Constantine

by Heather Grothaus

  “So, go on and fetch him, Nurse,” Glayer goaded.

  Eseld stood and approached the lord of Thurston Hold and his heir, her spindly arms reaching toward the child.

  “No, leave him,” Glayer commanded, knowing it would pain her to do so. She hesitantly turned to go and Glayer cleared his throat softly. Eseld froze in her escape.

  “Pay your homage,” Glayer reminded her in a quiet, happy voice.

  The old woman turned and dropped to her knees, kissing Glayer’s feet. She reached a trembling hand toward the end of the baby’s dressing gown, but Glayer cupped his boy’s feet in his hands, denying her.

  “That will be all,” he said.

  Eseld struggled to her feet and quit the chamber, pulling the door closed behind her and leaving Glayer and the baby on the luxurious velvet chaise.

  Glayer sighed through his contented smile and stroked the baby’s fine gown, covering his shallow, even breaths. “Mothers,” he complained on a sigh. “Be glad you don’t have one. And you’re welcome.”

  * * *

  The boy stood for a moment between the pair of massive winged cherubim, soaking up the bright sunshine. He had to squint, even with his hand shielding his eyes. The statues must have been fifteen feet tall, but rather than being intimidating, they seemed to smile down on him.

  He dropped his hand and faced forward, looking past tall, wide gates to the courtyard beyond, where it seemed the entire population of the compound was milling about the plots of trees and fountains. He felt a bit of nerves settling in his stomach. He should be relieved, he supposed; now that he’d survived this far, all he had left to do was follow the instructions Father Simon had given the woman on the Chatham road.

  If he could find the one Simon had named among so many similarly garbed men inside . . . He swallowed down the shaky feeling in his throat.

  But not all the men inside were dressed the same, he now saw, and not all of them were even men. Three couples dressed in the clothing of laity were clustered near the center of the courtyard, an equal number of mounts waiting nearby and obviously equipped for a journey. The men and women were smiling and taking turns embracing one of the robed men in particular, a skinny, balding monk.

  Must be him.

  He drew a deep breath and started through the gate, glad that no one had thus far noticed his arrival. But that was usually the case with adults and children. Very few grown persons ever paid young ones any heed, unless it was to get up to something dastardly. Up to this point in his journey, it had suited him just fine to be ignored.

  He paused and quickly dropped to one knee, wriggling his filthy forefinger beneath the ankle lace of his shoe until he felt the little round coin. He was dismayed that he hadn’t taken time to wash up in the river when he’d snuck from the boat. Perhaps the man wouldn’t take him seriously if he thought him nothing more than a dirty, penniless orphan.

  Well, it was the truth, wasn’t it?

  He stood once more, feeling a moment of dizziness, and then began his march forward, the gold coin clutched so tightly in his right fist he wondered that it didn’t melt.

  One of the well-dressed men—he had eyelashes like a woman and a fancy tunic with braiding—caught sight of him over the slight monk’s head and gave a quizzical smile.

  “Pardon me, Victor,” the man said, and his accent was foreign even to this part of the world. “I think there is someone who wishes to speak with you, yes?” The woman at his side, holding a girl child in her arms, leaned ’round and gave a coo and a kind smile of the sort ladies were wont to give as her gaze caught sight of him.

  The monk turned around and looked down, his own slight smile on his face. His eyes were red-rimmed and glistening. He opened his mouth and spoke in the language of the towns planted along the winding river below, but of course the words made no sense.

  The boy seemed unable to slow his breathing, had to swallow several times. He tried to recall Simon’s exact instructions to the woman.

  Up the river to Austria, in the town of Melk, where there is an abbey. Give this to the abbot there—Victor. Tell him who you are and what has been done to you. If there is any help to be had for you . . .

  “Are you Victor?” the boy asked, surprised at how strong his voice sounded to his own ears, when he was actually more than a little concerned he might vomit before all these finely dressed people staring at him with amusement.

  The monk’s reddened eyes widened a bit. “I am indeed, my son. Do you require my assistance? I’m a bit occupied now, but if you—”

  A huge blond man stepped forward, a falcon sitting easily upon his shoulder, and placed a hand that seemed as large as a cartwheel on the monk’s own thin shoulder. “It’s all right, Victor. We have a long journey ahead of us. We can surely wait a moment more.”

  The monk reached up and absently patted the large man’s hand before turning his attention back to his visitor. “Well, then. What can I do for you, child?”

  The boy wrenched his attention away from the hunting bird and thrust out his arm, his fist opening with what seemed to him to be a creaking of his fingers, the bright sun glancing off the gold in his palm in delirious flashes. Almost finished now . . .

  All those gathered around Victor seemed to still. They leaned forward slightly to gaze at the coin offered to the monk and glanced at one another quizzically or with frowns.

  Oh, no. Maybe it meant nothing after all. Maybe the woman had been right, and Simon had been sending her on a goose hunt to get her far away.

  Victor himself reached out very slowly and retrieved the little metal disk with forefinger and thumb. He looked down at it thoughtfully for a moment before raising his eyes slightly to regard the boy once more. “Where did you get this, child?”

  Tell him who you are and what has been done to you . . .

  He swallowed down his fear again.

  “My name is Christian Gerard. A man called Glayer Felsteppe killed my mother and I think my father might be dead, too. His name is General Constantine Gerard, and he is the earl of Chase. I know that it probably doesn’t make very much good sense to you, but I was told if I came here, you could help me.”

  The abbot made a strange sound in his throat before he was pushed gently aside and a man with long hair stepped into his place and then squatted down before Christian. He reached out his arms, and when his sleeves rose, Christian saw that his skin was painted with spiraling black swirls. His eyes sparkled as he grasped Christian’s elbow with one hand and cupped the side of his face with the other.

  “Christian?” the man asked, and his voice broke on the word. “Christian Gerard?”

  Christian nodded, and the tightly winding spring of fear was somehow uncurling in his stomach. “Did you know my father?”

  The man suddenly gave a huff of laughter and he smiled, even as a tear raced down his cheek. In the next moment, Christian found himself pulled into the man’s painted arms, held tightly against his chest. No one had embraced him since his mother had died, and even though the man was a stranger to him, Christian could feel the love and compassion coming from him like the warm glow of the sun above. It surrounded him, cushioned him, sank into him. Then the man pressed his lips to Christian’s cheek, which he knew had to be grubbier than his hands because he had no way of seeing when it should be cleaned.

  Then he felt other hands touching his hair, his back and arms, and the light of the sun was blocked as he was taken into the somehow even brighter fold of these strange and beautiful people, all laughing and whispering his name.

  “It’s all right,” the man holding him said. “It’s all right now—you’re safe. Thank God, thank God—it’s a miracle.” His arms tightened around him, rocking him slightly.

  Christian curled his dirty fingers into the man’s clean tunic, buried his face in his neck, and at last sobbed like the child he was.

  Chapter 7

  Constantine rapped on the thick oratory door and waited, the charred smell of the collapsed corridor behind
and above him causing his guts to twist; how could the woman beyond the door have tolerated it this long?

  “Yes?” she called from the stone room beyond, and Constantine pushed open the door.

  She was sitting on the narrow bench, but it appeared she’d just risen from a reclining position. He hadn’t meant to wake her. She had had color in her face since eating the fish he’d caught for them early that morning, but unfortunately, that color was a faint shade of green.

  “Are you unwell, Lady Theodora?”

  She pushed a hand through her hair, then shook at her skirts, avoiding his gaze as he came into the room and pushed the door closed behind him to shut out the burned, rotten stench.

  “I fear it has been long since I’ve had appreciable sustenance,” she huffed on a laugh.

  Constantine frowned, wondering if she had vomited what little she’d eaten that morning. He crossed the room and squatted near the hearth on the stone floor, making a show of straightening the firewood he’d brought.

  “How long after you gave birth did you escape to Benningsgate?”

  “I awoke from the draught they gave me in a carriage.” When Constantine looked up at Theodora, she elaborated. “The priest under Felsteppe’s thumb was to kill me. I suppose he experienced an attack of scruples, though, and instead thought to send me far away on a ship. I walked here on the Chatham road.”

  “Alone?”

  “There certainly wasn’t anyone I could trust enough to ask for assistance.”

  Constantine stilled in making the small pile of fuel. The woman had given birth for the first time and walked miles afterward to take shelter at this deserted ruin. It was a wonder she hadn’t bled to death. He recalled her telling him her hair had been caked with blood.

  But then, he also recalled that he was conversing with the woman who, by marrying the monster she had, had guaranteed Constantine’s exile from his own country.

  He placed the last stick atop the pile and then turned, sitting back against the wall and looking at her with a sigh. “Does the priest know you still live?”

  Theodora shrugged and hesitantly leaned her own back against the wall behind her. Constantine could tell she didn’t trust him, and that was fine. He didn’t trust her either.

  “I’m certain if he survived his fall and managed to gain the road once more to find that I, his servant, and the carriage for our departure to the docks had vanished, he assumed I had taken advantage of the opportunity to leave.”

  “His fall?”

  She met his gaze levelly. “I pushed him over the embankment at the roadside, into a ravine.”

  Constantine felt his eyebrows raise.

  “I’d hoped to kill him,” she clarified unnecessarily. “If I’d had any sort of weapon on my person at the time, I would have made certain he was dead.”

  Constantine remembered the strength with which she’d fought him when he’d cornered her in the ward and had no doubt that what she’d said was true. If only she had used such cunning and will to lay her husband low. “There is no one at all, then, who would have any reason to suspect you are still in the area of Thurston Hold,” he pressed.

  “There is likely no one who thinks I’m still alive, let alone still in this area.”

  He nodded. “I’ll need money.”

  She stared at him. “For what?”

  “The longer I wait to go after Felsteppe, the greater the risk that either or both of us will be discovered. If I am not to be arrested for Glayer Felsteppe’s murder, I must have the means to flee.”

  “You seem to have done well enough evading the authorities on your own thus far,” she pointed out. “Has this become a mercenary task for you, Lord Gerard? Avenging your family?”

  “No, but after he is dead, you and your son will once more live in the comfort of Thurston Hold while the king finds a suitable husband for you.” He gestured around the small oratory. “I have nothing left. And there are some friends I would help provide for if they are in need of it after all this is over. They, too, have lost their homes, their livelihoods.”

  “So you are telling me that you will help me rescue my son?”

  “No. I am telling you that I will wait to go after Glayer Felsteppe until you have secreted the child safely away from the danger.”

  He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed and then nodded. A faint sparkle came into her eyes—the first Constantine had seen.

  “How much will you require?”

  “How much can you lay hand to?”

  Theodora was still for a moment, as if considering her words carefully. “I’ve hidden a shallow trunk in a hollow of the wall behind a stone in the nursery. I hoarded away what coin and valuables I could lay hand to, so that after my son was born and I had recovered, we could flee. There is a considerable amount of silver. Jewels as well.”

  “That will do,” Constantine said.

  “Very well. Then we have an agreement,” she said.

  “You shall have to take more care than you have in the past. It is not above Glayer Felsteppe to torture those he seeks information from, and I’d not have you leading him right to me.”

  “I’m not stupid, Lord Gerard,” she said coolly.

  Constantine’s mouth thinned. “I suppose, between the two of us, you had a more intimate knowledge of him than I, but I know how he behaves when trapped.”

  “As do I,” she said, and her hard gaze made Constantine wonder for a moment just how deep that knowledge went, and exactly what Theodora Rosemont had done to make Glayer Felsteppe wish dead the beautiful, wealthy woman who was the mother of his child.

  It also increased his wariness of her. “Don’t think to betray me, Theodora.”

  “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, Lord Gerard,” she said, and her words let the unspoken threat hang in the cool, humid oratory, where once, a lifetime ago, Constantine had knelt to receive God’s blessing before departing for the fortress at Jacob’s Ford.

  He stood away from the wall. “It’s started to rain. By the looks of the sky, it’s likely to continue for some time. I’ll collect the fish from the pit and return with more firewood. After that I plan to see who’s still about in the village.”

  “Aren’t you afraid someone will recognize you?”

  “I am much changed from the time when I was lord here.”

  “I knew who you were,” she challenged.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said and walked to the door. “Old Stacy’s cottage might have what we require. If he’s gone, perhaps he’s left something of use behind.”

  “Stacy begged for employ at Thurston Hold after the fire,” she said. “Most of the villagers did, and my father provided for them. Many have left now, though.”

  He looked up at her, the question clear in his eyes.

  “Felsteppe sent them away. He said they were a burden on the estate.” She paused. “Are you searching for food?”

  “Herbs. Medicines.” He opened the door and paused to look back at her. “You’re still quite weak. You’ll need to regain your strength before attempting the journey to Thurston. I can’t have you being caught or overpowered.” Or dying, he thought suddenly, unsure why he would remotely care whether the strange young Theodora Rosemont lived or died.

  “I do believe this weak woman put up enough of a fight for you, Lord Gerard,” she challenged, but the faint shadow of a smile told Constantine that although she had succeeded in maintaining her life thus far, she was beginning to fade and knew it. “I do hope you didn’t have too much trouble stitching yourself up,” she said, glancing at the ruddy stain on the flank of his tunic.

  “But a scratch,” he said with a careless wrinkle of his nose. And then he quit the room for the black stink of the corridor, where the gloomy and miserable reality of Benningsgate wrapped around him with its suffocating embrace, obliterating even the hint of levity that had tried to seep between the ruined stones.

  * * *

  Theodora closed her eyes with a shuddering sigh and l
eaned her head back against the stones after Lord Gerard had departed the oratory. Her throat constricted, but she commanded herself not to cry. She had already wept enough for a hundred lifetimes and it was a waste of her energy. She took several deep breaths.

  He was going to help her.

  Probably.

  Dori didn’t try to fool herself into believing Constantine Gerard’s motives were even remotely charitable. By agreeing to wait to kill Glayer Felsteppe, he would secure the entirety of the resources Dori had secreted away while she’d carried her child.

  But if it meant she could hold her baby, knowing Glayer Felsteppe was dead, Dori would have gladly given up all of Thurston Hold to the earl of Chase were it in her power to do so. After all, Dori would have her son ever after then, but Constantine Gerard never would have his. The keep meant nothing to her now that her father was dead. Now that . . .

  Even the leaning of her mind toward him caused Dori to force herself to her feet to begin pointlessly straightening the few items within the oratory. If she was to share the space with Constantine Gerard, it needed to have the appearance of a common chamber rather than the private quarters Dori had been using it as. She was adding more wood to the small fire when he returned, his arms laden, the hood and shoulders of his cape dark with rain. He brought the sweet smell of spring with him in the breeze of his passing as he walked to the table to deposit the items. He disappeared through the door again without comment, although she’d been certain to leave the little eating knife with its tip broken off and CAG engraved on the handle in the center of the table.

  Dori rose and walked to the table, curious about the pile of goods he’d brought. A wooden trencher, perhaps, although Dori thought it large enough to be a dough bowl; a spool of twine, nearly spent; several rags, stained but clean, and stiff with the cold spring wind that had dried them on someone’s line; a fresh bough wrapped around several fragrant, dried fish.

  He was back through the door then, a short, three-legged stool in one hand and a thick, rolled bundle beneath his other arm, which also carried a bucket slightly more than half full of water. He set the stool on its legs near the hearth as well as the bucket and then made room on the table to place the dusty, moth-eaten blanket. He unfurled the ancient thing to reveal a handful of crumbly, dried bundles of herbs, a wooden tankard with a crack along the side; a long handled two-pronged fork; and a rough bag that, although tied tightly with twine, appeared by its deflated shape to be completely empty.