A Knight's Pledge, page 2
“No,” Lucan said.
“Lord—”
“No,” he called loudly into the frigid air, the refusal manifesting like a crystal cloud in the January night. He heard the steward’s approach but did not turn toward him.
“Please, lord,” Rolf pleaded as they entered the barn again. The weary stable boy was just turning about once more, disappointment clear on his face. “You’re the only one who—”
“The only one who’s been crippled by Effie Annesley?”
Rolf looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I’m not certain that’s true.”
Lucan snorted. “I’d wager it’s not.” He only just managed to keep from crying out as he swung his leg over the saddle. “Wait,” he barked at the sleepy stable boy, who would have pulled Agrios away. A wave of dizziness washed over Lucan so that he was forced to grip the saddle with both hands and rest his forehead against the fragrant leather. Beads of sweat burst out along his hairline and raced down the sides of his face; nausea swirled in his stomach.
He heard Rolf bring his mount to a halt beside him, but Lucan could not raise his head to glance at the man derisively as he wished to.
“Leave us,” Rolf said, presumably to the attending boy. A moment later, he said in a low voice, “Lord, you’re not well.”
“All the more reason to once more seek my bed,” Lucan acknowledged. “I’d not waste what little strength I have to get Effie Annesley out of a snare she’s most likely made herself.”
“It’s not her in the snare, lord.”
“But you said—”
“It’s her boy.”
Lucan’s racing heart had slowed somewhat and so now he did turn his head to regard the steward, who seemed to have paled another two shades. Lucan remembered the red-haired lad from his sister’s wedding to Padraig Boyd.
I’m George Thomas Annesley, how do you do…
“What’s wrong with the boy?”
“He’s…missing.” Rolf seemed in greater pain that Lucan, although Lucan didn’t know how that was possible. “Please come,” he whispered.
Sweat seemed to be pouring down Lucan’s back now. “Why should I care what happens to a bandit’s brat? In fact, why should you?”
“Lord?” Rolf’s brows knit together. “Perhaps you should—”
“It’s not as though she can further your status now that Darlyrede is burnt and she is wanted by the Crown,” Lucan explained. “In fact, if I should see her, I would only arrest her, which I do doubt would be of any assistance in whatever plight she now finds herself in. Most deservedly, I should think, as well.” Lucan paused. “You seem to be quite far away just now, Rolf.”
* * * *
Rolf Littlebrook caught the knight just before he could slide to the stable floor, his noble battle steed having done his duty in just holding his master aright these past several moments. Agrios didn’t so much as flinch as Lucan crumpled.
Rolf lowered the knight to the hay-strewn ground, seeing clearly his gray, greasy pallor beneath the lock of black hair. He was more unwell than Rolf has guessed, and now he was unconscious—dead weight. Rolf didn’t relish the idea of the trip back through the hold to return Lucan to his bed, nor the calling of the surgeon and the questions that would arise. He’d already wasted precious time in traveling to Steadport Hall. Apparently, neither the surgeon nor the priest from Darlyrede had done Lucan any good thus far. For such a young man to lose his foot would be a tragedy. If Winnie were here, she would know how to treat him.
He stilled, thinking. Dare he?
In the next moment, Rolf haltingly folded the tall knight into an awkward embrace and then staggered to his feet. Agrios stood as still as any stone wall as Rolf draped his master across the saddle. He fastened the stirrup high up around one of Lucan’s upper thighs to keep him from sliding to the ground. It wouldn’t be a comfortable ride, but hopefully he would stay good and unconscious until they were deep in the wood.
By then, it would be too late to return.
Rolf pulled Agrios’s reins over the horse’s head and regained his own saddle, leading the fine, inky horse into the equally inky night. The well-trained animal followed obediently, seemingly knowing that the cargo he carried depended upon it.
It would take much longer to arrive at the Warren this way, but it was likely better to arrive late with Lucan Montague than not at all.
Perhaps for Lucan Montague most of all.
Chapter 2
“He’s here.”
The words were whispered into Effie’s ear, but they roused her like a blast from Vaughn Hargrave’s arquebus. She opened her swollen eyes and looked up into Gorman’s face. His eyes, too, were red, dark-hollowed, above his thick beard. She made no reply, only held up her hand so that he could help her from George Thomas’s little bed. She followed him from the carved-out chamber in the rear of the warren of rooms and into the tall, twisting stone corridor toward the cathedral, still gripping the blasted parchment they’d found early yestermorning.
After fifteen years, Effie no longer noticed the mineral smell of the caves. Her eyes were exquisitely adjusted to the way the torches played off the chiseled-sharp, glittering planes of the walls and she knew them all as well as she knew the curves of George’s small face. There was no daylight in the caves, save for just inside the entrance, and in one chamber where a tiny sink hole in the forest floor far above sometimes allowed a beam of light to fall in the center of a tall, conical cell Gilboe had claimed as his oratory.
The lower portions and pathways of the corridors were worn smooth and rippled, perhaps by ancient, long evaporated rivers, but the upper portions of the caverns bore the marks of chisel and driven stone, the Warren having been stretched and widened by human hand for years to suit the hidden village it now contained. In addition to the common storage and stable areas, the Warren currently boasted seven private cells, as well as two large dormitory chambers where unpartnered adults slept. The echoey sound of the shallow, subterranean river grew louder, and beyond the next curve of stone wall the ceiling soared away into invisible darkness as Effie and Gorman entered the cathedral.
The cavern was filled with many of the residents of the Warren, and all were in a grim fluster as Effie drew nearer. She braced herself for the argument she knew was inevitable. Effie certainly hadn’t wanted to call for him, but Rolf and Gorman had convinced her that Lucan Montage could help them. And so help them, he would.
He must.
Gorman stopped suddenly in front of her, nearly causing her to run into his back.
“Rolf?” he queried in a strange tone.
Effie stepped around in time to see the man who had served as Darlyrede’s steward for decades place a dark, limp bundle on the floor. Rolf rose, and his usually placid face was troubled.
“Where is he?” Effie demanded.
To her dismay, Rolf Littlebrook glanced down at the motionless pile of rags on the stone.
“Did you need to render him unconscious in order to bring him?” The others moved aside deferentially as she stepped forward and then knelt at the side of Lucan Montague.
“That was a fortuitous coincidence, I fear,” Rolf sighed. “He’d outright refused before he fainted. He’s unwell, Effie. I thought perhaps Winnie…”
“He was fine two days ago,” she said curtly. His lashes were dark against his pale, chiseled cheekbone, like a crag from the Warren itself. His lips were bloodless and gray. Although the January cold still rolled off his clothes, Effie felt Lucan Montague’s forehead with her palm and found it fiery, and greasy with sweat. “He’s burning up with fever.”
Behind her, Gorman sounded incredulous. “You brought a sick man into the Warren, Rolf?”
“I don’t think ‘tis an illness, son,” Rolf corrected. “I believe his injury festers.”
Effie looked up quickly at Gorman’s father. “His foot?”
Rolf nodded.
“Dammit,” Effie muttered. And then, louder, “Dammit!” She rose to her feet, confronting Rolf. “He’s useless to us in this condition.”
“Perhaps Winnie—” Rolf began again.
“I don’t have time for this, Rolf!” Effie shouted, hearing her voice growing dangerously shrill, but panic was rising within her again, panic she had only just been holding at bay with the hope that Lucan Montague might aid them in some way. Now, she could not seem to hold back the floodtide of terror that was crashing and climbing against the banks of her mind as the one supposed to be George’s savior lay feeble at her feet.
“They have my son! They have George!” she shrieked. “How am I to ever think of—”
Her words were interrupted by thin, cool bands encircling and squeezing her upper arm. Effie whipped her head around to find the serene, wizened face of Winnie, her white, white hair frizzed around her head like dandelion fluff. Her pale gray eyes bored into Effie’s as she pulled Effie away from the form of Lucan Montague and knelt in her place.
The old woman tugged up her draping sleeves, revealing spotted, skeletal arms. Her long fingers with their short, round, shiny nails skimmed over Lucan Montague’s form, pressing his body here and there, laying her ear atop first his chest then his abdomen. She moved toward his feet on her knees and waggled squeezed-together fingers at his left boot, which had been obviously altered to accommodate his foot. Effie knew she should have felt some shame for being the cause of the injury, but she could not muster any sympathy for the man, lying here in the Warren’s safe cathedral while George Thomas was missing.
His arrival had done nothing more than delay them further. He should just hurry up and die if he was wont.
As if the old woman had read her thoughts, Winnie looked up at her sharply.
Effie stared back. She didn’t care what Winnie thought of her, either.
That’s not true, her conscience warned, seeming to be of one mind with older woman.
Thankfully, Winnie sent her expressive gaze to Gorman, who flew to her side at once as the boot was painstakingly removed. Effie watched as Winnie’s withered hands motioned in the air, the fingers of her right hand tapping those on her left, then drawing a pair of circles on her palm. She brought her two fists together and then swiped her hand over her left forearm.
“Only one?” he queried.
The frizzy white head shook and Winnie held up two fingers. Then she patted her lips briefly and wrung her clasped hands in opposite directions.
Gorman gained his feet and disappeared into the rippling shadows along the perimeter of the cathedral, and Winnie seemed to forget him immediately as she withdrew her long, slender blade from the belt around her tiny midsection. She inserted the tip of the knife carefully into the top of the stained bandages wrapped past Lucan Montague’s ankle and painstakingly cut down toward his heel.
Winnie peeled back the sections of rough-woven flax cloth to reveal Montague’s swollen foot, crusted with dried blood and seepage from the black, ragged slit of a wound caused by Effie’s own arrow. The cut wept and was malodorous, even from where she stood. She recognized again that she should feel some remorse, but her heart felt frozen in her chest and all she could do was stare at the man on the ground.
Gorman returned then with one of the youths and, kneeling at Winnie’s side, they deposited the items she’d silently requested. The old woman took a rag and dipped it into the wooden bowl of steaming water and placed it, sopping, on top of Montague’s foot.
The man started with a harsh cry, causing all in the group who watched to flinch, but Lucan Montague did not rouse again, even as Winnie began to wipe at the injury. Effie noticed a painful lump forming in her throat and, when the old woman brought forth her slender blade again and carried it toward the swollen appendage, Effie felt the bile rising. She turned away from the scene and walked quickly from the cathedral, tucking the parchment into her belt and then breaking into a run as she reached the upward slanting corridor that led to the entrance.
The steep grade forced her strides to long lunges, and she at last reached the top with her hands on her knees, her head hanging down, her shuddering breaths not delivering enough air to her lungs as saliva pooled in the recesses of her jaws. She went down on her knees in the moonlight, already growing pale with the approaching dawn.
She looked through the bare branches of the forest, their rolling, winter-prickly canopy stretching away to the North West. This time last year—and the fourteen winters before—Effie could have stood in this spot and occasionally caught a glimmer of light from far away Darlyrede House. How many times she’d looked across this expanse with both hatred and hope in her heart, longing for the day when she would be avenged, when her mother and father would be avenged, and all the wrongs done to them and the people of Northumberland were righted. She slid her legs to the side to sit on one hip, cocking her right leg to wrap her arms about her knee.
Now that horizon was dark; Darlyrede House was a ruin. And there was no hope left. No matter that her half-brother, Padraig Boyd, had returned to England—there was nothing for him to claim now. And the one thing Effie loved most in the world had been taken from her.
George Thomas. George…
“Effie?” Rolf’s gentle, low voice sounded behind her, amidst the shuffling of his footfalls on the grade.
She sniffed and wiped her face on her trousers leg. She hadn’t wept since that night long ago, the night another grand manor had burned, and now the night had turned into a pale sunrise.
“Aye, Rolf.”
He squatted at her side. “He’s sleeping now. Gorman’s watching over him lest he wakes. I believe Winnie has done much for him.”
“Perhaps she has, and he will live,” she allowed. “But you said yourself that he already refused you.”
“He doesn’t know the whole of it.”
“And you think he will have pity for us once he does?”
“He’s a good man, Effie.”
“He’s the king’s man, Rolf,” she reminded him. “And even if Winnie can heal him, and even if he agrees to help us, it will be too late. We should have set out yesterday.”
Effie took the steward’s silence as agreement with her assessment of the situation, but after a long moment the gentle man began to speak.
“It’s not too late. I never gave up hope that Gorman would be found. Five years, Effie. Five long years of not knowing whether he was dead or alive. And not only was my son returned, but now I have you, and George. I had nothing—now I have a family.”
“Gorman was older than George,” Effie pointed out past her constricted throat. “He escaped, and the man responsible for his abduction is dead. I cannot be optimistic about this, Rolf. My slight grip on sanity will not allow it.”
“I’ll not ask you for optimism,” Rolf said quietly. “But let us dwell on the predicament immediate to us: Lucan Montague is here, now. I feel that if he can help us, he will.”
Effie turned to look up at the man who had become like a father to her. She wanted to tell him that his trust in Lucan Montague was misplaced. That the high and mighty knight of the Royal Order of the Garter was selfish, spoiled, and greedy. Once a pampered, adolescent brat who had been swaddled and swept away to be reared in luxury in France, now he was a pompous coward who thought only of saving his own skin and furthering his reputation among the nobility. She’d seen it herself, hadn’t she? One didn’t easily forget such a lesson.
But footsteps on the path saved her from making a response. Effie looked over her shoulder and saw Gorman approaching the mouth of the cave entrance, his long strides effortless, his face wearied and yet made more handsome by his trials. She could see just there as the sunrise lightened the shadows under Gorman’s eyes from where George Thomas had gotten the wideness of his cheekbones and his sturdy forehead.
Her son was made partly from this man approaching, and unlike Lucan Montague, Gorman Littlebrook was good, through and through.
Rolf gained his feet to face his son. “What news?”
“He’s stirring,” Gorman allowed as he reached them. He looked down at Effie. “You’re exhausted. Give me the message—I’ll speak to him.”
She shook her head. “We’ll do it together.”
Gorman helped her to her feet. “Perhaps it would be best if you were not the first person Sir Lucan sees when he awakes.”
“What do you mean?”
Rolf took the opportunity to disappear into the mouth of the cave without further comment.
“I mean,” Gorman said gently, “that ‘twas you who shot him. He holds you a grudge for it, and if we are to enlist his help, perhaps—”
“I apologized to him,” Effie insisted. “At Darlyrede before more than a hundred people! It’s not my fault an incompetent priest rubbed shite in his wound.”
“I don’t think he’ll see it that way.”
Effie felt her ire rising, and it was a welcome change from the despair and terror that had haunted her since that sunset in the wood two days ago when she had seen George’s footsteps disappear in the snow beside a set of hoof prints.
But she knew that, for George’s sake, she could not drown herself in one emotion in order to numb another. It could be potentially deadly to her son. And Rolf was right—Lucan Montague was here. Rolf trusted him. Effie trusted Rolf.
“I’ll make amends. Again,” she vowed, looking up into Gorman’s eyes. For a brief moment, it was like the old days, the spark she felt when Gorman Littlebrook turned his deep brown gaze upon her, the look on his face a combination of admiration and desire.
He dropped his head and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “It’ll be alright, Effie,” he said against her skin. “We’ll get him back.”
* * * *
“I don’t think he’s stirring. I think he’s dead.”
Lucan considered the words spoken by the watery-sounding voice beyond his eyelids. He had died and gone to hell, or he was having the worst nightmare humanly possible.
