Constantine

by Heather Grothaus

  “Welcome home, Uncle,” Walter said. “Da and Grandda’s been so worried about you. And just wait until Mam hears—she’ll have the chapel bells rung. Now I’ll have someone to show my renderings to.” The boy pulled away and looked up at Maisie. “Is she my auntie? Are you my cousin?” he boldly addressed Christian.

  Adrian chuckled and looked up at Alastair. “Renderings?”

  “It seems studious pursuits must be in our blood, although I obviously lack that peculiar inheritance, thanks be to God.”

  Herne laughed. “Aye, young Walter has designed several pieces for the farm, Adrian, including yonder gate.”

  “You can pass through it with your horse at a gallop from the inside,” the boy offered enthusiastically. “But it swings to of its own accord and latches shut behind you.”

  Adrian felt his eyebrows raise. “Indeed, I will be very happy to look at your designs, Nephew.”

  The boy beamed up at his father, who smiled down and said, “All right then, Walter. Why don’t you take young Christian here to the kitchens? The two of you may ask Cook for a bite and then you can show him the barns, eh?”

  “But we were going to see the king again,” Walter protested with a frown. “Now that Uncle Adrian’s returned, shouldn’t he go with us and speak for himself?”

  Adrian looked up at his own father as he gained his feet.

  “Perhaps,” Alastair said vaguely. “Right now, do as I ask of you, Walt.”

  “All right, Da. Come on, Christian,” Walter said, letting his father boost him up to his horse. He took the reins and turned the small mare back toward the gate. “Cook makes the best pasties. If we’re polite, she might give us some milk to drink with them.”

  Christian looked at Adrian as if for permission, and Adrian could see the question in his eyes as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud.

  Am I safe here?

  “Go on,” Adrian said softly. “We’ll be along for you later.”

  Christian urged his horse from the group to walk alongside Walter’s and the adults watched the boys retreat in silence. When they were through the gate and heading past the manor house, Adrian turned back to his father and brother.

  “Going to see the king again?” he prompted. “And what need have you of a gate and guards on the road to Clifty Wood?”

  “Much has changed in your absence, Adrian,” Herne Hailsworth said. “Your brother and I, we have never stopped fighting to restore your good name. It has garnered us some enemies for certain, and made it necessary to choose carefully who is admitted onto the estate.”

  “We’ve had to defend against raids,” Alastair offered. “Twice the parties included soldiers of the king.”

  “They meant to set fire to the house,” Herne said, glancing down the road to where the boys had disappeared. “Just as they did to Benningsgate Castle. Although the king’s men weren’t party to that particular event.”

  Alastair added, “But we have tried to stay in Henry’s good graces by pleading our case regularly. It’s kept him from sending soldiers here again thus far.”

  “Thus far,” Herne added darkly. “We’ve had no visitors for nigh on six months, and we think it’s due to the rumors that the man responsible for the accusations against you will gain Benningsgate lands any day.”

  Adrian felt his jaw tense. “Constantine Gerard has come back to kill the one of which the rumors speak; his name is Glayer Felsteppe. He is prepared to do whatever it takes to see the man dead. But he doesn’t know his son, Christian, lives. Our friends—”

  Herne nodded as he walked to Adrian, pressing his arm and smiling up at him and then Maisie. “Let’s go home, shall we? You can tell us about your plan once we see you settled. You do have a plan, do you not?”

  Adrian smiled, and some of the anxiety he felt building inside him at learning what his family had suffered in his absence—and on his account—faded. He placed his hand atop his father’s.

  “We do have a plan, Da. It’s already been set in motion.”

  “I thought as much.” Herne squeezed Adrian’s arm again and then began walking down the road to retrieve his mount.

  Alastair gained his saddle and looked to Maisie, who had been quietly observing the men the entire time. “My lady wife will be much pleased with your arrival, Lady Maighread. Although I must admit that if my brother chose you for his bride, you likely don’t wile away your hours laboring at the needle.”

  Maisie smiled at him. “I’m certain I’ve nae idea what you’re talking about, Lord Alastair,” she said as she urged her mount forward and passed him, choosing to ride alongside Herne Hailsworth.

  Adrian swung into his saddle, then kicked at his horse. He tried not to notice the jarring sound of the gate when it closed behind the riders, a reminder of the danger that had reached across oceans and years to stalk them all still.

  He only hoped the brotherhood found Constantine first.

  Chapter 18

  “My lord.”

  Constantine straightened, breathing hard, a large piece of rock suspended in his hands. He propped the jagged edge on his thigh and twisted slightly at the waist to look behind him at Harmon. The man knelt on one knee, his bent back to Constantine, the single window of the hall high above him.

  Constantine thought briefly of when he’d dangled from that very window only the day before, through which Theodora Rosemont had delivered him to safety.

  He tossed the rock to the side, then swiped his arm across his wet brow. He rested his hands on his hips while he attempted to regulate his breaths before answering.

  “Yea, Harmon?”

  The carpenter looked over his shoulder but didn’t say anything, and Constantine felt his skin freeze over, his heart stop in his chest. Above him, the birds swooped and sang their sweet songs, slicing the air with gay abandon. The sun was gentle, warm, suddenly sending long beams of golden light into the ruin and filling it with a tender glow.

  Constantine began slowly walking over the uneven rubble toward Harmon, his chest growing tighter with each scuffling, sliding footfall. He wanted to run toward the man and whatever he had found; he wanted to flee to the farthest corner of the world to avoid seeing the discovery with his own eyes.

  At last he was just behind the man, unable to bring himself any closer at the moment. Harmon stood at once and turned away, averting his face from Constantine’s as he passed and leaving him alone above the slight depression in the rubble. Constantine kept his head cocked, his eyes on the charred red stone of the wall proper while he listened to Harmon’s footfalls echoing across the debris floor.

  His gaze came around in jerks and starts, as if a great hand had taken hold of his skull and was forcing him to look. Amid the gray and black rubble he saw the charred, curved anomaly among the shapes, the bone-white patch streaked with black, and his breath fled his lungs as his knees buckled and he collapsed near the depression, his hands catching him on either side of the discovery.

  Constantine reached out with his right hand and touched the curve with shaking fingertips. It did not rock—Harmon had obviously ceased his excavations at first sight of it—and so Constantine shifted the stones around it aside. He pulled the bone from the rubble, turned it toward himself. It was the top half of a slender skull, the front teeth long and white.

  She had smiled up at him so on their wedding day . . .

  Her gentle looks of love for the new babe she cradled in her arms . . .

  The flash of her grimace as they’d shouted at each other . . .

  “Patrice,” Constantine whispered.

  The birds above his head started from their secret nests and all together, causing him to startle and look upward. He pulled the skull to his chest, cradling it, the vision of the birds’ graceful flight above bulging and blurred with the tears in his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” he gasped on an inhalation. “Please forgive me.”

  He didn’t know for how long he sat like that, but it was some time later that Constantine sensed m
ovement on his left and he glanced down at the rubble to see Harmon’s sturdy, well-cared-for boots. The man set a long, floppy-sided basket near Constantine’s hip. A blink sent some of the haze from Constantine’s vision, and he saw the fine embroidered linen cloth on the bottom of the basket, pressed to a formal crispness that drew attention to the birds and swirls flying in a static circuit around the perimeter.

  “It was a gift from Lady Patrice to Isley the Christmastide before. . . before,” Harmon said. “I thought it fitting it should be returned to her. She should be wrapped in something belonging to her. Something fine.”

  Constantine’s chest tightened again, and it was a moment more before he could bring himself to speak.

  “Are you certain Isley won’t want it as a memento of her time with Lady Patrice?” He looked up at the bulky, bearded man.

  “Isley’n the girls perished in the fire as well, milord,” Harmon said gruffly.

  And then Constantine understood why the man had remained behind in the deserted village at Benningsgate, with the rest of the cripples and outcasts. Harmon’s beautiful, golden-haired daughters . . .

  “Your loss pains me as much as my own, friend,” Constantine said, his voice thick with emotion. “How did you know where to look?”

  “When we found the others—the servants who’d been locked inside the keep when the fire was laid—they had died pressed against the doors that were barricaded against them. In the upper corridor.” Harmon paused, and Constantine let the man be, marveling at his willingness to aid him after already providing this same act of love for his own family and friends. “If Lady Patrice had any consciousness in her, she would have tried to escape the hall by any means she could.” Harmon glanced up at the window above them, prompting Constantine to do the same. “You were already searching closer to the door, milord.”

  “Thank you,” Constantine said. He ran his palm along the smooth surface of the skull, then laid it gently in the basket atop the beautiful linen. He let his thumbs caress the high cheekbones as he released her, wishing that he had used the motion to wipe the tears from her face when last he’d seen her. Wishing he had set aside his pride—damn his pride!—and stayed, stayed, stayed.

  Harmon gave a sigh and then knelt across the depression from Constantine. When Stan looked up the man’s gaze was steady, without pity, without embarrassment, and Constantine understood at once that he and Harmon had been through the same war together, although their battles had taken place in different locations, years apart.

  “Let’s find Master Christian now, shall we, milord?” Harmon suggested.

  Constantine nodded and once more began removing the rubble, with each stone laid aside, each small fragment of charred and broken bone placed reverently atop the linen, his guilt was exposed to the air and breathed life in macabre contradiction to the woman whose remains would not fill a small woven basket.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you earlier,” Dori said as she stood in the doorway of the cottage’s only other chamber, causing the round Nell to turn from her work at the bench in the center of the room and regard her with wide eyes. “I know I’ve done nothing to belie my repute. Thank you for what you’ve done for me, and what you’re doing for Lord Gerard.”

  The woman blinked, a knife in one hand, a bunch of radish greens in the other. The small hearth in the cottage crackled, and although it was no royal chamber, Dori knew the remaining villagers at Benningsgate had given up the best of their own possessions to see that Constantine was well-furnished.

  “You’re welcome, milady. Wasn’t no one going to wear those things again any matter. Certainly not me,” she said gruffly, and then she turned her eyes back to the bench, where she tossed the greens into a small pot.

  Dori glanced down at the slim gray kirtle and short brown apron she wore. The sleeves and length of the skirts were too short for her by at least three inches, but otherwise they fit her thin frame well. After bathing in a bowl of warmed water in the back room of the cottage and donning the clothes, Dori felt as though she were dressed in the finest garments ever to be tailored, even with the moth holes and unraveling hems.

  “They belonged to my daughter,” Nell continued, trimming another handful of the white roots. “Fever took her and my man more than ten years ago. That there was her everyday dress. I couldn’t bear to part with ’em. Kept ’em folded with my own things. Think of her every day as I dress.” She paused, and her cheeks flushed, as if embarrassed by the unmistakable emotion behind her curt words. “I hope the shoes aren’t too small.”

  Dori held forth one foot to show Nell the short leather boot, still serviceable although stiff and brittle with age and disuse. “You’ve cared for them well. There is enough give in the leather to accommodate my feet. I’ll see they are returned to you.”

  “I’ll thank you for it.”

  Jeremy appeared in the open cottage doorway just then, rousing Erasmus from his slumber before the hearth. The rotund swineherd was panting, his cheeks flushed.

  “His lordship and Harmon’s coming down from the ruin. Carryin’ a basket.”

  “Mercy,” Nell whispered and made the sign of the cross. She turned to Dori. “You must see to finishing the meal, milady. I’m the only woman to help prepare for the burial—Edie is too old.”

  Dori glanced at the food strewn about the bench, the pot not yet even hung on the swinging arm. The panic must have been evident on her face, for Nell gave a grimace.

  “Never you mind; I’ll throw this on as is and tend to it as well as I can when I return. I’ve said for the longest time I wished some task to set my hands to. God has answered my prayers most generously.”

  “I will assist Lord Gerard,” Dori volunteered before she had thought better about it. Jeremy and Nell and even shaggy, gray Erasmus turned their heads to look at her, and she felt her face heat. Partly in humiliation for her intimidation at preparing a simple stew, but also by their suspicious expressions. They likely didn’t think her capable of doing anything. It made her eyebrows draw together and her chin lift.

  “How many nobles have you buried?” she snipped with a raised eyebrow.

  Nell and Jeremy exchanged guilty, if doubtful, glances.

  “Very well,” Dori said curtly and then started toward the door. “Excuse me.” She stood, looking pointedly at Jeremy, who was still filling the doorway.

  “Milady, I—”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Move.”

  Jeremy stepped outside of the cottage and Dori swept past him, walking straight up the village path several yards to stop in the middle and wait to meet the two men descending from the ruin.

  Constantine walked ahead of Harmon, and Dori’s stomach clenched at the basket he held against his chest. He looked straight ahead, his expression determined, but his gaze seemed to cut through Dori as if she were invisible. Indeed, Lord Gerard walked past her and on through the village without a word, although Harmon came to a stop at her side.

  Dori turned and watched Constantine continue down the path, noting how the remaining villagers—Edgar and Edie, Nell, Jeremy, Dunny and Garulf—had come to the edge of the path, watching in respectful vigil as their lord made his grim procession past the cottages. Even Erasmus stood watch, and Dori heard his low whine, soon matched farther down the path by the strange Garulf. Only Leland was missing, and Dori wondered for a moment if the crippled man was ever expected to attend much in the village.

  “It’s our lady, alone,” Harmon said, prompting Dori to turn and look up at the man. It took her a moment to comprehend what Harmon was saying. “We haven’t yet found Master Christian.”

  Dori straightened her spine in order to give the illusion of confidence. “I see. I’ll be preparing Lady Patrice for burial.”

  Harmon nodded, accepting her declaration without question. “His lordship is going on to my cottage—I’ve some linen ready on the bench, although there’s no oil or balm.”

  Dori recalled the small basket hidden
beneath the altar table in the oratory. “I can lay hand to something,” she said. “I’ll join Lord Gerard shortly.”

  “Very well, milady,” Harmon said deferentially. “I’ll go on to the burial ground and prepare the plot. His lordship likely wants some privacy with his wife before she is laid to rest any matter.”

  Harmon’s thoughtful comment gave Dori pause. The basket Constantine carried held what was left of his wife—the woman he had married, had made a child with.

  His wife.

  “I realize that,” Dori said, her tone sharper than she’d intended.

  Harmon only gave a short bow. “I knew you would, milady.” He headed deeper into the village while Dori turned and walked toward the ruin.

  Once she’d gained the ward, it took her only moments to descend to the oratory; her feet and hands found the holds and steps as surely as any path she’d once trod at Thurston Hold. When she pushed open the door, the hearth was cold and dark, the candle on the table little more than a rim of transparent wax, the flame seeming to float atop the puddle of clear liquid from the tall taper left there hours before. And so Dori lit the last remaining candle stub, intending to make sure she took everything she needed from the dank, dungeon room—she hoped never to set foot in it again.

  She retrieved Constantine’s satchel, setting it atop the table and opening the flap to return the miscellany to it—pausing a moment to look down at the vessel from which he’d given her sustenance. He’d saved her life. She tucked the cup inside and then quickly added his other things. Then she crouched down and felt along the shelf at the back of the table, her fingers seeking the little woven basket latched with a wooden peg and a leather thong.

  Dori laid hand to it and rose, setting it on the table and opening the container to reassure herself of the contents before setting it atop the other things in Constantine’s sack. She stuffed the few stiff linen cloths she’d used while living in the oratory at the top of the bag and secured it tightly. Then she put her hands on her hips and looked around the room for anything she’d missed.