Ariel, puffed with her own smug assurances, felt the strength of them leak out of her, deflating her composure as surely as if a knife had been thrust into a bubble of dough.
He was going to England because of a woman!
She was not quite certain why the idea should have shocked her, she only knew it did. Shocked … or unsettled … in truth she knew not which, but she found her gaze falling instinctively to the broad, muscled wall of his chest. The ring was not visible through the dark mat of hair that filled the open vee of his shirt, but she could sense it hanging there, ornate and delicate, warmed by the animal heat of his flesh.
“Is it so outlandish a thought, my lady?”
“N-no, of course not.”
“Or do you find it beyond belief that you might not be the prime consideration in everyone’s mind?”
She met the accusation with a hot flush of mortification, for he was smiling. Grinning, actually, even as he mocked her vanity and arrogance.
“Was there anything else you wanted to know?” he asked solicitously.
Ariel took refuge behind the rapid lowering of her lashes, and clasped her hands tightly together. “No. No, there is nothing else.”
Eduard beckoned for Robin to join them. “Hold a blanket for Lady Ariel while she strips out of these wet clothes. When she is dry, fetch some of Biddy’s unguent out of my saddle pack and see that she applies it thickly over any rashes.” He paused in his instructions and glanced at Ariel. “Unless of course you would prefer me to oversee the application myself. I would, naturally, be most happy to render my full and undivided attention.”
Heat flared in Ariel’s cheeks again as the wolfish smile broadened. Part of her knew enough to be outraged by the suggestion; another part of her shivered through a sudden image of those big, powerful hands slicked with oil, skimming over her flesh.
She blinked. “I am sure I can manage on my own. Thank you.”
He offered an exaggerated bow and strode away to rejoin the others in front of the budding fire. Ariel waited until he was too far to hear the words she mouthed under her breath, then turned and plumped herself down on a low, three-legged stool.
Robin had heard quite clearly and stood staring, a bundleof clothing in one hand and a goblet of mulled wine in the other.
“Have … you and Eduard argued?”
The again was unspoken, but loudly implied.
“Your brother does not argue,” she snapped. “He prefers to exchange insults.”
“My lord brother has never been a man to say twenty words where one is sufficient, and so he sometimes seems more … brusque than he really intends to be. He does have a great deal on his mind.”
“We all have a great deal on our minds,” she countered. “But we do not all walk around acting saddle-galled, as if parts of our bodies were held in a constant crush.”
Robin’s mouth trembled as he tried unsuccessfuly to contain a grin. “If he appears impatient at times, it usually means he is impatient with himself.”
Ariel accepted the wine goblet he offered and sipped at the spicy-sweet contents while she glared at the three shadowy figures in front of the fire. FitzRandwulf’s silhouette was unmistakable with his long legs braced wide apart and his shoulders blotting out a fair portion of the view.
“At any rate, it is better than the black moods he used to suffer.”
Ariel dragged her eyes away from the fire. “Black moods?”
“Oh aye, my lady. He used to have dreadful nightmares. Horrible ones that left him white and shaking in the mornings. Even now, you will notice, he does not sleep overmuch. An hour or two at a time, rarely any longer. It … had to do with what happened to him when he was younger. When he lived in England with the man he thought was his father, and where he was beaten and tortured. Why … he bears a scar this long” —Robin held his hands a foot apart—“where the Dragon thrust a knife into Eduard’s thigh and tried to make him betray our real father. And his mother … !” Robin shook his head like someone who has never known anything but absolute love and respect. “Biddy told me she was the most malefic woman who ever lived. She bathed in blood and used to torture people for the sheer fun of it. She laughed while the Dragon cut into Eduard’s flesh. She laughed and entreated him to stab again, and again. Biddy saw it all. She was there. And so was my mother, Lady Servanne, and Lady Gillian, and Sparrow, and Friar …”
He stopped, for he could see his credibility was beginning to drain away along with the wine in Lady Ariel’s goblet.
“It is true,” he insisted quietly. “You could ask Eduard himself, except that he tends to blacken eyes and break heads at the very mention of the name Nicolaa de la Have.”
Ariel lowered the goblet slowly from her lips. Even in as remote a place as Milford Haven, the name of Nicolaa de la Haye was synonymous with death and evil. Mothers invoked her spirit to frighten their children into obedience. Bards cast her as the witch or the sorceress or the bride of the anti-Christ when they retold tales spawned in the dark mists of Lincolnshire. Ariel had not thought someone so hellish had actually existed.
“Nicolaa de la Haye was Lord Eduard’s mother?” she asked in a fascinated whisper.
Robin glanced over his shoulder and showed the first signs of reluctance, as if he might have said too much already. “Aye, my lady. He bears the scars of her motherly affection to prove it. You … will not tell him I told you? You will not say anything …?”
“No. No, of course not, Robin. Ease yourself. I will say nothing.”
“Thank you, my lady,” he murmured, not sounding the least convinced.
“Robin …” She waited until he looked over at her. “I swear it on our friendship: I will say nothing. In fact …” She straightened and set the goblet aside. “I have forgotten it already. What were we talking about? Oh yes, I have it now. Blankets. You were going to fetch blankets so I could change out of these wet clothes before I freeze to death.”
Robin smiled gratefully. “Yes, my lady. I shall fetch them right away.”
While Robin was kneeling over one of the saddle packs, Ariel’s eyes strayed back to the fireside. A man born of a sorceress who had mated with a wolf and a dragon: this was the man her uncle had entrusted her safety to. A man who suffered black moods and nightmares.
It would be sheer luck if she did not have nightmares this night, for although she had promised Robin she would speak no more of it, it would be almost impossible not to think about it.
As quiet as the forest had been, with only the sound of the wind sifting through the trees, the abbey was like a tomb. Ariel lay in her straw-filled pallet with her eyes wide open, the very pores of her skin wide open as well, steeped in the silence of holy reverence. Sedrick had stoked the fire high before retiring to his own pallet, but the logs had been too damp to sustain a blaze for long and, apart from the odd crackle and hiss, it smouldered disconsolately in the grate.
Ariel had consumed rather a large quantity of wine after her confrontation with FitzRandwulf. Combined with the subsequent revelations by Robin, she filled her cup several times and eventually tottered to her bed with the room canting on a distinct angle downward.
Contrary to her earlier fears, she had been enjoying the best night’s sleep she’d had since leaving Chateau d’Amboise, when she was wakened—not by visions of demonic witches and ritual sacrifices, but by an uncomfortable fullness in her bladder. Twice before retiring she had ventured out into the night air and picked her way along the well-worn path to the lean-to that sheltered the privy holes. The fact that she needed to venture out a third time was threatening to keep her wide awake until something was done about it.
If I were a man, she thought miserably, I could simply piss in the corner pot and be done with it. But there was only one pot and it was a tall, long-necked thing she would probably knock over in her attempts to straddle it.
Apparently monks did not allow for pilgrims to have more pressing needs during the night.
Ariel lifted her hea
d and searched the gloom, but there was not much to see. She pushed herself cautiously upright and swung her legs over the side of the cot. The dull red glow from the fire gave the bound staves at the ends of the pallets the slightest hint of shape and substance, and allowed her to steer her way across the chamber without tripping over packs, saddles, armour, and furniture.
Like most doors in a monastery, the hinges were well oiled to prevent the devil from knowing there were souls wandering about. Ariel slipped through the arched portal of the pilgrim’s hall and hurried along the stone corridor that divided the hall from the almonry. Exit through another silently swinging door let her out into the clammy dampness of the evening air. The rain had stopped but the mist was thick and pervasive, wetting her skin almost instantly and clinging in tiny droplets to the blanket she had draped around her shoulders.
Hemming in the fog, the pale walls of the abbey were her only link with reality. Here and there, the branches of a low bush plucked at the dragging ends of her blanket, and twice she managed to shrivel her own skin with lurid images of crouched, stalking grotesques with bony fingers and grasping claws.
At first she thought it must be nearer daylight than she had supposed, for the fact that she could see the walls at all suggested a general easing into daylight. But then she quickly realized there was a source of light somewhere up ahead, a concentrated source that bore the acrid tang of a pitch torch.
The stable where the horses were kept was directly behind the pilgrim’s hall, and it was from there the torchlight bloomed, yellowed and hazed by the mist. Ariel guessed it was a monk going early about his chores, and she remembered to pull the blanket up over her head to conceal the length and colour of her hair.
Her footsteps slowed, however, as the sound of voices came toward her. They were familiar voices, one of them as readily identifiable as her own.
“If you are worried about the state of the road between here and Rennes,” Henry was saying, “surely there is a way to bypass the town entirely.”
“There is,” Eduard agreed, “but one of us will still have to ride into the city to see if the lord marshal managed to dispatch a messenger there. He mentioned Rennes or St. Malo as being places where a courier would be sent to meet us; both towns are big enough to show little interest in pilgrims passing through.”
“And if you are wrong? How will we know to stand fast?”
“I will have Sparrow with me. If there is any reason why you should not come near the city, one or both of us will double back to warn you. In truth, though, I do not anticipate any trouble. The leader of the rebelling forces is Hugh of Luisgnan—doubly vexed with the king for divorcing his first wife and taking Hugh’s betrothed as his new queen. He is a good man, not known for wanton pillage and murder. If his armies have occupied Rennes, he will be more concerned with restoring the peace than prolonging open hostilities. He wants all of Normandy to unite against the usurper; he cannot do that if he rouses sympathy for the English king.”
The light shifted and the fog swirled, retreating before the heat of the torch as three men emerged from the stables. Ariel, not wanting to be caught on the path spying on them, slipped behind the bulky shadow of an ancient fig tree a step before Henry, Sedrick, and FitzRandwulf materialized out of the fog. FitzRandwulf was leading Lucifer behind him. The enormous rampager was fully geared and as Eduard spoke he adjusted the corner of the saw-toothed saddle cloth.
“Leave here as close after dawn as possible and keep to the main road. If neither Sparrow nor myself rejoin you before midday, assume the way is clear and push on to Rennes.”
“Will you find us, or will we find you?” Henry asked.
“If I am not there to meet you at the town gates, go directly to an inn called the Two Fighting Cocks. The hostler is a friend and will provide all your needs. Whisper the words à outrance in his ear and he will know you come from Amboise.”
“The Two Fighting Cocks. A outrance.” Henry nodded. “And if you are still not with us when we are ready to leave again?”
Eduard smiled grimly. “Then I am undoubtedly dead and your sister will have realized her fondest desire.”
FitzRandwulf led Lucifer forward again, seemingly toward the solid wall that enclosed the monastery grounds. But as the torchlight burned away the fog, a postern gate took shape amongst the withered ivy and overhanging tree branches. It was just tall enough and wide enough to allow Eduard to lead the destrier through, and once on the other side, he swung himself up into the saddle and was swallowed into the darker mist without so much as a fare-thee-well.
Henry and Sedrick stood at the postern until the sound of Lucifer’s heavy hoofbeats had faded into the woods.
“He’s a hard fellow to like,” Sedrick commented. “Cocky as well.”
“Cocky,” Henry agreed, “but tolerable for another fortnight or so. In truth, I have never had a great love for these provincial barons—nor their bastard cubs—but this one seems to know what he is about.”
Sedrick chuckled gruffly. “The Lady Ariel might find cause to argue his worth.”
Henry glanced back at the ghostly silhouette of the abbey. “In this, Ariel will do as I say. She already has the means, with the Welsh princeling eager to climb into her bed, to win back the estates and titles rightfully belonging to the De Clare name. Once we have the Pearl in our possession, we will have the means to ensure those lands and titles remain ours for a very long time.”
Sedrick’s frown, as slow to form as some of the thoughts in his head, regarded the young lord speculatively. “Ye would fain help steal the Pearl to use as barter? But ye swore—we all three swore an oath on our lives, that once stolen, the Pearl would be placed in safekeeping, far out of reach of the king.”
“So we did. And I have no intentions of breaking that oath, nor do you. But keeping the Pearl out of the king’s hands, and well within our own, are two different matters.”
Sedrick’s scowl turned dubious. “I would not want to let FitzRandwulf hear ye say such things. He’s prickly enough as it is planning one theft without having to worry about planning another.”
Henry sighed as if greatly put upon to explain the obvious.
“We do not have to steal the Pearl a second time in order to keep the king on tenterhooks. It is enough to know. … and to have him know …”
“That we know where the Pearl is,” Sedrick concluded brightly.
“Thy wit is unsurpassed,” Henry said, laughing dryly. “Now come, man, these are heavy thoughts to burden so tender a brain at such an hour and place as this. God’s truth,” he added, shivering as they started walking back along the path, “I will be happy to be quit of this place. I swear the shadows move and the fog has eyes.”
Sedrick crossed himself hastily, his hand falling to the hilt of his sword as the gnarled trunk of a fig tree took shape beside them. He too could have sworn he saw movement, but there was nothing there, only the moving, swirling banks of opaque mist.
Chapter 12
Ariel had dashed back to the pilgrim’s hall and made it into her pallet a scant few seconds before she heard the faint rasp of the door and the sound of stealthy feet seeking out their beds in the gloom. Her heart had pounded in her throat and her lips had curled between her teeth in an effort to counter the pain of a stubbed toe, and for the next hour she had lain there wide awake, her bladder throbbing while she replayed a bewildering array of thoughts, most of them centring around the exchange she had overheard between Henry and Sedrick.
What was this talk of a jewel—a pearl valuable enough to use as barter? Barter with whom? For what purpose? It had to be extremely valuable if the king possessed it … doubly, trebly so if it was worth the risk of all their lives to steal it.
And the thought of FitzRandwulf as a common thief, willing to travel so far to steal a pearl? It made no sense whatsoever. Not for any of them.
Henry, with his own modest successes on the tournament circuits, was neither so penniless nor so witless as to resort to such de
sperate measures as stealing from the crown. Wealth, in any form, had never been of prime consideration in any of Sedrick’s plans either. He was the marshal’s loyal liegeman and as long as he had ale to drink, food to fill his belly, a wench to bed, and heads to break, he was content.
FitzRandwulf’s capacity for avarice was unknown to her, but from what Ariel knew of his personal worth—admittedly not much more than what she had gleaned from Robin’s stories over the past few days—he was not suffering from a cringing poverty. He had estates in Touraine and the Aquitaine, possibly more in Lincolnshire that would have come to him through his mother. Would he kill for a pearl? Would he travel to England and risk all for the sake of stealing a polished bit of stone?
Moreover, had he not already admitted he was going to England because of a woman? Had he admitted it … or had he simply not disagreed with Ariel’s supposition? And if it was a woman luring him out of his lair in Normandy, was it a woman in possession of this mysterious pearl?
Ariel had barely sifted her way through these convoluted deductions when she heard Henry’s call to rise. Determined not to betray any knowledge of their conversation—and here, she at least had the satisfaction of knowing she had not imagined the whisperings and intrigues—she made her prayers and greeted their meal of ale and bread with her usual morning scowl. Knowing it would be expected of her, she made a point of inquiring where their choleric guide had taken himself, and of expressing her heartfelt opinion that they could do just as well without him.
They left the abbey when the sun was still a pale blot on the horizon. They took infrequent stops along the way and by noon had left the thickest tracts of forest well behind them. Fields began to look well tended, hemmed with stone fences and hedgerows. Haystacks were built up around the trunks of trees, so high only the topmost branches showed. Flocks of sheep dotted the hills and once a black and white dog ran along the road beside them, loudly protesting their trespass.
In the Shadow of Midnight Page 21