Behold the Dawn (36 page)

“Nasty little brawl, looks like. I just happened to be walking by, of course. Appears as though some of those poor wretches is going to be in need of a holy man.”

“I’ll fetch the bishop…” The servant’s voice started to fade, as he turned away.

“No—wait, wait! You have to help me carry them in first.”

Annan pressed farther into the corner, shoulders hunched and head bowed to accommodate the ceiling. He could hear the servant’s shifting feet following Marek into the entry chamber. Annan’s fingers squeaked against the sharkskin leather of his sword’s handgrip, and he again rubbed one of his bleeding hands across his tunic.

The candlelight drifted in through the door, was blocked momentarily by Marek’s shadow as he entered first, and then sprang forth again as the servant stepped inside.

Marek turned to face the servant and laid a finger to his lips. “Ssh!”

With Annan’s hand over his mouth and the sword’s edge against his ribcage, the lad shushed nicely. Marek caught the wavering candle and snuffed it between his fingers.

The servant thrashed against Annan’s grip, then came to rest with both hands clamped on the wrist of the hand against his mouth. Annan bent low, his jaw shoved up against his prisoner’s. “If you want to still have a heart in your chest tomorrow, then you’ll help us.”

The serving boy’s fingernails bit into Annan’s wrist.

“Bishop Roderic is holding my wife here.”

The squirming stopped for a moment. Then she
was
here, undoubtedly. And every jack of a servant knew of it. Annan pressed harder with the blade. “Where is she?”

The lad started to shake his head, but Annan clamped down on either cheekbone hard enough for this impudent underling to know how easy it would be for him to crush his face without even trying. The head shaking immediately became a nod.

“Do you swear by the Holy City that you will not cry out if I let you go?”

Another nod.

He released his hold on the boy’s mouth and drew back enough to take him by one shoulder and spin him around to face the door. “Take me to her.”

From the other side of the street that Marcus Annan and his servant had just strewn with the bodies of a Frankish-Syrian sentry group, Gethin the Baptist limped into a narrow glow of moonlight. He lifted his cowl over the gooseflesh of his tonsure. His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowing to a hawk’s-eye glint.

Annan had come. Just as Gethin had known he would, he had come. He folded his hands into his sleeves and picked his way across the muck of the street, avoiding the still forms that lay upon the road—detritus of the late battle.

His eyelids quivered. The quest for justice was almost at an end. For sixteen years, he had played the game, had nursed his hopes that everything that had happened to him at the Abbey of St. Dunstan’s would finally be made right. Roderic of Devonshire and Matthias of Claidmore—they were the ones who had caused him to be beaten like a rabid dog and then cast aside for dead. They were the reason he even still carried the deep, riving scars upon his person.

But they would finish what they had begun. Just as would Gethin himself. Justice would be had.
Truth
would conquer.

And Marcus Annan would become a prisoner with no other choice but to comply with Gethin’s demands.

At the doorway, he stopped and listened to the silence. Then, with a smile, he slipped inside.

Chapter XXVI

RODERIC’S SERVING LAD led Annan and Marek to a staircase at the end of the passage. At the bottom of the stairs lay a stone-encased dungeon. Packed with cells, and only a narrow path between them, it smelt of earth and rust and ash. Water dripped somewhere. Annan brushed his free hand against the wall and felt the stones’ moisture and the moss within the crevices.

“Who’s there?” a voice, heavy with sleep, called. “MacDonald, is that you?”

Prison guard.
“Answer him.” Annan prodded his guide’s shoulder.

The lad spoke through locked teeth. “Douglass, it’s Odo. From upstairs.”

The guard grunted. He jangled as he moved at the far end of the passage. Annan stopped short, one shoulder against the wall, and reached out to touch the other side of the passage. He had no room to maneuver here, and no way to rush the guard with this Odo lad stumbling along in front of him like a soggy bag of flour.

“Wait there ‘til I find a torch,” the guard, Douglass, grumbled. “If this is about the lassie again, ye can tell the bishop I ain’t no nursemaid. If’n he wanted to keep her alive, why in the name of Bethlehem’s star did he have that fool Earl of Guerrant drag her all the way to ill-fated Jaffa? Eh?” Flint sparked against steel, and half a dozen pinpricks of orange spiraled towards the floor before winking back into darkness.

Annan tightened his grip on his handful of Odo’s tunic, his eyes fixated on the spot of darkness that disguised the body of the guard. “Marek.”

The lad moved in closer, his breath hot against the back of Annan’s neck. “What?”

“Keep a hold on him.”

“A hold on who?”

Flint and steel kissed once more, and this time the torch burst to life, illuminating the hunched figure of a portly, balding Scotsman. Annan shoved both himself and Odo sideways in the narrow passage, giving himself just enough room to hurtle past. He released the servant’s tunic, leaving him to Marek, and once again closed both hands round his sword.

Douglass whirled to face him, his flint and steel clanging to the stones at his feet. “Sweet Virgin Mother! Who the devil are you?”

Annan didn’t slow, and the guard had not even time to withdraw his sword before Annan smashed into him, knocking him halfway down the passage with a blow from his forearm. The torch clattered to the floor, its guttering light splashing the dungeon with grotesque shadows. Annan stood over the fallen Douglass, sword at his throat. “Where’s the Lady Mairead?”

Gasping, Douglass inched himself onto one elbow and groped for a quivering front tooth. “She’s there—in the last cell—”

“Where are your keys?” He grabbed the man’s shirtfront and hauled him to his feet.

“Yessir, here they be. Take her— I wish you would.”

Annan dragged him to the end of the row. “Unlock it.”

“Yessir.”

“Mairead?” He leaned against the rusted iron of the door, praying in his heart that more than silence would answer his plea. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead. Gethin would not triumph in his twisted game to force Matthias back into the open. She would still be alive, and he would take her away from this place, and they would disappear forever. The past, as always, would have to fend for itself.

The key grated in the lock, and Douglass dragged the door across the stones. Annan shoved him aside and yanked the door all the way open. “Fetch the torch. Marek, keep an eye on him.”

Marek grunted. “All right. But hurry. This laddie here’s been eating too many raisin puddings of late, feels like.”

Annan stood in the doorway, seeing nothing but the shifting shadows as Douglass raised the torch from the floor. He fancied he could hear the rustling of blankets, heavy breathing, maybe a whispered prayer—and his heart thundered against his ribs. “Lady?”

This time he had no doubt he heard a quick exhalation. “Annan!”

He didn’t wait for Douglass and the torch; he stumbled into the cold darkness of the cell. His knees hit the frame of a raised couch, and Mairead’s warm fingers clutched his arm. “Oh, Annan— God
is
merciful—”

“Hush.” He buried his face in the hair that draped her neck and held her against him, this flesh and bone and blood that was his wife. He breathed her in—the scent of dust and damp upon her hair, the stink of fear and illness that clung to her body, the smell of life—indomitable and unbroken. She was alive, and he could feel her heart beating against the emptiness of his chest. For just right now that was all that mattered.

“Annan, I was so afraid—so afraid I’d die before you came—”

“We have to leave. Are you able?”

“Yes. I’m able. Take me away from here.”

She closed her arms around his neck and held him as though he would disappear if she couldn’t hang on tight enough.

“We
will
live through this,” he whispered and started to raise her in his arms, blankets and all.

Behind them, Marek yelped. “Annan!”

And then all Hell came tumbling down around their ears.

From the stairwell, Hugh de Guerrant and a man-at-arms burst into the dungeon, swords at the ready. Laughter rumbled in Hugh’s throat, deep and satisfied. “Well, Master Annan, you’re becoming rather predictable, are you not?”

For the space of one long second, Annan stood as he was, staring across the flickering of the torchlight into the Norman’s laughing eyes. Mairead’s fingers tightened upon his neck, and even with all the blankets between them, he could feel her chest constrict. “Annan—”

He dropped her to her feet, praying her legs would support her long enough for him to dispatch this enemy once and for all.

With a snarl, Hugh lunged. Letting Odo go, Marek spun into Hugh’s path, sword arced in front of him. Hugh caught it and parried without slowing. Marek’s weak shoulder, unable to withstand the brunt of the Norman’s strength, gave way, and his sword hurtled from his hand. The man-at-arms lunged for him, but Marek dove at his feet, rolling past him somehow and recapturing his blade.

Annan whipped his sword in front of him and stood before the door of Mairead’s cell, teeth bared. Since the fall of Acre, he had been waiting for this day. The beat of his blood throbbed in his left hip. Nay—since that day at the melee tourney in Paris, he had waited. And now the time had come.

He took one giant step forward and met Hugh’s unabated charge. Their swords tangled, the crash reverberating against the stone walls and against every bone of Annan’s arms. For a moment, they held, their straining faces only a hand’s breadth apart, before tearing away once more.

Annan kept nothing back. His strength thundered against Hugh’s, raining blow after blow upon the other’s sword. And Hugh gave way. Experienced though he might be, he was Annan’s match in neither strength nor skill.

The look of iron in Hugh’s eyes wavered, the long shadows beneath his cheekbones deepening. Annan grinned savagely. That expression was the only admission of the truth he would ever gain from Hugh de Guerrant: by himself, he would never be able to take Annan.

“Esmè!” Hugh roared.

From the other end of the cellblock, the man-at-arms risked a glance at his master’s plight, then whirled back to Marek, vigor redoubled. He slashed the lad’s blade back to the ground and kicked it away.

“Leave him!” Hugh shouted as he staggered beneath yet another of Annan’s tremendous blows.

Somewhere on the edge of his senses, Annan saw Marek scramble after his blade only to be tackled by the jailer. Then Esmè joined Hugh, and Annan became too busy to notice anything beyond the extra blade added to his own battle.

The two Normans, neither of them possessing his own breadth of shoulder, wedged themselves side by side in the narrow passage and pressed the attack. It was evident they had fought together many times before. Their movements segued, one thrusting, then falling back to allow the other to push forward. The cramped space was all in their favor; it kept Annan from maneuvering. Nothing but a straight, head-on approach could be accomplished here.

He fell back, parrying, always parrying. Sooner or later, he was going to run into the back wall of Mairead’s cell. And when they reached her, his choices would be restricted even further. Hugh and this henchman of his would not scruple to use her to their advantage.

The shadows began to lengthen; their battle was almost outside the range of the torchlight. Annan gritted his teeth, his blade flying as he struggled to gain an offensive foothold.

He watched the faces of his opponents, waiting for them to shift their attention, even ever so slightly, as an indication that they noticed Mairead. But they didn’t flinch. Perhaps she had retreated back inside. He couldn’t be more than a few steps from the entrance to her cell, but he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t sense her.

His breath burned within his lungs. Sweat beaded the edges of his scalp. In the palms of both hands, he could feel the slippery heat of the blood that seeped from his wounds. Already, his sword was less than solid in his grip.

With a strong overhand blow, Hugh drove him back another step, and Annan’s left shoulder collided with the doorframe. His concentration snapped. He stumbled, and the man-at-arms penetrated his defense with a lunge at his abdomen.

“No!” Mairead screamed from the darkness behind him. She hit his right side, both hands shoving against his shoulder, and instead of penetrating his innards, the sword glanced against bone.

He crashed against the cell wall so hard his vision turned to black. Before he could open his eyes, his head slammed the stones once more, and the chill of a blade pressed against his throat.

Cursing, Hugh knocked Annan’s blade from his bloody hands. “Were the decision mine, I’d lay you open where you stand.” His blade cut into Annan’s wind. “You may be thankful—very thankful—that Bishop Roderic has other uses for you.”

Annan strained a breath past his gritted teeth and twisted to find Mairead. She lay on the floor, propped up on one hand, the other pressed to her side.

“Put her back on the couch,” Hugh commanded, and Esmè bent to lift her. “You may be interested to know, my dear Countess, that—unlike your husband—
you
have now served every purpose your wretched life was intended to fulfill. Except one.” His eyes narrowed even as his teeth showed in a smile. “And that purpose, at long last, is my own.”

Annan lurched around, heedless of the blade at his throat, and swung blindly at Hugh. The Norman whipped his sword down and caught Annan’s blow before it had gone half its intended distance. The blade’s edge pierced the thin flesh of his lower arm and grated against bone. Annan’s other fist found Hugh’s chin like a moneyer’s hammer against his anvil. “Marek!”

“I can’t get to you!” The reply struggled from the other end of the passage.