Heart of Stone

by Quinn, Paula

  “I did not know you were his friend, now did I?” the man asked nervously and took keys from his belt.

  “Who is the woman with you?” asked the second man, looking her over.

  “My wife,” Nicholas told them. “Who may I ask is the older woman? What is wrong with her?”

  “We call her Leigh because, according to the tales, ’tis the only sound she has ever made.”

  Not the only sound, Nicholas thought, recalling her words of affirmation only moments ago.

  “We do not know her real name,” the first man continued. “She has been here for years. Before we got here. She seems to be a dumb mute.”

  “A dumb mute who healed my wounds in a day?” he asked angrily. “What is her crime? Why is she here?” Here for years.

  “Look, m’lord. I do not know the answers to all your questions. You just missed the governor. He was here a few days ago. He did not say where he was going or when he would be back. We thought he would be in York by now. Did we not, Harry?”

  “We did,” his lanky companion returned.

  “We will release you and your wife and your bald friend and you can stay here or be on your way.”

  “And what of her?” Nicholas asked, pointing to Berengaria. He knew what would become of her if she remained here. Nothing. She would die here behind a locked door where no one visited or bothered to know anything about her.

  “She stays,” the first man said.

  “No,” Nicholas countered. “She comes with us.” And I will not kill you. “I will be responsible for her.”

  “She is locked up for a reason,” the men tried to convince him.

  “Aye, and you do not know what it is. Release her to me. I will remain here and eat your lord’s food until he returns and he can settle the matter.”

  “The good Lord will bless you,” Simon added.

  The men discussed it between themselves for a moment or two and then turned to him. “Very well. You can take her.” They opened the door.

  Nicholas nodded then stepped out of the cell with Simon and turned to reach out to Margaret, then his mother. “Come,” he urged her softly.

  Did she not remember him? Had she lost her mind? It would explain why she left.

  “Come.” He dropped his hand and stepped aside, but she would not pass. When he stepped out and waited for her, she did not come. In fact, she shook, as if afraid.

  “How long has it been since she has been out of the cell?”

  “This one?” Harry asked, looking a bit nervous.

  Nicholas’ heart dropped to his belly. He felt his blood racing to catch up. “Where was she before?”

  “Are you friends with Viscount Bamburgh? Has he sent you?”

  “Why would Bamburgh send me?” Nicholas demanded with full authority.

  “We know he abhors the mistreatment of slaves, prisoners, and the like.”

  “I do not know the viscount,” Nicholas told them truthfully. “But tell me this,” he ordered as he moved closer and leaned in. “She was moved in case he showed up, aye?”

  The first man shook his head. “She was moved just before the viscount’s first visit about six months ago.”

  “Ah,” Nicholas smiled at himself. “My mistake.” He wanted to kill them both. “Where was she before this?”

  The men looked at each other and grew equally pale. Neither wanted to speak. Finally, the first man did. “She was in a hole. A dark, stinking hole. She had no light and barely any room to bend her knees and –”

  Nicholas held up his hand to stop him from going on. He’d already heard too much. He watched Margaret hurry to his mother’s side and try to comfort her.

  “Why was she treated so poorly? Is there not even a rumor?” Nicholas asked while a thousand emotions from forgiveness to guilt swept across his heart. He should have searched for her. He should be the one comforting her. But he wanted too badly to kill Phillip DeAvoy and his brothers, and Nicholas would have vowed to kill their father if he was still living. He felt too much anger to comfort his mother. Besides, she didn’t know him. She likely went mad living in those conditions. She was afraid of him, afraid to leave.

  “Well, the latest rumor is—” Harry began.

  “No. Not the latest,” Nicholas directed him. “What is the oldest rumor? That is the one most likely to be closest to the truth.”

  “Aye,” both men agreed and thought about it. “I…ehm…” the second man cleared his throat and began again. “I seem to remember something that used to be whispered about when I was a lad.”

  “What was it?” Nichols asked him.

  “She was a witch—”

  “No,” the first interrupted. “The oldest tale is that Leigh was involved in a very close matter with Sir Roger DeAvoy and was thrown into the pit to keep her quiet.”

  Nicholas’ fingers cramped at the force of his fists. He tried to remember to breathe, to react calmly. “Why did he not just kill her?”

  “I do not know, m’lord. Are you coming?”

  Nicholas shook his head. He looked at his companions. They shook theirs, too. “No, we are not leaving her. You will bring us three more beds—”

  “Three!” they both exclaimed. “Why three if you two are married—”

  “Should we enjoy our marriage bed in front of this woman?”

  The warning glint in his eyes must have convinced them to be careful with their response.

  “Aye, m’lord. Three beds.” They hurried off, leaving the four of them alone.

  “Oh, my lord,” Margaret lamented over his mother. “She must have gone mad. The poor soul.”

  “When did you last see her?” Simon inquired.

  Nicholas entered the cell again and went to stand close, keeping his eyes on his mother. “Fourteen years ago. Her name is Berengaria.”

  Margaret wept harder and his mother pulled out a cloth and wiped Margaret’s tears with soothing strokes.

  Nicholas turned away, unable to see the woman he’d hated for so long for something she seemingly had no control over. He felt too heavy with guilt to rejoice at finding her. He remembered her goodness and the lessons she’d taught him and Julianna. Whatever she had done was not deserving of this.

  He wanted to claw at his hair, shout until the walls crumbled, but nothing would bring back those years.

  Phillip would pay. Nicholas would wait and then he would kill him.

  “I wonder why they call you Leigh,” Margaret said finally, smiling when her face was dry. “What were you trying to say?”

  Nicholas felt his eyes begin to burn. Where the hell were they with the beds? “Likely, Julianna. Berengaria was her nurse from her birth.”

  “Or William,” Margaret added. “A mother does not truly forget her own child.”

  “I was not her true child. My true mother and father were killed by the English. I was tossed into Berwick’s kitchen and put to work at two years old. Berengaria saved me and became the mother of my heart.”

  A clay pot Berengaria was cleaning crashed to the floor and startled Margaret. Nicholas stared at his mother. Did she understand him?

  “Mother?” She crouched low and picked up the larger pieces of clay.

  He hurried to help her, afraid that she would cut her hand.

  “Mother, Julianna has recently found me.”

  No reaction.

  “You will see her soon. You will see Julianna and my son.”

  She smiled softly at him and continued cleaning up. He spent the entire day with her, trying to ignite a memory here or there, trying to see some sign of recognition from his mother. He told her about Julianna and his life, his son and his travels. She gave no sign of understanding, but Margaret did.

  She wept for him and when his mother pushed him to Margaret’s side and scolded him with a scowl, Nicholas put his arm around Margaret the way he had when he and Julianna were younger and she was crying.

  Finally, he smiled at Berengaria. He’d found her. He was never going to lose her again. Her
or Julianna.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Before they left Edlingham, Phillip stripped Julianna of her clothes and her jewelry, along with having her fingernails cut down low. If there was poison anywhere on her, he made certain to remove it.

  He did this to her in the sight of his men, and in the presence of the Viscount of Bamburgh—whether or not he was alive, she didn’t know.

  “Phillip, there was no poison,” she told him angrily and quite convincingly. She had to convince him that it was nothing she did, but rather the will of God that gave him a second chance. “Would you throw it away?” she challenged him. “And would you take the risk of it happening again and, this time, you do not escape your grave?”

  His nostrils flared with rage at her. She almost lost heart and thought of running away. She didn’t care if he killed her. If Nicholas was dead, what did it matter? She would love to raise Elias but if she couldn’t, Agnes would take good care of him. She didn’t stand her ground for Nicholas, or for Elias. She stared Phillip down, unblinking and ready to call on the power of God to help her, for herself.

  Whatever he feared most kept him from touching her and he smiled rather than squeeze her throat. “What do you want me to make of this little spectacle of yours, Jules? Hmm? That you found your beloved William and you can die in peace? Because, you are going to die, but first there is someone at Alnwick I want you to meet. When you do, you will wish you were eating dirt.”

  “Anything would be better than spending another moment with you.”

  He laughed. She did not. She could feel her hair springing tighter as her heat rose. He could haul off on her at any moment, but she wouldn’t back down.

  “Get dressed, Wife. We are leaving.”

  Julianna turned away from him and nearly leaped into her clothes. She slipped her ring on her finger but that was all she could take before Phillip stepped behind her and poked her in the back with his sword. “Move.”

  She stepped around the viscount lying motionless on the floor and said a prayer that he lived. He and Nicholas. Phillip had taken enough already.

  “Tell me, Phillip,” she asked, grinding her jaw at him and fastening her cloak around her neck, “who is this person I will wish I had never met?”

  “’Tis my mother, Jules. And you have already met her.”

  That was all he would say. But it was so like Phillip to want to remain cryptic. Julianna didn’t care much about anything but Nicholas. She had to find a way to escape Phillip, yet again. Escape and find Nicholas. To do that, she had to first stay alive. She did what he ordered, gained a horse without any help from his men, and was ready to leave when he was.

  She had her ring. She had her ring! As soon as he couldn’t see her…she smiled and breathed. First chance she got. First chance, and she would make him sorry!

  About a quarter of the way to Alnwick, two of Phillip’s men pushed her off to the side of the road. She didn’t know what they wanted, to grope or fondle her, or worse. She wasn’t about to find out. She stuck the fang in her ring into one man’s face and into the other’s bare hand.

  They both fell almost instantly. When they did, Phillip was there watching.

  He looked worried.

  So did she.

  She had no more poison. She hadn’t wanted to use the last of it on Phillip’s men. She wanted to use it on Phillip! Her only consolation was that he was still afraid of her. Perhaps more now than before. She had no weapons. He’d made certain of that. He hadn’t checked her adornments and he hadn’t seen her lift her ring. So how was she still knocking his men unconscious? She dropped her ring in the grass. By now, there was no more poison left on the fang so the ring was useless.

  “I do not know what befell them, my lord,” she said, feigning innocence, and doing so rather poorly. “They tried to touch me and they just dropped dead from their horses.”

  He stared at her with fear marring his brow. “Devil!”

  She shook her head and looked up.

  “You tempt me to increase my cruelty toward you,” he warned her when she rode back to him.

  “You were born cruel, Phillip. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh,” he said just before she rode away, “but you did, Julianna. You had everything to do with it.”

  “What?” she laughed and rode at an even pace at his side, just out of his reach. “What are you accusing me of now, Phillip?”

  “I’m saying you took my place at my mother’s breast, while I was given to a cold bitch who hated me for being the product of a love affair between her husband and a servant.”

  Julianna took a moment to take in what he was saying. What? She took his place…his mother?

  “Since her own birth brought forth a dead babe, Claudia DeAvoy was able to nurse me and pretend I was the babe she had given birth to when, in fact, I was not.”

  No! Nooooooooooo! Chills ran through her. She took his place…she blinked. Berengaria! No! Julianna shook her head.

  Phillip nodded. His smile was charged with cruelty and satisfaction. “Aye. I am the son of a scullery maid named Berengaria.”

  It was as if he pulled out his sword and rammed it through Julianna’s middle. Berengaria. Her Berengaria was Phillip’s mother? It couldn’t be! She gripped her belly as an ache flooded through her. It threatened to knock her from her mount. She and Phillip were the same age. Claudia and Berengaria were with child at the same time, by the same man.

  Julianna leaped off her horse, ran to the side of the road, and expelled the bit of water she’d had earlier.

  Berengaria had been forced to give up her son and nurse someone else’s child. Oh, poor, poor Berengaria. Julianna choked on her tears rather than shed them in Phillip’s presence. And Nicholas! What would he think of the woman he had loved as a mother being the mother of his mortal enemy? She wanted to weep at the terrible tragedy of it all. She wiped her mouth instead and went back to her horse.

  “Did Berengaria leave us to go back to you?” she asked him quietly. She truly didn’t want to know.

  Phillip smiled at her as if she were the most pitiful fool. “No, Jules. Claudia had her arrested soon after my father died. You see, ’twas he who had kept Berengaria safe in Berwick. He never stopped caring for her, I believe.”

  “Arrested?” she echoed in a hollowed voice.

  “Aye,” he answered calmly, as if they were discussing how the sun rose. “And thrown into the pit.”

  Julianna’s eyes widened. The tears that threatened a few moments ago now filled her eyes and fell from their heavy weight. “What was her crime?”

  “Sleeping with my father.” He laughed shortly. “It cost her everything.”

  “When? When did you find out she was your mother?”

  “I have known for some time, years.”

  Julianna stared at him, horrified. She didn’t think Phillip could get any more hopeless. “You have known for years that your mother was in the pit? Did you have her taken out?”

  “Not until I met Bamburgh and he told me that he would never serve a man who mistreated his servants. I had to let her out then. Make her comfortable.”

  Julianna felt ill again, as if she might fall faint. He made her comfortable for the viscount’s sake, not for his mother’s. “So you hated me for drinking from your mother when I could not eat on my own? How very like you that is, Phillip. I’m sure you hated William for being the son she always wanted.”

  “I’m going to strip you of whatever power you have and—”

  The sound of horses suddenly coming upon them stopped whatever Phillip meant to say next.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Phillip demanded as if the men cared about his query.

  “We are looking for the Lord of Rothbury,” said their leader, a man with charcoal-colored hair and a fur lined cloak over his wide shoulders. “If you are him, speak up!”

  “He is not him!” Julianna shouted. “He is the man who just left Edlingham and Lord Bamburgh for dead!” They were the visco
unt’s mercenaries and they wouldn’t be getting paid because of this man.

  “Who are you?” the leader asked, gazing at her from his horse.

  “My wife,” Phillip snarled at him and then at her. “Mrs. Julianna DeAvoy.”

  Julianna closed her eyes and cringed in her cloak. She hated the idea of it. She had been such a coward. She swiped at an icy, stubborn tear.

  “Take them both,” the leader commanded, riding through them like Moses parting the sea. “Kill the rest.”

  Julianna didn’t care about Phillip’s soldiers. They had known the kind of man they served. “I was with Lord Bamburgh when he penned you those letters,” she rode close to the leader and told him. “’Twas my plea that inspired him to offer such a high reward. Tell me, please, have you found any trace that Lord Rothbury lives?”

  He stared at her face and into her eyes and then at the hair beneath her hood. “Aye, Bamburgh would do the like for you. Your earl stopped at some inns on the roads from Otterburn. He was with a woman.”

  Julianna’s heart and hope soared. He was alive! She wanted to hug the leader for the good news, but she refrained. She did show her joy in her smile though. As for the woman, Julianna hoped it was someone from the castle, or the village. Margaret or Molly.

  “This news of him pleases you?” the leader asked with a soft smile that revealed a deep dimple in his cheek.

  “Aye, it does. Lord Rothbury is a good man and a father. I would see him receive help from the wiles of men who will never be like him.” She spoke softly so that Phillip didn’t hear but slanted her gaze to him for an instant. Then she was back to smiling. “Lord Bamburgh vowed that you were good men.”

  The leader was quite obviously taken with her. He hung on every word she said. She let the wind push down her hood several times so that her hair was free to whip around her face. It seemed to please men to look at it.

  “So you are his wife?” the leader asked, referring to Phillip.

  “Sadly, aye.”

  “And you are in love with Lord Rothbury.”

  “I have always been in love with Lord Rothbury,” she confessed.