Chapter 11
Dori couldn’t help her scream as the huge dog took Constantine Gerard to the ground. Some sort of wolfhound that seemed nothing but long limbs and exaggerated head, covered in wet, gray fur as its mouth lunged toward the lord of Benningsgate’s face. Constantine seemed to be trying to wrap his arms around the beast for some sort of leverage, and she expected to see blood flying at his guttural shout.
The owner of the dog appeared in no hurry to rescue them from his beast; in fact, Dori feared he must be of the diabolical sort, for she could hear his laughter at their predicament even as he sauntered on toward them. If there was any hope for Constantine to survive this attack—indeed, for Dori to survive after the animal was done mauling the man on the ground and before the dog’s evil master was upon them both—Dori would have to provide it.
She looked around the steep, sodden bank and her eyes caught sight of the thick, black tree branch, half rotted where it had been washed onto the grass by the flooded river. She had no other weapon and so she dashed to it, wrenching its heavy mass from the tangle of weeds and using all her strength to raise it above her head. She gave a cry of determination as she staggered toward where Constantine Gerard still lay beneath the animal, and she saw a brief flash of his face, his teeth bared in a terrible grimace.
“No! No!” he shouted, but the dog paid him no heed.
“Get away from him!” Dori screamed and swung the branch.
“Dori, no!”
The branch was jerked from her grasp by the man who must have found a burst of speed to have gained her side so swiftly. Dori spun in the slippery grass to face him, hardly noticing his plump, bewildered expression before her fist shot out and she punched the man in his bulbous nose.
Her attacker dropped the branch and his walking stick to bring both hands to his face with a wounded cry, his cages and traps sliding to the ground behind him as he staggered backward and nearly tripped on the things. Dori took the opportunity to reach down for the long, flexible-looking cane and, taking it in both hands, spun toward where she’d left Constantine Gerard at the mercy of the beast, ready to fight off the monster as best she could.
But Benningsgate’s lord was sitting up in the grass, the great hairy animal sprawled across his lap and Constantine’s arms wrapped around its neck. Perhaps he was trying to choke the animal to death, but he didn’t appear to be making much headway as the animal seemed quite content, its long, flopping tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth in a vulgar fashion as it leaned into the man’s chest.
And, actually, Constantine Gerard was looking at her with a rather confused expression.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I-I—” she stammered and slightly lowered the weapon in her hands. “The dog was attacking you. I—”
“Glory, missus,” the man standing to her right mumbled through his hand. She turned her head in time to see him give a swiping pinch of his even more swollen nose before he raised his eyes to her. “I can understand you not fancyin’ dogs, but Erasmus wouldn’t harm you or your man. See? He only—”
Here the stranger held his bloodstained fingers forward and glanced at Constantine, wherefore his speech abruptly stopped.
Dori looked to Constantine and saw the dog craning its neck back, rubbing its matted-looking face against Constantine’s in what appeared to be a desperate attempt to lick the man from chin to hairline.
Constantine chuckled, and Dori realized that perhaps the grimace she’d witnessed when he’d been mauled by the dog had been a smile.
“Good day, Jeremy,” Constantine said to the man. “You’re looking well.”
The man—Jeremy, apparently—gave a choking gasp and staggered forward to fall to his knees in the wet grass at Constantine’s side.
“My lord?” he asked in a quiet voice. “Is it really you?” He tried to shove the wide head of the dog away before grasping two fistfuls of Constantine’s tunic. Then he actually shook the lord of Benningsgate as he shouted, “Is it really you?”
Constantine grinned. “I worried for a moment that Erasmus wouldn’t recognize me, He was little more than a pup when last I saw him.”
Jeremy gave a shout of joy and drew Constantine to him in an embrace. Dori was surprised to see the plump man’s shoulders shaking with—well, laughter or sobs, she supposed. But she had been a poor judge of emotion only a moment before, and so she wasn’t entirely certain. Although she was relatively sure Constantine was no longer in danger.
She bent her knees and laid the man’s cane on the grass as inconspicuously as possible, straightening and then using her foot to push it farther away from her person.
Jeremy drew back, grasping Constantine by the shoulders and looking into his face. His expression was still.
“My lord, Lady Patrice; our young master . . .”
Constantine’s throat convulsed. “I know, Jeremy.”
Dori’s chest tightened, but she was startled from her compassion by a warm, hairy dampness on her hand. She jerked her arm away and looked down to find that the monstrous dog had sidled up to her left elbow and was now looking up at her with black, mournful eyes.
No, she mouthed down at the beast.
It scooted slightly closer to her on its haunches and gave a soft whine.
“Come now, Erasmus; let the lady be,” Jeremy said as he grasped Constantine by his arm and pulled him to his feet. “You’ve already thoroughly wet his lordship through.” The man turned to her and gave a bow, his eyes only barely flicking over her conspicuously short hair. “My apologies, my . . . er, milady. Jeremy’s the name—loyal swineherd to the house of Chase since I was a lad.”
Dori felt a twinge of shame at her appearance, a foreign sensation after being so desperately alone for so long with her thoughts consumed by little more than survival. She could only imagine what she looked like to this man.
“How do you do?” Dori said stiffly and glanced at Constantine. “I apologize for striking you. I misunderstood your intent.”
Constantine stepped forward and reached out to scratch the dog’s head. The animal went willingly back to his side, much to Dori’s relief. “It’s a habit of hers I’ve found, Jeremy, upon making the acquaintance of men.”
Dori’s cheeks tingled. At least he hadn’t told the swineherd her name.
“This is the lady Theodora Rosemont of Thurston Hold.”
The man’s hooded eyes widened. “Lady Theodora? But I thought—”
“Yes, well, I’m quite alive.” Dori bristled, her stomach clenching as she glared at Constantine Gerard. Was he out to ruin everything? “Apparently.”
The corners of Jeremy’s mouth turned down and he gave a knowing nod. “That does explain a lot,” he said, but his eyes were no longer kind on her. “Your actions, I mean.”
Dori frowned, and a hot rush of humiliation washed over her. Even the simplest villager not of her own home thought her a horror. He hadn’t even said he was glad she wasn’t dead.
Would there be anyone who was glad of it?
The man gave her anther brisk bow and then turned back to Constantine. “When did you return, milord? There have been many inquiries as to your whereabouts the past several years; have you been to see the king yet? Does he know you’ve returned?”
Constantine let a long silence fill the air as he scratched the enraptured dog’s head. “No one save yourself knows that I or Lady Theodora are alive, let alone at Benningsgate. I arrived more than a fortnight ago and have been making my plans.”
“I see,” Jeremy said, in a tone that conveyed he might not. He glanced at Dori. “What’s she doing here, if you’ll forgive my asking, milord? You still have my loyalty, and the loyalty of what few of us remain below in the village, but I’d wager not many would be willing to help her after what she drove her poor father to. You might not know that she left a new babe behind at Thurston, although the right bastard she married let it be thought she’d died.” He said it as a challenge, as if daring her to deny it.
Dori stiffened and waited for Constantine’s response with her eyes fixed on the hillside. It was clear by the contempt in Jeremy’s tone that he thought her of the same ilk as Glayer Felsteppe. She would not acknowledge the swineherd’s comments, but she was curious as to what Lord Gerard’s reaction would be, when she had only just explained to him the events that had led up to her father’s death.
“Lady Theodora is . . .” Constantine began and then paused. She could feel his gaze on her, as if using the spare moments of his silence to come to a weighty decision. Dori’s chin lifted.
“She is helping me recover Benningsgate,” Constantine finished, and Dori didn’t know she’d been holding her breath until it began to leak out in a cool rush through her nose.
“Is that so?” Jeremy had the audacity to question in a more than slightly suspicious tone. Or perhaps he was only intrigued by this turn of events. It had been so long since anyone had said anything kind to her that Dori couldn’t be sure.
“If such a recovery is at all possible,” Constantine said. “And so we must strive to keep our presence secret until such time when revelation can no longer be avoided. I will make my return known to all once I have settled on a course of action against my enemy.”
“Well, we who’ve stayed have done so because we couldn’t imagine living out our days anywhere else save Benningsgate. Loyal to the family to the end, we are. Certainly I am at your every command, milord,” Jeremy said with a bow. “Where do you sleep?”
Constantine took up his fallen satchel, which had been knocked from his person by the enthusiastic beast that was even now dancing at his heels. He glanced toward the wall behind him. “Here.”
Dori’s anger simmered again.
“About the ruin, milord?” Jeremy said. “But it’s not at all safe; all the interior corridors have collapsed. When we tried to get to the hall afterward—” He broke off, and his florid complexion mottled further. “I imagine the walls have crumbled further with the passing seasons.”
Constantine looked at the man for perhaps a heartbeat longer than was warranted. “Parts of it are yet sound and should suffice for the time being. But Lady Theodora has been quite ill. I would press you at once for a potion and perhaps some meat. I’ve no bow.”
The man glanced at Dori. “I fear Stacy is the man you’d want for the purpose of medicines, milord, and he took to Thurston Hold some time ago. We’ve seen little of him.” The statement somehow seemed an accusation at Theodora, and she could no longer tolerate the strain of the man’s less than silent judgment as her eyes swelled with watery anger and unreasonable hurt.
Why did she care what this Benningsgate villager—a swineherd of all things, who had stayed behind to live in the shadow of a ruin the rest of his friends and neighbors had wisely abandoned—thought of her?
She stepped around the men without a word and began walking up the hill toward the wall, taking great pains to step carefully lest she slip on the wet grass and further humiliate herself by falling on her face.
There was a lull in the conversation, and Dori imagined both men watching her walk away. Perhaps the dog had thought to follow her, for Jeremy gave a sharp whistle.
“Erasmus, to me—the lady don’t want you.” And the meaning behind his words was clear: And we don’t want her, either.
* * *
“I’d be honored to provide for you, milord,” Jeremy said to Constantine after calling the dog back in Dori’s wake. The man looked over his shoulder at the numerous traps strewn about the hill where he’d dropped them. “Not much hunting goes on at Benningsgate these days. The forest is plentiful with game.”
“I will meet you in the ward before dusk, then,” Constantine said, trying to push from his mind the sight of Theodora’s face as her reputation was aired before her. “Have you married, Jeremy?”
The man’s expression grew jolly once more. “I never have, milord. Few women would tolerate old Erasmus here supping at their table and soiling their rugs.” He clapped the dog about the shoulders and then looked back up at Constantine. “It’s fine to see you again, milord. I never thought to.”
Constantine could not tell the man that he, too, was happy to have returned to this place, so he only nodded. “Perhaps you could lay hand to some clean garments for Lady Theodora? A pair of slippers? Her wardrobe has taken some wear since leaving Thurston Hold.”
“The items will be hard to come by with everyone having so little. And I have no admiration for the woman, I confess,” Jeremy replied.
“You only know her as well as the rumors about her perhaps,” Constantine chided.
“You know her better?” Jeremy rejoined with a raising of his eyebrows. “Milord?” he added deferentially.
“I’ll appreciate whatever you can lay hand to” was all Constantine would say. “As will Lady Theodora. Be sure you aren’t followed when you return later.”
“You can warrant it,” Jeremy said, gathering up his traps and his long pole while Erasmus ran in loping circles around the man. “No one dares come to the ruin after midday—any hour really.” He dropped his eyes as if he’d misspoken. “Good day, my lord. Come along, Erasmus.”
Constantine watched the man navigate the slope into the fringe of the wood, his dog bounding to the fore and aft like a hairy pendulum. Once Jeremy had disappeared into the fresh, dripping greenery, he turned on his heel and followed in Theodora’s trail in the weeds toward the wall.
He didn’t expect her to be waiting for him as he stepped over the threshold. She sat on a large rectangular stone that had tumbled a far distance into the ward from where it first had fallen. Even after being returned for weeks to the reality that was Benningsgate, he still could not fathom the catastrophe that had taken place here. Besides the obvious signs of the fire that had structurally destroyed the tall keep, it was as if a great fist had seized the enclosure, bending and cracking its walls, shaking its pillars and arches to the ground.
When we tried to get to the hall afterward—
Perhaps crushing the burned bodies of his wife and son in its grip, leaving their remains trapped somewhere deep inside the rubble.
No one dares come to the ruin after midday—any hour really.
Did they think Benningsgate haunted by Patrice and Christian?
Was it?
Constantine stopped and waited to see what Theodora Rosemont had to say, for obviously something was weighing on her mind. But she only stared at Constantine, and the longer her dark, sad gaze bored into his, her wide mouth still and silent, the higher Constantine felt unreasonable ire rising in him.
“I’m surprised you didn’t strike poor Jeremy again for speaking so poorly of you,” he said, hearing the bait in his own words.
“Because he wanted further proof of my bad behavior?” she rejoined, but her words were without bile. Indeed, she sounded subdued, resigned. “‘Spoiled, rude Theodora. Never made to mind her manners. Treated as a princess, with her every whim granted. The ruination of her father, God rest his poor, weary soul.’ I wouldn’t want to disillusion him into considering I actually am one of his betters.”
Constantine heard her words against the backdrop of his destroyed life as she spoke them from her weak and battered body, her costume worse than rags.
“Everyone envied me for some reason or another,” she went on, and still her voice was flat, lifeless. “Usually something ridiculous, like my hair or my father’s station. How many horses I had to ride at my pleasure. As if I had any control at all over those things. As if I had control over anything.”
“Patrice mentioned several times that everyone thought you’d marry royalty,” Constantine spoke the memory aloud before he could think better of it.
Theodora huffed a mirthless laugh. “And look at me now. I’m supposedly dead. Everything has been taken from me: my health, my beauty, my fortune, my family, my home. My son. Even the basest slave has more to boast of than I. Theodora Rosemont, who had every freedom, is now little more than a ghost. A hated ghost.”
Her tone caused Constantine’s defenses to rise. “Was I supposed to defend you to my loyal man, who served my family and knew me well?”
Her eyebrows raised. “I don’t know. Were you?” she challenged him.
“You’re twisting this into some lack of chivalry or honor on my part,” he accused her. “Before coming back to Benningsgate, I hadn’t seen you since you were a girl in short skirts. You came to my wedding with your father. You’d never even met my son.”
“I’ve said nothing of chivalry or honor,” she replied coolly and then rose. “And to my knowledge, after your wedding to Lady Patrice, you were not in residence at Benningsgate for a length of time such as would allow a visit from my father or anyone else. So perhaps it is your own conscience you hear berating you rather than me. Are you ready?”
He was frowning in earnest now. He had come back to the ruin from the river intent on doing that which he hadn’t known was still necessary, and he didn’t need Theodora Rosemont trailing after him like the sickly, pathetic waif she was, her big eyes holding him responsible for all the wrongs that had perhaps been done to her, even as he wanted to denounce her for his own trials.
“Ready for what?” he snapped.
“For me to show you through to the hall,” she said, looking into his eyes. “That’s where you want to go, isn’t it?”
Constantine’s stomach became an icy pit. “You know a way?”
“I could see your reaction to the loyal Jeremy’s slip that no one had been able to reach Lady Patrice or your son after the stones had cooled enough to attempt a retrieval. You thought they had received a great ceremony befitting the noble house of Chase, did you not?”
Constantine could only stare at her and nod his head once, sharply.
Theodora Rosemont shook her own head to the negative, and he thought he saw a spark of anger in her dark eyes. “Patrice was marked as a traitor in league with you—as hiding one of your co-conspirators within Benningsgate and refusing to divulge your whereabouts. The king ordered the ruin abandoned, the village emptied, until such evidence as to your guilt or innocence could be provided.”
Constantine continued to stare at her until his vision blurred and he was forced to look away. His rage was so great that he felt as though his mind and body had been enveloped in a white-hot haze, buffering him from the earth, burning him inside this fiery cocoon.
“Show me,” he rasped.
She turned without further word and began walking toward the tilted stair that led to the wall walk and Constantine followed her, his heart screaming in his chest, his footfalls so heavy he thought it a wonder they didn’t leave chasms in the twisted overgrowth of the ward.
They gained the walk and Theodora went to the most intact wall of the keep. Hugging it close, she stepped on to the stones that had fallen against its south side, forming a sort of bridge. Constantine thought they looked more than a little loose, but none of them so much as shifted under Theodora’s slight weight. If they did, she would tumble down into the ward atop the pile that had already met that same fate long ago, becoming buried herself.
As if she heard the unspoken warning, she turned her face back toward him. “Step lightly.” And then she was gone around the far side of the charred remains.
Constantine followed, the stones beneath his boots sighing and groaning, whispering to one another as he made his careful way after the woman. Perspiration sprang out along his forehead, both from the exertion of keeping his footing and the nightmare into which he was heading. Part of his heart was screaming at him to stop, go back. He didn’t want to see.
But he reached the hidden corner of the keep that appeared from below to be collapsed. It largely was, the wall cracked in a long seam along the stones of a doorway lintel and shoved back as a whole, revealing a partially collapsed gap inside, filled with stone and what appeared to be a long, oiled piece of finely turned wood.
“I’m not going in,” she said, drawing his agitated attention.
“I didn’t invite you,” he snapped.
Her pale face regarded him for a long moment. “If it collapses around you . . .”
“Lucky for you,” Constantine said.
“I didn’t do this, Lord Gerard,” Theodora said, and the sadness was back in her eyes once more. “I’m sorry you think me your enemy. I’m not.” She paused. “Be careful.”
Then Theodora Rosemont braced her hands on the collapsed walls and moved around him, back along the treacherous path of the fallen stones to leave him to his miserable discoveries or his painful end, whichever he might be more determined to find.
Constantine lowered himself carefully into the chasm, reaching one booted foot upon the conspicuous piece of hewn wood. It wobbled and flipped under his weight, obviously no good foothold, and he spilled to his knees, sliding sideways into the wall with a shout of alarm. But his fall was arrested and he turned over onto his stomach to take hold of the piece of wood that had caused his slip.
It was the crucifix from the oratory, the crumbly remains of a wreath of long-dead flowers still affixed with faded ribbon around the scarred head of Christ. Flowers Benningsgate’s priest would have laid. Or perhaps even the lady of the keep, Patrice.
But how did the crucifix come to be . . .
Constantine glanced at the triangle of daylight beyond the pile of rubble, thinking of the woman who had come upon this place so ill and weak; the only person who had been determined enough to attempt to enter the place his wife and son had lost their lives through the cruel evilness of the man she had married. And even as fragile and unwell as she had been, Theodora Rosemont had wrested the crucifix from the wall of the oratory and somehow managed to bring it over the treacherous path through the ruin to lay it at the threshold of the place where his family had been left without ceremony. To try as best she could to make a proper tomb for his little boy. Spoiled, horrid Theodora Rosemont, Glayer Felsteppe’s wife.
She’d been the only one who cared.
Constantine swallowed down the thorny lump in his throat and crawled on through the black chasm.