A Knight's Vengeance (34 page)

Mildred dug the spade into the herb patch, wiped dirt from her nose, and beamed. Her tone hushed, she said, "Milady, you work miracles. However did you convince the rogue?"

Kneeling before a crumbling rockery bed, Elizabeth shrugged and kept her blushing face from the matron's view. "I challenged him. He reacted as I thought he would." A giggle bubbled in her throat. "You should have seen his expression when he ordered us to do scullery work."

"Pah! You will not laugh like a naughty child when we must make the meals." Mildred plodded closer. "If I may be so bold, how much cooking have you done?"

Elizabeth uprooted a blooming dandelion.
"None."

"As I should have expected."
Mildred sounded a little concerned.

With careful fingers, Elizabeth nudged aside a spider scuttling up her skirt. "I have helped Fraeda order wine and spices and watched her cook on occasion, but I have not lifted a cauldron, boiled pottage, or chopped onions for stew. Nor, as the lord's daughter, did I expect to."

Mildred sank onto the turned earth and dropped her face into her hands. "We are destined for disaster."

The fine hair at Elizabeth's nape prickled. She raised her head. "You have cooked before, have you not?"

The matron mopped her brow with her sleeve.
"Many years ago, when I was married.
Long before I entered the nunnery and learned the ways of herbs and tonics. Long,
long
before your father rescued me from those infernal hours of prayer and asked me to be your mother's lady-in-waiting."

Elizabeth blew a relieved sigh. "Thank goodness."

"I cooked for two, milady," the matron pointed out, "not an entire keep."

"The principles are the same, are they not?" Elizabeth tossed another dandelion onto the huge pile of weeds. "What one does to one quail, one does to fifty."

Mildred clutched at her head. She looked about to faint.

"Why do you look so distraught?"

The matron's throat moved on a loud swallow. "The process is a little more . . .
ah . . .
complex than you make it sound."

"How so?"

"The quail, if that is what we are to prepare, must be plucked. They must be cleaned, trussed, and . . . and then there is the matter of the fire. The meat cannot sit too near the flame. It must also be basted with fat as it cooks so it does not dry out and become tough and flavorless."

With a loud snort, Elizabeth flicked her braid back over her shoulder. "The rogue cannot fault us for that. We have been eating leather for days."

Mildred's sigh ended with a groan. "I am afraid my skills do not extend much beyond salted pork and roasted chicken."

"Then we will serve pork and chicken."

"Oh, milady."
Mildred bit down on her grubby hand.

"Cooking cannot be so difficult." Elizabeth brushed clods of dirt from her bliaut, and then worked a cramp out of her back. "We must convince the rogue we can cook the meal, or we will never manage to escape."

"True." Worry still gleamed in the matron's eyes. "I am glad de Lanceau will be fast asleep before he has tasted much of our fare."

*
    
*
    
*

Lord Arthur Brackendale yanked off his helm and dragged his hand through his sweat-soaked hair. Frustration burned inside him like glowing embers. The journey to Tillenham had taken far longer than expected, due to the necessary repair of a splintered wagon wheel, and heavy rains that had flooded parts of the road and forced the convoy to lose a half- day's journey.

He stared at Tillenham's keep looming ahead, a hulking fortress outlined against the crimson twilight sky. The doubt nagging him over the last few leagues settled in his belly like a chunk of limestone. He had not ridden past charred fields or seen clouds of dense smoke. He had found no evidence of devastating fires.

Oaks sighed along the fortress's walls and clustered in fields as far as Arthur could see. Over the stink of his own body and sweaty horse, he smelled drying wheat, sweet as the flowers blooming along the roadside near his destrier's hooves.

The earl's missive was a hoax.

A dog barked in the shorn field to Arthur's left. He turned his head, and saw peasants calling to their bedraggled children. They looked at him, curious, awed, even a little a feared.

He scowled, rage hot in his mouth. They stared at an

old
fool.

Aldwin rode up, his horse lathered with sweat. "What now, milord? There are no fires."

"I know." Setting his helm in his lap, Arthur fixed his gaze on the keep ahead. "The earl will answer for his missive."

Nodding, Aldwin fell back and relayed the message to the other knights and foot soldiers. Over the rattle and squeal of the wagons, Arthur heard grumbles. He ignored them. His men would eat and rest when he had the answers he sought, not before.

As they rode up to the keep, a sentry on the wall walk hailed them.

"Lord Brackendale of Wode," he shouted back. "I will speak with the Earl of Druentwode."

After a moment, the portcullis raised enough to allow out a guard in full chain mail. He tromped across the lowered drawbridge, and Arthur spurred his horse forward.

The sentry bowed. "Milord, I regret the earl is not receiving visitors."

Arthur's lip curled. "I will not be refused."

The guard tensed, and he dropped into another bow. "He is very ill. He lies near death, and has done so for almost a week."

Arthur jerked in surprise. Murmurs ripped through the knights behind him. Leaning down, he flipped open his saddlebag, withdrew the missive and tossed it to the guard. "I received this from him several days ago."

The sentry glanced at the document and shook his head.
"'Tis not possible."

"Then who—"

Suspicion shattered the lump in Arthur's belly into a hundred shards. De Lanceau.

Arthur's hands clenched around the destrier's reins, until chain mail links dug into his skin. The discomfort sharpened his anger to a lethal pitch. Why would de Lanceau create such an elaborate deception? Why did de Lanceau want him at Tillenham? There seemed no reason unless . . . Arthur sucked in a breath.
Unless de Lanceau wanted to lure him away from Wode.

A brutal, invisible fist squeezed Arthur's gut.

"Lord Brackendale?"

With effort, Arthur returned his attention to the guard. The man had not spoken, he realized, but the peasant lad who stood beside the destrier. His smile hesitant, the boy handed up a small bundle, a scrap of black silk bound with twine. "A man brought this for you."

"Man?" Arthur scowled. "He
knew
I would come here?"

The guard's expression turned confused and wary. "Answer the lord's question, boy."

The lad swallowed and looked down at the stony ground. "He told me to expect you. I did not ask questions, milord. He gave me some silver to keep silent until you arrived and"—the boy's face turned red—"he told me 'twas very important."

Arthur turned the object over in his mailed palm, weighing the contents.
Round.
Heavy.
He broke the twine and parted the cloth's frayed edges. In his palm lay a rolled piece of parchment sealed with wax, and a gold brooch.

Elizabeth's brooch.

Anticipating the ransom demand, Arthur ripped open the parchment and read the note. He crushed it into a ball.

"God's blood," he whispered. "Elizabeth."

Elizabeth thought the morn could get no worse . . . until Dominic brushed past the grim faced guards and entered the kitchens.

He stopped as though slapped by an invisible hand, wrinkled his nose, and peered at her through the thick smoke around the wall of cooking fires. "What is that atrocious smell?"

"Smell?"
Mildred chirped
,
looking up from a bubbling pot hung low over one of the fires. "Milady, do you note a smell?"

Scowling, Elizabeth leaned away from the chopping block. Dominic chuckled and she shot him a warning glare. How dare he laugh? 'Twas not her fault her green bliaut was splattered with blood, sauces, and vegetable juices. Nor would she apologize for the state of her hair.

"It
could
be the chickens I burnt to a crisp on the spit," she said, raising her hand and counting off options on her

fingers
. "Or the rotten cabbages I found in the pantry and took the initiative to throw away. Or mayhap 'tis the white sauce I scorched a moment ago when I simmered it over too high a flame. Why do you ask?"

Dominic's gaze fell to the bunch of fresh herbs destined for the cutting board, then slid to the knife by her hand. "Just curious," he said with a grin.

She
huffed
a breath. "Please take yourself and your curiosity elsewhere. We are busy."