Lady de Lohr hoped she hadn’t done damage with her truthful outburst. “He was very big, but women are made for bearing big children,” she said. “I have given birth to my share of them and I am quite well. But Janie… as I said, sometimes these things happen and we do not know why. Only God knows.”
Tor was sinking further into despair and trying hard not to. “For a man to die in battle, I understand why God permits such a thing,” he said. “A man goes into battle with the intention of taking a life. If his own life is taken, it is a fitting retribution. But a woman faces childbirth with the intention of giving life. It is a cruel God who allows women to die in childbirth.”
“Hush,” Lady de Lohr said softly. “You must not blaspheme.”
Tor wouldn’t look at her. “I can say what I wish now that there is no longer any reason to pray to God,” he said. “He should have taken me instead of Jane. I had gone to Goodrich with the intention of killing men. But Janie… all she wanted was to hold our son in her arms. Speak not to me of God, Lady de Lohr, for that is not something I wish to hear.”
Lady de Lohr wasn’t going to push him. She knew that he was doing the best he could under the circumstances, lashing out as much as Tor de Wolfe was capable of lashing out. She’d never seen such a controlled man, but she had heard from her husband that once the control was broken, there was no stopping Tor in anything he wished to do – kill a man, destroy a home, burn a town. He was capable of such things.
But he kept that monster tightly under restraint.
Therefore, she simply squeezed his hand and released him. “If there is anything I can do for you, Tor, you only need ask,” she said. “I am here to help you in any way. If you wish for me to send a missive to your father, I shall. I have refrained from doing anything, waiting until you returned so that you can decide what needs to be done. But you must understand that we had to bury Jane. With the weather warm, we had no choice. I hope you do understand that.”
He was still looking away, still staring off into space as he pondered his unexpected future without the woman he loved.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“In Lioncross’ abbey,” she said.
“Down in the vault?”
“Aye,” she said. “You know the area under the south wing of the keep, the old abbey. It is where all of the de Lohrs for almost one hundred years have been buried. Jane is in good company down there. The knights in their crypts will watch over her.”
Tor sighed faintly, realizing that he felt very much like weeping. He hadn’t wept since he’d been a child. Jane was gone, their child was gone, and he had nothing left.
Nothing but Jane’s younger sisters.
Lady Barbara and Lady Lenore de Merrett had come to live with them only a few months ago after their parents died of the same mysterious infection. Barbara was ten years of age and Lenore was nine years of age, small girls that Jane had coddled and fussed over. Truth be told, Tor hadn’t had any real interaction with them. He didn’t even really know them.
But now, they belonged to him.
Standing up, he excused himself. He didn’t want to talk to Lady de Lohr any longer. He wanted to visit Jane and their child, down in the cold, dank abbey of Lioncross. They were alone down there and he needed to be with them. He wanted to talk to her, to apologize for killing her with the child he implanted within her. He knew she wouldn’t blame him, for Jane had been a gentle creature who would have taken the guilt herself before she let Tor assume any of it, but he wanted to apologize to her all the same.
He did this.
It was all his fault.
The pain was beginning to consume him.
As he made his way down to the abbey, he had to pass through the massive bailey to do it. There was an exterior door, heavily fortified, that led into the labyrinth that was known as the abbey, but as he walked, he swore he could hear a collective hush come over the bailey even though the army was beginning to arrive.
Word was spreading.
Lady de Wolfe did not survive, men were saying. They were whispering from one to another, and Tor could feel their stares crawling up his back. It felt like vermin crawling all over him, knowing men were staring at him and flooding the very air around them with their pity. He hated it; he hated being pitied. Somewhere behind him, Lady de Lohr had emerged from the forebuilding to watch him make his way to the abbey, but she caught sight of her son as he rode into the bailey and she went to him. Tor didn’t see her tears when Curt took her in his arms.
He didn’t care about her tears.
He only cared about his own.
The abbey smelled like mildew. It was sunk deep into the ground, not quite below ground but not quite above it, either. The abbey had been dedicated to St. David, but had fallen into ruin when the builders of Lioncross had constructed their castle over it. However, the abbey had been built over Roman ruins, so the floor of the abbey had mosaic work, unusual in a Christian building.
Whatever was down here smelled old and rotten, as if the very strands of time had been buried deep into the soil. Everything about it smelled ancient. Tor didn’t come into this place much, mostly because he wasn’t very pious, but as he came into the abbey itself, he could see that torches had been lit. Up near the nave stood two small figures and he knew immediately who they were.
He recognized the red hair.
Barbara and Lenore had been found.
The girls heard the footfalls and turned to see Tor as he approached in the darkness. Even though he hadn’t had much interaction with them, and they didn’t know him very well, they still ran at him, throwing their arms around him in gestures he found both uncomfortable and pitiful. Lenore, the younger sister, was wailing.
“You came back,” she wept. “You did not die in battle!”
“We were afraid you would not return!” Barbara sobbed, grasping at him. “Janie is dead! The baby is dead!”
Tor wasn’t sure what to do. The children were clinging to him as if he alone could save them from their gloom, and he wasn’t ready to deal with it. He had his own emotions to deal with. He didn’t want to comfort two grieving children.
It was an effort not to push them both away.
“Nay,” he said. “I did not die. But do not hug me so close. I have sharp things on my belt that can hurt you and my clothing is filthy. Stand back, now. Let me go.”
He practically had to pry them away, but they clung to his hands. Both of them were weeping, wiping running noses and eyes, and Tor lost his patience. He pulled his hands away from them, yanking himself free, and stepped away.
“Go,” he told them. “Go back to your chamber. I will come to you there when I am finished.”
“But..!” Barbara started to speak.
“Go,” Tor boomed, the word echoing off the walls. When the girls shrieked, he lowered the volume of his voice. “Please. Obey me, both of you. Go to your chamber now.”
Sniffling, Barbara dragged the wailing Lenore from the abbey. He could hear the children weeping until the sounds eventually faded. Then, he was alone in that mildew-ridden vault. Taking a deep breath, he stepped over into the nave where the crypts were kept.
It was very dark in this section of the abbey, with only the ambient torchlight to bring some illumination to the darkness. Tor moved hesitantly, his eyes becoming accustomed to the extreme darkness. There was something sacred here, but there was also something eerie, as if the slightest sound could awaken the dead. His heart began to beat faster with trepidation and his carefully held control seemed to be slipping no matter how hard he grasped at it.
He was in the realm of the dead.
Jane’s realm.
The family that had originally built the castle, the House of Barringdon, had family members buried in stone crypts that were built against the walls. He could see the names of some of the past lords of Lioncross… Arthur Barringdon, who’d died on crusade with King Richard was one. Tor remembered hearing that Arthur was the man Christopher de Lohr had
inherited the castle from when he married Arthur’s daughter. In fact, Arthur’s daughter, Dustin, was also buried here in the same crypt as her husband.
They were together for eternity.
Moving further into the nave, Tor could see the crypts of other de Lohrs. He was so busy looking for a crypt that would contain his wife and child that he failed to notice the ground to his left. The floor of the nave was flagstone, the blue slate stone that was so common to Wales, and a portion of that flagstone had been moved away and the dirt beneath it disturbed.
He finally saw it.
There was a small mound of disturbed dirt on the extreme south side of the abbey, just about the right size for a lady of Jane’s small build. Slowly, Tor made his way over to it, realizing as he drew closer that there were two small bundles of drying flowers on top of the disturbed earth.
Two small bundles from two small sisters left behind.
When he realized he was looking at Jane’s grave, all of Tor’s strength seemed to leave him. The control that he held so carefully was gone and he sank to his knees, feeling a lump in his throat. He was a man unused to emotion but, at this moment, he was feeling things he’d never felt before. This was not what he had expected when he had returned to Lioncross this day and the blow to his soul was almost more than he could take.
“Oh… Janie,” he murmured. “Lady de Lohr told me what happened. Forgive me, Janie. Forgive me for telling you not to send word to me while I was away. I wish you had. God, I wish you had, but your obedience cost you the right to have me with you as you breathed your last. It cost you the right to have my comfort and I can never express my sorrow and regret. I should not have been so harsh with you. I only thought… I did not wish to be distracted because I wanted to return whole and safe to you. I swear to you that it was my only thought.”
He was met with silence. The hollow echo of the cold stone walls and the icy fingers of the earth reaching up through the ground grasping at him, caused him to feel that iciness in his heart. His grief threatened to consume him but, even above that, all he could feel was unmitigated anger at himself for being stubborn enough and foolish enough to tell his wife that he was beyond her reach during a time when he should have been at her side every moment of the day.
He was absolutely right. Her obedience of his directive had caused her to die without his comfort. Lady de Lohr had said that Jane had writhed with pain as she struggled to bring forth a child that could not, and would not, be born. What terror and agony she must have felt knowing that she couldn’t deliver the child. Surely she would have known that towards the end, realizing that nothing she could do would push that babe from her body.
Jane died alone, without the love or comfort of her husband, and with only Lady de Lohr and the physic as company.
That knowledge was beginning to eat him up inside.
His head fell forward into his hands, and he sat there a moment with his eyes closed and his hands over his face as he tried not to envision Jane breathing her last and knowing her husband would not come. His face would not be the last one she ever saw. It was a horrible ending for a kind, pretty, and gentle soul, one who had captured Tor’s attention even as a girl.
Tor had known Jane since his arrival at Lioncross Abbey, as she had been a ward of the House of de Lohr. In that sense, they had grown up together, and he had been given the privilege of years of knowing Jane. She wasn’t like the other girls who followed Lady de Lohr around and learned from her direction. She wasn’t flighty or gossipy, and that was always something he had appreciated in her. She had her moments of wisdom, her moments of stubbornness, but mostly, she had her moments of brilliance and those were moments he was very much going to miss. When he’d been at Goodrich, he’d missed her, but never as much as he did at this very moment, knowing she wasn’t going to return.
And then there was their child.
Given the size of the babe and the fact that Jane had been too weak and too small to push it out, he was positive that it had been a boy. A son of the House of de Wolfe that would never know his destiny. It would not be the first child of de Wolfe that did not know his destiny, and it probably would not be the last, but this particular tragedy hit closer to home to Tor than the other instances.
He’d had his share of death when it came to young males in the family.
When Tor had been a youth, he had lost a younger sister and youngest brother in a tragic accident that also took his mother’s life. As a result, his father had fled the tragedy, unable to face his grief or his guilt. Tor and his older brother, William, had been away fostering at the time, so they were somewhat removed from the heart of the disaster. Tor would never forget how his father basically abandoned the family for a few years until he was finally able to come to grips with his grief.
An event he felt responsible for.
It had been Scott de Wolfe who had given the approval for the happening that had cost the life of Tor’s mother and siblings, but also the life of his aunt and two cousins. The women and their two youngest children were traveling after a series of heavy rainstorms and the carriage they had been traveling in had been dumped into a river where they had all drowned. Scott was the one who had put them into the carriage and sent them along their way, and it had taken him years to get over the guilt of sending all six of them to their deaths.
Now, Tor understood how his father felt.
He was responsible for this event.
He had been the one who had impregnated Jane. He had been the one who had kept her abed, taking delight in her supple, young body and filling her with his seed on a nightly basis. He had been reckless and lustful, never once considering that anything bad could come of it. They were married and they wanted children, and Jane had been determined to give him a son.
Her determination had resulted in her death, but it wasn’t her fault.
It was his.
Tor felt sick to his stomach. The sight of Jane’s grave made him feel woozy. He had killed her as surely as if he had taken a knife to her. Removing his hands from his face, he looked around the old abbey at all of the knights and ladies who had lived before him, great and wise men and women. But the same couldn’t be said for him.
He could feel their critical stares.
He had failed.
Leaning forward, he put his hands against the soft, cold earth of the new grave. The moment he touched it, tears filled his eyes and the lump in his throat made it so tight that he could not speak. He wanted to take her home, back to Castle Questing where generations of de Wolfes were buried. She was a de Wolfe, after all, and the right was hers to be buried with her husband’s family.
But in the same breath, he realized that she needed to stay here.
Lioncross Abbey was where she had practically grown up and it was where she had met her husband, and Tor knew how happy she had been here. She had never even been to Castle Questing, so it seemed to him that this was the best place for her – where she had been her happiest. It was where he had been happy, too, but it occurred to him that he could not stay here. He couldn’t stay here and face the ghost of her memories every time he turned around. Jane was imprinted here – she was part of this place. The more he thought about it, the more angst he felt.
The control he so carefully employed left him, leaving chaos in its wake.
That very day, Tor de Wolfe fled Lioncross Abbey Castle and took two small girls with him, not by desire, but by obligation. They were his responsibility and it had been a deathbed request from his wife. He had already let her down once. He wasn’t going to let her down a second time.
That day, Tor de Wolfe left the Marches behind forever.
And left a piece of himself behind.
The Hunting Party
CHAPTER ONE
Year of Our Lord 1301
Northumberland
They were on the hunt.
One of their own had been badly slandered and the de Wolfe knights were not going to stand for it.
A Hu
nting Party had been gathered. It had started at Castle Questing with Tor and his half-brothers Jeremy, Nathaniel, and Alexander. Tor was a product of his father’s first marriage to Athena de Norville and his half-brothers were the product of his father’s second marriage to Lady Avrielle du Rennic.
Tor was very close to his younger half-brothers and also to his half-sisters, of which he had several. In fact, he was close to the entire family for the first time in his life. He had been sent away at a young age to foster along with his older brother, and they had spent those formative years at Lioncross Abbey. But ever since returning home to Castle Questing, he had been given the privilege to come to know the brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles that he hadn’t grown up with.
Now, he was part of the massive de Wolfe collective.
He was one of them.
That familial bond was why they had all gathered. His Uncle Blayth’s daughter, Isabella, was supposed to have been married on the last Friday of the month, but her betrothed had second thoughts and had fled south. Poor Isabella was devastated and her father, a mighty warrior who had survived a horrific wound in his youth, was bent on hell.
Blayth had called together his nephews and sons and brothers to pursue a coward who had left his daughter alone on her wedding day. Never in the history of the de Wolfe household had such a thing happened to one of their women, so the de Wolfe men were all bent on revenge. No one slandered their women and got away with it.
They were going to find the errant groom and make him pay.
Along with his three younger half-brothers, Tor was joined by Isabella’s uncles, Nathaniel and Alec Hage. Since there were two Nathaniels in the family, named in honor of different men, the older Nathaniel, from the Hage branch, was called Nat. Nat and Alec were very big, very seasoned knights, and part of the reason Blayth had sent Tor and the others along was to keep Nat and Alec from tearing their niece’s intended into tiny pieces.
Nat was particularly upset and he kept talking about cutting off that which was most vital to a man while his brother, Alec, who was the oldest of the siblings and the head of the House of Hage, didn’t seem too inclined to tell his younger brother to calm down. Nat’s rage seemed to please him.
WolfeStrike (de Wolfe Pack Generations Book 2) Page 3
