Masters of Medieval Romance: Series Starters Volume II

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Charlotte shook her head. “What you are suggesting isn’t reasonable, Lyla. Take Ryan to a strange town near the battle arena simply so she can be with Dennis when he’s not out killing Welsh? What kind of life is that for her, or for him for that matter? And what about protection? We shall have to station someone with her all of the time to watch over her. When our resources are already so badly stretched, what you are suggesting simply is not logical.”

  “I do not mean to interrupt, ladies,” Clive said, wiping at his chewed lip. “But the more we talk, the more time we waste. Lady Ryan is out there, somewhere, and each moment is precious.”

  Lyla stared at her hands. “She will just run away again if you bring her back here.”

  “Then we shall lock her in the vault,” Charlotte said quietly. “For her own protection, we must.”

  Lyla shrugged. “She will find a way to escape. She always does.”

  Charlotte resumed her pacing, only this time it was more thoughtful than frantic. “What would you suggest, then? You know her best.”

  Lyla felt defeated. She did not know what to say; the reasonable answer would have been to find Ryan, bring her back, and lock her up until Dennis returned. But she knew that to do so would literally kill Ryan. So she told them what she felt from her heart.

  “Find her and take her to Dennis and let him decide.”

  “But Dennis already told her, repeatedly, that he did not want her with him.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “For her own safety, I do.”

  “Forget about safety. What about her heart?”

  Charlotte knew there was only one choice, unless they wanted a miserable lady on their hands. She might even become so miserable that she would become terribly sick, and Charlotte did not want that on her conscience. Moreover, she knew that Dennis had left secretly in the night and that Ryan had not forgiven him. She furthermore knew that Dennis had probably not forgiven himself either. Perhaps both Ryan and her brother needed closure on his abrupt departure and an opportunity to heal. She could only guess that it was a terrible thing to be in love and to be so cruelly, though necessarily, separated.

  “Very well,” Charlotte muttered. “Perhaps that is the only way to solve this. But it clearly will not be an easy task and Dennis, more than likely, will be furious with all of us.”

  Clive nodded his head. “I do not relish being the one to contact him.”

  Charlotte looked at him sharply. “And who is to say that it will be you? Ryan is my sister-in-law. I shall escort her.”

  Clive frowned. “Charls, be reasonable. You cannot go.”

  Charlotte’s round face pinkened. “Do you doubt my skills?”

  “Indeed I do not. But with Dennis gone, you are now Lord of St. Austell. ’Tis only right that you should stay here to oversee the fortress while I go and find Lady d’Vant.”

  Charlotte cooled, having originally thought Clive was insulting her, but now she understood his logic. Lord of St. Austell had a nice ring to it.

  “Take as many men as you shall need, then, and find her,” she said. “I would suggest sending a messenger to London to find out where Dennis is so you won’t waste any time. Then you may take Ryan directly to him.”

  There was a great sense of urgency now that decisions had been made and plans forged. Clive eyed Lyla one last time. “Are you sure you do not know where Lady Ryan has gone? You could save me quite a bit of time.”

  Lyla’s instinct was to refuse again, but she knew that was foolish now. “She and Patrizia wanted to hire a traveling merchant or bachelor knight,” she said. “I think they were going to a tavern.”

  Clive was already moving for the door with Charlotte on his heels. “There are four of them in the village,” Charlotte said to him. “Two near the water’s edge, one near the Avenue of the Merchants, and one….”

  “Near the main road,” Clive finished for her. He was into the hall and moving for the stairs. “I shall take twenty men with me. And once I find her, I shall go straight on to Dennis, wherever he may be. I shan’t return any time soon.”

  Charlotte stopped at the top of the stairs, watching him descend the flight. “Take twenty-five men,” she corrected him. “That should be enough to adequately protect her. We are speaking of the Lady of St. Austell, after all. And, Clive?”

  He paused at the bottom of the stairs, gazing up at her. “Yes?”

  Charlotte suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. She fidgeted a bit before waving her hand haphazardly at him. “Be careful.”

  He stared at her a moment and grinned. “Don’t you trust me?”

  Charlotte gazed down at him, aware of the odd twisting of her stomach. She suddenly could not stand the thought of Clive never returning; Riston was out of her mind altogether, but Clive… well, she’d known him for many years. She could not remember when he hadn’t been around. Maybe Dennis had been right; perhaps Clive was better for her after all.

  “I trust you,” she finally said. “But I have decided to go with you.”

  Clive’s smile vanished. “But…!”

  “You need me!” Charlotte boomed at him, uncomfortable with the tone of the conversation.

  Clive paused and then his smile returned. He could sense her meaning, both surprised and pleased by it. He’d always been fond of Charlotte, strangely enough, but he never thought she returned the sentiment.

  “Aye, lady, I suppose I do,” he said softly.

  Charlotte grunted and disappeared from his view. Clive stood there a moment longer, a smile still on his lips, wondering what it would be like to someday have a wife who could best him in a fight.

  *

  War was a bloody, bitter thing. Dennis had been fighting battles his entire life, but here, in the mist-shrouded mountains of Wales, he found himself disoriented and exhausted. Perhaps it was because he had ridden from London to Wales in three days, barely stopping to eat or rest.

  Fortunately, Bucephalus was a hearty beast and thrived on exertion and battle, but Riston’s black charger was showing signs of wear and the horse had developed an open sore on its hip where the saddle rubbed. Though Riston tried to tend it, it was difficult given the pace they were traveling.

  When they had arrived at their destination, the commander of the king’s forces wasted no time in putting them into the fray. The target, as Dennis had been told in London, was Abergavenny Castle, where the Hastings, a noble Norman family, had spent weeks being besieged by the Welsh. The castle was still being held for England, but her grip was slipping. About four hundred English troops were battling against possibly one thousand undisciplined, poorly-armed Welsh, but their sheer numbers caused the English a great deal of trouble. A few of the southeastern castles had fallen under attack, most of them held for England, but a few of them had fallen into control of Henry’s nemesis, Llewelyn the Great.

  The scale, Dennis had briefly learned from his commander, wasn’t so much one large siege; it was several battles all over Wales, thus dividing Henry’s forces. The commander, a knight for the Earl of Hereford, was named Payne St. Maur. He spoke with the weary disgust of a battle-hardened soldier, as if he had had enough of the whole thing and was ready to return to his family.

  Dennis had been wrapped up in his own battles for so long that he had failed to consider that the battle for Wales wasn’t one big all-consuming battle. It was something that had gone on sporadically for years and certainly would for years to come. Within an hour of his arrival, Dennis was already wondering if he hadn’t made a terrible mistake. But a pledge was a pledge, and he intended to keep it, especially if he wanted the return of St. Austell. There was no turning back.

  Abergavenny was a massive fortress surrounded by mist and foliage. It sat on the top of a rocky hilltop with massive curtain walls to prevent invasion. The ground was wet and the chargers kept slipping as they mounted the incline toward the castle. The Welsh were burrowed in near the top of the mound, though they were safely out of range of the arrows from the
walls. Thus, the troops sent to reinforce the castle were kept at the bottom of the mound, ducking Welsh projectiles, while the occupants of the fortress continued to weaken.

  It was a frustrating situation, and after a day and a night of stagnation, Dennis was furiously thinking of a way to purge the Welsh. Already he was sick of the uselessness of the siege, especially when they weren’t gaining any ground. St. Maur seemed content for the troops to languish at the bottom of the hill and complain how difficult the Welsh were, but Dennis, being fresh blood into this melee, was rapidly thinking of a way to end it. He did not want to be stuck for weeks on end, deteriorating in the cold and mud like the rest of them.

  “How do you propose to end this siege in a day, where St. Maur hasn’t been able to end it in weeks?” Riston wanted to know on the dawn of the second day. “What are you going to do? Call down God himself to end this?”

  The mist shrouded the land like a great cottony blanket. Dennis sat astride Bucephalus, his breath hanging in the freezing air. His usually trimmed beard was looking unkempt. It had been a long night of waiting and watching.

  “St. Maur is doing this all wrong,” Dennis finally growled. “He is trying to surround the mound and attack from all sides. What he must do to end this is to consolidate his men and charge the mound from one side only. We will drive the Welsh off the mound, not surround them and conquer. No wonder they have been at this for weeks. They are thinking like idiots.”

  Riston started at Dennis, surprised to hear the frustration and anger in his voice. He knew then how serious Dennis was about ending the siege immediately. Having done battle alongside Dennis as many times as he had, he knew the man had no patience for anything foolish or superfluous.

  “St. Maur has been here for quite some time,” Riston said. “Perhaps you should have some faith in the man.”

  Dennis snorted. “That’s the problem; he has been here too long. Any competent man would have ended this by now. He is blind to what is going on around him.”

  “And you can see perfectly what needs to be done?”

  “Can’t you?”

  Riston gave him a crooked, weary smile. “St. Maur has already lost this battle. If he cannot extract these Welsh, then he cannot help Hastings, and Abergavenny will fall.”

  “And the king will be furious.”

  “It will reflect badly on the Earl of Hereford.”

  Dennis suddenly reined his charger into the mist, heading in the direction of the English encampment. The air around them was so wet that it smelled of rot, and the ground oozed under the weight of Bucephalus’ hooves. Their armor, perpetually coated with wet, was rusting easily, and Dennis knew he would have to spend hours buffing it off. He was starting to wish he had brought his squire with him. In fact, he wished he had never left home at all.

  That was his problem; he missed Ryan more with each breath he drew. As he paraded through the mist in search of St. Maur, he knew that the strongest reason behind ending this desire to end the siege was to return to his wife. This war with Wales was a quagmire of Henry’s arrogance, and Dennis could already see, having been in Wales for barely two days, that it was nothing as he had expected. It wasn’t some grand crusade for the good of England. It was the complete decimation and domination of the people of Wales.

  Now all he wanted to do was get this over with as quickly as possible so he could go home. Still, some good had come of it; Henry’s troops were probably already marching to St. Austell to protect her from the earl. He had to remind himself that that was the only reason why he was here; it wasn’t to further England’s dominance or to add glory to himself. It was, pure and simple, to preserve his home for his children and grandchildren.

  The English encampment was littered with wet, cold men, huddled around fires that spread heavy smoke in the mist. It was almost choking. St. Maur’s tent was located near the rear of the camp and Dennis located the simple structure strung between two beech trees. St. Maur, his blond hair standing on end with sweat and dirt, was trying to clean the damp rot out from his toes.

  “M’lord.” Though Dennis technically outranked him, he nonetheless addressed him formally since he was the commanding officer. “I hope I am not interrupting.”

  St. Maur waved him off. “I’d ask you to sit, but there is nowhere to do so,” he said, while rubbing a rag furiously between his toes. “What is it, d’Vant?”

  “May I come directly to the point?”

  “By all means.”

  Dennis removed his helm and ran his fingers through his damp, dirty hair. “It would seem to me that we are at a standstill. I hope you will not consider my evaluation offensive, m’lord, but if you will allow me to perhaps interject a fresh opinion into your battle strategy, I would be honored.”

  St. Maur looked at him, instant suspicion in his faded blue eyes. “Diplomatically spoken, d’Vant,” he said. “What opinion would that be?”

  “That perhaps a different tactic is needed at this point.”

  St. Maur put the rag down and collected a damp, dirty sock. “Oh? And what is that?”

  Dennis wasn’t sure if he detected animosity, but was nonetheless careful with his words. “That perhaps instead of trying to attack the entire mound, we start at one end and work our way through. By surrounding Abergavenny, we keep the Welsh bottled up. They have nowhere to go.”

  St. Maur pulled on the sock. “So you suggest we run them off the mound?”

  “Like a herd of sheep.”

  St. Maur cocked an eyebrow at him. “We have tried that. It was our first tactic.” He pulled on his boot and stood up. “Do you think me for a fool, d’Vant? I know warfare as well as you, and perhaps better. Christ’s Bones, man, I fostered at Rochester.”

  “And I fostered at Kenilworth.”

  That brought Dennis into new light; St. Maur seemed to back down somewhat as he digested that statement. “Kenilworth?” he repeated after a moment. “There is no finer in all of England. How is it that you managed to foster at Kenilworth?”

  Because I am the king’s nephew, Dennis wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He wasn’t sure how St. Maur would take it, and frankly, it wasn’t something he wanted to brag about in the middle of the king’s war. Fostering had been a difficult time in his life, leaving home at five years of age and returning when he was fully knighted at twenty-one. Rodrick had, for once, used his royal relations to gain his gentle, soft son the best education he could. He thought the years of training at Kenilworth under the Marshal of England would toughen Dennis up, but it had only made him miserable. Dennis remembered the years of brutality, but not with the bitterness he used to. On the contrary; he had been grateful for the education his trainers had tried to give him. His only regret was that for as hard as they had tried, his handlers could never harden his manner. It had remained gentle and soft, much to his father’s displeasure.

  “Pure fortune, I suppose,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “In any case, it was not my intent to offend you, but to help you. I am here to assist and obey, m’lord.”

  St. Maur gazed at him a moment longer before chuckling. “You are certainly careful how you present things,” he said. “Did they teach you to be so cunning at Kenilworth?”

  “Sometimes my life depended on it.”

  St. Maur laughed. “No doubt.” He looked around for his sword in his cluttered, damp shelter. “Truth be told, you know that I am weary of this. If you think you can lead a charge against the Welsh and drive them from the mound, then you have my attention. Is there a particular variation to this tactic that you would use? Something indigenous to Kenilworth that the rest of us were not permitted to know?”

  Dennis’ gray eyes glittered; now that he had St. Maur’s ear, he knew the rest would be simple.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The ground was damp from the evening’s dew and the smell of wetness was heavy in the early morning air. The sunlight, though weak, streamed through the dead foliage and littered the dirt with intermittent circles of g
old that shone brightly as Clive and Charlotte clipped along the road at a swift pace. Birds were singing all around them, giving the atmosphere a light feel to mask the seriousness of their journey. With each passing step, their sense of urgency and panic grew.

  They had left the fortress before dawn, swarming the four inns in the town, terrorizing the patrons until they found a barkeep at the Wart who remembered the beautiful women who had come alone but left with an older, well-dressed man. According to the barkeep, the women hadn’t left the establishment more than three or four hours prior. With that information, Charlotte and Clive quit the town in all haste, leading their twenty-five heavily armed soldiers on a sojourn northward. Although they would be passing very close to Launceston, the road wasn’t visible from the castle and they expected, and received, no trouble. All that mattered now was finding Ryan, and Charlotte suspected that even the Earl of Cornwall would support them on that venture. But it was better not to find out lest they find themselves all in the vault.

  The main road through Cornwall leading to London was a cold, desolate thing. They would eventually pass through Devon, into Somerset, and finally into a more populace area nearing London. By mid-morning they had been on the road almost six hours and were nearing the border region of Cornwall and Devon. The pace had been swift, but the horses were hearty and strong. Charlotte would have ridden day and night if it would get her to London any faster, but she knew the chargers needed a nominal amount of rest. Clive never left her side, maintaining silent and alert vigilance as they passed through trees and over the gentle hills. Charlotte was very glad she had insisted on coming.

  “We should be catching up to them shortly,” Clive finally broke the quiet. “I doubt Lady d’Vant has maintained the pace we have set. I am surprised we haven’t seen them by now.”

  Charlotte pursed her lips, wiping the sweat from her forehead beneath her helm. “As am I. It makes me very concerned that he has taken a different route, or that we have missed them altogether.”