“Shhh,” Gilliane whispered, thrusting her face over his left shoulder.
Naturally enough, Pierre turned his head in the direction of hers, and Gilliane’s right hand rose, flung outward, and came back down with all the strength of her rage and her hate and her terror. The knife was long and very well honed. It cut through the leather hood like butter and sank right to the hilt, cutting the carotid artery under the ear and slitting the jugular. Indeed, it went so far that the point came through on the other side of Pierre’s throat and pricked Gilliane’s cheek. She jerked her head back and jerked at the knife, too. A flood of warmth ran over the blade and her icy fingers as the knife came out.
A strange low squawk had come from Pierre’s throat as the knife went in, but when the jugular was slit, he was gagged by his own blood and made no other sound. His body heaved in a single violent convulsion. Instinctively, Gilliane clutched at him, quite accidentally driving the knife she still held into his chest. More important, for Pierre was dead already, Gilliane’s left hand, equally accidentally, hit the reins, which were just falling from his slackened grip. The blows she had dealt, the squawk and convulsion of death, had purged Gilliane of the madness that threatened to destroy her reason. All at once life was, if not normal, at least rational. She comprehended her situation quite well and saw her only chance for escape lay in retaining the horse.
Perhaps five seconds had passed since Gilliane first stabbed Pierre. Either Jean had not noticed the swift motion of her arm because of the dark or had mistaken it for a gesture by Pierre. However, there was no profit in concealment, Gilliane knew, because each stride of the horse was bringing them closer to Osbert’s men. Besides, the jerk of the knife out of Pierre’s body had started it moving and it was already sagging against Gilliane’s right arm. It would be impossible for her to support that weight. It would be impossible for her to stay on the horse if she could not get into the saddle. Even as these thoughts ran through her head, Gilliane was pulling her knife free of Pierre’s chest. This further unbalanced the body, and, when Gilliane pulled back her right arm, it toppled over in that direction. As it fell, Gilliane kicked the horse’s belly and, simultaneously, Jean let out a bellow from behind. The corpse went over and Gilliane grabbed for the saddle pommel with both hands. Unfortunately, although Pierre’s left foot came free of the stirrup, the right did not. Walloped by the falling body on the right, prodded by Gilliane’s kicks and startled by the shout behind, the horse veered sharply away to the left and broke from a trot into a gallop.
As it turned out, Adam’s prediction about the feeding habits of deer in winter had been quite correct. Hardly half a mile into the hunting preserve, he and his companions came upon a stag of considerable size. By the time the hunt was over Adam felt much better. He was tired and sweating, but he had worked off most of his tension. Sir Richard and Sir Andrew were pleased with their sport; everyone was in the best humor. The horses, however, were really exhausted. It was clearly impossible to think of making them go back to the abbey when a hunting lodge was at hand. There was also wood for a fire and pieces of the stag could be roasted over that fire. Then, pleasantly tired, they rolled themselves in their cloaks and slept to wake with the first light of the rising sun, stiff and cold but still pleased with their sport and their companions.
After they were mounted, however, Adam pulled close to Sir Richard to say softly that he was aware he should not have broken the journey for sport. And then he cleared his throat awkwardly, unable to explain why he had been driven to do so.
“It does not matter,” Sir Richard assured him. “No more was lost than an hour or two. Lady Gilliane could not ride much farther in any case. It was good for all of us. The lady had some rest, and we had some pleasure, which, after all the worry of these past weeks, was sorely needed.”
Adam did not quite see why Sir Richard kept harping on Gilliane’s inability to ride. A flicker of concern passed through him. Sir Richard was much older than he and doubtless knew many more women. Perhaps he saw that Gilliane was frailer than most women. Then why did she not say she was tired or… Nonsense. Had not he and Geoffrey needed to think of a thousand excuses to stop and rest because Ian, who was not completely recovered from his illness, would have dropped dead from his horse rather than complain? Perhaps Gilliane’s spirit was stronger than her body and she, too, needed to be watched for her own good. Without realizing it, Adam picked up the pace. A few minutes more brought them in sight of the abbey and, to their surprise, before they reached the gate, they saw the abbot hurrying out toward them.
“My lords,” he cried, “I have most dreadful news. Lady Gilliane has been reft away.”
“What?”
“How?”
“By whom?”
It was, of course, impossible to distinguish the questions that were roared at him all at the same time, but the abbot knew well enough what had been asked.
“I beg you to listen and I will tell you at once everything I know. When the lay brother went this morning to bring breakfast to Lady Gilliane’s maid, he found the woman gagged and bound. She could tell him nothing, only that it was a man, for it was dark and she was thrown over on her face and bound before she could see who seized her.”
“When did this happen?” Sir Richard asked.
One look at Adam’s white, stricken face and fixed, unseeing eyes had told Sir Richard that he had better ask whatever questions needed answering. He was very sorry for his young overlord, who had given way to a most harmless impulse of youth and now was so bitterly punished for so small a deviation from strict duty.
“After compline surely, for the maid did not leave Lady Gilliane until then, but—”
“Have you no idea at all, no guess even, who has taken her?” Adam had recovered his voice, but it did not sound much like his as he forced the words through his constricted throat.
“My lord, let me finish. You will have your answer quicker that way. Although it is not certain, since no one saw what happened, we believe it must have been a guest who came to the abbey after you left, a Sir Osbert de Cercy.”
“Sir Osbert!”
“How could he know we were here?”
Sir Andrew’s and Sir Richard’s voices blended in horrified exclamation. Adam was again stricken mute. His sense of shock was so intense that the world reeled around him and he clung to the pommel of his saddle for fear he would topple from his horse. Adam knew perfectly well that male and female guest houses were separated by the width of the abbey. Therefore, Osbert could not have come upon Gilliane by chance. She must have summoned him. Somehow she must have sent Osbert a message to tell him that she was free of surveillance at last. Why? Why had she cozened him with her eyes, her lips, her body, if she loved her husband? What purpose…
“I grieve to say that was our fault,” the abbot was replying to Sir Richard’s repeated question about where Osbert had obtained the information that Gilliane was in the abbey.
“You mean she asked you to send Sir Osbert a message?” Adam asked harshly.
“No, no. It was an accident. Our prior, believing Sir Osbert and Lady Gilliane both to lack company, since our guest houses were empty except for them, suggested that Sir Osbert pay a visit of courtesy to the lady. It was late, of course, after vespers, so the prior was not surprised when Sir Osbert refused, since he was a stranger to the lady.”
“He was no stranger!” Adam exclaimed bitterly.
“Nor a man Lady Gilliane would have wished to see,” Sir Richard interposed warningly.
If the abbot discovered that Osbert was Gilliane’s husband, his willingness to give them information might be at an end. To a churchman’s way of thinking, the bonds imposed by the Church were more important than political purposes and far more important than personal likes and dislikes.
“That is very strange,” the abbot exclaimed. “Sir Osbert said nothing of knowing Lady Gilliane. He seemed, from what the prior said, to be embarrassed by the idea of thrusting himself so late upon the noti
ce…” His voice checked and a hard expression came into his face. “I see. He did not wish her to reveal what she knew about him. But he would have right of sanctuary here, no matter what he had done, unless… Heaven! Is he excommunicate? Is it needful for us to cleanse and resanctify…”
Adam had barely heard the abbot’s words. Sir Richard’s interruption rang through his head like a bell note, clearing the fog of rage and suspicion enough so that he realized that they had to have Gilliane back. Politically, she was necessary to him. It did not matter whether she had lied to him for some purpose he could not even guess at. Certainly Sir Richard and Sir Andrew were no part of any plot—if there had been a plot. Their anger and amazement were sincere. Gilliane could not even have hinted to them that she intended to return to her husband. Perhaps she had not intended it. Perhaps she had resolved to keep her lands any way she could after Osbert had gone for help, even if it meant subduing her revulsion and bedding her conqueror. Only when she saw the man she had murdered her first husband to get, her passion had overcome her greed and, for love of Sir Osbert, she had thrown away what she had worked so hard to obtain. Again Adam clung to his pommel, pain stopping his breath.
“Father,” Sir Richard’s incisive tones cut across the abbot’s worried wondering, “we cannot answer that question, but I must beg you to turn from your own concerns to ours for a little time. Was Lady Gilliane hurt? How was she taken?”
“Alas, I cannot answer your question any more than you can answer mine. There was no blood in her chamber and it was not disarrayed, but it would be easy enough for three men—Sir Osbert had two servants with him—to overpower one small woman. Nothing at all was taken. The lady’s combs and brushes and all her clothes except her riding dress lay as the maid left them—so much she told us, but we could get little sense from her, so much did she weep for her lost mistress.”
The band that had been cutting so tightly into Adam’s chest that it was an agony to breathe loosened a trifle. Everyone assumed Gilliane had been carried away by force. Perhaps she had been. If not, why should she not take Catrin with her? She was fond of the maid. And surely she would have taken her comb and brush, even if she was afraid to pause to pack her clothes. As one agony receded, another crowded forward. If the whole thing was a horrible accident of chance, what was happening to his poor Gilliane?
“Never mind how she was taken,” Adam snarled. “What is of note is that we must have her back.” He turned on the abbot. “Do you have no help to give us? Did the man say from where he came?”
“My son, be calm. He has been gone since before the sun’s rising. A few minutes more or less now cannot—”
“Can they not?” Adam roared. “We are no more than twenty miles from three of Louis’s great strongholds. If we catch them before they can enter such a place, we can have Lady Gilliane back safe. But—”
“I will summon the prior,” the abbot said hastily. “He is the one—”
“I will go to him. It will be quicker,” Adam growled, coming off his horse and throwing his reins to Sir Andrew.
Sir Richard dismounted also, fearing that Adam’s guilt, now that his shock was past, might drive him to lay violent hands upon the man who had, though unwittingly, revealed Lady Gilliane’s presence to Osbert. He was wrong in thinking Adam was likely to punish another for what he knew was his own fault, but his mediation was necessary. Adam was now so frantic, imagining Gilliane being threatened, or beaten, that he would hardly give the prior a chance to think over what had been said. Sir Richard could see Adam’s big hands twitching with the desire to shake the words out of the man.
“He did not say from where he came,” Sir Richard urged, “but think, I beg you. He came late. Did he not say what places he had passed?”
“Uh…not that I…oh, yes…I believe he said that Guildford was too far east…“
“North! We should have known,” Adam shouted, turning sharply away and starting for the door. “He came from the north, most likely from Berkhampsted. What a fool I am! I knew Louis was there.”
“Wait, my lord,” Sir Richard cried, following and seizing Adam’s arm. “I do not believe de Cercy was traveling with only two servants. To speak in plain language, the man was an arrant coward. If he had only a small troop of guards, he would have brought them all with him. That he came with only two men means that he must have a large troop camped nearby.”
“So?” Adam growled, wrenching his arm free and continuing on out of the abbey.
“I am not afraid to die more than any other man,” Sir Richard snapped, “but I should like to do so, if I must, for a good cause. What good could it do Lady Gilliane if all three of us should be slain?”
“We will not be slain,” Adam stated indifferently. He was too young, too worried, too angry to believe in death.
“My lord, consider! We are three men. If there be fifty or a hundred in de Cercy’s party—or, what if there be a doubt as to what way they went? How wide can three men spread themselves? Let us summon our own troops. It will take no more than—”
“By all means,” Adam replied, stopping for a moment, but the eyes that looked at Sir Richard were not sane. “Ask the reverend father to send someone to tell Cuthbert that he must break camp and follow me north. Do you go yourself, if you think it needful. As for me, I ride north now.”
“But will the men believe…” Sir Richard began.
He did not bother to complete his question. Adam had already walked away. It was obvious that nothing would deter Adam from riding north along the road to discover Osbert’s trail, if he could. Sir Richard paused a few minutes to ask the abbot to send a message to the troops, drawing off his seal ring so that the messenger would have proof that the order did, indeed, come from him. All he could hope was that he would be able, when Adam actually saw evidence that a large troop was involved, to convince his overlord to wait until their own men caught up with them.
Sir Richard was not completely successful in that attempt, but a sight of the size of the deserted camp and the number of campfires did bring Adam to a limited rationality. Even the state of mind he was in, where constant visions of Gilliane being held down and raped alternated with visions of her rushing passionately into Osbert’s embrace—and which of the two was more horrible to him was a moot point—could not completely wipe out Adam’s long years of training. Half mad though he was, he knew no three men could prevail over so large a force. One other factor contributed to calming him. Sir Andrew pointed out that the horse droppings indicated that most of the men were afoot. That meant either that the whole troop would move slowly enough to accommodate the foot soldiers, or that the few mounted men, ten or fifteen at most, would ride ahead.
Adam would not hesitate to take on ten or fifteen men-at-arms and one knight. He, Sir Richard, and Sir Andrew were better armed and probably considerably more skilled. However, he had sense enough not to say that to Sir Richard. All he said was that he must follow to see which way they had gone. Sir Richard did not protest, although he insisted that they ride the few hundred yards to the village so that someone could tell their troops which way to turn.
What they found in the village made Sir Richard and Sir Andrew growl with anger and disgust. Both of them had loosed their men on helpless villages, but only as an act of war, not one of negligence or indifference. Adam said nothing at first, but he grew white as chalk again when his eyes fell on the crippled women with their bloodstained skirts. Then he spoke softly, calming the fears of the people as well as he could, promising that his men, who were following, would guard those who were serfs of the Church and make sure that the devils that had plagued them would not return. He gave the village headman a piece or two of silver from his purse to buy food and firewood to replace what the troop had consumed. The loss of their slender supplies would have condemned the village to freezing and starvation if the abbot had not chosen to help them. Adam’s largesse stilled the worst fears. Bruises and torn flesh would heal. At least no one was dead. The headman took A
dam’s glove as a token and promised to send a man to set Adam’s troops off on the trail of de Cercy and his men.
Without waiting for further assurance or even to see whether Sir Richard and Sir Andrew were following him, Adam rode back to where de Cercy’s troop had camped. He was determined to follow, although it seemed certain de Cercy was making for Lewes. It was the nearest stronghold committed to Louis in the direction the troop had headed. Two things drove Adam to follow. It was possible that this trail was a false one to throw pursuers off. Knepp castle was no more than six or seven miles to the southwest. In fact, Adam could not understand why Osbert had not made for Knepp at once. He could have been safe inside that formidable keep before Adam even knew Gilliane was gone. Perhaps he was already there, having sent his men away eastward to draw off those who followed.
Sickness churned in Adam at the thought. There were signs of horses as well as men in the dry earth and broken stubble. Adam pinned his hope on that, trying not to think of Gilliane as a prisoner in Knepp. But he had to know. He had to catch up with de Cercy’s men. Among so few horsemen, it would be easy to discover a woman, particularly if she were a bound captive. And if she were a bound captive and if the troop were far along the road to Lewes, the worst of Adam’s agony would be ended. The need to bind her would prove she had not gone willingly for love of Osbert; the distance traveled would mean, most likely, that Osbert had not taken time to molest his prize.
All true—if they were not in Knepp. At the spot where the camp had been, Adam pulled in his horse and bit his lip in an agony of indecision. Dare he take such a chance? Would it not be better to ride to Knepp and discover if they had taken in a man and a woman at dawn that morning? If they had, he could bring up the troops they had to make sure that Osbert did not escape and tell the castellan that he would bring a full army to take down the keep if Gilliane and Osbert were not sent out to him. But he had already told the headman of the village to send the men along the track of de Cercy’s men. Should he go back and countermand that order?
Gilliane (Roselynde Chronicles, Book Four) Page 26
