Dragonblade Trilogy - 01 - Dragonblade (26 page)

In the bailey below,
Kenneth heard the chortling. He stood below the wall walk, watching Tate and
Stephen, hearing the laughter and saying a silent prayer that he wasn’t picking
up body parts. He had been standing there since Tate had left the knight’s
quarters, watching and waiting. With a woman involved, he had no way of knowing
what turn the situation would take. He was glad it wasn’t the wrong turn.

Without even trying,
Toby could have done more damage than Mortimer’s army could have ever dreamed
of.

***

Toby awoke to the
sounds of shouts coming from the bailey. Every so often, a dog would bark or a
bird would screech. She was lying on her back on the bed in the master’s
chamber, one arm over her head and the other clutching the coverlet to her
naked chest. She lay there a moment, staring up at the ceiling and forgetting,
for a split second, where she was. She didn’t recognize the place. Then,
remembrance dawned.

It all came tumbling
upon her. She remembered Tate from the night before and her heart began to
pound at the mere thought. She remembered everything, from the moment he had
first touched her until she had fallen asleep in his powerful embrace.  Warm
delirium swept her as she thought on the power, the passion, and the
excitement.  She thought it might have been a dream until she lifted her hand
and smelled Tate on her flesh. She lay there a moment, inhaling deeply, feeling
her body tremble at his scent. She should have been shocked at her behavior,
ashamed at the very least, but she found that she was neither. She felt a
fulfillment in her soul that she’d never had before.  But her warm thoughts
faded as she looked around, noticing that she was quite alone in the bed and in
the room. 

She sat up, still
holding the coverlet to her chest. The kitten suddenly leapt onto the bed and
she petted the little beast absently. Her thoughts drifted to the night before
once again and she thought of Tate’s magical touch, the heat of his mouth, the
gentle power of his body when he took her. She hadn’t been prepared for that
intimate action but had very quickly succumbed to his passion. It had been the
most powerful physical and emotional event of her life, propelling her onto a
plane that she had never known to exist.  But now that she found herself alone
in the bedchamber, embarrassment was beginning to join her puzzlement.

Perhaps Tate had left
because he had been embarrassed, too. He had left without a word. Perhaps he
left because he realized it had all been a horrible mistake.  From the deeply
personal memories of the night before to a creeping humiliation, she wrapped
herself in the coverlet and went in search of her clothes. As she made her way
to her neatly stacked trunks, she passed next to the hearth and made a
startling discovery.

Someone had drawn a
smiling face into the ashes. Toby stood there a moment, staring down at the two
eyes and big smiling mouth. That had not been there the previous night. It
occurred to her that Tate must have drawn the face when he had left that
morning, not wanting to wake her but wanting to leave some mention of his
passing. One corner of her mouth twitched and then the other; soon, she was
laughing softly, laughing harder when the kitten walked through the face and
left little paw prints all over it.

As she finally reached
her trunks, she also noticed a basin of clean water on the nearby table. That
hadn’t been there last night, either; nor had the small wooden platter of
cheese and bread. She felt awful that she had thought poorly of Tate, that he
had abandoned her after their night of passion. Obviously, the man had put a
good deal of thought into greeting her with a pleasant morning and she adored
him for it.  Her heart was swelling so with happiness that she was sure it
would burst.  With a huge smile, Toby dropped the coverlet and grabbed her cake
of lavender and lemon rind soap.

When she finished
washing with the soap and tepid water, she dried off with a linen sheet they
had brought from Forestburn and proceeded to dress in pantalets, a linen shift
and brown surcoat that emphasized her slender waist. She brushed her hair
furiously and pulled it away from her face with a strip of cloth that wrapped
all the way around her head, tying a bow just behind her right ear. It was a
very flattering style for the heart-shape of her face. 

As she pulled on her
shoes, she threw bits of cheese to the kitten.  When all of the bread and
cheese were gone, and she and the kitten were fed, she collected the cat and
quit the chamber with the intention of taking the kitten outside to relieve
itself. But more importantly, she wanted to find Tate. The kitten was just a
convenient excuse.

The keep was dark as
she made her way down the deadly stairs. She hardly heard a sound.  But as she
neared the great hall, she could hear the men inside, mostly wounded, and she
ventured into the cavernous room. It was dim and smelling of smoke from the
fire in the hearth. The very first thing she saw was Stephen directly to her
left, tending to one of his patients. He looked up and their eyes met. Startled
to see him, Toby did the only thing she could do; she smiled timidly.

“Good morn to you, Sir
Stephen,” she said.  “I fear I must have been more exhausted than I thought. I
seem to have slept long into the morning.”

Stephen’s gaze
lingered on her. “No harm done. You obviously needed the rest.”

She shrugged faintly,
looking around the room and petting the cat in her arms. “May I help you this
morning?”

Stephen finished
securing the bandage of the man he was working on and stood up. “There is not
much to do,” he followed her gaze around the room. “Most of the men seem to be
healing steadily. The only thing you could possibly do is lift their spirits
with a kind word.”

“Perhaps they would
like to pet my cat.”

He looked at the
animal and cracked a smile. “I fear that grown men aren’t as attached to
felines as women and children are.”

She grinned, noticing
that he did not seem tense or angry with her this morning.  Perhaps Tate had
taken her advice and spoken to him. She could only hope.

“I am going to find my
young friend with the chest wound,” she said pointedly. “I will wager that he
would like to pet my cat.”

Stephen’s smiled
faded. “He is not here.”

“Oh?  Where is he?”

He hesitated. “He
passed away last night.”

Her face fell. “Oh,”
she whispered, looking pained. “I had hoped… you said that you thought he
would….”

Stephen moved towards
her, wiping his hands off on a rag. “I said that he would survive provided that
poison did not set in. Unfortunately, it did.  It took him very quickly.”

Toby nodded, realizing
that she was blinking tears away. But she couldn’t stop them.  “He was so
young,” she wept softly. “He was only sixteen years old. He was just a boy.”

Stephen stood next to
her, wanting to comfort her but knowing that he should leave that to Tate. It
had been made clear to him that Toby was the property of his liege.  Still, she
was upset and he put his big hand on her back in a comforting gesture.

“Do not weep for him,”
he said quietly. “He is no longer in agony. He is with God.”

“But he was so young.”

“I know,” he patted
her back and took his hand away. “But that is the way of war. It does not take
young or old into consideration.”

Toby wiped at her eyes
and turned away, heading for the keep entry. Stephen watched her go, his
cornflower eyes lingering on her slender beauty. He found himself once again
regretting that he had not been successful in his wooing attempt. But he could
not linger on regrets; if his discussion with Tate earlier that day was any
indication, the man was in love with a woman he once thought dreadful. Stephen
was glad that, at least, she was in good hands. Tate didn’t view her as a
contest won.  With a final glance at her shapely backside, he turned back to
his patients.

The weak morning sun
was bright and Toby dried the last of her tears, shielding her eyes from the
glare. The new keep stairs were braced up against the stone edifice and Toby
took the stairs gingerly; they seemed to sway a bit, which made her nervous. 
When she reached the bottom, she looked back up the stairs to see just how
precarious the stairs really were. Shaking her head at the rickety steps, she
turned around and almost ran headlong into Wallace.

His hair was wild and
he smelled like manure. Toby took a step back from the man just so she wouldn’t
be so close to him.

“Good day, my lady,”
he greeted. “I see that you are looking well this morn.”

It was as much as the
man had said to her since they had been introduced. She nodded. “It is a fine
morning,” she said. “Do you know where Sir Tate is?”

Wallace raised an eyebrow.
“Ah, he is more than a ‘sir’, my lady,” he corrected her. “He is an earl and
addressed accordingly.”

She nodded quickly.
“Of course, I’d forgotten,” she corrected herself. “Have you seen him this
morning?”

“He is outside the
walls, my lady. They are having trouble fitting the new gates and he is
supervising the installation. I will take you to him if you wish.”

Toby looked to the
gaping hole in the wall where the great wooden gates use to be.  “I do not wish
to distract him,” she said, although it wasn’t the truth. She wanted to see him
very much. “It can wait.”

With her gaze
lingering on the open gates and the activity surrounding it, she turned for the
kitchens that were to the rear of the keep.  It took her a moment to realize
that Wallace was following her. She looked up at him, a mildly
friendly-but-puzzled look on her face. He clasped his hands behind his back and
pretended not to notice her curious stare.

“It is a fine day
today,” he said, looking up to the billowing clouds above. “A good day for
rebuilding.”

It was odd
conversation from a man who had thus far gone out of his way to make her feel
unwelcome. She was wary of his company.

“I am sure it is,” she
didn’t know what else to say. In her arms, the kitten squirmed so she set him
down and watched him hop away. “At least it is not raining.”

“Ah, but it will,”
Wallace sniffled loudly and continued to look up at the sky. “Come the nooning
hour, it will pour. It always does.”

Toby simply nodded,
unsure what to say to that. She was increasingly wondering why the man was
tailing her. When she went to collect the kitten so he would not get trampled
by some nearby horses, she noticed that Wallace continued to follow.   

She stopped beating
around the bush and faced him. “Is there something you wished to say to me?”

“Say to you? What do
you mean?”

“I mean that you have
not said more than five words to me since my arrival. Now you are making
conversation so I assumed there was something more that you wished to say to
me.”

His bushy gray
eyebrows lifted, as if surprised by the frankness of her statement.  Then he
shook his head. “I have nothing to say to you, lady,” he said, but just as
swiftly corrected himself. “But I suppose if I was going to say something, it
would be to thank you.”

“Thank me? For what?”

“For your help with
the wounded during the siege the other day,” he shrugged his big shoulders.
“With the recent loss of your sister… well, you surprised me with your courage.
That is rare in a woman and I would congratulate you.”

Toby stared at him. He
seemed quite gruff with the praise and she couldn’t decide if she was offended
or flattered. So she nodded unsteadily and turned away, leaving Wallace
standing there, watching her, with a puzzled expression on his face.   After a
moment, he shrugged again and walked back the way he had come. He still didn’t
understand women, not after all these years. He probably never would. He’d
given the woman a compliment and she had not seemed pleased with it.

Toby kept on walking,
petting the kitten and realizing that Wallace’s statement, though he’d not
meant to do so, had unearthed thoughts of Ailsa. As she gazed up into the blue
sky and breathed the fresh air, she realized that she missed her sister very
much. The loss was still shocking and painful. She was starting to feel some
guilt that her growing relationship with Tate had given her momentary reprieve
from her grief.  She felt some remorse that she wasn’t completely miserable day
and night from the loss of Ailsa. The more thoughts of her sister haunted her,
the more she found herself hurting for the life cut short.

Toby wandered around
the circular keep, realizing when she was very nearly at the doorstep that she
had come upon the chapel. She paused a moment, gazing at the rough-hewn door to
the tiny sanctuary and feeling tears sting her eyes. Ailsa was in there and so
was deep pain. But she had to face it. With the cat in one hand, she pushed
open the door and entered the cool, dark room. It was barely big enough to hold
more than a dozen people at any given time. Very small lancet slits cut into
the outer wall allowed some light to enter, but it was still dark and eerie and
smelling of the fresh dirt from Ailsa’s burial.  Setting the kitten down near
the door, she made her way to the fresh grave near the altar.