Masters of Medieval Romance: Series Starters Volume 1

by Kathryn Le Veque

  “If I help you, I cannot do it now,” he hissed, hoping the walls around them didn’t have ears. “Lord Alary is discussing you with the Saxon lord right now and if we flee, they would soon catch up to us. We would not have much time to get away.”

  Kristoph didn’t agree. “If you do not help me now, there may not be another opportunity,” he said, trying not to sound too forceful because he felt that he was losing the man’s interest in his offer. “If Alary sells me to the Saxon, I will be gone. How are you to help me then?”

  He had a point, one that seemed to convince Mostig that the time to act was now. He was quite torn, however, with apprehension in both his expression and movement.

  “If I help you, where will we go this night?” he asked. “It is very dark and there is nowhere we can run.”

  Kristoph sensed that the man was finally coming around to his way of thinking. Mostig seemed to be good of heart, but he was weak of will. Kristoph sat back against the straw again, thanking God for his friend Mostig. In his plans to escape, he never thought he’d have an accomplice.

  “You know this area,” he said. “Are there any towns nearby?”

  Mostig nodded. “A few,” he said. “Smaller villages.”

  “Then we will avoid them. When we leave, the first places Alary will search are the nearby villages. But I will tell you something; a secret.”

  “What?”

  “I do not believe my Norman brethren have stopped following us. They would not let me go so easily. I believe they are around, somewhere. All we need to do is find them.”

  Mostig’s eyes widened. “Are you certain?”

  Kristoph shrugged. “I know them. They would not give up.”

  “That is an interesting bit of news.”

  It wasn’t Mostig who replied. It was Alary, entering the livery with a pair of his henchmen with him, men who were always at his side to do is bidding. They were also the men who had beaten Kristoph in the first few days of his captivity and the men, he suspected, who held him down when Alary cut off his finger. They were mindless, brutal dogs.

  Kristoph’s blood ran cold when he saw them enter the livery. He heard us! He thought in a panic. But how much did he hear? Kristoph would have to be extremely careful with this situation if he wanted to survive it. All of the hope he’d been feeling drained out of him like liquid through a sieve. Now, he felt empty.

  Empty and apprehensive.

  As Kristoph tried to gauge just how bad his punishment was going to be, Alary looked at Mostig.

  “Excellent work,” he said to the man. “You have done well this night.”

  Kristoph looked at Mostig, unsure what Alary meant as Mostig stumbled to his feet, looking at Alary in terror.

  “I did not do anything, my lord,” he cried. “The Norman spoke of escape but I did not do anything!”

  Alary looked very pleased. “I knew you were developing a friendship with him,” he said. “I have seen it from the start. Now you have tricked him into confessing that his Norman friends have not given up the chase, after all. I knew they had not but I also knew our captive would not tell me. You have done that for me, Mostig. Well done.”

  Mostig was overwrought with terror. He looked at Kristoph with such horror upon him that it was palpable. “I did not…,” he breathed. Then, he looked to Alary again. “I would not betray you, my lord. Forgive me!”

  Alary shook his head. “There is nothing to forgive,” he said. “You have shown me your true loyalties. Tell me you did this for me and I shall believe you.”

  Mostig was trembling as he nodded his head. “I have done this for you, my lord, I swear it.”

  Alary approached him, casually, putting out a hand to rest on the man’s slumped shoulder. “Tell me that you love me.”

  “I do, my lord, most earnestly!”

  Swiftly, Alary unsheathed a dagger that was at his side, a bejeweled weapon that was quite magnificent. He’d stolen it off of a dead Saxon lord a few years back and now it was at his side every moment. It was the dagger he’d used to cut off part of Kristoph’s finger. Before Mostig even realized what had happened, Alary slipped the blade between his ribs and straight into his heart. Mostig was dead before he hit the ground.

  With the man in a heap, Alary stood over him.

  “I lied,” he said, kicking the corpse. “I do not believe you!”

  Kristoph had to admit that he was quickly reaching a greatly apprehensive state. He couldn’t even think of Mostig’s death. Now, he had to think about himself. He was still chained and, in a fight, he wouldn’t be very effective, but he knew they were rapidly approaching that state and he intended to fight for all he was worth. He wasn’t going to let Alary slip a blade between his ribs as easily as he’d done to Mostig. As Alary turned to him, he braced himself.

  The moment of life or death, for him, was coming.

  “So your Norman brethren are nearby, are they?” he asked, wiping the bloodied blade off on his trousers. “Where are they?”

  Kristoph’s gaze never left Alary’s face. “I would not know,” he said. “And what I told Mostig was a guess. I have not seen any of them, if that is your meaning. For if I saw them, so would you and I would not be here right now. What I expressed was a feeling and nothing more.”

  Alary was closing in with his two henchmen by his side, all of them looking at Kristoph with the expressions of hunters who had just sighted their prey.

  “You seemed rather certain,” Alary said.

  Kristoph simply shook his head, trying not to appear any too leery of what was coming. “What happened to the Saxon lord Mostig spoke of?” he asked, trying to change the subject. “I thought you were going to sell me to the man for his daughter.”

  Alary shrugged. “His daughter was so ugly that even I could not resign you to such a life,” he said. “Moreover, the man did not want to pay my price.”

  “I told you that my family would pay any price you asked for my release.”

  Alary came to a halt and his henchmen along with him. “I wonder if your Norman brethren would pay to keep you alive.”

  Kristoph was coming to desperately wish that he was unchained because he very much wanted to strike the first of many blows he knew were coming. He knew he was in for another beating, perhaps the worst one yet.

  “Mayhap,” he said casually. “But know this; if you kill me, they will hunt you down. You will never be safe. I have told you this before, Alary. It is in your best interest to keep me alive and well so that my comrades will not punish you by stripping your skin from your body while you are alive. They will make sure you suffer a more painful death than I could ever suffer, so remember that before thinking to kill me.”

  It was a threat, a line drawn between them that Kristoph was instructing the man not to cross. But Alary wasn’t smart enough to realize it. He saw it as a threat to his safety and nothing more than that. He didn’t realize that Kristoph was trying to save his life.

  In fury, he struck out.

  The first blow missed Kristoph because he ducked, but after that, the fight was on as Alary’s two men jumped on Kristoph and began beating on a man who was severely restricted by his chains. But Kristoph was strong, much stronger than Alary had realized. In the end, he’d strangled one of the men with his chains and kicked the other one unconscious, all the while as Alary stood back and watched.

  This time, Alary didn’t step in to disable Kristoph. The man had taken a beating but it was clear he was ready for anything that came at him. He was strong, bound or not, and Alary backed off. He had a stronger sense of survival than most. Therefore, he left Kristoph alone that night, leaving the dead bodies of two of his men while the third, once he regained consciousness, limped from the livery and disappeared.

  As for Alary, he spent the night in the tavern where it was warm and dry, pondering his next move with the Norman knight who was not so injured as he had wanted everyone to believe.

  That night, the Norman knight showed his worth, and Alary
realized he had a prisoner who was very capable of killing.

  He would have to kill his prisoner before he was the man’s next victim.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‡

  Legio Tertium Augustus

  Someone was shaking her.

  Ghislaine ignored the gentle shaking, going so far as to shove them away, but she heard someone call her name, softly, and her eyes flew open.

  Ghislaine!

  There was some light now across the land in the very early dawn as she blinked, having no idea where she was or how she got here until she pulled the skirt of the cote completely away from her head and saw Gaetan bending over her. He looked pale and worried as he gazed down at her.

  “Ghislaine?” he said quietly, with concern. “Thank God you are alive. What happened? How did you end up here?”

  She blinked. Rolling on to her back and wincing when her right leg pained her greatly at the movement, she stared at Gaetan as if hardly believing what she was seeing. Gaetan! Was she dreaming? Or was he actually here, in her midst? Then, everything came tumbling down on her – the fevered wound, waking up in the smelly dank cell where she’d found herself and, most of all, waking up alone. Gaetan had promised her he would not leave her behind but he had. She was running after him to catch up with him. She must have found him and not even realized it. But now, he was here.

  He was smiling at her.

  Whack!

  A balled fist came up and caught Gaetan right in the mouth and his head snapped back as Ghislaine struggled to sit up. She was mad enough to throw another punch at him but she didn’t want to do it lying on the ground. She might even beat him to death in the process because he deserved it, in her opinion.

  Her fury knew no bounds.

  “That is for breaking your promise to me!” she bellowed, but there were tears on the surface. “You promised me that you would not leave me behind and you did! I had to come and find you!”

  Gaetan was rocked back on his heels, a hand going to his lips and coming away with a smear of blood on them. He remained calm.

  “Find me?” he repeated, confused and, frankly, rather hurt that she struck him. “What on earth are you talking about? I came to find you.”

  “But you left me! You said you would not and you did! You lied!”

  Gaetan was trying to figure out why she was so irate but it occurred to him that she must not have remembered much of the past day. Her fever had wreaked havoc with her mind so there was something going on with her that he did not quite understand. She was confused and making accusations that were simply untrue. He reached out to still her as she finally managed to sit up but she yanked her arm out of his grasp, sliding away from him, not wanting to be too close to him.

  In fact, the anger in her expression shocked him. He didn’t like to see that where it pertained to him. “Ghislaine, I did not lie to you,” he said evenly. “Why did you leave the apothecary’s hut? What happened?”

  She was furious and feeling ill. Moreover, her leg was killing her. “I do not know what you mean,” she snapped. “I know of no apothecary.”

  “The man who tended your leg when you were with fever.”

  Ghislaine looked at him, still feeling confusion and distressed, but now she truly had no idea what he meant. Still… she thought back to the town she had fled; she had awoken in a smelly hovel. Was that what he meant? A shaking hand flew to her head, pushing the mussed hair out of her eyes.

  “The man who tended my…?” she repeated, bewildered. Then, she looked around, seeing all of Gaetan’s knights looking back at her in various stages of concern. She looked at each and every face, thinking that these did not look like men who had abandoned her. They didn’t have that look about them. Her attention returned to Gaetan as she struggled for calm. “Someone tended my leg? But you tended it. You and Aramis did.”

  Gaetan glanced at Aramis, who was standing off to his right. Before he could reply, Aramis took a few steps towards Ghislaine and took a knee beside her.

  “That was the first time,” Aramis said patiently. “You began running a terrible fever and we took you in to Worcester where an apothecary cleaned out your wound again. Do you not remember?”

  A little more was coming clear now but Ghislaine didn’t remember any of it. It was frightening to realize that she truly had no memory of something that had happened to her. She looked at Gaetan. “Is that why my leg hurts so?” she asked.

  Gaetan nodded. “It was full of poison so an apothecary cleaned it out and stitched it up again. You were sleeping after the procedure so we left to go find supper and when we returned, you were gone. Did you truly think we had abandoned you? That I had abandoned you?”

  Now, the situation was making so much more sense. Ghislaine sighed heavily, beginning to feel quite foolish and dismayed. “I… I awoke in a strange place and I thought you had left me behind,” she said. “You said that you would not, but when I awoke and you were not there… I was afraid to remain. I had to find you.”

  Things were becoming clear to Gaetan, too. He smiled faintly when he realized what had happened. “So you left? With your bad leg, you actually set out to find me?”

  Ghislaine nodded, embarrassed. “You promised you would not leave me and I was going to find you and… you truly did not leave me behind?”

  Gaetan shook his head. “Nay, little mouse. I told you I would not.”

  He had. But she hadn’t believed him. But, as he’d proved to her since the beginning of their association, he was a man of honor. Norman honor. Her feelings of foolishness only increased as she noted the blood on his lip.

  “I am so sorry that I struck you,” she whispered. “I… I have no excuse other than I thought you had lied to me.”

  Gaetan’s smile grew. Then, he started to laugh, turning to the men behind him who were also starting to chuckle. He wiped at his lip again but there was very little blood.

  “It was a good hit,” he admitted. “I supposed I deserved it if you thought I had broken my promise. But I did not, I swear it. We have been looking for you for the past several hours. Cam was following your trail but he got off task a few times when a rabbit or a fox would cross his path. But it was really Cam who helped us find you. Without him, we would still be looking for you and you would still be angry at me.”

  Ghislaine smiled timidly, looking at the silly dog who was sitting a few feet away, his wagging tail thumping against the ground when her attention turned to him. She shook her head at the beast.

  “He followed me from town,” she said. “I do not even know when he left me because it seemed as if he was always with me.”

  “He waited for us on the bridge. Even he knew I would come for you and he waited to show me the way.”

  Her smile grew, though it was still sheepish. “Then he is a good dog.”

  Gaetan’s smile turned warm, his gaze only for Ghislaine. “Do you still despise him?”

  Ghislaine let out an ironic snort. “I suppose I cannot now that he has saved me.”

  As if on cue, Camulos stood up and made his way over to her, wagging his big tail and licking her on the chin. Ghislaine put her arms around the dog and hugged him as Gaetan stood up, glancing over at Aramis, who did the same. He noted that Aramis was watching Ghislaine with the dog, a grin on lips that very rarely saw one.

  Jealousy began to creep into Gaetan’s veins but he struggled not to show it. Even though Aramis had graciously agreed to give up his pursuit of the lady, still, Gaetan didn’t quite trust him. He hated that suspicion but he simply couldn’t help it. Laboring to put that aside, he turned to Téo, who was standing off to his left.

  “I will take the lady with me since we left her mare back in Worcester,” he said. “How far from Worcester do you believe we have come?”

  Téo glanced at the land around them. “At least five or six miles,” he said. Then, he turned to Wellesbourne, who was standing several feet behind him. “Do you know where we are?”

  Wellesbourne heard th
e question and looked about the landscape, trying to get his bearings.

  “I think so,” he said. “The lady would know better than I would, but I believe there is a road to the north that will take us to Kidderminster.”

  Still hugging the dog, Ghislaine heard him. She let the beast go, struggling to her feet as both Gaetan and Aramis rushed forward to help her. With Gaetan on one arm and Aramis on the other, they pulled her to her feet. When she staggered because of the pain in her leg, Gaetan swooped down and picked her up, effectively taking her away from Aramis.

  But Ghislaine was unaware of the competition between them. She was in Gaetan’s enormous arms and nothing felt more right or more natural. She looped an arm behind his neck to steady herself, but it was such a delicious position to be in that she nearly forgot about Wellesbourne’s assessment of their location. She would have much rather lost herself in Gaetan’s eyes and would have, too, had she not caught sight of Wellesbourne in her periphery. She was compelled to give the man an answer or risk looking like a besotted fool.

  In Gaetan’s arms, all was right in the world again.

  “I truly am not even sure where we are,” she said. “When I left Worcester, I crossed the river and just kept walking. You say we are five or six miles to the east?”

  Wellesbourne and Gaetan were nodding. Ghislaine began to look at her surroundings. “I wonder if we are near the disputed lands,” she said pensively. When Gaetan looked at her curiously, she explained. “There are lands in this area that are claimed by a tribe that calls themselves the Tertium. My brother, Edwin, has had some contact with them but they are very warlike and they keep to themselves. I have not known anyone who has had any contact with them other than in battle. It is possible we have entered their lands but I cannot be sure.”

  Gaetan was listening with interest. “Tertium,” he repeated. Tertium meant “third” in Latin. “Bartholomew, have you ever heard of the Tertium?”