CHAPTER TWELVE

The morning brought the rainfall that the heavy clouds had forecast. Raindrops beat against the stone sills and the frieze a few feet below the wide window slits. Lord Hayden stirred, basking in the remnants of a pleasant dream where Grace was truly his wife and lying asleep beside him. His normal restraint suspended in that twilight moment, he unconsciously reached for her. His fingers touched the fluffy silk pillows and the gold-filigreed coverlet, but no Grace. Coming fully awake, he remembered that the marriage was an act to keep the woman he loved safe from unwanted advances.

Their chamber was equipped with a modern lavatory, one among several aspects of progress to which the Inca did not object. Grace had probably slipped away to use the facilities. Hayden drifted back to sleep. An hour later, he woke again to find her still gone, and a disturbing silence. He left the bed and hurriedly exchanged his pajama bottoms for a pair of briefs and his trousers. Grace was not in the lavatory and Lord Hayden experienced a feeling of apprehension. He threw on his khaki shirt then pulled open the heavy door. He strode through the corridor to Talbot’s rooms. The guards barred his way as he tried to enter. Sheepishly, he asked one of the guards, "Have you seen my wife?" The guard shook his head. Hayden grew more apprehensive. "Where’s Talbot? I need to speak to him."

"Wait here," the guard told him. He returned from Talbot’s chamber accompanied by the Inca himself, still in his nightshift.

"Where is she?" Lord Hayden demanded.

"With you I assumed," Talbot replied cockily.

"Come on, where is she?"

"I’m flattered you think your wife would be in my company at this hour."

"Talbot!" Lord Hayden growled. "You know what I’m asking. Where have your guards taken her?"

"I assure you my soldiers nor I have seen the Lady Grace since last night after dinner when she left in your company. But there is no need to concern yourself. Perhaps she decided to go for an early morning walk. Why don’t you go and look for her. You have the freedom of the grounds."

Talbot waited for Lord Hayden to pass through the temple doors, and then he spoke to the guard who had awakened him. "Find her," he ordered. "Bring her to me. And do not let Hayden know if you locate her. Is that clear?"

The soldier quickly acknowledged the order.

 

As Lord Hayden searched for Grace, her fears and suspicions about Talbot played repeatedly in his thoughts. If she were harmed, or worse… He shuddered. He refused to reflect along those lines. Instead, he tried to think as Grace would. Where might she go if indeed she had taken an early stroll? It was not uncharacteristic of her to take that walk. He covered the grounds, spying into huts and sheds alike. Slowly, painfully, he began to realize that Grace might have taken it into her head to attempt an escape on her own. She would be caught. Talbot’s guards were everywhere. He had to stop her before the soldiers caught her and brought her before the Inca. The quartered remains of the poor unfortunate who had recently tried to escape, had been left to hang in the square as a warning to would-be escapees. Gulping, Hayden turned in the direction of the mountain that housed the secret passage. Halfway there, Talbot’s soldiers intercepted him. He tried to explain that his wife had gone for a walk and may have gotten lost, and he was looking for her, but either the soldiers did not understand English, or they did not believe him. They bound and gagged him and dragged him back, and threw him into an empty hut close to the temple pyramid. Lord Hayden hit the dirt face first. It was then he heard Grace scream.

Lord Hayden turned himself over and stared up at the solitary window, a small opening on the ceiling from whence her cry had reached his ears. Again, her cry reached him. He struggled, cursing and twisting, tearing in vain behind him at his bindings to loosen them. The ropes refused to give. He froze as the sound of leather striking flesh skirled through the small opening overhead and filled the hut. He cried out but the gag in his mouth muffled the anguished sob.

As the whipping continued, Lord Hayden thought he would go mad. Grace’s screams were like knives cutting out his heart. He groaned in agony, fingers groping uselessly to unfasten the knots that refused to give except to scrape mercilessly at the flesh on his wrists and ankles. Grace’s cries rending his ears, tears of frustration streamed down his cheeks, soaking the brown bristle on his jaw.

Finally, the maddening sounds ceased. She must be dead, he thought, biting down in pain and fury on the cloth stuffed into his mouth. The door to the hut swung open violently. Inca warriors filled the stream of light that poured through the entrance. The soldiers stood him up; Lord Hayden struggled and cursed, though the words scurried out as grunts because of the gag. To his surprise, they pulled the gag from his mouth, and then untied him. The moment his hands and feet were free, he struck at his enemies, only to be brought up short by half a dozen spears pointed at his heart. He was tempted to bolt forward and let the spears run him through because Grace was probably dead. But her death was not yet a certainty.

More guards crowded into the small hut and surrounded him. They pushed him forward into the wet square. The circle of armed guards parted, allowing Hayden an unobstructed view. His throat constricted and he opened his mouth in a silent gasp. Face pressed against a wood post, Grace was tied to it by her head, arms and waist. The shirt on her back was shredded and bloody. "Bastards!" Hayden cried. At the same time he noticed she was barely conscious, and unable to turn her head because of the bindings. His name echoed through the square and he turned in the direction of Talbot’s voice. Holding a partially coiled whip, the Inca advanced toward him. Rage filled Lord Hayden as he noticed the blood on the leather tong—Grace’s blood. The guards seized him before he could lunge at Talbot, and held him immobile. Talbot regarded Lord Hayden quizzically for a moment, then without preamble, he threw the whip at his rival’s feet and motioned the guards to release him. The oddity of the Inca’s action caused Lord Hayden to think twice before following his first impulse to pick up the whip and flay the Inca to a lifeless pulp for the suffering he had caused Grace.

"Pick it up, Lord Hayden," Talbot said. "You want to kill me, don’t you? This is your chance. A duel between us. The winner gets all, including your wife." Talbot unsheathed a long narrow knife.

Lord Hayden’s rage, his anger and his determination in the face of obstacles decided him. He picked up the whip. The next events happened so quickly that he had only time to absorb their meaning and utter a broken rasp. The binding holding Grace’s head to the post was cut. Water was thrown in her face. She moaned and turned her head weakly and looked at Lord Hayden. Droplets of water hung on her face scratched and bruised. Lord Hayden watched them slide down her cheeks and mix with blood, tears and mud. It was evident she had put up quite a struggle. Her gaze was not totally focused, but he could read cognition in it as it settled on the whip he was holding, and then moved back to his face. It lingered there a moment, filling with hurt beyond reparation as it silently asked, how he could have hurt her so. Starting toward her, Lord Hayden opened his mouth to deny vehemently the accusation. The same guard who had cut the cord that had bound Grace’s head to the post, lifted his spear and with its butt struck her, knocking her unconscious. Talbot howled an order and a soldier tore the whip from Lord Hayden’s hand. The Inca’s laughter crackled and permeated the square. The circle of soldiers restraining Lord Hayden parted. Talbot advanced. "And now, Eros," he said, slithering hatred in his voice, "Psyche’s love is taken from you, as you stole it from me two millenniums ago." He paused to savor his victory, and then he ordered the guards, "Take him away!"

Hayden’s gaze was black with venom as the guards hauled him off. They did not return him to the hut, but instead dragged him up the temple stairs, then thrust him into his chamber. A few minutes later, two guards carried Grace in, slumped and unconscious between them.

Lord Hayden ran toward her and nearly got himself speared as the soldiers assumed he was attacking. He stopped in time and held back until his captors had assured themselves he did not mean to fight. He waited at a distance as they placed Grace on the bed, face down, then he watched them retreat backwards, their dark eyes trained on him for any sign of attack. Finally, just before the doors were locked and the bolt slid back into place, the whip was hurled mockingly into the room. It landed with a thud at his feet. Lord Hayden eyed the weapon hatefully, and then turned his full attention to Grace.

Talbot far exceeded the description she had applied to him. "Fiend," she had called him. "Monster" more aptly described him. The monster’s plan was clear. And it had probably worked, Lord Hayden reflected, distraught. The wedge Talbot continued to hammer between the two had sunk in to its widest part. Lord Hayden cursed the Inca anew, this time including himself for his blindness in not deciphering Talbot’s full perversity. The man had not even bothered to confine Lord Hayden separately from Grace, certain of the success of his plan, because when Lord Hayden explained and denied, the fact remained that Grace had seen him behind her holding the whip. Talbot was sure to have used all the necessary deceptions up to the instant Lord Hayden picked up the whip to lead her to a logical assumption. She had broken the Inca law by her attempt to escape and Talbot had relegated her punishment to Lord Hayden. An easy enough fact for her to accept after watching him slowly succumbing to Talbot’s influence. And in a sense, the suffering inflicted on her was his fault. He had succumbed to Talbot’s influence. He wanted the knowledge of the whereabouts of the artifacts, and possession of the Ark and he had not cared about the dangers involved to himself or to Grace.

For the first time Lord Hayden visualized the fine line between his love for the past and his love for Grace. Until now he had thought both passions equal, not realizing that true love might demand self-sacrifice of the very art for which he lived. Hayden knelt beside the bed and gently removed what was left of Grace’s blouse, wincing as he saw the bloodied welts crisscrossing her back. There would be scars. He checked the bruise on the side of her head that had rendered her unconscious. It matched his. He left her side a moment to retrieve the medicine kit from his backpack. For now, he would tend to her exterior wounds. Those would mend with the proper care. The wound inflicted on her heart would be much harder to heal.

As Lord Hayden ministered to Grace, he began formulating a plan of escape. It included the Ark, for therein lay both salvation and Talbot’s destruction.