Authors: Kathy Morgan
Chapter Seventeen
“I
don’t like this.” Arianna spoke somberly, forehead pressed against the window. The view was breathtaking…literally, the altitude so high the lack of oxygen made getting air into her lungs laborious. The incline was so steep they seemed to be driving perpendicular to the high and winding road bordered on one side by a sheer rise of rock, on the other by an endless drop to the sea.
“Don’t like what?” Caleb asked, glancing in her direction. “Being up in the clouds?”
Clouds?
With a shuddering glance, Arianna looked
down
at what she had believed to be scattered patches of fog. And below—much, much farther below—at the waves splashing against the jagged rocks. “Now that you mention it,” she muttered. “But no, that wasn’t what I was talking about. I just hate letting some sick jerk get the best of me, run me out of my own house. I’ve never run away from anything before.”
“Ever had someone fancy hacking you into a million wee pieces before?” he inquired blandly. She figured she must have turned a lighter shade of pale at his remark, because he gruffly apologized.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” She looked at his hands. Long fingers, lightly dusted with hair. Neat, square-cut fingernails. God, she loved his hands.
Focus, Arianna.
His head turned. He fixed her with those bewitching green eyes. “Sorry, for what?”
“Take a woman out to dinner,” she quipped. “Next thing you know she’s moving in.”
“You’re very welcome in my home, Arianna.” His voice was girded with steel. “Were that not the case, sure I’d not have insisted you come here. I don’t do polite.”
No, he wasn’t exactly the type for the grand sacrificial gesture, the obligatory kindness. Still, she hated the thought of invading his privacy, intruding on his reclusive lifestyle.
Resting her head back, Arianna stared at the cumulus clouds etching the sky in shades of charcoal and gunmetal gray. “Looks positively ominous,” she said to the window.
A scatter of whitewashed villages dotted the valley below, so far away that the white-fleeced sheep looked like tiny cotton balls grazing the scraggly farmland. Thatched-roof cottages resembled toy houses set on a velvet backdrop of faded green.
At that moment, the road snaked sharply to the right leaving nothing in front of them but an endless expanse of sea and sky. “Oh, God!” Arianna shrieked. She grabbed for the armrest just as the front wheels found purchase on a slice of roadway even narrower than the one before.
“Breathe,” Caleb ordered dryly, slanting her an indulgent look.
She obeyed, sucking in a deep breath. Blowing it out. “Bet that can be tricky at night.”
“Deadly.” Like the suppressed violence in his voice, that murderous glint in his eyes. “‘Tis a private road,” was all he said. Though the rest was left unspoken, his meaning was clear. That anyone fool-hearty enough to ignore the
Private Property
notices posted prominently at the foot of this treacherous drive did so entirely at his own peril.
A seething anger was emanating from Caleb; she had felt it building in him, like steam in a pressure cooker, since the moment he had discovered the desecration of her home. Silent and sullen, he had spoken barely a dozen words the whole way here. And when he did speak, it had been in monosyllables. All that coiled violence inside him served only to increase Arianna’s sense of foreboding. What was she thinking, moving into some desolate, gothic castle with a man she didn’t know?
The road took another sharp right onto a cobblestone drive, a road much wider than the bumpy single lane they had been traveling. As they rounded a long, winding curve, Arianna spotted the hulking fortress looming off in the distance. Constructed of cut medieval stone and wrapped in flowing skirts of cool, gray mist, the castle resembled something out of a Tolkien fantasy. Barely visible now through a densely wooded thicket, Arianna knew that in the spring and summer, when leaves dressed the naked branches of the trees and shrubs, it would be all but hidden from view.
There was a lingering sense of menace in the air, as if some otherworldly presence warned potential trespassers off the estate. Two round towers rose in the distance, their pointed slate roofs set equidistant along the outer wall. In front of the ancient fort flowed a stream of water that was dark as the river Styx.
A moat? No way
.
Yes
way.
As he approached the water’s edge, Caleb reached up and touched a remote control device attached to the visor. A clanging rang out as the huge iron gate, a portcullis, began to ascend with the screech of metal on metal. When the gate had disappeared into the gabled roof of the gatehouse, a wooden partition began to lower across the water, like the opening of a giant jaw.
A drawbridge. Un
-freaking-
believable.
Arianna glanced at Caleb. Staring straight ahead, fingers tapping the steering wheel, he looked like an impatient commuter in rush-hour traffic.
Should she say something? Make some polite remark about his lovely home? Arianna opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again.
For the first time in her life, she was totally, utterly speechless.
She must have made some sound, though, because Caleb turned to look at her. A twinkle lit those intriguing eyes as he slid a finger beneath her chin—and gently lifted her gaping jaw.
His large hand covered hers in her lap, where her fingers were still intertwined from the frightening ride up the mountainside. That was all it took. One simple touch and a sense of wellbeing flooded over her. The feeling that she was entering the enchanted domain of some supernatural entity ebbed away on a tide of peace. After crossing the drawbridge, they passed through a short, dark tunnel beneath the gatehouse.
Caleb pointed upward. “Machicolations,” he told her. “Murder holes built into the turreted outer bawn, as well as the entrance of the keep.”
“The keep?” she asked, eyes alight with a childlike excitement she didn’t care to mask.
“The main residence, command post, the last line of defense in times of battle. Many refer to the building as ‘the castle’, when in actuality all that you see inside the bawn,” he made an expansive gesture with his hand, “is part and parcel of the
castle
. The curtain wall is constructed of granite…em…measured in feet, about eight thick, twenty high. The ramparts along the wall-walk above us have crenellations, or gaps, for the shooting of arrows or guns.”
“My God, all the history here… This is just so…so amazing….” Arianna rolled her window down. A spray of soft, cool mist dampened her face as she strained for a better look.
She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath of the salty sea air. But then a rumble of thunder in the distance set her heart to pounding. After the abject terror of that day on the coast, was she forever doomed to be frightened by the sound of thunder? As she wondered at this, she realized the sound she was hearing wasn’t thunder at all, but a kind of reverberation that was getting louder, drawing closer. Stunned, she identified the sound.
A stampede of horses
. Dozens, possibly hundreds of them, were galloping straight in her direction. So close now that she could feel the impact of their hooves shaking the ground beneath her feet. The
ground
beneath her feet? But she was sitting in the Land Rover.
Her eyes popped open. She scrubbed at them, but it didn’t alter the vision, this…delusion that had wrapped itself around her.
Oh, no. Not again.
Icy fingers of fear gripped her heart in a fist as Caleb, the SUV, all that was real in the world was suddenly, irrevocably, swallowed up by the thick alien fog swirling around her feet.
Standing beside the gatehouse, she was caught up in an appalling scene of pandemonium. Women with small children clutched to their breasts ran screaming from the small wooden outbuildings enclosed within the castle walls.
A garrison of foot soldiers milled truculently behind the portcullis. The sun struck a sharp gleam on the battleaxes and broadswords clutched in their powerful hands. Fierce knights, their muscular bodies clad in rough-hewn leather, sat astride giant war-horses. The destriers nickered and pranced about, impatient for their master’s battle cry.
Attempting to retreat from the melee, Arianna began to ease backward until she felt the rough coolness of the curtain wall against her back. In disbelieving silence, she watched a volley of flame-tipped arrows zip over the outer bawn.
There were screams, shouted commands. Death burned in the eyes of the battle-worn warriors positioned strategically along the narrow wall walk. Clearly, there would be no mercy, no quarter given those who had dared lay siege against this mighty fortification.
Targeting the invaders, rocks and other missiles began hurtling from the parapet above Arianna’s head. Huge cauldrons of boiling oil were tipped, dumped ruthlessly upon the heads of those attempting to breach the sanctity of the outer bawn.
Blood-curdling screams rent the air, and Arianna gagged at the sickening smell of petroleum mixed with burning flesh, and the metallic smell of blood. Knees too weak to hold her, she slid down the rough stone at her back. Arms locked around her legs, face buried against her knees, she tried to block out the revolting violence.
“This is the bailey.” Caleb’s voice echoed in her ears, as if he were in a tunnel. Penetrating the miasma clouding her mind, the sound of his voice drew her slowly away from the edge of a precipice, inch by nail-bitingly-slow inch, until she was finally seated again in the vehicle beside him. “Gardens and orchards are over there. A fishpond…” His recitation began to trail off. He tapped the brakes and brought the vehicle to a sudden halt. “What is it, Arianna? What’s happened?”
Foggy-headed, she tried to look at him, but found it hard to focus. “I saw….”
What? Ghosts re-enacting an ancient battle?
“I don’t know. I just got dizzy for a minute.”
He slid a hand around the back of her neck and began a gentle massage. Then, with his thumb applying a light pressure on her chin, he turned her head, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Tell me
.
”
“It was weird. A…a vision, I guess it was. I found myself caught up in the midst of some ancient battle. There were war horses and men in armor.”
Caleb’s face became a thundercloud.
“Look, it was nothing,” she said. “Strain from this morning, from the last couple of weeks catching up with me is all.” She bared her teeth in the effigy of a smile. “Now, you were saying something about a fish pond?”
Caleb tipped his head, and eyed her askance for a few seconds. “Right,” he finally muttered, shifting into gear and traveling on. “It’s stocked with trout and pike.”
“And the river flowing around the entrance…the…moat? Is that stocked, too?”
“’Tis. With crocodiles.”
Arianna cut him a sharp look. Was he serious? Or had that been some glib reference to the gossip being circulated by local rumormongers?
As they drove around a bend in the road, she saw several wooden structures. Replicas of the cabin-like huts she had seen in her vision. “Caleb, h…how long have those buildings been here?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m not sure exactly. Let’s see…The round tower was after being built in the ninth century. After that, some time in the late 1200s, the northern-most end of the square tower was added. I reckon the outbuildings…the mill, a chapel and an alehouse…were erected during that latter period. Why do you ask?”
Arianna licked her lips. “I saw them in the vision. Witnessed women running from them.” She turned beseeching eyes on him. “What’s going on, Caleb? Do you know? Ever since the night I arrived here, I’ve been experiencing strange, inexplicable things. My father warned me…you know, the night he died…he warned me that I would encounter things here that I wouldn’t understand.”
Caleb pierced her with a look. “You’re father said that to you?”
“Yes, he did.” She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “Why is it I get the feeling you know exactly what he was talking about?”
There was no response to her question—not that she really expected one. But his jaw muscles did that clenching thing as they continued along the winding cobblestone drive in a discordant silence. Leafless trees towered over them like mighty sentinels, interlocking branches moving as one in the bracing sea wind.
As the Land Rover drew ever closer to its final destination, the sense of doom Arianna had been experiencing returned. Her hand touched her mouth, eyes riveted on the imposing structure in front of them. Five levels of wild and sibylline charm struck a haughty pose atop the rocky promontory she had first seen in her childhood dreams.
“God, Caleb,” she whispered in awe. “It’s breathtaking.”
“The keep.” Spoken softly, the two words conveyed a wealth of family pride. “In the mid eighteen-hundreds, my great-great-grandfather had the original medieval trussed roof removed, windows enlarged, the exterior otherwise modified. Around the time of the potato famine, it was. Our family had plenty, so wasn’t he after opening the gates to the starving hordes living on our land. And to some who lived beyond the thousand acres, as well.”
“Sounds like a wonderful man,” Arianna murmured. “And this place…it looks almost mythical…like something out of an Irish faerie tale.”
She watched Caleb’s lips curve in a secret smile as he parked in front of the massive edifice, where a dozen thick, broad slabs of white stone led to a towering entryway.
“Look, I know dealing with all that mess at my place this morning has made you really late for your meeting. So, feel free to just dump my suitcases out here on the driveway. I can knock on the door and find my way in from here.”
His reply came with the lofty nonchalance one might expect from someone born into this level of affluence. “Sure, the servants will be out to collect your things straight away and deliver them to your quarters. I warrant you’ll be finding your stay here amenable.”