Untamed (5 page)

“Is that common among Blackthorne vassals?” Dominic asked idly.

“Nay, lord. None but she and her mother before her had such green eyes. 'Tis the mark of Glendruid blood.”

Dominic's eyes narrowed even more.

Simon watched his brother uneasily. He had seen that look of cold assessment many times before, in the instants before a battle was joined. Yet there were no armed enemies here, no war horns calling knights to defend God's city.

“So heavy, my lord,” Eadith said. “'Tis a fine gift any lady would be proud to wear.”

The handmaiden's fingers caressed the brooch with an envy she couldn't quite conceal.

Dominic looked to Simon and nodded slightly.

Without a word Simon turned and went to the chest once more. For a moment or two he fished about in the contents. The faint, unmistakable sound of gold coins and chains rubbing over one another whispered musically in the silence.

Simon grunted as he found what he sought. He turned toward his brother and held up another brooch.

Impatiently Dominic nodded.

Simon stepped forward, took Eadith's empty hand, and dropped the bit of jewelry onto her palm. There was no gemstone in this brooch, but its weight testified to its value. Startled, she looked up and met Dominic's cold silver eyes.

“For you,” Dominic said.

Eadith's jaw dropped.

“Plain enough to see that the keep and its people have not been blessed with plenty of late,” Dominic said as kindly as he could manage to the girl whose pale eyes and thin smile he had disliked on sight. “The widow of a brave knight should have a few bright bits of jewelry to please her vanity.”

Eadith closed her hand around her brooch so fiercely that one edge cut visibly into her flesh.

“Thank you, Lord Dominic.”

“It is nothing.”

He saw the direction of Eadith's eyes as she bowed her head to him. Her pale blue glance was drawn to the chest like iron to a lodestone. Simon noticed too. He shut the chest with a casual gesture even as he gave his brother a hooded look of disapproval.

“Will there be anything else you require?” Eadith asked.

“No. Just take the brooch to Lady Margaret with my greetings. And send my squire in with supper.”

Simon watched the handmaiden hurry through the doorway as though afraid of being called back and forced to give up the brooch. When he was certain he couldn't be overheard, Simon turned back to his brother.

“Now the whole countryside will know what was in those chests they watched being carried into the keep,” Simon said neutrally.

“It's a good thing for vassals to know their new lord isn't so poor he will have to wring blood from them to keep his knights well fed and better armed.”

“And for future brides?” Simon said. “Is it also a good thing for them to know?”

“Particularly for future brides,” Dominic said with harsh satisfaction. “I've yet to see a female whose eyes didn't brighten at the sight of golden trinkets.”

“Always the tactician.”

Dominic smiled rather grimly as he thought of the emerald-eyed wench who had neatly outmaneuvered him in the mews.

“Not always, Simon. But I learn from my mistakes.”

A
CRISP WIND BLEW THROUGH THE
bailey, lifting skirts and short coats and sending smoke from the kitchen fires leaping up toward the gray sky. Although Meg usually enjoyed a brisk spring breeze scented by the first rush of growing plants, at the moment she was too irritated to notice anything but the gamekeeper who stood uneasily before her.

“What do you mean, there will be no venison?” Meg asked, her voice unusually sharp.

The gamekeeper looked away and twisted his hands nervously. “The pale, m'lady. 'Tis so fallen down in places a hare could leap it, much less a stag. The deer…they're fled.”

“How long has the deer park been in such a state?”

Looking only at his feet, the gamekeeper mumbled something.

“Speak up,” she said. “And look at me while you speak.”

Meg rarely took such a tone with the keep's vassals; but then, she was rarely lied to by them.

That wasn't the case now. The gamekeeper's falsehoods were so great they were sticking in his throat like chicken bones.

“I…the winds…uh…” he said.

Pale blue eyes beseeched Meg, stirring unwilling compassion in her.

“Good man, who told you to lie to me?” she asked gently.

Hands roughened by bowstrings, snares, and skinning knives pleaded silently for Meg's kindness.

“The laird,” whispered the gamekeeper finally.

“He's too weak to leave his bed. Have you been to his chamber, then, to receive your orders to lie to the mistress of the keep?”

The gamekeeper shook his head so hard his oily hair lifted. “Sir Duncan, mistress. He told me.”

Stillness came over Meg. “What did Duncan tell you?”

“No venison for the Norman.”

“I see.”

And she did.

It chilled Meg. She had been glad to see Duncan return from the Crusade, for his cousin Rufus wasn't interested in keeping peace with Henry. No matter how little she liked the idea of being pawned to a strange Norman knight in order to keep peace in the northern marches, Meg liked the thought of bloodshed less. The constant chivvying and thrusting against the English king—and among ambitious Saxons while leaders such as Duncan were off pursuing a holy Crusade—had worn out Blackthorne Keep's people, its fields, and its hope of a better future.

The vassals blamed their ill fortune on their lord and on the revenge of a Glendruid witch mated to the wrong man. Meg blamed the ruined fields on the inattention of her father, a man obsessed with stopping the advance of the English by marrying his daughter to a thane known as Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer.

Ah, Duncan. Don't succumb to my father's lures. They will lead to plague and starvation, bloody meadows and an early grave
.

“M'lady?”

The gamekeeper's voice was uncertain. The lord's daughter looked pinched and drawn, far too old for even an unmarried maid of nineteen.

“You may go,” Meg said tightly. “Thank you for the truth, though it nearly came too late. Make plans to kill a stag. There will be venison at this wedding feast, even though it will be tough for want of hanging.”

The gamekeeper's dirty fingers touched his forelock, but he didn't leave.

“Is there more?” she asked.

“Duncan,” he said simply.

“He is not the lord of Blackthorne Keep. Nor will he be. I, however, am the lady.
And I will remain so
.”

The gamekeeper took one look at the narrowed green eyes watching him and decided to let the lords and ladies fight it out among themselves. He was going hunting.

“Aye, m'lady.”

Meg watched the gamekeeper trot across the bailey to the gatehouse with gratifying speed. But the gratification, like the man's speed, was short-lived.

This fighting must end
, Meg told herself silently.
There will be no one left to bury the dead, nor any food for the living. One more year of meager crops will be the end of Blackthorne Keep
.

A sliding, changing pressure at Meg's ankles distracted her. When she glanced down, Black Tom looked back up at her with feline intensity.

“Not yet, cat. First I must see Duncan.”

Black Tom stropped himself once more and walked off in the direction of the granary. Meg
wished him luck. She doubted there was enough grain inside the structure to lure a mouse from the meadow stubble's skimpy food.

Holding her simple head cloth and leather circlet against the searching wind, Meg started for the keep.

 

“T
HE
church will agree to your marriage,” Lord John said hoarsely. “All you have to do is take the Norman's gold. And his life with it!”

A savage smile transformed Duncan's face, revealing the Viking ancestry that ran through Scots blood like lightning through a storm.

“Done,” he said.

And then Duncan laughed.

John's pale lips shifted in a smile that was colder than the stones of the keep. His bastard son was much like him in ways that went beyond hazel eyes and hair the color of freshly turned loam; both men were warriors who gave no quarter and asked for none.

“Send word to the Reevers,” John said. “Have them blend with the wedding guests in the chapel. Then—”

Abruptly words became a fit of coughing that wracked John's frail body.

Duncan went to the bed and slipped his arm around his father, helping him upright until the coughing passed. He held a cup of ale against the old man's dry lips until most of the ale had been drunk.

“You should rest,” Duncan said.

“
Nay
. Listen to me. Whether I live or die, you must let the wedding go forward before more Normans come! You must! Only then will—”

Coughing took away words and the will to say them. When John was once again quiet, Duncan gave
him more ale to drink; but this time he added two drops of the medicine Meg had made to alleviate John's pain.

“Ease yourself,” Duncan said. “I'm listening. What have you planned?”

With a surprisingly gentle hand, Duncan brushed back the forelock that had gone gray between one winter and the next as disease ate John's strength.

“Get Meg,” John said hoarsely. “I can say it only once.”

“I'll send for—” Duncan began.

“There is no need,” Meg said from the doorway. “I am here.”

No longer was she dressed in the clothes of a cotter's child. She wore a long inner tunic of soft rose wool and an outer tunic of forest green that was trimmed with a heavily embroidered strip of cloth. Unlike the tunics many women wore, Meg's were closely fitted, for she had no patience with flapping cloth. Her narrow waist was wrapped about with a sash that crossed in back around her hips as well before being tied in front, further keeping folds of cloth from getting in her way when she worked in the herbal. The sleeves of the outer tunic were long and narrow, hemmed with more embroidery.

“What did you want of me?” Meg asked.

Her intense green eyes looked from Duncan's muscular good health to the withered shadow that was her father. She noted the stopper out of the small medicine bottle and looked quickly at Duncan.

“Two drops only,” he said, knowing her concern.

Her mouth flattened. “He had that much before mass.”

Everyone in the room knew that the potion was very strong. Six drops sent a patient into dreamless sleep. Three times that could kill the average man.
A person as frail as her father had to be given the medicine with great care.

“No matter,” John rasped. “If I die sooner, so be it. Listen well, daughter of Anna of Glendruid. You will be wed on the morrow, before the feast.”

“What feast?” Meg said tightly. “Duncan forbade the gamekeeper to—”

“Silence!” John coughed, but only weakly. “When the priest asks if you agree to the marriage, you will say no.”

“But—”

John talked right over Meg, his voice as dry and withered as his body; and like his eyes, his voice burned with the intense flame of an obsession that was little short of madness.

“There will be confusion among the Normans when you refuse the match,” John said. “Duncan will strike and the Normans will die. Then you will marry Duncan before blood dries in the aisle.”

“You cannot mean that,” whispered Meg.

Stricken, she looked at Duncan. His hazel eyes were as hard as agates. There would be no help from that quarter.

“The Church refused our marriage six years ago,” she said urgently. “For good reason, Duncan. You are my half brother!”

For a long time there was only silence barely disturbed by the quick, frail breaths of a man who clung to life.

Duncan looked at John.

“Tell her,” the old man said.

Reluctantly, Duncan turned back to confront the intense green eyes of the woman who had little real blood relationship to the men in the room.

“At most, sweet Meggie, I'm your stepcousin.”

“Nonsense,” she retorted. “You are John of Blackthorne's bastard. Anyone with eyes to see knows it.”

“Aye. I am his son.
But you are not his daughter
.”

Meg took a step backward before she controlled her shock. She straightened her spine and stood proudly.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

Before Duncan could speak, John did.

“Your mother was breeding when we married,” he said bluntly. “You might be my stepbrother's bastard. And you might be a groom's spawn, for all I know. The bitch is dead and it matters not to me, for I will die soon.”

“I don't believe you,” Meg said tightly. “You may be able to blind priests with lies and offers of gold, and lure Duncan with promises you can't keep, but not me. I am the daughter of Blackthorne Keep. I know it the way I know plants will lift their faces to the sun!”

John struggled to sit up, but had to be content with turning onto his side to confront the girl whose birth had been the greatest affront ever suffered by the proud Saxon thane.

“Look at me, Glendruid witch,” he said roughly. “Know my dying truth. You aren't of my blood. Duncan is. Despite the meddling of English kings and the perfidy of Glendruid women,
my son shall inherit my land
.”

Meg sensed that Lord John wasn't lying.

For a moment she couldn't breathe. She fought the ice condensing just beneath her skin, chilling her until she shuddered. She had always known that her father could barely suffer the sight of her.

Now she knew why.

“Your son will inherit only death,” Meg said in a low, clear voice.

“I'll nae listen to your curses, witch!” John hissed.

“Curses? What nonsense,” Meg said harshly. “'Tis only common sense.”

She turned to Duncan, who was watching her unhappily.

“I'm sorry, lass,” he said. “I didn't mean for you to find out this way.”

“My bastardy or lack of it matters not one bit right now. Listen to me, for John is too far into death's embrace to care what happens to the living.”

“Meggie—”

She put her hands on her hips and interrupted sharply.

“Don't you ‘Meggie' me, Duncan of Maxwell. I vow we must be close in blood, for I am immune to your Scots charm!”

A crooked smile crossed Duncan's face. “That you are. 'Tis why I like you so well. We will do nicely as man and wife.”

“God blind me,” Meg said through her teeth, shocking both men. “John has the excuse of grave illness to explain his lack of wit. What is your excuse, Duncan? Does ambition cloud your mind as much as death clouds his?”

Duncan opened his mouth to answer, but Meg kept on talking, her voice both angry and pleading.

“King Henry won't accept the treacherous murder of his knights,” Meg said. “The great barons will also—”

“They are busy with the Celts in the south,” Duncan interrupted curtly, “when they aren't fighting among themselves or plotting against the king. They have tried to take the northern marches. They failed.”

“They had no reason to succeed. There is easier land to the south.”

“Exactly. They won't—”

“They
will
!” she interrupted passionately. “You will give them the reason!”

“No more than they had before. It wasn't enough then.”

“Tell me, Duncan,” Meg said in a scathing tone, “if your right arm were cut off by a bandit, would you notice its loss and seek vengeance?”

“Aye, but I'm not the English king.”

“Ah, you've noticed that, have you? 'Tis a thing to keep in mind whilst planning the death of Norman nobles.”

“Meggie—”

“Norman barons quarrel among themselves because there is no better game to play,” Meg continued without pausing. “Slay Dominic le Sabre and you will provide the barons with the best game of all.
War
.”

Duncan shrugged. “It is a game we shall win.”

“You will not win! If I can see that, why can't you?”

“You are a girl with a tender heart and no understanding of war.” Duncan smiled. “'Tis another of your graces, Meggie.”

“Save the oil for the serving wenches,” she said acidly. “I'm not so easily tricked. Neither is the king of England. When word of the slaughter reaches London, the king and his barons will unite and deliver such a harrowing to the marches as will still be whispered of a thousand years hence! You have but twelve knights—”

“Sixteen.”

“—and a rabble of brutes good for little more than butchering women and children.”

“Enough!” Duncan demanded.

“Nay! 'Tis not enough until you understand that you can't win!”

Duncan's hands wrapped around Meg's shoulders, holding her still while his words hammered at her like stone.

“Understand this,” he said flatly. “If you marry that Norman bastard, I will have to watch my birthright—”