In the Shadow of Midnight (10 page)

“You are
not
needed,” she assured him, snatching the capons from the one churl and handing them to another who had been waiting to skewer them. At the sight of her husband’s scowl, she sighed and smiled, and reached up a delicate white hand to press against his cheek.
“Wanted
… yea, a thousand times over, my lusty and handsome wolf’s head, but at the moment, definitely not needed.
Sparrow!”
The chatelaine’s sharp blue eyes flicked past the Wolf’s shoulder as she caught sight of another movement in the shadows. “Sparrow, where have you been! Biddy has been scouring the rafters for you.”

“Well, I am found now, am I not?” he groused sullenly. “And I should like to see the day Old Blister scours anything for anyone.”

“Is that so?”

Sparrow felt, rather than saw, the knuckled fist swing out at him from the gloom of the landing.

“Forsooth, I should scour the ears from your head after I box them free, you rancid little puffin of a man!”

Biddy had crept up on him with the stealth of a cat, and if not for lightning reflexes and elfin speed, Sparrow might well have taken an unexpected flight headlong down the steep span of stairs. As it was, he ducked and pivoted on a heel, then took intentional flight upward with a hop and a skip, landing on a ledge carved halfway up the wall.

Biddy’s grasping fist was mere inches behind, and, with an
“Aaawk!”
of genuine consternation, Sparrow leaped again,
seeming to climb by finger and toeholds to an even safer sanctuary. Reaching a window embrasure, he plumped himself on the stone casement and glared down at his nemesis.

“Scour me now, Troll,” he snorted, his arms folded in smug defiance over his chest. “Would you had not eaten half a harvest at noontide, you might have succeeded.”

Biddy countered the insult with narrowed eyes. “Would that you
had
eaten half a harvest at noontide you would be able to remain on your perch through the smells of the coming feast. As it is, however, your belly will send you down long before I grow tired of waiting.”

Everyone within earshot snickered. Rare was the day that passed when the two were not exchanging verbal or physical blows. Sparrow had been the Wolf’s man for nearly three decades, while Biddy—well past her sixtieth year and still full of spit and vinegar—had been nurse and maid to Servanne’s mother before becoming the fiercely protective guardian to the daughter. Over the years, Sparrow had managed to maintain the youthful appearance and agility of a wood sprite, but Biddy had grown as round and plump as a larded dumpling. What she had lost in speed, however, she had gained in perseverance, and their positions as stalked and stalker reversed on a regular basis.

This day, their minor drama was eclipsed by the arriving hail of tiny booted feet. Three dark-haired boys and two squealing girls raced full tilt out of the darkness of the upper landing and tumbled down the stairs into the great hall. They ran toward their parents, converging from five points of attack to grasp a leg or an arm or a folded pleat of skirting. Robert followed at a more sedate pace, the sixth and youngest bundle of energy squirming in his arms and wailing to be set free to join the general melee.

“Sweet Mother Mary,” Servanne said with a helpless laugh. “Why do I even think I can run this household as a normal dwelling? I should simply throw the gates wide and invite Chaos to move in amongst us.”

The Wolf glanced down at his beautiful wife and his look of adoration encompassed the seven handsome children she
had given him. “Chaos is already here, my love, and in truth, I would not have had it any other way.”

“Liar,” she muttered, but tilted her mouth up to his for a kiss that left both their eyes shining.

The Wolf felt the clutch of a tiny fist on his sleeve and turned to answer the wail of his youngest babe, but a sudden stab of pain in his hip and thigh transformed the movement into a dizzying moment of instability.

“There,” Servanne said smartly. “Did I not tell you you were trying to do too much too soon! Children—leave go of your father. Robin, give Rhiannon to Biddy and fetch your father’s walking sticks.”

“Robert—stand fast,” the Wolf commanded. “I neither want nor need any blasted walking sticks. The wound is a nuisance, nothing more. And a good deal less than what I have endured in the past.”

“In the past, you were a good deal younger,” Servanne reminded him. “Robin, the sticks, if you please.”

“Robert …” The warning in the Wolf’s voice was as silkily deceptive as the faint tug of a smile that curved his lips. “You may indeed fetch the sticks. Fetch them directly into the fire.”

Robert looked from his mother to his father. He handed the babe into Biddy’s pendulous arms then picked up the two carved and polished oak staffs the castle carpenter had fashioned into crutches. One after the other, he tucked the sticks under the crooks of his father’s arms, securing them with a look of icy blue challenge in his eyes.

“After so many similar battles,” he said with a pragmatism far beyond his years, “do you still think you can win an argument with Mother?”

The Wolf stared at his son for a long moment—a moment poised between violence and grudging respect—and because he could not help but see his wife in the boy’s eyes, he tilted his head back and broke the tension with a deep, husky laugh.

“By God, he must be a fitting handful for Eduard.”

“He is a true wolf’s cub,” Alaric agreed lightly. “I see more of you growing in him each day.”

“Whereas I see more of his mother.” The gesture that accompanied another robust roll of laughter sent Lord Randwulf swaying off balance again and both Alaric and Robert reached out hastily to offer assistance. “Bah! Heave off, the pair of you; I am not ready to meet the floor just yet. Come with me while I hobble and limp my way into a corner where,
Deo volente
, we shall be left in peace with a tankard or two of good, strong ale. Where the devil is Eduard? Surely, by St. Anthony’s longest whisker, he has not been away so long as to forget his way to the cellars?”

E
duard could have found his way to the huge cellars blindfolded. The descent into the bowels of the keep took him down a winding corkscrew staircase, the passage lit at intervals by torches propped in iron cressets bolted to the stone walls. Where there was a torch, there was usually a landing or passageway marking the entrances to the rooms used for storing grain and vegetables, bolts of precious cloth, oaken bins of recently harvested apples and turnips. In this vaulted underbelly of the castle there were also chambers originally designed for confining prisoners, and, in a salle one had to pass before reaching the deep, cool core where the casks of wine and ale were kept, there was a complete armoury that could be used in times of siege to repair and replace expended weaponry.

Neither the donjons nor the armoury had been used in recent years, although both were lit and cleaned regularly to discourage rats and other rodents from increasing their families. The armoury was also used to store the castle’s private stock of weaponry, with racks of swords, lances, crossbows, and precious hoards of raw iron. Here, with its heady smell of well-oiled metal and leather, Eduard had often come to admire the Wolf’s cache of deadly trophies won in tournaments and battles he had fought from one end of the Continent to the other. The walls of the great hall were hung with crossed swords and lances, decorated with the pennants and prizes won from his foes … hundreds of each, to be gazed upon with proud remembrances, each with its own story of victory, of meeting and overcoming impossible or improbable odds. But here, in the darkest heart of his castle, was where Lord Randwulf kept his private victories. Here were kept the stories he would not boast of before a roomful of boisterous knights.

There was the sword King Richard had given him on the redoubt outside Jerusalem—the same sword he had
not
used to obey the command to aid in the slaughter of a thousand unarmed prisoners Richard had had no further use for. There was
the armour, black and gleaming, he had worn the day he had met his brother Etienne in mortal combat at Bloodmoor Keep … and never worn again. There was the sword—oddly shaped and fitted with iron sleeves that could add or decrease the weight and balance of the weapon—the Wolf had used this long ago to strengthen an arm so ravaged by hideous wounding the physician had predicted he would never use it again.

Eduard’s footsteps slowed, as they often did when he passed the armoury. The door to the chamber was partially open and a light glowed from inside—nothing unusual in itself, and he might not have stopped, might not even have taken a second glance had the faint but unmistakable rasp of a sword leaving its sheath not set the fine hairs across the back of his neck prickling an alert.

FitzRandwulf’s hand dropped instinctively to the hilt of his own sword and he stepped quickly to one side of the door, his back pressed to the wall and his body immersed in the darkness.

A shadow cut across the path of the light where it spilled out into the corridor and Eduard’s gaze flicked to the wall on the far side of the chamber. A silhouette bloomed larger than life on the rough stone, thrown there by whoever was cutting and capering in front of the torch. It was the silhouette of a woman, identifiable by the unbroken sweep of her skirt. She was holding a sword, testing its weight and balance, and as she spun to parry the thrust from an imaginary opponent, the long, unbound waves of her hair lifted around her shoulders.

Eduard’s hand relaxed from his sword and he let out his breath in a slow, steady stream. Whoever the girl was, she had a deal of gall to be in there touching things she had no business touching. He took an angry step toward the door, but was brought to a dead halt again as the intensity of light was broken a second time, not by a shadow, but by the flesh and blood outline of the guilty culprit herself.

The woman’s shape was blurred by the loose-fitting tunic she wore; more so by the incredible abundance of fiery red hair that tumbled and swirled about her shoulders in a sleek, shining mass of curls. Her movements—twisting, dodging, pivotting
on her heels—caused the gleaming red waves to dance like live flames in the torchlight, fanning out in a bright coppery swirl when she spun, and crushing to her shoulders in a froth of red and gold and amber when she stopped or suddenly changed directions.

“Hah! Foiled, Sir Knight,” she muttered in smug triumph. “And such a pity to have to bleed all over your fine new tunic.”

Intrigued, Eduard folded his arms over his chest and watched. The girl was not familiar to him, but then he had been absent three months and would have no way of knowing any new servants on sight. Although he should have known her. He should have been able to spy the unusual colour of her hair from across the widest part of the bailey.

Eduard’s train of thought, along with his breath, was interrupted abruptly as the girl turned fully into the light and used an impatient hand to push the mist of curls away from her face. It was a face designed to turn a strong man’s knees to water, for it was heart-shaped and presented on a slender, arching throat. Her skin was fair and flawless. Inordinately large, thickly lashed green eyes were set above an exquisitely delicate nose, complimented by a mouth as full and lush and perfectly shaped as any sent to torment a lusty man’s dreams, and Eduard was forced to modify his original assumption that she was a common maid who worked in the castle. Nothing about her was common. Not the colour of her hair, not the colour of her eyes, or the tilt of her chin. Even the wool in her tunic was of the finest weave and the hose he had glimpsed molded around a trim ankle was of sheer, unblemished silk.

She was no stranger to the feel of a sword either. Her grip was firm, her wrist steady. Granted, the weapon she wielded with such gleeful bloodlust was a woman’s shortsword, but it was maneuvered with a confidence and expertise gained only through much practice. Even as he watched, she carefully lifted the blade and sighted along the length of the steel, turning it slightly this way and that to gauge its character against the telling flare of the torchlight.

Midway through her inspection, something beyond
Eduard’s line of sight caught her attention and she slowly lowered the sword again. She moved out of the light and Eduard heard the clink of metal as one weapon was set aside and exchanged for another. When she moved again into the centre of the room, she was holding a heavy longsword, the blade a full three feet long and fashioned from twice-tempered Toledo steel. Eduard recognized the sword. He was familiar with its weight and balance and his first thought was that she must possess an excellent eye to have picked it out from among so many others. His second thought was that the notion was preposterous. A woman knowing one blade from another? Doubtless he would have to step in soon to prevent her from slicing off her own foot.

In the meantime, the girl traced a fine, delicate hand along the edge of the sword, her fingertips skimming over the shallow blood gutter that ran the length of the blade. Using both hands, she lifted the weapon so that the light flared and skipped along the surface of the polished steel, then she swung it in a slow, graceful arc, moving her body side to side, setting her feet in an attack stance.