The Captive Heart (33 page)

“Why do we return home, my lord? Should we not go over the border after our good lady?” The captain’s name was Dugald, but he was called Beinn, which meant mountain, by all who knew him, for he was a giant of a man standing six feet six inches tall with a massive head covered in russet hair, and limbs like tree trunks.

“I am certain I know who has absconded with my wife,” the laird explained. “She will be safe once she has reached her destination. He will not harm her. We will get these scrawny beasts safely back to Dunglais, and then tomorrow we will cross over the border to retrieve my wife. We can hardly go raiding with a herd of horses now, can we?” He grinned at Beinn, who grinned back.

“Aye, my lord. But can you tell me, do you know, why this Englishman took our lady?” For all his size Beinn was a gentleman except when provoked. All the village children and every dog for miles around loved and gravitated to him.

“This lord believes my wife was betrothed to him. She was not,” the laird told the faithful Beinn. “You recall how my lady was found?”

And Beinn nodded. “Aye, I do.”

“She had been fleeing this man,” the laird explained. “Do you remember the Englishman who came to the keep some months back? It is the same man. My wife and daughter kept to their chambers while he was at Dunglais overnight, and I told him I had no knowledge of the woman he sought. He is half-mad, I believe, but he will not harm Alix. Of that I am certain.”

Alix, however, was not certain at all that Sir Udolf was harmless. She was utterly exhausted when they finally arrived at Wulfborn. Had it always looked so bleak and lonely out upon the moors? Aye, it had, she thought with a shiver. It had been almost two years since she had escaped from here, and she was not pleased at all to be back when she first saw the house from a distance. The captain of the raiding party came to help her down from her mare. As shaky as she felt, Alix pushed him away, glaring.

“I don’t envy your lord, lady,” he said quietly.

“The old fool who lives here is
not
my lord. I expect my husband is not far behind, and there will be blood before this is all over,” Alix snapped. It was all she could do to keep standing.

And then Sir Udolf hurried from the house, smiling broadly. “My darling Alix, welcome home!” he gushed and made to put his arms about her so he might kiss her.

“This most certainly is
not
my home, Sir Udolf!” Alix said, shoving him away and wondering where she had gotten the strength to do it when she could hardly remain on her own two feet. She was surely going to collapse if she didn’t sit down soon. Pray God the bairn was all right.
The bairn!
She had called it the bairn.
I am becoming a Scot
, she thought, and almost smiled, but caught herself in time lest Sir Udolf think she was smiling at him. She gazed hard at the man in front of her. He had aged. How old was he? she attempted to recall. In his late fifties, for he had been close in years to her own father. “I am weary beyond telling,” Alix said coldly. “Let us go into the hall.” And she pushed past him as she moved into the house.

God’s wounds! The hall had become a pigsty. There were rushes upon the stone floor, and those rushes were filled with animal bones and other bits of garbage. The whole place stank of sour wine and beer, rotting food, and chimneys that were not drawing properly. It had certainly not been this way when she had first come to Wulfborn, nor while she lived here.

“He beat me black-and-blue when it was discovered you had escaped him,” a voice whined by her elbow.

“Why is the hall so filthy, Bab?” Alix demanded to know, recognizing the woman’s voice. “Where are the servants?”

“He kept saying you would take care of it all when you came back,” Bab told her, coming around to face Alix now. She hadn’t changed either, Alix thought. She was still a bawdy old slattern.

“I did not come back,” Alix told the serving woman. “He had me kidnapped from my own lands, from my husband, Bab. The laird will be here soon, and I will return home to Dunglais with him.”

“He were very excited when he found you,” Bab nattered on.

“I am not remaining,” Alix told her.

“He won’t let anyone else have you, lady, and under the law you are his wife.”

“As his son’s widow it was my right to choose a new husband if I wanted one. Your master is a lustful fool, but no decent woman would wed her father-in-law,” Alix told Bab. “It is ungodly. It is incest certainly.”

“But he got his dispensation from York,” Bab protested.

“A dispensation he told me he would buy,” Alix said. “When I could not dissuade him from his folly, I fled Wulfborn as any respectable woman would have done! I am not betrothed to your master, nor am I his wife. I am the wife of the Laird of Dunglais, as all at Wulfborn will learn to their misfortune when my husband arrives. Our marriage was sanctioned by the bishop of St. Andrew’s. Now, Bab, I am exhausted. I must rest. Tell your master I will see him on the morrow.” And without another word Alix went upstairs to her old bedroom.

She was shocked to find everything exactly as she had left it two years ago. Although dusty, it was still obviously the cleanest room in the house. Her trunk was yet at the foot of her bed and filled with her own clothing. The scent of roses assailed her nostrils as she opened it. It would appear it had not been opened since she had left Wulfborn. Alix whirled at a scratching on the door. “Who is it?” she asked.

“Only me,” Bab said, coming into the chamber with a pitcher of water. “I remember how you liked to bathe yourself, and you have been traveling for several days.” She set the pitcher down on a table. “I told the master what you said, and he has agreed to see you on the morrow. Are you hungry? If you are I’ll fetch you something to eat.”

“Aye,” Alix answered her. “I would like that. Thank you, Bab.”

The serving woman left the chamber. Alix stripped off her cape. It was dusty. She would have Bab brush it. Pulling the chamber pot from beneath the bed, she peed, tossing the water from the window. Then she bathed her face and her hands in the water Bab had brought. The woman had remembered she preferred warm water to wash in, and not cold. Where was Colm? Alix wondered. Certainly he had been only a few hours behind her captors. She had been surprised when he hadn’t caught up to her before they arrived at Wulfborn. Sir Udolf would not be easy to deal with, but her husband would quickly settle the matter to his own satisfaction, but not to Sir Udolf’s.

Bab returned carrying a small bowl of soup, half a loaf, and some cheese. She set it down upon a small table near the hearth. “You’d best eat it while it’s hot, lady,” she advised. Then she sighed. “The soup I fear will taste of nothing. The bread is stale, and the cheese hard with age. Nothing has been right since you left us.”

“Do you understand why I left, Bab?” Alix asked the serving woman.

“Aye,” Bab said. “So you have told me. But he’s mad. The dispensation he gained cost him dearly. The priest had to make two additional visits to Yorkminster before it was granted.”

“God and his Blessed Mother!” Alix swore lightly. Then she shook her head. “Are there no suitable women of childbearing age hereabouts he might take as a wife? Why has he fixed all his hopes upon me?” She broke off a piece of the stale loaf and dipped it in the soup to soften it before popping it into her mouth. Bab was correct. The soup had no flavor at all, and she would swear that the piece of cheese brought to her had the marks of mouse teeth in it. She pushed it away.

“I think most of the gentlefolk in the region kept their daughters from the Wattesons because of Master Hayle. He were an odd boy, as you would surely know, lady. Sir Udolf has not spoken with his neighbors in many years now. I think he took offense towards them because of their attitude against Master Hayle,” Bab said. “But I know there are at least two ladies still young enough to give him what he wants that he might take to wife. Their families are good and equal to his. He just doesn’t know how to approach these families after all the time that has passed and the animosity between them. And you were here. Young and fecund, lady.”

“But after I was not here why did he pursue the matter?” Alix wondered aloud.

“Sir Udolf is like a flock of sheep. Once he gets going in a certain direction, ’tis nigh impossible to turn him onto another path, lady, without much effort.”

Alix shook her head. “I wish your master no ill, Bab, but my husband will come for me, and when he does I will go with him. If Sir Udolf attempts to stop us, Colm will surely kill him. As it is, I shall have to dissuade him from slaying Sir Udolf when he first arrives. My husband is by nature a peaceable man, but he loves me and will be very angry that I, or the bairn I carry, might have been harmed.”

“You’re with child?” Bab exclaimed, and then she looked closely at Alix. “Aye, I can see it now. When is your child due to come into this world?”

“Late winter,” Alix told the woman.

“Will you tell the master?” Bab wondered fearfully. Sir Udolf was not going to be pleased at all to find that his heart’s desire was carrying another man’s child.

“I most certainly will tell Sir Udolf, Bab. Do you think I want to endanger my bairn, having to fend off his unwanted advances?” Alix pushed the tray away. “And you say naught to any until I have.”

Bab nodded her grizzled head. “Aye, lady, you may be certain I will say nothing, for I do not wish to be the victim of Sir Udolf’s disappointment and outrage when he learns your secret. I still ache two years after the fact from the beating he gave me when you ran away,” the older woman said.

“He should not have punished you at all,” Alix said angrily. “Everyone had been told I was praying and fasting and had no wish to be disturbed. You were simply obeying the orders that he himself had approved.”

Bab picked up the tray. “I’ll leave you, then, but a word of warning, lady. Bar your door this night against any surprise incursions.” Then she left the chamber.

Taking her advice, Alix went and turned the key in the lock of her door. She then took the heavy wooden rod that was used to barricade the door to ensure her privacy, and lifting it not without some difficulty, Alix set it in its place. The master of Wulfborn would not be disturbing her this night. But where was Colm? Should he not have come to retrieve her by now? But as he had not, Alix lay down on the bed to rest. She would just have to wait. Today was over, but Colm would come tomorrow, she was certain.

 
“It isn’t her,” the Laird of Dunglais said, looking down at the ravaged body of the almost naked woman who had been found out on the moor and brought back to the hall by the men who had made the gruesome discovery. He looked down with pity on the bruised and battered body. The woman had been very ill used, raped and beaten. Her face was a swollen mass of bloody pulp. It wasn’t Alix.
It couldn’t be!

“Can you be sure, my lord?” one of his men asked nervously.

“It is not my mam,” Fiona Scott said with great certainty as she came around her father’s tall frame and peered down at the body curiously.

“Fiona! What are you doing here? Fenella, take her away,” the laird cried, disturbed that his almost-eight-year-old daughter should have seen such a terrible sight.

“Da, it is not Alix,” Fiona insisted. “Alix was wearing breeks. Those shreds of clothing still left on that poor lass are not from her breeks. And look closely at her hands, Da. The nails are cracked, broken, and dirty. And they are large hands. Alix has dainty hands, and her nails are never broken nor her cuticles cracked. And this lass has no belly. My mam’s belly was beginning to grow round with my brother.”

“The lass is right,” Fenella said quietly, quite startled by the child’s sharp perception as she too stared down at the body. The woman was too big-boned to be Dunglais’s lady. “This isn’t your wife, my lord.”

“The Englishman is clever in attempting to make me believe it is. Yet he was careless in his choice of henchmen to carry out his nefarious plot,” Malcolm Scott noted. “They did not bother to consider the differences between my wife and the victim they chose to masquerade as her. Poor woman. Can anyone identify her?”

“It may be Vika from over the hill,” Beinn said thoughtfully. “She’s a local whore, my lord.” He looked the body over very carefully and then nodded. “Aye, that’s just who it is, my lord. See that round pinkish brown mole there on the side of her ankle? Vika had just such a mole.”

Another man-at-arms sidled forward and peered down. “Aye, ’tis Vika, poor lass. She were a good whore, and never stole from a man when he slept,” he remarked.

“Fenella, find some respectable garments for the woman, and we’ll bury her decently. Someone go and fetch the priest. Father Donald can say a word over her. Did she have any bairns?” the laird wanted to know.

“Two,” Beinn answered him. “Lads both. Maybe three and five.”

“Is their sire or sires known?” the laird asked.

“If Vika knew, she never said, my lord,” Beinn told him.

“Find those lads,” the laird instructed, “and bring them to the keep. In an odd sense their mam died for my wife. I’ll see her lads aren’t left to starve or be mistreated.”

It had been a day now since Alix had been kidnapped, but with the discovery of the dead whore Malcolm Scott was once more delayed from leaving Dunglais to seek out his wife at Wulfborn and bring her home. The Englishman had to be mad to concoct such a wicked scheme. And what in the name of all that was holy had convinced him he could get away with it? While Malcolm knew Alix was safe, he was still concerned for his lambkin and the bairn she carried. An almost-two-day ride across the hills and over the border could not have been easy. If anything had happened to either his wife or his son the Englishman would regret his folly with his last dying breath, which the Laird of Dunglais promised himself would be a long, painful time coming. And not a stone of his house or village would be left standing.