The Hostage Bride (42 page)

He burst out onto the ramparts, heedless of the sharp stones beneath his bare feet, and ran to the watchtower over the drawbridge. “Mother of God!” He looked beyond the smoke and flames to the ranks of men crowding the far side of his moat. He coughed as the filthy, oily smoke filled his lungs. The fire would do no damage to the castle itself. The stone walls would need more than a bit of burning brushwood and pitch to bring them down, but it made observation almost impossible. But it also meant that the besiegers could not see to fire upon them.

He signaled that the men should retreat from the battlements to the outer bailey, where they could take stock. Diana appeared on the steps from the donjon. She was wrapped in a cloak over her nightrail, and she looked terrified.

“My lord, what is it? Are we under attack?”

He controlled the urge to dismiss her. Of course she was frightened, and deserved to know what was happening.

“It rather looks as if we are besieged, madam,” he said, trying to make his voice light as he came up the steps toward her. “But there’s nothing to worry about. We are well prepared
to withstand months of investment. Our cellars and granaries are full. And Fairfax will come to our aid. He’ll raise the siege in no time.”

Putting an arm around her slender shoulders, he eased her ahead of him back inside. “I must dress. It will be for you to calm the household … and the girls, of course. Make sure they understand that there’s nothing to alarm them.”

He put Diana from him and strode past her. She stared in disbelief, for the first time in her adult life utterly at a loss. The shouts and musket fire continued unabated. She put her hands over her ears, trying to shut them out.

“Diana, what is it? What’s happening?” Phoebe came flying toward her, Olivia on her heels. “What’s going on? Is it a battle?”

Diana shook her head, her hands still clapped to her ears. Her face was whiter than whey. She stumbled past them, leaving them gazing after her.

“Lord, I’ve never seen Diana look so sick,” Phoebe observed in wonderment. “Never expected to, either,” she added.

“Come!” Olivia tugged her sleeve impatiently. “To the b-battlements. We’ll find out what’s happening.” She pulled Phoebe toward the door and began to run.

They reached the outer ward as the sky was lightening, pink and orange streaks appearing on the horizon. Men were racing from the barracks, milling in the court, hefting muskets, drawing swords. Olivia kept to the edge of the court, Phoebe following suit, until they reached the narrow flight of stairs cut into the wall. Olivia darted up to the battlements, then choked, doubling over.

“Filthy!” Phoebe gasped, stumbling to the parapet to look over. “Look at all those men, Olivia. There’s thousands of them.” It was a serious exaggeration, but in the eerie light of the smoke-wreathed dawn, the apparitions below seemed myriad.

“They’re attacking the castle,” Olivia said with a thrill of excitement that quite superseded fear. “Just like Portia said would happen.”

“What did Portia know about it?” Phoebe was instantly curious.

“Portia knows everything,” Olivia said simply.

“I doubt that” the more realistic Phoebe said. “Even though she’s joined with the royalists, she can’t know everything.”

“Well, she knows a lot,” Olivia stated, and Phoebe was prepared to let it go at that.

“Whose standard is flying?” Phoebe leaned over the battlements, blinking vigorously in an attempt to clear her watering eyes. “Is it the king’s? Yes, I believe it is, but there’s another one … an eagle, I think. Azure on a gold background.”

“Decatur!”

The girls spun around. Cato stood behind them, his face a mask or rage, all semblance of his previous tranquility vanished. His enemy was at his gates. And the enemy was not King Charles.

A herald’s fanfare blew through the drifting smoke. The light was growing, the fires dying down. Rufus Decatur, astride his chestnut steed, rode forward to the edge of the moat, to the point where the drawbridge, had it been down, would have given him access to the castle.

He sat his horse, the standard of the house of Rothbury planted in the socket of his saddle. He signaled for the herald to sound again.

Cato’s own herald responded immediately and the marquis of Granville took a step up onto the ledge immediately below the parapet. The rules of war and of parley ensured his safety.

Rufus stood up in his stirrups and his voice rang out through the hush of dawn. “My lord of Granville, I am come in the name of your most sovereign majesty, King Charles, to demand that you lay down your arms of rebellion and surrender your person and your castle to His Majesty’s mercy.”

Cato answered, his voice as measured as his adversary’s, his words as formal. “In the name of Parliament, I will uphold the cause of the people. Castle Granville will not surrender.”

He stepped back off the parapet. The silence was complete. It seemed to Phoebe that no one knew what to do next. Then Cato said harshly, “You two shouldn’t be outside. Go in, and stay within doors.”

They obeyed without a moment’s hesitation.

In the back rank of the Decatur force, in the hush that followed the declaration of battle, Portia was overcome by a wave of nausea. She fought it, but it was invincible. She scrambled off Penny and stumbled behind a bush, heaving up her guts in bleak misery.

“D
id you eat something bad, Portia?” Luke’s worried little
voice accompanied a dimpled hand on her back as Portia crouched in the bushes.

“Probably.” Portia sat back on her heels, wiping her mouth with her kerchief.

“I ’spect it was goosegogs,” Toby said knowledgeably, squatting down in front of her, regarding her with his head on one side. His own most recent bout of sickness had followed an extended visit to a gooseberry bush.

Portia smiled weakly but with what she hoped was reassurance. So far she’d managed to keep this gruesome early-morning business to herself, and she didn’t want the children running to Rufus with tales of her woes. “It’s all over now, I’m quite better,” she said. “Have you had breakfast?” The thought of food brought another wave of sickness sloshing through her belly.

“Bill made us coddled eggs,” Luke said. “Are you really all better?”

“Yes, really.” Portia staggered to her feet, picking up her discarded straw hat. It didn’t quite match her soldier’s costume, but it protected her delicate pallor from the sun. “Where’s Juno?”

“Down a rabbit hole.”

Silly question.
“Let’s go back to the camp.” She took their hands and walked back with them to the encampment crowding the foot of Castle Granville, but before they reached the first row of tents the children’s attention was caught by a soldier repairing the broken axle of a baggage cart and they darted off to offer their assistance, leaving her to continue alone.

In the two weeks since they’d been in position, siege engineers had built bridges across the moat, sturdy enough to hold the culverins, and the steady boom of cannon was a daily ritual, at dawn and sunset. The castle walls so far had withstood the bombardment with no major breaches, but they were showing signs of wear and tear.

Archers shot their arrows in a fairly relentless harassment over the walls, and Granville men returned the fire, but in desultory fashion causing few casualties. It was too risky for them to stay above the lip of the parapet for long enough to take careful aim. The oily fires were lit under cover of darkness to render the air stifling and foul for both besieger and besieged alike. But at least those outside could retreat, Portia reflected. For the castle inhabitants the nightly suffocation would be torment. There was nowhere they could go to escape it, and the weather didn’t help. It had turned hot and thundery, but without the relief of a storm.

The sky this early June morning was steely gray with thunderheads, and the heaviness added to Portia’s miseries. It made her head ache and the continual dragging nausea seemed harder to bear, and even harder to conceal. Her duties were not arduous these days. She helped with construction of the bridges and with the light rope ladders that they would use if the opportunity arose to scale the walls. She performed picket duty, patrolling the perimeter of the camp and the moat, on the watch for any undue movement within the castle. And always as she passed the spot, she averted her eyes from the concealed door just above the surface of the moat.

Prince Rupert’s battalion had come as promised, and as Portia crossed the beaten-down grass toward the headquarters tent, she heard the prince’s voice, ringing with confidence and good humor, addressing his commanders. The prince had just succeeded in relieving the rebel blockade of York and was flushed with triumph and the conviction of success.

Because of the heat, the men had abandoned the tent and were meeting under the shade of a beech tree, gathered around a long table on which a map was spread out. The prince, magnificent in his peacock blue doublet, his scarlet slash, his hair falling in a curled and glowing cascade to the
collar of Valenciennes lace spread over his shoulders, pointed with a stick to a place on the map.

“Gentlemen, we must—we
will
—force a decisive battle. The king demands it.” He raised his shining face to the sun, flourishing his pointer. “It is the king’s will, my lords.”

Rufus was studying the map, his expression showing none of the prince’s enthusiastic conviction. In fact, Portia thought, observing from some ten yards’ distance, he looked as if he were about to burst into vigorous disagreement. She could tell by the set of his shoulder, the line of his mouth. But to her surprise he remained silent, continuing to study the map, a frown creasing his brow.

He looked up suddenly and she knew he’d sensed her presence. With a word of excuse, he moved away from the group and came toward her. “How now, gosling?” He smiled, but the strain remained on his face. “Are you idle this morning?”

“Until noon,” she said. “Is there trouble brewing?”

“I don’t know. The prince is convinced the men are ready for a decisive action. I’m not so sure.”

“Will that mean you’ll abandon the siege?”

Rufus looked back at Castle Granville. The pennants still flew from the battlements in brave defiance of the army at its gates. “They’ve been out of fresh water for several days now. Even if they had stored extra barrels in the cellars, with five hundred people and I don’t know how many horses, they can’t last much longer.”

He glanced down at Portia, the blue eyes raking her face. “That hat isn’t going to do any good hanging from your hand.” He took it from her and set it on her head, adjusting the brim to a rakish angle. “You’re looking peaky. Are you ailing?”

“No. It’s just the heat,” she said in swift disclaimer. “What will happen to Olivia and Phoebe and Diana and the babies?”

“They’ll be given safe conduct to wherever they wish to go. Is that what’s worrying you?”

“I worry at how they’re suffering now,” she said bluntly.

“It is for Cato to bring an end to that suffering,” Rufus returned curtly. “He has only to haul down his standards and lower the drawbridge.”

“And then you’ll hang him,” she stated.

“No. He will be the king’s prisoner, not mine. I am interested only in his submission.” It was said with a cold finality.

Portia said nothing, but her freckled face was set, her angular features standing out against the white skin in the shadow of the hat brim. She didn’t believe him. Rufus was using the pretext of war to further his own ends. He had won restitution and freedom, but he still wanted Cato’s life for his father’s.

Rufus found himself waiting for her to respond, although he knew she would not, could not, give him the response he wanted. He wanted her to say that she understood, to rejoice with him in the prospect of his victory. But he knew he would get nothing more than this silent acceptance of his obsession, and the equally silent loyalty that she had promised him. And he knew that both that acceptance and the loyalty brought her pain.

The silence lengthened and with a brusque gesture he strode back to the men under the tree, turning his back on her pain, and on the fact that he was responsible for it. He could do nothing now to stop the juggernaut, even had he wished to.

Portia turned with leaden step toward the mess tent. She’d had no breakfast and she felt both hungry and sick at the same time. Her entire body didn’t seem to know what was happening to it or how to react. Her breasts were sore, her mood swung from wild elation to the depths of depression, she was as likely to snap as to smile without reason for either. This business of reproduction, she decided, was vastly overrated.

And she still hadn’t told Rufus. She wanted to tell him, but she wasn’t ready yet. She hadn’t sorted out her own feelings about it, and she was afraid, too. Afraid that he would not respond as she needed him to respond. He already had children; it wouldn’t be such a momentous thing for him. She knew he would not reject the coming child, but it was likely he would simply shrug his acceptance, promise to provide for the infant, and leave it at that. The child would be his bastard. The child’s mother was his mistress. They had no claims except those of love and honor. He would fulfil the latter claim, but Portia didn’t know about the former.