My Lady Faye (23 page)

Simon was exposed, so slight and young as Calder stalked the distance between himself and her child. Faye grabbed the bed linens and scrambled to her feet. The whoreson would not touch her child. She lurched for Simon.

Simon stood frozen to the spot. His mouth worked soundlessly.

“Nay,” Calder roared. Cruel fingers fastened around her neck and jerked her to halt. Her head twisted, pain seared through her muscles and she grabbed for the hands.

The clatter of metal hitting the ground echoed through the chamber.

Calder stilled. His gaze flew to the knife.

It lay against the stone, the gem in the hilt blinking at them.

“Was that for me?” Calder’s inclined his head, his hand tightened against her throat. “Did you think to stab me?”

Faye flailed as his grip tightened on her throat. Her vision blackened at the edges. She gasped for air past the constriction in her throat, but it would not come. Calder’s face blurred before her.

He lifted her onto her toes. She clawed at his hand to get free, struck out with her legs.

He held her at arm’s length, his powerful shoulders bunched beneath his tunic.

She could not get air into her starved chest.

Calder laughed, cruel, jarring, as she dangled in his grasp like a poppet.

God, Simon watched this. Her boy stood there, face ashen and watched his father strangle his mother. Twisting against the hold, she lashed out with her legs. Air, she needed air or she would black out.

“Stop it.” Simon’s voice, tear logged and shrieking. “Let her go.”

Simon hurled himself at Calder, who jerked back a step

“Nay.” The word couldn’t escape past Calder’s fingers. Simon would be hurt. He must stop.

Calder dropped her. Her legs gave way beneath her and she fell to her knees. The dagger lay inches from her and she crawled for it.

Calder had Simon by the nape and shook him like a terrier with a rat. The man was so much bigger than the boy. Simon barely reached Calder’s waist. His thin chest worked like a bellows as he sobbed at his father to release him.

“Stop it.” Her scream was nothing more than a rasp. She scrambled toward her son, the knife in her hand. “Stop it.”

“You dare defy me.” Calder released Simon and spun toward her.

Simon froze.

“Run!” Faye forced the words past her damaged throat. “For God’s sake, Simon—”

Calder backhanded Simon.

The blow caught Simon on the side of his head and lifted him off his feet. He twisted through the air. Faye scrabbled forward to catch him. His cry filled her ears and then a sickening
thump
as he crumpled to the ground.

“You need to learn some manners, boy.” Calder stalked to her child.

Faye got there first. She wrapped herself around Simon, her back to Calder. Simon whimpered in her arms and she tightened her hold.

Calder grabbed her wrist, bone crunched as he forced her to open her hand. The knife fell out of her hand.

Faye tucked her head into Simon and braced for the next blow.

“You sicken me.” Calder hawked.

Wetness hit her nape. Faye shuddered and curled about Simon. The boy shook so hard, her entire form shuddered with it.

Calder stalked to the hearth.

The spittle slid down her spine and she retched. She could not let go of Simon.

Hearth flames flared. Simon sobbed as his wooden badger smoked and then caught fire.

“Let me show you what to do with a knife.” Malice lit Calder’s face as he bent to scoop up the knife. He raised it and tested the edge with his thumb, hissing as a small bright red dot of blood blossomed on his thumb. “Sharp, too. What a pity you will never use it.”

Calder twirled the dagger in his grip and held it as Gregory had taught her, underhand to deliver the most damage.

A sharp rapping at the door. “My lord?”

Simon burrowed deeper.

Calder wrenched open the door. “What?”

“You had better come,” Royce said.

“Now?”

“Right away, my lord.”

The door slammed shut and the bolt slid into place on the other side. Their footsteps receded, growing fainter and fainter.

Faye dragged in a deep breath. She had no time to weep and bemoan her fate. Hiding her winces, she uncoiled from Simon. Faye ran her fingers over his beloved, sweet face. She traced the angry red mark on his cheek. He had harmed her child. Her vision blurred and Faye shook as if she had the ague. The miserable whoreson had marked her precious child.

“You are bleeding?” Simon touched the corner of her mouth. “He hurt you.”

Faye wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the aches from Calder’s blows making themselves known. Knees shaking, she struggled to her feet. Her voice rasped from her raw throat. “I am fine.”

They couldn’t wait for Calder’s next brutal act. The chamber offered no hope. The casement stood open, but it sat high above the bailey. That way would bring certain death. They were locked in. Calder had her knife.

Her hip ached as she stumbled toward the food tray from earlier. She dipped a cloth napkin into the wine and motioned Simon over. Water would be better, but this was all they had.

Simon stood for her while she bathed the mark on his cheek. It would bruise for sure. Her hand shook and wine slopped over the table on the floor. Faye drank straight from the flagon. Wine stung her broken lip and spilled down her chin. The inside of her bruised throat screamed in protest.

The stench of Calder’s power crept into the room. It seeped into the furnishings and hangings and hung in the air over her head. Faye kissed Simon on the forehead. It could not end like this. She would not allow it.

The tray held the remains of their meal. Some meat, bread and fruit. No knife or anything else of use.

Simon trembled and she clutched him close to her, running her hands in soothing motions over his back. She needed to think. There must be something in the chamber she could use as a weapon. Calder would not lay another hand on her child. The chest at the end of the bed held linens. All weapons were secured in the armory. There had to be something, “Search.” She squeezed Simon’s shoulder. “Search for anything we can use to defend ourselves.”

Gregory rode with Sir Arthur and Roger at the head of the army.

Calder Castle rose from the forest in all her majesty, a beautiful keep of massive proportions standing guard over the land for miles. What a pity she housed such a craven dog. Faye and Simon were in that keep. Gregory would take it down stone by stone, with his bare hands if he must, but he would get them back.

The army passed through the eerily still town of Upper Mere. Doors remained shut fast, windows shuttered. They traveled with colors flying in full view of the battlements.
See us,
the pageantry of the army yelled.
See us and tremble before this might.
Only Bess stood in her tidy yard and waved.

Gregory nodded to her as they passed.

“Set up the camp.” Sir Arthur spoke to his son. “They know we are here.”

Sir Arthur’s men moved out of the forest like wolves, wary and alert to the possibility of archers. They stopped outside of bow length, but these men took nothing for granted.

“What is your plan?” Sir Arthur’s gray destrier shifted beneath him.

Gregory turned to stare at the older man. “My plan?”

“Your plan.” Sir Arthur swung his head back to the keep. “How are you going to get my daughter and her son out of there?”

“We need to present the writ.” Calder wouldn’t honor the writ. Gregory’s blood surged in imminent victory. And when he didn’t, Gregory intended to relish every moment of exacting the king’s justice. “When that fails, we attack.”

Sir Arthur grunted and crossed his arms over his pommel. “Ever attacked a heavily fortified keep before?”

“Nay.”

“I have.” Sir Arthur leant forward on his arms. “It is going to be a sod to get in there.”

“Aye.”

“So be it.” Sir Arthur nodded and straightened. “And then what, Sir Monk?”

“Eh?”

“After we get my daughter free and make that sod sorry he ever laid a hand on her, what then?”

“We free Faye and Simon and return them to Anglesea.”

“And then what?” Sir Arthur posed the question that had haunted Gregory since he’d first laid eyes on Faye. The answer rang clear in his brain. So clear it almost unseated him. He would not be returning to the Abbey. Sometime in his frantic search through the night, or even before then, something had changed for him. Leaving Faye at Anglesea a year ago paled before a life in which Faye no longer existed. Aldous’s last words to him made a ringing sort of sense. His heart might have known all along what his head refused to accept.

Sir Arthur’s glare bored straight to the heart of him, the eyes of a father demanding answers.

“Faye is mine.” The admission resonated through Gregory. It fit. The old, familiar battle stilled inside him.

“Make sure of it.” Sir Arthur clucked to his horse. “Because that is my daughter in there, and she deserves all I would wish for her. I gave her to a man who did not cherish her before and I will not do so again.” He moved off to join Roger.

William nudged his mount into place beside him. “My father makes a good point.”

“He often does.”

The red battlements of Calder soared between Gregory and the closest thing he had to a family. He had walked away from Faye before, and it had nearly killed him. Never again. She was his. “I have been a knight and a monk. What now?” He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud. Now they were said, he was glad of it.

William nodded. “It is no easy thing to change course midstream.”

“I should never have left her with Aldous. Every time I leave her something bad happens.”

“Then make sure you do not leave her again.” William tilted his head and appraised him. “Have you not had a surfeit of guilt, Sir Gregory?”

It hit Gregory like a blow to the middle, and he gaped at William.

“Our father should never have married her to Calder. I should have checked when I heard those things at court. None of us should have let her leave on this journey. And on and on and on we go.” William scythed his arm through the air. “Save your guilt for when we have her back, and then do what any man would and throw yourself at her feet and beg for mercy.”

“She will not make me beg.”

William snorted. “Do you know nothing of women?”

“Nay.” God knew he spoke the truth. His knowledge of women came from the Bible and Faye.

“Nay, I suppose you do not.” William shrugged and gave a soft laugh. “I like you, Gregory, but I love my sister. I will not see her hurt anymore.” He stared over at the castle. “There are many ways to strike a woman.”

The unjustness of the last gagged him. Gregory wanted to lash out and belt the man for even suggesting he could, in any way, be compared with Calder. He tightened his grip on his pommel and stayed his hand. Faye’s tears that night in Bess’s cottage had seeped through his tunic into the skin beneath. His failure to act had hurt her as surely as Calder’s fists.

William nodded and kneed his horse forward.

Henry appeared at his side.

Gregory groaned out loud. After Henry, there would be Roger. Would anyone else in the camp like to have a go while they waited? The cook? The camp followers?

“She is a mighty one.” Henry jerked his chin toward the keep. He gave Henry credit for a more politic approach than his father and older brother.

“I will not be returning to the Abbey.”

Henry opened and shut his mouth as color climbed his cheeks. “Aye, well, she is my sister and we were wondering what would happen.” They must have had a family war council or some such foolishness.

“I never liked Calder,” Henry said. “I was much younger when he arrived to marry Faye. A man will often reveal to a child more than he does to another adult.” It was the truth. He and Calder had met as squires and Calder always showed one face to his lord and another to his fellows. For his wife, Calder had an entirely different face.

Gregory’s anger simmered and sputtered beneath the surface. Aimed more at himself than anyone else. Like a craven churl, he had never queried the marks on Faye. Seven years he had lived with the knowledge of what her husband did to her and he had done nothing. His paltry excuse he had no right to interfere between a man and his wife turned to bitter ash in his mouth.

It hadn’t always been as bad, not in the beginning. It had crept up on them over the years. The habit of ignoring the truth had crept along with it. In this, he and Faye and been in tacit agreement. He could not claim ignorance. He had known, had lain awake at night and burned for the bruises on her.

It had taken Faye begging him to take her to Anglesea to break the code of secrets and silence. She had not cited Calder’s brutality as the reason, but spoke of his association with the dead King John and how he plotted to overthrow her father. Never again. There would be no more secrets between them. There were no good secrets.

Garrett joined them. “I believe it is my turn at the stocks.”

Henry’s lip curled in distaste as he eyed the nag Garrett rode. Garrett remained unmoved by any plea for him to give up Parsley and get a better destrier. Henry had offered to train a destrier for him, but Garrett was stubborn. Fierce determination not to be anything other than the man he was drew Gregory’s admiration

“I have been told to ask your intentions.” Garrett raised a brow at him.

“The others are ahead of you.”

“Ah.” Garrett nodded toward the keep. “So, how does this waging war against a keep happen?”

“Siege.” Henry scratched his cheek as he considered the castle. “War engines, hot oil, archers, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds painful.” Garrett grinned.

“We will attempt to reach an agreement.” Gregory’s gut clenched. “And then, I kill him.”

Garrett’s grin widened into feral snarl. “Beatrice thought you might say that.”

“She did?”

“Oh, aye.” Garrett nodded. “She had her sword strapped over her belly and was ready to join us. It was only when I assured her you would be here, she agreed not to come.”