And wait.
Andreas waited all day for Gavriella to appear. He kept telling himself that she had only been delayed and that any second she would come in through the door, but she never did. He ordered food simply to keep the table, but he never ate the food. It sat there and grew stone cold as he continued to wait for a woman who had been so delayed that she still hadn’t shown up by sunset.
But he refused to believe she wasn’t coming.
Andreas ended up sitting there all night, even after the tavernkeeper locked the door for the night. He continued to sit and wait, wondering if Gavriella had misunderstood him about when to meet him at the tavern. He thought that perhaps she had thought he meant the next day and he was willing to put faith in that belief, but when dawn came on the following day, Gavriella still did not come.
But Andreas continued to wait.
After sitting there for two days and nights, William and Tor finally came looking for him and found him sitting at the table, now cluttered with old food and empty pitchers of wine, still waiting for the woman who hadn’t shown up. Andreas was exhausted and heartbroken, and it took both William and Tor to convince him that it was time to leave. But even after they left, Andreas walked to The Asher and stood across the street with his cousins, watching the front door, watching for some sign of Gavriella.
But he saw nothing.
Gavriella had told him that she was afraid for him to come to The Asher because she was unsure how her aunt would react to a man coming to call for her. He had mentioned that to William and Tor, and when the wait became too excessive, it took both of his cousins to convince him not to go to the door and inquire about Gavriella. But that didn’t stop William from going to one of the guards at the entry door and asking them about the lady. One of the guards knew nothing, but the second guard told him that the niece of Lady Blackburn had been sent home. That was all he could tell William, who returned to Andreas to relay the news.
Now, he knew.
But Andreas sent William back to talk to the guard who could tell him nothing more than what he had already told him. He didn’t know where she’d come from and he didn’t know where she had returned, and not even the offer of a few coins from William could get him to change his story. He positively refused to ask the countess about her.
The guard finally chased William away by refusing to answer any further questions and William had to return to Andreas to tell him that there was no further information about his mysterious lady. All they knew was that she had been sent back where she had come from, and Andreas knew that was somewhere in Northumberland.
Andreas hadn’t felt real disappointment in his life until that very moment. When he realized that he might never see Gavriella again, he felt disillusionment that was bone crushing. He only had one lead, that she lived somewhere in Northumberland, and he thought that if he started from one end of the province and worked his way to the other end, he might be able to find her or at least find someone who knew her.
He was willing to try.
Northumberland was quite large, but it wasn’t heavily populated, so it was very possible he would find at least her trail. Perhaps the easiest way of doing that would be to inquire at all the churches, for if she was meant for the veil, certainly he would find her priest at some point.
That meant he had to go home as soon as possible.
The sooner he could get to Northumberland, the sooner he could find his Gavriella. In fact, if she had been sent home the very last night that he saw her, that meant she only had a few days head start on him and there weren’t many roads into Northumberland, so he had hopes of possibly finding her on the road if they moved swiftly.
Four days after Andreas was supposed to meet Gavriella in that stuffy little tavern, he departed London along with William, Tor, and Theodis, heading for the wilds of Northumberland.
Andreas had never wanted to go home so badly in his life.
He was going to find Gavriella if it took him the rest of his life.
PART TWO
THE SCOTTISH MARCHES
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Year of Our Lord 1293
January
Wolfe’s Lair
The bailey was filling up with dirty, war-scarred men and knights, funneling into the great bailey of Wolfe’s Lair nearly as far as the eye could see.
It was an army returning from war.
The de Wolfe knights were filthy, sweaty, and in most cases, bloodied as well. They had just seen six days of a nasty battle in a long line of battles over the past five months, but this one had started when Clan Maxwell, reinforced with their allies from the north, had broken out in an ugly skirmish with Clan Elliot. There were pockets of fighting, and clans chasing clans, and all of those Scots had overrun the border north of The Lair.
Oddly enough, this wasn’t a typical land grab, the type of thing that had been going on for centuries. There were wars between Clan Maxwell and its enemies, Clan Elliot and Clan Johnstone, but that feud was spilling over into de Wolfe lands and tearing up everything in its path.
The English found themselves caught up in a clan war.
It was a nasty, political conflict. The House of de Wolfe had tens of thousands of men at their disposal, but there was such a buildup of angry clans on the border that William de Wolfe, the Earl of Warenton and the head of the House of de Wolfe, had called upon the king to send more troops north to help contain the rage. Considering King Edward was mostly focused in Wales at this time, he hadn’t been happy about moving men and material from the Welsh Marches to deal with the conflict happening along the Scottish border.
De Wolfe was holding the line, but he was calling in reinforcements.
Other great de Wolfe allies had come to their aid – de Lohr, de Winter, de Shera, du Reims, de Royans, de Reyne, and more. Wellesbourne and de Russe had also headed north with their massive armies, which the Scots saw as a buildup to an English invasion. Or, perhaps they saw it as an insult that the English should involve themselves in a bloody conflict between clans that was just growing worse. Whatever the case, that brought more Scots to the border.
The entire north of England was straining against a Scots surge.
Wolfe’s Lair was right in the middle of it because, technically, it was in Clan Elliot territory. Wolfe’s Lair belonged to Scott de Wolfe, the heir to the House of de Wolfe, but what made the situation complicated was the fact that Scott’s twin, Troy, had married a chieftain’s daughter from Clan Kerr. That particular clan was allied with Clan Maxwell but in the midst of these border wars, they were doing their best to remain neutral.
As Troy had put it, the whole thing was a goddamned mess.
On this icy winter’s day as the sun set against an orange sky to the west and the embattled army filtered into the bailey for the night, Wolfe’s Lair sat like an immovable sentinel against the dramatic Scottish landscape, protecting the armies that trusted her.
The Lair…
In truth, Rule Water Castle hadn’t been called by its proper name in decades, ever since the de Wolfe family from nearby Castle Questing had annexed the former Scottish garrison for the de Wolfe barony of Kilham, now the Earldom of Warenton. Everyone in England and Scotland knew the place as Wolfe’s Lair, or simply The Lair, an extremely fortified fortress that had an imposing look to it.
Much like infamous Hell’s Guardhouse Castle about a day’s ride to the southwest, seat of the terrible de Soulis family, Rule Water Castle was built in much the same design and it was almost twice the size. It was square, box-shaped, and four stories tall. The walls of the keep were also the exterior walls of the fortress, with massive flying buttresses by design. It also had an enormous moat that was fed by a nearby stream, a wide and muck-filled ditch that was at least twenty feet wide in places and had a massive retractable wooden bridge that crossed it.
The impression of Wolfe’s Lair was one of intimidation. It sat on a flat plain, with rolling hills in the distance, and could been seen for miles. With its
sheer, dark walls, it had the look of dread and danger about it. The entrance to the fortress was also much like Hermitage Castle in that it was a Norman arch, several stories tall, and had two enormous gates that had been forged from the strongest iron. These gates were thick, vastly heavy, and impossible to breach once closed.
The great gates protected the interior of the fortress, which included an enormous bailey in the center. The stables, trades, small chapel, and kitchens were all located in the vast bailey while the second level contained sleeping quarters for the soldiers. The third level contained living and sleeping accommodations for the family and the fourth floor was mostly the wall walk, a flat roof over the third floor that spanned the perimeter of the fortress. The hall, a great thing that took up one entire side of the second floor, was designed to hold a thousand men at any given time.
It was into this hall that the de Wolfe knights moved.
Andreas was at the head of the exhausted de Wolfe pack, along with Will and Tor, Markus de Wolfe and his brother, Cassius, sons of their uncle, Patrick. They were joined by Brodie de Reyne, Troy’s garrison commander from Scotland, along with Scott de Wolfe, Troy de Wolfe, and another de Wolfe brother, Blayth.
Blayth had been born James de Wolfe, but the horrible battle at Llandeilo that Andreas wouldn’t speak of was where the man received a near-fatal head injury. The entire de Wolfe family believed he was dead for five years until he resurfaced with no memory of who he had once been. It had taken time, and the loving arms of his family, to return much of Blayth’s memory, but given that he’d spent those years in Wales as part of the Welsh rebellion, no one knew rebellion and clan battles better than Blayth did.
His advice and experience during these recent battles had been invaluable.
These were knights in their prime, fighting men who kept the Scots from invading the north of England, but they were joined by their counterparts to the east, men who were preventing the Scots from infiltrating the entire eastern seaboard of England. Northwood Castle, Castle Questing, Wark Castle, Berwick Castle, and Kyloe Castle were just a few of the fortresses who had mounted massive armies to hold the border.
Northwood was commanded by the Earl of Warenton’s best friend, Paris de Norville, and his sons Hector and Adonis, while mighty Berwick Castle was commanded by the Constable of the North, Patrick de Wolfe, and his knights Alec Hage and Apollo de Norville. Patrick had sent his powerful sons, Markus and Cassius, to The Lair to help their Uncle Scott. Strangely enough, Troy de Wolfe’s properties in Kerr lands hadn’t been particularly threatened, but that didn’t mean they weren’t on high alert. Roxburgh Castle, usually heavily beleaguered by the Scots, was also on high alert, another de Wolfe outpost that was reinforced.
And waiting…
Holding the center of this unbreakable line from Berwick all the way to Wolfe’s Lair, the furthest outpost to the west, was Castle Questing commanded by none other than the Earl of Warenton himself. Since half of his sons, and knights, were concentrated at Wolfe’s Lair and also at Kale Water Castle and Monteviot Tower, Troy’s holdings, several knights from Northwood Castle came to help hold perhaps the mightiest and most unbreachable castle on the entire border in Castle Questing. Legendary Northwood knight Michael de Bocage and his sons, Case and Corbin, came to Castle Questing as well as the entire army from Beverly Castle, a close de Wolfe ally.
Castle Questing was so vast that she had a three-thousand-man standing army and along with Beverly’s troops, added a thousand more. When de Russe and de Lohr began to arrive, Castle Questing filled out quickly and armies set up their encampments on the hilltop around it. When everyone finally arrived, including the royal troops from Wales, they had a count of twenty-five thousand men, all of them waiting for orders from William de Wolfe.
The order, starting five months earlier, had been given. But in this most recent Scots brawl, more men than ever before had moved up from Castle Questing to help quell the fighting.
This particular battle had been different.
The Scots, in a deviation from their usual plans, had decided to breach the border between The Lair and Kale Water Castle near Kelso, otherwise known as Wolfe’s Den, and plowed down through the rolling hills of Northumberland and swarmed the smaller allied castles of Makendon and The Lyceum. That brought de Wolfe from the east and the west, converging on the surge of Scots that were eventually driven back over the border.
Six long and exhausting days of battle. It had taken more than a shove to get the Scots back over the border and, now, the men from the west had returned to The Lair while those from Castle Questing had retreated to their base. As the doors to the great hall of The Lair flew open, men covered in old blood and congealed gore, sweat and filth, swarmed into the hall, heading for the tables where the servants had been frantically putting out pitchers of watered wine and ale, bread and beef.
Andreas went for the wine right away. He was covered from head to toe in grime and blood, though not his own. Somehow, in the past five months of heavy fighting, he’d managed to come away unscathed. The same thing could be said for most of his cousins and uncles, though a few had light to moderate battle wounds. Will had taken an ax strike to his left arm that pained him when he moved, while Markus had taken a strike to the thigh that had taken twenty-two stitches in fine cat gut to close.
Nothing that wouldn’t heal, eventually.
Everyone was beyond exhausted, however. It had been six days of limited to no sleep and Andreas was ready to collapse, as were most of them. Sleep would come easily tonight, but they all needed to eat something and decompress a little. As much as they were able, at least, given that they’d been in fight or flight mode for the past six days. More like the past five months.
It had been a rough autumn and winter.
Bringing up the rear of the cavalcade of knights entering the hall were Scott, Troy, and Blayth. As the senior commanders of the western army, they were the tacticians. Their sons like Andreas and Will and Tor were simply the followers at this point. Andreas could see his father gathering the de Wolfe knights, herding them towards the table where Andreas and the others were. Tor, in fact, had already stretched out on the floor under the table until Scott bent over to call him out. Wearily, Tor climbed out as far as the edge of the table before laying down on the floor again.
Scott didn’t try to get him up.
He knew how tired they all were.
Scott de Wolfe, Lord Kilham, was the heir to the entire de Wolfe empire. A brilliant man, usually gregarious and emotional, was oddly serious these days with the threat against his family’s lands. He was a stellar battle commander, much used by the king when his father wasn’t in need of him, so he was the natural leader for something like this.
Next to him was Andreas’ father, Troy. Although he was Scott’s twin, they two brothers looked quite different. Scott was blond, favoring their mother, while Troy had the dark of their father’s Saracen blood. Troy was quick to temper, a ferocious fighter, and loved his family deeply. He was proud of all his sons, so much so that he’d brought Andreas’ younger half-brothers along for the experience.
Gareth de Wolfe was nineteen years of age and more Scots than English by blood. His mother, Rhoswyn, was the chieftain’s daughter of Clan Kerr and his father, Troy, was half-Scots through his mother, Jordan Scott de Wolfe. Gareth looked like Troy to a fault with his dark hair and hazel eyes, and he hated anyone bringing up the fact that he was mostly Scots. He would live and die English, he swore, and as he spied Andreas, he headed over to his oldest half-brothers for camaraderie and comfort.
Andreas had a soft spot for Gareth.
Bringing up the rear behind Troy were two more sons, Corey and Reed. They were younger than Gareth at seventeen years and fifteen years of age, and they were not yet knighted but had talent beyond their years. Reed in particular; at fifteen years of age, he had inherited the extreme height trait that ran through the de Wolfe bloodlines, seen most prominently in Patrick. He had glorious auburn hair and haz
el eyes, and was at least a head taller than his father, who wasn’t a short man by any means. He was a calm lad who obeyed orders, trained hard, and had fists of iron. He could also be excitable. Brother Corey was much more like his father – dark, quick to temper, but also quick to laugh.
And Andreas loved them all deeply.
But they also chattered like magpies and were noisy and aggressive, grabbing bread and food, shoving others aside to get at it. Scott finally had to smack Corey on the back of the head so the lad would get the hint and shut his mouth as Scott held up a hand to silence the table full of knights. Once he had their attention, he scratched his head wearily.
“Good men,” he said. “It has been an exhausting six days, but a magnificent six days. You have all performed admirably and I am very proud of you, every single one of you.”
The older knights were used to such praise and didn’t react overly, but the younger knights puffed up. Corey and Reed puffed up. They were usually the pair to get worked up, feeding off each other. They grabbed their cups of watered wine and cheered for themselves, a chorus picked up by the other men in the hall until it was reverberating with their shouts.
Scott had to wait until it had all died down.
“Now,” he said. “Just a few moments of your time and you can eat and sleep afterwards, but I have a few things that I must discuss with you. After we chased the Scots back over the border, my spies tell me that they have retreated to the Maxwell seat of Old Midlem, at least for now, but not before they destroyed some of Kelso.”
“What of Northumberland’s charity at Edenside?” Andreas asked. “Aunt Mae has her foundling home right outside of Kelso and Uncle Tommy keeps men there to protect it. Did that escape unscathed?”
He was speaking of the Earl of Northumbria, Thomas de Wolfe, and his wife, Maitland. Maitland was well known for her benevolence and she had a foundling home just to the east of Kelso where unfortunately parentless children were raised, nurtured, and educated. It was a lovely place. But Scott shook his head to his nephew’s question.
WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations Page 21