Wonderful (36 page)

So as the wind picked up and blew in some clouds of rain, she hid as the drops began to fall, knowing she had no choice, for she was his only chance.

It rained all night and was still drizzling when Merrick’s camp was getting ready to pack up and leave. The sun was just coming over the misty eastern hills when he heard the shout of a watch guard.

Merrick stepped out of his tent, his sword drawn. A horse loped into the camp, a small drenched lad hanging on to the horse’s neck. Someone grabbed the loose reins and stopped the mount.

Merrick caught Thud just as he fell off, soaked, smelling like a swill pit.

The lad fought for breath and blinked, looking up at him as if he could not see him. “Lord Merrick?”

“Aye. ’Tis I, lad. What is wrong?”

“The Welsh have taken Camrose.”

Merrick cursed. “Lady Clio? Is she safe?”

“I do not know. They have everyone, I think. I escaped, then stole a horse and rode here.”

“Someone see to the lad. And pack up. We must leave!” Merrick looked off toward the southwest, the direction of Camrose. And Clio. He stood there, his head pounding and his fists shaking. He took a deep breath, then gave a loud cry, like an angry wolf caught in a trap.

With both his hands he jammed his sword into the muddy ground, then knelt there, his head bowed. He swore with his life he would save her.

Clio moved as quietly as she could. She was near the chapel and the spiral stairs that led from the lower parapet to the chaplain’s room, where Brother Dismas had his quarters. It had been quiet here, and other than the guard that was watching over the chapel doors, she had seen no one.

She took it one step at time, slowly, so no one would hear. She just made the middle turn when she heard the shout. Behind her.

“There she is!” She spun around. Three Welshmen came flying toward her. She turned and ran. She slipped and suddenly she was falling.

Her head smashed into the hard stone. Pain shot through her and she tumbled, down and down and down …

She heard a scream. So terrifying.

God in heaven, it sounded like her.

That was her last thought.

Chapter 39

For over a week they had tried to break into Camrose. They could not. No attack could breach the walls. Men were killed and they had no word from inside. Nothing.

David ap Gruffydd would not negotiate.

It only took two days for the other patrols to join Merrick’s, and messengers had been sent to Edward and to the neighboring marcher lords for aid. It seemed that more than one castle was under siege.

Merrick had spent most of the last few hours going over strategies. Nothing looked promising. It was late, about an hour before Matins.

His squire brought him his meal, then left him alone as he’d asked. Merrick turned and looked at the platter. There was a pewter cup next to a trencher of stew. He ignored the food and picked up the cup.

A sense of dread came over him.

It was filled with ale.

Bile clogged his throat and he leaned over and spilled his stomach, heaving over and over and again.

He wiped his mouth, then straightened and stood frozen. His hands hung limply at his sides. What good were they? He could wield a sword and mace and an ax, but he could do nothing to get to his wife.

He felt as if the life were sucked from him.

The breath he tried to take hurt. The air began to quiver in his chest. He could feel his emotions rising inside of him so furiously and with such power that it was all he could do not to cry out.

Almost overcome by desperation, he walked outside his tent, needing the taste of air. He stood there and stared up at Camrose, the fortress he’d built to be strong and solid, impenetrable.

His king’s pride.

His heart’s destruction.

The irony of it hit him hard and sharp and like a sword through his heart. The awful truth was that he could not break inside Camrose to save his wife. The place he’d built to keep her safe, now kept him out and kept her away from him.

He caught sight of a flicker of light in the distant tower and was drawn toward it like a moth to flame. He walked across the field, past sleeping men, through the mud and over the shimmering red embers that were left from the campfires.

His hungry gaze never left the strange distant tower light that no matter how far he walked, did not seem any closer.

He thought he saw a shadow cross the window. A flicker of darkness against the golden light.

His imagination? He did not know.

He wished it were her, hoped it was her, walking there, as he was walking, pacing in front of the window, waiting for him.

Just a sign, all he needed was a sign, so he would know if she was safe.

It twisted inside of him, this doubt and feeling of helplessness, this eerie sense of loss and the pain of not truly knowing.

The mind was a cruel thing; it played tricks on you. One moment you dreamed of holding your love. You could taste her, smell her, hear her voice, feel her touch. You awoke in a cold sweat because you wanted so badly for it not to be a dream, but to be real.

Then you saw the reality.

She was there, far away, yet so close. Helpless.

And you were here. Impotent.

He stood there for the longest time, remembering that his last words to her had been in anger.

Finally the distant light dimmed, then flickered out, making the tower look like a huge black shadow of something that wasn’t really there.

He closed his eyes against the emotions that swelled in him again. He hung his head in defeat.

With nothing left to him, he fell to his knees in the mud and bowed his head over his tightly knotted hands, praying to God for another chance with her.

For Clio, his Clio. Praying for the woman who meant more to him than his very breath, more than even his salvation.

The next night they brought the monk to him. Brother Dismas was crying and wailing. He saw Merrick and stumbled across the ground, falling to his knees and sobbing.

He babbled that they had sent him to the Red Lion. He was supposed to give him a gift from David ap Gruffydd.

In his hands, he held a blood-soaked gown.

Merrick stared at it.

He knew the gown. ’Twas that ugly yellow thing Clio had worn on that first day at the castle. He stared at it for the longest time, feeling as if he were in the throes of a nightmare, not wanting to see what he saw.

The blood. Red and soaked on his own wife’s clothing. Part of him, the so hope-filled part of him that still believed life was not the hell it seemed, hoped that she had given the gown to her maid … to someone. Anyone.

“She is dead, my lord,” Brother Dismas wailed. “She is dead.”

“Who?”

“I saw her fall down the stairs. She tumbled and tumbled like a straw doll. But then it was so bad. She lay there in all this blood.” He raised the gown before them and shook it. “She lost the babe. In all that blood, she lost a babe.”

“A babe?” Merrick grabbed him by the cowl and dragged him up from the ground. “Who? Damn you man! Who is dead?” He shook him so hard the man finally stopped bawling.

Brother Dismas just stared at him as if he didn’t see him.

“Who?” Merrick repeated.

“I’m sorry, my lord, but your wife. I swear on the holy Cross it was Lady Clio.”

Chapter 40

Old Gladdys moved around the small room where Clio was kept prisoner.

She had lost the child. She did not remember it, not exactly. She remembered screaming with pain, as if she were in some torturous nightmare, and she remembered Old Gladdys slapping her and telling her to shut up while she had straddled her and kneaded her belly again and again.

She had not been beating Clio, but had been fighting to save her from bleeding to death. ’Twas a battle the old woman won.

For Clio the days since had passed too swiftly when she slept them away, and too slowly when she was awake. Once she had gotten out of bed and climbed up on a bench so she could look out through a high arrow loop.

She could see the campfires of Merrick’s men in the fields around Camrose. She could see the shadow of a tent. She knew it was his.

He was out there. So close. Yet so far out of her reach. She garnered what little peace she could from the knowledge he was there, and lay in bed, doing as she was told.

She looked up at Old Gladdys. “I have failed him, haven’t I?”

“Your husband?”

She nodded. “I could not help him. I failed in my plan to help, but more than that, I have failed him as a wife.” She stared at her hand clasped over the belly where her babe had been. The child she’d promised she would never sing lullabies to. She felt the sting of tears again, then raised her head and said, “There is no longer a child.”

“You have not failed him. It matters naught. Your lord does not love you for the babes you could give him.”

Clio rose to her knees and leaned toward the old woman. “Gladdys. Tell me. Please. There will be other babes?” She began to cry. “Please? You must know. I beg of you. Tell me like you told Gerdie the goose girl. Please tell me I can give my lord another son or daughter.”

“’Twas a baby girl you lost,” Gladdys said. Before she turned away, Clio saw the pity in her old eyes.

The look was almost more than Clio could take at that moment. “Oh, God in heaven, please … Tell me I will give him another daughter.”

The silence and the meaning behind it hung there, a horrid thing, like a dead body that hangs from an executioner’s noose.

The old Welshwoman gave her a direct and honest look. “I cannot. I wish I could, but I cannot tell you that.” She turned and knocked on the locked door. The guard let her out.

A second later Clio heard the lock click and she was alone again.

Clio wrapped her arms around her small body and began to rock, rock back and forth, back and forth, the way she would have rocked her child to sleep.

A huge wailing cry threatened to explode from her chest. She gritted her back teeth together and her whole body shook. She continued to rock harder and faster and more frantically, as if she could rock away all of this horrible reality.

It went on for the longest time, the deep black anguish, grief so overpowering that thoughts of any kind ceased to exist. ’Twas the same way her mind ceased to exist when it was on a plane where there was nothing but this unbearable empty ache.

Finally her body, which was already weak and tired and sapped of everything, sagged back on the bed. She curled into a tight and protective ball.

’Twas nothing but a motion of pure futility when she pressed her knees to her chest and held on, almost as if she could keep safe the babe she had already lost.

She buried her face in a pillow and cried and cried, until a blessed dose of sleep finally numbed her pain.