Tahn (24 page)

“I trust it,” she told him. “They are my friends.”

They brought the horses and wagon into the stable house next to the animals and carriage already inside. Netta patted the nose of one of the horses in the stable.

“Cherub, you are still here,” she whispered. She turned to the boys. “If Father Marc Anolle is still here as well, I know we are safe. This is his horse. He will help us.”

“I don’t like your ‘if,’ Lady,” Vari told her.

“Trust me,” Netta told them. “What choice have we, till we know where to find our Dorn?”

Netta pulled open the huge sanctuary door and urged them inside. But they all seemed afraid.

“We’re not supposed to be in here, are we?” Tam said, looking into the dark hall with its vaulted ceilings and recessed walls. The moonlight that filtered through the stained glass windows created shadows that made the place look truly cavernous.

Vari pushed past them. “Find a place to lie down.” But he stopped in the middle of the aisle. “Lady Trilett,” he said, “God would not fault us using his house this way?”

“He has prepared it for us,” Netta told him. She looked around anxiously. “Father Anolle!” she called. “Are you here?” She went toward a door at the back of the sanctuary and called again. “Father Anolle?”

There was no response.

“I’ve never been in a church,” Doogan said. “It feels strange.”

“We need to be here,” Stuva maintained. “We need God’s help tomorrow. He’ll hear us for sure in here.”

Netta was walking back to them. “He hears us always,” she said. “But Stuva is right. Let us ask for his favor and guidance.”

They sat in a circle in the aisle, and she led them in prayer and told them the story of David and Goliath. When she was finished, the boys lay beneath the pews and soon were asleep.

But Netta could not rest. This was almost like home, and her heart stirred within her for her family.

They had passed the ruins of the Trilett estate as they neared the town. Her home was heaps of stone and ashes now, and she’d had to put the sight of it behind her quickly.
Where are they?
she wondered.
My father, my aunts, my cousins—what has become of them?

“All of my world has changed, Lord, except this place,” she whispered and then glanced over at the sleeping boys. They’d needed the rest, but she could not wait a moment longer to know if Father Anolle was all right. Might he be in the rectory? She hadn’t expected that because of the damage, but he was not in here. So had to know whatever he could tell her about her family. And she had to pray with him for the Dorn.

She slipped from the church quietly and ran across the moonlit churchyard. The rectory was dark and quiet, with scaffolding over a third of the back for the repairs. She ran to the door at the front.
If he’s not staying here, where would he go? If he were in the church, surely he would have heard us.

She pounded on the door, but there was no response. The rectory too was empty. “Lord God, where is the priest?” she cried. “Show me!” But she returned to the sanctuary without answers.

She fell to her knees at the altar and began praying, but she stopped suddenly. She’d heard a sound, so faint and far away. Voices.

“Father, where are you?” she called. She rose up and found her way through the dark to one of the back rooms.

“Father Anolle, are you here?” she called again, but only silence answered her. “I know I heard someone!” she said. “Help me, God!”

She peered out the window over the churchyard. The rectory stood stark and silent, just as it had minutes before. But now a faint glow appeared and passed before a window. Soon the rectory’s side door opened, and a tall figure emerged holding a flickering candle.

“Father Anolle!” she cried. She could not wait for him to cross the churchyard. She ran out to him and fell at his feet.

“What is it, child?” the priest was asking. “Who are you? For what have you come?”

He leaned and took her arm, but she did not rise when he tried to pull her upward.

The priest set his candle down carefully and knelt beside her in his long robes. “Who are you, child?” he asked again. “What brings you here so late at night?”

“Father Anolle,” she said.

He stared at her for a moment, but then he pulled her into his arms. “Netta, dear child!” he said. “Thank God you’re alive!”

But he broke from the embrace suddenly and took her arm again. “Come,” he said with some urgency. “Come with me now.”

He led her into a back room of the church and by the dim candlelight rolled away a rug from along one wall. Then he lifted a concealed door to reveal the dark tunnel going down into the depths. “There are steps,” he told her. “Come with me now.” He took another candle from a table and lit it for her.

She stared in surprise. “Father—” she began, meaning to tell him she was not alone.

“You must have feared that all were lost,” the priest broke in. “And they feared for you beyond measure.”

Her heart leaped in her as she realized what he meant. Someone was alive! Somewhere beneath this church, in this hole black as pitch, someone in her family was alive!

“Follow me closely,” the priest was saying.

Netta followed him down the dark steps, but he turned a corner and seemed to disappear.

“Father?” she called out.

“Lord above! Netta?” another voice answered.

And Netta gasped, unable to believe what she thought she had heard. “My father?” Hurriedly, she followed the priest around the corner and into a room.

“Netta? Truly?” The voice of the nobleman Lord Bennamin Trilett reached cautiously across the darkness.

“Father!” Netta cried. She dashed forward toward his voice, but he was there to meet her before her third step and pulled her to his chest in a crushing embrace.

“God be praised!” he cried. “Great God be praised!”

“It was her we heard in the church,” the priest explained. “She came running out to me as I reached the courtyard.”

“We thought you were lost the night your screams woke us, cousin,” another voice said. A young man stepped from the shadows toward her.

“Jarel!” Netta said. “I thank God for your lives!” It was Winn’s son, the awful tease she’d avoided as a small child. How glad she was to see him now! But she grew quiet. “Are there any more?” she asked them. “What about the others?”

Her father took both of her hands in his. “Dear girl,” he said softly. “They are with your mother now, God rest them.”

She choked down a sob. Dear Aunt Mara, her cousin Anton, and—

“Netta,” her father said. “Are you all right? Really?”

Her mind whirled. For a moment it was hard to think past the sorrow. But there was so much to tell them. So much to ask. God help them understand.

Her father was leading her to a cot. Jarel lit a pair of oil lamps with the priest’s candle, and suddenly the room seemed almost a cozy living space. “We’ve no idea what you’ve been through, child,” Benn Trilett was saying. “Rest now. Sleep if you can. We will talk when you are ready.”

“No, father.” She stumbled over the words. “I have with me … friends … They are upstairs …”

Immediately the priest moved to the dark stairway. “Who are they, Lady?” he asked with concern.

“Children,” she told them. “They are sleeping, I think, beneath the pews.”

“Children, you say?” the priest asked in amazement. “They should not be alone. They would not be too frightened if they found me upon waking?”

“I shall go back up to them, Father Anolle,” she said. “But first, have you heard of the execution soon to take place?”

“Indeed,” the priest told her. “It shall be right outside the churchyard. I was told the scoundrel was taken by the baron’s men as he sought a young girl’s harm.”

“He’s the one who led the men to destroy us, Netta,” Lord Trilett added. “And one of the baron’s men told Father Anolle it is the same devil who killed your Karll! I thank God you are here to know his punishment.”

“No!” she cried out. “No, Father! He’s no devil. That is why I came here. Father, we have to stop it! He saved my life in taking me away. He saved yours by letting me—telling me—to scream as I did. Father, I shall tell you everything, but please believe me, he’s no devil. I pray that we may save him!”

Her father held her. “They say his name is Dorn, child. You tell us he is innocent?”

“Yes, Father. The children upstairs, and others, he spared from the true villain, a trainer of killers whose name is Samis.”

“I don’t understand, Netta,” Jarel said. “If the man meant no harm, why did he take you away? Why did he not speak to us of the danger instead of only having you scream? It would have gone far better for us. First they slaughtered those who stayed praying, then they rounded up whoever they could find as we searched for you.”

Netta bowed her head. “He said it would be that way,” she whispered sadly. “That only those seeking me would have a hope to survive.” She looked up at their faces, knowing how hard this must be for them. “We would not have listened to him,” she said. “We would have run him off without trusting his words. Or perhaps worse. Because truly he is the one who killed Karll.”

“Child!” her father exclaimed. “How can you say he is innocent, then? Did you leave with him willingly?”

“No, Father, but he did not harm me. He meant it to save some of us.”

“Cousin,” Jarel said, shaking his head, “I’ve heard it how a woman can be swayed by a captor till she see no more the wrong—”

“You don’t understand!” she insisted. “I will explain it. All of it! But you know me, and you know the love I had for Karll. If I didn’t know the very truth before God about the man, I would wish him dead. But he
is
innocent, Father! He didn’t know how to do it perfectly, but he did save my life and yours. He risked his life for the children. And I believe with all my heart that he has given his soul to the care of our Savior!”

“You speak inconceivable things, Netta,” Lord Trilett told his daughter.

“I—I should go back upstairs before the boys wake and find me gone.”

But it was too late for that. Vari had stirred against a pew and then sat up in the dark. “Lady?” he called. “Are you awake?”

He found Doogan beside him, and Tam and Stuva nearby. But no one else.

“Miss?” He stood, and the shadows seemed to dance around him. Where could she have gone?

He was walking toward the altar when he heard a man’s voice and saw the faint candle glow. He ducked into the darkness beneath the nearest pew.

“They are orphans,” Netta was telling someone. “I told you of the villain, Samis. They were in his capture, and Tahn Dorn saved their lives.”

“Did you see this rescue?” a gentle voice was asking.

“No. The children told me about it.”

“How do you know they are not with him to deceive you, child?”

Vari had heard enough. Netta clearly didn’t consider this man a threat, but the man obviously didn’t respect them. The youth jumped to his feet. “Let a man who calls me a liar at least look on my face first,” he said.

“Vari!” Netta called to him. “It’s all right!”

A tall man entered the sanctuary and lit the candles above the altar. Netta immediately followed, holding the hand of another man.

“Vari!” she said again. “My father and cousin and Father Anolle are alive and well!”

But Vari could not brush aside the accusing words so easily. Behind him Stuva was stirring. “Vari?” the boy called out sleepily.

“Get the others up, Stuva,” Vari told him soberly.

“I meant you no insult, young man,” Lord Trilett said as Netta pulled him to Vari’s side.

Netta spoke quietly. “My father is a good man, Vari. And Father Anolle is a priest of God. We are safe with them. But you know the Dorn better than I do, and I trust you can believe that it will take more explaining for them to understand.”

“We may not have a lot of time, Lady,” he said gravely. “Do any of them know where he is?”

From the wall where he had lit more candles, the priest moved to join them. “The man who came to inform me of the coming execution was a captain of Baron Trent, and he said they would be bearing the prisoner through several towns before they came. He wished me to ask my parishioners to tell it publicly and to prepare the yard before the church not for this morning but the next.”

“The next?” Netta asked in dismay. “Do you know at all which towns?” She hated the thought that Tahn could be another full day and night in the pain and humiliation she’d seen.

“No, Lady,” the priest said with what seemed like real sadness. “I know not, except that what the baron has set in motion will take an act of God to stop.”

Stuva, Doogan, and Tam were all awake now but kept their distance, watching the newcomers.

Netta took the clergyman’s hands suddenly. “I have hungered for your prayers, sir,” she said. “Please, pray for him.”

“Pray for my cousin, Father Anolle,” Jarel said from the doorway behind them. “She is kidnapped by this man called Dorn and now returns with his gang to loose him from law. Even she dresses like them.”

“Jarel!” Netta exclaimed. “There has been no real law in our land since the death of our king. Each man with men under him is a law to himself. Tahn Dorn is not convicted by any law but the baron’s. And can you really believe
him
to be your friend?”