Maid of Midnight

by Ana Seymour

  “Why not?”

  Bridget shook her head. “He tested it on a model and it blew the whole thing up. Anyway, Brother Cyril says it’s plenty hot enough as is.”

  Ranulf’s expression was thoughtful. Most of the brothers’

  “tinkerings” appeared to be innocent contraptions to ease their life around the abbey, but this was something different. “I wager there would be powerful men around the continent who would like to see this thing in action,” he said.

  Bridget shrugged. “We don’t really get visitors here.”

  Ranulf’s gaze was on a heap of metal that lay scattered to one side of the blast fire. He walked over and picked a piece off the top. “That’s the metal they forge,” Bridget said.

  He looked down at the cold steel in his hands. It was black as coal and hard as a diamond. He’d seen that metal before, he thought to himself. In Jean the Smithy’s shop. And on the wrists of the sheriff just before the man’s mace had nearly split his skull in two.

  Chapter Ten

  It appeared that Bridget was not the only secret the monks of St. Gabriel had been harboring all these years, Ranulf thought, his mind still on the amazing blast fire as he rode in the direction of Beauville.

  He’d already seen the black metal in action. He remembered the smithy’s brawny arm smashing the helmet down with no effect.

  But the question that pounded in his mind was: is the black metal what Dragon had been seeking at St. Gabriel? If so, what had happened to him?

  He slowed Thunder to a cautious pace as he approached the town. He had no idea why the sheriff and his men hadn’t followed him to the abbey, but he was not anxious to encounter any of them by surprise. He veered off the road before he entered the main part of town and made his way by a back route to the smithy’s stables at the western edge. There was no sign of other visitors, and from the inside he could hear the ringing of an anvil.

  Tying Thunder to a post, he went quietly up to the stable doors. The blacksmith was alone inside, pounding on a piece of harness. He stopped when he saw Ranulf.

  “Good day to you, Sir Ranulf,” he said. His tone seemed a little hesitant.

  Ranulf walked toward him.

  “I trust your purchases were satisfactory,” the smithy added.

  “Aye. I’ve come on another matter.” He glanced at the shelf where the black helmet had been on his last visit. “I want to ask you about the black helmet you showed me.”

  Jean laid his hammer to one side and dusted off his large hands. “What about it?” he asked, too casually.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It was made at a forge near here.”

  “At St. Gabriel?”

  “How do you know about St. Gabriel?” the smithy asked, surprised.

  “I’ve been staying there with the monks.”

  Jean looked confused. “Have you come to be a monk or something?”

  Ranulf gave a little smile at the idea. “Nay, ’tis not a life for me. I met with an…accident, and the monks have been caring for me. I saw their blast fire and remembered the helmet you showed me.”

  “They’ve told me not to speak of it.”

  “Who told you?”

  The smithy hesitated, then said, “Sir Ranulf, let me give you some advice. The men who are interested in the black metal want it for themselves and want it badly. They won’t take kindly to a stranger asking questions about it.”

  Ranulf had been looking around the stable for anything else that appeared to be made of the metal, but could see none. “I have a reason for needing to know.”

  Jean spoke firmly. “I warrant I’d better have the reason, then, for telling you any more than I have puts me at some risk.”

  Ranulf gave a terse account of his search for his brother. He did not color his words with feelings, but he could see a gleam of sympathy in the smithy’s eyes.

  “He’s your little brother, this Dragon?” Jean asked.

  “Aye, by but a year.”

  Jean hesitated just a moment, then he stepped around Ranulf and crossed a couple of empty animal stalls to reach a huge chest that sat against the far wall. Throwing open the top, he gestured to the contents and said, “Here’s your black metal, Englishman. Spear points and arrowheads for the army of the Duke of Austria, being supplied to him by his faithful follower, Henri LeClerc, the Baron of Darmaux.”

  Ranulf followed him across the room and looked inside. A shaft of sunlight from the open stable roof glinted off the shiny black points. “Why spear points?” he asked.

  “For one simple reason,” the smith answered. “They pierce armor.”

  Ranulf gave a low whistle. “They’re that hard?”

  “Aye. We’ve experimented with forging armor and other items, like the helmet I showed you, but ’tis difficult and the steel is so hard that it becomes brittle. But it’s perfect for this.” He gestured once again at the chest.

  “Arrows and lances that pierce armor could change the entire nature of warfare.”

  “Aye, or win battles for the army that possesses them.” He reached into the chest and pulled out a four-inch-long spear point. “With the right blow, this will go through a man’s breastplate as if it were butter.”

  A sick feeling settled into the pit of Ranulf’s stomach. “Do you make them here?” Ranulf asked.

  “I do some finishing here. They forge them at the abbey.”

  “They forge weapons at the abbey?”

  “Aye.”

  He stood for a minute in stunned silence. He couldn’t believe that the kind, eccentric, absentminded monks of St. Gabriel were engaged in making weapons of war for an unscrupulous baron and his liege lord, the Duke of Austria. “How many people here in town know about this?” Ranulf asked softly.

  “Not many. As I told you, ’tis worth one’s life to speak of it.”

  “But they had to tell you because they needed your skills.”

  “Aye,” said Jean. “The baron needed my skills.”

  Ranulf looked up in surprise at the sudden venom in the smithy’s tone. Carefully he asked, “Do I sense that you are not fond of the baron?”

  The smith’s knuckles grew white around the spear point he held. “The baron needs me because the other blacksmith in Beauville is dead.”

  Ranulf tensed. “What happened to him?”

  “He was too talkative for the baron’s taste.”

  Once again the two men’s gazes met, and this time there was a bolt of understanding exchanged between them. “Was he a good friend of yours?” Ranulf asked gently.

  Jean sent the spear point smashing into the chest. Then he looked up again with hollow eyes and answered, “He was my brother.”

  “I just want to know,” Bridget said firmly. “Ever since I can remember, no one would speak to me of how I got here or where I came from. I didn’t hatch from an egg. Somebody here must have some information about me.”

  She and Francis were scrubbing the long wooden refectory tables with sand. The monk continued his methodical rubbing and avoided looking at her. “I told you, Bridget, that I was afraid the time would come when you would no longer be happy here at the abbey.”

  Bridget gave her foot a little stomp. “I am happy. But I’m also curious. Francis, when I went into Beauville with Ranulf, people stared at me as though I were someone come back from the dead. What do they know? Who did they think I was?”

  “Sometimes curiosity is dangerous, child” was all Francis would say.

  Bridget wrinkled her nose with frustration. “If you won’t tell me, perhaps I’ll just have to go back into town and start asking myself.”

  At this, the monk straightened up, put aside his rag and turned to her. “You mustn’t do that, especially now. Think about those men who came looking for you at the Marchands’.”

  “But don’t you see, Brother? That’s why I must find out. This is not simply idle curiosity. Why were those men looking for me? Since no one in town has ever seen me before this week, it must b
e something to do with my past.”

  Francis hesitated, then pulled out a bench from under the table they’d been cleaning and motioned for her to sit down on one end. When she did so, he settled himself opposite her. “I’ll tell you what I can, Bridget.”

  Bridget’s palms started to sweat. In the past, she’d always let herself be dissuaded from asking questions, but this time she was determined to find answers. She braced herself on the bench as though ready for a blow.

  “You were born here,” he began.

  Bridget’s eyes widened. “Here? At the abbey?”

  “Aye.”

  “But why—”

  Francis held up a hand to interrupt her. “Abbot Josef and Brother Eustacio helped your mother give you birth.”

  Both monks were now dead. “Did my—my mother have no other family to help her? No women? My father?”

  “She had no one but us.”

  The back of Bridget’s throat had gone dry and she rasped as she asked, “What happened to her?”

  Francis leaned forward and put his hand over Bridget’s where she had it braced on the bench. “She died, child. Twelve days after she gave you life, she lost her own.”

  Bridget closed her eyes. Twelve days. She’d had a mother for twelve days. “’Twas the birth that killed her?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “Aye, ’twas the birth.”

  Bridget opened her eyes again and met Francis’s sympathetic gaze.

  “But she loved you fiercely, little one. She said over and over that you were the best thing that had ever happened to her.”

  “What about my father?”

  Francis looked away. “That I can’t tell you.”

  “But if my mother was here, being cared for by the monks, she must have revealed who my father was.”

  “Your father was known to us.”

  “Then tell me who he was,” she demanded, snatching her hand angrily from underneath his. “It’s been twenty-two years, Brother. That’s enough time for secrets to be honored.”

  “Some secrets must be kept forever. All I can tell you is that your father died shortly after your mother, and he left you to us as a sacred trust.”

  She could tell from the set of Francis’s face that once again she’d hit the wall of silence that had greeted her inquiries ever since she could remember. It made little sense to her. And none of it explained why people had stared at her in the town, unless her mother had been from there. “Do I look like her?” she asked wistfully.

  He smiled. “Aye, you’re the image of her. She was that beautiful.”

  Bridget was surprised. It was the first time that any of the monks had ever made a comment on her appearance. “Was she from Beauville? Is that why people stared at me the other day?”

  Francis shook his head. “This is the truth, Bridget. I don’t know who she was. But she was not from Beauville.”

  “You didn’t know her? Did no one here know her identity?”

  “Abbot Josef knew, but he swore never to reveal it.”

  “Was she called Charlotte?”

  The monk nodded. “Aye, that much I can tell you.”

  It was not enough. For all these years she’d pretended to herself that being a child of the abbey was enough. The monks were her fathers and the abbey was her heritage. But suddenly, her actual parents had become real people. Her mother had a name—Charlotte. She had lived and loved her baby daughter for twelve whole days. And her father had left her to the monks as if she had been some kind of treasure to keep guarded and hidden.

  Questions raced through her mind. Questions without answers. She had a sudden thought. “Did Abbot Josef reveal my mother’s identity to someone before he died? Brother Alois, perhaps?”

  Francis shifted on the narrow bench. “I’ve told you all I can, Bridget. Let that be an end to it. You’re happy here at the abbey, and that’s all that counts.” He boosted himself up. “If we don’t get these tables finished, we’ll miss the sext prayers.”

  Bridget got slowly to her feet and started wiping down the row of tables once again, though her thoughts were not on cleaning. Brother Francis was right. She was happy at the abbey, but that was no longer all that counted. She wanted to know who she was.

  Ranulf’s head pounded as he unsaddled Thunder and led him into an empty stall in the abbey stables. He’d spent much of the afternoon talking with Jean the Smithy, but none of the smithy’s information had given him any clues about what might have happened to his brother. Ranulf’s only theory was that if Dragon had been seeking the black metal, then the man who might have the answer to his disappearance was Henri LeClerc. But Ranulf had learned his lesson blundering into the sheriff’s house. He was not going to be so foolish as to ride up to Darmaux Castle alone.

  “We need to get back to Lyonsbridge, boy,” he told Thunder as he pulled the saddle blanket off his back.

  “Are you planning to leave?” asked a soft voice from behind him.

  He turned around to face Bridget. “I have to,” he told her. “I need help.”

  “Have you found out something about your brother?”

  “Maybe. I think his disappearance might have something to do with your monks’ ‘tinkerings,’ as you call them.”

  Bridget looked puzzled. “You think he was coming here for their inventions?”

  “For the black metal.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either, precisely. But what of your day? Did you speak with Francis?”

  “Aye.” She gave him a summary of her conversation with the monk.

  “So the old woman who called you Charlotte must have known your mother?”

  “Aye. Francis says it’s foolhardy for me to go into town again, but I’ve been thinking all evening that I must risk it. I want to talk to the old dairy woman again.”

  “And I was thinking that I should take you back to Lyonsbridge with me and leave you safely there while I come back with help to find Dragon.”

  It was twilight outside and the interior of the stable was dim. Bridget could just barely see the sudden flare in his blue eyes. Her throat closed. His words had taken her completely by surprise. “Take me to Lyonsbridge?” she repeated.

  “Aye. I don’t like to leave you here unprotected. The sheriff’s men may come looking for you, and no matter how much faith you place in them, I don’t think your monks would put up a very good fight in your defense.”

  She felt a pang of disappointment. She’d been foolish to think for even a moment that his offer had been anything more than a gallant gesture. Knights were sworn to protect helpless women. Any woman.

  She drew herself up. “What would your fine lady grandmother say if you suddenly appeared with a poor Norman girl with no name?”

  Ranulf grinned. “She’d say, Bienvenue, ma chère. She’s Norman herself, remember?”

  “A Norman noblewoman,” Bridget pointed out. “Nay, I thank you for the offer, but I’ll stay right where I belong.”

  “Which is an abbey full of old men?”

  “Who have cared for me as fathers. Aye.”

  When she’d seen him riding in on Thunder, she’d followed him to the stables, wanting to tell him of her conversation with Francis. Now she was sorry she’d come. Her eyes misted with tears.

  He saw them and before she could blink them away, he had put his arms around her. “Don’t cry, angel,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. I know how much the monks mean to you, but I find it difficult to stomach the idea of you living out your life here.”

  “It’s the only home I know.”

  “Aye, but there’s a whole world for you to learn to know.”

  “From the little I’ve seen of that world, I’m better off here.”

  His arms had brought her flat against the hardness of his body. “Were there no parts of that other world that you liked?” he asked, low in her ear.

  “Aye, there were some parts,” she answered, her voice even lower.

  When
she tipped her head to look up at him, he was smiling, and his eyes held another emotion that she had begun to know that afternoon in the woods. His lips brushed her cheek. “What would those parts be?” he asked.

  “I think you know.”

  He shook his head and held her even more tightly so that her breasts flattened against his chest. “I want you to tell me,” he murmured.

  His lips nibbled at the tip of her chin. “This,” she whispered.

  His mouth moved to gnaw gently at her lower lip. “This?” he asked.

  “Aye.” The word came out as a sigh.

  “Ah, angel, if you only knew,” he breathed. “’Tis only the beginning.”

  Chapter Eleven

  He took her mouth fully now, a deadly onslaught of lips and tongue, and she found it suddenly hard to stand upright. Sweeping her into his arms, he looked around the dark barn. “Hold on, sweetheart,” he told her, then carried her through the row of stalls to the far corner where the fresh hay was piled. He set her on the ground with a quick, hard kiss on the lips and said, “Don’t move.”

  Within moments, he’d hauled some saddle blankets from a rack on the wall and laid them out over the hay. When he was done, he looked back at the open stable door, which framed the last rays of the late spring twilight. “Will any of the monks be coming here this evening?” he asked her.

  His voice reached her through a kind of fog. She shook her head. “They’re at compline prayers. After that they go directly to bed.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then we won’t close the doors. I want to be able to see your eyes while I make love to you.”

  Her stomach did a flip at his words. “Are we going to make love?” she asked without the least tone of protest.

  “Aye,” he said, taking her in his arms again. “We are.”

  The idea was suddenly, deliciously enticing. She’d read about lovemaking in the forbidden abbey books, but she’d never thought it would happen to her. Somehow, with Ranulf’s arms firmly around her, it felt natural and right and inevitable.