Conquering William (32 page)

“And that was before you wore a beautiful dress, and your hair unbound.”

She had trouble concentrating on his words. “You do not like the dress.”

“I like the dress fine.” He clasped her nape and dragged her mouth to his. “But I like you better. You have no need to dress up for me, Alice. You enter a room and make me hard with wanting you.”

His words drove her over the edge, and she shattered on a loud cry.

He swallowed her sounds in a kiss. Devastating and hungry, it swept through her. In his kiss lay the truth of his wanting, and Alice melted into it.

“Let me love you, Alice.”

“Aye.”
Love me, William. Love me with all that you are.

“I guess the dress appealed to William.” Ivy chortled and gave Alice a nudge.

Good Lord, could the entire keep see how long and hard she and William had loved last night?

“If her glowing cheeks did not tell the story, the noise that kept me up certainly did.” Beatrice shuddered and dug her spoon into her pottage. “I am fond of you, Alice, and I love my brother, but I think it is time for us all to go home.” She added more honey to her bowl. “Or for you and William to keep your voices down.”

Ivy bumped Beatrice’s shoulder. “You are merely out of sorts because you miss that handsome husband of yours.”

“True enough.” Beatrice sighed as she stirred. “How much longer do you think it will be before we can go home?”

Ivy’s face grew shadowed. “I am not sure.”

“My lady.” Seamus beckoned her from the doorway to the bailey. “Lady Alice, might I have a quick word?”

Alice rose and followed the boy out the hall, keenly aware of Beatrice and Ivy watching her. “What is it, Seamus?”

Seamus examined the passage before he slid further into the shadows and motioned her to follow. “She said I must only speak to you, my lady. To be sure you were alone.”

“She?”

He ducked his head. “I would not have done it, except she said she would call down God’s vengeance on my head.”

A nasty feeling wriggled through Alice.

“And she is a Holy Sister, my lady. I reckon if anyone can call God down on you, she can.”

Gripping Seamus by the arm, Alice forced his frightened babble to a halt. “Slow down, Seamus, and tell me from the beginning.”

Seamus took a deep breath. “I was on the moor, my lady, checking the snares for rabbits. I always do that because my brothers say I am not old enough to go on the hunt.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, you know where the trees grow a little thicker, by the tarn?” Seamus wiped his palms on his tunic.

“Aye?”

“It is the best place for snares, because the rabbits think they are safe from foxes in the thicket.”

“Aye, Seamus.” She needed patience. Screaming at Seamus to get on with it would only frighten him more. Her mind whirled. As much as she knew to her core that it was Sister Julianna, her brain tried to reason the dread away. Sister bided safe with the nuns at St. Stephen’s.

He leant closer to her. “She came upon me so sudden, I did not see her at first.”

“Who came upon you?”

“Sister Julianna, Lady Alice. And at first I thought it could not be her, that she was some sort of haunt, because I saw her leave that day with the others.”

She had left with the others. Alice had stood in the bailey and watched her go, waved her on her way. Sister had sat in the cart beside the Prioress and never turned as they cleared the gate. Surely, the Prioress would have sent word if she were missing?

“She is in the woods?”

“Aye, my lady. Upstream a ways, there is an old shepherd’s croft and she has taken shelter there.” Seamus’s eyes widened. “She said I had to come and find you. I was to tell you to bring food.”

* * * *

Alice rummaged through the quiet larder, cursing her stupidity.

Beside the banked kitchen hearth, Cook and Walter slept bathed in the ruddy glow of the coals. Soft snores rose from their bundled forms. She slipped into the kitchen with ease, waiting and half-wishing with every step for someone to hail her and stop her.

The wise course would be to tell William. It would only go badly for her if she did not and he discovered what she planned. She’d had her mind made up to tell him after dinner. Then William had arrived in their chamber in a sportive mood, and conversation had fled from her thoughts.

Cook left a few provisions out for nightly kitchen raids.

Alice snatched a couple of loaves of bread, a wheel of cheese, and some winter apples and stuffed them into her sack. Going to Sister like a thief had to be one of the stupidest things she had ever done. But she did it anyway. Because she felt some lingering loyalty for the woman who had raised her? Partly, but more because she wanted to make this go away without William having to involve himself.

Wonderful peace lay between them now. Her courses had still not come, and the growing conviction she carried their child made this time sweeter. Perhaps if she could see Sister, speak with her, she could make her see reason. If Sister went away, and without notice, perhaps Alice could avoid the nastiness that followed Sister.

From the stores beside the larder, she pulled an old blanket and pushed it into her sack. A couple of tapers followed, and a flint. Who knew what she would find when she reached Sister.

Through the kitchen door, she crept into the still inner bailey. Cold night air stole her breath. On the walls, the sentry’s torches flickered as they moved. Before William, the walls had stayed dark. Some part of her still hoped one of the guards might see her and call out. Then she could shut her nagging conscience up and return to her bed, knowing she had failed.

Then she would tell William.

Alice clung to the walls as she made her way around the bailey to the gate leading to the outer bailey. From the stables, horses whiskered and stamped. Low voices murmured to each other from the barracks. She inched past and into the outer bailey.

William would be so angry. She had made him angry so many times in their short marriage. His last accusation nestled in her breast with the sting of truth. Too often she had turned her head and let others take charge. Not this night. She would assume responsibility for Sister.

Alice stopped, her hand on the latch for the postern gate. Once she went through that gate, she set her course.

Out there, in the dark and the cold, Sister waited, and she had only recently recovered from her illness.

Nay, she would go to her. Persuade her to return to Tarnwych and in the morning they could send for the Prioress. Or better yet, take Sister to St. Stephen’s and make sure she stayed put this time.

Oiled hinges opened the postern gate onto the moor.

By night dark shadows made secret shapes on the moor, and she tripped over something and fell on the icy ground. Her sack slipped from her hand and rolled away. Alice scrabbled after it and stayed crouched low to the ground.

William had trained the sentries well, but the moon hid behind heavy-laden snow clouds.

As she moved through the dark, her eyes grew surer and she quickened her pace. The dark shape to her left must be the rocks she could see from her casement.

The furs William had given her kept the worst chill off her body, but yesterday’s small snowfall seeped through her boots and chilled her feet. Sister risked freezing to death if she sheltered close to the tarn. Wind came off the water there with a dagger-sharp cut of ice.

Surely, the river lay close now. Distances confused her in the dark, and Alice took a moment to find her place. There, thick and hulking, rose the towers of Tarnwych. She went the right way.

Water whispered to her long before the thin glitter of river in the moonlight peeped between the trees. Turning left, she followed its course upstream. As she moved closer to the water, the chill deepened, and Alice huddled into her furs. Sister had left with nothing more than her wool cloak. Alice should have thought to bring another.

“There you are.” A scream caught in Alice’s throat as a thin form appeared out of the dark.

“Sister?”

“Aye.” Sister gripped her arm and tugged. “Come. I have been waiting outside for you.”

“I came as soon as I could.” Fool she for coming at all.

“I prayed for you.” Sister ducked around the ghostly tree trunks. “I prayed you would see the truth and come to me. God has answered my prayers.”

Alice felt sure God had very little to do with this. “I came to take you back to the keep with me.”

“Whist, Alice.” Sister’s fingers dug into her wrist. Her breath made clouds in the air about her head. “Do not be stupid and come along. Anyone could be out here. They are looking for me, you know? I can feel them. They bring their dogs with them.”

“St. Stephen’s keeps hunting hounds?”

“I did not see them, but I know they are there.”

Limned by the sparse moonlight, the hut came into view between the trees.

With a loud creak, the door opened and Sister pulled her inside. “Did you bring tapers?”

“Aye.”

“Light them.”

Alice’s hands shook with cold, and it took several strikes to raise a spark. In the taper’s dim light, the hovel looked long since deserted. Leaves and branches littered the floor from where one part of the roof had collapsed. The walls did little to ward off the cold.

“You should light a fire.” Alice’s teeth chattered, and she rubbed her hands together for warmth.

“I cannot light a fire.” Sister turned to her. “They will see it. They hunt me.”

Her first good look at Sister shocked Alice speechless. Hair matted and snarled, writhed about her head like a nest of vipers. Her face appeared gaunter beneath the layers of grime. She still wore her habit, but it was torn in places and soiled. Sister’s eyes shocked Alice the most. Alice could not drag her stare away. If not completely mad, Sister teetered close to the edge of the abyss. Her gaze darted about, burning fever-bright.

“I brought food.” Alice held up her sack.

Sister scuttled forward and snatched it from her. Like an animal, she squatted on the floor and opened the sack.

“Sister, you must come back with me. You cannot live like this.”

“Nay.” Sister scrabbled through the sack. “If I go back with you they will send me to that place.”

“St. Stephen’s.” Alice crouched beside her.

Sister tore into the bread with her teeth. “It is filled with whores and adulterers.”

“It is an Abbey, Sister, surely not.”

“You know nothing.” Sister huddled over her bread. “You know nothing about those places and the sin behind their walls. But I know.” She took more mouthfuls of bread. “I know.” Crumbs sprayed from her mouth, and Alice inched away from her. “Because I know their secrets they have to kill me.”

There did not seem any point in carrying the conversation further down that road. “I promise William will not send you back to St. Stephen’s.” But clearly Sister needed to go somewhere. The creature in front of her had drifted beyond reason. It hurt to see her thus.

“William.” Sister cackled and grabbed the wheel of cheese. Digging her dirt-encrusted fingers through the rind, she pulled out a handful. “William the fornicator. He took my Alice.” She looked up, her gaze sharp. “He turned my Alice against me with his lewd ways, and his stiff man’s rod.”

Alice had never heard Sister refer to…that. She scuttled further away from Sister, wanting to put distance between herself and the addled stranger spitting cheese from her venom-thinned lips.

“He sticks it in her, again and again and again. Spills his seed and sin deep inside her until she is rotten from it. Rotten and stinking of him and the devil.”

Alice needed to leave here. She rose. Coming here tonight had been a worse mistake than she had first thought. Reason would not prevail here. The creature cackling through her meal in the hut was not Sister. Not the Sister she had known, anyway.

Had the nuns coming to take her back driven her mad, or had it lain inside her, coiled and waiting to appear? Flashes of incidents tumbled through Alice’s mind. Rages that would shake Tarnwych for days. Not often, but vicious enough to send everyone running. Days spent on her knees in the chapel as Sister ranted Bible verses at her and implored her to repent.

Dear God. Sister had not grown mad. She had always been mad.

Sister stood and stalked Alice. “What are you doing?”

“I must return to the keep. They will note my absence.”

“You lie.” Sister closed on her.

Alice sprang back. The hut rattled as her back jammed into the wall. “Nay, Sister. I must return but I will be back.” With William and an army if that was what she needed.

“You want them to kill me.”

“Nay, Sister. I would never want that.”

Kill.

The hut shimmered and dipped about Alice and she lost her bearings. Beneath her nails, the wood wall provided her only anchor.

Kill him.
Sister screamed in her mind. Clear as if it happened right now.
Kill the abomination before he soils my Alice.

Alice’s head spun, she could not draw a decent breath.

The boy. The one like Mathew, but not Mathew. A different boy. A boy who had lived at Yarborough.
Play, Alice, play.
Then gone.

Vanished into a deep hole in her memory, but now his face rose clear as day and stared at her through his heavy-lidded eyes.
Kill him!

So much blood. Warm and sticky, it clung to her hair and her face. Blood, red and thick, as it pooled around the boy’s head. His eyes, open and staring, and even then she had known he was dead. Like the rabbits that lay on the kitchen table before Cook skinned them.

Sour bile stung Alice’s mouth.

Sister watched her, head cocked as if she saw what Alice saw. “Come back soon, and we will make a plan to escape.”

“Aye, Sister.” Alice’s hand shook on the latch. Flinging open the door, she fell into the night.

Dear God, what had she remembered?

Mind whirling, Alice stumbled to the keep. Rocks and low vegetation caught her feet and tangled them. The door had opened in her mind and she could not shut it, did not want to shut it as the images blasted her.