Exile’s Bane (3 page)

Behind me, Duncan cleared his throat. His gauntlet hand encircled my upper arm, and he led me back into the bowels of the great house. I went without complaint. Though Duncan was Marie Louise’s creature, his company was far preferable to my aunt’s or even my uncle’s in his current state. Yet the earl’s presence infused me with purpose and further increased my mounting apprehension. At whatever cost, I must remain at Tor House.

At the top of the south stair, we met Captain Wallace who had Peg in hand, and together the four of us went on. Two officers and two captives in their own home. Had Marie Louise forgotten Peg’s disposition? It didn’t matter. Peg was with me. They would not take her again.

Chapter Two

We came to a stout wooden door set deep in the wall. Duncan released my arm, lifted the bolt, and opened the heavy door. Peg and Captain Wallace caught up with us, Duncan stood aside, and we entered under his stern eye. The smell of old leather and mold assaulted me.

“The level below this opens on the staging area between the postern gate and the stables,” Captain Wallace instructed Peg and me with an extended forefinger. He stood in the thin shaft of light that fell from the single slit window.

“Enough.” Duncan pushed Wallace away. “No further conversation between you and the ladies,” he demanded, hand on his holstered pistol.

“I respect the intent of the countess’ order—” In grave concern, Captain Wallace slowly shook his head. “—but you do not know this little tower, nor do the ladies. Dangers lurk here. You have my word, Captain Comrie, we speak no conspiracy.”

Duncan inspected the chilly dark hanging around us, his face closed up in uneasy displeasure. He lowered his hand. “Go on then, but quickly.”

Wallace turned to me with a forced smile. “This level of the tower has long been used for storage by the stables.”

“It smells like it,” Peg piped up behind me.

“The entry on the back hall here—” He gestured at the light beyond the open doorway. “—is heavily traveled. You will be safest on the level above this, though gunners will pass through to the roof should we come under attack again.”

I placed a warm hand on my exposed neck and looked around at shadowed piles of saddle blankets and old tack thrown indiscriminately around the tiny room. I took a hesitant backward step, and my heel slipped.

Duncan caught and righted me. We looked down at a dim, half-empty feed bag, its contents spilled in moldy clumps across the floor.

In a sudden panic, I pulled at Captain Wallace’s sleeve, as I had done since I was a child and could reach it.

“Don’t leave us here.”

“On the upper level there is a bed frame and a drafty hearth,” he responded, patting my hand.

“Captain,” Duncan said to Wallace. “You will locate Sergeant Burke of his Highness’ Lifeguard. He should be with the prince. Tell him I need him and four men immediately. Direct them here.”

“Yes, Captain,” came Wallace’s crisp response.

Captain Wallace departed, and Duncan moved into position within the open doorway. Moments later, a familiar set of clicking footsteps stopped at the door before him. A hubbub ensued.

“Who do you think you are?” came Mrs. Lowry’s raised voice from beyond Duncan, whose mere size in the doorway blocked her entry. “Don’t you think it bad enough with our mistress in this awful tower without you tryin’ to deny her the barest necessities?”

A moment later, our red-cheeked Mrs. Lowry sauntered around Duncan carrying a huge pile of linens, a sack of faggots hanging off her arm. With careful footsteps and my hand on the rough wall to guide me, I led her up the steps to the upper room Wallace had designated. Peg followed. We topped the stair, and Peg slid the faggot sack off Mrs. Lowry’s arm.

“Thank ye, dear.”

Mrs. Lowry wound her way carefully across the floor and dropped the linens on the slats of the bed frame, which stood in the slim shaft of light from the window. Hands on ample hips, she looked critically around the tower room. “And you accustomed to your own four-poster bed. This is disgraceful. Aren’t those your father’s hangings?”

“Holy Mother, they are!” I cried. Rolled up in a huge ball at the far end of the bed were indeed my father’s beautiful tapestries, hangings I had last seen in his rooms in the private tower, years ago.

“Tis a true shame to see them here, but they will brighten the room up a bit, no?”

I stood in shock while Peg helped Mrs. Lowry hang the tapestries up around the small circular room that had surely been used as a place of repose for weary gunners relieved off the roof above, the tapestries their cover against the cold. But the walls didn’t even take a quarter of the lustrous hangings and so they hung a second layer in an offset pattern, leaving the tight little window open for what air and light we could get.

Mrs. Lowry frowned and shook her head disparagingly. “I will have two mattresses brought up. Your personal belongings I will see to directly. If ye need anything else, Lady Elena, send for me. I won’t fail ye, and that young man downstairs won’t keep me out, as ye have seen.” And she was off, strands of her perfectly-placed, straw-colored hair loose and flying.

Peg made herself a perch atop the remaining tapestries spread across the bed slats. Her high cheekbones, those bones I so admired, were bright with color. She pulled out the tortoise-shell hairbrush she carried with her constantly, drew her long hair around, and began to brush at the ends. I carefully joined her atop the bed. She stopped her stroking, grasped my hand, and gave it a little pat. A sure sign of her continued support, no matter my disgrace.

My father had discovered Peg, the long-lost daughter of a runaway cousin, on one of his many trips to Ireland and brought her back to Tor House as a companion for me. His words came back to me, “You are the same age and both Rolands, after all.” I heard this again and again when anyone questioned this odd addition to his daughter’s establishment. For Peg had been brought up in an Irish backwater where they still spoke the English of the prior century, and no amount of coaching had been able to remove it entirely from her speech.

“Whatever possessed you to approach the prince like that?” I asked her now.

“The countess denied me attendance at his arrival. Ye heard how she treated me. All I wanted was to see him. I did not expect him to stop.” Since the war began, Peg had been fascinated with reports of the King’s nephew and general, Prince Rupert of the Rhine. “I still don’t believe he actually spoke to me,” she said, with a quick, shy smile.

“What did he say?”

“He wanted to know my name, my place at Tor House, and did I have a pet.”

“That was an odd question, was it not?”

“Oh, no. I had reached out for Boye. He loves dogs, don’t ye see?”

“Go on.”

“He squeezed my hand and went on his way. But enough about me.” She put the brush aside, clasped her hands before her, and looked me in the eye. “What has happened to put us in this mean place?”

“We are confined until we leave for the isle.”

Peg’s face did not change at this news. She, who had long warned me of my aunt’s and uncle’s grasping ways, leaned toward me in concern.

“What has she done?”

“She has leveled a ridiculous charge of conspiracy against me. Her purposes are apparent now.”

“I warned ye.” She nodded her head sadly and slumped back against the wall. Unable to sit still for long, she soon gave me her brush, slid off the tapestries, and approached the hearth with a doubtful look.

Alone on the bed, I straightened my back against the cold wall, and folded my arms across my midriff. Anxiety blossomed anew within me. I looked down at the brush still in my hand and began to work the snarls out of my own long hair.

“Could they be right? Maybe it is my fault. Perhaps I should accept my fate and do my duty. It would be the reasonable thing to do. It would end this dilemma.”

Crouched before the hearth, her green dress tucked carefully up around her hips, Peg dropped her handful of tinder and shot me an incredulous look. “Edward Gorgon?”

I shrugged and went back to brushing my hair. The room went dark. It closed in around me, threatened to suffocate me with the deep reds, blues, and browns of my father’s discarded tapestries. The oppressive smell of rain floated in the window.

The countess had taken my servants, left me in this last bastion within my own home, this bare prison in the farthest corner of the house. Separation from all I knew.

I left the brush on the makeshift bed, avoided the clutter on the floor, and went over to the window. The sky was full of lowering black clouds. Movement caught my eye, and I recognized one of the stable boys, his face an agony of dread and loneliness. He looked longingly back over his shoulder, then pushed on out through the postern gate. In his way, he could not stand to leave the safety of Tor House any more than I could.

Moments later, rain droplets showered in through the window. I stepped quickly back to avoid getting wet and nearly fell on a corded collection of old leather tack.

“Careful there,” Peg said. A guttering flame had started in the hearth, and Peg had a stack of faggots beside her, at the ready.

“You are right about Gorgon,” I admitted. “He is an unnatural beast of a man.”

“Truly now, do ye have a choice?” From her squat before the fire, she put a hand on her hip and looked up at me with dark, piercing eyes.

“I will make one,” I insisted. Anger smoldered under the surface of my helpless distress. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t like the unknown, you know that.” I set my jaw and walked to the edge of the bed, hands in tight fists at my sides. “I will not let my home go so easily. No.”

“Of course not. I am with thee, Elena. We shall find a way,” Peg said with aplomb, feeding her little fire.

I sighed, wishing there was something I could do to change the situation. Then, something unspeakable came to mind.

“There is always a hint of what I should or could do in my dreams,” I said softly. “A hint would be useful now.”

Peg gave me a doubtful look. “Ye do not feel that way when ye dream.”

I retreated to the tapestries atop the bed frame. It was true. Foresight was the realm of witches and something to hide. I did not want to burn for a gift I had no control over and certainly had not asked for.

“So tell me of thy dreams,” Peg went on as she stacked wood over the brightly blazing little fire. “I have long wondered what thee see that defeats ye so, ye who are strong.”

I shrugged, though sudden panic rode within my veins. “I’ve had them since I was very small, little events for the most part. Father could never surprise me. I even knew before he gave me my sword.”

“Uncle John’s death was no little event.”

“No, it was not.”

“Tell me what ye saw.”

I shook my head. “My dreams leave raw feelings on me. If I see something exciting or curious, I live with the welling passion of that feeling for hours afterward.” My heart stepped up its beat. “The dreams of Father’s death left me destitute for days.”

“Well then.” She stood up and studied me, compassion in the set of her head. “I can see why thee would not want to think on it.”

“I have not dreamed, not those kinds of dreams anyway, for some time. I certainly did not foresee Uncle Charles’ deceit. Maybe I’ve outgrown them.”

“I warned ye about both of them, the earl and the countess.”

I sighed again and held my tongue.

“What do ye think they are? What do they mean?” she asked, suddenly intent.

“My dreams?”

“Yes.”

“The Bible says those who foresee are an abomination.”

“There is no abomination in thee, Elena Roland.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Tell me of Uncle John, your father.” She sat dutifully down beside me. “Share it with me. Because I too loved him, yea.”

I studied her sincere face for long, agonizing moments.

“You must promise to tell no one,” I whispered.

“I would die first.”

I settled myself, my back pushed up against the cool stone. With a great shaky breath, I took her hand.

“The sound was shattering,” I quietly began. “Cannon and musket fire, men screaming and yelling. Clouds of gun smoke masked my view, but it was clearly a battlefield, for I could see a weaving standard deep in the smoke. It went down, and swords clashed nearby. A horse screamed. In the dream, I strode forward through the smoke until I came to a Royalist officer on the ground. His armor, his clothes, his sword were bathed in blood. One of his retainers pulled the officer’s helmet off. I recognized his black, wavy hair, so like my own. Oh, Peg, he lay so very still in the surrounding chaos, his eyes wide and staring, but not seeing. A devastated Captain Wallace stood over him. Wounded Kalimir waited close by.” I searched Peg’s honest face for hatred or disgust, but saw neither.

“Bad as it was, there be no evil in seeing truth.” She gave a sharp nod, underlining her decision. “How did ye stand it?”

“I did not, as you well know. I remember that I awoke in excruciating terror, for Father was due to leave the next day. Were it not for you, I do not know what I would have done. Your ministrations that morning saved my sanity. I never told you, but I tried to stop him.”

Peg gasped, her face gone pale.

“My pleas would not sway him.” I shook my head in despair. “He went on to war and to his death. According to Captain Wallace, just as I foresaw it.”

We sat quietly for some time. Finally, Peg picked up her brush and broke the uneasy silence between us.

“So what, now, are we to do?”

“I have given some thought to it.”