What the gossips did not know was that
Isabel’s own desires, by now thoroughly awakened after being
carefully suppressed for so many years, fully matched, and
sometimes even surpassed, her husband’s.
His fingers continued their motion, steadily,
insistently. Isabel felt the moistness between her thighs, felt the
heat rising from her belly to her breasts. She knew Walter sensed
it. He removed his hand from her back and held it out to her.
“Come,” he said.
Isabel laid down her embroidery and rose,
pretending not to see the stares of her women. She followed Walter
out of the solar and across a narrow hall to their private
chamber.
Walter bolted the door and swept her into his
arms, his mouth hot on hers. She felt his hard arousal. He was
always like this, always ready for her, whatever the hour of day or
night. He was insatiable and she loved it, loved his wild,
sometimes violent passion, a passion that more than made up for all
the empty years when she had lived like a nun and had never known
what ecstatic release a man could give a woman. She moved against
him, groaning. His face was buried in her neck.
“Guy has to give into us soon,” she murmured,
pulling up his long indoor robe. “This can’t go on much longer. And
then you will be Baron of Afoncaer.”
“If I am not,” Walter said, lifting his face
from her throat so she could finish removing his robe, “I’ll send
his nephew to him, piece by little piece.”
“My darling, you know you don’t mean
that.”
“Do I not?” He shrugged his arms out of the
sleeves, smiling. Something in his dark face frightened her. “You
gave the boy into my keeping, Isabel. I will do what I want with
him.”
Walter stepped away from her and quickly
finished undressing. Isabel stood uncertainly, holding his robe
against her bosom, breathing in the exciting scent of Walter that
rose from it, her blood pounding in her ears with desire for
him.
“You would not harm Thomas.” It was a
breathless plea.
“You care nothing for him, Isabel. You never
have.” Walter stretched out on the bed, his manhood erect, ready
and waiting for her. She wanted him. Oh, how she wanted him. He
lifted one hand, inviting her to join him. “You are slow today,
Isabel. Take off your gown.”
“Promise me you won’t harm Thomas.”
“I will do what I have to do.” He watched her
face. “Come, Isabel, don’t look like that. We have guessed aright.
Guy will give up the castle to save Thomas, so there’s no need to
discuss it, is there?” He fixed his eyes on her, and slowly Isabel
laid down his robe and began to take off her own clothes. Coif
first, then gown and underdress, fine linen shift and shoes, then
one stocking. She was a little afraid of him after his cruel
remarks about Thomas. His words ought to have chilled her passion.
Instead….
“You are too slow. I want you now.” Walter
was off the bed, coming toward her. “You delight in teasing me,
woman, in making me wait.”
She had one leg up on a stool, removing the
ribbon that fastened her second stocking. He tore the ribbon out of
her fingers and stripped off the stocking.
“Walter!” She was crushed in his passionate
embrace, his long naked body assaulting hers. His tongue plunged
into her mouth again and again and again in a wildly suggestive
rhythm. Her fingers raked across his bare shoulders as he thrust
himself at her. She cried out, her knees giving way under this
onslaught.
He picked her up and carried her to the bed.
He tossed her into the middle of it and threw himself on top of
her, taking her in a paroxysm of unleashed passion that went on and
on, leaving her gasping and crying and, finally, limp and drained
and utterly, completely, satisfied.
Later, when he had left her to attend to some
business with his captain of the guard, she lay, still naked, on
her marriage bed and worried. Walter loved her; he would do
anything for her. Surely he would spare Thomas for her sake if she
begged him. But it would not come to that. It would not. Guy would
give up Afoncaer. He had to. Nothing would happen to Thomas. But
the doubt was there, lurking in her mind, nagging at her, spoiling
her sense of power and her expectation of triumph. She no longer
trusted Walter completely. She needed him for her plan, she desired
him and knew he loved her, but she did not, could not, trust
him.
Meredith and Branwen were up at first light.
They began their long walk even before dawn had gilded the
treetops. Branwen had explained the night before what they must do,
drawing pictures on the cave floor to show the plan of the old
portion of the manor house, as she remembered it.
“There is a tunnel running from the forest
underneath the house,” Branwen explained.
They walked until midday, pausing only
occasionally to rest or drink from a stream. As they walked,
Meredith went over and over in her mind the arrangement of the
house.
“There,” Branwen said at last, pulling back a
clump of saplings so Meredith could look down into an open meadow.
“That is the place. How it has grown. It used to be just a peaceful
farmhouse, but now there are so many armed men. And that log
palisade is much larger and higher than my uncle’s once was. If
Walter Fitz Alan lives there much longer, it will become a
fortress.”
“He doesn’t plan to live there long,”
Meredith reminded her. “He wants Afoncaer.”
“He won’t get it,” Branwen said, chuckling,
“and he won’t live long, either. Not once we have Thomas safe. Then
Brian and Sir Guy will make Walter pay for kidnapping Thomas, and
for killing Rhys, and for anything else he’s done that he shouldn’t
have. Come with me now, I want to find the tunnel entrance. I
remember well where it is, but we should make certain the tunnel is
open all the way to the house.”
It was. It was low, and they had to stoop in
places as they walked through it, but it had been well built, with
timbers to shore it up. They examined every foot of the way, using
the candles Brian had supplied them. In only one area, where the
earthen wall had recently crumbled half-way across the tunnel
floor, was the going difficult, and there was no lack of fresh
air.
“Someone has been using this passage,”
Meredith said. “Look here, these timbers are almost new.”
“Aye.” Branwen laughed softly, testing the
low, square door at the tunnel’s end. “I’ll wager Sir Walter has
been losing stores and has no idea where they’ve gone. The last
tenant may have had the same problem. These hinges are well
oiled.”
“You mean in spite of all the guards posted
outside the local people sneak in here and steal from Sir
Walter?”
“Why not? He surely steals from them, so it’s
only fair. Let’s go back to the entrance and wait there until it’s
time to enter the house.”
As the sun approached midday the two women
ate a little bread and cheese from the packets Joan had given them
and drank from a nearby stream. In early afternoon they crept back
to their original vantage point to see the men from Afoncaer
arrive. They waited impatiently as the sun slanted lower.
“Where can they be? They are late.” Meredith
was growing more frightened with each minute that passed. If
something had happened to prevent Brian’s coming, if Guy had
changed his mind and now refused to let him try to talk to Walter,
then she and Branwen would have to make the attempt to rescue
Thomas on their own, with no hope of assistance if they were
discovered. It would be growing dark soon. Meredith moved
restlessly.
“There they are.” Branwen touched her arm and
pointed.
Brian, Geoffrey, and six men-at-arms came
down the road from Afoncaer at a steady canter and drew up by the
manor gate. After a long wait, which they appeared to endure
patiently, and after leaving their weapons with the gatekeeper, the
men were admitted to Tynant.
“Now we can begin.” Branwen led the way as
she and Meredith returned to the tunnel entrance, lit their candles
once more, and made their way through the tunnel.
When Branwen pulled open the wooden door at
the tunnel’s end the draft blew out their lights. They stood in the
dark until Meredith struck a flint and relit her candle so they
could see where they were.
They had come out into a large underground
storeroom. The door through which they had entered was half hidden
behind barrels of wine and kegs of ale. Once closed it was
indistinguishable from the rest of the rough wood planks that
paneled the earth walls, until Branwen pointed out the corner
neatly planed off one board.
“Remember this, Meredith, in case you have to
find it again by yourself.”
Branwen led the way across the room to a door
in the opposite wall. Then, while Meredith sheltered the candle
flame with her hand, Branwen carefully opened the door. They could
just make out a short passage with a wooden staircase at the far
end.
“This part of the house is unchanged,”
Branwen said, gesturing toward several doors along the passage.
“Those are more storage rooms, and that last door, under the
stairs, is where prisoners were kept when I was a girl. It’s the
first place we should look for Thomas.”
“Won’t there be a guard?” Meredith whispered
fearfully. Her heart was pounding hard and her palms were wet. She
hoped she wouldn’t drop the candle she was carrying. She tried to
keep it steady as Branwen hurried to the cell door and pushed it
open.
“Hold the light in here, Meredith. I want to
be certain. Just as I thought, he’s elsewhere. If Thomas were here,
there would have been a guard, as you guessed.”
“Now we must look upstairs?” In spite of her
best efforts, Meredith’s whisper was more of a croak. She nervously
adjusted her head scarf with her free hand. A sound at the stairs
above her made her jump. “Aunt Branwen, someone is coming.”
“In here. Quickly.” Branwen pushed her niece
through a door into one of the storage rooms. The rich scent of
ripe apples filled her nose and lungs. Baskets and baskets of them
were lined up in neat rows on one side of the room, gleaming red
and pale green in the light of Meredith’s single candle.
“Hold that candle higher so I can see
better,” Branwen’s soft voice was remarkably calm. She picked up a
small, flat basket from the floor and began to put apples into it.
“If anyone comes in here, we are helping the cook. Let me talk.”
She added a few more apples to the basket, cocking her head as
footsteps sounded outside the storeroom door. The door was flung
open with such force that Meredith smothered a scream and nearly
dropped the candle.
“Kitchen wenches!” An elderly man in
servant’s garb glared at them in open disappointment, a short knife
gleaming in his thick fist. “I thought ye’d be some o’ that Sir
Guy’s men, what came to talk again. I wuz goin’ tae puncture ye.”
The man laughed, showing broken, yellow teeth. “Ye be careful,
wenches, or they’ll puncture you in another way.” He laughed lewdly
at his own joke, gesturing toward the ceiling with his knife. “They
be dangerous men.”
“Are they talkin’ to Sir Walter?” Branwen
asked, matching her accent to the man’s. “Will he let the boy go,
d’you think?”
“Ha, not he. He wants Afoncaer for heself,
and Afoncaer he’ll get, or die tryin’. He’s tough as a piece o’ old
oxhide, Sir Walter is.”
Branwen finished piling apples into her
basket. She looked at the last one in her hand.
“I’ll wager the boy would like one of these,”
she said. She tossed the apple to the man, who caught it, grinning,
and bit into it. “I’ve not seen young Thomas,” Branwen added.
“Seen ‘im? No one has, ‘cept for that skinny
servin’ wench Alice, and she won’t talk. And his mother and Sir
Walter, o’ course. Locked up next to their private chamber, he is.
Private chamber! Ye’d think that Lady Isabel was at the king’s
bloody royal court. So dainty! Washes her hands before eatin’, she
does, and him, too, and hot water for baths every day. My back is
near broke, carryin’ buckets up those steps to their private
chamber. Are ye done in here, wenches? I have orders to be sure
there’s no one in the basement.”
“I think that’s all we’ll need for now,”
Branwen replied calmly. She nodded at Meredith. “Come along, girl.”
Meredith followed her out of the storeroom and up the stairs to the
first floor of Sir Walter’s manor house, the old servant close
behind her.
There was a guard by the door at the top of
the steps. He glowered at them suspiciously as Meredith
extinguished her candle and hid it in the pouch that hung from the
waistband of her apron.
“I didn’t see you two go down there,” the
guard said, raising one hand to stop them.
“Ye must be growin’ addled, Roger,” cackled
the old fellow behind Meredith. “How could ye miss two pretty
wenches and not follow them into the cellar to pluck a little
fruit? I got mine, I did,” and he plunked the well-chewed core of
the apple Branwen had given him into the guard’s outstretched hand.
He scurried off, dodging when Roger threw the unsavory morsel at
him, and disappeared around a tall screen into the great hall.
While Roger’s attention was distracted,
Meredith had looked around and found the kitchen. Pointing
silently, she led Branwen into the hot, crowded room, where two
cooks directed an assortment of servants and pages, who bumped into
each other as they picked up platters and bowls and carried them
toward the great hall to serve the feast Sir Walter had ordered for
his guests. Sir Brian, it seemed, would be well fed before
negotiations began between him and Sir Walter.
“Here, give this to the cook.” Branwen thrust
the basket of apples she had been carrying into the empty arms of
an astonished page just returning from the great hall. “Meredith,
take a dish. That one. That looks like food for the common folk at
the lower tables.”