Lord of War: Black Angel (24 page)

“As am I.”

He sighed sadly and kissed her forehead again. “Then let us make the most of this time together.  Let us build happy memories to cling to for the times we are separated. I promise I will not bring up my departure to France in your presence until such time my departure is imminent. I will not constantly remind you of something we are trying to ignore. Is that acceptable?”

She frowned. “When are you departing?”

He was serious. “Four weeks at the most.”

Ellowyn closed her eyes, already miserable although she was struggling not to be.  Finally, she nodded. “Very well,” she whispered. “We will pretend you are not leaving and that you shall always be with me.”

He put a finger under her chin, tipping her head up.  He kissed her softly on the mouth. “I will always be with you no matter where I am,” he kissed her again. “My heart is with you, Wynny. Surely you know that.”

She gazed into his dark eyes, unable to control herself. “I do love you, Brandt,” she murmured. “Always remember that. You have all of me.”

His features when through the range of emotions - shock, realization, and finally awe.  He wrapped her up in a fierce embrace, squeezing the breath from her.

“Wynny, my love,” he murmured. “I do not know what to say except….”

Ellowyn buried her face in his neck, trying to avoid the chain mail. “Except what?”

“Except… I am sorry I called you a whore when we first met.”

Ellowyn froze, her eyes flying open. Then, she pulled her face from the crook of his neck, looking at him with such surprise that her mouth popped open. Brandt looked back at her with equal surprise until she broke down into screaming laughter.  Soon, the two of them were howling with laughter, so much so that Ellowyn was nearly weak with it.  She struggled to catch her breath.

“It was probably the best thing you ever did,” she chortled. “As sweet and slick as a marriage proposal.”

He shook with mirth. “I was at my most charming that day.”

She shook her head, wiping the happy tears from her eyes. “You are a devil, Brandt de Russe.”

He grabbed her face and kissed her soundly. “Aye, but I am
your
devil, Wynny. I am your devoted, humble, and loving devil.”

She sobered as he kissed her, the moment so warm and fluid between them. “Do you love me, Brandt?”

He slowed his aggressive kisses, running his hands over her soft cheeks. “I have never loved anyone before but I suspect that I do. What I am feeling for you could only be love.”

She grinned, returning his sweet kisses, until they turned amorous. The fire that ignited so easily between them roared to life. Brandt picked her up and headed to the bed, but she balked.

“Nay,” she breathed. “Not on that mess. It is filthy and full of bugs.”

Brandt hardly slowed down.  He began pulling off his gloves, unfastening the ties of her girdle with a free hand.   Ellowyn felt his sense of urgency, feeding off of it, and in little time she had her surcoat off, helping Brandt with his mail.  It was more cumbersome to undress him but they managed it, everything from the waist up.  His broad, muscular chest drew her lust and she kissed his chest, toying with his nipples just as he toyed with hers.

Brandt yanked the shift over her head, leaving her clad in her hose and boots.  She had a fabulous figure, soft and round in the right places, and already he was suckling her breasts and fondling her buttocks, pulling her up against him.  She had such soft skin and he lapped it up, starving for her. Nothing on earth fueled him like she did.

Ellowyn, meanwhile, managed to unfasten his breeches but he had to lower them; he could do it faster, anyway.  With his breeches down around his knees, he turned her around, braced her arms against the bed post, and lifted her buttocks up against his pelvis.  His manhood, hard and demanding, thrust into her from behind.

Since he was so much taller than she was, he had to literally hold her up off the ground as he thrust into her.  It was nothing for his considerable strength. Ellowyn gripped the bed post, wrapping her legs around him as he drove into her soft and yielding body.   He had a firm grip of her pelvis, holding it tightly against him, his gaze on her slender back and supple buttocks, driving him insane with desire.

Bending over, he wrapped a big arm around her torso, holding her against him as his free hand roamed her breasts, delighting in the silken texture.  Then his fingers moved to the curls between her legs, fingering her, listening to her gasp and groan as he stroked her.  He felt her release and he answered shortly, spilling his seed deep into her womb. 

Still embedded in her, he held her close, kissing her back, stroking her breasts gently, digesting everything about the woman that he was so closely joined with. Every tremor, every breath, every sigh was engrained in his brain. She was becoming a part of his very makeup, the fibers of his being.  As he stood there and held her, his body still joined to hers, his mouth was against her back.

“Aye, I love you,” he whispered into her flesh. “I will never love another.”

Eyes closed, trying to catch her breath, Ellowyn could only smile.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The dream was back, picking up where it had left off.

She had no idea what her grandfather was pointing at. Through the rain and mist, all she could see was mud and dead bodies. Even this far away from that horrid, smoking castle, the bodies were thick. So many dead.

Her heart was pounding in her throat, her hand on her belly as the child kicked.  The kicking was becoming painful, in fact, and she rubbed at her belly as she tried to see what her grandfather was pointing at.

There, Wynny, he said. Do you not see him there?

She was frantic as she tried to determine what he was talking about. There was something in the distance to catch her attention, something deep and dark and ugly. She could feel it. She wanted to know what he was pointing at but then again, she didn’t want to know.

Who is it, Papa?  she cried.

Her grandfather simply pointed, his handsome face edged with sadness.

Go to him, Wynny. You must save him.

Frustrated, terrified, she began to cry. The baby kicked, painfully, and she cried harder. But she could see something through the rain and mist beneath the trees in the distance. It was a man in armor, lying beneath the canopy. There was blood all around him, the color of a ruby  In an otherwise black and white and gray landscape, it was the only spot of gruesome color.

She tried to move towards him but the mud had become a great sucking cauldron, refusing to let her move.  She clawed at it, scratching her way towards the man lying beneath the trees. The hands of the dead began to sprout up through the mud, grabbing at her, clutching at her.

She screamed.

***

During those first few days of the duke’s return to Guildford, the servants, soldiers, and knights would be hard-pressed for an answer when asked who the sterner task-master was - the duke or his wife.  Popular opinion was leaning towards the formidable and lovely Lady de Russe as she took over the castle like a conquering hero.

The evening they took possession of the castle and keep, Brandt had sent four soldiers to assist his wife in making the keep habitable to her standards, which wasn’t a simple or quick task.  Ellowyn had very high standards.  The first thing she did was set a giant iron pot to boiling in the kitchen yard and ask the soldiers to find some lye.  A search of the entire castle didn’t turn up a trace of it, so Ellowyn set forth making some.  She’d seen the women at Erith make it dozens of times so she understood the simple process.  In order to effectively clean, she had to have lye.

One of the soldiers found her an old wine barrel, which she had propped up on some stones so that it was off the ground.  Then, she had the soldiers put rocks all over the bottom of the barrel and covered the rocks with a thin layer of hay before making a hole near the base and plugging it up with another rock.

With all of that done, she had them make a fire of oak.  The hard wood burned long and low, so it wasn’t until the next morning that they had the desired ash from the burning.  While waiting for the oak to burn down, Brandt had tried to talk her into sleeping on the dirty bed but she wouldn’t touch it, so he fashioned a pallet for them on the floor of the chamber and they slept on that.  His first night back at his castle had him sleeping on the cold, hard floor, but he didn’t mind. As long as he had Ellowyn in his arms, he was a content man.  However, she didn’t sleep very well at all. She had cried and muttered all night in her sleep.

At dawn the next day, Ellowyn made no mention of her restless night. She was more concerned with her chores.  The oak wood had burned away overnight and she had her pile of ashes, so she had the men scoop up the white flakes and pour it into the barrel along with gallons of rainwater.  The white mix blended, settled, and sat for three days while Brandt and the other men went about their business, watching Lady de Russe’s mysterious experiment carefully.  Ellowyn, too, went about her business of doing what she could to clean up the keep but everything was really dependent upon the lye she was making. It would be the key ingredient to a clean keep of her standards. 

At the end of the third day, Ellowyn took an egg from the chicken coop and, opening the barrel, cracked the egg into the murky water. Brandt, Dylan, Stefan, and her four helpers watched curiously as the egg floated on the top and Ellowyn declared her satisfaction. The lye was sufficiently leeched. Unplugging the hole and the bottom of the barrel, she had her assistants fill buckets with the white stuff, now ready to be used.

The giant iron pot was filled with water again and put to a boil along with a bucketful of the white lye concoction.  The bed linens were all thrown into the pot and the massive bed was broken down, brought outside, and scrubbed with lye. 

Meanwhile, Ellowyn and one of the soldiers went inside and began scrubbing the floors and walls down with the lye.   When Brandt caught sight of his lovely wife on her knees, scrubbing like a washer woman, he sent Stefan into the village to acquire servant women to do the dirty work.  He had promised her, after all, and the truth was that it had slipped his mind until he saw her on the floor with a horse bristle brush in her hands. Then, he was fired into action.

Stefan returned with four women by the evening, a widow and her three daughters, and Ellowyn was thrilled. She had already managed to scrub most of the bed chamber but was happy to turn it over to someone else.  While two of the daughters got to work finishing the master’s bower, Ellowyn spoke to the old widow, Miss Maude, and discovered that she was mostly deaf but seemingly very willing to work and very knowledgeable.  Ellowyn put the old woman to work with the now-boiled bed linens while the third daughter, a surprisingly attractive red-head, started to work on scrubbing down the solar.

The keep was lit up with torches that the soldiers had ignited when the sun began to set.  The narrow windows of the keep made it a fairly dark place, even in broad daylight, so there were a variety of wall sconces for the torches and black soot on the walls above them.  Satisfied that her new worker women were proceeding nicely with their tasks, Ellowyn went in search of her husband.

Descending the long and edgy stairs that led down the motte and into the bailey, she headed for the great hall.  It was nearing supper time and she could smell the roasting meat.

A few soldiers and male servants were already in the hall, milling about.   It was a long and slender room with a greatly angled thatched roof and a massive fireplace built of stone against the southern wall.  The chimney wasn’t in good repair so smoke seeped into the room, clouding up near the ceiling.  Two long, well-used tables filled the room, each one of them seating at least thirty men. 

Ellowyn hadn’t really made it into the feasting hall since her arrival because she and Brandt had taken their meals in the keep, and she hadn’t much been out of the big stone structure.  But now, she looked about with interest as an old male servant put fresh bread upon the feasting table.  It was brown bread, course, but there was plenty of it. Ellowyn got the man’s attention.

“Have you seen the duke?” she asked.

The old man was very old and very tiny.  He shook his head. “Nay, my lady,” he replied. “He has not been here.”

Ellowyn’s face twisted thoughtfully. She looked around the room, her thoughts moving from one to the other.

“What is your name?” she asked the servant.

“Gilbert, my lady,” he replied.

“Who does the cooking here?”

Gilbert pointed to his right, towards a darkened alcove. She could see an open door at the end of the alcove.

“Servants, my lady,” he replied. “Men servants. They served the duke’s father.”

Ellowyn’s eyebrows lifted. “They must be very old.”

Gilbert simply nodded, both fearfully and eagerly, and skittered after Ellowyn as she proceeded through the alcove and out of the feasting hall.

The kitchen yard was vast, backing up all the way to the outer wall.  There were various small structures; chicken coop, pig pen, goats roaming free, sheep penned near the outerwall, a buttery that was made of uneven gray stone and resembled a bee hive.  There was also an enormous stone oven that was blazing in the early evening and a fire pit near the oven contained a carcass of a sheep, roasting on the open flame.

Everything was fairly open, unlike the kitchen at Erith that was actually enclosed on the lower level of the keep.   There were two big, burly men carting around sides of meat and other things, obviously preparing for the coming meal.  Gilbert, a nervous little man, made haste to run them both down and bring them to Ellowyn.

As the men drew near, Ellowyn could see that they were indeed quite old. If they served Brandt’s father, then they had to be nearly ancient. One man was big and bald, perhaps once muscular that had now gone to fat, and the other man had long gray hair, huge hands, and was missing an eye.  Ellowyn was a bit taken aback at the ‘cooks’ of Guildford. She had only known women cooks, not two old men who looked more like thieves or murderers.