; they could have struck some sort of bargain. But if Geoffrey was with him, it could only mean that the queen no longer trusted Douglas. Geoffrey’s presence would assure his arrest.

  In that instant of illumination, Roger yearned to take Alexandra’s advice and flee while there was still time. If he allowed himself to be taken, he would be conveyed to London, put on trial, and very likely condemned. Yet how could he leave? He glanced, agonized, at his dying father. He and the baron had only these few minutes left to them; it was the only chance they would ever have to redeem the past. And to answer the questions that still remained.

  His voice was urgent as he once again approached his father. “Who was her lover?”

  The baron had closed his eyes again. Dorcas was bathing his forehead with a cloth. “In faith, I do not know. Roger, listen to me: Alexandra is right: you are in danger and must leave. Go out the postern gate and down into the woods. Even Douglas would have difficulty finding you there.”

  “I’m not going anywhere while you lie dying. You came downstairs to the hall this morn to be with me. Now I would stay here and be with you.”

  “I order you to go,” said his father.

  Roger sat down on the bed. “And I, as usual, defy your orders. I shall not abandon you.”

  The baron grimaced in frustration. “Then I must be quick about this business of dying, I think. You have always been infuriatingly stubborn, Roger.” He paused briefly, gathering what strength he had left. “Can you forgive me for all the wrongs I’ve done you now that you’ve heard the truth?”

  Could he? His bitterness and anger were still warm within him; he felt no upsurge of peace or filial love. He did not know exactly what he felt. Too much had happened. Too much had hurt him. But his father was waiting with eyes that pleaded—dignified eyes, and proud, yet they pleaded all the same. Christ! He had to speak.

  But he could not.

  The baron sighed. He reached out a thin and bony hand; Roger stared at it for an instant, and then slowly took it in his own. It was cold, fragile. Roger had a vague image of this same hand, then big and strong and hearty, holding his small boy’s fingers, pulling him up into his lap, throwing him high in the air and catching him. A man laughed, a child squealed in delight. He swallowed hard. Had it happened? Or was it only a long-buried, unfulfilled longing for a father’s love?

  Roger’s eyes filled. His fingers tightened around his father’s hand as he took a breath and said, “I forgive you, yes.”

  A great weight seemed to slide away from his heart.

  “Thank you,” said the baron. He closed his eyes. Continuing to hold his hand, Roger looked across at Alexandra. Her face streaked with tears. She hugged Dorcas to comfort her; she kissed the baron’s gray and tired face, and he squeezed her hand.

  After a few moments she withdrew to the window. Roger watched her, and a moment later he knew that she too had spotted Geoffrey. She whirled back, appalled, covering her mouth to restrain her urge to scream at him to run, to escape while he could. Roger shook his head once at her, and then looked away from the agony in her brilliant eyes. She understood; of course she understood.

  The baron was smiling faintly, looking calm for the first time all day. Roger clenched his jaw. Nothing, he decided, was going to be allowed to destroy that serenity. Nothing. If his arrest was the price he had to pay for these last few moments of domestic peace, so be it. That much forgiveness, that much filial love, he could render to the man who had given him life.

  Somewhere far below he heard shouts and a pounding on the gates, but he paid no heed. He simply sat there clasping his father’s hand tightly in his own until Richard Trevor’s tired heart gently, peacefully, ceased to beat.

  Chapter 41

  “I arrest you in the Queen’s name.”

  Roger Trevor stood silently before Sir Charles Douglas and his men downstairs in the great hall at Whitcombe Castle while Alexandra’s father read out the charges against him. He was accused of heresy, treason, abduction, and rape. The terms of the indictment were long-winded and formal; Roger hardly heard them—he was staring into the angelic eyes of his enemy, Geoffrey de Montreau.

  If he had known that Geoffrey was traveling with Alexandra’s father, Roger would have taken some steps in his own defense. Geoffrey had become a trusted agent of the crown, more trusted, evidently, than Charles Douglas himself. Roger had seen that the men who had accompanied Sir Charles were not wearing his badge, but that of the queen. Alexandra’s father was under scrutiny. He had no choice but to strictly obey the letter of the law.

  “You are ordered to make yourself ready,” Sir Charles finished, rolling up the document again. His florid face was tired and grim and his eyes were genuinely regretful. “You will accompany me back to London to stand trial. I’m sorry this coincides with the death of your father.” When Roger gazed at him blankly, he ad
ded, “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself, lad?”

  “My lord,” Roger corrected.

  “What?”

  “I am Baron of Whitcombe now. I expect to be treated with the respect to which my rank entitles me.”

  “Well, I never knew you for one who used to stand upon ceremony, but it makes not one whit of difference to me, my lord.”

  “I have one request before we leave. It concerns your daughter.” He met Alexandra’s eyes and sent her a smile. She was standing nearby with Alan and the resurrected Priscilla Martin. It would have been impossible to determine now that the two women had ever been rivals in love. On Priscilla’s arrival they had thrown themselves into each other’s arms in a paroxysm of relief and thanksgiving.

  “What about her?” Douglas growled. “You’ve done enough damage there, as it is. If I were not under strict orders to return you to London for trial, I’d call you to account for besmirching her honor right here and now.”

  “I think not, Douglas. I wish to marry her. I ask that a priest be summoned so the ceremony can be formalized before you take me away. There may be no opportunity after the trial.”

  “Indeed there will not—after the trial they’ll hang you. I’ve no desire to have my girl married to a notorious criminal, even for the few short weeks until she becomes a widow!”

  “Your daughter will be the wife of the Baron of Whitcombe. And the child she carries in her womb will be my heir. I wish the child to be born legitimate, Douglas. I feel certain you’ll agree.”

  Everyone within hearing began to buzz and stare at Alexandra, who held her head high. Her father turned to glare at her. “Daughter, is this true?”

  “Yes. Your grandchild will be born in April, Father.”

  Sir Charles Douglas spewed out a colorful collection of expletives. “The devil take you, Trevor! ‘Tis bad enough that you abduct my lassie and ensnare her affections without getting your brat upon her as well!”