Chapter 25
They came through the final stretch of woods below the village still in the dark of night and began the final ascent up the road toward the ruin, invisible to them yet from where their horses walked, although Constantine could feel it ahead of them in the black sky—that solitary finger of stone.
William was quiet, once more sleeping after Dori had fed him a skin of goat’s milk. Her actions with the baby were awkward and unsure, but she had not once asked for help, and Constantine was certain her determination and the love she felt for the boy would quickly make up for her lack of experience. And although it caused a bittersweet pain in his chest, Constantine could remember holding Christian at that age. They would manage.
The ruined keep came into view at last as they neared the far end of the village, and the odd glimmer on its ragged edge caused Constantine to frown and pull his mount to a stop in the center of the path. Dori came alongside him, and he didn’t have to explain why they’d stopped, for she, too, was looking up at the castle.
“Torches,” she said, her gaze locked on the faintly flickering stones.
Constantine looked about the houses to either side of him now—Nell’s cottage and, farther back, Harmon’s. The doors stood open, and yet no hearth light could be seen within the darkened doorways.
It was as if they’d meant to leave a clear sign: there is no one here.
He looked back toward the ruin. Perhaps they had gathered there, and it was his own people’s torch glow he saw. But why would they leave the comfort of their homes before dawn unless urged to do so? Constantine had not brought Theodora back to Benningsgate by way of Thurston Hold, so he had no way of knowing if Glayer Felsteppe had only gone as far as Dori’s home, or if he had chosen to come straight to Benningsgate, thinking it his, to claim it at once.
His gaze dropped to the road beneath him, but he could not see any evidence in the night shadows of a large party of riders passing through the town, if even it was there.
Although he could not fathom whether it was for good or ill, Constantine knew that Benningsgate was different than when he’d left. And he also knew he must prepare Theodora as best he could before he proceeded.
“If I should fail . . .” he began.
“You won’t fail,” she interrupted, and he knew she had already worked out on her own the possible scenarios that lay ahead of them in the ruin.
“Listen to me, Theodora,” he ordered sharply, looking at her in the gloom of predawn. “If I should fail, you must return to London as quickly as you can. Beg Henry’s protection in seeing you and William away from England as soon as possible.”
“Constantine . . .” she pleaded.
But he would hear none of it before she gave her word. “Promise me.”
“All right,” she said. “I promise. Of course.”
Constantine swung down from his horse and then walked to Dori’s side. She held the baby close to her bosom while he helped her slide to the ground.
“I’m going up on foot,” he said. “Felsteppe left London with a retinue of the king’s men. I’ll need to get as close as I can without being seen.”
“You can’t seek him out when he has armed men at his command! You know he will set the soldiers on you rather than face you. He’s a coward!”
He looked down into her eyes and smoothed a lock of her hair from her forehead. “Go into the back room of Nell’s cottage but leave the door open as we found it. I’ll tie the horses inside Leland’s, across the way; his door is still shut and won’t incur suspicion. If I don’t come for you, wait until you hear them depart and then go. You don’t want them behind you.”
“I’m not going to cower in a cottage while you’re possibly killed. If Felsteppe and the king’s men are there, I’d as soon know it and leave for London immediately.”
Constantine shook his head. “You’re not coming past the village.”
“Yes, I am,” she insisted. “Only part of the way. I must.”
“No.”
“You can’t stop me, Constantine,” she said shrilly. “I’ll just wait until you leave and follow you.”
He pulled her into his chest and stroked her hair as she began to cry. But William soon objected to the close quarters and roused with a squawk, prompting Dori to pull away from him.
“I’m not going to endanger myself or William,” she said, bouncing the baby to quiet him as she swiped at her nose. “But I can’t allow you to think that you are alone any more. I won’t. Because you’re not. And if you know that the two of us are behind you, perhaps you will try just a bit harder to come back for us.” She glared at him, as if he had committed some terrible slight against her.
But Constantine knew she was only very afraid.
“All right,” he conceded.
Her nostrils flared and she continued to glower at him. “I love you.”
He leaned down and kissed her lips lightly, unable to help his smile. Then he bent and pressed his mouth to the blanket covering William’s head. “And I love you.”
He closed the horses inside the crippled villager’s sty of a home and then met Theodora in the street once more. They left the village side by side, and Dori, true to her word, fell behind him gradually as they ascended the rise leading to Benningsgate Castle. He was grateful for that, for believing she would hide herself away when she ought. Constantine knew Theodora loved him, but he also knew she would not risk the son she had come so close to dying trying to save.
He could see the outline of the ruined keep and walls now, yellow light rippling up from the ward beyond. Many torches would be needed to create such a bright glow, and the thought of Felsteppe trying to use Benningsgate as a fortress against him caused a new, fresh fury to rise up in Constantine.
A smaller flare of yellow was now bobbing along inside the partially collapsed tunnel of the barbican, reflecting on the wall behind the fall of stones washed out on the road. Constantine’s mind went briefly to that day, weeks and weeks ago now, when he had first returned to Benningsgate and wept on this road with the gravel in his hands.
A black shadow grew within the yellow glow—a sentry perhaps.
“Who goes there?” a man’s voice called out with authority, and Constantine stopped in the center of the road. “Announce yourself or prepare to be cut down.”
A lump formed in Constantine’s throat as a sneer twisted his mouth. Despite the years that had passed, the regrets he held, the mistakes he had made and could never atone for in this life, in that moment, Constantine had returned to protect his family.
Patrice and Christian.
Dori and William.
He drew his sword and began walking forward once more.
“It is the master of this hold who approaches,” Constantine said in a low and deadly voice, his weapon at the ready, his steps sure. “And I have come to reclaim what is mine.”
“The true master of this hold is rumored dead,” the voice taunted.
“The rumors are false. I am General Constantine Gerard and—”
He broke off as a piece of the yellow glow from within the barbican separated itself from the larger radiance and crept around the edge of the rubble. A single torch emerged and Constantine’s heart hardened further when he saw that it was a young boy who carried it. It was clearly not this lad who had warned him away.
Constantine stopped. “Fetch your lord, boy,” he growled. “He is using you. You’ll only be hurt. Run, I say.”
The boy shook his head, the torchlight glinting off his unruly blond hair and stared at Constantine.
Constantine looked sideways quickly as Dori appeared near his arm, holding William.
“What are you doing?” Constantine growled. “Go back to the village before you’re seen, Theodora, for the love of God!”
But Dori also ignored his command. “It’s you,” she said, looking at the boy as if seeing a ghost. “I thought you got on the ship that night. The ship to—”
“Fallen Angels Abbey,” the man’s voice from earlier finished, and a tall shadow appeared from behind the rubble and stepped to the boy’s side, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Constantine feared in that moment that he would faint, for the man’s arm was tattooed with swirls and points of black.
“Adrian?” he choked.
Into the torchlight at Adrian’s side stepped Maisie Lindsey. Then, on his other side, Valentine and Mary and Valentina; Isra and Roman, Lou perched on his wide shoulder. Constantine’s blurry gaze flew up to Benningsgate’s ragged battlements as torches sprang into sight, held by soldiers whose fealty Constantine could not fathom.
He gasped a breath and looked back to the group of his brothers, his family, spearheaded by the little blond boy staring at Constantine. A boy Theodora somehow already knew, had sent away on a ship bound for Melk?
Adrian bent to one knee and took the torch from the boy’s clutching fingers in such a gentle manner that it caused Constantine to shake his head as he tried to protect what little of his sanity remained.
Only Patrice’s bones had been found in the ruin of the hall, beneath the single window.
If Lady Patrice had any consciousness in her, she would have tried to escape the hall with Master Christian by any means she could.
No...
“Papa,” the boy said, clearly, firmly, looking straight at Constantine.
Constantine heard his sword clatter to the road. “Christian?” he wheezed on a sob.
And then, as if in a dream delivered directly from heaven, the boy’s feet were pounding down the road as he ran toward Constantine, and once again he was brought to his knees before the ruins of his home.
But this time Christian was in his arms.
Constantine had not wept as he wept then since he was a boy much younger than the one he now held. His ragged sobs echoed and echoed off the stones; he shouted his gut-wrenching joy with his weeping, thanking God through his tears and his trembling for this miracle of all miracles. The greatest gift he’d ever been given, now received twice.
* * *
Theodora walked toward the man and the boy in the road, her own face awash with tears, as the group from the ruin came forward and they all met around Constantine and Christian. Dori felt conspicuous in this crowd of people who all seemed to know one another and in which she was the stranger.
Constantine stood, Christian still in his arms, and the boy caught sight of her. He leaned away from Constantine and patted his shoulder. Constantine turned so that both father and son regarded Dori.
“Is that your baby?” Christian asked her.
Dori nodded.
“I’m glad. A boy needs a mother,” he said.
Dori smiled. “Even if she’s not a good one?”
Christian reached the arm around Constantine’s neck toward Dori and she stepped closer, reaching up to grasp his fingers in her own. But the boy tugged on her hand until his arm was around her shoulders, too, and he pressed his hot, damp cheek to hers.
“Thank you,” Christian whispered. “For saving my father.”
And then Constantine’s arm also came around her, embracing all three of them. As Christian pulled himself aright, Constantine stepped back in order to look down into Dori’s face.
“You put him on a ship to Melk?”
Dori shook her head. “I just gave him a coin.”
The tattooed man, Adrian, spoke. “It was a Chastellet coin, Stan.”
Constantine looked back to her. “You saved his life, Dori. You saved my son.”
“No,” Dori said, unwilling to further usurp the place that needed recognition. She looked at Christian. “Your mother saved your life, didn’t she?”
“Glayer Felsteppe hurt Mother, Papa,” Christian said, his chin flinching. “He burned the hall. She couldn’t get up. But she put me in the window. I had to jump.”
“But Christian, how?” Constantine said. “It’s so far to the wall . . .”
The little boy looked into Constantine’s eyes with a solemnity that was heartbreaking to Dori.
“There were men lying beneath the window. I hurt my leg when I jumped, so I lay there for a long time, waiting for Mother. But she never came. I reckoned later she knew she wouldn’t be coming.”
Dori closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of how terrified Christian must have been.
Constantine pulled the boy back into his arms, holding his blond head.
“I understand that you have much to catch up on, Stan,” said a dark-haired, well-dressed man of swarthy complexion. “But do we no even get a simple hello?”
Constantine turned and set Christian on his feet, although his hand gripped his son’s and did not let go as he fell into the embrace of his friends and their wives.
“Forgive me, all of you,” Constantine said, looking at this one, gripping the arm of another, touching the red-haired woman’s face. He turned to the largest man Dori had ever seen in her life, who claimed white-blond hair and carried a hunting bird on his shoulder. At his side was an exotic-looking woman whose wide-eyed expression gave Dori the idea that she was as anxious about this meeting as Dori herself was.
“Roman,” Constantine said. “You, most of all—”
The giant of a man smiled. “It’s all right, Stan.”
The two men embraced, and then Constantine turned to the woman. “I’m so glad you’re both safe.”
“As we are you, my lord,” the woman said.
Constantine frowned. “Isra, I’m not your lord.”
Everyone in the group save Dori laughed, and Dori felt a lump in her throat again at the bond these people shared. She could never compete with them.
“It is good to see you once more, Stan.” Isra laughed.
“Do they always call you Stan?” Dori blurted out, and everyone turned to look at her. She blinked and quirked her mouth, muttering, “It’s dreadful.”
The red-haired woman seemed to consider. “’Tis nae worse than Dori now, is it?”
A heartbeat of silence passed, and then the entire group roared with laughter.
Constantine pulled Dori to his side. “Friends, may I present Lady Theodora Rosemont and her son, William Calumet.” He introduced each person to Dori, in reverse order to that in which she’d heard them speak, and when he got to the sweet-faced Mary, the woman rushed forward and embraced Dori.
“I’m so happy to meet you,” she said, looking into Dori’s eyes. “I just know we will become the best of friends. Sisters, you and I. And my home is close, just south at Beckham.”
“At least until the king finds out, yes?” her handsome husband cautioned before turning to Constantine. “The soldiers along the wall are the king’s. Er . . . borrowed from Beckham Hall.”
“With a small amount of coin for incentive,” Adrian admitted. “My father is coming with the men he can claim, but I don’t expect them until after the sun has risen. Your loyal villagers are already inside the walls—they were keeping watch when we arrived.”
“They knew a fight was coming,” Constantine said grimly.
“Felsteppe left London before us,” Theodora offered to the group. “If he has gone to Thurston Hold, he might be warned that Constantine and I are here. He could be upon us at any moment.”
As if in an attempt to point to the truth of her words, a shout called down from the wall walk. “Party approaching the village! Perhaps fifty mounted!”
“Papa,” Christian said suddenly, grasping at Constantine’s tunic. “He’s coming! Let’s go! Let’s just go! We can go away somewhere—all of us—and live. Maybe with Adrian’s father and brother. They have cows and pasties,” he said, his voice thready with desperation. “And a gate. We can hide!”
Constantine squatted down to eye level with his son. “I know you’re frightened, Christian. I would much rather go away with you and Lady Dori and William. Somewhere we could try to forget all this and start over. But the bad man who harmed you and your mother, he has also harmed Lady Dori and William. He’s harmed our friends and their families. He is responsible for the deaths of many good men where Papa was away for so long.”
Constantine stroked the side of his son’s face as he continued. “I made promises when I married your beautiful mother. And when I became a general. And when I swore to help exonerate my brothers’ names. And I also made a promise to the man who’s done all those terrible things; that I would hold him responsible. I want to make very, very certain that he never harms anyone ever again. It’s my duty, son. And Adrian and Valentine and Roman, and the men you see atop our wall there, they are going to help me keep my promise. You understand?”
“You can’t go away again,” Christian whispered.
Constantine shook his head. “I won’t.” He leaned forward until his nose touched his son’s. “I promise you.”
Christian’s gaze was dropped to the road and his brow was furrowed. Dori jostled William into one arm and wrapped her other around Christian.
“Come along to the wall with us,” she said to the boy. “We’ll all wait for your papa there.”
Christian turned away from Constantine into Dori’s skirt but didn’t say anything.
“One thousand yards!” the soldier shouted down from the wall.
Constantine rose and took his sword from Adrian.
“Go into the ward,” Constantine said, glancing at Dori as he removed his cloak and tossed it aside. The rest of his friends seemed also to be readying for battle, withdrawing long daggers and swords. The large man, Roman, produced a pair of hammers.
“Five hundred yards!”
Dori seemed rooted to the road, where she could feel the vibration of the riders through the soles of her shoes, and she turned her head, wanting to see with her own eyes. William stirred and began to cry.
“Theodora!” Constantine shouted and she looked to him. “Go!”
Dori looked over her shoulder and saw that Mary Beckham was already retreating with her daughter, albeit reluctantly, also looking back at the road as she walked. Maisie Lindsey and Isra had both failed to heed the orders of their men.
Dori wanted Glayer Felsteppe to see that she was alive. That she was alive and had William. She wanted him to see her face before he died, to know that he had not beaten her.
But she felt the hands in her skirt, the weight of the boy hanging on them. Christian, who had borne too much for his young age. She looked down at his panicked, pale face and felt his fright.
“I don’t want to go,” he whispered up at her. “I don’t want to leave my papa.”
It would require little bravery for her to face Felsteppe now, but it would cost her all her will to let her moment of revenge go in order to protect the precious children now in her care.
She withdrew her arm from his shoulder in order to grasp his hand. “Come, Christian,” she said firmly. “Let’s hurry and do as your father asks. We don’t wish to worry him.” And she turned and ran with the boys up the road toward the ruin, following in Mary Beckham’s wake.