“Why would you protect him?” the woman continued in an interested tone. “You obviously know nothing about him, so let me enlighten you: He is no one. Worthless, common trash, that would steal my son’s birthright with his lies.”
“You mean your lover’s son, do you not?” Alys shot back, no longer able to control her tongue when faced with such outright slander against Piers. She didn’t know why he had left her, but she knew the things Judith Angwedd was saying were evil falsehoods. “I know about your cuckold of Warin Mallory, and how it is you who is trying to steal Gillwick. When the king finds out, it is you who will be punished, Judith Angwedd.”
The redhead’s already high set eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline before drawing down in warning slashes. “And who is going to punish me, hmm? You?” Her beady eyes looked Alys up and down with disdain. “I hardly think that likely.”
“Piers has the ring Warin had made for Elaine as proof.” Alys was pleased to see the white hot fury wash over Judith Angwedd’s face at the very mention of Piers’s mother’s name. “And I will tell everyone who will listen what I know.”
Judith Angwedd rushed her unexpectedly, struck Alys soundly in the face so that she toppled off of the stool and onto the floor, her hands bound behind her. “Then it is very unlikely that you shall leave this room alive!”
Judith Angwedd took several deep breaths, and in those moments, Alys realized too late the folly of her impetuousness.
“Pick up the pig and put her back,” Judith Angwedd commanded, once again in control of herself.
Alys was roughly shoved back on the stool. She flung her hair from her eyes.
“Piers would not intentionally lead you to our camp. He would never intend for me to fall into your clutches,” Alys said levelly. “And I know that he will come for me, because you see, he will not stand before the king as a common man. In truth, he will hold more sway with Edward than the pair of you could ever dream of possessing.”
“Lies. Foolishness,” Judith Angwedd scoffed on a braying laugh. “You’re only trying to buy yourself time.”
Alys shrugged. “Think that if you will, but it is to your own folly. Piers and I met at the Foxe Ring, after he had barely escaped with his life from the beating Bevan dealt him.” Alys let a smile crawl over her lips as Judith Angwedd blanched. “Yes, two unmarried people, at midnight, during a full moon, at the Foxe Ring. And in keeping with the grand old tradition of the land, we are now married. Your stepson is presently kin to the most powerful house in all of England, and he outranks you by leagues.”
Judith Angwedd turned abruptly away and for a moment, Alys savored her victory. Bevan seemed quite disturbed, his fists clenching and then unclenching, his heavy brow drawn down, his eyes flicking anxiously to his mother.
But when the redhead turned to face Alys once more, she was smiling, and Alys’s dread increased.
“Perhaps you are telling the truth.” She shrugged. “It matters naught. Piers could be married to one of Edward’s own daughters, and it would not change the fact that Bevan is still known as Warin Mallory’s first born. My husband never denied him, in all his many years. Bevan will gain Gillwick. The king has a love of the law, and he will uphold it.”
Judith Angwedd paused, and her expression became perplexed. “But if that whore’s spawn is now a husband of Fallstowe, why does he not simply give me back my husband’s ring and be content with the life of luxury you will so foolishly bestow upon him, hmm?”
“Because—unlike you—Piers only wants what is due him. No more, no less.” Alys prayed her next ploy would work. Her life—and Piers’s—depended on it. “Were I you, I would not be at all certain that the king will grant Bevan anything. Because Piers knows who Bevan’s true sire is—as do I.”
Judith Angwedd rolled her eyes. “Impossible.”
“Is it? Piers’s own grandfather seems quite certain of it.”
“Now you are inventing relatives for the bastard scum?” Judith Angwedd smirked.
“How quickly you seem to have forgotten about the man who was your wedding gift to Warin Mallory,” Alys said, her disgust at the woman’s self-absorption clear in her tone. “He is very much still alive, you know. Ira himself told us of the birthmark. I can hardly think it a coincidence, and I believe the king will share the opinion.”
This time it was Bevan who charged at her, and Alys was spared her life in the last moment by Judith Angwedd’s screech.
“Bevan, no!” She threw herself onto her son, causing him to stumble from his intended course. “If what she says is true, we must be very deliberate and very clever with our next move.”
“He couldn’t know!” Bevan choked. “He’s never laid eyes upon John Hart!”
The room went grave quiet. Alys let her breath shudder out of her soundlessly.
Lord John Hart. The gray-haired old widower had been at Fallstowe’s winter feast. He had offered for Alys, the same night that she had been betrothed to Clement Cobb.
Judith Angwedd slapped her son’s face, and Bevan brought a hand to his wide cheek.
“Mother,” he whined pitifully.
“You don’t deserve even half of everything I have done for you,” Judith Angwedd spat. “You ungrateful, drunken idiot!”
Alys tried to keep her face composed when Judith Angwedd swung around to her, her flat chest rising and falling with great effort. She stared at Alys, stared with her hard, beady eyes so that Alys wanted to flinch and look away. But she would not.
“Bind her completely and lock her in the wardrobe. Put the beast’s crate in there with her.”
Bevan yanked Alys from the stool, tossed her to the floor, and straddled her. He began lashing her legs together from ankle to thigh, as Judith Angwedd stepped nearby to look down upon her.
“If you are such a fool as to think yourself in love with him,” she said coldly, “then you should know that it will be you who costs him his life.” She leaned down abruptly, her arm stretched out, and Alys closed her eyes against the blow she felt certain would come.
But there was only a sharp jerk near the bonds at her wrists, and so she opened her eyes once more to see Judith Angwedd turning away.
Bevan had secured her arms at the elbows, so tightly that Alys could feel her chest muscles on the verge of tearing. Then he forced her mouth open and replaced the gag deep between her teeth before picking her up by her restraints as though she was a sheaf of grain. He dropped her into the bottom of the deep wardrobe, her skull banging against the thick lip of wood. She heard Layla’s muffled scream, and then a moment later, the woven basket containing the monkey was tossed atop Alys’s head. The doors swung shut solidly, leaving her in complete blackness, and Alys heard the scraping of the lock.
It sounded like a blade being honed.
The forest rang with the sound of the soldier beating his sword against his shield, and Sybilla felt made of stone so still was she astride Octavian.
“Rebels, come out!” the soldier commanded in a voice that carried with it the hard experience of many battlefields.
Sybilla looked up at the undersides of the well-camouflaged dwellings hung in the trees. Not a whisper was heard from any of them, although around her on the forest floor, fires still blazed, pots bubbled, chickens scratched the ground where snow had been scraped away.
They would not deny her.
Sybilla took a deep breath. “It is Sybilla Foxe who commands you, Lady of Fallstowe Castle, and sister to Lady Alys. You are surrounded by armed soldiers. You will bring the girl to me—the runted child with the yellow hair. You will bring her to me now, or I will burn this village to the ground!”
The only reply she received was the wind in the branches, and then the sudden, muffled sound of perhaps a woman’s fearful sob.
Sybilla waited for a count of ten. Then she called out to the soldiers, “Fire the trees.”
Her men surged forward without hesitation, torches ready. They quickstepped through the village, going to the ground level
huts and the bases of trees, kicking through and scattering piles of dried hay and thatching, touching their contagious flames to anything consumable. The smoke was instant, thick and black.
“Call your dogs off, you heartless bitch!” an old man shouted hoarsely, his bent and pointed backside the first thing appearing from the underside of one of the tree huts. A rope ladder unfurled beneath him and he began to climb down, glancing hatefully at Sybilla. “I said call them off!”
“You do not command me, old man,” Sybilla replied calmly as her soldiers never paused. “Where is the girl?”
“Her family’d rather die than hand her over to the likes of you!” The old man said, reaching the ground with both feet in a stomp and then striding toward Octavian. The horse tensed and raised his muzzle slightly.
A soldier stepped to the front of Sybilla’s mount and leveled a crossbow at the old man’s chest. “One step more and you’re a dead man.”
Sybilla heard the click of mechanism as the soldier readied to fire. The old man stopped in his tracks, a tic wrinkling his already weathered cheek. He stared at the deadly, pointed end of the weapon.
“No!” a little voice shouted, and then the tree tops came alive with long tongues of ladders, and leather-clad legs appeared through the growing cloud of hovering smoke.
In moments, no fewer than three score people—men, women, children—haggard and dirtied and clothed in what appeared to be the forest itself had gathered together at the center of Sybilla’s crackling and smoldering threat. Sybilla recognized the diminutive child, her shoulders clasped by a grown woman, moving to the fore of the crowd.
Sybilla gathered her skirts to one side and shook her boot free from the stirrup, then swung down from Octavian. Her soldiers had left their arsonistic duties to truly surround the destitute people, their attention focused on their lady.
Sybilla approached the crowd and stopped only six feet away from the girl and her glowering mother.
“You lied to me, child.”
The girl shook her head, her eyes wide and bulging, her white face highlighted by the scarlet patches on her cheeks. “I’m not a child! I’m thirteen!” In that instant, Sybilla was reminded of Alys so clearly that it pained her.
“What do you mean, she lied to you?” the girl’s mother accused. “She’s never laid eye upon your cruel self!”
Sybilla raised her eyebrows. “That’s not true, is it, girl? We met the night of the feast.”
The girl’s mother’s eyes went to the top of her daughter’s head. “Tiny?”
“I’m sorry, Mam,” the girl croaked. “Truly, I am! I wouldn’t have told her anything, but she was to break me arm!”
“No,” Sybilla interrupted. “No, I would have never deliberately hurt you, Tiny, and I told you as much. I could not have turned you loose until I had the information I sought, and I could clearly feel your frailty beneath my fingers. Had you struggled, your arm would have given way.” Sybilla looked to Tiny’s mother. “Hmm?”
The woman nodded.
Sybilla looked back to the girl. “I didn’t harm you, and in fact, I paid you a fine piece of gold for your cooperation.”
Tiny’s mother gasped. “You said the coin was from Lady Alys!”
“But you lied to me,” Sybilla continued. “Lady Alys did not go to London. Piers Mallory walked into that city alone.”
The old man’s face fell from the hateful scowl into genuine surprise. “What do you mean he entered the city alone?”
“Just what I said, old one,” Sybilla turned her head fully to him. “Have you any guess as to why that was?”
He frowned and shook his head. “They … they left here together, only yester morn. They knew the route, they had plans to—Alys, she was to send word to you once they gained the city.”
Sybilla was stunned into silence for a moment. She spoke carefully. “I have watched your town the whole of the time my sister was obliged to stay here. The night before she and Piers Mallory left, Tiny confirmed to me where they would go next. We rode ahead to the city to wait for them, so that I could intercept my sister and bring her home before she acted foolishly before the king and found herself imprisoned. But when Piers Mallory arrived, he was quite alone.”
“Did you speak to him?” the old man asked.
“No. He is not my concern. Only my sister.”
“Mayhap you are the one who is lying, and you wish to harm Lady Alys,” Tiny piped up suspiciously. “Ira’s always said that nobles’ favorite sport is spinning falsehoods—and you don’t look a bit like Lady Alys!”
“And you don’t look to be thirteen,” Sybilla countered. “But I can assure you that I am indeed her sister, and that my utmost priority is her safety.” Tiny properly chastised, Sybilla looked once more to the old man. “And as it was you who sent them, Ira, perhaps you had better tell me what you know before your village is naught but a smear of charcoal on the forest floor.” She flicked her eyes upward. “One of your nests is on the verge of catching.”
“I already told you, viper,” Ira snarled. “They left together. And Piers, fool that he is, would never let harm come to your spoiled brat sister. For a reason known only to God, he’s in love with her. He took her to wife at the Foxe Ring.”
Sybilla swallowed, nodded, and then looked to the ground for a moment. When she again met the old man’s eyes, she was heartened by the concern she saw, lurking just beneath the put on disdain.
“If their plan has wandered so far from the course they both intended, then I am inclined to believe that they are both in great danger.”
Ira’s hairy brows drew downward. “Judith Angwedd.”
Sybilla was more than a little surprised to hear the old man speak that name. “He told you of her?”
Ira nodded once sharply. “He did. But I know enough of the bitch personally to last me the rest of my miserable life.” The old man’s mouth thinned, and Sybilla thought she saw his shoulders square. “Piers Mallory is my grandson, lady. My grandson, and the sole heir of Gillwick Manor.”
Sybilla drew a quick breath. She was very rarely ever surprised, but this piece of information shook her. She looked around her to the soldiers and the crowd of villagers. “Do what you can to put out the flames, all of you—go!” she shouted. Then she looked back to Ira. “You’ll be coming with me, Ira.”
“You’re no mistress here, woman, and I am not your subject to be ordered about,” the old man sneered.
Sybilla simply waited.
He fidgeted for a moment, crossed and then uncrossed his arms. “I’ll get me bag.”
Chapter 21
The guards had admitted him into the palace.
Up until the instant he’d received the approving nod, Piers had doubted they would. His entire scalp was covered in perspiration beneath the weak glow of the late afternoon sun, his stomach knotted, the muscles of his legs shook. He was certain it was the suit of clothes that Alys had gifted him with that had swayed the guards—they’d looked him up and down and obviously believed his claim to be the Lord of Gillwick Manor, and for the brief instant their eyes had inspected him, Piers prayed they would not notice his old, worn boots that would clearly mark him as common. Even with the costly signet ring on his smallest finger—perhaps even because of—had he worn his old clothes, they would have likely turned him away, or had him seized for a thief.
But now he strode down the receiving hall, trying to stymie his sense of curiosity and his sense of overwhelming at being in the king’s very home, but his eyes glanced around furtively at the lavish residence, the milling nobles preening before each other. He hoped to seek audience with the king immediately—as unlikely as that notion was, else he did not know where he would pass the night. He certainly was no royal guest, and he had not one single coin to spend. He’d given his leather pack and all of its remaining contents to a beggar just inside the city walls, so now Piers had naught but the clothes upon his back and the signet ring on his finger.
Perhaps he could feign hi
s way around the stables, if his audience was delayed.
Every time a man let out a shout of laughter, or a door slammed, Piers had to fight his urge to jump and swing around with his fists readied. His nerves were like a rope being rubbed over a sharp rock.
He spotted a man near a set of ornate double doors, who received people in turn, spoke with them briefly before scribbling on a sheet of parchment with a quill and sending them away. He was a large man, taller than Piers, and looked more to be a soldier than a court servant. His hair was longer than was fashionable, and fell away from his face like a tawny lion’s mane. Piers guessed that he was looking upon Edward’s own gatekeeper, and it was that man he would have to first convince.
Piers turned away for a moment, pretending to admire a tapestry on the wall, and he summoned Alys to his mind. His eyes closed as her sparkling brown eyes and impish grin flooded his consciousness, and his heart kicked petulantly. He was a fool for sending her away from him—he needed her brazenness now, her fire and fearlessness. She had always had faith in his dreams and abilities, even when Piers had not, and now he was determined to live up to her high opinion of him.
He wrapped the image of her in his soul, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes. Turning with his head up and eyes forward, he marched toward the lion at the gate.
The man looked him up and down with the merest flick of his eyes before meeting Piers’s gaze directly. “Good day, my lord.”
“Good day,” Piers said firmly. “I am Piers Mallory, lord of Gillwick Manor. I have a request to speak with the king this day. As soon as possible.” Piers cleared his throat. “Now, actually.”
The man’s tawny eyebrows barely rose. He looked down at the parchment before him. “His appointments are filled for the next pair of days, and then there will be no further court until the year is new. Mayhap you could persuade your mother to speak on your behalf—she arrived only this morning with your brother, and will see the king on the morrow.”
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