In the Shadow of Midnight (41 page)

“Marienne?” he said on a breath. “Is it you?” The smile that came slowly, disbelievingly to the young maid’s lips (in truth, she had lost hold of her wits for a long, startled moment as well) grew inconceivably wider and brighter as she looked up into Robin’s face. She blushed and lowered her lashes quickly, then raised them again, staring into his face as if she could have devoured him whole. “Aye, Lord Robert,” she whispered. “’Tis me.”

“You look … well,” he said awkwardly, flushing to the roots of his hair.

“You look … a welcome sight, forsooth. I had given up hope of ever seeing the face of a … a friend again.”

Her dark brown eyes were attracted by movement over Robin’s shoulder, and she saw Eduard FitzRandwulf standing by the hearth. Her fingers lost their grip on the jute handles of the buckets and both crashed to the floor. With a cry of unselfconscious joy, she ran across the room and threw herself into the dark knight’s arms. The mature, resolute facade she had been determined to maintain these past months for her princess’s sake, crumpled into a child’s sobs as she buried her face against his shoulder and clung to him for all she was worth.

Ariel was helpless to do much more than stand in the shadows and watch. She thought to signal Robin to close and bolt the door, but one look at his face, straining not to crack and fold in on itself, betrayed how close his own emotions were to the surface. She moved on silent feet and lifted the buckets herself, setting them down again inside the door before she closed it and stood with her back pressed against the banded oak.

“My lord, my lord,” Marienne sobbed. “I confess we were still afraid it was not you.”

“It is me,” Eduard assured her gently. He smoothed a hand over her hair and tilted her head enough to press a kiss on her forehead, wiping a thumb across her cheek in a futile attempt to staunch the flow of tears. “Did you honestly doubt I would come?”

“N-not I,” Marienne declared. “I never doubted it for a moment. I just never thought you would come
here.
H-how did you …?”

Eduard shook his head. “It is of no consequence
how
we came, only that we have come, and that we have come to take you and Eleanor away from this place.”

“Would that it were possible,” she said in a whisper.

“Anything is possible if the heart is willing,” Eduard insisted. “Now, what is this tripe the captain tells me? What is
this nonsense I am told that the princess does not want to escape this place?”

“Oh … my lord—” Marienne sniffed and wiped her cheeks, then dragged her sleeve across the wetness streaming from her nose. “It is true. She has sent me here tonight to beg you to leave Corfe, leave England before the king’s men catch wind of your presence here. You would be a grand prize to offer as hostage against my lord La Seyne Sur Mer’s actions. A grand revenge for the king to hold you ransom.”

“Think you either I or my father care one wit for the king’s men or for the king’s petty retributions against us? It is Eleanor whose safety must come before all else. Eleanor whose future must be protected against those who would harm her.”

Marienne swallowed hard. “She is … convinced her uncle will keep his word and merely banish her. She is convinced his guilt over … over her poor brother Arthur will protect her from farther harm.”

Eduard frowned. “He must have twisted her mind if she believes this. I cannot fathom how she would, after all that has happened.”

“After all that has happened,” Marienne said softly, “her beliefs are all she has left.”

“She has me. And I will not allow her to remain an hour longer in her uncle’s web than is necessary. I have come to take her away from here, and by God, I will take her away, willing or not.”

“My lord … she loves you very much; surely you must know this.”

Eduard’s face remained taut and Ariel’s drained to a paler shade of gray as she bowed her head and stared at her twined fingers.

“Just as I know you love her,” Marienne continued. “She asks you … nay, begs you … because of this love, to heed her pleas and do nothing more to endanger yourself.”

“And she expects me to obey? To simply ride away and leave her in this damp-ridden, pestilent prison governed by drunks and lechers? What happens when John’s guilt over Arthur’s
death fades—if, indeed, it ever affected him? What is to stop him from ordering a more permanent means of ending any further threats to his throne, for as certain as the day is long, Eleanor remains a threat to him. A threat he will not bear reminding of too many times.”

“My lady is no longer a threat to King John,” Marienne insisted softly. “He has already taken measures to ensure she can never be a threat to him again.”

“Measures? What measures? Even if he intends to make her swear fealty to him in front of every baron in the kingdom, there will come a time when he breaks into a cold sweat and wonders if there were any rebel lords he missed.”

“She is no longer a threat to the crown he wears,” Marienne said again, a little more desperately this time. “She is no longer a threat to his rule over England, Normandy, or Brittany. The only threat that exists is against her life if you attempt to take her away from this place, for she will surely die, if not by the king’s hand, then by her own.”

“By her own?” Eduard sucked in a harsh breath. “What manner of horror has the king promised to make her contemplate such a thing?”

Marienne lowered her chin until it rested on her chest. “I am sworn to say only what I have said to you thus far, my lord. I am sworn to say it and to exact a promise, sealed on the holiest of vows, that you will pursue this thing no farther.”

Eduard offered a short, remonstrative laugh. “God on high should not test my patience with any more vows! How can she expect such a thing from me without my knowing the reasons behind it?”

“Her love is the reason behind it. And if your love for her is one tenth … one
hundredth
as strong as her love for you, it would be enough.”

Eduard shook his head. It was beyond his comprehension to accept defeat so easily and Marienne recognized the gesture for what it was. But there was nothing more she could say or do to explain, or even to ease the torment of her Eleanor’s decision, not without breaking a most solemn vow of her own.

“Perhaps … I should go away and come back later, when you have had time to think on my lady’s request.”

Eduard did not answer. He gave no sign of any intent to do so, and Marienne turned away, her shoulders slumped under the weight of more misery than she could bear. Robin was standing where she had left him and she tried to smile again, but the threat of more tears was too bright in her eyes.

“Marienne … you must let Eduard help,” he stammered. “You must convince the princess to
let
him help.”

The sweet, heart-shaped face lifted to his. At fourteen she was more than capable of turning heads—Robert d’Amboise’s had been most thoroughly swivelled since the first moment he had met her. A smile was enough to tie his tongue in knots, and a tear … A tear was enough to wrench his heart into his throat and nearly smother him.

“You have already helped more than you can ever know,” she said. “Just the fact that you came for her, that there is still something good and fair and noble left to rise out of the sorrow and heartbreak … well …”

Robin was too devastated to reply and Marienne looked at Ariel for the first time.

“Forgive me, my lady. I was to assist you with your bath, and here we have talked the time away instead.”

Ariel shook her head. “Think nothing of it; the time was better spent.”

Marienne offered a small curtsy and was reaching for the latch of the door when she stopped and glanced back. “Be very careful of Lord Gisbourne. He plays the role of amiable host well enough, but he is cut of the same mold as his liege and master, who loses his charm to madness with a swiftness that can take your breath—and your freedom—away. Even our bold captain treads lightly around the governor’s moods.”

“I thank you for the warning,” Ariel said, answering for them all.

Marienne cast a final glance at Robin and Eduard, then left. No sooner had the door eased shut behind her, however, than Eduard was moving toward it, his face set and grim, his
hands taking an instinctive inventory of the knives, daggers, and sword comprising his personal arsenal.

“Where are you going?” Ariel asked. “What are you planning to do?”

“I am going to follow Marienne back to the tower and I am planning to find a way to talk to Eleanor myself, if I have to fight my way past every blasted guard in this castle.”

“Eduard—no!” Ariel gasped, grabbing at his arm. “If you are caught—!”

“Leave go of me, woman,” he snarled, yanking his arm free. “It may be all I can do to find the right cell in the right tower, and if that proves true, then so be it. But I must do something. Surely you can see
… I must do something!”

Ariel saw. She saw the rage and anguish in his eyes, put there by the challenge issued against the strength of his love for Eleanor of Brittany. There was nothing she could say or do to ease it; nothing she could do to fight it, and she stepped aside, clearing his path to the door.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

But he was gone.

   Eduard nearly missed the first junction; would have if he had not heard a faint sniffle echo along a dimly lit passageway. They were in the labyrinth of tunnels carved beneath the keeps and towers to join each building to the next. It was almost pitch dark, with torches kept alight and smoking blackly at each exit to mark a flight of steps upward. He had to watch where he placed his feet so as not to scrape a heel on a loose bit of earth, and he kept his hand on the hilt of his sword to guard against the tip of the blade striking stone. Once he had to stop and flatten himself into a niche in the wall as two guards laughed their way through an archway and up a flight of stairs. One of them saw Marienne and shouted an invitation for her to join him in his bed later, but she ignored him and kept walking, and the two guards moved on, discussing what they might like to do with her should her nose ever come down from the ceiling.

Eduard pushed away from the shadows and made swiftly
after Madeline’s ghostly shape far ahead. He was vaguely surprised he had not encountered any sentry posts between one building and the next, but then, on further reflection, he understood the reason why. Where was the threat? Corfe did not support a sprawling, bustling community like Amboise. It was a prison, a barren and self-contained stronghold populated by soldiers, whores, and wretches who would have nowhere to go even if they did escape their chains.

Eduard stopped again. He heard voices and tried to see through the gloomy smudge to identify the source. There was a table up ahead, outlined by the weak glow of a horn lantern. A guard sat on a three-legged stool, his arms folded over his chest. Beside him was a half-eaten loaf of black bread and a leather costrel of some unwholesome elixir that had rendered his eyes glazed and his mouth wet and slack.

Whatever Marienne was asking him was met with a belch and a thumb jerked over his shoulder. She passed under a low archway and through a narrow door, closing it behind her with a muted thud.

While Eduard debated what to do next, the guard stood and scratched vigorously at his crotch. He belched again and waddled like a penguin to where a crack in the stone blocks rose black and jagged through the slime. A hand groped beneath his tunic a moment and he leaned against the wall, grunting with relief as he aimed a jet of liquid into the crevice.

Eduard used the sound to muffle his approach and while the sentry was still occupied with shaking and tucking, he struck out hard with the heel of his hand, driving the man’s head into a violent meeting with the stone wall. Eduard caught the body under the arms and dragged him back to his stool propping him in place between the table and wall. After giving the contents of the costrel a wary sniff, he tipped a quantity of the sour-smelling wine over the guard’s chin and down the front of his tunic. It was a makeshift tactic at best, but he was fairly certain the sentry had not seen or heard him and would waken to suppose he had stumbled and knocked himself out in a drunken stupour.

Eduard opened the door a crack, half-expecting to see
another guard on the other side. But the passage was empty, black as sin, and he retreated long enough to search the table-top for the stub of a candle he had spied beside the loaf.

With his hand cupping the newly lit flame, he passed through the door and drew it shut behind him. He could not see much beyond the weak yellow flare he held in his hand, and he went so far as to curse himself for blinding his own eyesight by trying to stare through the light. He raised the stub over his head and found he could see modestly farther. The stone walls, cracked and slimy mortar looked no different from the passages he had already traversed, yet he felt a quickening sensation come over his body, a sense of expectation as if he was very close to what he sought.

A mere dozen paces brought him to a solid wall. The passage ended here, with no visible means for Marienne to have exited.

Eduard whirled around and retraced his steps … and saw it. A large black maw yawned in the passage wall and as Eduard moved the light toward it, he had to quell another flush of excitement as the shape of stairs emerged from the blackness. Marienne had not troubled herself to take a candle into the darkness; she must have known the way well enough to dispense with lighting the stub that was obviously kept at the guard post for that purpose. There was waxy evidence spattered around the floor to prove that others saw a greater need, and Eduard remembered Brevant saying the princess was allowed to descend out of her tower twice a day to see her confessor.

He started up the spiral staircase, taking the steps two at a time. There was no change in the quality of the darkness until he had climbed a goodly forty feet into the tower. When the walls higher up began to take on shape and substance, he doused his own candle and slowed his steps, taking caution with his boots and his creaking leather belts again as he rose steadily toward the soft bloom of light.