Dark Champion (37 page)

“Ty…” Renald protested.

“No.”

It was all FitzRoger. The sort of command no one ever disobeyed. Imogen prayed that Renald would knock his friend out before he went on with his madness. He’d done that in the passages, after all. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to occur to him now.

They found Warbrick pinned at the base of the cliff like a maddened bear surrounded by mastiffs. And like a baited bear, he had drawn blood. A body lay nearby and Warbrick’s great sword glinted red in the torchlight.

FitzRoger pushed forward and Imogen went with him. When Warbrick saw FitzRoger, he cursed viciously. “I’ll have my men’s guts around their necks.”

“They tried,” said FitzRoger almost sweetly.

Warbrick straightened. “Well, Bastard. What now?”

“Now I kill you. You deserve to die for your many sins, but you will die for touching my wife.”

Warbrick laughed. “I did more than touch her! Has she told you what happened up there? Of course not. She’d lie about it.”

Imogen would have protested, but FitzRoger’s hand gripped her arm, telling her to be silent.

“She wouldn’t lie. But no matter what happened, only you will suffer. Shield.”

The one-word order immediately brought him a kite shield.

“And for him.”

More reluctantly, one was passed to Warbrick. Imogen took some comfort from the fact that it could not possibly cover his bulk.

Imogen pulled FitzRoger back a little, and he allowed it.

“This is madness,” she hissed. “Hang him. He deserves it.”

“I promised to kill him for you,” he said quietly, flexing his shoulder.

“Then use a rope.”

“No.”

“I take back my request. Let the king deal with it.”

“No. He must die by my hand.”

She wanted to hit him. “You’re in no state!” she protested. “You’ve that wound, and it’s a miracle that blow didn’t break your shoulder!”

His hand covered her mouth, and not gently. His eyes were almost cold with the killing fury that possessed him. “You will be silent,” he said. “You will stand here where it is safe, and watch in silence as a good wife should.”

When he released her, she snapped, “And what am I supposed to do if you lose?”

He shook his head. “I’ll have to take to beating you, won’t I? If I lose, at least don’t give yourself to the victor.”

She watched him limp away, filled with exasperation. Merely a stiff leg? She doubted it. If she thought she had any chance of accomplishing it, she would order his men to tie him back up to a tree while she hanged Warbrick herself.

They’d never obey.

The idea came to her.

It terrified her.

But these past days she’d done so many things that terrified her that one more hardly seemed to matter. Before she lost her nerve, she picked up a fist-sized rock and swung it hard at her husband’s unprotected head.

She’d not wanted to kill him and she thought for an awful moment that she’d not hit hard enough. He staggered and turned, rage blazing in his eyes.

Then he crumpled at her feet.

All the men except Warbrick. He guffawed. “Know he can’t beat me, eh?”

Imogen turned to look at Warbrick. “Kill him,” she said coldly to the men. “I don’t care how. Kill him.”

There was an eerie stillness, then a man with a bow coldly nocked an arrow and let loose. Cursing, Warbrick caught it on his shield, but another man had a bow and stuck him in the arm. Imogen watched as her enemy became bristled with arrows as FitzRoger had once been, but this time without the protection of mail.

Warbrick was not a coward. He charged his attackers, but cold-eyed men drove him back to be victim to more arrows.

He was roaring and staggering about, threatening his assailants like a maddened animal. Then at last an arrow took him deep in the chest and he crumpled with a last cry of agony and defeat.

Silence fell.

Sickened back to her wits, Imogen turned away from the man’s final twitching moments, wondering just what her husband was going to do to her. Bone-rattling shudders began to rack her. She had actually knocked FitzRoger out to prevent him from taking part in what he probably regarded as a duel of honor.

She half expected to find him facing her, rage still sheeting from those green eyes, but he was on the ground and trussed up. He appeared to still be unconscious.

“I had to give him another little tap,” said Renald, shaking his head. “By the thorns, Imogen. I don’t know…”

“N-nor d-do I,” she stammered, hugging herself. “You haven’t‘t-tied him too tight, have you? H-his wounds…”

“He’s tied tight enough to hold him,” Renald said. Grimly he added, “I hope. I’m working on the belief that he’ll regret it afterward if he throttles you with his bare hands.”

Imogen covered her mouth with her shaking hand. “H-he’ll be that angry?”

“I have no idea how angry he’ll be. Nothing like this has ever happened before. My plan, however, is to escort you to Cleeve while the men put him in a bed with a strong sleeping draft. Then we just hope that he’s too wounded to set out after you until he’s cooled down a bit.”

Imogen desperately wanted to tend her husband with her own hands, but she had some sense left. “Yes please,” she said meekly. “But please untie him as soon as possible.”

Renald gave his orders, and those for disposing of Warbrick, then escorted Imogen around to the gate to get horses. Her knees were weak, and her head as misty as the gray morning. She shivered constantly and not just with cold.

What was going to happen to her? If she was lucky, he’d just beat her half to death.

Her terror was that he’d cast her off.

Renald took time to find her some wine and a thick cloak, but then he and six men carried her off to Cleeve at an urgent gallop.

Imogen managed to stay on her horse, but when she dismounted she collapsed, and the next thing she knew she was in a bed at Cleeve, sore from head to foot, and miserable as the devil.

Given the situation, she rather wanted to keep her eyes closed forever, but she opened them a crack, then wider to search the room. She had expected FitzRoger to be there, waiting to visit his rage upon her. When she realized he wasn’t, her heart sank and her mind immediately conjured up the worst.

He was too wounded to move.

He was dead.

He never wanted to see her again.

Imogen turned and wept heartbreaking tears. She could clearly hear him once saying, “I hope at least that you never cry because of me, though I suspect you probably will.” She didn’t think either of them had expected her to cry at his loss.

Imogen slept again, the sleep of exhaustion, and woke in the evening no better in mind or body. This time, however, she did not weep, but started wearily to put together some sort of existence.

When she sat up, aching in every part of her body, she found ale and bread by the bed. The bread had begun to harden, and the ale had caught a few flies, but she ate and drank anyway.

Then she assessed her physical hurts. Her feet were sore again in places, and when she inspected them, some of the worst wounds had been revived. No matter. She had nowhere to go.

She had an alarming number of bruises and scrapes with no recollection of how she had acquired them, but the sorest spot was her face. She gingerly felt her jaw, which Warbrick’s blow had made very painful; she had no doubt she was black and blue there. Her fingers found another hurt, and traced the jagged gash in her cheek made by the flying piece of the lanthorn.

A thin wail escaped her when she realized she would be scarred. She shut her mouth on that weakness, but she could not stop the tears that rolled down to drip off her cheeks.

A woman peeped around the door, then came in. “Why, my lady, what’s the matter? Never fret. All’s well now.”

That struck Imogen as hilariously funny, but she managed not to giggle. “My face!” she gasped.

The middle-aged woman grimaced. “‘Aye. it’ll never be quite as it was. But it’ll look better when it’s healed, you’ll see. I’ll get some of old Margery’s salve for it. That’ll help.” She came over and picked up the cup and platter. “Now, lady, do you feel ready for a bath?”

Imogen realized that she was stripped to her shift, but even that was stained with dirt and blood. Her hair was sticky with gore. She stank of blood. “Yes,” she said.

When the woman had bustled off, Imogen climbed wincing out of bed and looked down at herself. In disgust, she tore off the ragged shift and wrapped herself in a sheet. The shift was good for nothing but rags now, she thought, then she saw one particular set of bloodstains.

Among all the other stains no one would note them, but Imogen knew they were the marks of the consummation of her marriage. She slid down sadly against the bed, clutching the garment. For a brief while then, at their darkest hour, she had been happy and so had he. FitzRoger had opened himself to her as perhaps he had never done to another. He had trusted her.

And she had betrayed him.

It had been a betrayal.

Honor said she should have let him go to his death.

She could not have done that, though. She contemplated the matter sadly and decided that she would do the same thing again. If she had the courage. That was what was lacking now—the insane recklessness of living with death for twenty-four hours.

Servants brought the tub—the same tub she had used when she had first come to Cleeve. She’d been in a disgusting state then, too, she thought wryly. They lined it with cloths and filled it with warm herb-scented water. Imogen was assisted into it among horrified exclamations at her scrapes and bruises.

Then one woman exclaimed, “Oh, lady! Your hair. Your beautiful hair!”

Imogen’s hand flew to the severed plait, finding the ragged end brushing her collarbone. She clutched at the other, still thick down to her thighs.

The women began to unravel the long plait in deathly silence. It only took fingers to untangle the stubby one. No one said a thing, but their shock echoed in the room. Hair was any lady’s glory, and length was one of the most prized attributes. Some ladies had to content themselves with plaits down to the waist, or even to the breasts. Many extended their deficient hair with false braids.

No lady had hair that was almost too short to braid at all.

“Cut the other side,” said Imogen flatly.

“Oh lady…”

“I can hardly have one side long, one side short. Cut it.”

A woman fetched a sharp knife and with unsteady hands trimmed Imogen’s hair until it was all the same length.

“Oh, lady,” said one, incautiously. “You look just like a boy!”

“At least it will be easier to wash,” said Imogen staunchly. “Does this place boast a mirror?”

“Oh, I don’t think…”

Imogen fixed the ditherer with an icy stare. “Get it.” The woman rolled her eyes and scurried off.

Imogen forced herself to relax and let the women wash her. What can’t be changed must be endured, and at least her hair would grow. How long, though, would it take to achieve its former glory? She had no idea. Her hair had not been cut since she was a child.

Years, she suspected.

Among all her other troubles, this should be nothing, and yet it clogged her mind and heart like a dismal cloud.

At least, as she had said, it was easy to wash out the grime and blood, though the women were stumped as to what to do with it afterward. “I could make it into plaits, lady,” one said dubiously.

Stubby little plaits? “No, leave it. Where’s that mirror?”

Eventually it arrived, a plain one of polished silver, but adequate. Imogen was dressed by then in a borrowed shift.

She held the mirror at arm’s length. Braced though she was, she could not suppress a gasp.

One side of her face was black, blue and yellow, and swollen to boot. The other was marred by an angry weeping gash. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her hair, which had always been merely wavy when long, was now drying into a frizz of unruly curls.

And in a beam of sunlight, it
did
look ginger!

Imogen thrust the looking glass into a woman’s hands and retreated, lips quivering, to the bed. “Go away!” she commanded, and the women went.

A little later there was a knock on the door. Imogen ignored it. One thing was certain, FitzRoger would not knock. The door opened. Imogen looked up, hoping despite sense. It was Renald.

She saw him wince at the sight of her, and turned away. “What are you doing here?”

“You think I’d rather be at Carrisford?” he asked dryly. “Mind you, the state you’re in I think I should perhaps have left you there. Ty would have to be a monster to take vengeance on you now.”

Imogen gritted her teeth. “Renald, if you think that is any comfort, you’re wrong. I’m a freak.”

He came over to stand in her line of sight. “Wounds heal, Imogen. I’ve seen enough, and yours won’t leave serious marks.”

“My hair!” she wailed.

He shook his head. “Amid everything, you’re worried about your
hair
?”

She looked at him miserably. “How is he?”

“I don’t know. There’s been no word.”

“Oh.” After a moment, she said, “Perhaps we should send a messenger.”

“That would tell him where you are.”

She sat up abruptly. “He doesn’t know? Then send one!”

Renald wrinkled his brow. “That may not be wise, Imogen. Give him time.”

Imogen couldn’t believe this. “If he’s conscious, he’ll be concerned. It’s not right to worry him so.”

“
Worry
him!” exclaimed Renald, wide-eyed. Then he shrugged. “I haven’t understood you two from the beginning, so if you want me to send a messenger, I will.”

“I want you to.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” shrieked Imogen, then winced as her jaw complained. Her already shaken nerves were jittering even more at Renald’s uneasiness. Did he really think FitzRoger would charge in here and take her apart, piece by piece?

Perhaps he did.

Renald went toward the door, then turned, very serious. “One thing, Imogen. Don’t even think about trying to hold Cleeve against Ty. I’ll truss you and toss you over the walls first.”

“I wouldn’t!” she gasped.

He shrugged. “Just wanted to make it clear. I don’t know what you’d be likely to do anymore.”

Imogen collapsed back against her pillows. She knew she should be terrified of her husband’s knowing where she was, but all she wanted was news that he was safe.

No news came that night and Imogen settled to sleep, suddenly aware that she was sleeping in FitzRoger’s bed. Of course they would bring her to the castle solar. Where else?

There was nothing to mark the place as his, for most of his personal possessions were at Carrisford, and the others were locked in chests. But she thought she could sense his presence lingering here.

She hugged a pillow that presumably had cradled his head, and drifted off to sleep.

When daylight woke her from tormented dreams, matters looked no better.

She had to accept that for a woman to strike her husband, strike him unconscious, was a very grave matter. She wasn’t even sure it wouldn’t cost her her life.

She couldn’t believe that FitzRoger would demand that penalty, but he could hardly allow her to go unpunished. Confinement on bread and water? A public beating? Her greatest fear was that he would cast her off entirely.

What was she going to do if he sent her to a convent? She wondered if what she had done was grounds for divorce.

She laid her hand over her flat belly. There was a small chance that she was with child. She earnestly prayed that she was. She knew, with his history, that FitzRoger would never put aside a wife who was bearing his child.

But even if he took her back, would he ever relax with her again? Ever trust her again?

Still she knew that in the same situation she would do the same thing if she could. She’d burn at the stake to save his life. Her thoughts trudged around and around in weary circles.

A tap on the door brought servants, servants bearing familiar chests and even Imogen’s harp. One of the maids was Elswith, nervous but smiling.