“You'll be careful,” she said, her chest heaving, her eyes wide and shiny with unshed tears, her gaze traveling over his face, as if desperate to memorize each feature. “You will.”
He rubbed his open mouth against hers. “I will. I will.”
The stillness of dawn hung heavily over the mountainside, the air cool and damp with mist. Damion worked quickly, running the brush over the bay destrier's withers and flanks, the lantern hanging from a hook on the side of the stall casting a warm pool of golden light that left most of the stables in darkness.
He was reaching for the saddle blanket when the sound of footsteps approaching the stable door brought his head around. A darkly robed figure appeared out of the luminous mist. He had been expecting Attica. Instead, it was Isabelle d'Anjou who paused at the edge of the lantern light.
The big destrier swung his head, snorting out a breath, his hooves moving restlessly in the straw. “Where is your ‘squire’?” she asked, faintly smiling.
“In the kitchen, doubtless packing my saddlebags with enough food to keep a small army happy.” Damion tossed the blanket over the horse's broad back. “Why?”
She came to stand on the big stallion's far side, her head thrown back, her hands thrust deep into the opposite sleeves for warmth. “Because I want to know what it is you're not telling me.”
He smoothed the blanket in place, deliberately giving her his most charming smile. “What makes you think I'm not telling you something?”
“That smile, for one thing,” she said, making him laugh. “Attica may believe you told me everything last night. I know you held something back.”
He swung away to grab his saddle and settle it on the de-strier's big back. Last night, after vespers, he and Attica had spent hours in the abbess's quarters. Together, they had told Isabelle about Attica's flight, first from Salers, then from the protection of her own uncle. But he had sensed, even then, that Isabelle knew he was hiding something.
She said, “Damion, if you are going to leave that poor child with me, I think I need to know.” She paused. “In case you don't come back.”
He tossed the stirrup up and reached for the girth. “All right.” He yanked the girth tight, then reached across the withers to hook the breastplate to the far side of the saddle. Straightening, he met her gaze steadily across the horse's high back. “Last night, when we told you about the Parisian courtier, and the viscomtesse de Salers, and the castellan of Laval, do you remember what you said?”
“I said you made it sound as if every noble from Brittany to Maine has been plotting against Henry.”
He nodded. “It sounds ridiculously improbable”— he settled the reins around the stallion's neck and slipped the bit into its mouth— “until you think, what is the connection between Salers and Laval and the king?”
“Stephen d'Alérion,” she said.
He nodded, lifting the bridle's headpiece up over the horse's ears and easing out the forelock. “Not only that, Stephen is one of only three or four men who know the real reason behind my journey to Brittany and Ireland.” He buckled the throatlatch and reached for the noseband.
“Yet you say the castellan of Laval knew of it?”
Damion nodded.
His mother studied him with bright, intelligent eyes. “Attica doesn't realize you suspect her brother?”
He turned away. “No.”
“I think you're making a mistake by not telling her.”
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Do you honestly think she'd agree to stay here if she did know?”
Isabelle shook her head. “No.” She lifted the lantern from its hook, her gaze searching his face. “Tell me, Dam-ion: If it comes to a choice between your loyalty to Henry, and her brother's life, which will you choose?”
Through the stable's open doors he could see the sky bleaching white now with the rising of the sun. A cock crowed, undulating its jubilant cry to the morning. Dam-ion gathered the reins in his hand and wheeled the warhorse to face the open door. His chest felt oddly tight. He sucked in a deep breath of air rich with the familiar scents of ripe hay and warm horseflesh. And still he felt it, that inner torment, tearing him apart.
He lifted his head, his gaze searching the swirling mist. He could hear her now, hear Attica running across the courtyard toward him. Running to him, because she didn't know. She didn't know what he was about to do.
He was aware of Isabelle, coming to stand beside him, although he didn't look at her and he didn't answer her question. There was no need. They both knew his choice had already been made.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Attica raced up the tightly spiraling staircase, her lungs straining to suck in air. The leather soles of her shoes slapped the endlessly circling stone steps, her outflung hands pushing off the curving stone walls as she tore up the church tower. Round and around she ran, hot, sweating, grazing her knuckles, as she hurried to reach the top of the tower in time to catch one last glimpse of him.
She burst through to the upper landing, the cool mist slapping her in the face as she lunged to the arched opening that overlooked the valley below. Her hands curling over the stone windowsill, she stared out over the clustered rooftops of the monastery to where the road wound down the mountainside and disappeared into a thick stand of pine.
He was there, at the edge of the wood, a solitary rider mounted on a great dark charger. Wisps of mist still trailed through the trees, but the sun was up now, shining out of a blue sky, glinting off the burnished steel of his helmet.
“Damion,” she called, leaning out the opening, her arms waving.
He swung about, the restless horse dancing beneath him, his head falling back as he stared up at the monastery. His cloak billowed out around him in the breeze and the dark stallion reared up, its great hooves slashing the sky. She saw him raise his hand in a brief salute, saw him wheel and touch his heels to the horse's sides. She heard the thud of hooves, echoing up the hill, saw the swish of the bay's dark tail. Then horse and rider disappeared into the forest, leaving the mountainside silent and empty.
Her hand fell slowly back to her side. A sob burned in her chest. She sucked in air, trying to ease the pain before it escaped as a wail. She pressed her fist to her lips, aware of light footfalls and the soft swish of robes behind her.
A cool hand touched her shoulder. “Come, my child,” said Isabelle d'Anjou.
Attica turned and went into his mother's arms.
“I understand Damion told you what happened that night,” said Isabelle d'Anjou, the skirt of her black habit fluttering in the breeze as she stood looking out over the quietly lapping waters of the pond. “That night fourteen years ago.”
From her seat on a nearby low stone wall, Attica stared at the abbess, standing so straight and self-composed and at peace. After Damion rode away they had come here, to the reed-edged pond that helped to supply the convent's table with fish. The sun had burned away all traces of the mist by now, but the air was still fresh and clean. The sharp slap of ducks hitting the water as they came in to land mingled with the other sounds drifting down the hill from the monastery buildings—the lowing of cows waiting to be milked, the baaing of sheep jostling through the gate on the way to the high meadows. But they were too far away from anyone else for their words to be overheard, and suddenly Attica knew that was why they had come here.
She said, “He had an idea that if I knew what he'd done—knew the truth of it—then I would turn away from him. But he was wrong.”
The figure beside the pond did not move. “Damion didn't tell you the truth, Attica. Or at least not all of it. He couldn't, you see, for he is bound by a sworn oath.”
The sun shone warm on Attica's back, but she felt a chill deep within. She didn't think she wanted to hear what Damion's mother was about to say. “You don't need to tell me,” said Attica swiftly.
Isabelle turned, showing a face as impassive and uncompromising as Damion's own. “But I do. I'm the only one who can. He made tha
t oath to me.”
She held Attica's gaze a moment longer, then swung away again to look out over the distant valley. She stood very still, staring at the horizon. But Attica had the impression she looked far beyond it, into the past.
“I was fourteen years old the day I first set eyes on Simon de Jarnac,” said Isabelle, her voice measured and calm. “He was in the party that came to my home to escort me to Poitiers, where I was to marry his father, Hugh.
“The night before we were to leave it had snowed. As I came down the steps to the litter, I was aware of someone stepping forward to help me. It was Simon, but I didn't take his hand; I didn't even look at him. Not then. I needed all of my willpower and concentration simply to force myself to get into that litter.”
It was a scene Attica could imagine only too easily. The freezing morning, the light fall of snow blanketing the castle, the horses’ hooves restless on the frozen earth, their breath steamy in the cold air. The young girl, sick with the knowledge that she was leaving her home forever, frightened of the future that had been thrust upon her.
“And then, two steps from the bottom, I slipped.” Isabelle swallowed, her smooth white throat working with the effort of what she had to say. “I slipped, and Simon caught me in his arms. It was so sudden, we both laughed. He was only fifteen himself, but already as big and tall as a man, and fiercely, wonderfully beautiful. I looked up into his eyes and I was lost. Forever.”
Attica felt the shock of Isabelle's words rip through her. For some reason, she had assumed that the love between Isabelle d'Anjou and her husband's son had grown after Hugh's death. For if it had begun earlier, if it had been there from the beginning, then their relationship had been not only incestuous but adulterous as well.
“What did you do?” Attica asked quietly.
“I did what I had to do, of course. I climbed into the litter, and I traveled to Poitiers, and I married Hugh. Only I couldn't seem to stop myself from looking at Simon, and it wasn't long before I realized that Simon was looking back.”
Attica sat very still, watching the drab brown ducks floating on the pond, their paddling feet sending gentle ripples undulating over the surface of the placid water.
“There are many kinds of love,” said the abbess quietly. “Ours was deep and rich and profoundly spiritual, yet it was also … hungry. That wild hunger that burns and torments day and night, that steals the will, saps resolve. We fought it. For a time. But we were very young, and Hugh would go off for weeks, often months, leaving us alone.”
Attica curled her fingers over the sharp rocks at her sides. “You don't need to tell me this.”
“No,” said Isabelle. “You need to know.” She thrust her hands deep into her sleeves. “For there came a day, you see, when we simply couldn't stop ourselves. Afterward, we were horrified by what we had done. I had betrayed my husband, and Simon had betrayed his own father. Yet as wretched and guilt stricken as we were, we knew that as long as we were around each other, it would inevitably happen again. So he went away.
“He went away, and he stayed away until Hugh de Jarnac died. I sometimes think it broke Hugh's heart, Simon leaving like that. He couldn't understand, you see, what had driven Simon away.”
Attica stared out over the meadow, where tiny blue and white butterflies danced among the daisies and buttercups and yarrow. “He never knew?”
“No. Although he always suspected that Damion was not his own son.” She lifted her head, her face strained now by a softly tragic expression. “It's why he was so hard on Damion when he was young, why he made certain Damion's inheritance would consist of only one small manor.”
Attica made a curious sound in her throat, her hand coming up as if she could ward off what she was about to hear.
“And Hugh was right,” continued the abbess, her voice calm and flat. “He wasn't Damion's father; he was his grandfather.” She paused, and in the sudden stillness Attica could hear the buzzing of the honey bees in the meadow and the slapping of the wind-whipped water against the pond's edge. “Simon wasn't Damion's brother, Attica; he was his father. The man Damion killed on that dreadful stormy night was his own father.”
“Damion knows?” whispered Attica.
“He knows.” The black veil fell forward, hiding Isa-belle's face as she bowed her head. “Simon told him right before he died.”
The men sprawled naked and bloody at the edge of the road, the afternoon sun hot on their pale dead flesh. They had been stripped of everything—armor, boots, even braies. Attica only knew they had once been knights because she drew rein and forced herself to look at their faces. Just in case.
She twisted away, nausea roiling in her stomach, one hand gripping the wooden pommel before her. Thank God, thank God, thank God, neither of those bloated, hideous faces belonged to the man she loved. Yet she knew them; they were two of the knights who had been sent after her from Châteauhaut.
The sudden trill of a blackbird deep in the forest brought her head up. An unearthly stillness hung over the glade, broken only by the shrill buzzing of the flies. Tugging her left rein, she drew the gray around in a tight circle, her anxious gaze scanning the quietly drooping branches of scrub oak and ash, all her muscles so tense that she was quivering.
“If I were anyone else, lordling, you would be dead meat right now.”
Attica gasped, her heart seeming to stop beating only to start up again and slam against her ribs, hard. “Damion. Thank God.”
The bay destrier appeared from beneath the trees, the knight in the saddle looking tall and lean and grim faced. “Cross of Christ, Attica.” He rode at her, his big warhorse looming over the smaller gray until he was close enough that she could see the deeply accentuated lines bracketing his lips, see the dilated pupils in his hard green eyes. “What in the name of all that's holy are you doing here?”
She met his gaze squarely. “Looking for you.”
She heard his saddle leather creak as he reached out one gloved hand to grasp her behind the head. “Are you mad?” He tightened his grip, forcing her head around so that she had no choice but to look at the mutilated, discolored bodies of the dead knights. “Look at those men.” He held her brutally when she would have jerked away. “Don't you realize what could have happened to you before you found me? What can still happen to you, by God?”
She wrenched out of his grip, her stomach heaving. “I know.”
His dark eyes blazed at her from out of a harsh, tight face. “Then why the devil did you leave Sainte-Geneviève?”
She met his gaze squarely. “Because I know the main reason you wanted me to stay was to keep me out of danger. Because I realized I'd rather be with you and in danger than at the convent and safe. Because in less than a month I may be Fulk the Fat's bride, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life remembering the little time we had together, and wishing I had found the courage to seize a few days more.”
A strange tightness came over his face, as if he were able to contain a rush of unwanted emotions only with effort. “Christ, Attica,” he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle, almost hushed. “We could die before we get to Chinon.”
She swallowed, a queer smile trembling her lips. “It's worth it.”
“You're mad,” he said on a rough expulsion of breath. Leaning forward, he caught her face between his hands and seized her mouth in a long, desperate kiss. “I shouldn't be glad you're here.” His breath rushed warm and moist against her face as he kissed her eyes, her forehead, her nose. “I shouldn't be. But I am. God help me, I am.”
Near dusk, they came upon a small manor house set in the midst of lush, gently rolling fields and scattered small copses of beech and poplar. It seemed a prosperous manor, from the looks of it, sturdily built of tuff and slate and surrounded by a high wooden palisade. But when they urged their horses at a slow walk through the untended gatehouse, they found the yard lying silent and empty before them, the open gate swinging in the warm wind as if the last person through it had left so quickly he hadn't
bothered to secure it.
A swift search of the nearby village located the steward, who told them the lord and his family had retreated to a less comfortable but more heavily fortified manor up in the hills. Most of the lord's servants had fled as well, he said, along with any from the village who could. No one, it seemed, knew which way the French or English king would be marching next, but no one wanted to be in their way.
“I'm certain my lord would make you welcome, were he here,” said the steward, pulling at one earlobe as he cast nervous sidelong glances at Damion's long sword.
And so they stayed. By the light of a single lamp, they ate their supper on the cool earthen floor of the absent lord's kitchen. They sat cross-legged, knee to knee, while they ate sausages and figs and crusty day-old bread washed down with fresh buttermilk. As they ate, Damion watched the flickering light cast temptingly mysterious shadows across Attica's downturned face. He remembered the way her breasts felt in his hands, the way she quivered when he eased his hand down her flat stomach. He thought about how badly he wanted to touch her, to taste her, to take her—but slowly this time, the way he had promised.
She wiped her fingers daintily, her head lifting so that she looked into his face. She smiled at him with her eyes, and he took her hand. Together they rose and crossed the yard to the small hall. Hand in hand, they climbed the wooden steps to the single solar above, a small but comfortable chamber wainscoted with painted wooden panels.
Damion had expected the lord to have taken his bed when he fled, but it still stood upon a dais in the chamber, a massive oaken frame hung with fine green wool drapes and piled high with a feather mattress and a marten fur coverlet that gleamed in the light of his torch.
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