Fortress of Mist (22 page)

She was in the crowd because she wanted to hear and watch Thomas, and there was no way for her to remain beside him as he addressed the people from the top of the castle stairs.

When he appeared, the rustling undercurrents of speculation immediately stopped. Thomas held complete attention.

Once again, Katherine was grateful for the bandages. The new smile was one of admiration. She wasn’t sure she would have wanted Thomas to know he impressed her. Not if his feelings for her were different than her feelings for him.

“People of Magnus,” Thomas began, “today I face death.”

Whispers and excited chattering.

Thomas held up his hand for silence. He wore only simple clothes. A brown cloak. No jewelry. In his arms, he carried the white cross Gervaise had built.

“Because of you I undergo trial by ordeal. Magnus can withstand any siege, but only with your support. Some of you have chosen to believe I am guilty of the charges laid against me. Today, then, I prove my
innocence so that Magnus might stand. I tell you now, God will cause dogs to howl and bats to fall from the sky at the injustice of false accusations.”

Thomas said nothing more. He spun on his heel and marched back into the castle.

Surely he feels fear
.

From Katherine’s viewpoint among the hundreds of men and women of Magnus lined along the top of the fortress wall, Thomas appeared small and lost, standing alone halfway across the land bridge. He held the white cross in front of him.

Thomas stood completely still and faced the opposing army. Between them, and where the land bridge joined the shore of the lake, a hastily constructed pen—made from logs roped together—held huge and restless bulls. From the castle wall, they seemed dark and evil.

Katherine frowned. Why a heap of dried bushes at the back end of that pen?

The collective tension of the spectators began to fill her too.

Soldiers moved to the front of the pen.

A sigh from the crowd along the fortress wall, like the wind that swept down the valley hills across them.

Thomas crossed his arms and moved his feet apart slightly, as if bracing himself.

If he turns and runs, he declares his guilt. Yet how can he remain there as the bulls charge? The land is too narrow. Surely he will be crushed
.

A sudden muttering took Katherine from her thoughts. She looked beyond Thomas, and understood immediately.

The bushes at the rear of the pen … soldiers with torches … They meant to drive the bulls into a frenzy with fire! Thomas had not agreed to this!

The vulnerable figure that was Thomas remained planted. Katherine fought tears.

Within moments, the dried brush crackled, and high flames were plain to see from the castle walls.

Bellows of rage filled the air as the massive bulls began to push forward against the gate. Monstrous black silhouettes rose from the rear and struggled to climb over those in front as the fire surged higher and higher.

Then, just as the pen itself bulged outward from the strain of tons upon tons of heavy muscle in panic, the soldiers slashed the rope that held the gate shut.

Bulls exploded forward toward Thomas in a massed charge.

Fifty yards away, he waited.

Does he cry for help?
Katherine could not watch. Neither could she close her eyes. Not with the thunder that pounded the earth. Not with the bellowed terror and fury and roar of violence of churning hooves and razor-sharp horns bearing down on him like a black storm of hatred.

Thirty-five yards away, Thomas waited.

Men and women around Katherine began to scream.

Still, he did not move.

Twenty-five yards. Then twenty.

One more heartbeat and the gap had closed to fifteen yards.

Screams grew louder.

Then the unbelievable.

The lead bulls swerved, then plunged into the water on either side
of Thomas. Within moments, even as the bellows of rage drowned out the screams atop the castle walls, the bulls parted as they threw themselves away from the tiny figure in front of them.

Katherine slumped.

It was over.

No bull remained on land. Each swam strongly for the nearest shore.

Another sigh from the crowd atop the castle walls. But before excited talk could begin, the first of the bulls reached the shore of the lake. As it landed and took its first steps, it roared with renewed rage and bolted away from the cautiously approaching soldiers.

Small saplings snapped as it charged and bucked and bellowed through the trees lining the shore, through the tents and campfires, and finally to the open land beyond.

Each bull did the same as it reached land, and soldiers fled in all directions.

And behind the people, dogs started to howl in the streets. The men and women of Magnus turned in time to see bats swooping and rising in panic in bright sunshine, until moments later, the first one fell to earth.

K
atherine did not see Thomas anywhere on the streets of Magnus during the celebration that traditionally followed the end of a siege. Merchants and shopkeepers, normally cheap to the point of meanness, poured wine for the lowliest of peasants and shared the best cakes and freshest meats freely.

Around her was joyful song—much of it off-tune because of the wine—and the vibrant plucked tunes of six-stringed lutes and the jangle of tambourines.

People, even the most bitter of neighbors, danced and hugged one another as long-lost brothers. Today, the threat of death had vanished, and their lord, Thomas of Magnus, had been proven innocent. How could they have ever doubted after the uncanny howling of dogs and the death of bats that had followed Thomas’s trial by ordeal?

Katherine moved aimlessly from street to street. Never, of course, in her life as a freak in Magnus, had she felt she belonged. This celebration was no different. Few offered her cakes, few offered her wine, and no one took her hand to dance.

Did it matter? she wondered. All those years of loneliness, years served as duty for a greater cause. She thought she had become accustomed to the cruelty of people who judged merely by appearance.

Yet today, the pain drove past the cold walls around her heart. Because of Thomas. Because she could remember not wearing the
bandages. Like a bird freed from its cage, then imprisoned once more, she longed to fly again.

Now, walking along the streets and among the crowds, thinking of Thomas darkened her usual loneliness.

Yes, Thomas had proven his courage. Yes, Thomas had defeated the Druid attempt at rebellion within Magnus. And yes, Thomas had also turned away the most powerful earl in the north.

But the Druids had not been completely conquered. Magnus was not free from danger.

Katherine frowned beneath her bandages. She was disappointed in her own selfishness. So much was at stake. Her duty to Hawkwood proved it day after day. Yet she could barely look beyond her feelings—a frustrating ache—and beyond the insane desire to rip from her face the bandages that hid her from Thomas.

She sighed, remembering Hawkwood’s instructions.
“Until we are certain which side he has chosen, he cannot know of you, or of the rest of us. The stakes are far too great. We risk your presence back in Magnus for the sole reason that—despite all we’ve done—he is or might become one of them. Love cannot cloud your judgment of the situation.”

Head down and lost in her thoughts, Katherine did not see Gervaise until he clapped a friendly hand upon her shoulder.

“Dear friend,” he said, “Thomas wishes you to join him.”

T
he Roman caltrops worked as predicted,” Thomas said as greeting. He stood beside the large chair in his throne room and did not even wait for the guard to completely close the large doors. A small dog was curled on the ground at his feet.

Strange. Thomas trusts me enough to reveal how he survived the charge of the bulls?

Katherine kept her voice calm. With only the two of them in the room, she could bluff. “Predicted? Forgive my ignorance, m’lord.” After all, the person behind the bandages should have no understanding of caltrops or of Hawkwood.

“Katherine,” Thomas chided. “Caltrops. Small, sharp spikes. Hundreds of years ago, Roman soldiers used to scatter them on the ground to break up cavalry charges. Certainly you should know. After all, you left the letter with those instructions for me:
Go the night before and seed the earth with spikes hidden in the grass. Bulls are not shod with iron. The spikes will pierce their feet and drive them into the water.
”

“M’lord?”

Behind her bandages, beads of sweat began to form on Katherine’s face.

“Katherine …” He used patient exasperation, a parent humoring a dull child. “We are friends, remember? You need not keep up the pretense. After all, your letter told me how to bring dogs to a frenzy. How
to force bats to their deaths in daylight. I doubt it was coincidence that help was offered to me after I told you directly that I needed it and wanted it.”

Hawkwood had been right about the risk.

“M’lord?”

Thomas stood. The small dog rose too and wagged its tail.

Thomas reached down and scratched the dog’s head. “Yesterday, this dog was, to all appearances, dead.”

“I’m trying to understand this conversation,” Katherine said.

“And I am trying to make sense of this fortress of stone. I walk through it daily, and the walls are solid. Yet it feels too often as though I walk through shrouds of mist, where nothing is as it appears. Including you.”

“M’lord?” She felt panicked and trapped and could think of no other response.

“There’s a potion of medicinal herbs and roots. One known to very, very few. Administered in too strong a dose, it kills like a poison. But in the right dosage, it renders a person so close to death that it is almost impossible to tell the difference.”

He stepped closer, examining her mask closely. She stepped back.

He spoke quietly. “Twice, if I am not mistaken, I have been fooled by the apparent death of a woman. The first was the daughter of the former lord of Magnus. And the second was the death of an old woman, the herbalist who visited Magnus on occasion.”

He smiled, but with a coldness that chilled her. “Yet I wonder if perhaps it was the same woman?”

“I have no answer, m’lord. I am baffled at your musings.”

“I don’t think so.” He stepped closer, and she edged away again. “You were once about to tell me what you knew about Druids, but
Geoffrey prevented it. And while you were unconscious, the potion was administered and you were taken away, dead. Then you spied on me and Magnus as the old woman herbalist.”

“No!” Katherine’s denial was emphatic.

“I’ve already sent out guards to find the old man who posed as your husband,” Thomas said. “But he has disappeared. So that leaves you. Isabelle.”

Thomas lifted a hand to her bandaged face.

“No!” she cried. “You cannot shed light upon my face! It is too hideous.”

Thomas dropped his hand. “These are your choices. Unwrap it yourself. Let me unwrap it. Or, if you struggle, the guards will be called to hold you down. They will also be witnesses … something I’ll wager you do not wish.”