Читать книгу Knight Triumphant - Heather Graham - Страница 8

CHAPTER 2

He was excellent at the art of killing. Eric knew it well. Against superior forces, he and his men always had the advantage of extreme training, experience, and the cold hard fact of desperation. But none of their expertise had ever wielded such a blow against the English as that of the strange disease that had seized their little band of rebels. One moment, they had been the most dreaded of the English king’s enemies; the next moment, they were a group of outcasts, shunned and feared by their captors. But even after their capture by the English, Eric had been confident of escape. He had allowed his own incarceration, planning on escaping walls and chains, to return for the others. He had known his ability to fight, to elude the strongest of his foes. He had never imagined that there would be an unseen enemy against whom all the prowess in the world was utterly futile. For all of his determination and strength, he had no power whatsoever against the illness that had ravaged their number. There was no enemy he had ever wanted to best with such passion, and no enemy who had ever had a greater power over him.

As they neared the great gates to Langley Castle, he was barely aware of the woman on the saddle before him, or even of his own men, as willing as he to risk their own lives for the return of their women, children, and compatriots. Of course, they had all already been exposed to the disease. It had come upon them when they returned from the sea with the lone survivor of a shipwreck. None of them had known, when they plucked the unlucky survivor from the waves, that they had taken death itself from the brine, and that the man’s ship had gone down because none aboard his damned vessel had been able to fight the onslaught of the storm. The man had never regained consciousness. Within hours after coming aboard, he acquired the dreaded boils.

None had thought to return him, still breathing, to the sea whence he had come; they knew that they had brought death aboard. Only when the fellow had breathed his last, had he been returned to the water.

Soon after they had brought their own small boats back to shore, the English had come upon their camp, not knowing then that they had just captured the promise of certain death. Though Eric and many of the others had been apart from the band when King Edward’s men seized hold of the group, they had allowed their own capture, aware in their depleted condition and poor numbers that their only sure chance to rescue their women from the grip of the enemy was to come among them and discover the weaknesses among their captors and their prison. They had gone so far as to warn the English as to the manner of prisoner they were taking. The enemy had not believed them.

Now, they did.

Even as they rode the last stretch of distance to their destination, they could see that black crosses had been painted here and there around the walls, warning any who might venture too near that death lay within.

“Tell the guard to open the gates,” he commanded his captive, reining in.

Castle Langley rose high before them. A Norman fortification, it had high, solidly built stone walls, and a moat surrounded the edifice. It was an excellent estate, one that stood on a hill surrounded by rich valleys. It was near the vast hereditary Bruce holdings, except that Robert, recently anointed king of Scotland, now held less than he ever had as a first earl of the land. Edward of England had come to lay his heavy fist of domination with a greater vengeance and anger than ever. The Scots had a king they could admire, one behind whom they could fight for a free Scotland. But being crowned king, and becoming king, in Scotland were far from one and the same.

“You will but have me open the gates of death,” she said softly.

“Call out; have them open the gates,” he said. “We are a band of dead men riding already.”

“Guard!” she called. “It is I, Igrainia, lady of Langley. Cast down the bridge.”

There was motion on the parapets high above them, and a reply.

“My lady, where is your guard? You must be away from this place; you must not reenter here!”

“Open the gates; lower the bridge.”

“Sir Robert has said that you must not return—”

“I am lady here; open the gates.”

“You ride with madmen; you come with rebels—”

“The guard will die if you do not open the gates.”

“Oh, my lady! For your own dear life—”

“I am commanding you. Open the gates. Let down the bridge.”

For a moment Eric feared that the woman might not have the authority she should wield; despite his desperation, he had not come here ill prepared, without knowledge regarding the situation at Langley. The lady here was a woman of greater importance than the lord. Though her husband had been a Scottish peer in his own right—one who had maintained a loyalty to Edward of England—this woman, wife of the perished lord, was the daughter of an English earl, a man who had gained his title some years back through an ancestor born on the wrong side of the English royal blanket.

The sound of gears and pulleys creaked against the stillness of the day. The gates began to lower to span the moat. Here, near the sea, it was an oddly clean body of water, for the moat joined a stream that cut a blue ribbon across the green plain toward the rocky coastline where the land joined the sea. Moments later the gate was down, and entry to the castle was but yards away. He spurred his horse and entered into the courtyard.

A pathetic show of troops came mustering from the tower keep as his band of men came clattering over the bridge. Though clad in mail and the colors of their late lord, the group that greeted them did not draw weapons, but formed a semicircle around their horses, waiting. They seemed to be leaderless, strangely adrift.

“Set me down!” Igrainia said, “if you would manage this without bloodshed.”

He didn’t like her tone, it was as rasping as her mere existence. But her words made sense toward his one driving goal, that of reaching Margot, his daughter, Aileen, and the others. It was all he could do to keep from throwing the woman down from his horse. She was anathema to him, hair pitch black when he sought a woman with a head of hair as golden and glowing as the sun, eyes a curious dark shade of violet when his world had come to rise and set in a gaze as soft and blue as the most beautiful spring morning.

Alive and well and walking while Margot lay dying . . .

He lifted the Englishwoman with a forced control and set her to the ground before dismounting behind her.

“Where is Sir Robert Neville?” she asked.

One of the guardsmen stepped forward.

“My lady, he is . . . he is abed.”

“Does anyone tend to him?” she asked anxiously.

Eric lost his patience, stepping around her. “I am Eric Graham, emissary of the rightful king of this holding, Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Lay down your arms, and your lives will be spared. The castle is now in the hands of the Scots who honor and acknowledge Robert Bruce as king.”

He glanced back at Peter MacDonald, who had ridden at his heels, giving a quick nod that he should now take over as the authority. Ignoring all else, he then started across the courtyard to the door to the keep, knowing exactly where the prisoners, even though near death, were held. It might have been a foolish move; a guard with a death wish of his own might have brought a battle sword piercing through his back. Behind him, he could hear the fall of arms as his men dismounted from their horses and collected the weapons. Peter MacDonald, a man who had been his right hand since the coronation of the king, began shouting the orders. Eric had complete confidence in Peter: the Scottish nationalists with whom he rode had survived thus far by covering one another’s back. They had become so tightly knit in their numbers, they nearly thought alike.

He was prepared for some sign of resistance when he entered into the great hall, but there was no one there, other than an old man hunched in a chair by the fire. The old man tried to stir at the sight of Eric, but the effort seemed too great. He fell back into the chair, watching Eric as Eric watched him.

“You’ve the disease, man?” Eric asked, his voice seeming to bellow across the stone expanse.

“Aye. But survived, I believe,” the fellow replied, watching Eric. “You’ve come to take the castle, sir? You’ve taken hell, sir, that’s what you’ve done. Slay me, if you will. I would serve you, if I could.”

Eric waved a hand. “Save your strength. Tell me, where are the rest of those who serve the castle?”

“Dead, many dead. Sir Robert Neville fell, and the Lady Igrainia’s maid tends him in his room. The guards . . . not yet afflicted, keep to the courtyard and the armory. The Lord of Langley was laid hastily into the crypt, walled into his grave, lest his sickness travel; his wife could not bear that he should be burned, as the rest of the victims.”

“And what of the prisoners and their guards?”

“Fallen together below in the dungeons.”

“And who tends them?”

“Those who still stand on two feet among their own number. Before . . . ah, well, the lady of the castle tended to the dying, until she was sent from here that her life might be spared.”

“Rest, old man. When you’ve strength, you might yet be called upon to serve.”

Eric strode through the hall, finding the passage that led from the hall to the winding stone stairs that led below. Hell. . . the man had said. Hell had been planned long before any disease for those incarcerated here. The damp stairs to the bowels of the castle seemed endless; the prisons here were sure to bring about disease all on their own, fetid, molded, wretched. Those brought here to the belly of the fortification were among the dead, long hallways with crypts where past lords and ladies, knights, nobility, and those who had served them well lay in perpetual silence and rot, some in no more than misty shrouds that barely hid the remnants of finery and bone, while some were walled with stone and remembered with fine chiseled monuments. The passages of dead came before the cells with their iron bars, chains and filthy rushes. The dead of the household were far more honored here than the prisoners brought in with little hope for life.

Eric passed through the crypts and knew he neared the cells again as he heard the sound of moaning. Ducking beneath an archway he came to a large, thick wooden door with a huge bolt; the bolt was not slid into place and the great door gaped. Pushing through, he saw the cells, and those who lay within them.

There were no soft beds or pallets here. The stench was so overwhelming that he wavered as he stood, but for no more than a matter of seconds. On either side of the hall, the sick and dying lay like piles of cast-off clothing. He entered to the right, where he had been kept with Margot and his daughter. He rolled a body over, saw where the boils on the man had swollen and burst. He did not recognize the dead man, who had surely been one of his own. He looked at a death more heinous than any horrible torture devised by his enemies.

The dead should have been taken away, their sad remains burned to keep the pestilence from spreading. Here . . .

“Margot!” he whispered his wife’s name, because the scene would allow for no more than a whisper, and he moved through the bodies around him on the rushes. He could not find Margot, but even in his desperation, as he searched, a burst of fury and fear gave him a force of energy that was near madness; he made some sense of the room, finding those who breathed, with signs of life, and lifted and carried them, separating the living from the dead.

“She is not here.”

He started at the sound of the woman’s voice.

Igrainia of Langley stood at the entrance to the cell, watching him, holding a large ewer.

“Where is she?”

“Several of the women were brought to the solar above,” she told him. As if she had known what he had been about, she approached those who still showed signs of life. She seemed heedless of the scent of rot and the horror that surrounded her. Despite her elegant apparel, she came down to the rushes among the living, her touch careful as she lifted heads to bring water to parched lips.

He strode to her, catching a handful of her hair to draw her face to his, his intent at the moment not cruel but born of greater desperation. “Where is the solar?”

“Above. Take the stairs from the great hall, to the tower. There is sun there. Father MacKinley believes the sun may have the power of healing.”

He still had a handful of ebony hair in his hands. His fingers tightened.

“Come with me.”

“If you care nothing for these, your friends—”

“They are my life’s blood. But my men will be along. They will see that the dead are burned, and that the others are brought from this deadly morass as well.”

Even as he spoke, he heard footsteps along the stone flooring that led to the cells. James of Menteith and Jarrett Miller had come. The Lady of Langley stood gracefully, yet gritted her teeth. “My hair, sir. I will accompany you with greater facility if you will be so good as to release me.”

He did so, unaware that he had maintained his death grip upon the black tresses.

She handed the ewer to James and pointed out where she had brought water, and what survivors remained. She stepped carefully around the prone Scots upon the floor and left the bars, her footsteps silent upon the stone where the men’s heavier tread had created a clatter. Eric nodded to James, who inclined his head in return, then followed after the Lady of Langley.

Once returned to the hall, he found that they traveled up a staircase amazing in its breadth for such a fortified castle. Though this stronghold had been built to repel an enemy, some resident had taken pains to turn the place into more of a manor. The stairway he followed was not stone, but intricately carved wood. It led to a second landing with a long hallway and doors where the lady did not pause, but continued on to a smaller staircase. There, arrow slits lined the stone and she passed them all, coming to a large room filled with daylight. Makeshift beds littered the space, and light from a break in the ceiling seemed to cast a ray of hope over those who lay there. A priest moved among the beds, a young slender man in the black garment of his calling. He seemed surprised to see his lady at the doorway, and called to her with a frown. “Igrainia, you were to be away from all this!” he chastised.

She stepped inside. “This is Sir Eric, Father MacKinley,” she said, and walked into the room, approaching a bed. Eric nodded to the priest and followed Igrainia.

He fell to his knees by the pallet; he had found Margot at last. She seemed to be sleeping. No boils or poxes appeared to mar the beauty of her face. Yet as he touched her face, it was as if he touched flame. He saw where the boils had grown upon a collarbone and on her neck, and he was tempted to weep.

He stared up at Igrainia of Langley. “Save her,” he commanded.

She found water and brought it to Margot’s side and began to bathe her forehead.

“Where is my daughter?” he asked.

“Your daughter?” said the priest.

“My child. Aileen. Young, blond hair, pale, soft as silk.”

There was a silence from the priest.

“My daughter, man! There were not so many young children among our number!”

The priest nodded. “The little angel,” he murmured. “Sir, God has taken her.”

He rose from his wife’s side, pain a blinding arrow through his heart. He approached the priest like a madman, tempted to take him by the throat and crush flesh and bone. Some sense delayed him from his purpose, and he paused before the man, who had not flinched. Eric stood before him, fists clenching and unclenching, muscles taut and straining.

“Where is her body?”

“Yonder room,” the priest said quietly. “We meant to do her honor in death.”

“You knew I would come and kill you,” Eric said in a bitter breath.

“She was a child, and beloved by all. What fear have we of violent death, of murder, when we work here?” the priest replied, and even in his madness, Eric knew it was true.

“You,” he said, pointing to the priest, “you will bring me to my child. And you,” he said, pointing at Igrainia, “you will bring Margot to a room alone, and you will spend your every moment seeing that she breathes. If she ceases to do so . . .”

He let his voice trail.

“What of the others?” the lady asked.

“We are here now. And we will drop down in death ourselves before we let our kindred lie in rot and die without our care. Ready a chamber for my lady wife. Nay, the master’s chamber. See that she is surrounded by the greatest possible comfort. Priest, now you will take me to my daughter.”

The priest led him quickly from the solar, opening the door to a small room in the hall just beyond. There, on a long wooden storage cabinet, lay the body of his daughter.

For a moment he couldn’t move.

He felt the priest at his back.

“There is comfort in knowing that she rests with our Lord God in Heaven—” the man began.

“Leave me!” Eric said sharply.

The door closed behind him instantly.

He walked forward, forcing his feet to move. He looked down upon Aileen’s face, and his knees sagged beneath him and tears sprang to his eyes. He swallowed and reached out for her. Her poor little body was cold. He cradled her against him as if he could warm her, smoothing his long, calloused fingers through the infinitely fine tendrils of her hair. Aileen, with her laughter and her smile and her innocence of the cruelty of the world around her. Aileen, with her little arms outstretched to him, calling him, each time he had been away, her little footsteps bringing her to him. And he would bend down and scoop her into his arms, and she would cup his face in her hands and kiss his cheek and say his name again with such sweet trust that he knew that the world itself was worth saving, that freedom was worth fighting for . . .

Innocence, trust beauty . . . dead. The sun had gone out of the world.

This time, when his knees failed him, he fell to the floor, cradling her lifeless form in his arms.

Alone among the sick in the solar, Igrainia looked about with dismay. Among the Scots seized and still living, there was an older woman with long, graying hair. She would survive, Igrainia thought. Her boils had broken, and she was breathing still. The pestilence here was as strange as death itself; this woman had lived many years; she appeared frail and weak. Yet she would survive.

Another younger woman seemed to slip away as Igrainia bathed her forehead. The two others in the room were young as well, both still holding on. Igrainia lowered her head to the chest of one, and heard that the rattle had left her breathing; she, too, would survive. And the other . . .

“Water!” came a desperate and pathetic whisper.

“Carefully, carefully,” Igrainia warned, holding the woman’s head. She was, perhaps, twenty, almost as light as Margot. Igrainia forced her to drink slowly, then nearly dropped her head back to the pallet as a cry suddenly seemed to rip through the stone walls. It was more than a cry, more like a howl of fury, despair and anguish. It was like the sound of a wolf, lifting its head, giving a shattering curse upon heaven itself, and she knew that the Scotsman had seen his daughter.

She looked up at a sound in the doorway and saw her maid, Jennie, a frightened and startled look upon her face as they both listened to the echoes of the cry.

“My God. We are haunted now by monsters!” Jennie whispered. “My lady . . .”

She ran across the room and greeted Igrainia with a fierce and trembling hug. “You did not make it away; the Scotsmen came. They are here, now, among us. They won’t understand that we have done all we can. Mary was working in the dungeons, until she fell there, she lies among them still. Father MacKinley and I are all who walk now, even Garth fell ill, you know, yet survived, the boils did not come to him, he thinks he might have suffered a similar illness as a child. Berlinda in the kitchen fell ill in the scant time you were away. Sir Robert Neville stood upon the parapets watching you go . . . then took instantly to his bed. Oh, lord, this man will kill us, won’t he, we might as well have all fallen to the plague! So few of us are left . . .”

Jennie was still in Igrainia’s arms, shaking. Igrainia pulled away from her. Sir Eric’s agony over his child would last some time, but then he would be back.

“Jennie, we must be strong. Tell me, first, who tends Sir Robert Neville?”

“I keep watch over him. Molly, Merry, John . . . Tom, the kitchen lad.”

“Where is Sir Neville?”

“In his chambers. We are doing all we can.”

“Why were the remaining prisoners ignored in the dungeons?”

Jennie stared at her, wide eyed. “How could we tend to more? We are all dying. And the smiths and merchants in residence in the courtyard . . . they all fight for their own lives. But what difference does it make now? We are all doomed.”

“This rebel doesn’t know that the Earl of Pembroke ordered Sir Niles Mason to find what Bruce forces he could and bring them here for their fates to be decided. Nor does he realize that Sir Niles took his troops and left at the first sign of the disease!” Igrainia said bitterly. “He thinks that Afton was responsible.”

“And he knows he would have been executed,” Jennie said, her voice rising with fear. “Tied to a horse’s heels, dragged over rocks and debris, hanged until half dead, cut to ribbons, castrated, and not beheaded until it was certain he could feel no pain!”

“Perhaps that wouldn’t have been his fate.”

“It’s the order Sir Niles said he had been given! I heard him, my lady, I heard him telling your husband what must be done. Afton argued that no executions should take place here, but Sir Niles was determined. He said that the rebel, Eric Graham, had fought far too long and too often against King Edward—first with William Wallace, and now, for Robert Bruce. He is a known outlaw, lady. He was to be an example. His wife was to be given to the troops. And as to his daughter . . . oh, Lord!” She crossed herself quickly. “Sir Niles thought it so amusing. The child was too young for much entertainment, but she was the spawn of a rebel and would grow to be a traitor, and if she was murdered, it would be best.”

“Afton would have never allowed the slaughter of a child.”

“Igrainia, Lord Afton had little rule over Sir Niles, not when his orders came from the Earl of Pembroke, who is following the direct command of King Edward! And Robert Bruce may have had himself crowned king of the Scots, but he hasn’t taken hold of Scotland, certainly not here. King Edward’s men hold almost everything in the lowlands, from the small farms and hamlets to the great castles. Igrainia, I swear, as well, that we have tended to the sick, to all of them, as Afton first said we must, then as we promised you, when Sir Robert insisted you flee. There are many alive who would not be if you hadn’t had us tend them.”

“The fact that so many are alive seems to have little effect upon the wrath of this man. Perhaps he cannot see the truth now, but he must. For all of our people who remain alive, Jennie, and who may survive, we must do everything we can now for the prisoners.” She felt her own voice rising slightly. The prisoners! Now, they were the prisoners. “My chamber must be prepared. Clean sheets, fresh water. Fresh rushes. His wife will be cared for there. We must . . . we must keep her alive.”

“He will kill us, one way or the other.”

“Jennie!” Igrainia took her maid by the shoulders and shook her lightly. “He will not kill us while he needs us.”

“But . . . your chamber. Where . . .” Her voice wavered and she gave up speaking.

“Where Afton died,” Igrainia said softly. “It doesn’t matter. He has said that she will be brought there. Jennie, we need to keep her alive.”

“She is dying.”

“She must not die.”

Jennie seemed to understand then. She straightened, nodded to Igrainia, and hurried out. Igrainia turned her attention to Margot once again, trying to cool the woman and sorry once again that someone so gentle and kind, who had worked tirelessly among the others, had been stricken. But this pestilence had struck with ravaging cruelty, bypassing so very few of them. Years before, when she was in France, the village where she was staying, outside Paris had suffered a similar fate, and she and Jennie had nearly died then. She did not fall now because of that terrible time, she knew, yet this illness was so devastating she didn’t know if it wouldn’t sicken her in the end after all. When Afton had died, it hadn’t seemed to matter.

There were herbs that would help bring down the ravaging fevers, sometimes, and there were broths that could be forced between the lips of the sick. But little done by man seemed to make a difference.

“The master chamber is prepared for my wife?”

He stood in the doorway, now as harsh and cold and pale as the ice sheets of the northern waters by winter. She might have felt a great pity for a man who had lost his child and let out such a terrible admission of pain in a single cry, but now . . . he was frightening in his steel control.

“Yes.”

He walked across the room. Heedless of contagion himself, he lifted his wife with the utmost care and tenderness. “You will show me where to go,” he said.

“But the others here—”

“Your priest will return. And my men are bringing the others from the wretched hell into which you have cast them.”

“They were cared for, always, wherever they lay. It was my husband’s order.”

The scathing look he gave her did far more than infer that she was a liar. “Show me where we are going.”

Igrainia did so, leading the way down the stairs and to the master’s chamber. She was almost embarrassed by the richness of it as they entered, certain that the quality within was but something else that he would hold against her, Afton, and the household where his people had been brought. Langley Castle had first been built when the Conqueror had come north, and in those days, it had been stern rock and wall, loaded with weaponry, and manned to keep King William’s borders against the wild tribal clansmen of Scotland safe. The Conqueror had spent his life proving his position against the Saxons of England as well, and therefore needed strongholds rather than royal residences. But over time, and in the days of King David I of Scotland, borders had changed, and intermittently, during the years, there had been times of friendship between the two countries. During the reign of Alexander, the castle had been given to the first Langley, and each succeeding lord had married well, until here, in the master’s chamber, the walls were hung with the richest tapestries. Arabian rugs had been brought back from the Crusades to warm the floors, and a magnificently carved bed had been brought from France. Flemish lacework edged the sheets; pillows were made of softest down; and sleek furs scattered over the bed that stood before the great hearth. The room was furnished with trunks and a wardrobe from France, marble-covered tables from Italy, and great shields upon the wall crossed with swords from Spain, Germany and the finest arms manufacturers in England.

He didn’t notice the furnishings, only that the bed was vast and comfortable, a good place to lay his lady. When she was down, and he had smoothed the damp blond tendrils from her face, he stood back. “You will save her.”

“I will do all that I can.”

“You have killed my child.”

Ice seemed to race along her spine. He spoke the words without malice or anger, merely as if they were a simple truth. “God, sir, has taken your child.” She wanted to add that she was sorry, so very sorry, because his agony was such a terrible thing, almost palpable on the air.

But she dared not. He stared at her with red-rimmed eyes of loathing.

“You will keep Him from taking my wife,” he said bitterly.

She thought he would leave the room, but he did not. He brought one of the heavy wooden chairs from the window to the bed and sat there, taking his wife’s ashen hand in his own, and looking upon her face.

“She is as hot as fire.”

“Then you must move so that I can cool her.”

Jennie had left fresh cool water on the marble-topped table near the bed. Igrainia first set the kettle upon the hearth where a poor fire burned, then began dousing clothes in the water. When she turned back to the woman she found that he was frowning, his eyes blue blades again, so sharp as to cut into her.

“You’ve gone so far as to steal the rags of clothing from her back?”

“She is swaddled, sir, because the only way to ease the fever is to cool her skin from head to toe. I will brew herbs with wine as well, for some have the power to heal, as surely you know.”

“If you poison her, you will die very slowly. There are some interesting torture devices to be found in the foul dungeons below where we were kept.”

“There is no real threat you can give me. But since I pray that you don’t set forth upon a bloodbath and murder the men and women who live in this castle, I can promise you, I have no intention of poisoning your wife. Nor sir, would I ever do such a thing. You malign my husband, who is now judged by God alone. If you were blessed with half the intelligence of your brute strength, sir, you would have realized that when you were brought in.”

She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but gave her entire attention to the task at hand, bathing the woman to slake the fever.

As the day wore on, he saw what she did, and tried to help. When he realized her dismay at the poor flames in the hearth, he went to fetch wood, and when she dropped each herb into the mulling wine, she had to give him a detailed explanation of just what she used, and why.

During the long afternoon his men came to the door and gave him reports on what was being done to secure the castle or who had lived, and who had died. Father MacKinley came, and flagons were filled from the great kettle of mulling wine so that he could treat the others as well. Except to fetch wood and kindling for the fire when it was needed, the rebel Scot did not leave the room at all, and when he was not working to bring down his wife’s fever, he sat by her side, holding her hand. What emotion he felt he did not display, other than in the ticking of a blood vessel at his throat, and in the tension in his muscled forearms, and the tightening of his hands.

“Have you suffered the fever yourself, ever?” she asked him once.

His cold Nordic blue eyes touched hers. “No.”

“You are at great risk.”

“We have been at great risk.”

“From where had you come to bring this fever with you?”

He scowled at her, as if talking to her was an extreme bother, but he gave her a reply. “I don’t know where this fever came from. We found a man at sea . . . his shipmates had apparently perished. We thought to save his life. Instead, he has taken all ours.”

“Perhaps,” she said, changing the cloth on the woman’s forehead, “it was God’s judgment.”

“Perhaps it was God’s judgment that the English should seize upon women and children and bring them here, and so kill many more English than Scots,” he said sharply. “And what makes you think I honor your God?”

She started. “The God of England is the God of Scotland.”

“But I am not entirely a Scotsman, lady. So don’t think that I will stop at anything because of Christianity or a fear of Hell.”

“I have no doubts that you would kill as brutally as any man alive.”

“No man alive is more brutal than Edward of England.”

That was difficult to argue. Not a man, woman, or child alive had not heard tales of the king’s fury when he sacked Berwick. Orders had been given that none should be spared, and women, children and infants had been struck down as they ran in terror. Only the slaying of a mother at the moment of giving birth at last brought the king’s own horror home to him, and only then did the carnage come to an end.

“Edward is merciless against those he considers to be traitors,” she said.

“I am merciless against those I consider to be traitors—or murderers,” he replied.

A knock sounded at the door and he went to answer the summons. A man he had called Patrick stood there, and spoke to him in quiet tones. A moment later, he closed the door and returned to the room, showing Igrainia a parchment.

“There lies the love of your king! It’s an order delivered at the end of an arrow shot far from the gates, warning that we must not spread the plague from Langley. How intriguing. It seems that the troops who swept down upon women and children, refusing to believe in the illness, managed to depart your husband’s castle at the first sign we were telling the truth. They have crossed the border, and are ordered to remain in an abbey there until they are certain they will not bring this contagion into England. It’s a pity that none of the king’s lackeys could have delivered it straight into Edward’s bosom. The Earl of Pembroke, that illustrious battle arm of Edward, has sent word that none should leave here until all are certain that the illness will not be spread beyond these gates. There is lengthy rhetoric here, which you are welcome to read, but in truth, it says that all must die with the Scottish rebel prisoners rather than risk infesting the land. Of course, the message has been sent to your late husband. Apparently, no one has received word of his demise. But you must be grateful, of course, that I waylaid you before you were able to disobey an order from the long arm of your king.”

“No reasonable man would want this plague spread. It came to Langley through your people. It is an enemy to you, and to me. Any ruler, mindful of his subjects, would give such an order.”

“Madam, you are very understanding. What would your father think, however, knowing that his child must be sacrificed along with all the others!”

“My father, sir, cannot share his thoughts on the matter. He has been dead some months now.”

“Ah! So the king can cast you to your fate with no fear of reparation among his greatest barons. Ah, but, surely, there is someone to claim the title now?”

“My brother.”

“And, pray tell, does he fight for Edward?”

“He is expected to ride with him soon. He just turned seventeen.”

“Just seventeen? Do you know how many young men of that age litter not just the battlefields here, but the farmsteads and villages as well?”

“Justin is an excellent horseman and swordsman. The king has taken a keen interest in his training, and has been intent that he should be fully prepared to command his elders.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Poor lad. He is an earl. He can’t be taking orders from lesser men. Yet I wonder if he is aware of what has occurred here, news can travel so slowly. And if he knew . . . what could he do? Orders have been given. So his dear sister must stay here . . . languishing among the doomed!”

“By the time my brother hears of the situation here, it will be over.”

“And how shall it all end?” he asked lightly, and she realized that he didn’t want an answer. He was watching his wife where she lay upon the bed. He leaned toward her, then told Igrainia tensely, “Her fever does not lessen.”

“I am afraid she has fallen very ill.”

“You know that you must save her.”

“I know only that I can do my best.”

“If she dies—”

“Aye, yes, I know, you will murder us all. Then you must, for I can do all that is in my power, but I am not invested with magic.”

Again, he did not seem to be paying any heed. His eyes were upon his wife, and though she loathed him, she felt an odd chill, wondering what great love he must have for this woman that he could think that anyone, any power, could fight death.

She was startled when he replied to her after several moments. “That is not what they say.”

Igrainia stared at him, but his steady gaze remained upon his wife. He knew much more about Langley Castle, and about her, than she had imagined.

She measured her answer carefully. “If I were a witch, sir, with magic beyond that of healing herbs, I would have saved my own husband.”

That brought his steady gaze to her at last, and he slowly arched a brow. “Madam, your marriage was arranged at your birth, and you have been lady here less than a year.”

She felt the hot burning of her eyes, and she was furious. It was one thing that he should come here, fight her people, demand the castle, and mourn his child while demanding that she keep his wife alive. Force and power, even brute cruelty might be expected in war, and these were violent and dangerous times.

But that he should know her life, and mock her love for so fine a man, seemed an invasion that went beyond the power of a victor. She locked her jaw tightly, fighting tears before she replied. Then her anger infused her words with strength. “How dare you? How dare you suggest that . . . You did not know Afton. You could never know a man like Afton, never understand a man like Afton. The world to you is take and seize with your sword, with your violence. Fight with such fury that you will always win. There are those alive who can see the plight of others, men with minds as well as brawn, who will not practice cruelty because cruelty has been practiced against them. My husband was such a man, with both strength and gentleness, and had I been his wife but one day, sir, I would have loved him with a deeper passion, admiration, and respect than you could ever begin to understand.”

His gaze remained on her and she waited for—expected—mocking words in return. But after a moment he turned to his wife. “Then I am sorry for your loss. But still, this is—was—your husband’s holding. And it was he, surely, who ordered that prisoners, dying and in pain, be kept in the dank bowels of a castle, there the quicker to die.”

“It was not Afton! The king’s men came—”

“A lord need not bend a knee so low, even to a king.”

“You fight and bow to yours.”

“I choose to stand behind mine. He does not cross the lines of right and wrong—those lines drawn by your God, my lady.”

“How wondrous—when it is said that he did away with the last man to compete with him for the throne by doing a murder.”

He twisted where he sat, staring at her coldly, but not denying the charge. “Many men have betrayed one another in this struggle. But the die is cast now, and Bruce is king. King of Scotland. None of this is important now. My wife is.”

She walked to the bed, standing at his side, trying very hard not to tremble. “I have done what was in my power for your lady, for your people. I will fight to save her life. Not because you will kill me—or even others—if I don’t. But because your are mistaken when you think that my lord husband did not know compassion, and what was right, and wrong, in the eyes of God. And humanity.”

“Perhaps you should give your speech about humanity to Edward of England.”

“As you have said, kings are not important here, this lady is. Speak no more about my husband, if you would have me tend your wife—with you in the room.”

He stood, coming to his full height and size, which sent her back a step.

His fingers bit into her shoulder, but stopped short of inflicting real pain.

“She must live!” he said, and in his words she at last sensed his desperation, and the weakness within the man.

“I swear to you that I will try.”

He released her, and took his chair again, and in a few minutes’ time, she had him hold his wife so that she could do her best to get some of the healing brew of wine and herbs between the lips of his beloved Margot.

Again, then, she began the bathing with cold cloths.

An hour later, it seemed that Margot’s fever had cooled somewhat. Father MacKinley came to the room and told Igrainia that she must rest. She shook her head firmly before the Scotsman could reply to him. “I am fine for now, Father.”

“Sir, I would speak with you for a moment, if you would allow me,” Father MacKinley said to Eric.

The Scotsman rose and went to the door with the priest. Igrainia kept vigil at the woman’s side, praying.

She was startled when Eric called her sharply. “Madam, the priest has need of you for a moment’s time.”

Arching a brow, Igrainia rose from the bedside and walked to where Father MacKinley stood.

“I will return her immediately,” the priest vowed.

The man nodded, turning back to his wife.

Still amazed, Igrainia followed the priest into the hall. “Where are we going?”

“Sir Robert Neville tosses in a fever, but he has asked to see you. It may well be a last request, and so Sir Eric has said you may have a minute.”

They hurried down the hall to Robert’s chamber. Igrainia swept in, alarmed to see how seriously ill Robert had grown in such a short time. She immediately took the water by the bed and began bathing his face. Robert was a handsome man, her husband’s second cousin. He was gifted with sable brown hair and deep, haunting eyes. His features were very fine, as Afton’s had been, and usually, when he stood, he was lean and straight, and he both rode and fought with courage and skill.

Now his face was pale, and his eyes seemed like stygian pools. He caught her hand as she cooled his face.

“Igrainia!”

“Robert, rest.”

“You’re alive, safe . . .”

“Aye, Robert. I’m well.”

“They have the castle. The outlaws, the barbarians . . . you must find a way to leave.”

“Aye, Robert, don’t worry.” She glanced at Father MacKinley; they both knew she’d be forgiven any lie. “Don’t worry. I will get away. They pay little heed to me.”

He almost seemed to have forgotten her.

“It should have been mine now. It shouldn’t have fallen. . . to this. To them. King Edward should have bestowed the castle on me. Now . . . it is death, they are death. You mustn’t worry. I was Afton’s kinsman, I will take the castle again, I will see that you are safe . . . that you are safe with me.”

“Aye, Robert, don’t worry. You must save your strength. I’m brewing herbs in warm wine, and you will drink it and sleep and fight this illness. We’ll survive, we’ll both survive, and the castle will be ours again.”

He still held her hand, but he had no power. She slipped free from his grasp, slipping his arm back beneath the sheets. When she looked up, she saw that Eric Graham had come to the door and was watching her. She didn’t know what he had heard.

“You must come,” he said simply.

She nodded. Robert Neville’s eyes had closed; he wasn’t dead, she saw with relief, only sleeping. She hurried to the Scotsman, and walked back across the hall again.

Margot was tossing again, burning with heat. Igrainia immediately began bathing her with cool cloths, harnessing the rampaging fever.

Eric imitated her every action. At last, the fever somewhat abated. It appeared that Margot slept in some peace once again.

The Scotsman continued to pace, then paused by the mantel at last, staring into the fire.

Igrainia sank into the chair by her bedside, watching Margot.

She kept that vigil through the night.

When morning came, she stretched, having fallen into a doze in the chair. The woman still breathed.

The Scotsman was still standing by the fire. She doubted that he had taken a minute’s sleep, all through the night.

Igrainia touched Margot’s lips gently, then rose and told Eric, “She is still with us. I need more kindling for the fire. And now, we must get some more plain, cool water past her lips. If you would help me here . . . please.”

He turned away from the mantel where he had leaned. His color had gone from the ruddy glow of health to the pale ash of illness.

“Tell me what I must do.”

His voice rasped. It seemed he would walk to her, but could not manage to make his legs move.

Igrainia gasped, staring at him, then walked instinctively his way.

“You are about to—”

Even as she neared him, the great power of the man gave way, and his imperious length of muscle, sinew and strength went crashing to the floor.

She came to a halt, wincing.

Then she froze, waiting to see if he would move.

He did not.

She came to her knees at his side. His eyes were closed. They opened briefly, a deep, dark blue. He moved his lips to speak but no sound came. He reached out. His long fingers fell short of touching her face. His eyes closed once again.

Igrainia hesitated, then laid her fingers against the ashen flesh of his face.

His flesh burned with a heat like the fires of hell.

He wielded no power over any man then.