Candle in the Window (34 page)

“In the woods where I caught you? Aye, you
were crying.”

“I cried until my eyes bled.”

Scorn bit through his tone. “He adores
you.”

“He wants more than I can give. He wants me
to pledge to give myself wholly. He wants my soul as well as my
mind. He wants me to depend on him for everything, while he needs
me for nothing.
You
know William. You
know what he expects.”

Her bitterness caught him by surprise.
“Aye.” Eyeing her, he paced again, slowly, across the
room and back.

“Please don’t put him in with me. I
cannot bear his demands and he swore—”

“To make you yield?” Nicholas released
an angry cackle, and she could hear him rub his hands up and down
his
leather riding breeches. “Very good.
Very, very good. Put the rope down, Bronnie, and make her
go.”

Bronnie blubbered with terror. “My lord,
please, Lord Nicholas. She’s a lady.”

“The rats can get mother’s milk from
her. Make her go!”

Placing her on her feet, well away from the hole,
he assured her, Bronnie fetched the rope. She heard him tie the
ends to a beam while Nicholas chatted, “Dear little Bronnie
worries about you being a lady, but you’re actually getting
privileged treatment. Most prisoners are thrown down. If
they’re lucky, ’tis wet and the floor’s oozing
mud. If ’tis summertime and dry, or wintertime and frozen,
they can lie there with their broken bones, groaning in agony,
until they die.”

Trying not to listen, she leaned against a barrel
of wine, but his mocking voice wove spells around her. He
continued, “You, Lady Saura, you get a rope ladder that
reaches almost to the bottom, and Bronnie to tie the knots that
hold it. But do watch for rotting flesh and bones beneath your
feet. We haven’t cleaned it out for months.”

She shuddered, the kind of chill that started at
the base of her spine and vibrated up to the top of her skull, and
he laughed. “It shouldn’t be so bad for you.” He
crept up beside her and put his hands on her waist. He drew her
close against him and liked the shudder that shook her again.
“Unless you’d rather stay in my bed?”

She closed her eyes and sighed as if weary.
“’Tis a hard choice.” Her voice creaked, and she
cleared her throat. “But I must prefer the rats to the
snakes.”

He shoved her away from him and she stumbled
forward. Her slipper caught on the edge of the trap door. She
pitched forward as Bronnie cried out. She fell; she knew the hole
in the floor would gobble her, but Bronnie caught her. She
landed in his arms, astride the door to the dungeon.
Out loud, she thanked God for his intervention.

Before she could thank Bronnie, Nicholas ordered,
“Bronnie, I don’t care how you do it, but put her down
that hole and shut the door and leave her. Leave her.” He
stepped closer, and she cringed away. “Leave her until
she’s joined by her husband and they can die together in
everlasting love.”

“You promised you wouldn’t put him in
with me,” she cried.

“I promised you nothing. Nothing!” He
stormed away, crossing the store room, climbing the stairs, and
leaving them together.

As soon as the sound of his footsteps faded,
Bronnie said fearfully, “Lady, I’ll take ye an’
hide ye.”

“Nay!” She grasped his shoulders and
rolled off him. “Nay, I don’t want you to get in
trouble. He’d kill you.”

She felt the tremor run through him, but he denied,
“Better me than you. I’d run off an’ live in
th’ forest.”

“And be hung for a poacher. Nay, Bronnie, I
thank you. I must go down.”

But she didn’t move, and he asked, “Are
ye sure?”

His relief leaked into his voice, and she repeated,
“I must go down.”

“Bronnie!” A roar thundered down the
stairs, and he rolled away.

“I’d better climb down before trouble
finds you.” Still she hesitated, until he picked up her hand
and placed it on one of the knots.

“See? I tied it tight.”

“Aye.” She felt down the rope until she
found a step and then she felt up the other rope. She brightened.
“’Tis just like a real ladder!”

“Aye, m’lady. Do ye want me t’
get ye started?”

“You’d better.”

“Then put un foot
there…aye…an’ th’ other down with it.
Good.” He touched her tentatively, but her fears had
dissolved in a rush of resolution. She placed one foot on the
unsubstantial rope step and then another. Drawing one fortifying
breath, she reached out with her foot, but couldn’t find the
next rung.

“’Tis a bit further,
m’lady,” Bronnie said, leaning out over the sill.
“I can just see it.”

Extending her leg, she found the next step, far
down the rope. Sliding her hands, moving slowly, she put both her
feet on it. She was inside the dungeon now, and she lifted her head
to ask, “Are all the rungs so far apart?”

“They were made for a man,
m’lady,” Bronnie said apologetically.

There was nothing else to say. Soon she was
descending with halting regularity. As she moved deeper into the
pit, the rope swayed wider with each of her steps. Her teeth
clenched in agony as she felt cobwebs sweeping her face. Her hands
clutched the cord. All her concentration centered on the next step.
Nicholas would have thought it a fitting torture; descending
endlessly, wanting only to reach the floor of her prison. At last,
she groped with her foot and found nothing. She strained her toes
down: nothing. Nicholas hadn’t lied; the cord was too short.
She was hanging in midair, held by only a flimsy rope, and all
around her was a void with no relief.

“Bronnie.” Her voice creaked, weak with
terror. “Bronnie, can I jump to the bottom?”

“Don’t know, m’lady,” he
called. “’Tis so dark in there, I can’t see past
th’ first step.”

Her arms shook with nerves. Moving like a
caterpillar, she undulated down the final length of support. She
hooked her
knees around the rung, cursing her
skirts, then she inched her hands all the way down, down to the
last bit of rope. Taking a breath, she loosened her feet and swung
her body out and away, to hang dangling in the chill ether of the
abyss.

Saura hung there for days, through a
season, until she was old, until her arms trembled with the strain.
Then she let go. She fell, she landed. The shock jarred her ankles;
the ground was much closer than she’d braced for. She sat
there in the dirt and rubbed her feet and laughed and cried.

Bronnie heard her and hollered,
“M’lady, m’lady, are ye hurt?”

Collecting herself, she hoarsely called back,
“I’m well. But Bronnie, can’t you wave a torch
and tell me where the bodies are?”

“Th’ bodies?” He sounded
dumbfounded, then relieved. “Nay, ’tis not all as bad
as he tol’ ye, m’lady.”

She snorted. “I’m surprised.”

“This isn’t his main castle an’
he doesn’t keep any prisoners here, an’ if he did, he
sure wouldn’t let them die, just like that. He’d work
’em t’ death, he would.”

Irresistibly amused by his succinct reading of
Nicholas’s character, she queried, “No
bodies?”

“Nay. But there’s rats, for sure,
an’ ’tis coolish. I want ye t’ take me
jerkin.” He tossed it down, and it fluttered onto her head.
“Did ye get it?”

“Aye, thank you. Is there any
more—” A dull roaring echoed down from above, and Saura
winced. Even in the dungeon, she recognized Nicholas and his wrath.
“Hurry up to him, Bronnie. I’ll be fine now that I know
I’m alone. Except for the rats.”

“Oh, m’lady…ooo, I hate t’
leave you there. A noble lady an’ all.”

“Shoo.” She waved her arms even though
he couldn’t see her. “I don’t want him having
second thoughts about me.”

“Aye. Aye.” She heard him pick up the
door. “Are ye sure?”

“I’m fine.”

The opening almost closed above her, and then he
swung it back once more. “M’lady?”

“Go, Bronnie.” She spoke firmly, and he
obeyed.

The thump of the door above her sounded so final.
The jerkin clutched in her hands retained his warmth and she drew
comfort from the evidence she wasn’t totally alone. Wrapping
her arms around her knees, she hugged them and laid her cheek down
and wondered at herself. Being shut in a dark cave shouldn’t
bother her. What difference did the absence of light make? Nothing
was different in this space than in any other. Until she discovered
the parameters of any room, she was bewildered.

Still, it seemed the air pressed down on her head,
weighted by the closed door. The ceiling, which she knew to be as
high as the sky, seemed too close; she fancied she would hit her
head on it if she stood up. The walls closed in; the floor
seemed to tilt beneath her. The odor of mold
suffocated her, and she panted. Digging her fingers into the dirt,
she clenched a fistful in dispair.

How had she come to this?

Just yesterday she had approved the repair of roof
thatch on the village homes of Burke. She had ridden with the
steward as he called for an accounting of the tenants’
harvest, and she had recited the figures to Brother Cedric as he
wrote them down. Perhaps Peter had only given her the
responsibility of the autumn accounting to take her mind off
William, but he’d said he would gladly let her do it, and she
believed him.

Every night he’d come in from hunting,
mud-spattered and jovial, presenting a hart or boar to be salted
and stored for winter. Saura understood this display of manly gifts
wasn’t for her. It was for his Maud, standing at
Saura’s side and properly impressed with the bloody haunches
he tossed at their feet. The love between the master and the maid
had blossomed into a steady fire, glowing with the constant warmth
of embers and blazing with occasional displays of wrath. Peter and
Maud were wrapped up in each other, and Saura felt jealous and
abandoned and ashamed.

She’d lost the everlasting attentions of
Maud, Peter paid her no more than absentminded attention, the boys
kept busy with the duties of young warriors, and William was
gone.

Only Bula had kept his vigil at her side, plopping
his huge head in her lap when she sat and tangling himself under
her feet when she walked. The servants joked about his devotion as
they scurried to finish the work of autumn before the first
freeze.

Her mind sprang back to Bula’s extraordinary
behavior on the path. Stupid, she chastised herself. Stupid, stupid
wench.
So wrapped in your own desolation you
didn’t realize what the dog was trying to tell you. If
she’d paid attention to the dog, she’d be home at Burke
right now, hugging the fire and not a jerkin that jumped with
fleas.

Home, smiling about Maud and Peter; home, waiting
for William to return.

Home, waiting for Bula to bound in and bestow on
her his devoted affection. Scolding him for being underfoot.
Laughing as she rubbed his ribs and his foot thumped in
ecstasy.

If she’d paid attention to the dog,
he’d be alive today, not worm bait in the forest. She wanted
to cry for him, but the tears wouldn’t come. Her guilt was
too deep, her pain too fresh. Her dilemma required reason, not
emotion. She’d already betrayed Bula once; she wouldn’t
betray him again by failing to escape and avenge his death.

Restlessly, she shook her head. Nicholas wanted her
to become an ineffective weakling. He wanted her to die down here,
afraid and begging for release, and she wasn’t giving him
anything he desired. Not anything.

’Twasn’t dripping wet down here; the
dirt was loose powder that sifted through her fingers. Chalk,
probably, for the castle sat high above the ocean and this section
of England was famed for its white cliffs. Even if they threw
William in, he’d probably be uninjured.

Please God, Nicholas would let him come down the
ladder. Please God, Nicholas would send William down any way
possible.

Even if William were hurt when he arrived in her
prison, at least she’d know he wasn’t dead. Even if he
were injured in the fall, he’d still be William, mighty
enough to vanquish all their enemies.

In those appalling moments when Nicholas was
choking her and she’d thought her life was over, she’d
realized Wil
liam could save her. While her
breath had threatened to explode her chest, she’d decided
that together, she and William could destroy this demon.

If only Nicholas would just take the bait and bring
William to her. Begging him not to put William in the prison with
her was a feeble device, but the best she could think of in her
frazzled state. She’d complained William expected too much of
her, and in that argument resided just enough truth for Nicholas to
believe her. If only he didn’t think too deeply on it. If
only he believed himself to be in such an invulnerable position
that he dared unite them.

Nicholas was just dreadful enough. She laughed at
herself. How she skidded around the truth. Nicholas was crazed.
Everything about him shouted it. How could she have been
unsuspecting? It was as if two people lived in his mind, both
diabolically clever. The child in him sought love, the parent
protected the child.

Was he crazed enough to put William and Saura
together? Perhaps. Crazed enough to kill them and expect to get
away with it? No doubt. That was what frightened her, that was what
raised her from her despair. To escape from this trap, she and
William would have to combine their strengths and become as
powerful as the storms that swept the sea. Now as she sat on the
floor of her prison, an illogical hope burgeoned in her bosom.

She had found in herself a great desire to live, to
prosper, to find a resolution to the problem she faced with
William. When William arrived, he’d be calm, commanding,
decisive. He’d know just what to do and they’d do it.
He’d not find a quivering wreck of a woman who prayed for a
man to rescue her. He’d find Saura, his calm, quick-thinking,
thorough wife.

What should she do first? Explore. Find weapons.
Find
some way to construct a ladder. Prepare
herself to help William and be gratified with his amazement at her
capabilities.

Nodding, she stood and brushed the dust from her
skirt.

The door above slammed back with a kind of triumph.
She woke from her half-sleep and knew William had arrived. Just by
the crack of sound, she knew that Nicholas had seized him, that
Nicholas was happy, and that Nicholas was putting them together.
She shut her eyes thankfully, but they sprang open at
William’s words.

“I won’t go down there.”

Huddled on the ground where she’d spent the
night, her skirt tucked about her legs for warmth, she pulled
Bronnie’s jerkin closer. The vigor of William’s
speaking voice was heightened by some element she couldn’t
understand. Cocking her head, she listened, trying to identify
it.

“You won’t go?” Nicholas mocked.
“Very well. We’ll leave your wife down there
alone.”

“Saura’s down there? Why, you
filthy—”

“She feels safe down there,” Nicholas
protested with genteel satisfaction. “Safe, away from the
nasty man who offered her his heart.”

“Who? Oh, you.” William sounded so
patently uninterested Nicholas sputtered. William listened to the
madman’s complaints and said, “Well really, my friend,
you didn’t expect her to lust after you when she’s had
me, did you?”

Like a worm that eats at the core of a good apple,
Nicholas sneered, “She’s none too happy with you,
either, my friend. She specifically asked I keep you away from her.
Aye, that surprises you, doesn’t it? That your intense
goodness is some
thing to be avoided. That not
every woman wants to share herself, body and soul, with
you.”

“You bastard.”

“Oh, I know all about the rot in your
marriage. Your wife’s quite loquacious after she’s been
crying.”

Saura heard him lunge, and Nicholas laughed in a
high tone, marred with ripples of frenzy. “You’re tied,
William. You’re a captive. You walked into my castle alone,
armed only with your pride. Struggle all you want, those bindings
on your arms will never come free.”

“Why was she crying?”

“Crying in the woods. Weeping buckets of
water. What could I do? I took her under my wing and brought her
here. For safekeeping.”

Saura could imagine how Nicholas smirked, and she
cringed at this twisting of events.

William said nothing for a very long moment, and
then burst out, “If my wife doesn’t want me to join her
in prison, if she’d rather have the rats for company, then I
don’t want to go down.”

She knew he’d comprehended her ploy. She knew
by the sham conviction in his voice; it rang so clear she worried
that Nicholas would hear it. Even more than that, she worried about
the note of dread. What was wrong with William?

“You don’t want to go down. She
doesn’t want you with her,” Nicholas purred.
“What more could I ask? And what more could you ask, but a
chance to iron out your marital problems before you die.”

“She’s probably not even down
there.” William stalled, scuffling with the men holding him.
“She hasn’t said a word.”

Saura stood and walked directly below the hole.
“Nicholas, you promised me.”

Nicholas laughed, and William roared,
“Move!”

A thumping and scraping ensued and she scrambled
back just in time. He fell like a wounded eagle at her feet. Dirt
flew, she leaped for him. He wheezed, gagged, and she knelt,
coughing, at his side. “Are you well? William? Answer
me!” She groped over him and tugged at the cord that bound
his wrists in front of him.

“One moment…woman.” He sucked in
a big breath of air mixed with dust and coughed like a man bleeding
from the lungs.

“Will he live?” Nicholas called.

“My eating knife,” William said in a
low voice.

Her hands flew to his belt and flipped open the
sheath. “He let you keep it?” she whispered back.

“He thinks it’s no weapon.” He
held his arms up for her as she sawed through the binding.
“He underestimates me.”

“Will he live?” Nicholas demanded
loudly.

“Aye, I’ll live.” William’s
voice strengthened as he spoke, and he jerked his hands free and
rubbed his wrists. “No thanks to you or your
henchmen.”

“Good. No matter how satisfying that was,
I’d hate to deprive myself of the privilege of killing you
properly.”

The door began to creak shut, and William struggled
up on one elbow “Wait, Nicholas!” His burst of noise
brought on another fit of coughing and he boosted Saura to her feet
with a hand on her behind.

“Wait, Nicholas,” she summoned
obediently, and paused, unsure what William had wanted. But she
knew what she wanted. “I’m hungry. I’ve been in
here overnight with nary a crumb nor a drop.”

Smooth as cream, Nicholas answered,
“I’ll send my personal servants down for your
requirements, my lady.”

William regained his breath and called, “Drop
a torch
down here and let me see Saura. I want
to see what you’ve done to her.”

“Nothing.” Nicholas leaned into the
hole. “I barely touched her.”

She touched her tender throat and grimaced.

“I’ll come for you soon,”
Nicholas assured them. “When you’ve been properly
subdued.”

He pulled away and as the door creaked again Saura
shouted, “I’m thirsty! You can’t starve us to
death, you know.” The door banged shut, and she said to the
ceiling, “Although I don’t know why not.”
Kneeling beside William, she groped for his body and found him
trembling. “You’re hurt,” she breathed. More
strongly, she said, “You’re hurt.”

“Nay.” But still he shuddered beneath
her hands and he sounded frightened.

“William?” Her palms smoothed over his
shoulders. “William?”

“I’m well,” he said, but she
didn’t believe him.

“This is no time to be foolhardy. If
you—” She stopped. His hands came up onto her elbows
and pulled at her, and her arms went around him. He burrowed his
head into her stomach and wrapped himself around her.
“William?”

From the depths of his soul came a cry of terror.
“’Tis dark.”