The Dark Knight (15 page)

Tonia moaned under her breath while Sandor continued to hold her and kiss her hair. When the first shock receded, she considered the motivation behind such a barbaric request. “Who are these bloodthirsty men?”

His eyes flashed. “I know not. The Constable of the Tower gave the box and instructions to my uncle. When Gheorghe asked the same question, he was told ’twas the King’s business and not his.”

Tonia furrowed her brow. “Methinks King Edward knows nothing of this. ’Tis one or two of his ministers. But why?” Suddenly the reason shone crystal clear in her mind. “Sweet Saint Anne! ’Tis diabolical indeed!”

Sandor
stared at her; a muscle along his jaw quivered. “Do you know the man?”

“Nay, but he has the devil’s own mind. You take back that box with my heart in it—”

“Together with a lock of your hair and a piece of your gown,” Sandor added.

“Exactly so!” Tonia grew angrier with each breath. “For true proof of my death. And this double-dyed villain will send it north again to my parents at Snape Castle. Oh, my poor mother! ’Twill kill her to see such a sight!”

Sandor whistled through his teeth. “To what purpose?”

“I was tried for treason because I wanted to practice my religion in the old-fashioned way. For the past few years, the laws of this land have grown very harsh toward any form of Catholic worship.” Unable to contain the energy that her rage had unleashed, Tonia rose and began to pace up and down.

“In the churches, altars are smashed and replaced with common tables. Prayers are recited in English instead of Latin. Statues of the saints and holy candles have been outlawed. King Edward wishes to replace our beliefs with the so-called ‘New Learning.’ His half sister, the Princess Mary, has refused and she remains a steadfast Catholic. Should the King die, she is next in line for the throne, and Edward is very ill, I hear. His ministers must be quaking in their boots!”

“But what are kings and queens to you? Is your family royal?”

Tonia paused before the fire. The family’s motto flashed across her mind: Neither Collar nor Crown. “Nay, but the Cavendishes are the most influential family in the north—and we are Catholic. Howsoever we lead, the good people of the fells and moors will follow. Aye, Sandor, we are cause for fear among those who crave power. By proving my death to my parents in such a gruesome way, these vile men demonstrate their might and so keep the Cavendishes at home should the common people rise up in revolt against the government.”

Sandor
struck his thigh with his fist. “And I was to be their black hand.”

“Aye.” Tonia sighed. Her fury waned and was replaced by a heavy fatigue. “I was to be executed in secret. No one to know of the deed till it was long past done. None of my blood spilled in the execution so that no one’s tender conscience would be stained. My parents probably do not even realize that I was in such dire danger. By the time they should see my heart, I would be cold in the ground in an unknown grave. ’Tis too wicked to contemplate!”

Rising, Sandor took her in his arms. Hugging him, she wept fresh tears of relief. How close her family had come to perdition and sorrow!

“I will avenge your honor, for ’tis my honor now,” he said, rubbing the nape of her neck.

Tonia gripped his arms. His muscles tensed under her fingers. “Revenge, aye! But not yourself alone. We must go to my father and—”

Sandor shook his head. “Nay! Remember, you are dead, and for both our sakes, as well as my family’s, you must stay dead to the world’s eyes. Even now my little cousin Demeo lies in the Tower’s dungeons as surety for my swift return with the proof of the deed.”

Tonia gasped. “In my happiness, I had forgotten him! You have tarried here too long.”

He sighed
. “Aye, ’tis why I must be gone tomorrow. When I went to tend Baxtalo, I saw that the snow had stopped some hours ago. The wind has turned, bringing warm air from the south. Methinks, ’twill melt tomorrow if the sun shines. Tonight, we must devise our plans with care.”

Tonia stiffened.

“How, now?” He looked around as if he expected someone to burst in upon them.

She gave him a wry look, then pointed to the hob. “Methinks our supper is burning.”

O
vershadowed by
the separation that they knew lay ahead, Sandor and Tonia shared their supper of the salvaged hare pie in a silence filled with poignant tenderness. Tonia feasted her eyes on her new husband, trying to imprint his features in her heart. He, in turn, held her in his steady gaze while he ate. Afterward he took her in his arms and pillowed her against his chest while they spoke long into the night.

“You will be safe enough here,
sukar,
” he reassured her. “I will leave you all the food, and the woodpile is still high. Your guards must have done nothing but chop dead trees to fill up their time while they were here.”

She traced the furrows and ridges of his hands with her fingertip. “Indeed, they left me alone in my cell save for pushing food and scanty fuel through the hatch. At night, methinks they overimbibed their ale, for their voices were loud and raucous like a flock of ravens.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “’Tis fortunate for their future health that they did not harm you.”

Tonia said
nothing but snuggled deeper in his embrace. It would serve no purpose to tell Sandor that she had feared the rough men who had brought her to Hawksnest. Daily, she had expected ravishment, despite the fact that the soldiers had been ordered not to touch her. Who would have known what they had done? The victim was already condemned. One terrifying night she had even heard them debating the matter. Only the cooler head of the sergeant in charge had stopped the others. At least one man among them had been honorable.

“I was protected by my angels,” she finally said. Tonia believed it was true.

“Then I pray that your angels have not abandoned you now,” Sandor rumbled deep in his throat. “Tomorrow, I must make all speed to London. ’Twill be a hard journey for Baxtalo, but he has a great heart.” His jaw tensed. “I wish to God that I did not have to leave you here alone.”

She agreed, but for both their sakes, she assumed the veneer of courage that she had used when Sandor had first arrived. “We have already chewed that subject to shreds, my love,” she soothed, though she trembled inside.

“If I took refuge at one of the inns in Harewold, the whole village would know of it within the hour. If anyone came looking for a young woman of my description, ’twould be child’s play to find me there. And my home is too far to the north for you to take me there first.” Regret tinged her sigh. “You would lose valuable time.”

He sighed. “When I return, I will take you to your parents, though we will have to travel under the cover of night. No one must see us.”

Tonia nodded. “You will come back soon?” she asked, although she had already asked this question twice before.

Sandor kissed
her ear. “As soon as I have delivered the box to the Constable and made sure of Demeo’s release. ’Twill be a week if the roads are good. Ten days at the most. How could I stay away when you have my heart?”

She shuddered at the mention of hearts. She had almost gagged when Sandor had shown her the pig’s that he had purchased from a butcher. Now it lay in the King’s infernal box, along with a swatch of her gown and a curl of hair from the nape of her neck. She wrapped herself around him. “Speak to me of love, not of hearts.”

“Aye, I will show you once again the depth of my love soon, but first there are a few more things you must know,” he replied. He pulled out a dagger from his boot and laid it in her hand. The metal chilled her skin. “Could you use this to defend yourself? Could you kill a man if needs be?”

Tonia gripped the leather-wrapped haft. In her soul, she knew that she possessed neither the physical strength nor the bloodlust to do such a vile deed, but she could not tell Sandor. His worries for his family already weighed him down. “Am I not the daughter of the best swordsman in England?” she sidestepped her answer.

He chuckled. “Aye, so you have said, but this is a
chiv,
not a sword.
Jaj,
I wish I had the time to teach you how to throw it.”

“Is it very hard to learn?”

“It takes many hours of practice.”

Sandor gently untwined her from his side, then he rose from their cot. He plucked a bit of charcoal from the edge of the fire and drew the outline of a man on the wooden door. He marked the spot where the human heart lodged, and set the lantern so that it cast its light on the target. Then he stepped back to the far end of the room. He drew out his hidden arsenal of knives: one from his belt, a second from his other boot and one from the sheath that Tonia knew was strapped to his forearm. He pulled the final blade from the casing that hung down his back.

She attempted
a jest to soften the set expression in his face. “By my troth, Sandor, I never realized that I had married a hedgehog full of prickly bristles.”

He flashed her a grin that showed a great deal of white teeth. “English law forbids Gypsies to carry arms, even a bow and arrow. ’Tis why I call these my eating knives. Now watch.”

He had barely finished speaking before he threw the first one at the door. The others followed in a flashing blur. Tonia gasped. Three out of the four impaled the charcoal heart. The fourth lodged in the figure’s left arm at the shoulder.

“’Tis a marvelous wonder!” Tonia breathed. “Not even my father could do such a feat as that,” she added truthfully, staring at the four quivering daggers.

Sandor lifted his chin a notch as he worked to free his blades from the wood. “You think so? Pah! I missed one. ’Twas the poor light.” But he looked pleased with himself despite his protestations.

After he returned his weapons to their hidden recesses, he sat down next to her again. “Practice,” he reiterated. He opened his arms to her.

Tonia curled against him once more. “I will be watchful,” she assured him. “Besides, no one has passed by save yourself since I was first brought here.”

Sandor furrowed
his brow. “Praise the Lord God for that. But if you are forced to leave Hawksnest before my return, I want you to lay a trail of
patrin
so that I can follow where you have gone.”

Tonia rubbed the side of her nose.
“Patrin?”
she repeated.

“’Tis a sign made of grasses bent a certain way, or a twig broken just so that will point your direction. ’Tis how the Rom find each other in unknown countryside.”

“Oh!”

Using her fingers and his, Sandor taught her the various
patrin
common to his people. Tonia sucked on her lower lip. She was not sure she could remember all the patterns. “I will be here when you return,” she promised him. “Just hurry!”

He kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Use these signs. But if you cannot, I will still find you, even if I must travel to the ends of the earth.”

Tonia returned his kiss. “They say that the earth is round.” He tasted of honey and hare pie.

“Ha! How do you know this? You have never traveled anywhere. ’Tis flat, and filled with a great many mud holes in the middle of poor roads.” Sandor unlaced her bodice. “Let us put away this dull talk of knives and pigs’ hearts. ’Tis our wedding night and I wish to lie with my bride to make sure that she will remember me.”

His warm hands cupped her breasts. With a deep sigh of pleasure, Tonia lay down on the fleece. She would worry about tomorrow when tomorrow came. For tonight, she wanted only Sandor’s love.

Jaj! Now
I am starting to think like a Gypsy!

Guy paced the narrow confines of the inn’s main bedchamber that he shared with his son and nephew. Though darkness still cloaked the moor beyond his dirt-speckled window, a thin sliver of pale gray light sliced the horizon, signaling the approach of a new day. Guy pressed his face against the bottle-thick glass of the panes and watched the rose-hued dawn arrive. Knotting his hands into fists, he dug his fingernails into his palms.

Tonia was dead. In his heart he knew it. By now, she had been imprisoned too long to have escaped the King’s unjust sentence. All he could hope for was to locate her body and return it home for a proper burial under Snape’s chapel floor. ’Twould give his wife cold comfort, but perhaps it would ease her grief a little to know that their eldest child lay within their walls. After that, Guy would ride to London and ferret out the villains responsible for this heinous crime against the most innocent maiden in England.

“How now, Father?” Francis sat up in the trundle bed he shared with Kitt. “What’s amiss?”

Guy gave his only son a brief smile. “The morning comes apace.”

Francis jabbed his elbow into the side of his sleeping cousin. “Up, Kitt!”

The youngest Cavendish rolled out of the low bed onto the floor. He rose to his knees bleary-eyed but alert. “What ho! Are we attacked?” He fumbled for his sword.

Guy shook his head. “’Tis time we were away. I am a-weary of this lice palace.” He rapped on the windowpane with his knuckle. “It grows more light. Today will be fair.”

Francis
struggled into his tight-fitting doublet. “We shall find Tonia today, Father.”

Guy did not meet his son’s eyes. “I fear that you speak the truth,” he replied in a low voice.

Sandor found his leave-taking to be more painful than he had anticipated. He fought the urge to pull Tonia up behind him and ride away with her to Scotland, instead of returning to London by himself. Holding Baxtalo’s bridle while he saddled his steed, Tonia gave Sandor brave smiles but he saw the sheen of concern in her jewel eyes.

“One kiss more,” he said in a husky tone, after he had tightened the girth. “Kiss me until I cannot breathe.”

She flew into his arms and hugged him as an ivy vine clung to an ancient oak. “I love you, Sandor,” she whispered between their kisses. “Hurry back soon.”

“I will,” he promised. With a final, bruising embrace that left him on fire and short of breath, he swung into the saddle.
“Jel ‘sa Duvvel,”
he blessed her. “Go with God.”

“And with you,” she whispered. She swallowed back her tears. There would be time enough for them later.

Sandor wanted to kiss away her sorrow, but the sun had already sent his rays over the crest of the mountain. Not trusting himself to say anything else, he turned Baxtalo toward the front gate and kneed him into a trot. Once they were on the post road, he would push his faithful mount to eat the miles to London. Sandor looked back over his shoulder just before Baxtalo crossed over the moat’s bridge. Tonia waved and flashed him a brave smile. Gritting his teeth, Sandor turned away to face the journey at hand.

The track
down to Harewold was slippery in many spots, but at least the snow had melted enough to make the going easy for Baxtalo. An hour later, Sandor skirted around the village where people were already up and about their daily business. In the sky above the trees that ringed Harewold, he saw plumes of smoke from many chimneys. The breeze carried the sounds of men and dogs and the scents of a hundred breakfasts. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he must eat well at whatever public house he found near noontime. He would allow himself only one full meal a day while on the road. Tonight he expected to sleep under a hedgerow.

“Or a warm hayrack, if we are lucky,” he said aloud to Baxtalo.

Harewold was less than a mile behind him when he spied a party of men coming toward him. As the riders drew closer, Sandor’s heartbeat increased, though he kept his expression neutral. By the look of the fine horseflesh, by the rich cloth of the riders’ apparel and by the long swords that hung from the belts of the three men in the lead, he deduced that he had blundered into a party of nobles.

The aristocracy had always made Sandor uneasy. Experience had taught him that gentlemen were usually hand-in-glove with officers of the law. Sandor’s brand mark itched under his shirt. He hoped that the men were merely hunters out for a day’s sport, though they carried no falcons on their wrists nor did a pack of hounds accompany them. Pulling his cap low to cover his earring, Sandor slowed Baxtalo to a walk and sat back easy in the saddle with his arms away from his sides to show that he carried no weapons. He prayed that the noblemen would not mistake him for a highwayman.

When the
horsemen reined to a halt, Sandor marveled at the stature of the three who wore the swords. The eldest man in the middle sat particularly tall astride his warhorse and he held himself with an air of command. Sandor was tempted to stand in his stirrups to equal them.

The youngest gentleman lifted his hand in greeting. “Good day to you.”

“And to ye, m’lords,” Sandor replied, mimicking the accent of the local folk. He too raised his empty hand. “’Tis a fine day to be abroad a-hunting.”

The second young man smiled at him, though he regarded Sandor with an unsettling intensity. “Aye, my friend, you have hit upon the nut and core of it. ’Tis a hunt we are on, though the lay of this land is strange to us. Do you know these parts?”

“Middling well,” Sandor hedged. He eyed the four men-at-arms who rode behind the gentlemen.

“Is there a castle called Hawksnest nearby?” snapped the eldest man.

“Or Eaglesnest?” added the youngest. “We were told ’twas in this direction.” He pointed down the road that led into Harewold and from there to the mountain where Tonia waited among the ruins.

Sandor’s heart thudded as if a bolt from a crossbow had skewered it.
The devil take these
gadje!
They are King’s men sent from London to see if I have killed my beloved.

Thinking quickly, he nodded. “Aye, m’lord,” he answered. “’Tis an abandoned abbey ye seek, but ye have taken a wrong turning at the fork. ’Tis way on the other side of this mountain. To get there, ye must backtrack a wee bit, then take the trail to the left. ’Twill lead ye round to the pass. From there ’tis another few leagues. Ye canna miss it. ’Tis a great crumbing mass o’ stone.”

The oldest
man swore an oath that set Sandor’s teeth on edge. Without a word of thanks for the false directions, he wheeled his horse around and started back down the road they had just come. The men-at-arms and the second gentleman followed after him.

The youngest noble again raised his hand, this time in farewell. “Our thanks to you.” He pointed to Harewold’s church tower that was just visible above the bare branches of the trees. “What village lies yonder?”