The Redeeming (36 page)

“How?” Gaenor demanded.

He met the frantic gaze she cast over her shoulder. “Likely, they came through the postern gate.” Though it was surely well defended, it was the best explanation for the sudden turn of events.

“And what of my sister?”

Christian set his jaw. “She is the reason we are here, Gaenor. We will bring her out.”

“Alive?”

He drew a slow, deep breath. “Aye, alive.”
Lord, make not a lie of my words.
Before Gaenor asked more questions that could not yet be answered, he turned to D’Arci. “Two of your night guard shall remain outside the walls with my lady wife until we know the extent of the breach.”

“Nay!” Gaenor protested. “My sister is in there.”

This was a battle of wills she could not be allowed to win. As his vassal motioned his men forward to receive Gaenor, Christian said, “The sooner we are assured of your safety, the sooner we may go to your sister’s aid.”

He felt more than saw her resentment, but she offered no further argument and turned forward again as D’Arci’s men drew alongside.

“When all this is done,” Christian said in her ear, “I will right what I have wronged and give you cause to smile again. This I vow. Until then, think on forgiving me.”

Though Gaenor was not exactly sure what he meant, she found hope in that moment. Scraping her teeth across her bottom lip, she once more looked over her shoulder.

He reached up and brushed a thumb across her ill-treated lip. “God willing, it will be over anon.”

She stared, longing to believe this would soon be in the past and all would end well for Christian and her. However, she was too painfully aware of the wounds dealt this day—more, of the wounds that might yet be dealt.

Christian lifted her and passed her to the nearest man-at-arms. Before her guard could settle her sideways before him, she threw a leg over and straddled the horse. When she returned her gaze to her husband, there was a slight curve to his mouth and she sensed there was something he wanted to say, but he did not. Just as she did not.

And so you with all your righteous anger will let him go without a word, knowing it might be the last word he never hears from you…

The drawbridge landed heavily, causing a wave of dust to rise around them.

“Christian!” she called as he and the others surged across the drawbridge. “I do love you!”

If he heard, she could not know, but she prayed he did and that her declaration would aid in returning him to her.

“Let us take cover,” the man at her back said to his companion and turned his horse toward the wood.

Gaenor peered around him and watched as the portcullis was lowered against any who might try to cross the drawbridge uninvited. When it touched down, she closed her eyes and began to pray.

T
he donjon was, indeed, taken, though not by breach of the postern gate. The only explanation, it seemed, was that someone had let in the brigands. Still, if it was true their numbers were as great as Sir Durand told, it was incomprehensible that so many had passed through the outer and inner baileys without raising an alarm well before they reached the donjon.

“Again!” Christian shouted, and he and the others who hefted the battering ram once more charged.

The massive doors that had been barred against them groaned and bowed inward but held.

As Christian and D’Arci and his men drew back along the landing, the force of wood on wood arose from the west side of the donjon where Abel and Durand and a dozen others attempted to gain entrance through the door that let into the kitchens.

For the third time, Christian gave the command to charge and, a moment later, the doors burst inward.

Christian and his men abandoned the battering ram, drew swords, and surged into the great hall where they were met by the eerie still of death that has come and gone.

The links of their armor settling, they surveyed the room and picked out those who had fallen to the brigands—the porter, a female servant, and three men-at-arms, all of whom were so viciously bloodied that if any had breath left in them, it would soon be their last.

Robert had timed the attack well, he and his men having entered the donjon before the supper hour that would otherwise have seen the brigands outnumbered by those of the guard and household who gathered at table.

But where had the brigands taken Beatrix and the rest of the servants? As they had barricaded themselves in the donjon, the likeliest choice was abovestairs since the winding stair made it easier to secure and defend than the cellar. The kitchen was also a possibility, but unlikely. After all, there could be no doubt Abel and his men would soon take down the door that stood between the garden and the cook’s domain.

Still, Christian had learned that nothing was certain when faced with an enemy, and so he turned to divide his men. It was then a crash and the clamor of booted feet sounded from the direction of the kitchen.

When those led by Abel and Durand burst upon the hall, they were met by the steel of their allies who immediately eased their battle-ready stances.

“Three dead in the kitchen,” Abel growled, sweeping his gaze over the hall. “No brigands.”

“Take your men and search the cellar,” Christian ordered. “We will search abovestairs.”

As he led his men opposite, he saw that D’Arci was already upon the stairs. It was foolhardy considering what might await him around the first turn, but it
was
his wife whose life was in peril and Christian knew that neither would he have waited if Gaenor was in danger—Gaenor who, in spite of his jealousy and suspicion, had called to him as he had ridden away from her. If anything could sustain him through the looming confrontation with Robert, it would be the words she had spoken.

And God
, she would say.

And God,
he would agree, even though his conviction would lack the strength of hers.

Past the first turn of the stairs and just down from the landing, Christian and his men found D’Arci bent over a knight, the fallen man’s blood smearing the stone steps, his hand turned around his sword hilt.

“Canute!” D’Arci turned the man over.

It was the weathered old knight who had been the physician’s companion since before Christian had become acquainted with and indebted to D’Arci.

“Lord!” D’Arci beseeched and pressed a hand over the wound that opened his man’s abdomen.

Sir Canute’s lids lifted beneath eyebrows so silver that the light of the torch overhead winked through them. “Sir Robert,” he huffed, “has taken your lady wife.”

“Abovestairs?”

“Nay.”

“Where?”

The knight’s eyes closed.

D’Arci shook him.

Canute swallowed loudly but did not lift his lids again. “One moment, all was quiet,” he murmured, “the next, they were in the hall. But they did not come through the great doors, nor from the kitchens.” He coughed. “They appeared as if…from the bowels of hell.”

“The cellar,” Christian snarled.

D’Arci looked around. “I know of no passageway that leads outside the walls.”

“Nor do I”—Christian swung away—“but if there is one, my father would have revealed it to Robert.” And Robert would have had time to explore and exploit it during the years he served at Soaring previous to the attempt on Beatrix’s life that had seen him imprisoned.

As Christian pushed past his men, he heard D’Arci direct a man-at-arms to remain with Sir Canute, then his vassal and the others were at his back.

Swords going before them, chain mail ringing, they shot across the hall and down the dimly lit northern corridor. Around a corner, they nearly collided with one of the men-at-arms sent to search out the cellar with Sir Abel.

“My lord!” The man jumped back and nodded over his shoulder at the doorway that glowed with a light from within the cellar. “Sir Abel sent me to inform you that a passageway has been discovered. He and the others have gone into it.”

Christian thrust past him and narrowly avoided treading upon a servant whose head lay in a pool of blood let from his throat.

Grinding his teeth against an anger so dark it threatened to eclipse reason, he crossed the cellar threshold. As he descended the steps, he recalled that the last time he had been in a cellar was at Wulfen Castle when Everard had taught him to use the senses beyond sight to defeat darkness and the enemies who lurked there.

The cellar, lit by a single torch, appeared empty save for the barrels and shelves of food and household supplies it boasted in abundance. But out of the farthest corner came the sound of struggle, a pale echo of men’s cries and grunts and the meeting of steel. Abel and his men were upon the brigands, and Gaenor’s sister was likely in their midst.

D’Arci wrenched the torch from its sconce and lunged across the cellar. Christian and the others followed to where a passageway that had been cut through the donjon’s foundation gaped dim beyond overturned shelves that had spilled their supplies on the earthen floor once concealment was no longer necessary.

So treacherously narrow and squat was the tunnel that it was impossible for even those of lesser stature than Christian to negotiate it with ease or speed. Fortunately, it grew in width and height and, at the point where Christian guessed they were outside Soaring’s outer walls, he was able to draw alongside D’Arci and run with him.

Though the sound of men engaged in battle continued to reach them, it remained distant as if Abel and Durand and their party were beating back the brigands. It was thus for several turns of the tunnel, but at last the din became the distinct clash of swords and shouts of men. And Christian knew what must be done as Everard had impressed upon him at Wulfen.

Ahead of the next turn, he gripped his vassal’s arm and forced him to a halt, causing those behind to grunt and curse as they checked their own progress.

D’Arci came around so suddenly and violently, Christian thought it possible that, had he not arrested the man’s sword arm, he might have been gutted.

“Put out the torch,” he rasped. “Abel and Durand are expecting us, but not the brigands.”

Shortly, guided by the din and vague glow of torches that had surely been carried by those who had taken Gaenor’s sister, they came around the last turn into a low-ceilinged cave.

Had Christian any reason to entertain humor, he might have laughed at his half-brother’s fondness for the dens of animals.

By the light of a torch that lay on the ground, its writhing flame revealing those who fought at the mouth of the cave beyond a half dozen who had fallen to the sword, Christian and his men streamed forward and joined the fray.

T
he weight of her, slight though she was, slowed him.

Not that he minded now that he was so far ahead of his pursuers. Indeed, were he not so eager for his first strong taste of revenge—to press it to his palate and savor it and let it slide wet and warm down his throat—he would have been tempted to walk the remainder of the wood to where he and his men had tethered their horses at a goodly distance from the cave.

It was there that Lady Beatrix would meet her end as she should have done on the day she was pronounced innocent of Simon D’Arci’s death. All was in readiness and, providing the knock to her head did not too long hold her unconscious, she would be awake to see—and feel—every bloody moment.

For this, he had not struck the stammering witch harder when she had sought to unman him. Of course, if she did not awaken, he still had hope of a worthy audience, for he knew his men could not contain all of those who had somehow learned of his plan to enter Soaring Castle.

Just barely, Robert avoided a low-hanging branch, his sudden sidestep causing the woman on his shoulder to slip. Resettling her as he continued up the rise, disgusted that his breath should sound so winded for one born to sword and mail, he returned to his musing.

He would be content to have Michael D’Arci witness his wife’s death, but far more pleased if Abel Wulfrith presented.

“And Christian,” he muttered, then laughed across the moonlight-lit darkness and once more considered slowing. After all, he would not have any enemy of the Lavonnes miss this night’s reckoning.

C
hristian had thought death, felt death, breathed death and, from the amount of blood spilled to get past the brigands, might even be said to have embraced death. But only when he emerged from the cave into moonlit night and saw that Sir Abel had fallen did he feel capable of wrapping his arms around the terrible specter that, given the chance, would make a meal of his soul.

“D’Arci!” he shouted as his vassal wrenched his blade from the gut of another brigand who sought to provide his leader with time and space to work evil upon Beatrix.

The physician snapped his chin around and met his liege’s gaze where Christian had dropped to a knee beside Gaenor’s brother. Leaving his men to hone their sword skill on the remaining brigands, D’Arci ran across the bloodied ground and knelt beside the man who was as much his brother-in-law as Christian’s.

“He breathes,” he pronounced, then gripped Abel’s shoulder and shook him. “Abel, hear me!”