Timeless (10 page)

“Try not to worry. It will work itself out. I
always say so, and it always does,” Millicent said in a soothing
tone.

Not this time, I thought, sighing. This time,
it’s too big for you.

****

That evening, the great hall filled as we
prepared to feast the champion. Finally, I would get to see him, I
thought, wishing he wouldn’t be the center of so much
attention.

“Emmeline,” my father called to me from the
dais, raising his glass. I smiled at him, but his kindly light gray
eyes had moved from my face to sweep the hall, searching, I knew,
for Lamia.

“Come give us a kiss, sweetheart,” he said,
though I wondered whether or not he meant me. For the first time, I
wondered whether his affection was merely a show for others.

I stepped up beside him, and I could feel
Lamia’s eyes following me. She was jealous as always of any display
of my father’s love for me. These were the times that I missed my
mother the most.

My father had married Lamia last summer,
waiting an indecent time after my mother’s untimely death in
childbirth. Mother should have been long past her childbearing
years, and yet, happily she thought at the time, she would give my
father his long-awaited heir.

Lamia, a distant cousin of my mother’s—nobody
knew from where— had arrived to help with the birth. She and my
mother had grown up together, and my mother had had strange fancies
near her confinement. She wanted someone from her past to stay with
her during the birth of her son.

And so Lamia arrived, a beautiful,
golden-haired woman who seemed ageless, looking much as my mother
had remembered her from years before. When she’d first arrived, I’d
regarded her with fondness—she seemed to take such good care of my
mother, and she spared a kind word or smile for me as well, despite
the coldness I saw in her dark eyes.

When the time came for the birth, we’d stood
together, helping my mother through the throes of an agonizing
labor. It had ended, finally, three days later, my mother suffering
before the child, dead inside her, had been ripped from her womb,
killing her. At that instant, Lamia withdrew from me completely, a
knowing smile on her lips. She immediately went to comfort my
father, whose grief at my mother’s passing knew no bounds. He had
wed my mother twenty years before, and they’d lived a happy life
together before the unfortunate birth of the brother I would never
meet.

Lamia arranged for the burial the next day—an
unheard of, rushed event that gave the mourners no time to grieve
or prepare the body. It was customary at Montavere Castle, our
ancestral home near to the town of Sarum, to spend several nights
praying for the soul of the deceased.

But my father would not hear of it. Though I
cried, pleaded, and begged, he turned a deaf ear, relying on Lamia,
who, some maliciously said, had bewitched him. Knowing the depth of
my father’s love for my mother, I could not believe he could so
disrespect her in death.

But time would prove me wrong. Less than
three months after she died, Lamia had become the lady of the
castle, and rumors of the dark power she wielded over my father had
been silenced. Everyone feared her.

Once she became my father’s wife, she dropped
all pretence of affection for me. She took a heavy hand to the
servants and would not have my mother’s name mentioned in her
hearing. It was as though she wanted to erase all memory of her
childhood friend and relative.

A dark cloud settled over the castle, a sense
of foreboding filling our hearts with dread. Behind her back they
called her la belle dame sans merci, the lady without mercy.

My sorrow increased tenfold when she began to
turn my father away from me. Though she commanded him and all the
castle inhabitants, she could not efface his love for me entirely.
I suspected that she practiced the dark arts, but even I dared not
accuse her. She exercised such power that I shuddered to think what
could happen if I defied her.

If it had not been for Damien, the truest and
best of my father’s knights, I could not have born her tyranny over
us.

I rushed to embrace my father, my heart
gladdened at the memory of our once happy home, and I missed my
mother. My eyes found Damien’s, and he smiled at me, knowing, of
course, my every thought.

Though my father had thrown the banquet
ostensibly to honor the champion, he clearly meant for all eyes to
turn to the champion’s chosen lady that night, Lamia. An
uncustomary pall fell over the castle, normally jovial to the point
of riotousness at tournament celebrations that lasted well into the
night.

Gladdened by the lack of attention Damien
received, I looked for an opportunity to meet him secretly as we
did often. It was the only joy left to me after my mother’s
passing. To my knowledge, neither Lamia nor my father knew of my
feelings for Damien, whom my father had trained as his squire from
the time he’d brought Damien home thirteen years before.

No one knew where Damien came from, including
Damien, who had no memory before his life with us at the castle. My
father had found him at the local town fair, wandering alone as a
small boy. He brought him to the castle as his own, and I knew,
from the first time I saw his dark, captivating eyes, that he
belonged to me. We had played together as children, running and
laughing outside of the castle walls.

By his twelfth birthday, Damien had shown
signs of strength and talent as a knight. My father trained him
from that time, and though Damien was young, he’d already fought in
several tournaments, easily winning against even more experienced
knights.

I waited for my father and Lamia to become
distracted before I slipped out of the hall. Neither of them gave
much thought to me anymore, and my place at the dais had long been
supplanted by my stepmother, who would not allow me to sit with
them. I’d been resigned to sitting at the table below them, glad
for the reprieve. Though I missed my father, I felt relief at being
able to escape Lamia’s prying eyes.

The hall was long and dark, with torches
attached to the walls and a roaring fire at the opposite end
offering light for the great chamber, filled with visiting lords
and ladies, knights, squires, and servants. Damien, I saw, had
already slipped out unnoticed by all but me.

It was easy to escape with so many milling
about. Most averted their eyes, trying to avoid Lamia’s piercing
stare.

I stepped back into the shadows of the hall,
knowing he would be there, somewhere. I didn’t have long to
wait.

“Dearest,” he whispered in my ear, catching
me by my waist and easily sliding me farther into an alcove at the
far end of the long hall where no one, not even the discerning eyes
of my stepmother, could see us.

I gazed longingly into his dark eyes and
almost believed Millicent, who thought such beauty was only to be
found in the tales troubadours told. He was indeed as finely made
with as pure a heart as the knights who defeated fearsome dragons
for their lady loves.

Though tall for a woman, I was much smaller
than Damien, who rose well over a foot above me. His arms, long
attuned to sword fighting and practice on the field, reached around
my waist.

“Emmeline, I’ve waited all day for you,” he
breathed into my hair, kissing my eyes, cheeks, and forehead before
settling on my lips.

I smiled, burying my fingers in his hair as I
wrapped my arms around his neck to pull him closer.

“Not here. She might see us,” he
cautioned.

I almost didn’t care. Almost.

Reluctantly, I pulled away, not wanting to
break our embrace. Most of our moments together now were stolen in
dark corners, and I had no longing to part from him.

The haunting melody from the harp and flute
trickled down from the gallery above, following us as we slipped
out to the courtyard outside.

Relieved to have escaped Lamia’s notice, we
ran across the yard to the stables and began saddling Brutus, which
my father had given to him on the occasion of his knighthood along
with a sapphire-and-gold cross that he always wore around his neck.
Brutus could support us both and had become accustomed to these
evening jaunts.

I knew we wouldn’t be missed for a couple of
hours yet, and Damien and I had frequently met in secret in an
abandoned church in the woods, not too far outside the castle
walls.

Damien quieted my horse, Mairin, a skittish
mare in the stall beside Brutus, and helped me up his large
warhorse before mounting behind me.

The last obstacle was to get past the guard
at the front gate, a hurdle Damien had already foreseen. He’d given
me a dark, hooded cloak he had hidden earlier in Mairin’s stall. It
covered my red hair—my most recognizable feature since no one else
in the castle had it. Having ensured that the cloak covered every
tell-tale strand, Damien led us to the gate and spoke to the guard
on night duty.

“Good evening, Richard,” he began.

The guard eyed me suspiciously.

“Who is this, and where would you be going,
Sir Damien?” he asked warily.

“Just out to enjoy the evening with a
friend,” Damien replied casually.

The guard’s face broke out in a gap-toothed
smile, comprehension dawning on his old, craggy features as he
thought I was a servant, perhaps, whom Damien fancied. It was
entirely plausible, as he was champion of today’s tourney, but it
worried me, as I thought he’d be missed soon by Lamia and the
others, even if I wasn’t.

Richard slowly lowered the drawbridge for us,
watching me carefully to discern my identity.

“On ye go, then. But keep an eye out for
witches, aye?” he cautioned, suddenly sober. Lore had it that
witches rode out at night, stealing the souls of the unwary. A
shiver ran through my spine, as there was a full moon. Everyone
knew that witches held their Sabbaths then.

We all crossed ourselves, and Damien
murmured, “God save us all.”

“Amen,” we each responded automatically.

Damien picked our way through the shadows, a
well-worn path to us by now, and led us through the moonlight into
the forest and towards a small clearing in front of the church. The
castle itself was on a small hill, and we wended our way down to
the woods, the dark closing in on us as we made our way through the
trees.

We dismounted, and Damien tied Brutus to a
nearby tree. Even in the moonlight, I could see him smile down at
me.

“Emmeline,” he began, “the final tourney
tomorrow…”

“Shhh…” I put my finger to his lips.

He took my hand into his.

“You know I will have to wear her color. It’s
the tradition since your father no longer jousts.”

“Yes,” I breathed, not caring.

“But I want to wear your colors next to my
heart,” he said, suddenly unsheathing his dagger. He bent down and
cut a swathe of cloth from the white underskirt of my gown. Though
he already possessed a favor I’d made for him—an embroidered ribbon
with gold thread and white flowers—he wanted something more
personal, something I’d worn.

“The purest lily,” he whispered, kissing the
cloth.

As much as I loved Damien, I knew we needed
to discuss the more pressing question of marriage.

“When can we approach my father?” I asked. I
had begun to urge Damien to ask my father for my hand. Having
already long passed my thirteenth birthday, I knew that my father
would soon turn his attention to finding me a husband. He’d already
waited too long, I knew, because of my mother’s death and his
remarriage to Lamia, who seemed to have him in thrall. I could not
bear to be parted from Damien or be given in marriage to
another.

“Soon,” he replied, kissing away my
fears.

Taking me by the hand, he led me into the
ruins of the church, lit by the moonlight. Folklore said that the
church had been the ancient site of the Druids, those pagan
priests. It was a magical place, the crumbling stone walls a haven
for us.

Damien knelt before me where I imagined an
altar once stood.

“Lady Emmeline,” he began formally, “I plight
you my troth.”

My breath caught, and I could feel the tears
forming in my eyes. We’d once made our vows out beneath the stars,
but the church, even a pagan one, held a sacred solemnity to it. To
me, we were already as good as married, priest or no.

“And I you,” I vowed, bending to kiss the top
of his head.

He laid his hand upon my waist, his hands
easily circling it, then tied our hands together with the material
he cut from my skirt, handfasting us.

“I shall speak to Father Philip first,” he
told me.

“But we shall still need my father’s
blessing,” I said worriedly, thinking that my father could easily
invalidate the betrothal.

Both of us knew my father would easily have
consented had my mother been alive; there was a time when he cared
less about a person’s lineage than their moral worth, but now, I
suspected that that would be the greatest obstacle, even though
Damien had proven himself as a knight. Lamia’s disapproval and
influence was uppermost in both of our minds.

“Emmeline, I wonder, would you be prepared…”
he began nervously.

I looked at him, waiting for him to
finish.

“Prepared?” I prodded. “For what?”

“To defy your father…to turn your back on all
this,” he gestured towards the castle.

“To leave, you mean?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“It won’t come to that, Damien, I know it
won’t,” I said firmly.

“But if it did. If your father will not, no,
cannot grant us his blessing. Would you be prepared to leave of
your own accord?”

I heard the tone of insistence in his
voice.

I didn’t immediately know what to say. As
much as I disliked Lamia, I was only a thorn in her side, and I
said as much. The castle was my entire world, my father the only
family I had left. How could I leave him? How could I depart
forever from the place where I’d lived my entire life? I’d never
been farther than Sarum on a market day and could not imagine
living anywhere else.