By Possession (6 page)

A ruby. Bernard's third gift, easily worth two hundred pounds. The temptation after the hallmote to march to this cottage and retrieve this jewel and throw it into Addis de Valence's face had been intense. Two hundred pounds was too high a price for smug satisfaction, however, especially when she could easily escape for nothing. She had been saving this jewel for a purpose, but that purpose had just been severed from her life, and so now she would use it to find a new one.

She scooped the coins back into their sack, but held the ruby while she pulled over her sewing basket. It glittered warmly in her hand. She smiled. If Edith had been nothing but a whore to Bernard, she had been the most expensive whore in Christendom.

CHAPTER 3

S
HE SLIPPED THROUGH
the croft toward the stream, delighting in the faint sounds of crickets and animals and scraping branches. It was a perfect night, cool and breezy after a hot day, so clear that stars specked the sky as far as one could see. She followed the line of the gurgling stream, aiming for her favorite spot, the big flat rock where she could lie in total privacy and dream. On a night like this a girl could be anyone and anyplace on that rock.

She approached the small clearing in the growth where the stream widened and the rock jutted out. Something moved and she paused. A dark form hunching on her rock took shape in the shadows. She stepped forward curiously.

“Who goes there?”

She recognized the voice and it took her a moment to find her own. She should probably run away, but it was her rock after all. “Just a village girl.”

“Your father will beat you if he learns you are out this late.” The voice, normally low and melodic, sounded tight and strangled.

Her father would do no such thing, since he had been gone three days now. It had finally occurred to her that he might not return, but she had not told anyone yet, not even her mother, who had not come down from the castle for over a week this time. She moved in closer. He sat with his legs drawn up, his arms resting on his knees.

“You should not be out this late either,” she said, knowing a thing or two about the rules for the squires.

“They will not miss me. They still celebrate Claire's birthday.”

An odd thing to say. Claire at least should miss him. She herself had been to the feast at midday, but had not been invited to the evening meal.

She thought about his expression at that earlier celebration, and his sober withdrawal amidst the revelry, and Claire's pique that he hadn't been as much fun as usual. Thoughtless Claire.

“I'm sorry about your mother,” she whispered, wanting him to know that she understood why he was here. In a way it was why she had come too. Her own heart was heavy with the realization that her father had left for good and might as well have died.

He turned to her, the shadows barely showing his features except the lights in his eyes which burned like an animal's in the night. His silent regard lasted a long time, and she wondered if she had angered him. “Will you be going home?” she asked.

“Nay. She would be buried before I got there.” He looked away and spoke bitterly. “It is a small thing to them. They hardly knew her, except Bernard, but even he … a person passes and life goes on. The day has been so damn normal.…”

“It is astonishing, isn't it? I remember when my little brother died. I felt the earth, the air, every plant had changed. After we buried him my mother came home and began cooking and cleaning like she did every day. I was furious with her. A momentous event had occurred, to my mind, one that changed everything. But almost immediately the hole he had left just began filling in.”

“At least you were among people who acknowledged his small significance. At least, for a few hours or days … Bernard has said the mass tomorrow will be for her, but I do not know how I can attend. People will chatter through it like a normal daily mass, and I will want to kill them.”

She hopped up on the stone next to him. His words broke into odd groupings, as if his thoughts ran ahead of his tongue. His sadness subtly quaked the air around him and tore at her heart. He had come here to be alone with it, but he had not insisted that she go. “What was she like?”

At first she thought he would not respond, or do so angrily and indeed tell her to leave. Instead he stretched out one leg and rested his cheek against the knee of the other and spoke of her. He described scattered images and memories such as a child has of his mother, of small kindnesses and comforts and securities. He talked a long time. At first the words came haltingly, then more smoothly, but finally with a rough, throaty tone that said his composure was breaking. Without thinking she placed a hand on his shoulder.

She did not remember how they ended up lying on that warm rock with her arms around his large frame, cradling him the way her mother had comforted her when her brother died, his face against her breast. If he cried it had been silent, more soulful than physical. Her own sadness about her father was relieved by absorbing this higher grief.

They lay there a long while after it had passed with the sweet mood of exposed emotions binding them. She looked to the beautiful sky and savored the sound of the stream, thinking it was delicious to be close to someone like this, even if he was practically a stranger and if in the dark he didn't even know who she was.

In the oddest way the mood slowly changed and became imbued with something tense that she didn't understand. He rose up on his arm and gazed down at her. “How old are you, girl?”

“Thirteen.”

He looked away into the night. “Too young.”

“Too young for what?”

He laughed and her heart skipped with joy that he didn't sound so sad anymore. “Definitely too young.” He rolled away and slid off the rock. “Run home now. If your parents find you gone they will raise the hue and cry.”

She emerged from her reverie as she had entered it, watching the mesmerizing rhythm of the donkey's flanks as it pulled her cart down the road. She glanced back to check how far she had sightlessly traveled. Her pace must have slowed, because the wine merchant's wagon that she had followed most of the morning had disappeared ahead.

It was all coming back to her in memories like this, little pageants from her childhood that had become buried by time and blocked by grief. People die and life goes on and the memories of them are best put away since the grief never really dims otherwise. Still, details ignored are not details forgotten. If she let herself think of Claire or Edith she could still feel the anguish of losing them as if it had been yesterday.

And so it had been with Addis, except that now he had returned from the dead. These thoughts kept insinuating themselves into her mind, sometimes taking it over completely until they ran their course, forcing the old feelings to emerge even if he was no longer the youth on whom they had dwelled.

She looked back at the cart stuffed with trunks and baskets and reeds and stools. The coins were tied in their sack below its planks. The ruby was stitched into the lining of her sewing basket. The emotions of her recollections weighed on her.

A good thing that she had left. If this kept up, she
would have been unable to deny him anything, even seeing now what Claire had done to him and knowing full well the revenge he had taken on her.

She vaguely remembered passing the road south to Salisbury while she daydreamed. In her old plan, that city had been her destination when she finally left. Now it was too close and too small. She headed farther away than that.

The road had been active with travelers all morning, but it had become deserted. She switched her willow at the donkey's flank, thinking it would be wise to catch up with that wine merchant again.

She rounded a bend and, as if summoned by her vague foreboding, three men materialized on the side of the road ahead. Light reflected off their spurs, but then their postures alone bore the arrogance of knights. One crossed the road and they waited for her approach. She urged the donkey to a faster gait and looked straight ahead, hoping they would let her pass.

The two on the left seemed inclined to do so, but the one on the right stepped out and grabbed the donkey's bridle. Instinct alerted her caution.

“Where do you hail from, woman?” he asked. The heavy stubble of a dark beard shadowed his face and his cotte looked soiled by dirt and food.

“My home is far from here. I have just been to the markets in some towns back a ways.”

“Did you stop at Darwendon?” another asked while he lifted one of her best baskets from the cart. She wondered if he could assess its value and hence his question. A basket like that, with its several colors and intricate weaving, was not the sort one sold at a town market but rather to the mistress of a manor.

“Nay. If you like that you may take it for your lady,” she offered, hoping she could buy them off.

“Still, you must have heard talk at the towns. About Darwendon.”

“I seem to recall some comments, but I was just passing through and paid little attention.”

“What sort of comments?”

“This and that. The condition of the crops, the number of young sheep …”

“Nothing else? About the lord, perhaps?”

A pluck of apprehension scurried up her spine. These knights wore no livery that proclaimed their lord's retinue. Either they were without a liege lord, and possibly brigands living off the theft of travelers, or they sought to hide their identity. In either case they were dangerous. “The lord? Oh, you mean the one who returned recently. Aye, there was some talk of him. A hard man, they say.”

“Is he there now? At Darwendon?” The knight holding the donkey peered at her. His eyes reminded her of a fox.

Which would be the better answer? If they knew he was gone, perhaps they would go and lie in wait for him. “Aye, he is there.”

The fox released the bridle with a thin smile that said she had chosen wrongly. Hands on hips, with a swaggering authority that made her stomach churn, he paced around the cart eyeing its contents. “Others who passed said he left yesterday. You are lying. I wonder why.”

“I do not lie. As I said, I did not pay attention. What do I care about the doings at Darwendon?”

He returned and gave her a look that suggested her truthfulness didn't really matter, that he had moved on to other considerations. The fox eyes glowed and drifted down her body. “Does a basket maker visiting markets always bring her chests and stools? Perhaps you came from there. Perhaps while the hard lord is gone you seek to escape him.”

“Perhaps I do, or perhaps I come from one of the other manors or towns nearby. What difference does it make?”

He grinned at his friends. “None.”

She flicked the willow switch and the donkey stepped forward. “Then I bid you good day.”

Her dismissive tone usually did the trick with men. Certainly it always checked Raymond, but then Raymond at his core was an honorable knight. These three were not. A hand shot out and clutched the bridle again. She watched those fingers close on the leather and knew for certain that she was in horrible trouble. Raw fear gripped her.

“Where is your man?” the fox asked, looking up and down the road, toying with her, emphasizing their isolation.

She battled the panic that wanted to shriek. “Back a short ways. Just behind the bend. A wheel came loose on the other cart. He will be here shortly.”

He smiled, charmed that she would even try such a ruse. “The road has grown very quiet,” he said to the others. “It must be mealtime.”

They laughed and stared at her like so many wolves cornering a chicken. Her stomach heaved. Blind desperation broke. She swung the switch around, slashing all of their faces, then brought it down hard on the donkey.

He lurched forward into an awkward gallop but a donkey leading a cart could hardly outrun them. Still she whipped and whipped, praying they would give up their game. Instead boots pounded up behind her and hands pulled at the cart's walls. The fox leapt up beside her and grabbed the reins with one hand while he twisted her veil and hair with the other.

“Bitch!” he growled, wiping the thin line of blood on his cheek with his arm. He shoved her out of the cart into the arms stretching up to grab her.

She fought like an animal, terror and fury giving her strength. She pummeled and twisted and kicked and bit in a blur of movement. An arcing hand landed hard against her face, snapping it back, but she still resisted. A fist swung into her stomach and the pain quaked through her whole body.

Resignation nearly defeated her then, but while they carried her into the trees the panic returned and she scratched at the eyes of the man who held her shoulders. Her rebellion slowed them and it took a long while to pull her into a clearing.

They hauled her over to a fallen tree trunk and threw her facedown over it. The hard bark pressed into her sore stomach.