The Protector (3 page)

Finally she reined in her horse and pointed to a road heading west. “That will take you to the town of Ville de la Roche. We could get home that way, but this is shorter.” She led him to a forest path farther down the road.

The trees eventually thinned, then fell away. Across an open field, an old triangular castle stood on a rocky rise of land. A large tower formed the gatehouse at its front point, and a large round keep filled the northern angle. A wall stretched from the gatehouse for a goodly distance to the north.

As they neared he realized that the coast formed a cliff here. The castle had been built on a promontory of land jutting out into the ocean, and most of its walls rose above sheer chasms. A deep, wide ditch had been carved into the rock at the base of the walls facing the field.

“It is impressive,” he said. “Has it ever been taken?”

“Nay. My family has held La Roche de Roald for over three hundred years. With the sea at our backs we can always be provisioned, so a siege is useless.”

They rode through the gate into the bailey. It was empty of people, and eerily silent. The world of the living had retreated from the death that he carried. He peered at the upper reaches of the keep in time to see a young blond girl pull back from an open window.

A small portal stood open in the northern wall, too low for a man on horseback.

Anna dismounted. “Please leave your horse here and take what you need.”

The gate gave on the section of field enclosed by the long northward-thrusting wall. It extended about two hundred yards before curving to meet the cliff, which made a natural boundary on the west. The enclosure served as an outer bailey, and small houses and service buildings hugged the wall.

In its middle, busily posting canvas lean-tos, worked the twenty men who had come north with him from Gascony. Each man's camp was separated from the next
by a fire and they and the fires had been placed in neat rows, chessboard fashion.

“We have given them plenty of blankets, and canvas to protect them from rain. Food will be brought to the perimeter of the camp at meals,” Anna explained. “They are far enough apart to avoid the disease's spreading if one succumbs, I hope.”

“Why so many fires?”

“My brother told me that in Avignon the Pope was kept between two fires and he did not get the death. I have no idea if it really does any good, but we will try anything.”

At the edge of the field, twenty paces from the cliff edge, was a wooden-roofed structure fitted with canvas walls. Anna brought him there. She pulled aside a canvas flap and secured it open.

Morvan stuck his head in and looked around. Three cots formed a U in front of a rude hearth. There was also a table, chair, and stool, and some buckets and rags in a corner.

A void opened in the pit of his gut.

“So, this is the death house,” he said.

Anna built up the fire in the hearth and tried to act as if she hadn't heard him. She knew too well what he was experiencing, and it wasn't a moment for strangers to see.

This shelter represented the reality of his future, and he was facing it in his soul. It was one thing to know that you were going to die, and it was another thing to
know
. It had been too much to hope that he would be one of the many who were too unimaginative to ever fully know.

Memories of her own knowing, of waiting for the
death while huddled like a baby in Ascanio's arms, forced themselves on her. She fought back the desperation.

He still stood at the entrance. Those wonderful eyes stared dully, with all of his vision turned inward.

“I survived, Sir Morvan.”

A bit of spark returned. He stepped into the shelter and gestured to the cots. “You expect others. When will you know?”

“When ten days pass and no one has shown the illness, your men can leave.”

“And if one does?”

“He comes here and we begin the count again. Set down your possessions and I will help you remove your armor.”

He permitted her to unbuckle the breast plate and help him lift it from his body. He sat on a cot and went to work on his arms and legs.

“Tell me, my lady, what is the name of your lord?”

“My lord?”

“Aye. I would know his name if I am to be his guest. What is your husband's name?”

She smiled at that. “Sir Morvan, look at me.”

He glanced up as he set aside the plate.

“Nay. I mean
really
look at me.”

“Aye, my lady.” And he did. A speculative, amused expression passed on his face, and then a different one that left his jaw set and his eyes burning. The look unsettled her. She wondered if she had angered him somehow.

“Well, Sir Morvan, in all of your experience, have you ever met a man who would have a wife such as me?”

“My lady?”

“Think about it. If I had a husband telling me what to do, do you think that he would be telling me to do this?”

He smiled slowly. “Perhaps your husband is an unusual man.”

“In this, there are no unusual men.” She had removed her cloak on entering, and now swung it back over her shoulders. “I must go. Ascanio will come to you soon.”

He accompanied her outside. Someone had placed little pennants around the structure, and others flew at the corners of the men's camp. They were blue and gold, not black, but their message was still a warning to stay away. Combined with the noisy camaraderie shouted over the fires, they gave the field almost a festive mood.

He faced her with eyes full of black fire. “Will you be back?”

“Someone will be with you,” she said, promising comfort since she could offer little hope. “Either Ascanio or myself. You will be cared for. You will not be alone.” She forced a cheerful smile of farewell, then walked away toward the castle. She sensed his gaze follow her until she passed through the bailey portal.

L
OOK AT ME
, she had said. Really look at me. And he had. He had looked and the specter of death had slipped away as he suddenly saw the woman beneath the man's clothes and behind the wild mane of curls.

She was very beautiful, but not in a fashionable or predictable way. No tweezed brow and forehead, no elaborately coifed hair, no flowing gown. Her beauty was as honest and natural as her manner.

And as he looked desire had entered his head and shown him images of her dressed in thin silk, and then in nothing at all. He had been unprepared for that, and for the reaction of his body. He had no doubt that his unbidden thoughts were written on his face, but she had seemed oblivious to them. Or indifferent. He found that interesting. He almost never looked at a woman that way and have her fail to look back.

He judged her to be about eighteen, but it was hard to tell with the hair half hiding her face. When she gave orders to men or cast that level gaze she appeared older. The occasional smile lightened her eyes and features, however, and then he saw a girlish, almost childlike quality.

He watched her until, a proud gray and gold form, she disappeared into the inner bailey. She didn't walk like most women, but it wasn't a man's stride either. Rather, she had a purposeful, fluid movement, with all of her limbs working together in graceful coordination.

A strange woman. Interesting. He had never met one quite like her before, and he had known many women very well. The one constant in his life besides his skill at arms had been his ability to attract women. They came to him because of his face and body and stayed because of the pleasure he could give them. As a youth he had reveled in those conquests, but the predictability of success had made the sieges less interesting of late. It was, in the end, a cheap form of power.

A voice calling his name roused him from his thoughts. At the edge of the camp a familiar figure waved to him. Morvan walked to the boundary marked by his own pennants and found himself thirty feet from Gregory, one of the archers in his troop. A good man, Gregory, strong and honorable and a plain speaker who had aided Morvan in keeping the men in order during the past months. When life got hard as they crisscrossed their way up the coast from Gascony, trying to avoid the plague outbreaks, it had been Gregory whose voice always supported him as he convinced the men not to resort to brigandage. And yet, that week when no town would receive them and there was no food, it had also been Gregory who disappeared for a day and returned
with a cloakful of bread and fowl. No one had asked him how he came by it, least of all Morvan.

“Well, you've finally led us to paradise, Sir Morvan,” Gregory called with a grin.

Morvan smiled back at the graying beard and thickening form of his friend. “Was there any trouble?”

“Not to speak of. We outnumbered them and they were just boys, but they caught us napping, so we had to listen. Even Sir John, who argued long and loud that they might have taken your cloak from your dead body and that we couldn't trust them. But the knight, the one called Ascanio—he's a priest, did you know that?—he promised us hot food and soft blankets and, well, soldiers like us live to be bought.”

“Try to keep things orderly. If they stay apart and all goes well, you can be on your way soon.”

“Oh, they'll be orderly. There's archers on that wall and those bolts can come this way as well as outside.”

“Have you learned anything of our hosts?”

“We spoke with some servants who brought us supplies. A few speak French and some of the men know a bit of Breton.” Even from thirty paces Morvan could see his eyes twinkle. “It is a strange place you've brought us to. There is no lord here. A Lady Anna is mistress. A saint, to hear them speak of her. She defends the castle, manages the farms, cures the sick, and probably walks on water and makes the sun move. Some have seen divine light glow from her at night, ever since they say an angel saved her from the death. Seems her father died in battle and her brother of the plague and she's all that's left, her and a younger sister. Dedicated to God, too. Convent-raised and convent-bound, once she gets the young duke to settle things here.”

“I have met her. Hardly saintly. Just a woman in man's clothes.”

“Was she that lad who brought you in? She must be taller than me.”

“A tall woman, and formidable, but still a woman.”

“That's what Sir John said. He speaks Breton well, and he also learned that there is a legend of a treasure hidden here, brought back from the Holy Land by an ancestor.”

John was bound to be trouble. He was too full of youthful conceit and arrogance not to be.

“He also,” Gregory continued, “has studied the castle closely and, I figure, has realized as I have that there be no more than twelve men, along with the priest and the lady, holding the place. And most of them are green.”

Morvan didn't like the implications. The castle was unbreachable, but that wasn't a problem if it was lightly defended and you were already inside. “Did they let you keep your weapons?”

Gregory shook his head. “Sir John was indignant when they took his too, but this Ascanio isn't stupid.”

“You must watch John. Do not let him influence the others. Make sure that your voice is heard, for I'll not be with you.”

“If he plans something, he'll wait until you are sick or dead,” Gregory said bluntly.

“Go to your meal now. I see it being brought. If God is generous, I'll speak with you in the morning.”

Morvan waved him off and walked to the cliff edge. This section of the coastline shot farther out to sea than the promontory on which the castle stood. From here he could see the back of the keep.

It was built right into the cliff, with heavy buttresses supporting the foundations. Above that curved the living quarters, marked by small windows. Then a newer
level rose, with larger windows and the unusual feature of a gallery hanging off one room, its openings neatly arched and roofed.

Something else caught his attention. The rock of the cliff below the castle had been worked, and a narrow staircase carved into the living stone. It zigzagged up from the small beach until it disappeared behind one of the foundation buttresses. There would be a postern door there. A secret way out and in, and inaccessible to an enemy even if he knew of it.

He walked back toward the shelter, staying near the cliff. The sun was setting, and he sat on a large rock that still held its warmth. He looked out to the sea, feeling empty and exposed in a way that he had never experienced when facing death in battle. But he'd had some control over his fate then.

A sense of utter isolation descended on him. The sounds from the camp dimmed and disappeared. He had become accustomed to being alone in the world, but this was growing more intense and essential than that. It was as if an invisible hand was drawing a circle around him that prevented even tenuous connections to the other men, leaving him with only his soul for company.

Nay, not only his soul. The sea and the sky were still alive for him, surrounding him with their sounds and vastness. The western horizon became streaked with brilliant pinks and purples that reflected like colored ice on the throbbing eddy of the water. Even the crests of the breaking waves were touched by the colors, and the dimming light itself seemed tinted. He was momentarily awed by the beauty, and entranced by the slowly sinking disk of fire on the edge of the world.