Knight Triumphant (4 page)

She stepped inside. “This is Sir Eric, Father MacKinley,” she said, and walked into the room, approaching a bed. Eric nodded to the priest and followed Igrainia.

He fell to his knees by the pallet; he had found Margot at last. She seemed to be sleeping. No boils or poxes appeared to mar the beauty of her face. Yet as he touched her face, it was as if he touched flame. He saw where the boils had grown upon a collarbone and on her neck, and he was tempted to weep.

He stared up at Igrainia of Langley. “Save her,” he commanded.

She found water and brought it to Margot's side and began to bathe her forehead.

“Where is my daughter?” he asked.

“Your daughter?” said the priest.

“My child. Aileen. Young, blond hair, pale, soft as silk.”

There was a silence from the priest.

“My daughter, man! There were not so many young children among our number!”

The priest nodded. “The little angel,” he murmured. “Sir, God has taken her.”

He rose from his wife's side, pain a blinding arrow through his heart. He approached the priest like a madman, tempted to take him by the throat and crush flesh and bone. Some sense delayed him from his purpose, and he paused before the man, who had not flinched. Eric stood before him, fists clenching and unclenching, muscles taut and straining.

“Where is her body?”

“Yonder room,” the priest said quietly. “We meant to do her honor in death.”

“You knew I would come and kill you,” Eric said in a bitter breath.

“She was a child, and beloved by all. What fear have we of violent death, of murder, when we work here?” the priest replied, and even in his madness, Eric knew it was true.

“You,” he said, pointing to the priest, “you will bring me to my child. And you,” he said, pointing at Igrainia, “you will bring Margot to a room alone, and you will spend your every moment seeing that she breathes. If she ceases to do so . . .”

He let his voice trail.

“What of the others?” the lady asked.

“We are here now. And we will drop down in death ourselves before we let our kindred lie in rot and die without our care. Ready a chamber for my lady wife. Nay, the master's chamber. See that she is surrounded by the greatest possible comfort. Priest, now you will take me to my daughter.”

The priest led him quickly from the solar, opening the door to a small room in the hall just beyond. There, on a long wooden storage cabinet, lay the body of his daughter.

For a moment he couldn't move.

He felt the priest at his back.

“There is comfort in knowing that she rests with our Lord God in Heaven—” the man began.

“Leave me!” Eric said sharply.

The door closed behind him instantly.

He walked forward, forcing his feet to move. He looked down upon Aileen's face, and his knees sagged beneath him and tears sprang to his eyes. He swallowed and reached out for her. Her poor little body was cold. He cradled her against him as if he could warm her, smoothing his long, calloused fingers through the infinitely fine tendrils of her hair.
Aileen, with her laughter and her smile and her innocence of the cruelty of the world around her. Aileen, with her little arms outstretched to him, calling him, each time he had been away, her little footsteps bringing her to him. And he would bend down and scoop her into his arms, and she would cup his face in her hands and kiss his cheek and say his name again with such sweet trust that he knew that the world itself was worth saving, that freedom was worth fighting for . . .

This time, when his knees failed him, he fell to the floor, cradling her lifeless form in his arms.

 

 

Alone among the sick in the solar, Igrainia looked about with dismay. Among the Scots seized and still living, there was an older woman with long, graying hair. She would survive, Igrainia thought. Her boils had broken, and she was breathing still. The pestilence here was as strange as death itself; this woman had lived many years; she appeared frail and weak. Yet she would survive.

Another younger woman seemed to slip away as Igrainia bathed her forehead. The two others in the room were young as well, both still holding on. Igrainia lowered her head to the chest of one, and heard that the rattle had left her breathing; she, too, would survive. And the other . . .

“Water!” came a desperate and pathetic whisper.

“Carefully, carefully,” Igrainia warned, holding the woman's head. She was, perhaps, twenty, almost as light as Margot. Igrainia forced her to drink slowly, then nearly dropped her head back to the pallet as a cry suddenly seemed to rip through the stone walls. It was more than a cry, more like a howl of fury, despair and anguish. It was like the sound of a wolf, lifting its head, giving a shattering curse upon heaven itself, and she knew that the Scotsman had seen his daughter.

She looked up at a sound in the doorway and saw her maid, Jennie, a frightened and startled look upon her face as they both listened to the echoes of the cry.

“My God. We are haunted now by monsters!” Jennie whispered. “My lady . . .”

She ran across the room and greeted Igrainia with a fierce and trembling hug. “You did not make it away; the Scotsmen came. They are here, now, among us. They won't understand that we have done all we can. Mary was working in the dungeons, until she fell there, she lies among them still. Father MacKinley and I are all who walk now, even Garth fell ill, you know, yet survived, the boils did not come to him, he thinks he might have suffered a similar illness as a child. Berlinda in the kitchen fell ill in the scant time you were away. Sir Robert Neville stood upon the parapets watching you go . . . then took instantly to his bed. Oh, lord, this man will kill us, won't he, we might as well have all fallen to the plague! So few of us are left . . .”

Jennie was still in Igrainia's arms, shaking. Igrainia pulled away from her. Sir Eric's agony over his child would last some time, but then he would be back.

“Jennie, we must be strong. Tell me, first, who tends Sir Robert Neville?”

“I keep watch over him. Molly, Merry, John . . . Tom, the kitchen lad.”

“Where is Sir Neville?”

“In his chambers. We are doing all we can.”

“Why were the remaining prisoners ignored in the dungeons?”

Jennie stared at her, wide eyed. “How could we tend to more? We are all dying. And the smiths and merchants in residence in the courtyard . . . they all fight for their own lives. But what difference does it make now? We are all doomed.”

“This rebel doesn't know that the Earl of Pembroke ordered Sir Niles Mason to find what Bruce forces he could and bring them here for their fates to be decided. Nor does he realize that Sir Niles took his troops and left at the first sign of the disease!” Igrainia said bitterly. “He thinks that Afton was responsible.”

“And he knows he would have been executed,” Jennie said, her voice rising with fear. “Tied to a horse's heels, dragged over rocks and debris, hanged until half dead, cut to ribbons, castrated, and not beheaded until it was certain he could feel no pain!”

“Perhaps that wouldn't have been his fate.”

“It's the order Sir Niles said he had been given! I heard him, my lady, I heard him telling your husband what must be done. Afton argued that no executions should take place here, but Sir Niles was determined. He said that the rebel, Eric Graham, had fought far too long and too often against King Edward—first with William Wallace, and now, for Robert Bruce. He is a known outlaw, lady. He was to be an example. His wife was to be given to the troops. And as to his daughter . . . oh, Lord!” She crossed herself quickly. “Sir Niles thought it so amusing. The child was too young for much entertainment, but she was the spawn of a rebel and would grow to be a traitor, and if she was murdered, it would be best.”

“Afton would have never allowed the slaughter of a child.”

“Igrainia, Lord Afton had little rule over Sir Niles, not when his orders came from the Earl of Pembroke, who is following the direct command of King Edward! And Robert Bruce may have had himself crowned king of the Scots, but he hasn't taken hold of Scotland, certainly not here. King Edward's men hold almost everything in the lowlands, from the small farms and hamlets to the great castles. Igrainia, I swear, as well, that we have tended to the sick, to all of them, as Afton first said we must, then as we promised you, when Sir Robert insisted you flee. There are many alive who would not be if you hadn't had us tend them.”

“The fact that so many are alive seems to have little effect upon the wrath of this man. Perhaps he cannot see the truth now, but he must. For all of our people who remain alive, Jennie, and who may survive, we must do everything we can now for the prisoners.” She felt her own voice rising slightly. The
prisoners!
Now,
they
were the prisoners. “My chamber must be prepared. Clean sheets, fresh water. Fresh rushes. His wife will be cared for there. We must . . . we must keep her alive.”

“He will kill us, one way or the other.”

“Jennie!” Igrainia took her maid by the shoulders and shook her lightly. “He will not kill us while he needs us.”

“But . . . your chamber. Where . . .” Her voice wavered and she gave up speaking.

“Where Afton died,” Igrainia said softly. “It doesn't matter. He has said that she will be brought there. Jennie, we need to keep her alive.”

“She is dying.”

“She must not die.”

Jennie seemed to understand then. She straightened, nodded to Igrainia, and hurried out. Igrainia turned her attention to Margot once again, trying to cool the woman and sorry once again that someone so gentle and kind, who had worked tirelessly among the others, had been stricken. But this pestilence had struck with ravaging cruelty, bypassing so very few of them. Years before, when she was in France, the village where she was staying, outside Paris had suffered a similar fate, and she and Jennie had nearly died then. She did not fall now because of that terrible time, she knew, yet this illness was so devastating she didn't know if it wouldn't sicken her in the end after all. When Afton had died, it hadn't seemed to matter.

There were herbs that would help bring down the ravaging fevers, sometimes, and there were broths that could be forced between the lips of the sick. But little done by man seemed to make a difference.

“The master chamber is prepared for my wife?”

He stood in the doorway, now as harsh and cold and pale as the ice sheets of the northern waters by winter. She might have felt a great pity for a man who had lost his child and let out such a terrible admission of pain in a single cry, but now . . . he was frightening in his steel control.

“Yes.”

He walked across the room. Heedless of contagion himself, he lifted his wife with the utmost care and tenderness. “You will show me where to go,” he said.

“But the others here—”

“Your priest will return. And my men are bringing the others from the wretched hell into which you have cast them.”

“They were cared for, always, wherever they lay. It was my husband's order.”

The scathing look he gave her did far more than infer that she was a liar. “Show me where we are going.”

Igrainia did so, leading the way down the stairs and to the master's chamber. She was almost embarrassed by the richness of it as they entered, certain that the quality within was but something else that he would hold against her, Afton, and the household where his people had been brought. Langley Castle had first been built when the Conqueror had come north, and in those days, it had been stern rock and wall, loaded with weaponry, and manned to keep King William's borders against the wild tribal clansmen of Scotland safe. The Conqueror had spent his life proving his position against the Saxons of England as well, and therefore needed strongholds rather than royal residences. But over time, and in the days of King David I of Scotland, borders had changed, and intermittently, during the years, there had been times of friendship between the two countries. During the reign of Alexander, the castle had been given to the first Langley, and each succeeding lord had married well, until here, in the master's chamber, the walls were hung with the richest tapestries. Arabian rugs had been brought back from the Crusades to warm the floors, and a magnificently carved bed had been brought from France. Flemish lacework edged the sheets; pillows were made of softest down; and sleek furs scattered over the bed that stood before the great hearth. The room was furnished with trunks and a wardrobe from France, marble-covered tables from Italy, and great shields upon the wall crossed with swords from Spain, Germany and the finest arms manufacturers in England.

He didn't notice the furnishings, only that the bed was vast and comfortable, a good place to lay his lady. When she was down, and he had smoothed the damp blond tendrils from her face, he stood back. “You will save her.”

“I will do all that I can.”

“You have killed my child.”

Ice seemed to race along her spine. He spoke the words without malice or anger, merely as if they were a simple truth. “God, sir, has taken your child.” She wanted to add that she was sorry, so very sorry, because his agony was such a terrible thing, almost palpable on the air.

But she dared not. He stared at her with red-rimmed eyes of loathing.

“You will keep Him from taking my wife,” he said bitterly.

She thought he would leave the room, but he did not. He brought one of the heavy wooden chairs from the window to the bed and sat there, taking his wife's ashen hand in his own, and looking upon her face.