By Possession (42 page)

A sudden outpouring of shouts and yells drew their attention back to the yard. A ringing line of men surged forward and the attack resumed.

The fighting was closer now, and the blood and pain loomed horribly real. She could see faces rise above the wall and their expressions when swords dealt the death blows. But more kept coming, and more again, until some bodies breached the wall and the fighting spread along the walk.

It was like a scene from hell. Her blood pounded and her eyes teared from the scenes of carnage. Beside her Simon observed as if he enjoyed an interesting entertainment, but she could smell that fear on him still. She scanned for Addis until she saw the colors of Valence and his swinging sword where he fought for a foothold on the wall near the gate. Raymond fought beside him, and Small John too. They were trying to take this entry as they had the last, but Owen noticed and led reinforcements in their direction.

Addis and the others who had breached the wall found themselves isolated as Owen's men thwarted any further scaling. Outnumbered now, they valiantly held off attacks from both sides.

He would be killed. She just knew it. His sword fell with methodical precision, but there were too many. She silently begged him to retreat, to find a way back down, and looked away to avoid seeing the death blow that would find him soon.

Her gaze fell on the inner yard. Amidst the wavering shadows a group of nine men moved in thick formation, all wearing the scarlet of Simon's knights. They eased along the wall with swords drawn.

They slipped forward. Three disappeared into the gate and the other six mounted to the wall. Her heart almost
burst with despair when she realized they headed toward Addis. There would be no hope now.

They joined the battle, but not in the way expected. Suddenly those armored arms were pushing men off the wall, crashing archers' heads against the battlements, clearing a path to the sword fight. Owen glanced over his shoulder and seemed to assume they were with him. When a sword from behind felled the man by his side, he realized the truth.

She had forgotten about Simon, but his livid curses drew her eyes to his astonished expression.

“Sir Richard said some had stayed behind,” she said.

“Vipers in my own bed! I'll have them roasted alive!”

“It does not appear you will have the chance. Even I can tell that their aid has turned the tide on that wall and that the gate will be taken soon.”

Even as she spoke, the grinding sounds of chains and wheels filtered through the din of battle. Simon's eyes glazed.

“Three went inside. You were so busy watching Addis that you did not notice.”

His gaze locked on Owen fighting desperately, his position as hopeless as Addis's had been just moments before.

“Surrender. He cannot help you or even himself anymore. Yield. Addis is not without mercy.”

Beads of sweat dotted Simon's brow and the hair of his mustache. A furious desperation lit his eyes and he turned away, pulling her with him. “I'll not be counting on his mercy.”

He hauled her down to the solar where he plucked two fat purses from a chest. With an iron grip on her arm he forced her down the stairway. The sounds drifting from the yard changed abruptly. She could hear hundreds of bodies moving and yelling, but no longer the screams of death and pain.

“It is over. He is inside,” she said, wondering if Simon had noticed.

He pushed her downward with determination. “Aye, but I will be outside.”

“You can move more quickly without me.”

“I think that you are a better shield than steel, and so are worth the trouble.”

“Think you to walk across these lands and not be found?”

“Horses wait not far away. I had great faith in Owen, but I am not a stupid man.”

He pushed open a small door at the northern base of the keep. The yard was shallow here, and filled with shacks for chickens and pigs. High above on the wall Addis's men were accepting the surrender of Simon's.

Simon circled her in one arm and gagged her with his hand. Staying in the shadows of the shacks, he dragged her toward the wall. His rough handling reawoke her sores and she submitted to avoid more pain.

If he got her outside her peril might be even worse than before. Desperate and vengeful, he might kill her when he had no more use for her. A rebellious fear spread. She struggled and fought and he twisted her head cruelly in response. Pressing against the wall, he felt for the postern door.

A string of lights began edging around the keep. Simon shrank farther into the shadows but the glow spread until no shadows existed anymore, leaving the two of them starkly exposed. A tall armored figure strode among the torches toward them. Blood smeared the jerkin draping his body and colored the sword clutched in his hand. He stopped ten paces away.

“Are you going somewhere, Simon? I might consider permitting it if you did not try to take what was mine with you.”

She could feel the body pressed behind her shake.

Simon's hand jerked down to his side and the two purses flew onto the ground at Addis's feet. One of the torchbearers crouched and poured their contents out. Gold coins and glittering jewels flickered in a heap.

“I was not speaking of the wealth you had amassed and hoarded these past years.”

His arm embraced her more tightly and the pressure on her bruises made her light-headed. “She will stay with me until I am well away.”

“She will stay here, and so will you. You have much to answer for.”

“It was a king who gave me Barrowburgh, and a king's council who took it away. I will go and answer to them for not obeying, but I will accept no judgment from you!”

“Your disobedience to the council is the least of it.”

Simon's whole body flexed, as if he tried to suppress a huge shiver. Moira couldn't blame him. Addis stood there resolute and dangerous, a blood-aroused warrior who had just accomplished an impossible victory. There was little of the kind knight whom she knew in this man. He had removed his helmet and fury flamed in his eyes.

“Where is Owen?” Simon demanded. “Is he dead?”

“You pray that he is, I am sure, but when faced with the choice he took the coward's way as he always has. No trees or hired killers to hide behind up on that wall. No enemy army on whom to blame the sword or the spear. When it came down to him and me in a fair fight he yielded. And then he talked as if his life depended on it, as indeed it did.”

He paced forward and Simon tried to pull her into the wall. “When my father married your mother he did not have to take you into his home as he did. But his generosity only planted greed in you, and plans to take my place as his son. Moira once said I was fortunate in my wounds, and she was right. In his youth Owen proved inept. A
squire among my companions should have been able to kill me, the second time if not the first.”

She gasped and twisted until she could see Simon's face out of the corner of her eye. He stared wide-eyed with terror, sweat pouring down his face. It was true. It had been Owen who scarred that body, Owen whose spear left Addis for dead on the crusade.

His strangled cry echoed her thoughts. “It was Owen!”

“His sword. His hands. But your idea and your gain. A hungry youth's impatient plan. But even with me dead, my father did not embrace you as his new son, did he? And so Lancaster's rebellion offered a way to make your own fate, without my father's favor.” Addis traced the ridged scar on his face. “This I might forgive. Even those years of slavery. But my father's death was from no natural fever, I think. Owen doesn't think so either.”

Simon's arm had become a death grip, squeezing the breath out of her, crushing her sore ribs and torso. Little spots of blackness dotted her sight. His other hand fumbled. A sharp edge pressed into her neck and a dagger hilt bumped her chin.

“You will release her,” Addis said.

“Nay. You are speaking madness and I will get no justice here. You have no proof on Patrick but it will not matter during the power of your victory.”

“Release her.”

“She comes with me. If you want to see her alive again you will not follow.”

Addis looked away for a moment and then stepped closer yet. Simon's terror surged in a palpable way. The blade pressed, the arm squeezed, and she almost passed out from pain.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” Addis asked quietly. “She does not know where Brian is. You may have my woman, but I have your son.”

His words stunned her. She tried to twist and see Si-mon's reaction but the gesture made the blade burn her neck. She stared at Addis, hoping for a sign that he bluffed, but he did not even acknowledge her reaction. All of his attention centered on the face gasping sour breath next to her ear.

“You will never harm the boy who might be yours,” Simon blustered.

“Not mine. And a Christian knight should not harm any child, but I find myself feeling less of one with each passing moment. Harm Moira and there may not be a shred of such mercy left in me.”

She could feel Simon's panic. Her own mind veered from thought to thought, trying desperately to accommodate what Addis said and the cold way he said it. Simon's son! He had used Brian as a pawn from the beginning. Her throat tightened from a mournful sorrow, strangling her breath.

“Claire said the boy was yours!”

“She lied, even to you it seems. But you suspected the truth. He would not have survived if you had not, no matter how well Raymond and Moira tried to hide him.”

“You cannot be sure.…”

“I am sure.”

Simon clutched harder, the last grasp of a desperate man. The pain made her dizzy. Through her numbing awareness she felt him resist, hover, and then plunge into despair.

A violent push sent her flying at Addis. Her blotched senses absorbed the impact of his body, the support of his strong arm, and then his own thrust as he hurled her away. She floated to the ground on a pillow of semiconsciousness, only vaguely aware of the furious activity raining down around her.

Suddenly a deathly silence fell. Strong arms lifted her
up and her head lolled against a metal chest. Her insides felt as if they had been bludgeoned by that battering ram. Darkness sped by and she found herself gently laid on a soft bed.

Her tenuous hold on reality strengthened, but she resisted full alertness and the pains it would bring. Voices and movements swirled around her but her mind folded in on itself and followed its own paths through memories and emotions full of joy and sadness. She saw Addis in all of his faces, but most starkly in the new one revealed to her tonight in the yard. A profound disillusionment made her keep her eyes closed even when a woman came to wipe her face and check her wounds.

She pictured Brian riding off beside the man she thought was his father. But he was Simon's son, and Addis had known. That she had lived four years thinking she protected one man's child when in fact the boy needed no protection at all did not dismay her. The joy she had known giving Brian love could survive the knowledge that her great purpose had been a fraud. But the fact that Addis had taken that child from her and hidden him among strangers, had risked leaving Brian abandoned and alone should he die, had severed that spot of light from her life, all to hold a threat over Simon … her heart turned from what it meant about him. She did not think she could forgive him for using the child thus.

Sounds intruded more insistently and she realized that she lay in the solar. She could hear men talking and entering and leaving, and Addis's low voice giving orders. She turned her head toward him and forced her eyes open a slit.

He had removed his armor and thrown on a cotte. He sat in the lord's chair discussing something with Sir Richard. He looked as if the chair had been built for him. Proud and strong and powerful. A family like Valence did
not hold on to their honor by being weak-hearted, and he was undoubtedly Patrick's son. She had been loving hidden parts of him that could no longer be acknowledged. The man whom everyone else had seen and feared would dominate now.

He noticed her looking and gestured Richard aside. She watched him come until he stood beside the bed. He caressed her cheek. “You are badly hurt, Moira, but the women say they do not think that you bleed inside. You will be feeling better soon.”

She did not think she would ever feel better again. “Simon?”

“He came at us both with that dagger. A mad thing, since I wore steel. The blade caught your shoulder, but it is not deep.”

“Did you kill him?”

“The peasants killed him. They moved as soon as he did, and he was dead by the time I got through to him.” He bent down and kissed her forehead. “I must go down to the yard now, and see that the people get back their animals and such fairly. Rest, love.”

“Will you ask Raymond to come? I want to speak with him.”

He nodded and turned to leave.

She raised a hand to stop him. “Kiss me, Addis.”

“I will hurt you.”

“Please kiss me.”

He carefully brushed her split and swollen lips with his mouth, and pressed the gentlest kiss on them. Tears burned in her closed eyes, and not because of any pain. He lingered there, her Addis, the vulnerable Addis of confusion and loneliness who had found love with a bondwoman. Their warmth connected them long enough that she almost lost her composure. She savored it, branding her mind with this final memory.

A sound interrupted them. She looked through moist eyes at Thomas Wake standing at the door. Addis straightened, suddenly the Lord of Barrowburgh again, the fearsome warrior who could conquer a fortress in three night hours and hold a child ransom in a game of power. The two men left her alone in the solar.

It was as she had known it would be. The string of his life had been retied. He did not need her anymore, not really. And the point had come, that specific moment she had been dreading, when she must either leave or walk back into the shadows.

The deep breaths with which she fought tears racked her bruised body. She only found some comfort when she forced her thoughts from the past to the future, and to the quest awaiting her.

By the time Raymond came she had made her decision.