The Lion of the North (11 page)

Isobeau was looking at him with wide eyes, her hand over her mouth to somehow hold back her horror. “Sweet Mary,” she whispered, blinking back tears. “His own men tried to kill him?”

Atticus nodded, his jaw ticking faintly. Speaking of the incident was bringing his hurt and fury up all over again. “Aye,” he replied, his voice soft and hoarse. “They tried and they succeeded.”

“Are you for certain they did this terrible thing?”

“Titus told me himself with his dying breath,” Atticus replied. “It is therefore my intention to seek de Troiu and de la Londe and punish them for what they did to my brother. I hope you can understand that, my lady. It is something I must do.”

The hand came away from her mouth, the tears spilling over. “
Understand
it?” she repeated, aghast. “I encourage you to do it, Sir Atticus. If Titus did indeed name his killers, then it is your duty to find them and punish them. You will find them and you will make them pay, do you hear?”

Atticus was mildly taken aback by her attitude. He had never in his life heard of, or even seen, a woman who was in support of vengeance or killing or punishment. “You do understand that I mean to kill them, do you not?” he asked, just to be clear.

Isobeau nodded vehemently. “Indeed I do,” she said, wiping furiously at the tears on her face. “The murderous blackhearts. They must be punished for what they did.”

Atticus was quite surprised at what he was hearing from her. Women, to him, had always been rather indecisive and needy creatures, but Isobeau certainly wasn’t that at all. She was strong-willed, stubborn, and as he could see, passionate in her views. She understood exactly what he had to do and she was not apt to fight him on it. In fact, her support of his duty was encouraging. He realized that it meant a good deal to have her approval on the matter. An inkling of respect for the woman began to sprout.

Come to know what Titus liked so well about the woman
, Warenne had said.

Already, Atticus was coming to see a flicker of it.

“Then know that after we return Titus to Wolfe’s Lair, I will leave to pursue de Troiu and de la Londe,” he told her. “You will remain at Wolfe’s Lair with my father. You will be safe there until I return.”

Isobeau was still wiping at the tears that refused to stop flowing. It was clear that she was shaken, angry even. “I have not yet met your father,” she said. “Titus spoke quite highly of him. I am looking forward to meeting him but I wish the circumstances were not so terrible. But won’t your father want to go with you, too, to punish these men?”

Atticus shook his head. “My father is old now,” he said. “I do not believe he has been out of Wolfe’s Lair for ten years. He does not travel well due to the affliction he has with his joints. They are swollen and he cannot move very well.”

Isobeau pondered that information. “Then if he cannot go with you, I will,” she said decisively. “This is as much my vengeance as it is yours. Oh, I know you told me that it is not my right to grieve Titus but you were wrong. So very wrong, Sir Atticus. I adored Titus and he was very good to me. What those knights did… they took away my future and my child’s father. If anyone has a great stake in this, it is me. I will not be any trouble, I swear it.”

Atticus was shaking his head before she even finished her sentence. “My lady, I cannot take you on this journey,” he said, watching her face turn red with anger. “It will be very difficult and the fact that you are with child will only make it harder. You must remain behind and take care of yourself and the baby.”

Isobeau wouldn’t let him deny her so easily. “Think on it this way,” she said, deliberately attempting to coerce him. She wasn’t one to be denied easily. “When I go with you and help you punish these men, then Titus’ son, through me, will also have a hand in punishing those who killed his father. That will bring him great satisfaction in the years to come.”

Atticus was still shaking his head; he’d never truly stopped. “My lady, I understand that you feel your own sense of vengeance, but I cannot take you with me,” he said, more firmly. “Even for the sake of Titus’ son, I cannot take you with me. It would be foolish to risk you and the child in such a way and I suspect that Titus would be quite angry with me to allow it. Nay, then, I will not do it.”

“Please, Sir Atticus. I am begging you.”

“I cannot. I
will
not.”

“But I must go!”

“I am sorry, but you cannot.”

Isobeau could see, plainly, that he had no intention of allowing her to accompany him but she could also see that he wasn’t being stubborn about it more than he seemed to truly believe it was in her best interest. But that wasn’t good enough for Isobeau; she was seized with a distinct sense of revenge on behalf of Titus, to punish the men who had killed him. Atticus denying her what she felt was her right was extremely frustrating. Frustrating, but not the end. Not as far as she was concerned. Still, she hung her head, upset and distraught, and struggling not to weep again.

Atticus could see that the woman was despondent but he wasn’t going to back down from his stance. It was ludicrous for the woman to expect to accompany him on a trip wrought with hazard. Still, her bravery was to be commended. It was apparent to him that the woman had little fear of trying to track down dangerous men; at least, in theory she had little fear. The reality of such a thing would more than likely prove to be quite different. He reached out and grasped her gently by the elbow.

“Come with me,” he said quietly. “It is cold out here. Let us go inside where it is warm and you can rest.”

Isobeau balked. “Nay, not now,” she said. “I… I want to see my husband. I have been waiting all day to see him. Did you find out where he has been taken?”

Atticus hesitated, thinking of the slightly greenish tinge to Titus’ face and his rather sunken appearance. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea for Lady de Wolfe to see her husband in such a way but he was also fairly certain he had no choice. She had every right to view her husband’s body.

“I did,” he said. “He is down in the vault along with the earl.”

Isobeau gazed up at him with her green eyes. “Will you please take me to him?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Reluctantly, Atticus nodded and politely took her elbow again as they made their way across the muddy, half-frozen ward towards the gatehouse. The angry, black clouds that had been moving in at sunset were now gathering overhead in a vast, pewter blanket, preparing to storm. Isobeau glanced up at the clouds as they walked.

“You should know that I will ask you again tomorrow if I can go with you,” she said to Atticus. “You cannot deny me forever.”

She said it in a rather imperious way and Atticus fought off a grin; he couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. Either way, it was rather humorous. “In fact, I can.”

“I will ask you daily. Mayhap even hourly.”

“Then you are in for a good deal of frustration.”

“We shall see.”

He frowned, glancing at her. “Do you think to badger me and beat me down until I submit?” he asked. “If that is the case, then you will be sorely disappointed. I do not fold.”

Isobeau cast him a sidelong look. “To men, you do not,” she said. “But it is different with women. It is bred into knights to grant a lady’s request. You will not be able to deny me forever, I say.”

“I suppose we shall find out.”

“Aye, I suppose we shall. Do not feel too badly when you finally grant my wish.”

“I will not grant your wish at all.”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “Would you care to wager on that, Sir Atticus?”

He looked at her, astounded. “Wager?” he said, outraged. “I will make no bet with a lady and I am ashamed that you would even propose such a thing.”

Isobeau scowled at him just as he was scowling at her. She even stuck her tongue out at him. Atticus held out about two seconds longer before swiftly turning away, breaking into a grin and hoping she hadn’t seen it.
The little vixen
, he thought. Even so, her gesture had been quite humorous. He couldn’t remember feeling the urge to laugh like that in a very long time. As of late, there had been nothing to laugh about.

Come to know what Titus liked so well about the woman.
Already, he was starting to.

The gatehouse loomed ahead and Atticus directed her to the left side of the gatehouse where the stairs to the vault were housed. They were slippery, and narrow, and he held her arm tightly as she descended the stairs in her heavy, linen skirt. Slowly, they made their way to the bottom of the steps where it was very dark except for a single torch burning hot and low in an iron sconce. It gave off little light against the darkness.

Atticus let go of Isobeau’s arm and removed the torch from the sconce, leading her towards the cell where Titus’ body was located. Atticus could pick up a whiff of decay and he wondered if Isobeau could smell it, too, but if she did, she gave no indication. She was tucked in behind him closely because of the darkness and when he finally came upon Titus’ decaying form, he held the torch up and away so she couldn’t get a clear look at the color of his skin. He hoped to spare her somewhat. Stepping aside so she could see, he silently indicated Titus’ stone-cold corpse.

Atticus wasn’t able to catch Isobeau before she fainted dead away.

Doncaster

The King’s Head Inn

“Y
ou are going
to lose some feeling in your face,” the old surgeon said as he packed up his catgut thread and needles. “Your wound was open for quite some time, m’lord. You should have had it sewn sooner.”

De la Londe could do nothing more than shrug his shoulders at this point; there really wasn’t much he could say to any of it. The wound that Titus had inflicted upon him nearly a week before hadn’t been properly tended until now for a variety of reasons, ones he didn’t care to discuss. Mostly, it was because the freezing weather had frozen the blood and beard on his face and that alone had stopped the bleeding.

During the battle at Towton, there hadn’t been time to do it. He’d kept his face wrapped with the piece of embroidered linen he’d stolen from de Wolfe. But six days later, he’d been forced to have it cleaned and tended because it was starting to fester. Hair had grown into it, as had dirt and debris, so the cleaning of the healing wound had been a harrowing experience. The surgeon had done his best but it was still a mess and de la Londe had been running a fever for two days. It would perhaps get worse before it got better.

But that was, in fact, the least of his concerns at the moment. Sitting in a room at an inn that had been confiscated in whole by the Duke of Norfolk, John de Mowbray, both de la Londe and de Troiu had bigger worries on their mind. De Mowbray, in fact, was in the room with them, as were several of de Mowbray’s knights and a lesser baron from Surrey that had once been aligned with Warenne de Winter. In the past six days since moving south from Towton after the decisive York victory, much had changed in the worlds of de la Londe and de Troiu, and all of it revolved around de Mowbray.

“We will be leaving tomorrow morning,” de Mowbray told the surgeon as the man moved stiffly for the chamber door. “I will ensure that he sees a surgeon in the next town we come to. We will keep check on the injury.”

The surgeon was a big man, older, once muscled but now gone to fatty. He had been a knight once, too, years ago before he injured his sword hand and had been forced to turn to another profession to survive. The surgeon’s gaze moved between de Mowbray and de la Londe.

“It is not the injury that is the issue, my lord,” he said. “It is the fever. I gave you powdered willow bark for that; make sure he takes it at least four times a day in a cup of wine.”

De Mowbray nodded. “He will.”

The surgeon still didn’t leave, a knowing glimmer to his tired, old eyes. He looked around the room, at the powerful and exhausted men. They smelled of war and he knew the smell very well.

“I heard about the battle to the north,” he said. “Towton, wasn’t it? Men passing through town a few days ago were speaking of it. They said it was a massacre for the Lancastrians.”

De Mowbray remained impassive. “It was a defeat for them. Aye.”

The old surgeon nodded at the confirmation. “I didn’t ask you when I came to tend the knight, but I assume he received the wound there?”

De Mowbray lifted a bushy eyebrow. “Indeed he did,” he said. “Thank you for your service.”

The surgeon had already been paid so it was only a matter of pushing him out of the door, which de Mowbray did. A stubby profile of a man, John de Mowbray was a powerful duke and a brilliant tactician. It had been his cunning that had turned the tides at Towton. Now, he was heading to London with his army because the new king had asked him to come. Edward, in fact, had already left for London and was a few days ahead of de Mowbray. The colors of the ruling house had decisively changed.

The king was determined to clean house of any remains of Henry’s loyalists and set up his own court at Westminster. His plans also included taking over the Tower of London as well as Windsor Castle. He was infiltrating deep into the heart of England and wanted de Mowbray with him. But de Mowbray was slowed with a bigger army, and wagons of wounded that had been sent back to Norfolk, and he wasn’t in any particular rush to reach London. At the moment, he was more concerned with gaining backing for Edward from the remnants of those who supported Henry. With Henry running for Scotland, de Mowbray would strike at the defeated supporters.

Which was where de la Londe and de Troiu came in. As de Mowbray shut the door behind the surgeon and bolted it, he turned to the two knights who had once been very close to Northumberland. They had been bought with relatively little effort and now that he had them, de Mowbray intended to use them.