There’s men coming.” Albric pointed to the road from the newly refurbished gatehouse. “Five of ‘em.”
Os narrowed his eyes to bring the riders into focus. “The earl’s colors. And I think he’s with them!” What could he possibly want?
“Very unusual for the earl to travel without an army.” Albric crossed his arms. “I wonder what’s going on. Intrigue is in the air, me lord Osbert. I like to know who me friends are before the fighting starts.”
“What do you mean?”
Albric flushed red. “A man has to make his own way in this life, and I’m not one to judge, but Warin and St. Germaine have both been acting strange. And I wasn’t spying—”
Os flinched at the word.
“—but I was helping Warin and St. Germaine move from the stables to the new housing, and I found this here medallion on the floor.”
Albric handed over a tarnished gold coin-shaped object. Os clutched it in his hand. “The Duke of Brittany.”
“Aha.” Albric cleared his throat and spat over the side of the wall. “You look how I feel, which means that we’re on the same side.”
Os nodded once.
“A king is a king, and for better or worse, we already have one on the throne. England don’t need another one.” Albric scratched his nose.
“Did you show this to either one of them?”
“Nay. It was sick; I was thinkin’ about it. You wonder if ye’ll go the same way as one side, what seems like might be right, or the way yer gut tells ya that you know is right. It ain’t logical, but there it is.”
Pocketing the medallion, Os clasped his friend on the shoulder. “Amen to that.”
He went down to greet his liege, the Earl of Norfolk.
“This is nice,” the earl said. “When I told Natalia she could have it for Thomas, I was under the impression that it was vacated and a ruin.”
“It was that,” Osbert said with a little pride.
“Hard work … mayhap being a farmer will suit you.”
“I want to raise goats, my lord. And horses. Not grain.”
“Grain would be better—at least a field or two. Winter will eventually come, and the king needs supplies.”
Os considered his lands—lands that truly belonged to the king—and nodded. “I can give up the goats, I suppose. And plant one field. Barley? Oats? What would the king desire?”
The earl laughed. “Both. I miss your banter. Walk with me?”
They went around the front of the mound to the forgotten entrance to the keep. The grass had been cut, the pond cleaned, and Os had made a wooden bench for sitting and watching the fish.
The men sat, and Os waited patiently for the earl to speak first.
“You always could last longer than me,” the earl complained. “Your services as my man of business have by far surpassed any other knight I’ve ever employed in that office. Do you remember Ida’s cousin’s cake?” The earl laughed, pounding his knee.
“Every day of my life, my lord,” Osbert smiled.
“Would you be willing to run the occasional errand for me?”
“Nay. I am home. I am in enough trouble for hiding the fact that you wanted me to find out which of your men was the traitor.”
“You told her?” The earl raised a brow.
“She found the papers. Thomas de Havel sent an official from London to get us to move off of his property. I’m grateful that you gave us those documents immediately. We needed them.”
“Having a wife certainly changes things,” the earl sighed wistfully.
“I think I like it.” Osbert grinned as the earl elbowed him.
“You were just glad to give up that vow of chastity. What were you thinking?”
“I wanted to be pure of heart.” The idea sounded silly now to his own ears.
“A noble purpose for a noble man. You are that, Osbert. So. Did you find the spear? Kailyn speaks highly of you both, but says that it is urgent now to get it before the enemy.”
Os couldn’t look at his liege. Instead, he handed over the medallion Albric had found.
“The Duke of Brittany?”
“One of my men found it in the stables. It belongs to our traitor. A man I thought was a friend.”
“Oh.” The earl clapped his hand on Os’s shoulder.
“One of the knights is working for Arthur. I have to ask, my lord, if he is also working for you.”
The earl was quiet, and Os wondered if he’d lost all he’d just gained by asking the right question.
Finally the earl answered. “No. I, Roger Bigod, High Steward of England, Earl of Norfolk, am loyal to King John.” He coughed and muttered. “Even if the man is a tax-raising, wife-stealing, pale image of his older brother.”
“Thank you. God help me, but you had me sweating there, my lord.”
“You are my conscience. When we were talking the day I signed over the land to you, I saw a brief flash in your eyes of disappointment. It struck me. You would stand by me out of loyalty, even though you disapproved. But for how long? You can’t be a leader of men if they don’t respect you.”
“I never meant to judge,” Osbert said.
“You didn’t. But I judged myself and found myself wanting. ‘Tis better now.” He stood. “I am here to pick up the bag of Lady Steffen’s that your wife so kindly wrote to my Ida about. And I think I’ll take a traitor home with me to hang.”
Os also rose. “Let’s go have a word with Ela first. I know she’ll be happy to see you.”
Ela was not happy at all. The earl cozying up with her husband—the two laughing like old friends. Were they laughing at her, at how gullible she’d been?
She stomped around the great hall, fluffing a pillow on the window seat, straightening a tassel on a large tapestry depicting a wood hunt, picking up an arrangement of fresh flowers and moving it half an inch.
What were they up to? She didn’t trust her husband—not when it came to doing something he thought would be for her own good.
She patted the short sword tied to her thigh and hidden beneath her gown, then checked the extra dagger in her half boot. Never again would she be caught unaware.
Not that a knife would do any good against her husband’s machinations—nay, not unless she’d cut out his lying tongue.
The two men were walking up the steps. Still friendly. Did the earl want Os to go back to Norwich with him? What if Os was so good at what he did for the earl that the earl wanted him back?
What if he had their marriage annulled? Her breaths came faster. Panicked breaths. She was pregnant, for pity’s sake. She had to have a husband to go with the triplets!
Her heart beat fast in her chest as they came through the front door.
“My lady Ela!” the earl boomed with outstretched arms.
Her knees buckled, and she grabbed on to the back of a chair. “My lord—please come in. Bertha is on her way back from the kitchen with a tray of refreshments. Let me go get that package for your wife.” She fanned her flaming face with her hand.
Meg and her mother both said that her “what ifs” caused more harm than good.
The earl was staring at her, as was her mortified husband. He didn’t like emotional displays, and she was about to faint. That wasn’t emotional—he couldn’t be angry about that—could he?
A physical response to stress, that’s all it was. She bit down hard on her inner cheek. “Yow,” she mumbled, tears springing to her eyes.
“Ela? What is the matter with you?” Os stepped forward.
“Nothing’s the matter—nothing’s wrong—I’ll be right back.” She ran up the stairs toward her chamber, feeling ten times the fool. She burst into her room and stopped with a screech. “Warin? What are you doing in here?”
He turned, his face mottled and ruddy, a bruise forming above his left eye. “What did you do with it?”
“With what, Warin? Let me get you a towel … who hit you?”
“Don’t touch me, witch—don’t think I don’t know about you. You bewitch everyone with your hair and eyes. Where is my mother’s bag?”
Ela stumbled backward into the wall. “Your mother? The Lady Steffen?”
“Lady Whore, you mean? That bitch deserved to die—now where is the bag she carried when I pushed her down the stairs?”
Gasping, Ela focused on his aura—too little, too late. Black and muddy brown. Blood red and olive green. Her head spun.
“I don’t understand.” Ela put her hand to her throat.
“Are ye stupid? My mother had many husbands and many children. Thomas and I are the only men. The rest are whores like her.”
“But Natalia was in the room with me that night. How did you … I …” Keep him talking and get the dagger from your boot.
“We set it up. She would steal from you or I would kill her—I wanted the spear, but you didn’t have it. I’ve been all over this damn keep, and I can’t find it.” His eyes were wild, and spittle flew from his mouth.
“So she did what you asked of her …” She reached down and slid the knife into her palm.
“And I killed her anyway. Tried to put the blame on you, but it didn’t work. Bitch.”
“Let me get the bag. I had it wrapped for the earl to take to the countess. That’s why you couldn’t find it.” Ela slowly got up and walked to the wardrobe. She opened the door and pulled out a pretty papered box. “It’s in here.”
She held it out for him and when he reached to take it, she threw it at him and hit him in the face with it. Then she ran.
“Damn you, come back here.”
Ela opened the door and fell into Os’s arms. She quickly pushed out of his embrace. “‘Tis Warin—he’s crazy.”
The door slammed shut behind her, and they heard the lock engage.
“He’ll go out the window.” Ela led the way to the stairs, pulling on her husband’s arm. It was like tugging on marble. “Osbert? Are you coming?”
“Ela. You were threatened. In our own home.”
“I escaped.” She tapped her toe.
“Without me.”
“I am not going to wait around and ask your permission each time I am in a scrape, Os. That is ridiculous.”
He shouted back, yanking at his hair. “What is ridiculous is that you find trouble no matter where we go. You collect trouble. You draw it to you somehow. I could put you in a bloody convent and you would find trouble.”
A loud whistle interrupted their argument. “Hello? I am looking for the always calm Osbert Edyvean? I know he would never shout at his wife—especially not in front of guests.”
Ela turned around and put her hand on her hip. “Mayhap you will listen to reason. Warin is Thomas de Havel’s half brother. He just admitted to killing his mother, the Lady Steffen. He more than likely has made it out my window and to the stables and possibly the road by now. And instead of going after him like a sane man, my husband would rather yell at me and tell me that I attract trouble.”
“You try my patience, my lady,” Os said stiffly.
She held up a hand and walked past the earl down the stairs to find some cheese. Emotional affairs such as these were beginning to make her hungry.
“Are you going after her?”
“Nay. I am going hunting.” Os reigned in his temper and turned it to cold steel. Hard, unyielding, and deadly.
“Wait. Now that we are certain who our man is, we can set a trap.”
“If I was that twisted son of a bitch de Havel, I’d want to come and get what was mine. He wanted us to think that he was going to France, and he paid that little weasel from London to come and lie. Sick, but not a bad plan. He wants us to have our guard down. Warin will run to him, wherever he is hiding, and warn him that we know of his plan.”
“My men are here, under your command. What would you have them do?”
Os rubbed the furrow between his brows, which grew deeper every day. Having a wife was stressful. Having a pregnant wife upped the stress by three—or would that be four? He shook his head. He and the earl formulated a plan.
“Do the cooking, make sure there is plenty of ale for my men—my men. What am I? A goat?” Ela tromped across the kitchen hall, looking up into the open night sky. She stopped, exhaled, and tried to find a reasonable bone in her body that she could perhaps use to hit Os over the head.
There was no reasoning with a man of logic. Not when his wife and home were under threat of attack. Her body buzzed with apprehension. She could feel energy come from the mound below the keep. It kept her teeth on edge.
What would her sisters do in such a situation? Better yet, what would Ana have done?
It comes down to the cursed spear.
She shook her head, thinking of all the things a spear could be disguised as. It could be anything from a bed rail to a walking staff. It was an iron stick, for pity’s sake. Bowing her head, she sent a prayer to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, that she could find the spear before her enemies. Britain’s enemies. Boadicea kept telling her she had it, but didn’t say where.
That wasn’t very helpful at all.
You believe in your power? The power that you were going to throw away on a worthless man who is even now scaling the walls of the palisade?
Boadicea?
Tell me I am not very helpful—pah. You are dense, girl. MY Ana would never have taken so long to do what I told her to do.
Hey.
Ela crossed her arms and scrunched her brow. Then she started running for her husband. “Osbert! Os—” She bumped into St. Germaine. He caught her around the arms.
“I was looking for you.” His voice was stern.
Warin had said he was looking for her. Was St. Germaine in league with de Havel too? She couldn’t trust anybody. She backed up, then ran around St. Germaine’s large body. “Osbert! Thomas is here, at the keep—coming over the palisades.”
He turned to look at her from up high where he was mounted on Bartholomew’s back. She wondered if he would listen to her. Then he shouted for his men, organizing them to cover the palisades with their arrows. She ran to his stirrup with relief. “I’m willful, and I don’t always remember that I am a lady wife.”
“And I forget that I am a husband—a lord now, who needs to remember to ask, mayhap, instead of order.”
She blinked away tears. “Be careful, Os. Come back to me.”
“Now who is worrying overmuch? This is what I do.” He kicked at Bartholomew, who lunged across the dirt toward the knights lined up in a row. “Go to your room,” he said over his shoulder.
She bristled, but then remembered that it wouldn’t hurt her to do as he asked—every once in a while. Besides, she would collect all the extra knives for weapons. She could throw from her window, if she had to.
Filled with purpose, she soon had a basket filled with throwing utensils. She opened the door to her room. Which was empty, thank all the saints. She went inside, lit more candles, and stared out the window at the scene below.
Her blood sang. She longed to be a part of defending her home and her husband. It was in her ancestral history to be in the battle alongside her man. She tapped her toe.
Thomas de Havel’s men were many. Paid mercenaries. She shivered, remembering what Os had said they would do if men like that caught her. Rape and plunder was part of their price.
She grabbed her favorite knife and balanced the hilt in her hand. Whoever thought to touch her would die.
Where was Osbert? She lost sight of him, his blond hair a halo in the darkening night.
Suddenly there were small fires everywhere. Thomas was using fire arrows! Ela couldn’t just sit back and watch from her ivory tower like a princess without a brain. She hefted her knife. Without a weapon.
A flaming arrow landed at her windowsill, and the roof smoldered. She glanced around for anything to put the fire out with. Her bed linens were too fine and would catch fire. Her tapestry. Thick cloth.
Her new home, or the legend that she could keep passing down? Tears filled her throat as smoke curled beneath the window frame.
Her home. Osbert’s home. Her children’s home. “Forgive me, Gram.”
She yanked the tapestry off the wall, but it wouldn’t come. The painted rod was set in half rings attached to the wall. She pulled harder. The tapestry was sewn around the rod, and it wouldn’t come down. Smoke filled the room.
Ela climbed on her bed and reached over to slice the tapestry from the rod. Who knew how old this tapestry was? The yarn wrapped around the rod was practically solid. Stiff with age.
The rod.
She started to laugh.
A body crashed through her window, breaking expensive glass. It wasn’t Osbert, she could tell right away. It was de Havel.
He grinned, bleeding from a head wound. “My lady Ela.” “I want a bedroom without a window.”