Catherine Coulter

by The Valcourt Heiress

  Red Tunic said, “He is my nephew, a spoiled and heedless boy, and disobedient. I was merely taking him back to his father.”

  The boy yelled, “You’re a mangy liar! I never saw you before in my life until you and these nasty louts kidnapped me!”

  Red Tunic took two steps toward the boy. Garron stopped him with a raised hand. He said, his voice cold as the winter solstice, “I suggest you and your men leave at once. If you do not, then Saint Peter may find himself judging you this day. Given what you’ve done, I doubt you would like the outcome.”

  One of the men growled as he slashed out with his knife, “ ’ Tis nay likely, ye cockhead. I can send ye to hell meself. Saint Peter will never have a whiff of ye.”

  “Look behind you,” Garron said, as he leapt backward.

  Aleric called out, “Aye, fill your eyes, you fool! We are here, my lord.”

  Garron said easily as he slashed his sword before him, “Either you leave now or you will die. It is your choice.”

  Red Tunic shouted as he pulled his sword from its scabbard, “Kill them!” He ran straight at Garron. Garron saw furious concentration and intelligence in the man’s dark eyes, unlike his men, who were all violence and no brains. This man was a formidable opponent, single-minded in purpose, and filled with pride. Was there desperation as well? No, he didn’t think so. He was a good fighter and he knew it. Garron saw one of the men run toward the boy. He jumped back from Red Tunic’s sword, pulled his own knife from his belt, and released it all in one smooth motion, so fast it was a blur. The man grabbed at the knife that stuck out the back of his neck. He whirled around, stared at Garron, and crumbled to the ground. There was an instant of frozen silence, then Red Tunic yelled, fury lacing his voice, “Bastard! I’m going to kill you now!”

  You’re still not afraid of me. Garron smiled, then yelled like a berserker as he ran toward Red Tunic, his sword directly in front of him like a lance. He heard the horses scatter into the forest.

  “Aleric, dispatch the others,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Protect the boy!” He saw the man wasn’t so cocky now. He paused, stroking his chin a moment, goading his opponent. “If you weren’t so meager, I would take your rich red tunic after I slit your throat. Mayhap I’ll spare you if you offer it to me on your knees. I’ll give it to the boy.”

  “I am not meager, you whoreson!”

  “If you are not meager, then just who and what are you?”

  “I am—it is none of your affair. There is no reason for you to interfere. You have killed one of my men. You will pay for that.” He slashed his sword in front of him. “You’ll not have my tunic, damn you.”

  “I’m thinking if the boy doesn’t want it, I will use it to wipe down my horse after I have sent my sword through your belly. Why are you afraid to tell me who you are? Who is your master? If I don’t kill you, mayhap he’ll relieve you of your tunic when you return to him empty-handed. You are so scrawny, mayhap he’ll use your tunic to rub down his horse.”

  The man squared his shoulders and cursed, loud and fluent.

  Garron said over him, “Four men with a struggling boy. You stole him, didn’t you?” His smile was ferocious. “What are you, a pederast? Or is your master a pederast?”

  Red Tunic growled deep in his throat and lunged. He was well trained and agile, Garron thought dispassionately as he sidestepped, watching how the man moved, watching for a weakness. Then he saw it. The man was furious, not thinking hard and cold, as a warrior should. Garron knew the man didn’t have his strength, but he didn’t want to kill him just yet. He wanted to know who he was first, and who the boy was, and so he contented himself with hacking a wide circle in front of him, keeping him back, wearing him down. He knew the moment the man realized he wouldn’t survive this fight. He chose to run, shouting over his shoulder as he jumped a tree root, “You’ll die for this!”

  Garron was after him in an instant, but Red Tunic had a stout warhorse nearby, and Damocles was back in the forest, tethered with his men’s horses. He was mounted and away before Garron could catch up to him. He stood there panting, watching the bright red disappear into the thick of the trees. He wondered again who the man was as he slid his sword back into its scabbard. He knew if he chanced upon the man again, he would certainly recognize his thin face, his dark, hot eyes beneath heavy black brows. He’d also recognize his warhorse, a bay with four white fetlocks, a horse he would take after he’d dispatched the man to hell.

  Garron flexed his hand as he walked back to the clearing only to see Pali, his eyes red and watery, stick his sword in a man’s chest, then kick him onto his back.

  It was dead silent now in the clearing.

  Garron said, “Where is the boy?”

  Aleric looked around. “He was—well, the ungrateful little bittle’s gone. He must have been frightened and run to hide in the forest.”

  “No wonder,” Garron said. “What were they going to do with him? Ransom, I suppose, and that would mean he’s of some importance to someone.”

  Aleric asked, “Shall I send Pali to search for the boy? With those long legs of his, he can cover more ground than the four of us put together. Or Hobbs, he can see better than an eagle.”

  Gilpin, Garron’s squire of nearly two years, laughed. “Aye, Hobbs can see a worm hiding under a leaf.”

  Garron looked at the dying afternoon sun overhead through the thick trees. It was growing late. Still, he couldn’t simply leave the boy alone. He and his men searched, kept assuring him they wouldn’t hurt him, that they would protect him.

  They didn’t find the boy, even though Garron called again and again to him.

  Finally, Garron said, “We have only another hour or two of daylight. I wish to be at Wareham before night falls. I wish to sleep in my own bed this night.” How odd that sounded—his own bed, the lord’s bed, not the small narrow cot he’d shared with his younger brother, Kalen, years before, a younger brother long dead.

  He kicked the boot of one of the dead men as he said, “We have no tools to dig graves, so we will leave them.” He looked again at the sun, wondering if he should search more for the boy. How far from home was he? And that damned man in his red tunic who’d kidnapped him, who was he? Garron shouted yet again, “Boy! We mean you no harm. We have killed your captors. I promise you safety. Come out now!”

  After a few minutes of silence, Garron realized there was no hope for it. “We’ve done our best—either he’ll survive or he won’t. Let’s go home.”

  As they walked back to their horses, Garron asked, “Did any of you recognize their leader, the man in the red tunic? He would not tell me his name or that of his master.”

  “Nay, but he’s an old hound,” Gilpin said, and spat on the ground.

  “You are but fifteen years old,” Garron said, and buffeted his squire’s shoulder, nearly sending him to the ground to land on his own spit. “I am an old hound to you, and Aleric yon is a veritable graybeard.”

  “No graybeard there,” said Gilpin, his voice cocky, his hands on his narrow hips, “since Aleric is bald as a river rock and his chin as smooth as a pebble.”

  Aleric waved a fist at the boy. “Well, puppy? Think you I’m an old hound? With my bald river rock head?”

  Gilpin gave Aleric a singularly sweet smile. “Oh, nay. My lord is nearly my own age and you, Aleric, you are a wise and generous protector, of no particular age at all. Your head is a beacon to all those who seek justice and hope.”

  Aleric shouted with laughter.

  Garron shook his head at the two of them. “I shall surely puke.”

  Gilpin said, “Nay, my lord, do not since I should have to clean your boots. Methinks the boy is afraid to come out because he saw Pali’s red leaky eyes and believed him the Devil.”

  Pali, those long legs of his making him even taller than Garron, gave Gilpin a terrifying smile. “If the boy saw me, Little Nothing, he’d fall on his knees before me.”

  “What?” Gilpin said. “You are God, not the Devil?
”

  Garron said, “Were I you, Gilpin, I’d shut my mouth. It might save you a hiding.”

  “Or Pali would wrap one leg around me and squeeze the life right out of my heart.”

  “Half a leg,” said Pali, and scrubbed his fists over his eyes. “I can do nothing about my eyes, they turn red with the coming of spring.”

  Garron said, “Stop rubbing them, Pali, it just makes it worse. Pour water on your eyes. Now, enough. Let’s leave this place.” His voice deepened. “Let’s go home.”

  Gilpin looked around, and said, “I hope the boy will be all right. He had guts. Did you see him kick that hulking brute and bloody his nose?” And he threw back his head and shouted, “Boy! Come here, we’ll take care of you! I’m a boy too, like you, come out.”

  A horse whinnied, making Garron smile. “Hobbs, get the villains’ horses. We’ve just increased our stables.” Horses loved Hobbs; he had only to speak in his low musical voice and they came trotting eagerly to him, legs high, heads tossing. In just minutes, three horses were blowing into Hobbs’s big hands.

  An hour later, Garron pulled Damocles to a halt. He raised his hand to stop his men behind him and looked toward his home. Wareham Castle, just shy of two hundred years of age, sat like a great fist of gray granite in front of them, a massive sentinel atop the end of a desolate promontory that stuck out into the North Sea. From the sea, Wareham was impregnable; black basalt rocks surrounded the promontory, spearing up twenty feet into the air, and the tide would do the rest, ripping boats apart.

  Garron felt an odd surge of satisfaction as he looked at the stark fortress that now belonged to him. It would be his line to call Wareham home, not his brother’s. This was the first time he’d been back in eight long, gritty years.

  It was a beautiful spring evening, not yet dark, an early, nearly full moon beginning to climb into the sky beyond the castle walls. Stars would stud the sky tonight, another hour, no more. An evening breeze was warm and soft against his flesh. It was completely unlike that night eight years before when a storm from the sea had raged hard, hurling heavy rain, frigid winds, and a thick curtain of cold fog on anyone unlucky enough to be outside. He’d been sixteen the night he and his best friend, Bari, the armorer’s son, had ridden into the storm, not waiting for morning, only two days after they’d buried Garron’s father, his brother’s words sounding stark in his ears, “There is nothing for you here, Garron. You are strong and you have a brain. ’Tis time you made your own way.” He’d never forget the moment he’d turned in his saddle for a final look at Wareham. The black clouds had suddenly parted, the swirling fog had lifted, and he’d seen the castle outlined by a hit of lightning, stark against the black sky, an eternal beacon, and he’d wondered bleakly if he’d ever see his home again in his life.

  Well, he was here now, but Bari wasn’t with him, hadn’t been since he’d choked to death, coughing up wads of blood so many years before. Wareham Castle and all its surrounding towns and farms were his, his legacy, his future, his responsibility.

  4

  I have surely vomited up my guts on the ground.” Merry moaned the words into the soft, soundless air, so weak and shaky she didn’t yet try to move. At least the fighting was over, her captors dead, except for their leader, Sir Halric, Jason of Brennan’s man. She lay not twenty feet away from her saviors, tucked beneath leaves in the hollow opening of an oak tree, listening to them talk, praying they wouldn’t come after her. In truth, she might have answered when their leader had called out to her, but she was vomiting from the clout on the head that huge man with his smelly beard had dealt her. It hadn’t killed her, praise St. Cuthbert’s padded belly.

  She managed to crawl away from her own sickness to lie on the floor of the forest, breathing lightly, waiting for her innards to settle and her head to stop pounding. She remembered their laughter. Surely they couldn’t be bad if they laughed so much. But how could she know? To jump from a boiling pot into the flames, it would be just her luck. And so she’d kept her mouth shut, too afraid to do anything.

  The large man dressed all in black—he was a young man, strong and hard, and he had saved her. She’d watched his knife plunge through the man’s neck, and she wished in that moment she’d had the knife and done the throwing. She didn’t know if she’d be as accurate as he’d been, but she’d have liked to give it a try. Aye, he’d been very sure of himself, and he’d not doubted his own skill. She liked the looks of him but she knew all too well he could be as rotten as Sir Halric. With men, she’d learned in her young life, one simply couldn’t be sure. As for women, she shuddered, her mother’s beautiful witch face, surely too young, clear in her mind.

  It was a pity Sir Halric had escaped, but she’d learned too that evil usually managed to slither safely away, never to die, always to return and wreak havoc.

  Such rotten luck. She’d crept out of the great hall, stolen a stable lad’s clothes, pausing beside an outbuilding when she’d heard the soft breathing so close by.

  And then the shock of pain in her head and she’d heard nothing else. She’d awoken soon thereafter to find herself a prisoner, thrown over the legs of a huge, smelly lout whose hand lay on the small of her back, holding her steady.

  When he’d seen she was awake, Sir Halric called a halt. He told her who he was and said he was going to give her a rare surprise, and then he laughed. “A different destination for you, lass, and a surprise for all. What luck, and all because of me and my quick brain.”

  “Your quick brain had nothing to do with aught,” she’d whispered, and thought he’d clout her, but he didn’t. Surely he was going to give her over to Jason of Brennan. What did he mean about a different destination? With her spate of bad luck, whatever his plan for her, she knew it wouldn’t be good.

  Life was not fair.

  But now everything had changed.

  Three men were dead, but Sir Halric had escaped, curse the fates. What would he do? He was running for his life away from the young warrior, this Garron, she’d heard his men call him, so Sir Halric probably believed she was with him, believed she was now safe. He’d lost, he’d lost. She fancied she would turn those lines into a fine song.

  She came up on her hands and knees, her head down, breathing slowly, waiting for her belly to settle. She slowly raised her head, waited for the dizziness to pass, and looked around. She could ignore the headache pounding over her left ear. It would be dark soon. She wasn’t more than ten miles from Valcourt—not that it mattered, because that was the last place she could go.

  Valcourt was no longer her home, not since her mother had come back, not since she’d brought Jason of Brennan. She wondered what the king would do now that there was no male heir, that there would be no male heir after what had happened. He’d find her a husband, that’s what he’d do, mayhap a man as rotten as Jason of Brennan.

  Once the king’s man arrived at Valcourt, what would her mother say about her daughter’s disappearance? She’d lie, of course.

  Merry felt tears burn her eyes and blinked them away. After all, she was not at this moment being forced to wed Jason of Brennan. She was alive and free, all but one of her captors dead. Surely that bespoke a benign God. Surely that meant her luck had changed.

  Now all she had to do was survive. And she would. She wasn’t a helpless girl, she was a boy. What’s more, she could read and write and make lists, and she would survive.

  Her father was dead. She felt again how his hand, squeezing hers so tightly, had suddenly become limp. She’d known the exact moment he’d died. She swallowed tears. She would grieve later.

  She’d never forget the young warrior’s name—Garron—he’d saved her life. All right, he’d saved a boy’s life, but he need never know the difference. She’d heard of Wareham Castle, who hadn’t? It wasn’t as large as Valcourt, but still, it was of great strategic importance, she’d heard her father say once. Why not go there? She could hide herself easily within those massive walls, mayhap she could assist the steward. Maybe she
could become the steward. She dragged herself to her feet, gritted her teeth against the pain in her head, and trotted after the five men.

  5

  WAREHAM CASTLE

  ON THE NORTH SEA

  Garron couldn’t believe the pleasure it gave him to ride across the drawbridge, horses’ hooves loud on the wood and iron. He looked up at the four large square corner towers, the high stone walls. Wareham Castle, now his.

  But wait, where was everyone? Why were there no soldiers lining the ramparts calling down at him? And why was the drawbridge down? With night coming quickly, that wasn’t wise. He threw back his head and yelled, “I am Lord Garron, Earl of Wareham! Raise the portcullis!”

  There was only silence.

  Aleric yelled, “Raise the portcullis! Your master is here!”

  Still silence.

  He felt sudden fear, cold and heavy. Something was wrong, very wrong. Then he heard a shaky old voice call out, “Are you really the new Earl of Wareham? Are you really young Garron?”

  “Aye, I am Garron of Kersey. Who are you?”

  “I am Tupper, my lord.”

  By all the saints’ hoary elbows, old Tupper, Wareham’s porter since long before Garron was born, he was still alive? “Have men winch up the portcullis, Tupper.”

  “There’s no one save me here, my lord, but I can do it!” Garron heard the sudden grit in that old voice.

  Hobbs said, “Is that old varmint as ancient as he sounds, Garron?”

  “Older.” Tupper had been stooped with years and worry and very few teeth in his mouth when Garron had seen him last eight years before.

  No one was by the portcullis, save Tupper? But that made no sense. What was going on here? His fear grew. He and his men watched, amazed, as the old iron portcullis slowly rose, the sound of the chain loud in the still air. Somehow, Tupper had found the strength to turn that huge winch. Tupper managed to winch the portcullis high enough for Gilpin to crawl under. After a moment, the portcullis winched up smoothly, the huge chain flying upward. When Garron rode into the outer bailey, he saw Tupper, scrawny as a dead chicken, staring hard at him. Then he shouted, a lovely full-bodied yell that reached the North Sea. “Young Lord Garron! Aye, ’tis you, my boy, ye’re home at last! Oh aye, ’tis a wonder! Bless all the saints’ burned bones!”