The Kindling (41 page)

She watched him wend among the fenced areas where a handful of men-at-arms and squires practiced at arms, turning opposite only when he reached the farthest fenced area where Judas deftly swung a sword against another of the few knights she trusted—an older man who had been her father’s man before her brother’s.

With the crash and clang of blade upon blade sounding behind, her brisk steps making her skirts snap at her ankles, she followed the servant whom the cook had sent to fetch her. Another problem with the menu? A delivery of foodstuffs that had not arrived? Lady Richenda had once more put the back of a hand to a kitchen boy?
 

Resenting that it continued to fall to her to manage the household while Lady Blanche slid from her fifth week post-birth into her sixth, she entered the kitchen some minutes later. It was empty.

She turned to the servant who had fetched her and discovered the girl had disappeared.

“Well…” She sighed, stepped back out onto the garden path by which she had gained the kitchen, and called, “Hilde!” and twice more as she strode among the leafy patches of vegetables that would soon find their way into the kitchen and onto the table.

“Milady?” The cook’s head popped up from behind a low-lying bush. “There be somethin’ ye need?”

Susanna halted, raised her eyebrows. “I understood ’twas
you
who needed
me
.”

The woman sat back on her heels. “Nay, milady. All be well with my pots and spoons, roastin’s and stirrin’s.” She harrumphed. “For now.”

Then had she misunderstood the servant? No, the girl had definitely claimed to have been sent by Hilde. But why…?

She heard it then—the absence of steel upon steel and grunts and shouts that had receded as she advanced on the manor house. Though diluted, it ought to still be present. Instead, there was mostly silence.

She snatched up her skirts and ran for the training field that lay downhill from the manor house.

Please, Lord!
she sent heavenward as she flew past the soldier’s barracks…the smithy…the stables…
Protect Judas!

It was worse than the worst sight imaginable, for never had she seen him in such distress where he lay in the dirt on his back with knights, men-at-arms, and squires loosely gathered around as if the throes of death were a wonder to behold.

Scrabbling at his chest and throat, choking and wheezing sounds issuing from his gaping mouth, legs alternately kicking and stiffening, Judas de Balliol struggled to keep hold of life.

She cried out his name, and the brightly-clothed figure she pushed past turned quickly toward her. And caught her arm.

She stumbled, landed hard on a knee and, as she wrenched to free herself, snapped her chin around and found the nearly impassive face of Lady Richenda above her.

Susanna knew she was no longer the fourteen-year-old girl who gasped audibly at any cruel word spoken in her direction, who hunched her shoulders up to her ears at the first hint of physical aggression, but until that moment she did not realize just how far she had risen—though some would say she had fallen.

She came up snarling and swinging and, in an instant, gave expression to the lady who had so lacked it. Taking no moment to savor the horror, pain, and crimson mist that distorted the woman’s face, she sprang away and dropped to her knees alongside Judas.

“Breathe!” she commanded as she dragged him up into her arms. “In, Judas, in!”

His head lolled against her chest, and she nearly cried out, but then his lids fluttered and there came the painfully thready sound of air being dragged in through his nostrils.

“That’s it. Hold it—just a moment.”

As he did so, she lifted his lax hand from the dirt, placed it in his lap, and lightly began to trace the sign of the cross upon it. Over and over. “Now breathe out…out…slowly…”

He parted his lips and complied. His next breath was stronger, as was the one that followed. And those who had stood around watching and doing nothing to save him, began to murmur.

She dropped her chin, letting her hair fall forward and curtain their faces, and squeezed her eyes closed.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you.

Of a sudden, Judas’s fingers closed strong and firm over hers, preventing her from placing more crosses in his palm.

Raising her lids, she saw he had tilted his face up to hers and the eyes with which he regarded her were steady, reflecting none of the sickly fatigue that ought to be there.

“Judas?” she breathed.

He smiled grimly and whispered, “Now we know, Sanna.”

“What?” No sooner did she breathe the word than everything fit painfully, perfectly together. Lady Richenda was responsible for this—had sought to bring about what Susanna had tried to convince Judas and herself that the woman would not go so far as to do. Indeed, the lady had even tried to hold Susanna back. And Judas had used whatever opportunity had been given him to test his brother’s grandmother by meeting cunning with cunning, his nine-year-old heart corrupted by the very real need to survive.

Something inside Susanna broke that she knew needle and thread would not put back together. The pieces were too hard, too sharp, too jagged. Thus, the sob that stole from her throat was followed by another, part relief that it had not truly been a near mortal attack Judas had suffered, part grief over his stolen childhood, and—selfishly, she knew—part despair that this should be her life. For years, her hell had worn the face of her brother who had been frightfully adept at emotional abuse. Now it wore the face of murder that could prove adept at taking from her the only being in the world who mattered to her.

She heard Judas’s voice, felt arms come around her that had to be his, but could not stop crying no matter the spectacle she made of herself as she had not done in years and years. Not until she heard another voice, one so hated it could not be ignored, did she drag herself out of her insides and back into the dirt of the training field.

“Poor child,” Lady Richenda said. “Certes, he must needs rest if he is to regain his strength. Bring him.”

Susanna brought up her head so sharply she nearly clipped Judas’s nose. To the right stood the one who, this day, had been thwarted, though perhaps not another day.

When Susanna saw what her fists and nails had wreaked upon the older woman, it was the hardest thing not to laugh. Lady Richenda’s veil was askew, upper lip smeared with blood that had not been completely wiped away, and four livid scores ran down her left cheek and over her neck.

“And assist Lady Susanna,” she continued. “Obviously, she is not herself, distraught as she is by her nephew’s illness.”

The two men-at-arms who stepped forward did so without conviction, as if uncertain of Susanna who, as all would attest, had attacked the other woman. Fortunately, their dragging feet provided her the time needed to stand on her own and pull Judas up beside her.

“Aunt Sanna?” he said, his shortening of her name in the presence of others revealing how shaken he was. But, then, never had he seen her reduced to such a state.

She swallowed hard against hiccoughs that, in her youth, had often followed a torrent of tears. “I am fine,” she murmured and put an arm around his shoulders. As he leaned heavily against her, his foresight in doing so but another ache to her heart, she set her gaze upon the men-at-arms. “We require not your aid,” she said and drew Judas with her to where Lady Richenda stood trying to look down her nose at them though it was impossible to do so, squat as she was.

“If you ever again…” Susanna drew a deep breath. “…lay a hand to Judas or me, I vow you will know exactly how
distraught
I can be made to feel.”

The lady’s eyes widened, showing yet more of the hatred she bore them.

“Test me if you dare,
my lady
.”
Susanna turned Judas opposite and, picking her gaze over those who had but watched and marking them well, walked slowly past them though she longed to run.

Only when they were far enough ahead to not be heard by those who followed did Susanna ask Judas, “Where did Sir—?”

“My lady!” someone called.

She pressed her lips closed and continued toward the manor house.

“The boy is well?” asked the one who drew alongside.

She swung her gaze to the knight, identified him as one of the majority who had followed her brother’s lead in disparaging Judas over the years. Now he answered to Lady Blanche and her mother, though he and the others would answer to Judas once the king acknowledged him.
If
he acknowledged him…

“The
Lord
of Cheverel is well,” she clipped, “though we have not you to thank, have we?”

The man’s shameful grimace seemed genuine, but she took only slight comfort in it, knowing that though he was not as hard-hearted as some, he would yet bend to the one who wielded power. And that was not yet Judas.

“I am sorry, my lady. I fear we knew not what to do to help the lad.”

And had not even thought to try. However, the older knight with whom Judas had been at practice and the one to whom she was to have owed a kiss had known what to do. And they had not been among those gathered around Judas.

“I left my nephew in the care of Sir Elias and Sir George. Where did they go?”

The man shrugged. “They were summoned by Sir Talbot.”

Of course. The head of the household knights and quite under the thumb of her brother’s widow. And, therefore, Lady Richenda. It had all been planned…

Determining Judas could just as well answer her next question, Susanna said, “We are most grateful for your concern, Sir Knight. Good day.”

The man opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, and turned aside.

After confirming that Lady Richenda, who followed with a knight on either side of her, remained distant, and once they were past the smithy and the curious regard of those nearby, Susanna said, “Judas, how came you to lose your breath?”

He looked up and a bit of a smile curled his lips. “You know I did not truly lose it, aye?”

She sighed. “Nearly too late for my heart to bear, but I know.”

“I thought it best you also believed,” he said, then answered, “When Sir Elias and Sir George were called away after you left, I knew something was afoot, but just as I decided to return to my chamber as you would wish me to do, Sir Morris said he would finish instructing me at swords.”

Susanna caught her breath, for though the knight was small of stature, he was quick and wily, so much that his skill at arms was as feared as that of the head of the household knights. Remembering his hard, bruising kiss—one not owed but stolen—and seeking, grasping hands, she swallowed bile. If Alan had not—

“I was fair certain of what he had been set to do,” Judas said, no longer leaning as heavily upon her as they neared the manor house, “and full certain when I saw Lady Richenda at the fence. Thus, I let him push me, harder and harder until I felt the air grow thick.” He gave a dry laugh. “Then I delivered unto the witch what she wanted.”

Susanna gripped his hand tighter. “Judas, I am sorry.”

He looked up at her out of eyes that very nearly belonged in the face of a wizened old man. “It changes everything, does it not?”

She inclined her head. “I fear it does, meaning you had best stumble and give me your weight again.”

He did not hesitate, for he also knew they would not be watched as closely if he appeared too weak to rise from bed over the next several days.

“I did not expect it to be so easy to claim my reward,” Sir Elias murmured as he stared up at Susanna where she knelt beside his pallet. “Truly, my lady ought to exercise more caution lest, in setting aside all propriety to deliver it, she be thought overly enamored with my person.” Smiling sleepily in the light cast by the half moon outside the window, he reached up and brushed his fingers across her lips. “In the middling of night…beside my bed…alone…”

As much as she longed to clamp her teeth upon those fingers, she pushed his hand aside and rasped, “You have earned no reward.”

He sighed. “I did what I could. Some things simply cannot be helped.”

It was true. Neither he nor Sir George could have refused Sir Talbot’s summons, but that did not mean she was in his debt.

Sir Elias eased up onto his elbows, and when his blanket slipped down, she was relieved to see he wore an undertunic. “How fares the boy?” he asked.

She hesitated. Though committed to what she would ask of this knight, still she feared it might prove a grave mistake. Unfortunately, there was none better to aid her. “That depends upon you, Sir Elias.”

“Me?”

“Aye, Judas and I need your help.”

“Another favor?”

She tried not to swallow hard, but there it was. “More than ever I have asked of you, but which, I believe, you are honorable enough to grant.”

He chuckled. “Am I?”

“Certes, you have heard tale of what happened to my nephew in your absence and must know ’twas by design. Thus, I ask you to save him from further attempts upon his life.”

For far too long, he was silent, but finally, he said, “How do you propose I do that?”

Too late, she caught herself dragging her teeth across her bottom lip, a nervous gesture vanquished years ago. “By delivering Judas and me to Wulfen Castle.”

His eyebrows soared and, after another bout of silence, he whistled low. “That is no place for a lady. Indeed, I am told women are forbidden within its walls.”

Susanna knew that, but the fortress that was renowned for training boys into knights was where she would find the one man who might be able to alter the course of Judas’s life. Of course, whether or not he could be moved to do so was another matter.

“And even if you find welcome there, my lady, ’tis a good two days’ ride.”

“This I know, but it is our only hope. Will you take us?”

That he did not immediately refuse gave her cause to believe he would agree.

“If I do,” he said slowly, “I cannot return to Cheverel. Indeed, it could prove difficult to sell my services to another lord.”

“You are assuming Judas will not be awarded his father’s title, and I tell you that when he is, your services to Cheverel’s new lord will be much needed. And Sir Talbot’s will not.”