My Lady Faye (17 page)

Simon pressed against her thigh. For him, she would have to. It was more important she live to protect her child. Dear God, what would they do to him if she was not about to see to her son?

“She is not going anywhere.” Odo turned his back on her. “We eat first.”

Will shoved her toward the tree. He turned her and her back hit the hard bark. A flush stained his cheeks, his expression heavy with lust. His raised his filthy, huge hands to her breasts.

Simon glared at Will’s hands. Big hands, coarse and blunt with dark hair across the knuckles, poised to touch her.

“Please.” Faye managed past her parched throat. “Not in front of my son.”

A struggle played across his thick features. Then, he dropped his hands and snatched up the rope.

Faye sank to the ground and tugged Simon as close to her as she could, his small, solid weight warm against her. The ropes cut into her chest and stomach as Will bound them to the tree. Bark poked through her bliaut and dug into her back. Faye prayed silently. She prayed for Gregory to find them, for an act of Mercy to save them and, mostly, for the strength to endure.

Gregory took the horse from one of his attackers. Two of the three men he bested in moments. The third presented more of a challenge. Number four had real skill and set his head ringing with a lucky, blunt edge blow. Five he finished in moments. The sixth made a clever decision and ran.

Gregory silently wished him well. Five deaths hung over him as he tore into the forest with a prayer for their souls on his lips. The men had been determined to kill him. They feared their lord’s wrath more than they feared him and he’d had no choice. Even knowing this did not alleviate the sticky mass of guilt in his gut. Another sin to confess when he returned to the Abbey, but not his most pressing concern.

He stopped and sifted through the sounds of the forest. The breeze whispered through the leaves. Chaffinches called and chuckled from above him. From deeper within the trees came the steady piping of a song thrush. He followed the low murmur of water to a stream.

Footprints in the muddy bank, a woman’s and a smaller set—Faye and Simon. The tracks stopped at the stream and disappeared. Gregory set off through the trees. They must have stuck to the stream’s course.

Calder had men everywhere, more numerous than rats in the grain. They forced him to stop as he evaded group after group. Calder must somehow know they had Simon and acted to retrieve the boy. The number of roving parties of men-at-arms also meant Calder had called in his vassals. The idea of Faye running into one of Calder’s hunting parties rode Gregory hard.

The pinch in his chest increased as the day waned into evening and he still hadn’t found her. By now, she could be anywhere. Back at Calder. The flutter of blue caught his eye. He stared at it as if his mind wandered. A scrap of blue fabric tied to a gorse bush.

He dismounted and studied the scrap. Simon wore a blue tunic, this very blue. The fabric was knotted, not hanging there as if the wind had blown it. Somebody had secured it there, on purpose. Simon. Clever, clever lad and stupid Gregory. He could have passed countless of these throughout the day and not seen them.

He led the horse as he scoured the area for more signs.

* * * *

Faye dared not sleep.

Simon had surrendered to exhaustion, his weight limp against her, his head drooping over his chest.

Full dark surrounded them, the trees too dense for her to see the night sky. The noise around the fire increased and drowned the sounds of the forest.

The boy had produced a flask of mead. Odo wrested it from him and now they passed the flask between them.

Will gripped his crotch and grinned at her, saliva gleaming on his thick lips. He sat with the others and shared the mead, but he waited, coiled and tense, for Odo to give him permission to do his worst. Every time she moved Will’s leer fastened on her. She rested her head against the tree trunk. Tiredness weighed at her limbs, but she must stay awake. Her prayer became a litany she said over and over in her mind. The fire blurred before her exhausted vision. She blinked and shook her head.

A shout from the fire and Faye started.

Simon stirred and wakened. “Mama?”

“Hush, sweeting.”

Ham shook his head, staggered a few steps and collapsed into a heap beside his rocky seat.

The others laughed at him.

Odo surged to his feet and kicked the man’s boots. “Drunken sot.”

Ham twitched and stilled.

Odo tipped the flask to his mouth and swigged.

“Odo.” The thin man swayed in his seat. With a sigh, he dropped over backward. “My head. Dizzy.”

Odo whirled and stared at the second fallen man. He stumbled and stood, swaying and blinking. “Not right,” he said, his words thick and slurred. “Something not right.”

Faye held her breath, not wanting to look away from Odo.

He shook his head and fell to his knees. “The mead.” The earthen flask slipped from his grasp and shattered against a rock surrounding the fire. Mead hit the flame in a hiss and a flare.

“What did you do?” Odo glared at the boy. With a growl, Odo dropped face forward into the dirt. Close enough to be singed by the blaze. The reek of burning hair filled the clearing.

Will groaned, blinked and gripped his head between his hands. “What?”

“Dwale, you dumb ox.” The boy grinned.

Faye’s head felt woolen. Nurse sometimes used dwale to give relief from pain and help the suffering to sleep, but only as a desperate effort, for it killed the drinker as often as healed them. The boy had drugged his companions. If she could only think, she could make some sense of this.

Will went over like a tree, hitting the ground with a thud that shook the earth.

“Right you are then.” The boy sprang to his feet and rubbed his hands together. He tripped across the clearing from one man to the other.

“His hair.” Faye jerked her head at the insensate Odo. Tendrils of smoke rose from his head.

“Let the sod burn.” The boy lifted Will’s head and dropped it to the ground with a
thump
.

“Please?” If Odo caught fire, Faye would be sick, for certain. Simon should not see something so horrible. “Could you move him?”

The boy snorted and shook his head. “Soft, you are, like the other one.”

Her slow brain couldn’t make sense of any of this.

The boy bent and heaved Odo a few inches from the fire. He peered up at her. “You know what he would have done to you.”

“Aye.” She struggled to form coherent words.

“So.” The boy appeared before her. “You are Faye.”

She didn’t know this boy. “Aye.”

From his tunic, he produced a wicked dagger. The boy cut through their ropes.

Tiny needles jabbed at her extremities as Faye moved her hands first and then her arms. Her back shrieked in protest. Faye dug the knife out of her boot. She held it as Gregory had taught her. “Who are you?”

“What do you want with that?” The boy frowned at the dagger. “I am Newt.”

“Newt?” Faye blinked at him. The whole of Anglesea had heard of Newt, the boy who had saved Beatrice in London. “Beatrice’s Newt?” This was Faye’s grubby answer to her prayer.

“Aye.” He grinned and seemed more like a normal boy when he did. “And fortunate for you I was with this lot, or things would have gone awful for you.” Newt studied Simon as her son stood. He turned that sharp stare on her. “You look like Lady Beatrice.”

“We are sisters.”

Newt sniffed and went back to studying Simon.

Simon raised his chin and glared back.

“What were you doing with them?” Faye dropped her dagger to her side.

“Heard there was some trouble up this way. Trouble for some means easy money for others. I drifted up here to see for myself and fell in with this lot.” He gave Will a prod with his boot.

“Where did you…never mind.” If but half Beatrice’s Newt stories were true, Faye did not want to hear where he’d obtained dwale. “You have my thanks.”

“Were not anything,” said Newt. “This lot only share half a mind between them.”

Despite his filth, Faye grabbed Newt and hugged him. His odor made her eyes water, but she didn’t care. He stiffened, but Faye tightened her grip. He had saved her, this unlikely little hero. She released him and slipped the dagger into her boot. “Do you know the way to Anglesea?”

“For certain.” Newt sprang back and eyed her as if afraid she might hug him again. “But you don’t want to go that way. Busier than the road to London that way is. Lots of men are looking for you.”

Gregory had told her to find Aldous. He would look for her there. She knew he would. “Newt.” Tired and hungry as she was, new hope surged within her and gave her strength. “Can you take me north?”

“Ay, my lady.” He held up a grubby finger. “But, then you will be in my debt.”

Probably for the rest of her life. “Indeed.”

Newt grinned and spat. She might see if she could cure him of that disgusting habit on the way to Aldous.

“Let me see what we have here.” Newt rifled through the fallen men and took what he needed. Odo’s body relinquished a purse. Coins clinked from within and Newt grinned. “Knew the cur had some coin on him.” Newt found a dagger on Will. He turned to Simon. “You know how to use this?”

“Aye.” Simon took it from him.

Faye battled not to ask and then shrugged it off. It didn’t matter at this point whom had been teaching her young son to fight with a knife. She would guess Gregory in any case. Gregory. She had no time to think of him now.

Newt finished with his last body and trotted over to them. “Best get going. Odo will come looking for me when he wakes up.”

If he wakes
. Faye had no compassion to spare on the brute as she and Simon followed Newt into the darkness.

Simon heaved an enormous sigh. “More walking.”

“Aye, sweeting, a little farther.”

“Will Gregory come?”

“Aye.” If he was alive, Gregory would come. The weight of “if” pressed on her shoulders. They had been going the wrong way all day. God knew how far out of their path they’d traveled. And there had been six men in the hamlet. Six were steep odds for any single swordsman, no matter how skilled. She couldn’t think on it now or she would lose what little remained of her mind. First she needed to get her and Simon to safety. And Newt.

* * * *

Gregory’s horse went lame around sunset. He’d ridden the poor beast hard all day and it was not the finest of animals. He halted the horse and dropped to the ground. Running his hand over the fetlock, he encountered a swelling on the joint.

“Damn.” Possibly a strain or worse, either way he did not have time to nurse the beast or take it to safety. Unharnessing the animal, he took what he needed from the saddlebags and slapped the horse on the rump. It hobbled a few paces forward and turned to stare at him reproachfully.

“Find yourself a nice warm barn.” He was talking to a horse. He’d lost his mind.

Gregory set off at a run. He’d tracked the bits of tunic back to the stream, hard by where he’d first lost the trail. Faye and Simon moved in an erratic pattern. Gregory could follow the most basic trail, but several times, he lost their tracks and had to retrace his steps.

Night closed in. Faye and Simon were out there, somewhere, without the knowledge or the skills to survive. Faye’s angry words pounded in his brain throughout the day. The Abbot had said something similar about Gregory listening with his heart and not his hard head.

As the hours passed with still no Faye, his mind played a new game with him, one that scared him to the depths of his being. What if he didn’t find her? Ever. Him at the Abbey and Faye at Anglesea was one form of torture. This new one was so much worse.

What a dolt. It staggered him he hadn’t seen any of this before. As long as Faye lived tucked away at Anglesea the chance for them remained. He got to cling to some misty dream of them together. Stupid sod. He believed the choice was his to make. His lady or his Lord. Even the agony of that choice gave him a twisted sense of being in command of his fate.

Fate must be laughing at him now. What if the choice was not his to make anymore?

A lifetime without Faye sliced him to the raw and left him bleeding. A lifetime with not even the chance of Faye in his life. Eight years, he’d known her and loved her. Played her paladin and her partner, her champion and her protector and with one touch of her mouth to his, it had all become hollow and lacking. Indeed, he’d lusted for her until his ballocks ached, but it had no substance until he cupped the sweet weight of her breast in his palm. Reality was infinitely more torturous than fantasy.

Dear Lord, what a sodding mess of contradictions and jumbled loyalties. Fate had played her boldest stroke. Jeering the question in his mind. What if you never find her?

Hooves thudded on the earth.

Gregory ducked behind a tree and waited.

The men passed at a fast trot. Wolf Rampant on Gules emblazoned across their surcoats.

The patrols grew more frequent as Calder’s net tightened.

* * * *

Faye called a halt to their march. Simon had no more strength in his young legs and she fared not much better. They needed to find a safe place to rest.

In addition to the men out searching, Newt told her Calder had offered a reward for any free man or woman who would lead him to her and Simon. He had set the entire of his demesne against them. Several times, they stopped and retraced their footsteps to avoid people. They were still on Calder’s land and Faye trusted nobody.

The farther north they traveled, the more infrequent the patrols. Calder must have trained most of his resources on the western path between Calder and Anglesea. Newt had proved right on that.

The night stayed clear and balmy. They took shelter beneath a small rocky ledge and made a meager meal of what Newt had scrounged from Odo’s men.

Simon curled up beside her, his head in her lap and dropped into a deep sleep. His jaw hung slack in his dirty face. A little boy should not be this exhausted or go to sleep with only stale bread to fill his belly.