Exile’s Bane (24 page)

“Without escort, at a vital moment,” I whispered. I looked around to be sure Peg did not overhear my words. “The prince will be encircled and captured by the enemy. Someone must be there to prevent it.”

“Like you changed my death in Bolton?” he asked, after a moment’s consideration.

“That was . . . different. I am not even certain I did it.”

“Of course, you did.”

“If one or more of his men are with him when the enemy surrounds him, they may be able to break out.”

“I see.” He set his jaw and nodded slowly. The plumed feather in his hat waved at me in the near darkness.

“Captain,” came Wallace’s crisp hail.

We looked up and he pointed at a light spot far toward the east. The bright spot was too small and far too early for sunrise. An orange tint flared at its edges.

“We need to move faster,” Duncan called out. “I am afraid it is the Ramsey house.”

Within a mile, the light in the distance had grown and extended across a wide swath of the moor. It was fire of a magnitude I had never witnessed. By the time we arrived at the Ramsey compound, the old manor house among the trees on its rock-edged hill was in full flame, everything around it consumed and starting to blacken and wither into ash.

Air rushed around us in the eerie, red-tinged dark, rekindling the devastating fire before us. The scent of ash and death hung heavy upon the rising breeze.

Loud whinnies traveled from one horse to the other, their ears laid back. They were all uneasy, jerking at their reins and dancing about. We came upon a small burn and dismounted at its edge. We settled the horses, watered, and hobbled them against a high bank where they could not see the flames. I spoke gently to Kalimir for a few moments, then went to join the others.

No one would stay behind, so hand in hand to keep together, we walked carefully across the uneven ground to the far edges of the hot crackle and lick of the overwhelming fire. Nothing in that huge cauldron of fire and ash so much as resembled a structure or even a tree. The stench of wind-driven, thick smoke, and of what I imagined to be burning flesh set us to coughing. We turned back.

“No one could survive that,” Wallace said, between Peg and me, his hands lightly at our backs.

We returned to the horses and coalesced into a warm circle in the cold wind. I turned back to watch the fire in the distance, when, a little off from the burning knoll, a wavering pink eye, that same glow of a matchlock fuse that had immobilized me on the Sheffington Road all those weeks ago, caught my attention. I extended my hand to point it out to Duncan. But he turned away. A shot rang out. At the same moment, a
bonk
sounded close beside me, and Captain Wallace let out a cry of pain.

“Ricochet,” Duncan mumbled. He looked down in amazement at his dented breast plate, then up. “Captain?” he called out to Wallace.

“I’m fine. A nasty graze is all.”

Peg and Annie were beside him. The two of them insisted he allow them to see the wound. He grimaced and leaned over his hands. He had his right hand wrapped tightly around his left wrist, blood seeping through his fingers.

“Everyone, down into the burn,” Duncan called out. Assured of Wallace’s life, he studied the darkness, his face rapt.

There,” I said, still beside him. I pointed to the right of the great fire. “A second before the shot, I saw a lit matchlock fuse. The wind probably made it flare.”

He flashed a glare me, then looked out to where I pointed.

“Whoever they are, they may still be there. For me to see that burning cord, they cannot be far. . . .” My words trailed off, for Duncan was already in movement toward Ajax.

“Stay here,” he said quietly over his shoulder. He pushed his hat down over his long locks, dark in the lowering light of the distant fire, and he mounted. “Get down in the burn, and for God’s sake stay together.” Bent over along the black stallion’s neck, he moved off into the windy darkness, instantly invisible. Even the soft sound of his horse’s hooves in the short, hardy grass ceased after a moment.

I could not spot the pink eye again. Down in the soft depression at the edges of the small stream, Peg held Wallace’s bleeding hand. Annie looked on in concern, her yellow hair falling out of its pins and hanging over her ears in clumps.

“Not too bad,” Peg said. “The bullet went straight through.” She had already stripped off and torn apart the lower edge of her petticoat. She went to the little stream and soaked two larger pieces in the dark water. She brought them back and carefully washed the open wound, hardly able to see what she was doing, though the distant fire cast a reddish pall over everything. She handed the remaining dry strips to me, and I wrapped the captain’s wrist tightly.

“Don’t fret,” Wallace said as I worked.

He, like I, must have seen Peg’s shaking hands and wild eyes. She had always been especially fond of Captain Wallace. She smiled and seemed to respond to the captain’s fine voice. As well, I gave her a pat on the shoulder, knowing how she felt, for my limbs were equally unsteady.

“You will do fine,” I said to our wounded captain. I tugged at his sleeve in childish affection.

Even Annie rested her hand gently on his shoulder.

Down in the stream bed, the four of us huddled together between the horses. Again and again, I stroked tall Kalimir’s heavily scarred shoulder to reassure him until he finally settled. I studied the sky, sorry I had never learned the names and shapes of the constellations. Two stars, close together in the expanse of the sky, winked at me . . . and were suddenly gone. I studied the dark firmament. Heavy cloud cover, of which the rising wind was a harbinger, already covered the thin crescent moon. Half the sky was pitch, starless black. Our long overdue storm was near upon us.

My fears for Duncan began to nip at my false bravado, when noises came out of the dark. A single shot sounded, followed by furtive movements not too far away. Low voices strained over the keening wind. Another shot broke the night and some time later, all of us on alert, weapons drawn, Duncan rode into sight and down into the burn, still ahorse. He passed a heavy matchlock to Wallace.

“I figure you own it now, since it wounded you. How is your hand?”

“It hurts, but will heal nicely, I think.” Wallace nodded at Duncan with some urgency, more interested in what had happened, it seemed, as were we all.

Duncan dismounted, took Wallace’s hand, and studied the neatly bandaged wrist. “I am relieved it is no worse than this.”

“What did you find? Whose musket is this?”

I moved toward him, anxious to be near him, and he tucked me up against his side under a protective arm.

“The steward sent two men to burn Ramsey’s place.”

“How did he know of our plans?” I asked.

“One of the house guard in his cups.”

“Walston,” Wallace intoned. “Had to be. He was with us, and he drinks.”

“There’s more,” Duncan growled. “They were to wait until we arrived—”

“He sent them to kill us,” Wallace put in, his face sharp with certainty.

“Yes.” Duncan gave a quick confirming nod. “They meant to murder us all. It seems Gorgon’s ambitions have surpassed his need for you, Elena.”

Annie grinned, for she still had little use for me and had been fascinated with Gorgon. Peg’s mouth opened. She snapped a look of concern at me.

“He must have discovered the priest missing,” I said, with a blink of disbelief.

Amazement murmured around our little company.

“Did our attackers get away?” I asked Duncan, who remained close beside me, but stiff and reserved.

“They are dead,” he said, his face dark with spent rage. “One of them, Gorgon’s huge guard captain, told me what I just told you, hoping to be spared.”

“And you killed him anyway?” Though I had been terrified of that particular Manxman, I stepped away from Duncan with a frown, suddenly cold in the questing air.

“Killing is what I do best,” he said, with a grim turn toward me. “You could have died in that house, Elena. All of us could be black ash like the Ramseys surely are by now.”

His comparison was not lost on me. The blood drained from my cheeks, and gooseflesh rose on my arms.

“Well, ladies,” Duncan said. He looked away from my crushed countenance, his face pale in the fire-lit darkness. “You have gotten your wish. We must go back.”

“We cannot take these ladies back to Tor House,” Wallace put in as he prepared to mount one-handed, his wounded hand tucked across his chest.

“I’m going with you, Cousin, in the baggage train,” Annie yelled from across the circle we had formed.

“There is little choice.”

“Do thee not see?” Peg asked me, her face red with excitement. “Tis meant to be.”

Frantic thoughts assailed me. I could not, would not abandon everything I knew for a
wagon
.

“If we be headed for the baggage train, we need the necessities at Tor House we were not able to retrieve before this disastrous journey,” Peg said. She looked from Wallace to Duncan.

“This is true,” I cried, seizing on Peg’s words. “We need clothing, blankets, shoes, heavy cloaks. We’re going north, for God’s sake. There are other things.” I lowered my head in a demur attempt at embarrassment. “Personal items that we require.”

“You know as well as I do,” Duncan insisted, “that Gorgon will kill us all if he catches us.”

Wallace, mounted and awaiting us, nodded in grim agreement.

“You can protect us,” I cried. I reached out for Duncan, so vital and set like a snare to pounce. “I know you can.”

“Not that easy.” He took my hand. His troubled gaze wandered over me, and, finally, his white smile flashed. He seemed to have made a decision.

I took a breath of relief.

“We will be quick,” Peg said, her face hopeful in the fading red light.

“Time is short. We must move.” Edginess crept into Duncan’s stance and across his shadowed face as he spoke.

“We chance all our lives.” Wallace shook his head. “This man is a butcher.”

“If we are careful and quiet, we can get the women in and out, no one the wiser,” Duncan said. “While I am in the house with the ladies, I want you to seize a wagon and two draft horses. Keep our horses ready. Do whatever you have to do to accomplish this, and quickly. Our success will depend on speed. We must catch them unaware. If we are not out in a reasonable time, you are to catch up with the army and stay with them.” Duncan mounted and brought Ajax up close beside Wallace and clapped my old guard commander on the shoulder. “By the way, Captain, if the knowledge will put you at ease, you will be a welcome addition to my company and can protect the ladies at night, as well.”

Wallace nodded acceptance of Duncan’s words, though he remained taut with anxiety.

Annie mounted, her tenacious expression supportive of any action Duncan took or would take.

Duncan’s anxious need for haste drove him all the harder to push us through the breezy dark. Clouds obliterated any starlight that might have helped guide us. Luckily, Duncan, Wallace, and I knew these trails. We descended into Lancashire’s fields and the wind rose. Thunder rumbled and cracked, and the dark sky pelted us with cold rain. We were finally forced to take shelter in an abandoned barn. Even that took a long search in the occasional flashes of lightning, our only advantage that we knew the run-down structure was there.

Wallace, Peg, and Annie settled in an open stall. Duncan handed me a charged pistol and remained close beside me at the open doorway, still taut with useless impatience. Unsure and afraid, I lost myself in the moody, unending need to keep watch over the deep darkness beyond our leaky shelter.

The idea came upon me, heavy with import, that return to the security of the house walls around me was all that mattered. The wind wracked the branches of the hedgerows off to the right of the barn. The long barreled pistol grew heavy in my hands. I knelt on the moldy hay, the sound of Kalimir’s stamping hooves close by, and considered ways that I might change my situation, discarding idea after idea, most of them already tried or moot by the advancement of time and Gorgon’s presence. There was only one thing left—and that a mere delaying tactic. The idea left me unsettled and wary. Yet I did not care. I had to find a way back to what I had known before.

Chapter Eighteen

By the time we reached Tor House, a hesitant dawn lay on the land. The postern gate was manned by two Manx guards, an ominous sign. They had little inclination to allow us entry.

“We have returned from a trip and do not wish to rouse the entire household with an arrival at the front entry,” Captain Wallace called up to them sternly. After some bantering back and forth over the outer wall, Wallace’s mellow baritone convinced them to open the gate.

We entered and Duncan, with Wallace’s help, disabled the two guards, silenced them with gags and left them tied back-to-back in the guard shack beside the gate.

Luck was with us, for the inner gates stood open. We left our mounts with Wallace in the stable yard and slipped in through the laundry entrance of the kitchen tower.

We treaded up the stairs and through the quiet hallways until Duncan shoved the three of us unceremoniously into our quarters while he kept watch in the corridor. The house seemed unusually quiet. No footmen or servants moved about. No Rosemunde.

Peg and Annie quickly gathered dresses, chemises, shoes, and their personal items and stuffed them into Peg’s old, oversized saddle bags.

I remained in the center of the room, wringing my hands. Panic flooded my senses. My gaze locked on my familiar four-poster bed with its heavy hangings that were such a deep blue that its folds shone blue-black. To my eye, at that moment, it seemed a funeral shroud.

“Come on, Elena.” Peg gave my unmoving form a gentle shove as she hurried across the room toward the dressing table. “Pack thy things.”

They raced madly about in ladylike haste and finally, with a shake of Annie’s head and Peg’s frustrated frown at me, they rushed out into the hallway. Moments later, Duncan strode into the room, his face creased in irritation.

I stood in silent, head-nodding shock. My gaze roved once again over my bed to my precious, uncomfortable, gilded chairs, to my dressing table, and finally rested on my oversized armoire. How could I leave these things, this room that had been my lifelong haven?

“Duncan . . .” I began, hoping for understanding from this man whom I loved with such relentless passion. “This is not something I can do.”

His powerful build seemed to deflate, his face drawn. “Oh, yes, you can,” he insisted with a deep, hurried breath that restored his height and his intent. “I guess you will have to make do with what you have on. The army has begun its advance. You saw them.” He threw Peg’s saddle bags over his shoulder, took my unwilling hand, and pulled me out of the room and into the hall. Peg and Annie watched in wide-eyed alarm.

Duncan shifted his grasp to my upper arm, and we moved down the dim hall.

Peg and Annie rushed ahead of us, but they stopped short at the head of the south stair, where they huddled together, waiting.

Duncan jerked me forward. I pulled against him, wriggled for release, and beat on the hand that encircled my arm with my opposing fist.

“What?” Duncan demanded of me. With a red-faced look of disgust, he finally let me go. “There is no time for this.”

I shook my head, wide-eyed, hair hanging in tangles across my face, afraid to go on.

In that dim corridor, gold flared in the depths of Duncan’s dark, penetrating eyes. He glanced distractedly at the stair and the women waiting there, and then back to me.

“I can deal with him. Let me stay. There is a way,” I pleaded.

“Have you lost your mind?” His flaming face crumpled before me. Red blotches marched up his neck. “After all we have suffered to avoid this man?”

“If I leave, I may never get back,” I cried. Determination for my chosen course rose like a flood tide within me. “I choose Tor House.”

Peg gasped in the distance. Annie’s face fell into an eye-rolling frown.

Duncan stumbled back in shock, but quickly regained his solemnity. He straightened before me.

My eye caught on the morning light that shone belatedly through the tall south window beyond the stair and glinted dully on the curl of his breast plate where it ended at his shoulder.

“Rather than come with me?” he asked in a soft voice.

“Duncan, I must.” I pulled my hair back out of my face, met his molten gaze, and reached out to him. I needed his touch at that moment, but he denied me with a convulsive jerk. My mouth moved soundlessly, my hands shook, and my knees threatened to give way. “I will await your return,” I croaked, my voice breaking.

“Why? You have what you want. This was your intent all along, was it not?” His chest rose and fell with a sound that was a laugh, yet a tearing sob. He shook his head in disbelief. His mouth curled into disgust. “May these stones make you a cold, hard bed.”

I did not think the breath would ever finish departing my lungs. The wall supported me, for I fell against it, tears streaking down my face.

Peg’s piercing brown eyes searched me out and our gazes met. From where she stood in the light at the stair, she nodded formally at me. Farewell, that deep drop of her head meant, which struck a second raw wound into my laboring heart.

Duncan pivoted sharply and whipped his russet locks, love lock and all, out of his face. He marched to the stair and grasped Peg and Annie each by an arm. Together, the three of them swept down the stairs, cloaks and dresses flapping, and out of sight.

Silence settled around me. Numb within, I treaded back to my open door and leaned into the door frame.

What have I done?

A sudden impulse came over me to race after them, but I remained where I was, the solid wood of my home warming under my cheek.

There was one other thing I could do. I rushed down the south hallway, then on along the short west hall to the three-way intersection of the gallery doors, the great stair landing, and the entry into the watch-tower.

Daylight always came slowly to the house corridors, but this sullen morning the light dallied. I turned into the dim tower passage and nearly ran into Gorgon as he came down the corridor. The corpulent man took a step back.

“Well, well.” He looked behind me, advanced, and searched the hallway I had just exited. “Where is that groveling Scot that noses around after you?” His face darkened. “And Wallace. Where are they?”

“Despite your attempt to murder me, I have returned to you.”

“You were not the object of that action.” His words came out in a defensive jumble. Either my appearance at this time or my conciliatory words shocked him. His head moved from side to side, as though considering such a rash turn of events.

“Maybe not, but the Ramseys lie dead. For what? For their generosity?”

“For opposing their rightful lord,” he spouted belligerently, any confusion overcome.

“You?”

“Indeed, me,” he said in a loud voice. “Warden of Tor House, duly appointed. If you wished to bid them adieu, the earl and the prince are gone. You will find them in the Royalist vanguard.” He pointed north toward the front gate and the marching formations we had witnessed upon our arrival from the east.

That my uncle would go off to war and not know or care about my fate came as a jolt to my self-confidence. He had set aside his countess, left Tor House to Gorgon’s care, and apparently had no further use for me either. Did he think my claim and my person ultimately dead? Perhaps, but there was something deeper than desertion or murder at the heart of his actions. Maybe it was part of my unique sight, but I could feel it there. I had no idea what it was, only that its source stood here before me.

“Where are Comrie and Wallace?” he demanded. “Tell me.”

“On the road with the army, I expect.” I shrugged.

“Why did you not join them?” He leered at me and settled solidly onto his feet.

“I have returned to you. Is that not enough?” I glanced at the man into whose scurrilous hands I had placed my life and my honor.

Gorgon’s barrel chest rose and fell in what I feared was heated passion. His dark eyes glimmered. I had never before noted the gray at his temples. It gave his rabid countenance a distinguished look.

“A wise choice, my dear,” he went on, with a deep bow before me.

“I have not done this for any love of you, or for duty’s sake,” I cried. I shook my head as a mad woman might, without concern for my appearance or my trailing hair.

“Then the question remains, why are you here, my lady?” Gorgon’s brows began a puzzled climb up his forehead.

“This is my home.” Anger rose within me, quickly overcome by looming hopelessness. “And I will not leave it.”

“Of course,” he said with a slow, knowing nod. “I knew this of you. That you would not leave me, despite your dalliance. We are much alike. Tor House drives us. It is our destiny to rule.”

“I want no power.” I shook my disheveled head, adamant. “Only my home.” My gaze, clouded with uncertainty and pain, snapped to his. “I would like to watch them go.”

“You are free to go where you will.” A magnanimous sweep of his arm produced a beard-splitting smile so wide his projecting eye teeth showed. His fingers reached for my chin.

I stepped away from him. Revulsion threatened to upend my stomach.

“I would attend you myself, but vital matters await my immediate attention.” Gorgon threw out a commanding hand. “Thomas, escort Lady Elena to the watch-tower roof.”

I had not realized Thomas was there until he stepped out of the corridor’s shadow. Dressed in a magnificent long tunic of yellow silk, he reminded me of paintings I had seen of Chinese potentates. He wiggled his shoulders, disturbing the fall of silk, and produced a condescending smile.

“Yes, my lord warden,” Thomas recited, a squeak in his voice.

“Until later, my dear.” Gorgon took my cold hand in his heated one, and kissed it gently. “I have much to do.”

“By the way, your guard captain and his men are dead,” I said.

A short hesitation, to ingest what he surely knew, and his heavy boot steps rapped away down the great stair. His haste drew a vision in my mind of a ransacked library.

A hopeful sense of security came over me as Thomas and I climbed the dark tower stair. Gorgon had not attempted to rape me straight out, and I had achieved a tentative foothold in my home.

By the time I reached the parapet wall, the army that had been spread out before the house was in motion, the vanguard already out of sight. But I was not too late, for Duncan’s flying, dark copper hair immediately caught my eye. Atop Ajax, he raced into the trees. He would be with the prince soon—what he desired above all things.

Everything was backwards. Everyone I loved had left. The one man I abhorred held Tor House. Even Thomas, beside me, was insanely dressed and unsoundly motivated. Just as the rain had passed and the sky was clear of clouds, this was my new reality, a fitting confirmation of what I had done to myself. The sun beat down on my head, hot and merciless. I sobbed, my loss creating a painful vacuum within me.

“Oh, don’t
do
that,” Thomas complained beside me.

I sniffed and forced myself to attend the last sights of those I loved. I could not tell which wagon belonged to Peg and Annie, for there were numerous baggage wagons awaiting movement of the forward wagons to allow them to pull into position. Despite my questionable position and my concern for Peg’s welfare, I was just as happy not to be traveling in a hot, bouncing wagon with no home to return to.

“Well, they are on their way.” Thomas’ handsome face assumed an ugly look of high-handed command. “You look like you are going to cry. Tears distress me.”

“What happened to my thoughtful friend? Where did you get that outfit anyway?” I asked, to distract my rising ire, though wrath had lifted my painful gloom somewhat. I wanted to hit someone. Any someone.

“The warden insists I wear bright, courtly garb when I attend him in the great hall, which he expects to do quite often in future.” He smiled, the devilish Thomas of old for a fleeting second, then frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “He has sent out notices to all the tenants and liegemen hereabouts demanding their homage in person.”

“But most of them are with Prince Rupert.”

“I know that,” he said in supercilious irritation. “If they do not appear, their homage will be duly accepted and the warden’s requirements demanded of their families.”