Gayle Callen (2 page)

“Oh no.” She gasped a lungful of air and was pulled below.

T
he water was so very cold. Katherine thrashed in the dark, frigid creek for a wild moment, sand swirling into her eyes. The current dragged her downriver, and with her weak arm she could not swim effectively. Panicking, bursting with her need for air, she kicked herself upward and smacked her head on the thick stone wall of the monastery. She drifted motionless, dazed, forgetting to swim, forgetting everything. She was so tired.

Something yanked hard on Katherine’s hair, pulling her forward. The last air bubbled out of her mouth as she broke the surface, gasping and gagging. Two strong arms lifted her out of the water. The monk held her like an orphaned kitten, dripping and bedraggled as she coughed weakly. Then he did the last thing Katherine expected.

“Will you survive?” he inquired politely.

Katherine gasped as she hung over his arm, her ribs compressed, her legs dangling. She managed
to push wet strands of hair from her face, and look over her shoulder.

“Did—did you say something?”

“I did,” he said, in a voice deep and cultured, though muffled by his cowl. “I thought you had finally succeeded in killing yourself.”

Katherine kicked and squirmed until the monk released her. She pushed away from his chest and strove to appear unaffected, to be brave, although the dark wilderness and this strange monk frightened her.

“Kill myself?” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “You tried to drown me! Surely going over the wall would have been preferable.”

“For me, perhaps. But I could not carry you, and you do not have the strength in your toes and fingers to climb. Now we must leave.”

After picking up a dark bundle from the base of the wall, the monk moved to catch her arm. Katherine backed away.

“Leave? With you?”

The dark cowl remained still as he spoke from its depths. “’Tis only a matter of time before we are discovered.”

Katherine felt almost as trapped as she had in the undercroft. She had no idea where she was, what she should do. The monastery walls rose behind her, stooped with menace. The monk stood between her and the forest.

“Where are we?”

“Western Yorkshire.”

Katherine sighed. She knew nothing of this part
of England. But she did know that Nottingham—and the king—were farther south. But how to get there?

“We must leave,” the monk repeated. When he would have touched her, Katherine stepped aside and began to walk into the forest. The trees closed in around her, shutting out the last of the moonlight. She felt her way from tree trunk to tree trunk, scratching her hands on rough bark, tripping over roots. She refused to ask for help, although the monk continued to follow her silently.

Soon enough Katherine’s knees grew weak with hunger and exhaustion. She was about to admit defeat, when the forest began to thin, and she could see glimpses of the moon between the branches. Stumbling to a halt at the edge of the woods, she looked out in dismay as the moon hung in the sky over a broad flat plain that sloped down away from her and seemed to stretch on forever.

“You are tired,” his deep voice said behind her. “I know a place where you can sleep, where no one can find us.”

He’d said “us.” Katherine shivered. But she was too exhausted to protest. She even allowed his arm to settle around her waist and steady her over the uneven ground. He led her to the left, skirting the edge of the tree line, until the sheer wall of a cliff rose up before her in the darkness. They walked beside the wall for less than an hour, both silent. An opening appeared in the cliff face, like a jagged crack straight down from the top of the moor. The
monk disappeared into it, pulling her along behind.

Katherine staggered, disoriented. The earth seemed to press in all around her.

“We can rest here,” he said. “’Tis dry, protected from the wind.”

He stood in the shadows. She couldn’t see his eyes or his face to read his intentions.

Katherine clasped her arm absently, and turned away from him. “Why do you speak now and not before?”

“I observe the Greater Silence while within the monastery.”

“The Greater Silence?”

“The brethren do not speak at night except to pray and sing.”

Katherine peered over her shoulder at him. He stood solid and dark as a mountain, blending into the night and the rock. She shivered as cold water dripped down her body beneath her ragged clothes. No sounds disturbed the peace. She was alone with him. She took another step away, wincing as her ankle turned on a stone.

“Why did you help me?”

There was a long moment of silence before he spoke. “You seemed in need of help.”

His voice was suddenly deeper, and rumbled over buried emotions she could only guess at.

“How did you know I was there?” she asked.

“I saw them bring you into the monastery. I—I couldn’t sleep.”

Did Katherine imagine that hesitation? What
wasn’t this monk saying? Her doubts grew larger, heavier, until she felt overburdened by cares a young woman shouldn’t have.

“I could not leave you to whatever they planned,” he said softly. “I heard you crying.”

His rough voice shook something deep within her. A new and dangerous sensation curled like heat through her stomach, and she convinced herself it was fear. “Thank you for your kindness. You can go back now.”

He remained silent, still.

“Go on,” she insisted. “I will be fine.” She stared out from the crack in the cliff, squinting, looking for a road or path by moonlight.

“I cannot return at the moment,” he said. “Your captor will know soon that I have aided you, and the prior might already have discovered my absence.”

Katherine felt the weight of guilt, which she immediately put aside. It was not her fault that this monk had helped her, risking his own position.

“Where will you go then?” she demanded.

There was no mistaking the long, tension-filled pause before he spoke, his words suddenly cold. “With you. You cannot possibly travel alone.”

Katherine turned towards him, her skin cool and clammy with fright, as she swayed on the edge of defeat. She did not know this monk, nor did she want to. She’d never traveled farther south than York. And now she’d been dragged off to a ruinous monastery, bound, gagged, treated like an animal, rescued by a monk who almost drowned her.
She wanted to laugh hysterically, and she wanted to weep at the same time. But most of all, in some deep hidden place in her heart, she wanted to prove to herself that she could accomplish one important deed before becoming wife to the Earl of Bolton.

But she was standing soaking wet inside a cliff at midnight, with no food, no horse, and no sense of direction. How would she ever get to the king?

“You cannot travel with me,” Katherine finally said. “’Tis not—proper.”

The monk set his sack down. “My lady, you are not thinking clearly. You must be hungry and cold. I have brought food and even a change of clothing. It would not do to look like a noblewoman.”

Katherine choked on a laugh and spread out her wet, dirty skirts. “How can you tell what I am?”

“Your voice, my lady.”

She shivered. The moon overhead was about to slide behind clouds, leaving her in total darkness with a stranger twice her size. True panic began to creep back up her throat.

Cold and wet and miserable, Katherine looked up at the monk. “Please, can you not just give me the food and leave me be? I don’t want your help.”

“In all honor, I cannot leave a woman alone in the countryside.”

“What do you know of honor?” she asked bitterly, remembering that other monk so many years before.

The head of her rescuer tilted to one side, but he did not answer. Instead he lifted his hands to the
cowl and began to pull it back. Katherine felt a deep thread of fear wind its way slowly up her throat, making it hard to breathe. She did not want to see his face, did not want to think of him as a man. He was a monk like the others, not to be trusted, having hidden reasons for everything he did. Yet she did not turn away as the hood fell in wet folds to his shoulders.

In the shadows of the night his face looked carved of rock, with a square jaw and a cleft beneath his thin lips. His brows hung heavily over the sockets of his eyes, turning them to blackness. When his lips turned up in the faintest semblance of a smile, she felt a strange chill.

“I cannot travel with you! Just give me the clothes and I’ll leave.”

“I come with the clothes,” he said in a voice made more menacing by its softness.

“Then I will do without.” Katherine turned away and promptly tripped over her wet skirts. She landed on her hands and knees in the dirt. She longed to cry in despair, but the monk picked her up under the arms as if she were a child’s toy and set her on her feet.

“You need me,” he said flatly. “Unless you can outrun me, I will follow.”

“But why?”

He hesitated, and this time Katherine could see anguish flicker across his face for but a moment. Could she have imagined it?

“I cannot leave you to whatever dangers are out there,” he said. “You are helpless against the ele
ments, helpless against these men should they choose to pursue you. I still do not understand why they kidnapped a noblewoman, when for a few pennies, a peasant girl would have—” His voice broke off.

“Would have what?” Katherine demanded. Her face flushed with heat. “You think they took me for—themselves?”

“Perhaps a ransom?” he said quickly.

Refusing to answer, she shivered and remembered the two humiliating days at the hands of her captor. Again, it nagged at her, how careful her kidnapper was not to harm her. The monk was right—they would try again. She knew their treasonous secret. And now that she’d escaped once, would they be so anxious to keep her unharmed?

“Why do you distrust me?” he asked, his head hovering above hers, his voice deep and harsh. “What have I done short of rescuing you from an unknown fate at the hands of men who kidnapped you? I have offered my help at the loss of everything I have strived for at St. Anthony’s.”

“I can’t trust you!” she cried. “I know you not. Yet you help me.”

Katherine covered her eyes with one hand. It hurt to remember that other monk, that “religious saint” her mother had trusted. No one had protected Katherine from him. If a man like that could claim a calling from God, anyone could. The next priest who cast a spell over her mother was little better, though he left Katherine alone.

She was alone now, with no choice but to turn
her life over to a man whose calling she despised, one who professed a need to help her but could give no true reason. She was too far away from King Richard’s Nottingham castle, with no idea how to get there. The bleakness of her situation settled about her soul like a shroud.

“I shall spread a blanket for you while you change out of those wet clothes,” the monk said, his voice only a sound in the darkness, but not unkind.

Katherine hugged her arms over her chest, feeling the warm dampness of her gown. Change?

“The moon has left us, my lady.”

“After I’ve slept,” she said, wondering if she would fall over in sheer exhaustion. What did it matter if she changed now or in the morning?

Rough cloth was placed into her hands out of the blackness.

“You must change tonight, before you catch a sickness. This is an undergarment to protect your skin from the woolen gown. You can sleep in it tonight. Please obey me in this. I don’t wish to watch you die.”

“There’s no privacy,” she whispered, hugging the smock to her.

“I cannot see you.”

Katherine heard compassion roughen his voice, and her resolve to be strong crumbled beneath the onslaught. She began to cry softly as she loosened the laces at her back. She shrugged the bodice forward and pulled off the wet, tight sleeves. With her embroidered girdle gone for many days, the
gown fell from her hips into a pile at her feet. Katherine sniffed, not even bothering to wipe the tears from her grimy cheeks. If only her own smock were not soaked, she could sleep in it. Instead she peeled it from her body and stood there naked in front of a strange man, a monk, who she only hoped could not see her.

A sob caught in her throat. The linen scratched her skin as she pulled it over her head and down her body.

“Here is a blanket,” he whispered, bumping her hand with his and finally grasping it. “Come down, lady.”

Fresh tears streaked her cheeks as she fell to her knees. As if she could be called “lady” after undressing in front of a monk and sleeping beside him wearing naught but a smock. She lay against the scratchy wool of the blanket, only vaguely feeling the weight of another blanket laid atop her. She told herself she was too tired to care that he lay close beside her. All that mattered was sleep, a sleep with no dreams. Yet the rise and fall of his chest stirred the blanket, and his even breathing kept time with the rhythm of her heart. He gave off heat that kept her as warm as any fire. She wondered if sleep would come.

Brother Reynold Welles came awake with a start, then remained still, listening. The slit of sky above his head was pale gray, heralding the coming dawn, illuminating the rough, gritstone chasm where they slept. For a brief moment, he wondered
if it had all been a bad dream, but when he looked, she was there, stretched out on her back with her face turned towards him in sleep.

Reynold inhaled sharply, smelling once again the scent of woman. He closed his eyes and tried to suppress the groan of sheer pleasure that threatened to escape. He could not remember the last time he had seen a woman, let alone been close enough to smell one. Sensations he had struggled for months to suppress now rose in chorus to distract him. He remembered a serving girl at his parents’ castle, the white flesh of her thighs, the scent that lingered on her breasts. She was not afraid of him, like so many others. He had buried himself in her, and the heat and warmth of her even now seemed so real. Just when he was resigned to the life of a monk, to serving God for his sins, this woman appeared, in need of rescue.

Reynold propped himself up on one arm and looked at her. He regretted it almost instantly, as the serving girl disappeared from his mind and a new woman took her place. She glowed with a quiet beauty, this dirt-streaked girl, with her honey-blond curls draped over half of her face. Without thinking, Reynold allowed his trembling fingers to touch her hair, to lift it away from her mouth. His hand looked so large and brutish beside the delicate bones of her face that he snatched it back as if burned. He told himself he was a monk now, that there was no turning back. A sly second voice whispered that he was only a novice, that his final vows had not been spoken.