Constantine

by Heather Grothaus

She felt a warm, heavy weight collapse into her and push her sideways, and when she peeled her hands from her face to look, she saw that Erasmus had come to sit behind her and prop his great mass against her flank. His panting breaths jarred her so that she couldn’t even cry properly. She gave the dog her elbow unenthusiastically, but it only prompted him to turn his muzzle back against her face so forcefully that she saw stars, and then he licked her.

  Which only caused Dori to wail all the more.

  “Now, milady,” Nell said awkwardly. “There, now. It’s not so bad as all that.”

  Dori dropped her hands and looked up at the woman.

  “Well, it may be,” Nell allowed with a grim set to her mouth. “But sitting here in the mud shan’t improve anything.” She held out her hand again with the same circling motion. “Come along now. We’ve much to do before this eventide.”

  Dori placed her hand in Nell’s and let the woman pull her out of the mud for the second time since their meeting only an hour before.

  “What do you mean?” Dori asked.

  “It’s a wonder you didn’t run yourself through with this horrid thing,” Nell muttered as she reached out and pulled Constantine’s blade from the tie at Dori’s waist and then bent to the ground. Lifting the hem of Dori’s overskirt, she cut the sagging, threadbare material beneath away and then wadded it into a ball as Dori stepped out of it. She handed the rags and Constantine’s knife back to her.

  “Lord Gerard is coming to the village. I suppose he means the same for you, if only to keep an eye on you.”

  Dori’s eyes narrowed at the woman.

  “Any matter,” Nell continued, “I’ll not be waiting on the likes of you as if I were a lady’s maid, so you’d best be prepared to lend your hands to the task.”

  Dori looked her up and down. “I doubt anyone with knowledge of such matters would mistake you for a lady’s maid.”

  “Not if you were the lady, I reckon,” Nell retorted and then started back through the wood.

  Dori watched the woman’s wide back retreating for a moment, feeling an odd twitch at the corner of her mouth. She realized Erasmus stood pressed against her leg and looked down into the dog’s mournful gaze.

  “Good boy,” she whispered.

  Chapter 17

  Glayer openly watched the young woman getting dressed at the side of his bed as he reclined on the luxurious bolsters. The girl was pale and wide-eyed in the bright candle glow of the guest apartment, her hands visibly trembling over their own shadows as she struggled with her fine, heavy kirtle. When the hem at last dropped to the floor, she looked to him.

  “You’ll speak with my father soon,” she pressed, her fingers twisting around themselves. “And then you’ll come for me.”

  “Straightaway,” Glayer promised, although he couldn’t quite keep the smirk from his mouth. He didn’t even know who the girl’s father was. Actually, he couldn’t bother recalling her name now either, after finding out she was birthed of such a small estate. “Right to Glenmar-rick.”

  She frowned, and Glayer saw her throat work as she swallowed. “Glencovent.”

  He always seemed to forget that virgins—while physically delightful—were much too exacting for his tastes.

  “Of course. Glencovent,” he corrected himself, giving his smile free rein now. A rap sounded on the chamber door and he gestured toward it before stretching to the side to retrieve his cup. “Admit my caller on your way out.” He lay back once more but paused in bringing the chalice to his lips as he saw that the girl stood staring at him as if rooted to the spot.

  “You’re not going to speak to my father at all, are you?” she demanded in a shocked voice, her expression the epitome of innocence destroyed.

  It put a warm, happy feeling in Glayer’s stomach.

  He cocked his head. “Do you really wish me to? It might put a quick end to any potential pimply-faced suitors awaiting you in the wilds of Glencarmack. If I keep my silence, you’ll have all the way until your wedding night to think of an explanation for your scandalous indiscretion.”

  “It’s Glencovent,” she insisted through her teeth. “And I doubt there’s need for any explanation.”

  Glayer rolled his eyes and waved his cup at her. “Be gone, child.” He drank.

  Her complexion, previously a beguiling shade of porcelain, took on a ruddy hue. “You’ll pay for this. You . . . you monster.”

  Glayer nearly choked on his wine, he was so amused by the threat. He held his wrist to his mouth while he snorted and swallowed. “Lofty aspirations, I assure you, poppet—men far bigger and braver than you have sought retaliation against me and fallen dismally short of their marks.”

  The rapping came at his door again, this time more insistently.

  He smacked his lips together and then sighed. The novelty of her was wearing off. “Shoo, shoo! I’m an important man with important business to attend to.”

  The girl whirled on her heel, tears already coursing down her face as she wrenched the door open and stormed past Eseld and little Glander, jostling them most rudely.

  Eseld turned and watched the young woman’s flight before closing the door carefully and turning her questioning gaze to Glayer.

  “A hanger-on,” he said with a dismissive wave of his cup. “I’m positively harangued of late by women hoping to attach themselves to me.”

  Eseld’s wrinkly face relaxed and her smile was prideful. “What maid with any sense wouldn’t wish to get herself in your good graces, my lord? You must choose carefully your next bride.”

  “Indeed,” Glayer said, lighting from the bed and slipping his arms into his silken gown. He tightened the belt and then walked to Eseld to take Glander from her. “She will not only need the finest pedigree but be of meek and gentle nature to be worthy enough of the title stepmother. I’ll not consider anyone seriously until Henry signs over the deed to Benningsgate; the addition of the estate shall open up a higher tier of nobility to choose from. Good day, Glander.”

  “She won’t take my place though, will she?” Eseld pressed worriedly. “You’ll still retain me as nurse.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course,” Glayer said in an irritated fashion, walking away from the annoying old woman. “We should have our answer any day, I expect. Henry is covered over with contemporaries of the Younger and their demands this week. I believe the tournamenting has addled them all with political ambition but no sense of strategic alliances.”

  “Not all men can carry the blood of such strong sires,” Eseld said, once more with pride in her voice, but this time Glayer ignored her. “Certainly Glander will be of such stock as his father and grandfather,” she continued in a happy, musing tone. “Great-grandfather.”

  Glayer pressed his lips together, his neck stiffening, and walked toward the window to look down upon the unclean street below.

  “I thought we agreed you would no longer mention that,” he said through his teeth.

  “I don’t see what harm it could bring you,” Eseld said, walking about the room and picking up discarded articles of clothing. “It’s much the same with any royal family.”

  “You weren’t a royal family,” he pointed out. “Your father was a lecher who lay with his daughter because he was too lazy to leave the farm and find a proper wife after his had died.”

  Eseld turned to face him, her chin held high. “He wanted to keep the line pure.”

  Glayer winced. “The line of what?”

  “Our family was powerful in the north before the sickness destroyed the tribe. Your father provided well enough for you to go on Crusade, did he not? And look what you’ve made of yourself. If that doesn’t show breeding, I don’t think anything would.”

  Glayer felt the rage boiling up inside him, but he fought to keep control of his temper while he held the child. He was a different man now. He was titled, respected, with an heir and a wealthy estate. He was a guest of the king of England.

  But he would not allow this woman, little more than a peasant, to th
ink she could ever talk down to him again. To think herself free to discourse on the sordid facts of their earliest years with some sort of pride when it had been the thing that had nearly meant the ruination of Glayer’s mind.

  It was a miracle he was still sane.

  He walked past her calmly toward the bed, where he reached out with one hand and made a careful nest for Glander. He tucked the baby into the sumptuous coverings with a smile and a tweak of his nose and then turned to walk back to Eseld.

  Glayer drew his left arm across his body. The old woman had no idea what he meant to do as he swung with all his might, the back of his hand striking the side of her face and spinning her on her feet before she fell to the floor. He straddled her body and put his left hand around the loose folds on her skinny neck, and even though she struggled with both her hands on his wrist, it did not cost Glayer much effort to cause her face to purple.

  Behind him on the bed, Glander whimpered.

  “Your lascivious sire,” Glayer said calmly, looking down into her face with as little expression as he could train his face, “did not provide me with shite. When I asked him for my earnings to depart that desolate spit of land and seek my greater fortune, he laughed at me. Laughed at me.” Here he shook her neck so that her skull banged against the floor. “Said he wouldn’t let loose free labor and that anything I ever earned would belong to him.” Glayer leaned close to her face, now clammy and pebbled with sweat, Eseld’s eyes bulging. “That was the day he fell. Only he didn’t fall—I killed him.”

  He released her throat and stood, stepping back and watching her as she writhed onto her side with a wheeze.

  “The only reason I didn’t kill you, too, is because I was in too much of a hurry to leave. But I have all the time in the world now, Mother. You’ll do well to remember that.” He turned and walked to the bed to pick up and hopefully quiet the child, who had begun to cry in earnest.

  “That’s quite enough, Glander,” he soothed. “It’s over now.”

  Eseld had gained her hands and knees but moved no further, crouched there on the rug, rocking herself.

  “You’re dismissed until I send for you,” he said to her. “Show yourself out.”

  “No,” she rasped and looked up at him, her expression stricken atop her swelling face. “Please—don’t send me away. I’m sorry. You needed to teach me, I see. Please don’t take him from me—my grandson. Glander. Please, don’t take him.”

  She was crawling toward him now, and the sight so disgusted him that he felt his stomach lurch. And so he met her halfway across the floor, moving the still-crying Glander to his left shoulder while he grasped the back of Eseld’s faded black kirtle. He dragged the old woman to the door while she cried out in a wheeze and dropped her in a heap before he opened the door.

  “Quiet!” he barked at Glander, who startled into silence, his fist in his mouth.

  Glayer regained his hold on Eseld long enough to toss her into the corridor. “You’d also do well to consider the limitations of your station. There are all too many nurses eager to take your place,” he warned in a cold voice and looked up to see a noble couple pausing on their way down the corridor. He met their gazes directly, almost hoping one of them would challenge his actions.

  But, to his surprise, the lady tilted her head and gave Glayer a sympathetic smile, and her lord husband nodded approvingly as he led his wife around the blubbering pile of rags that was Glayer’s mother.

  Glayer pulled himself together and gave the couple a short bow. “My apologies.”

  “Not at all, my good man,” the lord said heartily. “Refreshing to see her sort put in her place.”

  “They grow more insolent each year if you don’t arrest it right away,” the woman said. “Well done, I say.”

  Glayer bowed again as the couple continued on their way and then kicked out at the talons that clutched his bare ankle. He backed into his apartments and shut the door.

  * * *

  Eseld inched her hand up the solid thickness of the door that had been closed to her, her son and her grandson on the other side. She knocked lightly.

  “Glayer?” she whispered in a small voice, and even that breathy word caused daggers of pain. “My lord? Please . . .”

  She looked for his shadow approaching beneath the door, but it did not come. He meant to leave her there alone in her humiliation.

  She lay the sharp edge of her temple against the wood to roll her forehead along the door with a low moan and then paused with her eyes closed.

  “You’re just like him,” she accused in a soundless whisper.

  * * *

  There were only three of them on the road, Adrian recognized, and it was no thoroughfare of stone and packed sand. The sun that shone down did so almost lovingly, the verdant air around him soft as a caress. And yet his mind was thrown back to another road, years earlier, a road that had seen him on the verge of death, walking to a place that should have been his tomb. The sun had been white, blinding fire, the earth an open oven powered by the fires of hell presumably just below the surface of the never-ending sand. Whips and scourges, maggots and chains . . .

  The black markings on his skin seemed to tingle.

  “He’ll be there,” Maisie said lightly, drawing his attention back to the lush greenness of the day surrounding the road to Clifty Wood.

  Adrian looked over the neck of Christian’s small mount to his wife, who rode on the far side of Constantine’s boy. He could never hide anything from her.

  Adrian nodded. It was rare that Maisie was mistaken in matters she chose to speak of deliberately, but he also knew she wished for this as much or more than Adrian himself.

  “Adrian, look,” Christian said and nodded up the road.

  He could just see the dark gray outline of the roof of Clifty Wood manor, the house set beyond the little valley where he knew a lake lay hidden. A stacked timber fence bordered the rise, interrupted by a wide pass through on the road and although Adrian could never remember there being one before, he could clearly see the light, freshly hewn timbers of a gate that—at least in the present moment—stood open.

  Open to allow another trio of riders though, being seen off by the two rough-dressed men on foot standing between the mounts.

  Guards and a gate across the road to Clifty Woods?

  Adrian wasn’t spurring his horse on any longer. In fact, the reins had gone limp in his hands as they rested on the fore of the saddle, and he watched the rider in the middle, the rider with the long gray beard....

  The old man looked up, then, and all his company turned to regard the approaching visitors. But the bearded man didn’t raise an arm in welcome, didn’t ride out to meet them. He seemed to freeze, his gaze likely not able to make out the distinct features of Adrian’s face, shadowed by his hood, and yet he dismounted slowly, pushing his reins into the hands of the man standing nearest his horse, and began walking with halting strides.

  Adrian’s own mount stopped and, somewhere far away it seemed, Maisie called her and Christian’s horses to stand. Adrian swung down from the saddle and heard his boots crunching the gravel of the road he hadn’t walked in ten years. Faster and faster, his hood fell back...

  “Adrian!” Herne Hailsworth choked as he opened his arms wide.

  “Da.”

  His father seemed so much smaller than Adrian remembered as he embraced him; gone were the barrel chest and stout appendages, leaving a man who while not quite frail was physically diminished and showed that the years had rolled across the meadows of Clifty Wood just the same as they had floated past Melk on the Danube, or blasted across the burning sands of Syria.

  Herne drew away but kept a tight grip on Adrian’s biceps, his beard split by his smile while his eyes glistened.

  “I knew you’d come back,” he said emphatically and then turned his head to look over his shoulder at the man approaching them.

  Adrian raised his own gaze and saw Alastair. And it seemed that for every hand by which Herne Hailsw
orth had been diminished, Adrian’s older brother had increased. Alastair Hailsworth was even larger, more solid, the ends of his now long dark hair plaited and pulled back at his nape.

  “Little brother.” Alastair smiled, glancing at Adrian’s rich cape, his eyes taking in the tattoos creeping down his forearms where his sleeves had crept up. “Given up your dry studies at last, I see.”

  “Never,” Adrian said, returning the smile, and then stepped into his brother’s embrace.

  “But Adrian,” Herne called, drawing the brothers’ attention, and Adrian saw his father’s gaze alternating between the red-haired woman and the blond boy still mounted. “Who have you brought home with you to Clifty Wood? Dare I hope . . . ?”

  “Da, Alastair, this is my wife, Maighread Lindsey,” Adrian said. He turned to Christian. “And while I would be proud to claim him as my own, this fine young man is Christian Gerard, the son of my good friend, the earl of Chase.”

  Alastair froze in the act of giving Maisie a courteous bow to look at Christian, as Herne reached up to grip the boy’s shoulder.

  “Christian Gerard?” Adrian’s father said, amazement loud in his voice. He turned to look at Adrian as if to be certain he understood the gravity of what had been revealed.

  Adrian nodded but didn’t have the chance to expound, for Christian chose to speak for himself.

  “We’re going to find my father,” he said clearly. “To help him.”

  The elder Hailsworth men exchanged glances before Alastair broke the tightening silence following Christian’s proclamation by raising his arm and hailing the last mounted rider still waiting at the gate, who urged his horse forward at once.

  As the rider drew near, Adrian saw that it was a boy of about Christian’s age, with the same dark hair and wide, solid features as Alastair.

  “Come down, boy,” Alastair said and then stood him facing Adrian, grasping him by the shoulders. “Walter, your Uncle Adrian has at last returned to us.”

  Walter’s eyes widened as Adrian squatted down and held out his hand. “Good day, Walter.”

  The boy stared at Adrian’s hand for a long moment and then launched himself past it, wrapping his arms around Adrian’s neck.