Authors: Blackheart
He looked beyond her to his men upon the walls and those in the bailey. They were still, poised for his orders. He inclined his head. "At arms!"
As if a great hand set them to motion, they dispersed. Shouting one to the other, they rushed to their posts amid the terrified villagers. According to plans laid to table a fortnight past, Gabriel's people were ushered toward the drawbridge that would see them to the relative safety of the inner bailey, men hastened to light fires beneath the cauldrons, archers took up bows, pikes were hefted. Soon blood would spill.
The approach of Bernart's army adding to the clamor within the walls, Gabriel looked again to Juliana.
Her shoulders were square, her gaze fixed upon her hands at her waist.
Quelling the desire to embrace her again, knowing it best that he distance himself so that he not be distracted, he said, "Go, Juliana."
The stillness of his voice moved Juliana's gaze to his.
Forget not the tournament,
she told herself.
None can best him.
But an army... And how many might die? It was the way of things, she knew, that by blood men held that which they laid claim to, but it did not make it right. What of the king? Though he had not answered her summons, might he answer Gabriel's?
"Gabriel," she ventured, "still you could send word to King—"
"This is how 'tis done, Juliana," he said sharply.
She compressed her lips, denying the stab of tears. Did a miracle bring the king to Mergot, Gabriel would surely be angered by her having summoned him. Unfortunately, it seemed she was to be spared his wrath. "Nay," she said, "it is how men do it."
Vexation touched Gabriel's brow, but then he sighed and said, "it is the only way I know."
She started to turn away, but stopped. Never could she turn from Gabriel. If this was to be his course, she would stay by his side. She pushed her stiff lips into what felt nothing like a smile. "God be with you, my love." She spoke so softly the words were little more than a breath.
But he heard. Emotion in his eyes, he nodded, then pivoted and strode opposite.
Juliana stared after him a long moment, but as she lifted her skirts to descend to the bailey, a sickly familiar voice breached the wall.
"Gabriel De Vere, you son of a sow, show yourself!"
Bernart, his words sure to torture Gabriel for his mother's cuckoldry.
A chill shot Juliana, pitching her innards. Dear God, had she never again heard his voice she would have been grateful to eternity. In the quieting of the bailey, she looked around, meeting Gabriel's gaze where he stood distant atop the gatehouse. Face expressionless, he jutted his chin, silently commanding her from the wall.
"Come, old friend," Bernart taunted, his voice strained from affecting a pitch to ensure it carried over the wall. "Surely you fear not this man with whom you were once as a brother."
Gabriel closed his hand over his sword hilt.
"I want naught that is not mine," Bernart sent to the walls.
A sickening feeling in her belly, Juliana continued to stare at Gabriel. In spite of the distance between them, she knew there was fire in his eyes, though more because of Bernart's mockery—his lie—than that she had yet to go from the inner bailey.
Suddenly he turned and strode to the battlements. He peered down upon the besieger, then came around. "Lower the drawbridge!" he shouted as he descended the gatehouse steps.
Juliana's breath fell from her. He would answer Bernart's summons?
"Archers at my back." He ordered his men to position themselves at the battlements.
Amid the screech and groan of the drawbridge, he came off the steps and called for the inner portcullis to be raised. It was three feet off the ground when he ducked beneath.
Juliana ran to the wall, put hands to an embrasure, and peered at the ominous spectacle. Men everywhere. Fighting men. Killing men. And there, mounted upon his destrier twenty feet back from the descending drawbridge, was the one who led them. Appearing to have gained more weight, as evidenced by the roll of flesh between chin and chain mail that was as ruddy as his sagging cheeks, Bernart shifted his bulk. In response, the horse sidestepped.
With sudden remembrance of what he had once meant to her, Juliana dragged her nails over the stonework and sank them into her palms.
"Ah, Gabriel, old friend," Bernart mocked as the one he wrongfully called enemy ducked beneath the portcullis, "I did not think you would come out."
Juliana swept her gaze to Bernart, then back to Gabriel.
Sword in hand, Gabriel halted at the center of the drawbridge.
Her throat opened with a rattle.
Pray, send King Richard. Let truth decide this, not blood.
"I am here, Kinthorpe," Gabriel answered. "For what do you come against me?"
Bernart chuckled, a gurgling sound that, to his obvious embarrassment, turned to a hacking cough.
Juliana lifted a hand and fumbled back the strands of hair the breeze coaxed from her braid. What now? What did Bernart plan? She looked to his men. The one who was absent an arm captured her gaze, likely due to the dark scowl he wore as easily as one might a girdle—slung low upon what appeared to be a handsome face, putting frame to his eyes, nose, and mouth. It had to be the Baron Faison of whom Lissant had spoken.
A moment later those eyes came to hers. She jerked back to Bernart, and could not suppress her flinch of sympathy for his indignity.
Mouth gone flat, he wiped it across his tunic sleeve. "You know for what I come," he heaved as if exerted. "I want that stolen from me—my wife and son."
Juliana swallowed. Though he would know the child was born by now, was it only a guess that she'd birthed a son? More likely word of Gabriel's heir had come to Faison, who had then passed it to Bernart. She looked to Gabriel. How she longed to see his face. Not that he would reveal anything he did not wish Bernart to see.
He braced his legs farther apart, raising his sword higher. "You can have neither. They are mine and ever shall be."
Though fear wore Juliana's shoulders, her heart surged against her ribs.
As for Bernart, he reddened like a cloud-laced sunset. "Then you choose death." His angry voice trembled in a pitch far higher than he normally allowed. A moment later, he pulled his sword from his scabbard. He raised it, but not to come alone against Gabriel. Rather, to call his men to attack.
"Bernart!" Gabriel bellowed. "Look thee to my walls."
Bernart's sword wavered, his eyes skittering to the archers whose arrows were nocked and sighted upon him and his army.
" 'Twill be honorable, this," Gabriel said, "else death shall be yours."
Too late, Juliana realized she should have stepped back from the embrasure.
Bernart's gaze found her, and his eyes widened. His lips formed her name, and for a moment pain came out from behind the vengeance he breathed—that great heaving ache that, for too long, had held her to his side. All she had ever wanted was to take it away, to ease it from his brow, his eyes, his heart. But
that
no mortal could do.
No peace would he find on earth—with or without her and the child he hoped would prove his masculinity. He was as if dead.
"Juliana!" Her name burst from him. "I come for you."
Movement pulled her regard to Gabriel as his head came around. She could look upon his eyes forever, she realized—even now with displeasure as their source of light.
"Juliana!" Bernart shouted. "You have heard all?"
Oh, Richard, why do you not come?
She opened her hands on the embrasure. "I have," she raised her voice to make the distance.
"And what say you,
wife?"
She put her chin up. "I say you ought to return to England without me."
Had her words been arrows, she could not have bled him more. He flushed, baring his teeth. "Whore!"
And he could not have bled her more.
"Return to the donjon, Juliana," Gabriel called.
She met his gaze and saw that his back was stiffer for the foul name Bernart had put to her.
"I warn you, Juliana," Bernart seethed, "many shall die, for I will not leave without my son."
One last time, she gave him her regard, searching for a piece of the man for whom she had once felt. Gone. She shook her head, then turned that she would not be made to witness the terrible contorting of his face as he spewed curses.
Now there would be war, and many would die.
Feeling more an old woman than her twenty years, Juliana descended to the bailey. Hardly had she stepped to the ground than the drawbridge sounded its creaking and tumbling of chains. A few moments later, Gabriel was at her side.
'Take you to the donjon," he said, wearing distance as if it were a mantle.
Realizing he was no longer the Gabriel who had taken her heart to his, that this day he was a warrior, ready to battle for his home and people, Juliana quelled the desire to be near him. Were he to stay alive, it was as it should be.
"I shall come to you at first opportunity," he assured her.
Which could be tomorrow, or the day after, or never...
Nay.
He
would
come to her. Her breasts twinged with ache, a reminder that her babe would soon be in need of suckling. "I shall await you," she said, and turned.
"Juliana?"
She looked over her shoulder.
"Ever," he said, for a brief moment coming out of his armor; then he swung toward the gatehouse and began shouting orders.
That single word swelled hope through Juliana. "Ever," she whispered, and pressed a hand to her chest. Not even when, as a young woman, she'd glorified love as being the end of all had she dreamed it could be like this— beyond the body, the heart, the mind... not only within herself, but without. No courtly love, this. And were she to lose it in Gabriel's death?
She refused to ponder that last. As she lifted her skirts and started toward the inner drawbridge, her thoughts turned again to the one who could end the siege with but his coming.
Where are you, King Richard?
The walls were coming down again, the outer work crumbling beneath the barrage of boulders flung against the repaired stonework. There were fires as well, enough to warm the chill air and put sweat upon the brows of his men. But of all the ill wrought this first day, the worst of it was the shouts of pain that would not be put from Gabriel even after the injured were carried to the donjon for tending. As for the dead, there was one—at least until the wounded fell to infection, and it would happen if the siege did not soon end. Would it?
Gabriel peered through the arrow loop at the land before the castle. It was scarred and scattered with men and siege engines. Though Bernart's wounded were of greater number, partly owing to the vulnerability of battling on open land, and his army had suffered more deaths, still he sent men to the walls as if they were of no more consequence than the lifeless boulders culled from the wood. Most promising, though, was what appeared to be strife between Bernart and Faison. An hour earlier, Gabriel had witnessed across the distance the rebel baron's angry exchange with the man to whom he had offered aid. As there could only be one leader in any conflict and Bernart was not it, Faison was displeased. And he ought to be, for his losses included men, horses, and a trebuchet burned to the ground by a flaming arrow. For it all, he had bits of wall and a handful of the enemy fallen. It was not the revenge he sought.
Gabriel pushed his gaze to the horizon. Sunset was an hour away, but with the dark would come no respite. Of course, Bernart might not take advantage of the night to steal men over the wall to attack from within. But should he, those men would have to elude the light of torches Gabriel had directed to be set to the walls.
He turned into the gatehouse room, flexing his facial muscles in an attempt to ease the tension. He was tired, dirty, and smelled of the smoke of Bernart's fires. He closed his eyes and remembered the last that had leaped to the sky. It had taken a good portion of the stable roof before it was doused. As a result, a man-at-arms had been seriously burned and two horses lost. Of all that Mergot had endured this day, it was only the beginning.
Gabriel crossed to the stairs. As he began his descent, thunder sounded, rippling through the wood beneath his feet, but it was not of the clouded heavens. Another boulder had met its mark—a very large one. He took the last steps at a slide and surged into the bailey. "Damnation!"
The left face of the inner wall surrounding the donjon had taken a serious blow. Though it yet stood, four feet had been torn from its uppermost bounds.
Praying there were no injuries—especially to the villagers who huddled beyond—Gabriel ran past his men. Barely had he stepped to the inner drawbridge than a shout from atop the outer walls reached him.
"An army approaches, my lord!"
He faltered. An army. Yet more men Bernart brought against him?
God's rood!
Still, he did not turn back.
The mass of people were near frenzy when he strode into the bailey. The moment they caught sight of him, they surged forward.
"Any injuries?" Gabriel shouted above the babble of men and women and the cries of their children, the latter reminding him of Gabrien.
"Here, my lord!" A man's voice rose above the rest. "My boy's been struck on the arm and is bleeding."
Gabriel could not see beyond the others who crowded him. "Take him to the great hall," he shouted. "Any others?"
Two more answered. Fortunately, that seemed all, and the injuries were minor. Gabriel also directed them to the donjon, then instructed the villagers to keep back from the walls. They were hardly soothed, but there was naught else he could do. War awaited him. However, as he turned away he was struck by the sudden stillness—the absence of missiles striking stone and mortar. Who came to Mergot?
The riders came from out of the west, first putting fear to Bernart that they were hired by Gabriel to attack from without the walls, then foreboding when they drew near enough that the markings on their banners could be seen. It was no hireling army come to Mergot. It was King Richard.