In the Shadow of Midnight (27 page)

He had not deliberately kept De Braose’s name to himself;
he simply had not thought it important enough to mention to her, not when there was so little likelihood of either of them coming face to face with their mutual nemesis. Nor had he been particularly enamoured of the earl’s notion to keep his niece in the dark as to their real intentions. He believed a man —or woman—walking into danger should not do so blindly, and using Ariel de Glare to shield their attempt to rescue Princess Eleanor from the king’s prison was about as dangerous a situation as he could envision. She would have to be told eventually, of course. Even the Welshman would have to know eventually, but because it had been the earl’s express wish to delay the telling until it was absolutely necessary, Eduard was, in turn, bound to maintain the charade as long as possible. Even at the expense of his patience.

“Has it not occurred to you, Lady Ariel, that I may indeed have very good reasons for returning to England; that those reasons may not have anything whatsoever to do with you or your overabundance of grooms; that those reasons might be
private
and
personal?”

“Where a man is concerned, anything private or personal usually has to do with a woman. Is that what you want me to believe?” she scoffed. “That you are going to England because of a woman?”

Flung from her lips as a casual mockery, Ariel was surprised to see a distinct tightness alter the shape of FitzRandwulf’s jaw. Already iron-hard, it tensed even further so that each sinew was ominously well defined and the mottling of scar tissue stood out white and rigid. His eyes took on a glow not unlike the embers of a fire, burning away the thin veneer of politeness, and leaving only the cold gray ash of contempt in its wake.

Ariel, puffed with her own smug assurances, felt the strength of them leak out of her, deflating her composure as surely as if a knife had been thrust into a bubble of dough.

He
was
going to England because of a woman!

She was not quite certain why the idea should have shocked her, she only knew it did. Shocked … or unsettled … in truth she knew not which, but she found her gaze
falling instinctively to the broad, muscled wall of his chest. The ring was not visible through the dark mat of hair that filled the open vee of his shirt, but she could sense it hanging there, ornate and delicate, warmed by the animal heat of his flesh.

“Is it so outlandish a thought, my lady?”

“N-no, of course not.”

“Or do you find it beyond belief that you might not be the prime consideration in
everyone’s
mind?”

She met the accusation with a hot flush of mortification, for he was smiling. Grinning, actually, even as he mocked her vanity and arrogance.

“Was there anything else you wanted to know?” he asked solicitously.

Ariel took refuge behind the rapid lowering of her lashes, and clasped her hands tightly together. “No. No, there is nothing else.”

Eduard beckoned for Robin to join them. “Hold a blanket for Lady Ariel while she strips out of these wet clothes. When she is dry, fetch some of Biddy’s unguent out of my saddle pack and see that she applies it thickly over any rashes.” He paused in his instructions and glanced at Ariel. “Unless of course you would prefer me to oversee the application myself. I would, naturally, be most happy to render my full and undivided attention.”

Heat flared in Ariel’s cheeks again as the wolfish smile broadened. Part of her knew enough to be outraged by the suggestion; another part of her shivered through a sudden image of those big, powerful hands slicked with oil, skimming over her flesh.

She blinked. “I am sure I can manage on my own. Thank you.”

He offered an exaggerated bow and strode away to rejoin the others in front of the budding fire. Ariel waited until he was too far to hear the words she mouthed under her breath, then turned and plumped herself down on a low, three-legged stool.

Robin had heard quite clearly and stood staring, a bundle
of clothing in one hand and a goblet
of mulled wine in the other.

“Have … you and Eduard argued?”

The
again
was unspoken, but loudly implied.

“Your brother does not
argue,” she snapped.
“He prefers to exchange insults.”

“My lord brother has never been a man to say twenty words where one is sufficient, and so he sometimes seems more … brusque than he really intends to be. He does have a great deal on his mind.”

“We all have a great deal on our minds,” she countered. “But we do not all walk around acting saddle-galled, as if parts of our bodies were held in a constant crush.”

Robin’s mouth trembled as he tried unsuccessfuly to contain a grin. “If he appears impatient at times, it usually means he is impatient with himself.”

Ariel accepted the wine goblet he offered and sipped at the spicy-sweet contents while she glared at the three shadowy figures in front of the fire. FitzRandwulf’s silhouette was unmistakable with his long legs braced wide apart and his shoulders blotting out a fair portion of the view.

“At any rate, it is better than the black moods he used to suffer.”

Ariel dragged her eyes away from the fire. “Black moods?”

“Oh aye, my lady. He used to have dreadful nightmares. Horrible ones that left him white and shaking in the mornings. Even now, you will notice, he does not sleep overmuch. An hour or two at a time, rarely any longer. It … had to do with what happened to him when he was younger. When he lived in England with the man he thought was his father, and where he was beaten and tortured. Why … he bears a scar this long” —Robin held his hands a foot apart—“where the Dragon thrust a knife into Eduard’s thigh and tried to make him betray our real father. And his mother … !” Robin shook his head like someone who has never known anything but absolute love and respect. “Biddy told me she was the most malefic woman who ever lived. She bathed in blood and used to torture people for the sheer fun of it. She laughed while the Dragon cut into
Eduard’s flesh. She laughed and entreated him to stab again, and again. Biddy saw it all. She was there. And so was my mother, Lady Servanne, and Lady Gillian, and Sparrow, and Friar …”

He stopped, for he could see his credibility was beginning to drain away along with the wine in Lady Ariel’s goblet.

“It is true,” he insisted quietly. “You could ask Eduard himself, except that he tends to blacken eyes and break heads at the very mention of the name Nicolaa de la Have.”

Ariel lowered the goblet slowly from her lips. Even in as remote a place as Milford Haven, the name of Nicolaa de la Haye was synonymous with death and evil. Mothers invoked her spirit to frighten their children into obedience. Bards cast her as the witch or the sorceress or the bride of the anti-Christ when they retold tales spawned in the dark mists of Lincolnshire. Ariel had not thought someone so hellish had actually existed.

“Nicolaa de la Haye was Lord Eduard’s mother?” she asked in a fascinated whisper.

Robin glanced over his shoulder and showed the first signs of reluctance, as if he might have said too much already. “Aye, my lady. He bears the scars of her motherly affection to prove it. You … will not tell him I told you? You will not say anything …?”

“No. No, of course not, Robin. Ease yourself. I will say nothing.”

“Thank you, my lady,” he murmured, not sounding the least convinced.

“Robin …” She waited until he looked over at her. “I swear it on our friendship: I will say nothing. In fact …” She straightened and set the goblet aside. “I have forgotten it already. What
were
we talking about? Oh yes, I have it now. Blankets. You were going to fetch blankets so I could change out of these wet clothes before I freeze to death.”

Robin smiled gratefully. “Yes, my lady. I shall fetch them right away.”

While Robin was kneeling over one of the saddle packs, Ariel’s eyes strayed back to the fireside. A man born of a sorceress
who had mated with a wolf and a dragon: this was the man her uncle had entrusted her safety to. A man who suffered black moods and nightmares.

It would be sheer luck if
she
did not have nightmares this night, for although she had promised Robin she would speak no more of it, it would be almost impossible not to think about it.

   As quiet as the forest had been, with only the sound of the wind sifting through the trees, the abbey was like a tomb. Ariel lay in her straw-filled pallet with her eyes wide open, the very pores of her skin wide open as well, steeped in the silence of holy reverence. Sedrick had stoked the fire high before retiring to his own pallet, but the logs had been too damp to sustain a blaze for long and, apart from the odd crackle and hiss, it smouldered disconsolately in the grate.

Ariel had consumed rather a large quantity of wine after her confrontation with FitzRandwulf. Combined with the subsequent revelations by Robin, she filled her cup several times and eventually tottered to her bed with the room canting on a distinct angle downward.

Contrary to her earlier fears, she had been enjoying the best night’s sleep she’d had since leaving Chateau d’Amboise, when she was wakened—not by visions of demonic witches and ritual sacrifices, but by an uncomfortable fullness in her bladder. Twice before retiring she had ventured out into the night air and picked her way along the well-worn path to the lean-to that sheltered the privy holes. The fact that she needed to venture out a third time was threatening to keep her wide awake until something was done about it.

If I were a man, she thought miserably, I could simply piss in the corner pot and be done with it. But there was only one pot and it was a tall, long-necked thing she would probably knock over in her attempts to straddle it.

Apparently monks did not allow for pilgrims to have more pressing needs during the night.

Ariel lifted her head and searched the gloom, but there was not much to see. She pushed herself cautiously upright
and swung her legs over the side of the cot. The dull red glow from the fire gave the bound staves at the ends of the pallets the slightest hint of shape and substance, and allowed her to steer her way across the chamber without tripping over packs, saddles, armour, and furniture.

Like most doors in a monastery, the hinges were well oiled to prevent the devil from knowing there were souls wandering about. Ariel slipped through the arched portal of the pilgrim’s hall and hurried along the stone corridor that divided the hall from the almonry. Exit through another silently swinging door let her out into the clammy dampness of the evening air. The rain had stopped but the mist was thick and pervasive, wetting her skin almost instantly and clinging in tiny droplets to the blanket she had draped around her shoulders.

Hemming in the fog, the pale walls of the abbey were her only link with reality. Here and there, the branches of a low bush plucked at the dragging ends of her blanket, and twice she managed to shrivel her own skin with lurid images of crouched, stalking grotesques with bony fingers and grasping claws.

At first she thought it must be nearer daylight than she had supposed, for the fact that she could see the walls at all suggested a general easing into daylight. But then she quickly realized there was a source of light somewhere up ahead, a concentrated source that bore the acrid tang of a pitch torch.

The stable where the horses were kept was directly behind the pilgrim’s hall, and it was from there the torchlight bloomed, yellowed and hazed by the mist. Ariel guessed it was a monk going early about his chores, and she remembered to pull the blanket up over her head to conceal the length and colour of her hair.

Her footsteps slowed, however, as the sound of voices came toward her. They were familiar voices, one of them as readily identifiable as her own.

“If you are worried about the state of the road between here and Rennes,” Henry was saying, “surely there is a way to bypass the town entirely.”

“There is,” Eduard agreed, “but one of us will still have
to ride into the city to see if the lord marshal managed to dispatch a messenger there. He mentioned Rennes or St. Malo as being places where a courier would be sent to meet us; both towns are big enough to show little interest in pilgrims passing through.”

“And if you are wrong? How will we know to stand fast?”

“I will have Sparrow with me. If there is any reason why you should not come near the city, one or both of us will double back to warn you. In truth, though, I do not anticipate any trouble. The leader of the rebelling forces is Hugh of Luisgnan—doubly vexed with the king for divorcing his first wife and taking Hugh’s betrothed as his new queen. He is a good man, not known for wanton pillage and murder. If his armies have occupied Rennes, he will be more concerned with restoring the peace than prolonging open hostilities. He wants all of Normandy to unite against the usurper; he cannot do that if he rouses sympathy for the English king.”

The light shifted and the fog swirled, retreating before the heat of the torch as three men emerged from the stables. Ariel, not wanting to be caught on the path spying on them, slipped behind the bulky shadow of an ancient fig tree a step before Henry, Sedrick, and FitzRandwulf materialized out of the fog. FitzRandwulf was leading Lucifer behind him. The enormous rampager was fully geared and as Eduard spoke he adjusted the corner of the saw-toothed saddle cloth.

“Leave here as close after dawn as possible and keep to the main road. If neither Sparrow nor myself rejoin you before midday, assume the way is clear and push on to Rennes.”

“Will you find us, or will we find you?” Henry asked.

“If I am not there to meet you at the town gates, go directly to an inn called the Two Fighting Cocks. The hostler is a friend and will provide all your needs. Whisper the words à
outrance
in his ear and he will know you come from Amboise.”

“The Two Fighting Cocks.
A outrance.”
Henry nodded. “And if you are still not with us when we are ready to leave again?”

Eduard smiled grimly. “Then I am undoubtedly dead and your sister will have realized her fondest desire.”