HUGH thrust up his shield to cover his head. Three arrows rained down upon him. The metal heads plunked against the metal boss. A rock landed at his horse’s feet, sending the massive destrier prancing in an uneven gait.
“Easy, Orage!” Hugh shouted to the beast, taking a deep breath. Orage settled. Hugh took another deep breath and directed his men into the next position of assault.
A wooden hill fort in the Welsh foothills shouldn’t present too great a challenge to his hardened warriors. But it had. The defenders had held out for three days.
Every delay grated on Hugh’s nerves. Another day away from Ana. Another day for Radburn Blakely to gain power both political and magical.
Had Silvester managed to help Ana?
“They must be nearly out of ammunition,” Sir Andrew, Hugh’s senior knight from Bellecôte, said beside him. “The children are reduced to throwing rocks at us. I don’t see any men on the walls.” The knight looked disgusted.
This chore of collecting small boys as hostages sat no easier on his shoulders than on Hugh’s. But their king had commanded. The church had withdrawn from England. No one in England dared challenge John’s decisions now. No one else held authority over them.
“Stones can kill as easily as arrows and swords,” Hugh muttered back. But his fellow knight had assessed the situation correctly. This Welsh hill fort couldn’t hold out much longer. They had defied King John’s orders to release their sons as hostages against good behavior.
And Gyron of Yvain Fell had closed his gates and defended his walls before Hugh’s herald had arrived to read the orders.
They had been warned. By one of their own traveling fast cross-country, or by the Englishman who had organized the raid on Mendip Mor Castle?
Hugh sympathized secretly with the prince. He’d fight, too, before he gave Johnny up to the king.
Ten Welsh boys and Johnny waited for him back at his camp. Ten very small children who cried for their mothers every night. The three youngest fell asleep with their thumbs in their mouths. Johnny reacted to them with pale skin and frightened eyes. Perhaps Hugh should have left the boy at home rather than throwing him into the life of a knight’s page with so little preparation.
Hugh’s heart ached at the necessity of John’s harsh measures—necessary but cruel. Suddenly Hugh felt very grateful John had not claimed Johnny Bellecôte hostage, though he masked the demand under the name of fosterage and knightly training. So far Hugh had made certain John had no complaint to warrant such action. But if the time came, could he give up his boy, knowing he’d be educated and cared for under John’s supervision?
Gyron didn’t trust John to keep his sons safe.
Would John honor his vows to protect the boys as long as their fathers remained loyal and obedient? The question nagged at him.
Hugh didn’t dare take that chance.
Years ago, when he’d first run away from his father’s castle to join a troop of mercenaries, a siege like this followed by open battle would have excited him almost to the point of sexual pleasure. Eighteen years later he found no joy in this mission.
“Let us finish this quickly. Use the battering ram!” he called to his small force. The fortress seemed to sag atop its small plateau, as broken as its inhabitants.
Another shower of rocks greeted the men carrying the tree trunk with its sharpened and metal-encased tip. Three men fell under the onslaught.
“Get those shields up!” He kneed Orage up the slope and closer to the ram, extending his own shield to cover the nearest man. Five other knights followed his example.
Kathunk! The ram hit the fortress gates. The wood shuddered but held.
Again and again the men swung the ram in its harness with increasing momentum. One gate plank splintered. A woman inside the walls screamed.
Kathunk. The ram struck again. Two more planks split. Slivers the size of arrows sprayed the attackers. One man howled and clutched his head. Then he dropped in his tracks. A chunk of wood as thick as Hugh’s three fingers protruded from his skull. The stench of violent death, loosened bowels, and the sweat of fear broke out.
The smell of battle. Hugh nearly gagged with revulsion. Why now? He’d never shied away from war before. He thrived on it, drew his livelihood from it.
But he’d lived in peace since the majority of barons had refused John’s call to arms to invade Poitou in 1204. For these past four years he had concentrated on life, the life of his son and Bellecôte.
“Swing it again!” Hugh called, motioning another man to replace his fallen comrade.
An unnatural silence settled on the hill fort. The only sounds Hugh detected came from the battering ram. The gate crumbled and broke from its hinges with the next blow. Hugh led his mounted men into the breach. Three women, two girls, and five peasants stood in the doorway to the Hall sobbing, heads bowed, shoulders slumped.
“Where are your men?” Hugh called.
The tallest of the women, the one who stood in the center with her arms around the shoulders of two of the children, looked up and met his eyes.
“Where are your men and sons?” Hugh repeated his question.
The woman continued to stare at him without responding.
“Perhaps they do not speak French,” Sir Andrew said quietly.
“Do you speak Saxon?” Hugh asked. He knew he’d never put together enough Welsh to make his demands known.
Sir Andrew uttered a string of guttural sounds. The woman replied in similar words, hesitantly, as if she had to piece them together from a faulty memory.
“She says the men have fled, taking the boys with them. The women alone have held out for three days.” Sir Andrew slapped his thigh in frustration—or was it sympathy?
“They’ve gone to ground so deep in these hills we’ll never ferret them out,” Sir Andrew added.
“I feared as much as soon as John gave me orders to come here. These people melt into the mists like ghosts.” Like the men who had attacked Mendip Mor.
Again he wondered where the warning had come from.
The woman spoke again. Hugh looked to Andrew for a translation.
“She says that women are of no use to King John. She begs mercy for herself and her daughters.” Sir Andrew’s face flushed a deep red.
“She offered something more,” Hugh guessed.
Sir Andrew looked away.
“Tell her we are men of honor. Her virtue is safe with us, but I must take the oldest daughter hostage until her men return with a son,” Hugh replied. He’d heard that Welsh women freely offered themselves to any man. He suspected this woman and others like her offered their bodies in return for the safety of their homes and dependents. Not an honorable trait, but frequently an effective one.
His mother had done the same more than once. But Hugh’s father hadn’t been honorable about the results.
“I give you my word, madam, that you and your daughters will be treated honorably.” Hugh wheeled his horse around to depart.
“Is that wise, to stake your honor, and possibly your life on the whim of King John?” Sir Andrew asked with a smirk.
“Perhaps not wise, but the only action I can take and still live with myself.” The Welsh princes did not trust John. And it seemed neither did his own knights.
Ana certainly had no reason to trust John. But was John the true menace, or was it the sorcerer who whispered in his ear?
None of them were safe from Radburn Blakely. Certainly not Ana. Please, God, let Silvester find her and protect her. But she was the only person Hugh knew who could counter the king’s half brother at all.
“Sir Andrew.” Hugh summoned his comrade forward with a raised hand. “Take the ten hostages we have, and one of those girls and ride posthaste for Bellecôte. Take Johnny with you, too. Ride as if demons themselves pursue you. Leave the baggage carts behind. Let each knight take a child upon his saddle. But you must be safely within the walls of my castle in two days. No more.” He proposed a grueling, almost impossible ride for the men, let alone for the more fragile children.
“And what are we to do once we arrive there, milord?” Sir Andrew’s eyes opened wide in shock, giving him the look of a frightened frog.
“Keep all of the children, including my son, safe from any and all who come for them.”
“Including the king?”
“I do not believe John will menace them right now.He has other quarry in mind. I ride to join him and prevent mischief to him and by him.” A need to hold Ana safe in his arms, make certain she was safe, ached deep within him.
“God speed, milord. You’ll need it.”
o0o
The magic that sex with John had generated in me faded rapidly as we rode away from the standing stones and crossed the burn. I seemed to leave the magic behind with the villagers and Kirkenwood. I huddled into my winter cloak, chilled from the loss of magic while the rest of the party laughed and sang in the summer sunshine. Bright insects fluttered about. None of them my faery friends. Even they had deserted me.
A gentle hum in the back of my mind reassured me that not all of my magic had disappeared. I carried the staff as a knight would carry a lance while ahorse. Excalibur resided deep in my leather traveling chest, wrapped in wads of underclothing. I had buried the little eating knife with its crown of love-lies-bleeding with Excalibur. The original, damning letter from my father remained in Arthur Pendragon’s hands. Literally. I’d placed it inside the tomb with his skeleton. Four copies resided in the hands of four close friends of Uncle Henry, two of them bishops headed into exile on the continent.
The letter was safe. As for the sword? Hopefully, no one would rifle my belongings, including my so-called husband. I wasn’t certain how well the spell would hold up since I’d moved the sword from its original hiding place.
For this ride, I wore proper court dress, a tight chainse of finest linen, a bliaud of deep murrey color with matching veil over a modest wimple and chin strap. I did not feel comfortable in the trappings of a courtier nor riding sidesaddle on the placid mare John provided for me.
But I carried the staff despite Blakely’s stern disapproval.
I looked into the polished metal disk suspended from my neck on a silken cord. Reflected in its surface, the party behind me was a blur of colors. I couldn’t distinguish my people from the king’s. My magic slid off the mirror, refusing to enhance my vision.
More of my powers dribbled away as we climbed up onto the road. The same road I had taken mere weeks ago when I fled Radburn Blakely in Durham.
Now I rode beside him. Once more he seemed to have the upper hand magically. He leered at me and clenched his fist. My chest tightened in memory of the cough he had induced in me.
I mastered the urge to expel the tightness. One deep breath gave me control. A second breath flowed freely through my lungs and slowed their laboring. A third breath gave me the strength to build a shield between us.
Blakely reared back as if stung.
“Do not close me out, Resmiranda. I own you. You, your magic, your secrets, and the artifact you have so skillfully hidden from me. Where is it?”
I stared at him blankly. “Where is what?”
“If you do not open your mind to me, I will force it open, very painfully.” He rode closer to me. His knee brushed mine.
My skin seemed to burn at his touch, a precursor to the burning in my mind, or my body, should he force it open. I remembered the vision of the unknown woman he had ritually slaughtered with fire and knife and shuddered. But I hid my fear from him, ignoring his gibes with stony silence. I thrust the staff between us. Then I touched my stallion’s thoughts and it shied away from Radburn’s fractious gelding. Carefully, I reerected the shield around me.
John and sex awakened a new source of magic within me, and the stones amplified it. But it came from me. I controlled it, not Radburn Blakely.
“Later, Little One. I’ll settle this later.” Blakely urged his mount forward until he reined in next to John.
I resumed my place in the line of march, grateful for the plodding pace of the royal entourage rather than the breakneck speed I had traveled at before.
John had ordered Kirkenwood Grange stripped of all but the barest of staff and replaced most of my guards with his own. I knew he left men who would search diligently throughout the buildings. He didn’t want interference from people who owed their loyalty first to me and then begrudgingly to their king.
We passed through a section of woodland. The tall canopy of intertwined branches allowed little light to penetrate to the open forest floor. The accumulation of half-rotted leaves from the previous autumn muffled the sounds of our passage. The guards turned their attention to the trees and away from my retainers. Many of them crossed themselves as protection from whatever might hide within the shadows. John and Blakely bent their heads together in earnest conference. I raised the staff a little, waving it right and left ever so slightly. Then I looked into the polished metal disk that hung about my neck. Behind me, one of my men peeled off from the line of march and into the woods. He’d seen my signal.
In a few moments another man slipped away. They carried messages to my knights. I needed them back home protecting Kirkenwood. John’s men wouldn’t find their evidence that Arthur of Brittany lived—a threat to John’s crown—nor would they find Excalibur. In their frustration they might turn aggressive against my people. They might burn Kirkenwood, content to destroy the ancient hill fort and its contents if they couldn’t find what they sought.
My people knew how to fade into the moors to evade danger to themselves. Buildings could be rebuilt.
We approached a deep burn, swollen beyond its normal banks and running wildly down from the hills toward the north fork of the River Tyne. Everyone came to a halt while the advance riders negotiated the ford. We waited for the signal that the king could safely cross.
“Lady Resmiranda, you will build a bridge here,” John commanded while we waited. “You will build the bridge and charge a toll. Send half the revenues to the Exchequer in London.”
“Before or after the tolls repay the cost of building the bridge?” I asked. “Or will you pay the cost of lumber and workmen. Will the toll keeper be one of my people or one of yours?”
“You will build the bloody bridge. We will post the men to enforce the toll. Erect a lodge for them. One on each side of the bridge.” He almost sneered. His good humor had vanished. Then he urged his horse into the wild stream.
Three more of my men melted into the woods. Half an hour later when the last of the royal entourage splashed out of the water on the far side of the burn, another half dozen of my men had left on their mission. Some of them should get through to my knights. I had only to wait.
I had wanted to send a message to Hugh as well. But Archie had left to find his master yesterday, before the ceremony of oath taking. He’d made sure I knew he disapproved of my liaison with John.
He had been present when Radburn Blakely announced our marriage to the assembled household and diminished court.
I wished I could have told Hugh myself that the marriage was a sham and how much I regretted my liaison with John. I’d gained a little knowledge of magic, but nothing else from the encounter. Now I had fully severed my ties to the church and to Hugh. I doubted I’d ever trust another man with my body, my secrets, or my honor. The losses were not worth the gain.
I gulped back tears of sorrow lest I allow Blakely to see a weakness.