Temptress (35 page)

What did they mean?

Dear God, what was their plan?

Had this band of thugs lured them out into the night only to return them to Calon to be ransomed? Nay, that seemed unlikely. ’Twas too risky and had nothing to do with Carrick or revenge. The wheels in his mind turned and he tried to climb inside the thoughts of the men who had ambushed him.

Did the criminals plan to kill both the sheriff and himself? Perhaps for sport or to make a point to others who tried to stop their thievery? What better way to flaunt their authority and prove how clever and invincible they were than to slay the captain of an army and the sheriff?

But it seemed far-fetched.

He listened to the steady plop of the horses’ hooves in the mud and felt the sting of rain upon his face. Suddenly, without provocation, the truth hit him.

Like a punch in the gut.

He and the sheriff weren’t going to be taken to the castle for an exchange of prisoners or money. Nor were they going to be murdered outright, at least not yet.

Nay.

He knew in his heart they were being taken back to Calon for one purpose only.

To be used as bait.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

M
orwenna half ran up the stairs, her dog following at her heels. The walls of the great hall had seemed to shrink and she couldn’t sit still another second.

She hadn’t lied when she’d told Sarah that she was forming a party to leave at dawn. She planned to take five of the best men she could find within the ranks of the soldiers. She only hoped that the missing men would arrive by morning. Maybe they’d have Carrick, that cur, with them. Oh, she’d love to face him again! Tell him what she thought.

“Damn it all.” She wouldn’t think of Carrick, mangy rat that he was, not now. At the moment she had to concentrate on finding the captain of the guard and the sheriff. What she’d said to Sarah was true: stronger or smarter men did not exist in Calon. If Sir Alexander and Payne had met with ill fate, she doubted she and the lesser men she would ride with could triumph.

But she’d try.

And then she’d ride to Wybren, not only to tell Graydynn what she’d done, how she’d lost the man he’d been searching for, but also to see if, as she suspected, Carrick had ridden to the very keep where he was considered a wanted man, a criminal accused of treachery and murder.

But first she would seek out Brother Thomas.

At the top of the stairs she paused before walking to her sister’s door. Biting her lip, she knocked softly on the heavy door and waited. “Bryanna?” she called, but there wasn’t a sound coming from inside the room. “Are you all right?”

Still her sister didn’t answer. Bryanna had been holed up in her chamber for most of the day, ever since viewing Isa’s body, and Morwenna had let her sister be.

Now she placed a hand on the door handle, but before she entered she changed her mind. Bryanna just needed time alone to accept Isa’s death. Morwenna would give her that time. She understood Bryanna needed to face the hole in her life Isa’s passing had created. Later Morwenna would tell her sister of her plans to lead a search party. She only hoped Bryanna would not insist upon coming along.

In her own chamber, Morwenna tossed on a squirrel-lined cape and slid her shoes into her wooden pattens, as her boots were drying by the fire. Grabbing a lantern from a shelf, she carried it with her as she clomped down the stairs, Mort still at her heels. Once on the ground floor she headed out the main door, where a guard, Peter, tried to suggest she wait for an escort. “You should have someone with you, m’lady,” he said, his gray eyes filled with worry. “Think of Isa last night.”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. She didn’t mention that she had a dagger in the leather purse cinched by a strap to her waist, nor the tiny knife in her shoe.

Outside, a storm raged. Thick dark clouds blocked the moon. Rain peppered the ground and washed down in little gullies, cutting into the pathways of the keep. Mort, beside her, stepped outside, blinked and shivered, and then promptly turned around. Tail between his legs, he bolted toward the fire in the great hall.

“A fine watchdog you are if a little bit of rain scares you,” Morwenna muttered as she made her way along the rock-strewn trails, her lantern seemingly feeble and small.

Nerves stretched thin, Morwenna picked her way past huts where firelight shone from the windows. She passed by the sheriff’s quarters and saw Sarah by the fire, sadly mending a pair of breeches.

Quickly sketching the sign of the cross over her chest, Morwenna sent up a prayer for Alexander and Payne’s safe return. Crossing the grass beneath an orchard, she thought about the others who were missing also and belatedly mentioned Nygyll, Father Daniel, and Dwynn in her prayers as well.

The south tower, stretching skyward at the corner of the wall walk, was the tallest in the keep. A watch turret rose even higher from the tower’s battlements, seeming to pierce the sky.

By the time Morwenna reached the tower doorway, the flame on her candle had died and she had to relight it from a sconce inside the tower.

Leftover rain dripping from her cape, she began climbing ever upward, the spiraling staircase seeming without end. Her own shadow fell against the thick walls, and aside from the scrape of rodents’ claws and the pounding of the rain, she heard nothing.

When was the last time she’d seen Brother Thomas? Had he come down to eat for the Christmas Revels? She didn’t think so, and remembering the Revels reminded her that the deadly fire at Wybren had been set a year earlier on Christmas Eve.

The people who had later died that night had been celebrating, probably singing and dancing and passing the was-sail bowl. Mayhap they’d been entertained by a passing troupe of mummers while warming themselves at a great yule log . . . only to end up dead, hopefully dying from breathing smoke before the ravenous flames were upon them.

Shuddering at her thoughts, she continued ever upward and reminded herself that Carrick had escaped the blaze at Wybren . . . just as he had found his way out of his room at Calon. . . .

Refusing to dwell on the bastard, she climbed faster, passing several vacant hermits’ cells on her way up before finally stopping at the cell located at the highest point, just before one final flight of stairs narrowed to the watch turret.

’Twas time. Inhaling a breath of fortitude, she rapped upon the door to Brother Thomas’s cell.

She waited but heard no response.

“Brother Thomas?” she called, knocking more loudly. She’d spoken to the man only once, in the first week she’d arrived, climbing this very staircase to make certain she met everyone within the keep. What she knew of him she’d learned from others—Alfrydd, Alexander, and Fyrnne—who had known him for years. “Brother Thomas, it’s Lady Morwenna. May I come in?”

Again there was no answer.

Refusing to give up, she tested the door and found it unlocked. “Brother Thomas?” she called one more time and then pushed the creaking door open.

Inside, the monk knelt, head bent in prayer, his fingers sliding skillfully over the beads of a rosary. A single candle sat in a holder on a three-legged stool, its tiny flame casting the compact room with a dim, flickering light. Aside from the cot, stool, and pail, there were no furnishings. The only adornment upon the walls was a wooden cross nailed over the bed and two small hooks that held nothing. She waited in the doorway, and when he’d finished his prayers, he turned to her and nodded his head.

“M’lady,” he said, pulling himself to a standing position. Once a tall man, he appeared to have shriveled and become stooped, his skin sinking into his bones. With a monk’s tonsure, snowy beard, nose hooked like an eagle’s beak, and eyes as black as night, he wore a brown robe tied with a rope and looked a hundred years old if a day. “What can I do for you?” he asked in a voice that cracked like dry straw.

“I’m trying to find out what happened to my nursemaid, Isa,” Morwenna said. “She was killed last night. Slain by an unknown assassin. I thought mayhap you had heard something or saw something that might help me locate whoever did this. I know—I mean, Sir Alexander has mentioned that sometimes you climb up to the turret for fresh air in the middle of the night.”

“ ’Tis true.” He nodded, his wrinkled face a mask of patience. “And, aye, I was outside last night searching for the stars, hoping for a glimpse of moon.” He sighed sadly. “I heard her pagan prayers whispering on the wind.” He hung the rosary on a hook over his bed, and she noticed his white, nearly translucent skin stretching taut over the bones and cords of his hands. “Sometimes I think God handles heresy in His own way.”

“You think God killed her?” she said, horrified.

“Nay . . . you misunderstand me. . . .” He held up a hand.

“I hope so, Brother Thomas, because someone actually slit Isa’s throat last night, sliced it in the shape of a W, dropped Carrick of Wybren’s ring into her hand, and then disappeared. Whoever it was, he left her to bleed to death, like some kind of sacrificial lamb.” Anger began to thrum through her bloodstream again. “I want that person found and brought to justice.”

“Your justice,” he said.

“And God’s. Whoever killed her committed a mortal sin.” She took a step toward the stooped man. “Now, please, Brother Thomas, tell me what you saw last night.”

He shook his head. “I saw little. ’Twas dark, you know. I heard her chanting and I looked toward the sound. My hearing’s not what it used to be, but I think she was near the ponds. Then she stopped, not abruptly, not as if someone attacked her, but as if she was finished with her talk. It was late. I was tired. And I didn’t want to hear any more of her blasphemy if she started up again, so I walked down the staircase and into my room.”

“And that’s all? You saw or heard no one else?”

“I told you all I know.”

Her shoulders slumped in disappointment and she mentally chided herself. What had she expected? That this man had actually witnessed the deed and then never said a word?

“A man escaped last night,” she told him.

“Carrick of Wybren,” he said. Morwenna’s head snapped up and he added, “I hear the guards talking. They are right above me, you know. Their conversation often drifts through my window. And the boys who bring up my food and water, they, too, gossip. They seem to think he vanished into thin air, like that.” He snapped his fingers and managed a kind smile. “I’m sorry, m’lady, but I did not see Carrick leave, nor did I witness the death of your nursemaid.”

She waited, sensing he was about to say more. When he didn’t, she prodded him. “But you hesitate, Brother Thomas. As if you know something.”

His eyebrows quirked upward and he studied the floor for a second.

“You do!” she charged, her weariness suddenly gone. “What is it, Brother Thomas?” When he paused, she wanted to step forward and shake whatever it was from his tongue. “Please, you must tell me. For the safety of everyone in the keep.”

“I’ve lived here long,” he said, obviously wrestling with his decision to speak. “In fact, I’ve lived here longer than most. Perhaps the longest. I was here as a lad, long before I found my calling.”

“Yes,” she prodded when he hesitated.

“My grandfather was the mason who constructed this keep.” His lips folded over his teeth for a second, and he rolled his eyes to the ceiling as if searching for a sign from above before speaking.

It was difficult to wait, not in Morwenna’s nature at all. But she sensed the monk was choosing his words with care. She needed to be patient.

“My grandfather designed this castle for Lord Spencer,” Brother Thomas continued at length. “Lord Spencer required a . . . unique set of hallways within hallways within the great hall.”

“Hallways within hallways?”

“Aye. Secret passageways and rooms that only the lord knew about. Originally the lord said they were to be used in case of an attack, as a place to hide from the enemy, or even a way in which the lord could escape, get away unnoticed, but it was a lie. When all was said and done, my grandfather realized most of the hallways were used as viewing areas, places where the lord could spy unseen upon his guests or his wife.”

“What? Spy unseen?”

“Yes, from the hidden chambers.”

“But where are they?”

“I know not. I . . . I only know what I heard growing up in my family. I’ve never seen them for myself, never tried, nor, do I think, did my father or any of his brothers.”

“But someone knows,” she whispered, the hairs at the back of her neck rising as she remembered how often she’d felt unseen eyes upon her, how she’d thought someone was observing her in her chamber as she’d slept or dressed or bathed. Anger surged through her.

“For years, all of my lifetime, no one that I know of has used the hallways, and even the rumors of them have died. Anyone who talked of it always thought it was a joke or . . . or a legend . . . one that was fabricated to begin with and enhanced as the years went on.” He stepped to the wall and leaned his back against it. “But now, I fear, those hallways have been discovered and used.” His eyes found hers. “It explains so much.”

“Yes,” she said, trying to imagine who had the knowledge of the secret rooms.

“After Sir Vernon was killed, I wondered. Through gossip I learned no one could understand how the killer got away so quickly and completely. I didn’t say anything because I thought the killer might just be clever. But then Isa . . .”

“Then we must find the hallways,” she said, already thinking ahead, her blood pumping at the thought of discovering the killer’s lair, his escape route, his identity!