Joining

by Johanna Lindsey

  “What is your hurry?” Jhone huffed once she was inside Milisant’s chamber, then seeing her go straight to her coffer and start tossing clothes out of it said, “You have finally taken leave of your senses, aye?”

  “Wulfric is taking me hunting.”

  That should have explained it all, did so in Milisant’s mind, yet Jhone said, “So?”

  “So I had feared I wouldst never be able to hunt again—at least as I prefer to. Now here he is, only two days after we have joined, taking me hunting. You see no significance in that?”

  “I do, of course,” Jhone replied smugly. “The question is, do you?”

  Milisant chuckled as she shrugged out of her cumbersome bliaut and chemise. “Is this where you are going to tell me, I told you so? That is a bad habit you have, Jhone, of always being right—and gloating over it.”

  Jhone snorted. “I do not gloat—are you sure you should wear those?”

  Milisant had reached for her leggings. She paused long enough to grin at her sister. “Aye, he ordered me to.”

  Jhone rolled her eyes. But she came over to help Milisant tie up her cross garters and find a loose tunic to wear with them.

  After a moment Jhone wondered aloud, “Has he told you he loves you yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Mayhap today then.” “You think?”

  “Me?” Jhone snorted again. “What do I know, since I am so rarely right?”

  Milisant laughed, hugged her sister, snatched up her bow and quiver of arrows, and ran out the door.

  Jhone yelled after her, “Wait! You forgot a cloak. It is still winter, if you have not noticed!” Then with a smile to herself, since Milisant didn’t come back, “Never mind, I doubt me he will let you get cold.”

  Milisant hadn’t felt so exhilarated in years—and happy. Aye, happy. It was in her expression. She couldn’t hide it. And the man beside her wore a constant grin as well, as if he knew he was responsible for her jubilation—and so he was. Imagine that.

  When he had come for her last month at Dunburh, she had thought her world was ending. Nothing was ever going to be right for her again, unless she could somehow avoid wedding Wulfric de Thorpe altogether. Now, wedded and bedded by him, she could suddenly find no fault with anything. Just the opposite. She was happy! She was delighted to be with him. He seemed to be going out of his way to please her, and she was indeed pleased, in so many ways.

  Did he love her then? Like Jhone, she was now inclined to think so. She had only to hear it from him to be sure. And if she did hear it? Should she lie and tell him the same, if that would make him happy?

  His love was needed, as Jhone had pointed out, to allow her the freedoms she so craved. Today was sure proof of that. But her own feelings… She was happy; there was no denying that. She was pleased with him now. Would that be enough for him? Or would he demand her love in return? Would it even matter to him, as long as they continued to get along so splendidly, as they presently were?

  She moved ahead of him through the woods. They had left the horses a ways back. She had feared that Wulfric would make too much noise because of his size, and frighten any game away. But he surprised her. She could barely hear his footsteps behind her. And then she heard an arrow fly.

  She turned, saw him lowering his bow. She looked in the direction he faced, and saw the dove on the ground. She beamed at him, wondering if he’d shot it out of the air, and joined him to collect it.

  “Do you pluck?” she asked when she got there and saw that it was a nice, medium-sized bird. “Roasted sounds good about now.”

  “Me?” He looked down at the bird and laughed, which was answer enough. “What about you? Do you pluck?”

  “I never have,” she admitted. “I always brought my kills home for the table.”

  He nodded and stuffed his kill in a sack he had tied to his belt. “We will have to bring one of the kitchen helpers along with us next time, if you want to eat as you hunt. I agree, fresh roasted over a campfire does sound rather tempting at the moment.” Next time…

  She was so pleased, hearing there would be a next time, that she could have kissed him. Then she went very still, staring at him, as she realized that there was nothing to stop her from doing so. She did so.

  His reaction was swift as he pulled her to him, taking over the kiss. The sack had dropped to the ground, as did his bow. After a moment, though, he paused to gaze at her, his eyes filled with tenderness, one hand just as tender on her cheek.

  She gazed back at him in wonder, and said with the same wonder in her tone, “You love me?”

  “It took you this long to figure that out?”

  “Aye.” She blushed slightly. “My mind had been on other things.”

  He nodded, smiled. “Let us hope those other things bother you no more, and from now on your mind dwells more on things like… this.”

  He kissed her again. The contrasts were noticeable, his nose cold against hers, his hands warm, though, and his lips downright hot, because the rest of their exposed skin was chilled—but quickly warming. She imagined that if they continued, they would soon be giving off steam…

  She heard the blow, a solid thwack, then felt Wulfric tilting toward her, actually falling. He did fall, taking her with him, landed on top of her, then—utter stillness. She was still herself, having had the breath knocked out of her, but when she regained it, she could still barely breathe because of his weight.

  The realization came suddenly that he was too still, unnaturally still. At the same time, she felt warm blood drip on her neck from the back of his head.

  The scream gathered in her throat just as he was shoved off of her. She was yanked to her feet before she got the sound out. She stared down in horror at Wulfric, bleeding, more pale than she had ever seen him, not breathing that she could see, then at the man holding her wrist in an iron grip, a thick branch nigh the size of a small log in his other hand, which he had clubbed Wulfric with.

  “Jesu, are you mad?” she gasped in horror.

  “Nay,” the man said, and he was actually grinning at her. “Just lucky.” She didn’t understand, not at all—and then she did when he added, “Come along, lady. Our meeting is long overdue.”

  Fifty-one

  Milisant had not been able to see where she had been taken. Tears had blinded her, and with her hands restrained behind her back, she had been unable to wipe the tears away. By the time she could see again with any clarity, she was inside a thatch-roofed hut.

  The dwelling could be right in the village, near it, or sit alone in the woods—she couldn’t be sure. An old couple lived there. The woman had been severely beaten, lay half dead in the corner. The old man sat beside her on the rush-covered floor, unharmed but looking terrified.

  From a remark she heard, she gathered that he was being used to get rid of anyone who might come to visit. His wife had been beaten to get him to cooperate and give a good performance, pretending that nothing was wrong.

  It wasn’t a large hut, was only the one room, and so was crowded since there were others there as well. Aside from the man who had brought her, there were two other men—and that woman whom she had thought a whore, the one she’d thought Wulfric had dallied with.

  Hers was the first voice Milisant heard when she was roughly shoved into the hut. “Finally! Now can I return to London? I have been of little use here, since that lord got suspicious of me.”

  “You belittle yourself, Nel. You have talents other than poisoning,” the man at Milisant’s back replied.

  “Aye, Ellery, but you have not wanted them,” she sniffed resentfully.

  Ellery chuckled at her. “Alger and Cuthred are much appreciative, though. You have kept them most happy during the wait.”

  “Indeed,” one of the other men said from his seat at the table, and tried to pull Nel onto his lap, only to get his hand slapped away.

  “But aye,” Ellery continued. “You can leave now. Just make sure you are not seen doing so.”

  “As
if I want that lord breathing down my neck again. I had had a good cover, had worked that villager well to get it, but soon as that lord started questioning me, ‘twas all over. I was lucky to escape with my skin. They are too watchful by half around here.”

  “But to no avail,” Ellery said, and there was a great deal of smug triumph in his voice. “Since they have lost their pretty treasure, and now we have it.”

  “Patience does pay off,” one of the other men said. “You said it would, and seems you were right as usual.”

  “And vigilance,” the other man piped in, then added, “Where did you find her? Out hunting again?” The last was asked with a snicker.

  “Actually, she was.”

  An amazed whistle. “I had not thought she could be that foolish again.”

  “To give credit, she was not alone this time,” Ellery corrected.

  “Ah, so not that foolish—just too foolish for you, eh?” was said with a laugh.

  “Exactly,” Ellery agreed. “I expected another journey, though, like her last one. If she could escape once, she could again—which was why I continued to keep watch on the gates. I found them on the way to my usual perch.”

  It was telling, that no one asked what had happened to the one who had been with her, telling that the others took it for granted that Ellery had seen to him, which to them meant he was dead.

  The tears started again. Was he dead? If only she had been given time to find out. But she feared the worst. She had been unable to see if he breathed. He had been too pale—deathly pale.

  It was killing her inside, how little hope she had that Wulfric might have survived the vicious blow to his head that Ellery had dealt him. And to realize too late that she loved him. He hadn’t asked to hear it from her, but oh, God, she wished she had said it, wished he had heard it before he… The tears wouldn’t stop, were running into the gag that bit into her cheeks.

  “If you scream, I will hurt you bad, might even cut out your tongue. I would rather not have to do that, would rather hear your voice, just not a loud one. Do we understand each other?”

  Ellery said this to her, whispered it softly near her ear as he untied the gag from her mouth. The rope that he had wrapped about her wrists before he had tossed her up on his horse he had removed as he spoke with his cohorts. With so many of them there and the door closed, he must feel restraints were no longer needed.

  She didn’t answer, hoped that would be answer enough for him. If she felt it would be useful to scream, she would scream, despite his threats. But it would serve her no purpose whatsoever to tell him that.

  She turned to face him now. She had not gotten a good look at him before, had been too horrified to see other than Wulfric lying there in his own blood, then she’d seen nothing at all, she had cried so hard.

  She was surprised that he was a big, handsome man, but surprised only for a brief moment. Killers came in all varieties, after all.

  The other two men, stocky, bearded, had the look of typical mercenaries for hire. They laughed, they joked with each other, they might question their task, they might not. This one, though, this Ellery, he had a different look, a more menacing quality.

  She had a feeling he would feel no different swatting a fly or slitting a baby’s throat. Neither would engender an emotion in him that might stop him from doing so. A man without conscience, able to kill, maim, rape, and thumb his nose at the laws of the land, simply because he could. That made him more dangerous than the average mercenary for hire, much more dangerous than his two cohorts.

  Cuthred and Alger were watching her with interest from where they sat at a rickety table in the center of the room. The old man in the corner seemed afraid to look at her. Nel was stuffing a few scattered things into a sack. She was leaving, and quickly. So she was to have poisoned her? Wulfric had been right about that.

  Yet Milisant didn’t understand why these people were still here, why they still wanted her captured—dead. And she had to assume she was to be killed if Nel had been brought here to try to poison her.

  Had she completely misunderstood King John’s innuendos? If these were not the ones who were to be called off, then who? Or had John’s man simply been unable to find them yet to tell them? Jesu, had Wulfric been killed for nothing, because of a messenger’s tardiness?

  “You have erred,” she said in a voice hoarse with choking emotion.

  “Have I?” Ellery smiled at her. “When I do not make mistakes?”

  “But you have,” she insisted. “Whatever you do here, were you not told that the king has called this off? He no longer wishes me harm.”

  To that, Ellery shrugged and said simply, “We do not work for the king.”

  “Who then?”

  A new voice, heard as the door opened again. “They work for me.”

  Fifty-two

  He was a lord or a rich merchant, or so his raiments declared him. Rings and chains of gold, fine woolen hose, a tunic of thick velvet. He stood proudly, arrogantly, as if he expected everyone there to bow down to him. The look he turned on Milisant was gloating.

  But Ellery put a dent in the man’s apparent triumph when he said with such obvious disgust, “De Roghton, how do you keep finding us?”

  The lord stiffened. “That implies you have been hiding from me?”

  “Aye, it does, does it not?”

  Hot color suffused de Roghton’s face, hotter still when he saw Milisant’s surprise, that he would be spoken to like that. “How do you expect to get paid if you cannot be found?” he bit out.

  Ellery snorted. “Mayhap by going to you instead? But how is it you come here now, just as she is found?”

  “Mayhap as you have been watching for her, I have been watching for your success—belated as it is.”

  Ellery colored slightly now. The lord’s tone had been insulting, but Milisant could not detect an insult in the words. Ellery had heard it, though, whatever it was. Then it occurred to her…

  “Was there a time constraint on my capture?” she asked, though she did not really expect an answer. “You can at least tell me what this is about.”

  The lord was going to ignore her. She was to die. Explanations did not need to be wasted on her.

  But Ellery said, “Aye, she does deserve to know why. I would like to hear that answer myself, so answer her, Lord Walter.”

  She knew of no noble who would take such orders from a common mercenary, nor would this lord have. But he heard what she heard, the very real menace in Ellery’s tone, a subtle threat.

  De Roghton still tried to ignore it, demanding, “Why is she still alive?”

  Ellery took out his dagger. Milisant felt the blood leave her face. But the weapon was not for her—not yet anyway. He very calmly, very slowly, cleaned a fingernail with the tip of the blade. And then he looked back at de Roghton, stared at him, and continued to stare at him.

  After several tense moments of this, the lord answered her question, glaring at her as he did. “You should have died ere you were married. The joining of the Crispins and de Thorpes should not have occurred.”

  “Because King John was against it? ‘Twas his idea then? You are merely his lackey?”

  She should not have tried to insult him. Her words caused Ellery to laugh, which in turn enraged Walter de Roghton all the more. He could not hide it either as he glared at Ellery. The hate between these two men was palpable. Yet the one worked for the other?

  Despite his new rage, Walter de Roghton still answered her. “Nay, ‘twas my idea, but I had John’s tacit approval. He would have then recommended my daughter to Shefford for his son to marry.”

  “But the joining has occurred,” she pointed out. “You are too late.”

  “Nay, all is not lost, just not as ideal as it could have been. But young de Thorpe will still need another wife—when you are dead. John may still be benevolent enough to make the recommendation, since the solidity of the alliance will not be as firm with you dead.”

  She shook her head, inc
redulous over such reasoning. And besides, John had changed his mind.

  She pointed that out, telling him, “You delude yourself. You will find that John has withdrawn his approval. He has reaffirmed with both the earl and my father, and thus approves of my marriage now. He has sent his man to find those who have tried to harm me and tell them to desist. So it is you his man seeks but has yet to find?”

  “You lie,” Walter snarled, but she saw doubt in his eyes and pressed her point.

  “Do I? And what will be John’s reaction when he learns you have directly disobeyed him? Think you that you will live much longer than I will? And for what? I had to die just so your daughter could marry Wulfric. ‘Twas so hard to find her a husband, you had to kill to do so?”

  He took the insult to heart. “It goes much deeper than that, vixen. Anne should have been mine. I spent months courting her. Her wealth should have been mine. But de Thorpe was chosen over me.”

  “Ah, I see now. This was merely another bid for that wealth, since you yourself cannot manage to make your own fortune.”

  It was one insult too many for him. He took a step forward and slapped her. She had expected it, provoked it. What did she care, anyway, now that Wulfric was dead? And therein was the joke. The arrogant lord didn’t even know that the one he had hired to kill her had also killed the man he hoped would be his son-in-law.

  She was going to tell him, was going to throw it in his face, that every foul thing he had worked for had been destroyed by the swing of a sturdy branch. She would tell him just as soon as the truth could get past her choked emotions, caused by thinking of it again.

  But she didn’t get a chance to tell him. Ellery, for some reason, took exception to the lord hitting her. He swung him around, backhanded him once just for the pleasure of it, then stuffed his dagger into his gut. And she had been right. Not a single emotion crossed his handsome face as he killed a noble of the realm.

  His cohorts were less blasé about it, quite the opposite. They both jumped to their feet, one incredulous, the other horrified.