Dragonblade Trilogy - 01 - Dragonblade (14 page)

She hung her head
moodily, eventually distracted by a noise off to her left.  She turned to see
the young squire quit the stables and head towards the keep.  He was a tall
lad, blond, and seemed nice enough.  As she watched him avoid a pile of horse
dung, she remembered what the intruder back at Forestburn had called him;
young
Edward
. He said that he had been sent to retrieve him. Toby remembered
asking Tate once if he was running from someone and he assured her that he was
not.  But he had come to Cartingdon Parrish to raise money for young King
Edward’s cause, a boy crowned while still quite young and now being hunted by
his mother’s lover. 

And that’s when it hit
her.
King Edward
. Toby nearly fell off of the bench as the realization
struck. There could be no other explanation; John of Hainault could be no other
than Edward the Third. Traveling in the company of his Uncle Tate, the only man
capable of protecting him from his mother and her vicious lover, the young king
was disguised as a squire.  What else would explain de Lara, two massive
knights and a contingent of heavily armed men-at-arms around the boy? It made
perfect sense. The more she thought on the awareness, the more stunned she
became.  And the more frightened.

She rose on shaking
legs. The men who had destroyed Forestburn had obviously been hunting for the
young king.  They must have been Mortimer’s men and the Cartingdon family had
been unknowingly caught in the crossfire. Terrified, furious, Toby could only
think of one thing; she had to get out of Harbottle. She had to take Ailsa and
flee far from the young king and the murderers who pursued him. She had to get
away to save them both; otherwise, surely they would end up as their parents
had.

It was difficult to
walk across the bailey on shaking legs. She made it to the stairs, pulling
herself up until she reached the entry to the keep. Her fatigue was growing
worse but she ignored it, determined to retrieve her sister. As she moved
inside, she could see that Kenneth and Stephen were still sitting at the table,
only this time they were joined by the squire. Ailsa was still dancing around
the room. Toby staggered into the hall as fast as her weak legs would take her
and went straight to her sister.

Ailsa took issue with
being grabbed. She glared up at her sister until she saw the look on her face.

“What is wrong, Toby?”
she asked.

Toby had her arm
around Ailsa, eyeing the knights at the table. “Keep your voice down,” she
hissed. “We must leave this place right away.”

Ailsa frowned. “Leave?
We just got here.”

Toby had a grip on her
sister’s arm. “You must trust me. We must leave this very moment and I do not
want you to argue with me. Just come.”

“But I do not want to
leave,” Ailsa said loudly. “Stop grabbing my arm. You are hurting me.”

By this time, Stephen
and Kenneth had heard pieces of the conversation. Toby tensed when Stephen rose
to his feet.

“Leave?” he repeated.
“Who is leaving?”

Toby was exhausted and
frightened.  She couldn’t even look at Edward, stuffing his face with bread. 
At this point, it would do no good to lie about her reasons or intentions. She
had never been one to mince words.

“We are,” she
announced, trying to pull Ailsa with her. “We are leaving this place and you
will not stop us.”

Stephen’s gaze was
steady. “Why are you leaving?”

Toby was backing up
with Ailsa in her grip. Her hazel eyes moved rapidly between Stephen and
Kenneth as if waiting for them to leap up and grab her.

“Because we must,” she
said firmly. “We must return to Forestburn.”

“Forestburn is ashes.”

“No thanks to you,”
she snapped; her quaking legs had spread to her body, making it difficult to
remain balanced. “Those who burned my home were after you.  I suppose I knew it
all along but my illness has affected my thought processes. Now I know that my
sister and I must leave if we are to survive. It was a mistake to come here
with you.”

By this time, Kenneth
was on his feet. “Mistress, perhaps you should sit,” he suggested. “You have
been ill and….”

“I do not want to
sit,” Toby exploded, losing her grip on Ailsa. She stumbled backwards and in a
reversal of roles, Ailsa was now the one with a firm grip on her arm. “I want
to leave. I must leave. I do not want to be here when Mortimer’s men burn this
place down around our ears. I want to go home to Cartingdon where I belong.”

“Toby, what is wrong?”
Ailsa was starting to tear up. “Why are you so angry?”

Toby was losing ground
fast. She struggled to stay on her feet as she looked at her sister. “I am not
angry,” she insisted hoarsely. “I am terrified; terrified because de Lara and
his men have lied to us since the beginning. Those men who burned Forestburn
and killed Mother and Father were sent by Roger Mortimer. They are looking for
the king and we were caught in their path.”

Ailsa’s eyebrows
lifted in disbelief. “The
king
? But…?”

Toby threw an arm in
the direction of the table. “That squire, Ailsa. He is not a squire at all. He
is King Edward the Third. They had come to kill him but killed our parents
instead.”

Astonished, Ailsa’s
head snapped in the direction of the table. Not surprisingly, Edward was no
longer eating. He was staring wide-eyed at Toby, his expression one of a mouse
caught in a trap.

Toby’s pale face was
clouded with loathing as she met his stare.  “It would have been the decent
thing to tell us who you really were rather than carry on a lie that would cost
us everything,” she directed her venom at the boy. “At least if we had known,
we could have made an effort to protect ourselves. But you left us open and
vulnerable without regard for our safety. Is that the kind of king you really
are? Do you care nothing for your subjects?”

Slowly, Edward rose to
his feet, swallowing what was left in his mouth. He wiped at his lips with the
back of his hand.

“How did you know who
I was?” he asked with surprising firmness.

Toby sighed heavily,
her weakness growing. Lamely, she lifted an arm and let it slip back down to
her side. “I did not for certain until this very moment,” she realized that she
felt overwhelming sadness more than anything.  “We have lost everything because
of you. Why did you have to come to Cartingdon in the first place? Why could
you not have simply left us alone?”

“Because Cartingdon is
my holding and I serve the king.”

Tate emerged from the
stair hall, his storm cloud eyes riveted to Toby. His progression into the room
was slow, deliberate, the expression on his face unreadable. He had heard most
of her rant as he came down the stairs, not surprised that she had figured out
who the young squire was. She was a very smart woman. He found himself oddly
torn as he faced off against her; torn between remorse and duty. He was sorry
she had been put through such trauma but it had been, in fact, in the line of
duty.  And he was not going to apologize for his sense of duty.

Toby watched him as he
moved towards her, his stalking gait and powerful form.  The terror she had
initially felt was fading, being replaced by a strange numbness. Her body was
shaking with fatigue and emotion and it was increasingly difficult to hold a
thought.  

“You should have told
me who he was,” her voice was quivering. “Out of trust and generosity, we
showed you hospitality and you allowed harm to come to my family. If this is
the kind of king that Edward plans to be then I will side with Mortimer before
I trust him again. He has allowed us to come to devastation.”

She was so pale that
she was gray; Tate knew she wasn’t feeling well but he was having difficulty
keeping his temper down. He was extremely protective of Edward, even against an
ill young woman who had every right to be angry.

“In the first place,
Mistress Elizabetha, it is not your right to know the business of the king,” he
said steadily. “In the second place, you have no choice in who you trust or
support during this dark time. I am your liege and you will support whom I
dictate.”

“My parents are dead
because you withheld the truth,” she fired back with more strength than she
felt. “My home is burned and my life devastated. You are no better than
Mortimer’s men sneaking around in the mist except that you deliver your
deception under the guise of virtue.”

“There was no
deception.”

“We trusted you!”

The last exchanged was
rapid-fire, overlapping, Tate’s calm voice against Toby’s agitated one. They
stared at each other, feeling more emotion than they should have.  Toby was
filled with sorrow for reasons she could not begin to understand while Tate
resisted the urge to beg her forgiveness.  He did not like to see her so upset,
especially when he knew she was right.  He had tried to leave Forestburn before
things got too dangerous, but the threat had come too quickly. It had been upon
them before they realized it and had been the cause of the destruction of her
home. But he would not surrender.

“You are overwrought,”
he said, his voice quieter as he tried to calm the situation. “Let me take you
to rest. You will feel better when you have had some sleep.”

She shook her head and
turned away from him, almost falling for the weakness in her legs. “Nay,” she
whispered. “I… I want to go home. I must leave this place.”

“Why?”

She whirled to him and
ended up stumbling against the wall. “Because whatever poison follows that boy
will come here and destroy us all. I do not want to be here when it comes. I do
not want my sister to fall victim to it.  If you will not protect us, then I
will.”

Tate could feel
himself softening.  “So the true reason is revealed,” he murmured, taking slow
steps in her direction. “You do not feel that I will protect you.”

On the verge of
collapse, tears welled in Toby’s hazel eyes. “You did not protect my parents.”

He was almost upon her
as she slumped against the wall, his storm cloud eyes gentle as he gazed into
her pale, lovely face. “Had I known what harm was to come, I would have most
certainly done my best to protect you,” he said quietly. “But I swear to you
now, upon my oath, that I will protect you with my life; you and your sister.
No harm will come to you as long as I have breath in my body, Elizabetha. 
Please believe me.”

She stared up at him
with her almond-shaped eyes, so beautiful yet so sorrowful.  When she finally
blinked, fat tears splashed onto her cheeks. Tate moved in closely; so close,
in fact, that his torso brushed against hers. His voice was low, soothing.

“Do not blame the
boy,” he murmured. “He has sorrow enough with his mother and her lover
attempting to destroy him. We never meant that your family should fall to
destruction.”

She sobbed softly,
unable to continue with the conversation. Without another word, Tate swept her
into his arms, feeling more relief that he would admit when her arms went
around his neck and she wept quietly against his shoulder. He wanted nothing
more than to soothe away her fears. His gaze found Ailsa, a few feet away, and
he smiled weakly at her.

“Come along,
sweetheart,” he said quietly. “You and your sister are off to bed.”

Ailsa trotted after
him as he quit the hall. The chamber on the third floor was dusty but passable.
Tate put Toby on the bed and covered her with the cleanest blanket he could
find, a dusty old thing that had been tossed into a corner. Ailsa climbed in
next to her and Toby wound her arms around her sister, holding her tight. Tate
pulled the blanket over Ailsa as well and tucked them both in very tightly,
like a father tending his children. But Toby was still weeping softly and he
just couldn’t leave her in that state.  He felt responsible. After a moment’s
deliberation, he lay down against Toby and pulled both ladies into his arms.

“Go to sleep,” he kissed
the back of Toby’s head as he felt Ailsa squirm around to get comfortable.
“Nothing will happen to you, I swear it.  You may sleep peacefully.”

Toby didn’t even
protest, nor did she say a word. She simply lay there, a hiccup now and again
as her tears faded. She could feel him against her and rather than fight it,
she accepted the comfort it gave her. Through all of the illness and turmoil
over the past few days, Tate had proven himself to be a rock. At the moment,
she needed the rock, no matter how unattainable he was. For the moment, she
would pretend otherwise.

Tate lay with his
chest against her back, feeling her soft body against him and thinking there
was surely nothing more wonderful in the world. His thoughts began to drift to
the day he first saw her and how beautiful he thought she was in spite of her
boorish demeanor.  But that opinion had quickly fled; she wasn’t boorish at
all. She was simply strong, opinionated and intelligent. As his mind began to
reflect on the days past and the moments when he saw her smile, Ailsa’s head
suddenly popped up.

“Sing the baby song!”
she demanded in a loud whisper.

Tate frowned at her.
“Hush,” he hissed sternly. “I will not sing anything if you do not lay still.”