Bastien threw his satchel on to the ground by the bench; it landed with a scuffling sound, scraping on the gravel pathway. His large frame loomed over Beatrice, shadowing her. ‘How could you have let her go with that man? And all for money.’
‘Nay! Not just for the money. I couldn’t curb her ways, she wouldn’t be told; I had to do something, she was running wild! Edmund told me that his uncle was a decent, law-abiding man; he assured me that he was!’
‘He lied. That snivelling, two-faced boy lied to you. Have you seen him?’ Bastien paced up and down the path in front of her.
Beatrice raised one tentative hand to her head, checking her veil, patting the delicate fabric in place. ‘Nay, he never returned. I assumed he’d decided to keep all the money for himself.’
Bastien stopped, spun around lightly. His calf-length leather boots strained with the rapid movement. ‘Didn’t you once think about what you’d done, about how she might be feeling?’ His piercing tone slashed into her.
She hunched away, wincing, cowering from his furious expression. ‘Oh, my lord, I think about her every day.’ Big fat tears began to run down her face, creating runnels through the layer of white powder on her skin. ‘I love her, I love my Alice. I pray she can find a space in her heart to forgive me for what I have done.’
Bastien’s eyes travelled over her forlorn, drooping figure. ‘Oddly enough, you seem to have bred a daughter with an amazing capacity for forgiveness,’ he replied grimly.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,’ Beatrice kept saying, over and over again. ‘I’ve already told Fabien; he’s angry with me, frantic with worry. Now that all the business with the King is over…’ she waved one feeble hand in the direction of the castle ‘…he intends to ride to Felpersham’s castle tonight.’
‘She’s not there.’
Beatrice lifted one trembling hand to shield her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘Where is she?’
Bastien sighed. He lifted his head, watched the puffy clouds scudding across the sky. Beatrice Matravers seemed truly sorry for what she had done. He hoped he was making the right decision.
‘I’ll take you to her.’
Bastien slowed his horse to a walk beneath the trees, tall stately oaks that formed a deciduous forest to the east of Foxhayne. Leaning forwards, he patted the horse’s neck, feeling the animal’s sweating coat beneath his fingers. He had set a relentless pace from Northampton, leaving the lurching cart carrying Alice’s parents far behind. They were happy to follow at a more sedate pace, grateful to him for saving their daughter, looking forward to seeing her once again. As he left them, they had been talking quietly together, Beatrice weeping a little in her husband’s arms. Bastien knew that, despite what Beatrice had done, their relationship would soon be mended. Fabien Matravers’s kind, generous spirit would make sure of that.
Foxhayne lay quietly under the hazy cloud of noon; he suspected most of the workers would be eating their lunch at this hour. How different his feelings were from the last time he had approached, in a mixture of trepidation and curiosity, with Alice’s soft frame folded against him. As he trotted into the courtyard, a stable lad ran out to meet him, nodding furtively at Bastien before taking the reins of his horse. Bastien began to remove the leather satchels from the back of the saddle.
The main door of the house was wrenched open on its hinges.
Bastien turned, a smile on his lips, expecting to see Alice. His heart perched on the edge of happiness, of joyous expectation at seeing her once more.
He saw Mary.
Mary, his mother’s servant, her mottled pasty skin ravaged by tears and fatigue, her fingers bunching continually into the folds of her apron.
‘Oh, my lord, my lord!’ She stared at him, hollow-eyed, quaking.
Dropping the bag, he sprinted towards her, leaping up the steps in two strong strides, grabbing her upper arms, supporting her. ‘Mary! What in God’s name is the matter?’
Mary’s head lolled; he gave her a little shake. ‘Tell me,’ he said more calmly, ignoring the lick of fear in his veins, ‘tell me what’s happened.’
‘It’s your mother,’ Mary stuttered out. ‘She’s locked herself in her chambers; she refuses to come out.’
Bastien laughed, a slashing hollow sound. ‘So what’s new? She often does that.’
Mary withered visibly. ‘I think she’s done something dreadful.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘We can’t find Alice.’
Fear snipping at his heels, his mind tottering on the brink of crazed disbelief, Bastien fought for logic, for the cool control for which he was renowned. It could not be true; Mary must have it wrong! Striding across the hallway, he bellowed orders left and right to the milling servants, to look, to search for, to find Lady Alice. Like a soul possessed he tore up the stairs to his mother’s chamber, pounding on the door with his great fists, shouting, yelling at her to open up. Blood hurtled through his veins at a frenzied pace. Alice! Alice! his mind screamed at him, what has she done to you? His guts roiled—he should never have left her!
The door would be secured with a length of wood fitted horizontally into two iron brackets either side of the frame. On his orders, two burly servants raced upstairs with a sturdy length of tree trunk: an effective battering ram. The three men worked together, their combined strength pounding at the door until the top planks splintered; Bastien reached in, down, to toss the wooden barricade away.
He stepped into his mother’s chamber.
Closed, locked shutters made the room dismal, gloomy, stifled with acrid air. His eyes searched the shadows, heart thumping heavily in his chest. Cecile lay on the bed, sprawled, a frail, shrunken figure, still wearing her gown, her head-dress, her shoes. Her eyes were closed, her white skin stretched taut over the bones of her face; with a jolt he thought she was dead until he caught the faint rattle of breath emerging from her partially open lips.
As Bastien approached, her eyes snapped open, intent, glittering evil.
‘You’re too late.’ The words rasped out from dry, cracked lips; a bitter uneven gasp.
Reaching down, the blood pummelling the inside of his ears, he seized her shoulders, crushing her thin bones beneath his fingers, and shook her, hard. Her head bounced back on the pillow. ‘What have you done with Alice? What have you done?’ A guttural rawness soaked his voice.
A wavering cackle escaped Cecile’s mouth. She seemed to be having trouble breathing, her chest caving deeply with every shaky intake of air. ‘Oh, this does me good, Bastien,’ she wheezed. ‘This is what I wanted, to see you suffer like this.’ Her eyes narrowed, gimlets of hatred. ‘Just as I suffered when you took Guillaume away from me.’
‘You’ve punished me enough for that,’ Bastien replied grimly, his face a mask of anguish.
Cecile’s lips grimaced, a semblance of a smile. ‘Nay, not enough, my dear boy,’ she mocked, ‘not enough.’
His hands leapt to her throat, tanned, sinewy hands against her scrawny neck, wanting to throttle her, to squeeze every last breath from her body. But his hands fell away as she laughed in his face, the uncontrolled, maniacal laugh of the truly mad. ‘I’ve saved you the job, dear son. I’ve drunk enough poison to kill several men. I’ll be gone soon, to join your brother.’
‘Where…is…Alice?’ he bawled at her, heart cleaving with desperation, springing back from the bed. ‘Tell me, please, before it’s too late!’
Cecile raised a finger to her lips, coquettishly. ‘Now, that would be telling! Without her, you will suffer, just as I have suffered.’
Futility slashed at his face. ‘Nay, she’s not dead!’ he bellowed at her. If he spoke the words often enough, then maybe it wouldn’t be true.
‘Aye, she is. Or at least, she soon will be.’ A fit of choking drowned out her last words.
Bastien paced the room, frantic, ripping open the shutters to stare out. The normality of the bright blue sky, the small figures of people working in the fields below mocked him, laughed in
his face. How could he make Cecile tell him? His mother had nothing left to live for. His mind scurried through the nooks and crannies of his home, through dusty stairwells, into disused rooms. Where? Where was Alice? Cecile would not have gone far with her—where could she have taken her?
At his back, Cecile’s breathing laboured. It would not be long now. His heart splintered, vitality draining from his legs, his arms, the thought of losing Alice almost too great to bear. Whirling around, his gaze travelled the length of his mother’s body. Even in the throes of dying, she was perfectly turned out: jewelled head-dress, expensive gown, shoes threaded with silver, the pale leather soles turned towards him.
Her shoes.
Bastien blinked, then lunged for the door. The soles of his mother’s shoes were dirty, smeared with green slime. He knew where Alice was.
He flew down the stairs, feet barely grazing the polished wood, every muscle in his body charged with new-found energy. Alice could only be in one place, the place where he and his brother had played when they were young. He even recalled his mother’s voice from all those years ago, chastising them both as they returned, tired, hungry and happy with playing, their clothes and shoes covered in the green slime from the river steps. Bounding down into the courtyard, he cannoned toward the river, oblivious to the astonished stares around him.
‘Alice! Alice!’ Almost falling down into the river in his haste to reach the hidden chamber, Bastien fumbled with the iron bolt, skinning his knuckles as he wrenched the door open.
Nothing.
Black, foul-smelling darkness, but no Alice. His heart howled.
Desolation scoured him, grinding into his bones. He buckled, his big body crouching down on the steps, face sunk in his hands. His mind was blank, frozen. He had been wrong, and now it was too late.
‘Bastien.’ A hand caressed his shoulder, warm, tentative.
Joy kindled in his veins, flowing around his heart, gathering momentum as he twisted on the step and saw Alice standing there, whole, alive. Her gown was torn and dirty, her veil streamed in tatters from her curling blonde hair, smudges adorned her face but he didn’t think he could remember a time when she had looked more beautiful.
‘Christ in Heaven! It is you!’ He sprung upwards, crushing her body to his, tears of pure relief springing from his eyes. Enfolding her into his arms, he relished the tender, sweet feel of her. ‘Sweet Jesu, woman, I thought I’d lost you!’ He wrenched her veil from her head, sending jewelled hairpins flying, stroking the fine strands of her hair, tipping her face up towards his. ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he murmured once again. Beneath his taut, tanned features, his skin held a grey tinge, shocked.
Her blue eyes sparkled up at him, blazing sapphire, her pale skin tracked with old tears. ‘She wanted to be rid of me,’ Alice stuttered out. ‘She shut me in there.’ She pointed at the chamber, finger trembling. ‘She left me to die.’ Her voice faded to a tremulous whisper.
Anguish hollowed the shadows beneath Bastien’s eyes. ‘I should have never left you here; I should have taken you with me, kept you at my side.’ He paused, frowning. ‘But, how did you…?’
‘She forgot about the passageway,’ Alice supplied, heart flaring at his possessive words. She would stay by his side for ever, if he would have her.
Bastien’s face cleared, the ruddy colour of health returning to his cheeks. ‘Of course, it leads to the other side of the wall. Very narrow, as I recall, even when I was a boy.’ He glanced over her ripped gown, his green eyes grim.
Alice grinned. ‘It was a bit of a squeeze.’
‘Thank the Lord you found it.’
Her hand moved gently over his velvet sleeve, the thick muscles of his forearm solid beneath her fingers. ‘You would have found me anyway.’
‘Aye, I would have,’ he concurred, hands falling from her face, gripping her shoulders. His square chin jutted forward with determination. ‘I would have taken this manor apart, stone by stone, until I found you.’ Raw emotion thickened his voice, the sinews in his throat constricting.
Alice’s eyes sparkled up at him, blazing sapphire. ‘Cecile believed…’ she took a quavering breath, attempting to find the words ‘…she thought that it would destroy you, if I wasn’t here any more.’
His big, capable hands moved back to her face, one thumb moving across her lips, petal soft, a dewy rosebud. ‘It would have killed me.’ His eyes glittered, haunted with the prospect of what might have happened. A shudder rippled through his lean, broad body.
‘But…but…when I saw you at Katherine’s tomb…?’
‘You were there?’
‘Aye, for a moment.’ She had to be sure, be certain.
‘I was saying goodbye, Alice. I had spent a lifetime grieving, and a lifetime fighting against it, until the day I met a maiden who gave me hope once more, who showed me how to love again.’
Her breath caught, suspended on a gossamer thread of flimsy hope. A sudden breeze from the river whipped at her skirts, the embroidered hem flailing around his sturdy leather boots. ‘You mean…?’
‘I mean you, Alice. From the moment I saw you, surrounded by soldiers in the forest, threatening them like a cornered terrier, you began to change me.’ He stroked her hair as she leaned into him. His heart thumped solidly against her ear. ‘I will never let you go again, do you know that?’
‘I do now.’ Delight shivered through her, her heart bursting with utter rapture. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging his big frame to her. ‘Oh, Bastien, I almost dare not to believe it!’
‘Believe it, Alice. Believe that I love you, that I cherish you, and want to spend the rest of my days with you.’ He smoothed away a wayward strand of hair from her forehead; she shivered under his light touch, a moth’s wing of sensation.
‘As I love you, Bastien. With all my heart.’
With a groan, he lowered his head, gathering her slight body into his big frame, sealing his lips to hers in a kiss to claim her for a lifetime.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8218-6
CAPTURED BY THE WARRIOR
Copyright © 2010 by Meriel Fuller
First North American Publication 2011
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