Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero (36 page)

Then the Abbot broke the silence with cool confidence. “Does anyone here know of the existence of Lady Cynthia’s lover?”

The crowd looked uncertainly about. Garth scowled. What did that have to do with…

“Nay? Then how is it,” the Abbot mused, “that she carries a babe in her belly?”

The room rustled. Garth fired a glance at Cynthia, but her eyes were trained on the floor.

“Who,” the Abbot continued, “but the mistress of the devil could carry a babe in her belly without the benefit of a lover?”

A babe? Garth scarcely heard the mutters of surprise around him. A babe?
His
babe. Joy swelled his heart for one brief moment before it faded like a falling star against a black night.

He locked eyes with Cynthia. Worry etched her features. But not for herself. For him. Because she knew what he would do. What he
must
do.

He stretched himself to his full height. His whole being trembled with the enormity of what he was about to say. It would ruin him. It would stain his family name. Worst of all, it would exile him from the church that had given him some small measure of solace and peace.

And yet, hadn’t he known it would come to this? From the first time he and Cynthia made love, the possibility had been there. With each passing week, that possibility turned into a probability. He couldn’t lie and say he’d never considered the consequences. Perhaps he’d never let those consequences surface, but in his heart of hearts, he knew very well what he was doing…and that this day would ultimately come.

In a strange way, it gave him a sense of relief. The decision was made for him now. His cassock felt like an old snakeskin, ready to be shed.

He raised a hand for silence from the castle folk. “I declare before all assembled here,” he announced, “that I, Garth de Ware, am the father of Lady Cynthia’s child.”

Elspeth bit back a sob, and Roger could not have looked prouder were Garth his own son. But Garth was certain they didn’t believe him. They likely assumed he sacrificed himself for Cynthia’s sake. For one triumphant moment, the Abbot looked very anxious indeed.

Then Cynthia spoke. “Nay.”

Garth looked at her in surprise. Cynthia was shaking her head, her face as cold and unyielding as stone.

“Nay. He is not the father.”

Garth frowned. What in the name of God…?

“He is not the father of my babe.”

His heart twisted. How could she utter those words? How could she betray him? Of course the babe was his. She’d lain with no other. He knew that,
knew
it…knew it as well as he knew the color of her…

Eyes. Her eyes shone softly toward him, two translucent gems of blue, in silent entreaty. Then he realized the truth. She was denying him, because she loved him. She knew he’d be ostracized from the church if he admitted to siring a bastard. She was protecting him.

The idea that she’d sacrifice so much for him left a choking lump in his chest.

In all his searching, all the hours spent in prayer, all the days copying the holy Scripture, all the weeks and months and years of enduring the poverty of the flesh to aspire to heaven, he’d never even come close.

This
was heaven.

Not some black-haired wench twisting and writhing under his hips. Not the sweet plainsong of holy men echoing through a monastery. Not even carefree summer days spent frolicking in grassy meadows. Heaven was the love of the most precious woman on earth.

“Whether the babe is mine or not,” he said with more conviction than he’d ever put into a sermon, “I lay claim to it. And to the woman you so unjustly condemn.”

The crowd’s murmurs rose to a dull roar.

The Abbot licked his thin lips, his beady eyes darting about, and then raised both arms. “Silence! Silence!”

Garth furrowed his brow. “And if there no other way…” He clasped the wooden cross about his neck, jerking it downward to break the chain, and let it drop to the ground. “I renounce my priestly vows to do so.”

The bystanders gasped as a single being, and it took far longer this time to hush their amazed chatter.

Garth stood tall. He was free at last. Now he could rescue his lady. Now his life could begin.

The Abbot made a face that looked as if he’d been chewing green oranges. Then his eyes gentled unexpectedly, and he gave Garth a perfidious smile of pity.

“I fear, good people,” he said, interlacing his fingers piously before him, “it’s already too late. Obviously, Father Garth has been bewitched by your mistress. We must pray for him. Perhaps, once temptation is removed from his path and he is no longer under the witch’s influence, he will recover his wits.” He pointed a bony arm in the direction of the dungeon. “Take her below.”

“Nay!” Garth exploded as two guards dragged Cynthia toward the dungeon stairs. “She’s innocent! You can’t—“

“You poor, poor man,” the Abbot announced, shaking his head sadly. “She’s apparently ensorcelled you. I shall pray for your soul,” he promised.

“Nay!” Garth yelled, hurtling wildly after her. “Nay!”

The remaining two guards seized him by the arms and wrenched him backward. He struggled with all his might to escape their hold, but he was no match for the armed giants. The last thing he saw was Cynthia’s pale bare foot as she stepped down the first stair toward the dungeon. Then someone drove a mailed fist into his cheek, exploding stars across his vision that faded to leave a deep black canopy.

“There, that’s a lad.”

Droplets sprinkled Garth’s forehead. He flinched.

“Coming around now, are you?”

He opened his eyes. Elspeth’s lined face wavered above him.

“Clouted you good, he did. You’ve been sleeping most of the day.”

He sat up instantly. That couldn’t be right. It seemed as if he’d just watched Cynthia being dragged off.

“Here, have a care,” Elspeth chided, bracing his shoulders. “You’ll be wobbly as a new foal for a bit.”

He
was
dizzy. The last time he’d been cuffed that hard, it was for scribbling Latin exercises over his brother Duncan’s love letters, and that was seven years ago. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.

“I must go to her,” he said.

“Nay, you’ll be doing no such thing.”

“She needs my help.”

“She’ll be fine…for the moment. The last thing she needs is for you to get yourself locked up with her. You can’t help her from the confines of the dungeon.”

Elspeth was right, of course. But he couldn’t bear to think about his beloved Cynthia shivering somewhere in the dank bowels of the castle while he sat…

Where was he? A row of waxed cheeses hung from the low ceiling. Glazed earthen jars winked in the candlelight from beneath shelves of warped wood, where various cloth-wrapped bundles and bottles crowded together.

Elspeth answered his unasked question. “The buttery. Roger thought it would be best to keep you from beneath the Abbot’s nose for a bit…for your own good. As far as the Abbot knows, you roused and ran off.”

“I won’t hide here like a frightened rabbit while—“

“You’ll only endanger Lady Cynthia and your child if you—“

“My child.” He snapped his eyes toward her. “You know?”

“What?” Elspeth said with rueful snicker. “That the child is yours? Well, after all the tumbling the two of you’ve done in half the chambers of the castle, who else’s would it be?”

To his chagrin, Garth blushed. “I never meant to…”

Elspeth tugged the cassock up around his shoulders in a motherly fashion. “Truth to tell, lad, you never had a prayer, priest or not. Once Cynthia makes her mind up about a thing…well, you’d have to swim harder than a salmon upstream to resist her will.” She patted his hand. It felt strangely comforting. Then she clamped her lips together tightly. Her eyes watered. “But now she’s in the hands of the devil, and, will or no, she won’t wish to drag you into that hell. She’ll deny the babe is yours till they tie her to the stake and—“ Her voice cut off with a choking sob.

Garth slammed a fist against the wall. Flakes of plaster fluttered to the hard-packed dirt floor.

“I have to go to her,” he muttered between his teeth, scrambling to his feet. “I have to go.”

“Please,” Elspeth begged, bunching his cassock in desperate fingers. “You mustn’t. You’re her only nope now. But you’ve got to find another way.”

He took her by the shoulders and looked back and forth between her two brown, tear-bright eyes, his mind running quickly over ideas like a pen scribbling on parchment.

“The Abbot can’t sacrifice an innocent babe,” he said. “The church forbids it. The mark of the devil must be proved. The child must be born.” He ran a hand across his mouth. “So we have…”

“Six months, maybe seven.”

He gazed pensively over her head, past the jars and bottles, past the cheese, past the peeling plaster of the buttery walls, to a place in his mind’s eye that had grown dusty with disuse.

It was time to wipe away the cobwebs now, time to don the faded surcoat and rusty mail of the youth who once knew how to wield a sword, time to rub oil into the squeaky hinges of the war machine.

“Bring me parchment, ink, and quill,” he said, surprised by the authority of his own voice. “And a trusty servant who can ride like the wind. Nay, three servants.”

Elspeth nodded and hurried to do his bidding, wringing her hands and casting one hopeful glance backward before she left him in the buttery alone.

He ran a hand over his cheek, wincing as he found the tender place where the knight had doled him the blow. For four years, he’d turned the other cheek. It was time now to fight.

His brother Holden would be amazed to hear from him. But he’d come. Garth knew he would. And, with God’s grace, in time. If there was one thing in this world he could depend on, it was his brother’s love of a good battle.

Cynthia scratched a mark into the stone wall with a fragment of beef bone. She’d salvaged the tool from her first supper in the dungeon—two months ago, according to her tally.

So it was October, then, the time for sowing peas and beans, for transplanting leeks and spreading cinders under the cabbages. There was so much she missed…the changing of the seasons, birdsong, her garden.

Most of all, she missed Garth.

At first, she’d tried not to think about him. Instead, she focused on the babe growing inside her. Her belly was as round as a plumped goose now. It amazed her that the child continued to thrive, heedless of the lack of fresh air and sunlight. She supposed babes were as stubborn and hardy as weeds, able to grow in the most infertile soil. But she longed to give this babe the healthy start it deserved. Her aching back and idle muscles and pale skin yearned to feel the restoring touch of nature. She was weary of this dank, dark place, where moss sprouted from every crack in the stones and it was cold all the time.

What kept hope alive were Elspeth’s visits. Although she was under the close supervision of the Abbot’s guard, Elspeth was allowed to see her for a short time every few days. El supplied her with news—news about the castle folk, news about the Abbot, and, most recently, news from the village.

When, during one of her visits, El whispered to her that she had a message from a young man in the village, a good man who took care of the old and the sick and who’d promised to remember Lady Cynthia in his prayers, she’d known at once who it was.

From then on, there was frequent news from that “good man.” She learned that though he’d cast off his cassock, he’d never ceased doing the Lord’s work, that he now toiled alongside the villagers, right under the oblivious nose of the Abbot, and that the wheels of her rescue had been set in motion.

As for the Abbot, according to Elspeth, he’d begun gathering men about him—mostly overgrown dullards and religious fanatics—recruiting them into his personal army. Each day, more scarlet knights trickled in to usurp the chambers of Wendeville’s nobility. No doubt he planned to commandeer both Charing and Wendeville. She realized now that had likely been his intent all along.

She also learned from Elspeth that the Abbot was reluctant to execute her until her babe was born. He may believe she carried the devil’s spawn, but until irrefutable proof was obtained, church doctrine prevented him from laying a hand on an innocent child.

Cynthia stroked her swelling abdomen as it twitched now with subtle movements. About three more months. It would pass in the blink of an eye, she knew. Then, if Garth’s rescue somehow failed, since none could gainsay the edict of the almighty Abbot, he’d have his way. Cynthia would burn at the stake as a witch.

The thought brought despair down upon her like an abrupt June squall, and unwelcome tears flooded her eyes. Her chest hitched, and a sob fell from her lips before she could stop it. She clapped a fist against her mouth and struggled to cease her weeping, cursing the emotions which, of late, seemed to overwhelm her without warning.

Surely Garth would save her. And even if he couldn’t, the babe would survive, she told herself, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her surcoat. Elspeth and Roger would see to that. As for her, if all else failed, if she was to be executed, she intended to go to her death painlessly. When they came for her, she’d ask El to fetch her opium wine. With any luck, she’d be half-dead long before the flames licked her flesh.

Then she chided herself for her doubt. Garth would save her. He’d promised her as much. There was nothing to cry over.

Footfalls sounded outside the door.

“My lady!” El called.

It would distress El to see her thus, so she wiped away the last vestiges of her tears, then stood by the small barred window. “El, what is it?”

El’s face was bright with excitement, which she cautiously tempered for the sake of the guard. “The garden is doing very well today, my lady,” she said, adding pointedly, “You wouldn’t believe how
green
it is.”

“Green?”

“Aye.
Green.
As far as the eye can see.”

Cynthia blinked. That was impossible. It was October. The garden couldn’t be green.

El nodded emphatically. “I told you the
monks
hood would bear fruit.”