Martyr's Fire (14 page)

“All that remains is the wait,” Hawkwood said. “And the longer it takes, the less his chances.”

Katherine closed her eyes and summoned the vision of her last meeting with Thomas.
“I am sorry, m’lady,”
Thomas had said before banishing her. He had lifted her hand from his arm, then took some of her hair and wiped her face of tears.
“I cannot trust you. This battle—whatever it might be—I fight alone. Please depart Magnus.”

Those were the words that echoed now:
“I fight alone.”

It was at least five minutes before Hawkwood spoke again. “He leaves the entrance now.”

Katherine opened her eyes wide. And drew her breath in sharply.

For at Thomas’s side was another, a person she recognized instantly.

Slim body, long dark hair, haunting half smile of arrogance, now touched with fear. Isabelle Mewburn. The daughter of the former lord of Magnus. Isabelle Mewburn. Who had once proclaimed love for Thomas as a means to assassinate him.

Katherine could not help but feel a stab of jealousy. She knew that Thomas had once been captivated by that royal grace and the stunning features of a fine, pale face. And now, clothed in a dress that made the ladies around her look like shabby peasants, Isabelle seemed more heart winning than ever.

To a casual observer, it might appear that Isabelle merely accompanied the lowly monk’s assistant. Yet as Thomas descended the steps at Isabelle’s side, Katherine could see strain etched across her face and the falseness of the smiles she offered passersby. For Thomas discreetly had hold of her elbow with his left hand. His right hand was hidden beneath his cape.

Katherine guessed he held a dagger and that he had threatened her life at the slightest attempt of escape, the slightest attempt of obstruction by any of the castle guards. Yet with her dead, Thomas would surely be killed as well.

He was that desperate—that ready to gamble his life.

They reached the courtyard ground.

At the top of the stairs appeared two guards, watching closely every move that Thomas made. They followed from ten yards behind.

Thomas guided Isabelle to his horse. The boy removed the reins from the tree and placed them across the horse’s neck.

Isabelle balked as Thomas gestured upward, then slumped as he said something Katherine was unable to hear. A renewed threat to plunge the dagger deep?

She swung up onto the horse.

At that, the idle chatter in the courtyard stopped as if cut by the knife Thomas most certainly held.

“How strange, how crude,” the whispers began, “a royal lady mounting a horse in full dress.”

Some pointed, and all continued to stare.

Isabelle remained slumped in defeat. Until Thomas moved to climb up behind her. At the moment his grip shifted on the unseen dagger, she kicked the horse into sudden motion.

Thomas slipped, then clutched at the saddle.

His dagger fell earthward.

The next moments became a jumble. Thomas strained to pull himself onto the now galloping horse. Isabelle kicked at his face, and both nearly toppled from the horse. People threw themselves in all directions to avoid the thundering hooves.

And the following guards noticed the dagger lying in the dust. Free now to act, the first one shouted. “Stop him! He kidnaps the lord’s daughter!”

Knights scrambled to their horses. Screams and shouts added to the general panic.

Thomas now had his arms around Isabelle’s waist. The horse was
galloping in frenzied circles, once passing so close to Katherine that a kicked pebble struck her cheek.

It was his only saving grace, the speed of the horse. Had its panic not been so murderous, Isabelle could have thrown herself free. Instead, she could now only cling to the horse’s neck.

Thomas finally reached a sitting position in the saddle and roared rage as he reached for the flapping reins. His hands found one, then the other.

“Raise the drawbridge!” the other guard shouted. “Call ahead and tell them to raise the drawbridge!”

Thomas pulled the reins. The horse responded instantly to the bit. Thomas spun the horse in the direction of the courtyard entrance, then spurred it forward amid the shouting and confusion.

People once again scattered, except for a solitary knight with a two-handed grip on a long broadsword. The knight braced to swing as the horse approached him.

That iron will cleave a leg!
Katherine wanted to scream.

As the horse reached, then began to pass the knight, arrows flew. Three whizzed above Thomas and stuck into the stone wall of the courtyard. The last struck the knight’s right shoulder, and he dropped in agony. The sword clattered to the ground, useless.

Thomas swept through the gateway and thundered toward the drawbridge.

Katherine scrambled with all the other people in the courtyard to catch a glimpse of what might happen next.

Thomas and the horse passed into the shadows of the gateway.

Already, the bridge was a third of the way raised!

Yet Thomas did not slow the horse. A clatter of hooves on stone, then on wood. Then silence as the horse leaped skyward from the rising bridge
and landed safely on the other side of the moat. In the hush of disbelief that followed, that sudden silence became a sigh.

Almost immediately, the thundering of more hooves broke the sigh of silence.

Four knights had finally readied their horses, and the first charged through the courtyard gate toward the drawbridge.

After seeing Thomas escape, Katherine had relaxed. Now, with a deadly group of four in pursuit, Katherine clenched her fists again and for the first time felt the pain. In her fear, she had driven two fingernails through the skin of her palm, and in the heat of action, she had not noticed.

Katherine forced her hands to open again and ignored the tiny rivulets of blood. She could not stop the urge to draw huge lungs full of air, as if she, not Thomas, were in full flight.

Thomas must escape. Yet we are so helpless
.

She spun sideways in shock to hear Hawkwood softly laughing.

“Look!” He pointed from their vantage point at the front of the gathered crowd. “The drawbridge.”

All four horses skidded and skittered to a complete stop in the archway at the drawbridge. One bucked and pawed the air in fear.

For the huge wooden structure was still rising!

Loud bellows of enraged knights broke the air.

“Fools! Winch it down!”

Hawkwood’s delighted chuckle deepened. “Such a bridge weighs far too much to be dropped. They’ll have to lower it as slowly as it was raised. With three roads to choose on the other side and open fields in all directions, Thomas will have made good his escape!”

Five minutes later, when the drawbridge was finally in place again, they saw the obvious confusion of the knights as they pranced in hesitant circles at the crossroad beyond the moat.

Hawkwood touched her arm.

“Much has yet to be done,” he said. “But if he truly is one of us, we could not ask for more.”

Katherine tried to smile.

Yes, she could exult that Thomas still lived. And still lived in freedom.

But he was not alone. And it was not she but another at his side.

“Our friend Thomas is free,” Hawkwood said. “Yet there is much that troubles me.”

Katherine watched his features closely.
There is much that troubles me too. I cannot shake my last vision of him. The reins in his hands. The stallion in full flight. And her … far too beautiful, and Thomas behind her on that horse, holding her far too tight
.

Katherine did not voice those thoughts. Instead, she said simply, “I am sorry you are troubled.”

They stood at the crossroads outside the town walls of York. Behind them lay the confusion and chaos of an entire population buzzing with the incredible news. The lord’s daughter has been taken hostage! Kidnapped in daylight beneath the very noses of the courtyard knights!

Those same knights had already scattered in all directions from the crossroads where Hawkwood and Katherine and a handful of travelers now stood, each knight engaged in useless pursuit of a powerful horse long since gone on roads that would carry no tracks.

Hawkwood, however, had his head bent even lower now as he searched the hard ground of the well-traveled roads.

“Stay with me,” he said softly, leading the horses. “We shall talk as we follow Thomas.”

“Follow Thomas?” Katherine echoed with equal softness. “Half an army runs in circles of useless pursuit. If he has escaped them, most surely he has also escaped us.”

Hawkwood laughed quietly. “Hardly, my child. Do you not remember the puppy he left behind with his secret treasure of books?”

Of course. In the excitement of his escape, Katherine had allowed herself to forget that Thomas must soon return to the cave that held those books.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “We shall find him there. We know he’ll have to get back to his books within several days. After all, regardless of his plans, he will not let the puppy die of starvation.”

Hawkwood continued his low chuckle. “That only demonstrates that once again when you think of Thomas, you think with your heart. You wish him to have the nobleness of mind that would not let an innocent animal die a horrible death.”

“It is otherwise?” Katherine challenged, even though her face flushed at Hawkwood’s remark.

“Perhaps not. But others might believe Thomas will return to his puppy merely because of the more valuable books nearby.”

Katherine ignored that. “So we proceed back to the valley of the cave and wait.”

“Not so,” Hawkwood replied. “That is far too long, and time is now too precious.”

“Until then?” Katherine asked. She did not want to think about the days Thomas would pass in the company of such an attractive hostage, one who had once claimed a true love for Thomas.

“We will find Thomas by nightfall,” Hawkwood promised. His head was still down, and he still examined the ground carefully.

“That shows much confidence.”

“No,” Hawkwood said, smiling. “Foresight.”

Hawkwood grinned triumph and then hurried ahead on the road that led northeast to Scarborough on the North Sea.

Several minutes later, Hawkwood stopped and dropped his voice to a whisper.

“Speak truth now,” he warned. “An hour back, in York, you were convinced I had lost my mind to purchase that sack of flour in the midst of our hurry to reach Thomas in the lord’s courtyard before he could attempt to take his hostage.”

“I-I …,” Katherine stammered.

“Answer enough.”

Hawkwood tapped the ground at his feet with the end of his cane.

“There,” he said. “Our trail to Thomas.”

He rubbed the tip of his cane through a slight dusting of coarse unmilled flour.

Katherine nodded, unable to hide her own sudden smile at Hawkwood’s obvious delight in himself and at the implications of that flour. After all, in the courtyard had she not distracted the keeper of Thomas’s horse while Hawkwood loaded that flour into a saddlebag?

“Yes,” Hawkwood said as if reading her mind, “I cut a small hole in his saddlebag, and of course, in the sack of flour. Unmilled and still coarse, the flour that falls through is heavy enough to leave a trail wherever he goes.”

A mile farther, Katherine remembered Hawkwood’s words at the crossroads.

“What troubles you about the freedom Thomas so dangerously earned?” she asked.

Hawkwood’s eyes searched ahead for the next traces of flour as he walked. He answered without pausing in his search.

“Thomas should never have escaped York.”

“God was with him, to be sure,” Katherine agreed.

“Perhaps,” Hawkwood said a step later, “but I suspect instead the Druids in York provided earthly help.”

“He nearly lost his life,” Katherine protested.

“Are you certain? Describe the events you recall.”

Were not the subject matter so serious, Katherine might have enjoyed this test of logic. Somewhere in those events were clues Hawkwood had noticed and now wanted her to find. She summoned vivid memories.

“He left the castle with Isabelle, a dagger hidden beneath his cloak and pressed against her ribs.”