Marek (The Knights of Stonebridge Book 1) (18 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Marek’s warhorse thundered into the church yard. Yanking the stallion to a halt, he slid from the its back then reached to help Kitty down. The priest stood before a fire already so fierce, Kitty had to shield her face, even from a distance. She hesitated as she watched Father Jacob dance around the blaze.

“What ails him?” Marek asked.

Kitty shook her head and inched her way closer, Marek at her back. The priest did not seem to have noticed their arrival.

“Father!”

The priest froze at Marek’s bark. He glared at his liege lord. “Do not try to stop me. Lady Katherine is mine.” With that, he marched headlong into the roaring fire and nearly disappeared in a blaze of sparks.

Kitty reached to grab him, but she was not quick enough. There was a sudden stench of burning hair and flesh. Father Jacob stumbled from the fire, his screams enough to curdled one’s blood. Kitty covered her face, but could not hide from the image, his body ablaze, racing around the church yard.

Memories of waking up atop the funeral pyre flooded back to Kitty. “Oh God! We have to help him.” Through parted fingers, Kitty watched Marek chase Father Jacob through the graveyard. The mindless man bumped into headstones, trees, bushes, but still he continued to perform the most horrific, macabre dance Kitty had ever witnessed.

Marek finally managed to tackle him. They tumbled across the grass until the flames had been extinguished.

Kitty raced over to where Father Jacob lay on the ground, Marek kneeling at his side. He breathed so hard he could hardly speak as he looked at Kitty over the other man’s charred body. “I could not catch him. He was a man crazed.”

Kitty did not speak, she could not. But she plied him with an expression she hoped said that she knew he’d done all he could.

Tearing her eyes from Marek’s face, she forced herself to look at the man lying on the ground between them. She jumped when the priest took a gasp of breath through lips that had been nearly burned away. He was unrecognizable, remarkably still alive.

And trying to speak. His body twitched, reminding Kitty of a robot jumping from an occasional short-circuit.

Kitty leaned closer.

“My…shoes –”

Kitty looked down at Father Jacob’s feet. His shoes had been singed, but she could not bring herself to take them off. She looked up at Marek, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

Marek reached down without preamble and pulled off the priest’s shoes. The doomed man gave no indication he had felt it. Marek pulled something from inside the length of each one, looked at them briefly before handing both to Kitty.

In her hands, she held a pouch of dirt and a small jar of water. Both were plugged with a cork stopper. “Earth and water.”

“The druid said to take a deep breath before stepping into the fire. Do not scream, just hold your breath the whole time.”

She looked at him, swallowed hard. “That’s everything I need.”

The thought should have sent her heart soaring. She could now go back safely. She could save Vanesa, something she had failed to do in another time.

But as she stared at the man before her, her heart anything but soaring, she knew she would grieve for Marek Stone until the end of her days.

***

When Kitty looked back, Father Jacob was gone. His eyes, still clear, stared sightlessly at the night sky. Kitty glanced down at him and shook her head. “I can’t do it,” she declared. She could barely take her eyes off the charred remains. “I’m scared.”

Kitty looked up as Marek rose and moved away. He walked over to his horse and retrieved a blanket of sorts. When he returned, he covered the priest before pulling Kitty to her feet and leading her away from the horrific scene. They stood as near as possible to the fire, watched the flames dancing, listened to the crackle and pop of the wood.

“I would bind you to me,” he said.

Kitty looked at him, but Marek continued to stare into the fire. Without looking at her, he spoke again.

“Ours would be a life filled with love, happiness –” he nodded. “Heartache at times, to be sure, but we would have a life of which troubadours sing.” He paused, but continued to stare straight ahead.

Rather than stare at
him
, Kitty shifted her gaze to the fire, as well, imagining what he saw there. She longed for the life she envisioned, the vision he described, with all her heart.

“We would give Bria brothers. Perhaps a sister or two. Together we would watch them grow, create families of their own, welcome our grandchildren one by one.”

He turned to her. Moisture glistened along his lashes. “This journey threatens your very life, and I would keep you with me for all eternity, keep you safe, grow old with you.”

Kitty nodded.

“Alas our truest responsibility is to our children. We must protect them regardless of the cost to our own lives, our own happiness. Do you agree?”

“Of course.” She could barely speak around the lump in her throat.

He smiled then, a sad smile that nearly broke her heart. “I could never have loved her,” he said. “You are her image, but never have you been the same woman. When I realized I loved you, I knew your story must be true, no matter how strange. I could never have loved her,” he repeated. “But I love you as I have never loved a woman, and know I never will again.”

Kitty leaned into him. Marek wrapped his arms about her and held her against him as if he never wanted to let go.

“I’m so afraid,” she sobbed into his chest.

Marek nodded against the top of her head. “I too am afraid, more for you than I would be for myself.” He pushed her to arm’s length, looked into her eyes. “I would risk all to save Bria, now you must do the same for Vanesa. It is all we can give her.”

He was right. She had to risk it. Kitty looked down at the elements in her hand. Earth and water. Then again at the fire before her. All four elements. She had everything she needed.

“You should have been her father. You are making sacrifices for a child you have never met, something her own father would not have done. Somehow you manage to look after her from eight hundred years away.”

Kitty stood up on her toes, pressed her lips to his. When she pulled away, she thought she saw tears in his eyes. “I will miss you everyday of my life. I’ll come here. I’ll bring Vanesa with me and we’ll come here, to Stonebridge. Leave something for me, anything – trinkets, letters, anything. Promise?”

“I will,” he promised. “The cornice above the door to my chamber hides a secret alcove, room enough to store a trinket or two.”

Kitty nodded, finding it difficult to speak. “It’s so scary, even if I make it," she glanced over at Father Jacob’s corpse, "I’ll never have the courage to come back.”

Marek snapped his head around to glare at her. “You must swear that you will not attempt such a journey. Swear it!” He fairly shouted at her.

“Suppose there’s more to all this than we know. What if there is an opportunity? How could I not take it?” Kitty cupped his face in her hands. “In my heart, I know it’s impossible. I know I’d be too afraid to try. But I have to be able to hope.”

Marek shook his head. He pulled her hands from his face and held them firmly together. “That is a hope that would fester and kill you from the inside.”

She shook her head, almost frantic. “I won’t do it. I won’t swear.”

Marek said nothing, but Kitty knew he was merely choosing his words.

Then, unexpectedly, he pulled his crucifix over his head and dropped it around Kitty’s neck. He kissed her then, a kiss that she never wanted to end. When he pulled away, he stared into her eyes with such intensity she wondered if he tried to meld their souls together.

He turned her towards the fire. “I will love you with all my heart, for all time.”

The flames were no longer raging, but still high enough to put out an uncomfortable heat if one stood too close. Standing at the edge of that heat, Kitty was reminded of the first time she jumped from the high dive. She had been just as afraid.

But this was no leap into a pool of cool, refreshing water. This jump could very well kill her. She could not think of that now. She could not say goodbye yet again. How many times could she tell him she loved him, would always love him, would miss him everyday?

She gripped his hand. She did not look at him. “Remember your promise,” she said. “I want mementos.”

“I will remember.”

Unsettled as she had been from her first voyage through time, the fear that wrapped about her seemed impossible to face. Kitty took a step toward the menacing inferno. Then another. The heat grew as she walked closer. Marek walked behind her, her fingers still entangled in his. Finally there was only one more step to take.

Kitty took a deep breath and held it. She felt a familiar rush as she stepped into the flames. Her hair swirled around her. It was indeed like leaping from the high dive. She felt weightless as the flames enveloped her. Her fingers slipped from his hand.

The last thing she heard was Marek screaming her name.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Marek knelt on the ground. He could still feel where her fingers brushed his palm when she stepped into the fire. His throat was raw from crying out to her as she disappeared and choking on the smoke he inhaled. Anguish churned in his gut.

She was gone.

He wiped the moisture from his face with the sleeve of his tunic. The heavy fire smoke had caused his eyes to water profusely. It had to be the smoke. He had not shed a tear since he was a boy.

But that did not explain the dullness in his chest. Painful, as though his very heart had actually broken. Kneeling there on the ground, he knew his life would never be the same. Forget that he had just witnessed a person disappear into an inferno. He fully believed Kitty had journeyed to a distant time. Talk of such heresy would earn him his own place amidst a roaring fire.

She was gone.

She had not even been with him for one turning of the moon, yet he felt she had always been a part of him, would always be part of him. His future loomed before him, a future without love, without
her
.

Marek looked around the churchyard. He would build a monument to her right here near the church. A monument that would stand, if not for eternity, until such time as she could visit it. She would know how he loved her. He would leave her mementos of the life he and Bria would have, the life they would be forced to lead without her.

Even while his heart ached within his chest, so did it soar with the knowledge that she must have survived. He would not know this except for the charred remains beneath his blanket, the burned body of the priest that lay across the churchyard.

He had to clamp his teeth together to keep from screaming out loud, a cry of combined despair and elation. Despair that Kitty was truly gone. Elation that she yet lived.

He simply stared at the fire. Although the flames had dwindled, the embers glowed bright and hot. The heat burned his skin where it was exposed, but he barely noticed it.

She was gone.

How was he to live without her, now that he had known what life could be like with her? Her laughter would haunt him in every part of the castle. His bed, the bed in which he had slept alone for the entirety of his adulthood, would seem too large and empty. Her vacant seat upon the dais would make mealtimes near impossible to endure.

Never had Marek worried that Bria would not know the love of her mother, would not have a mother to teach her the ways of women. Always he had known that she was better off without the woman who had birthed her. Now he wondered what kind of woman she would grow to be without Kitty’s guidance, without her council, without her to tuck her in at night and tell her stories.

What would he tell Bria? What would he tell anyone?

She was gone.

None would believe that she had simply left. When his
wife
had come suddenly back to life, none had believed that either. He had heard the grumblings. Most of the villagers believed her to be a witch. Her bravery during the raid on the church, and her compassion after, had at least quelled much of the demand for her execution. But how would the people of Stonebridge react to her sudden disappearance?

Marek stood and walked over to Father Jacob’s body laid out on the grass. The sky had already changed from night black to the soft gray of morning. He knelt beside him and lifted the blanket back from his face. How would he explain this?

At the moment, he was prepared to tell them all to go to hell. He was Marek Stone, Lord of Stonebridge. He owed explanation to no one.

Except for Bria, he would tell them all they needed to know.

She was gone.

***

Kitty opened her eyes with a snap. The room was dark and still. The dim light from the street lamp outside her window left no doubt that she was home, in her own bed.

A sense of overwhelming sadness consumed her. She would never see Marek again, nor Bria. She ran her palms over her nightgown. It was the smock she’d been wearing when she left him. Bria’s scarf nestled at her throat. Marek’s crucifix lay against her chest next to the medallion, still whole, a soothing weight on her broken heart. She clutched his crucifix with both hands.

She had survived.

A surge of excitement raced through her, momentarily vanquishing her sadness. Vanesa was just down the hall. Kitty was just about to throw off the covers when she felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck. Someone else was in her room.

Instinctively, she knew it wasn’t Vanesa, the only other person who should be in the house.

She stifled a scream when she felt movement on the bed beside her. Slowly she turned her head. There, his head resting on the pillow next to her, was her husband, snoring softly.

***

Kitty took several deep breaths to calm her quaking heart. How could he be here? Was it really Jake? Maybe Father Jacob
had
made the trip. Would he have the audacity to go to sleep in Kitty’s bed?

Carefully, so as not to wake him, she slipped from beneath the duvet. She tiptoed silently from the room and crept down the hall. Her heart had risen to her throat.

“Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,” she whispered as she pushed open the door to Vanesa’s room.

Instantly her eyes burned with tears. Her beautiful daughter slept, albeit fitfully, in her own bed. Kitty rushed to her bedside, tempted to pull Vanesa into her arms and never let go.

Instead, she eased down on the bed and stared at Vanesa’s angelic face for what seemed like hours. Her soft baby-fine hair fanned out on the pillow beneath her, gold streaks fairly shimmered in the moonlight that streamed through her window. Every few minutes she would frown and mumble in her sleep. Occasionally her body twitched beneath the covers.

Okay
, she thought.
What’s going on?

On silent feet, Kitty left Vanesa’s room and went downstairs to the kitchen. Just as she reached to flip on the light, she was startled by the “beep, beep, beep” of the Casio Ironman she used to time her running workouts.

She opened the junk drawer, snatched up the watch, and pressed the button to turn off the alarm. The backlight showed two a.m. The date read March 18.

A chill crept up her spine. She grabbed the counter to steady her legs.

March eighteen. The night of Jake’s murder.

For a long time, Kitty forgot to breathe. The coroner had set his time of death at approximately three in the morning. She glanced at the wooden block where she stored her cooking knives. One, the biggest, was missing.

Kitty climbed the stairs two at a time. She fairly ran down the hall and into Vanesa’s room.

Her bed was empty.

***

With a choked cry, she headed back to her own room. As she passed the upstairs bathroom, she heard the toilet flush behind the closed door. The noise sounded foreign to her, even though she’d been gone only a short time. Then with eerie slowness, the door opened to reveal Vanesa standing there in her nightgown.

“Mom?”

“Oh, baby!” Kitty pulled her into her arms. She had not heard Vanesa’s sweet, voice in so long. “My sweet baby. I’m so sorry, so sorry. I didn’t know.”

Kitty sobbed into Vanesa’s silky hair, muttered her apology again and again. When she at last got a hold of herself, she pushed Vanesa to arm’s length. She brushed Vanesa’s hair back and cupped her face with both hands.

“I know about Daddy.” Vanesa began to shake her head. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault.”

Kitty sensed that Vanesa had something hidden in the folds of her nightgown. “Give Mama the knife.” Vanesa did not move. “C’mon, baby. Give it to me. He’ll never hurt you again.”

Vanesa lowered her eyes, slowly lifted her hand. Clutched in her tiny grasp she held one of the ultra-expensive kitchen knives she and Jake had gotten when they married.

Taking it from her, Kitty held a finger to her lips. She took Vanesa’s hand and led her back to her bedroom, careful to avoid the floorboards she knew would creak. She opened Vanesa’s dresser and tossed some clothes onto the floor.

“Get dressed,” she whispered.

“Where are we going?”

“Shh, just hurry.” Kitty could see that Vanesa was confused, probably a little scared. “I don’t know.” She sat on the end of the bed and started helping her daughter dress. “I’m sorry I didn’t see what Daddy was doing to you.”

Vanesa’s eyes grew huge. “You saw?”

Kitty shook her head. “I just know. And as soon as we’re out of here, we’ll have a long talk. Everything’s going to be all right now. He’ll never hurt you again.”

The expression of relief on Vanesa’s face broke her heart. Tears pricked the back of her eyes. She blinked them away. She would cry later. Instead, she pulled Vanesa into her arms again and hugged her fiercely.

“No one will ever hurt you again. I promise.” She pushed her back. “Now hurry and finish getting dressed. We have to leave right now.”

Kitty went back to the closet and pulled Vanesa’s coat from the hanger. When she turned around, her daughter was ready, shoes and all.

“That was fast.”

“You said hurry.”

“Why can’t you get ready for school that quickly?”  She took Vanesa’s hand. “Let’s go.”

Kitty peeked out into the hall. All was quiet. Again she signaled to Vanesa for silence then pulled her along behind her. She stopped suddenly halfway to the stairs.

Jake stood there, blocking their escape.

***

For a moment no one said anything. The three of them just stood there facing each other. Jake’s expression looked even more sinister in the dim light.

“Where are you going in the middle of the night? And
what
are you wearing?”

“Move out of the way, Jake. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?” He barked a short laugh. “Where are you going?”

Kitty shrieked at him. “I know what you did to her.” She felt Vanesa hiding behind her, her little body pressed hard against the back of her legs. “How
could
you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He glared hard at Vanesa. But she had her face buried in Kitty’s skirt, the material gripped tightly in both fists. “Stop this foolishness and come back to bed. Tomorrow we can all –”

“Shut up! Don’t deny it, Jake. I know everything.”

“Honey, I swear. I haven’t done anything. Look,” he said, indicating Vanesa trembling behind her. “You’re scaring her.”

“Of course she’s scared. Having to flee from her own father in the middle of the night.”

“Flee?” He laughed nervously. “You must be joking.”

“You bastard. I should kill you myself.” Vanesa started crying. “She’s your child for God’s sake. How could you do that to her?”

“Do what? I haven’t done anything to her. I love her. She’s my baby girl. Isn’t that right, Nes?”

Vanesa did not respond. She just continued to hide behind her mother’s skirts.

“Don’t you talk to her. You have no right to even speak to her.” Kitty herself trembled now. She was so angry, she wanted to strangle him with her bare hands.

“No right?” Jake’s own anger surfaced. “I have every right. This is my house. You are my wife. I am head of this family, and I’ll do as I please.”

Incredulous, Kitty gaped at him. “You think that gives you the right to abuse her?”

“Lies!” he shouted. “I could never hurt her. I love her.”

“You
love
her? A little too much don’t you think?”

Even in the shadows, Kitty could see his face turn an angry shade of red. “What exactly is it you think I’ve done?”

“Stop denying it,” she fairly screamed at him. Kitty’s breath came in ragged gasps. She had to calm down, think clearly. How was she going to get around him? “Listen, you don’t realize it,” she said in a quiet voice, “but I’ve just saved your life.”

He narrowed his eyes and took a step towards her. “Are you threatening me?”

Kitty took a few steps back, pushing Vanesa along behind her. But there was nowhere to go.

“You are not leaving. I won’t let you.”

Kitty gripped the knife tighter. “You can’t stop us, Jake.”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” he shouted. “You’re not going anywhere. You think I’m going to let you go, spreading your vulgar lies? I won’t allow it. I’ll kill you first.”

Would he really kill her? Oh, God. Vanesa would be completely at his mercy. She had to reason with him.

“Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make us some coffee, and we can talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” He turned away abruptly and stormed back to their bedroom.

Where was he going?

Welcoming this lucky break, Kitty made a dash for the stairs, Vanesa right on her heels. In her haste Kitty lost her footing and slid down several steps on her backside.