Dark Emerald

by Lisa Jackson

  Swallowing hard, Pigeon stole across the room and quietly closed the door so they would be entirely alone. “Please. Now, listen.” Pigeon’s eyes were round, and she swallowed as if there were a lump the size of an apple lodged in her throat. She walked to the fire and warmed her hands. “ ‘Tis here to help ye I am,” she whispered, clearing her throat.

  Tara doubted it. The girl had done nothing but send her daggerlike glances for days. “Help me?”

  “Aye. Do ye na wanna leave Broodmore?” There was a note of excitement in Pigeon’s voice, a tremor of anticipation.

  Tara’s eyes narrowed. This could all be part of a trick, for Pigeon was much more clever than anyone here at Broodmore, including her own mother, suspected. “Aye, Pigeon,” she said carefully. “ ‘Tis no secret I feel a prisoner.”

  “Then ye must go now, before Rhys and Abelard return.”

  Tara didn’t answer—she didn’t trust the girl and she didn’t want to give herself away. If she agreed to whatever foolish plan Pigeon had concocted, she was certain the girl would use it against her to gain favor with Rhys.

  When Tara hesitated, Pigeon threw up her hands and shook them, as if silently asking God to help her make Tara understand. “Do ye not hear me? This … this be your chance!” Her eyes were bright with eagerness, and there was more than mischief in her expression, much more—a dark need that was fueled by girlhood fantasies. She wanted Tara to leave as much as Tara desired to go—but for very different reasons. “We have not much time.” Digging deep in her pocket, she withdrew a small, decidedly deadly knife, one not unlike her own. Along with the dagger was a strong piece of cord, and a tiny bit of flint. “Take these with you.” When Tara didn’t move, the girl grabbed her hand and slapped the items into her palm, then curled Tara’s fingers over the treasures. “Take them.” So close to her that Tara could see the threadlike veins in the whites of her eyes, Pigeon said, “I know ye are plannin’ yer escape. Do not deny it. I will help ye by lurin’ the guards away.”

  “How will you do that?” Tara asked, her fist closed tightly over Pigeon’s gifts.

  “Do not worry. You will know.” Pigeon winked at her, and Tara felt more than a shiver of mistrust, for there was thinly disguised hatred in the girl’s eyes. “I must go now, but this I vow, you will know when the time is right.”

  With that, Pigeon scurried out of the room, her head bent, her demeanor poor and self-serving, as it usually was. As she swept through the door, she did not once look back and Tara, knowing she was making a mistake, decided to trust the flighty, love-besotted girl.

  Shadows lengthened in the room as night blanketed the keep. She glanced at the pallet where she had slept with Rhys, smelled him, felt his body pressed so tightly to hers. Damn the blackheart! She’d felt womanly stirrings deep within her and a hollow aching that had never completely left her. Whenever she thought of him, as she did now, the yearning swept over her, and she remembered the taste of his lips and the feel of his hands on her bare skin.

  “Stop it,” she muttered to herself and changed out of the dead woman’s clothes into her own simple tunic and mantle.

  As she tucked the cord and flint into her pocket, Tara told herself not to worry about Pigeon and her plot, whatever it might be. ‘Twas probably nothing more than a girlish fantasy of being a part of something daring. An adventure. Though Pigeon’s home was with the outlaw band, she was considered nothing more than a servant, a silly goose of a girl who had to do the most menial of tasks. Her mother, albeit loving, barked orders at her. The men thought her without brains, but Rhys offered her shreds of kindness, which she transformed into a young girl’s dreams of romantic love. Pigeon was hopelessly in love with him, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

  And what about you, Tara? Are you not falling in love with him as well? That horrid, nagging voice in her mind asked the question.

  Nay! Never! He was a rogue. An outlaw. A man who had boldly diverted her from her purpose, a man who had shamed her by insisting that he share a pallet with her, a once-upon-a-time knight turned to lawlessness. She would not ever fall in love with the likes of him.

  Angry at the wayward turn of her thoughts, she slid the knife into her boot, examined the platter of food, ate a few bites of cooling brawn and wastel bread, then ignored the congealing mass. Her stomach was already tied in knots, her palms were damp though it was cold, and her heart beat wildly in anticipation of this night. She would climb out the window as soon as the guard fell asleep at his post. Skulking in the shadows, she would locate her mare, then leave through the crack in the wall as she had before.

  If it was still unguarded.

  It had to be. Surely the fates would not be against her. Oh, Morrigu, watch over me. Make Dobbyn swift as a bolt of lightning, keep the sentries dull-witted and slow, and, please, please, I beg you, help me escape these oppressive walls. Let not Rhys return to stop me.

  Surely this time Rhys would not be around to thwart her.

  So where was he?

  Attempting to rid herself of any thoughts of him, assuring herself that she would not heed Rosie’s worries about him and Abelard, Tara tried and failed to ignore the gnawing sense of anxiety that had been with her for hours—that something dire had happened to him and that whatever misfortune had befallen him was somehow her fault.

  “You’re as big a worrier as Rosie,” she chastised herself.

  The emerald ring was already tied to her waist. She reached into her pocket, her fingers grazing her own knife, cord, candle, herbs, flint, and a few precious coins, all that she owned in the world aside from her horse. Aye, she was ready to make good her escape.

  If only she had a chance.

  If not, she would have to create one.

  She didn’t dare close her eyes while she waited for the fire to die down, needing as much darkness as possible for the few seconds when she would hoist herself into the window and drop to the ground. Without firelight behind her, she would be less visible, less likely to be discovered.

  She inched closer to the window. The smell of smoke drifted through the air. From the bailey a horse gave out a worried neigh. Someone coughed. Muted conversation was audible over a gently whistling wind.

  Tara spotted the sentry, Rupert, leaning against a post that supported a sagging roof. Arms folded over his massive chest, he observed the grounds with a lazy eye and spoke to some of the men passing by. They joked and laughed, but he never gave up his vigil. Even while talking to Bertrand, an outlaw with a crooked leer, stringy beard, and thin hair that didn’t hide his scalp, Rupert continued his watch on the keep.

  Finally Bertrand, who limped slightly, ambled off, and Rupert yawned. If only he would fall asleep, Tara thought. As long as he was awake, it would be more difficult to execute her plan. Somehow she would need to crawl quickly out the window, drop to the ground, scurry silently past him when he turned his back mayhap when he had to relieve himself—then run like the very devil across the bailey to the spot where the horses were tied, and …

  The sentry suddenly snapped to attention, his mouth dropping in horror. He took off at a dead run to the far side of the bailey.

  From the corner of her eye Tara recognized a treacherous glow. Bright orange shadows played upon the rough surface of the castle’s outer wall, and smoke drifted across the bailey.

  Fire!

  “Nay,” she whispered. “Oh, nay!”

  Frightened, she stuck her head through the window and, craning her neck, looked toward the rough shed that housed the kitchen. Her heart dropped. Thick black smoke rose in ghastly billows above the hut. “Dear God in heaven.” Her heart hammered. Fear spurted through her blood.

  “Fire!” someone in the hallway yelled. “Fire in the bailey! Fire!”

  Men shouted. Heavy, panicked footsteps thundered down the hallway, racing past her door. “Come on, you lout! You, Leland, get off yer sorry arse! Have ye not heard? Fire! There’s fire—bloody goddamned fire in the keep!”

  Tara climbed onto t
he windowsill and stretched to see past the kitchen. Above the roof, behind Rosie’s domain, angry flames crackled, lengthening ever upward in sinister orange, licking hungrily at old timbers and remaining bits of thatching. Smoke clogged the air, teased Tara’s nostrils, and drifted into her lungs.

  “Christ Jesus,” a man yelled, “the damned place is blazin’. Run! Run!”

  “Move! Kent, over here!”

  “Ben! Tom! Get the buckets!”

  Tara jumped to the floor of her chamber and sprinted to the door.

  “Leland! For the love of Christ, wet down some damned sacks. Get ‘em from Rosie.”

  “God almighty, how did this start!”

  “Pigeon! Find yer ma! Oh, for the love of Mary …”

  Just as Tara reached the door, it swung open, thudding against the wall. Pigeon, red-faced and breathless, her chin trembling a bit, raced into the room. “Go,” she ordered in a harsh whisper. “Now! You must leave—”

  “But the fire. I cannot—”

  “ ‘Tis nothing! A small fire in the old apothecary’s quarters near the eel pond. ‘Twill be out in no time.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Hurry!” the girl screamed. “Go now! You have but a few minutes before I will tell everyone I cannot find you, so run—now.“

  Tara hesitated.

  “ ‘Tis now or never. The fire will be out soon!”

  Tara didn’t argue. She hopped lithely onto the window ledge again, forced herself through, and dropped onto the soft grass of the bailey.

  Pigeon was right behind her. “Hurry. We must make haste!” she insisted, and without a second thought Tara ran to the old wagon where the horses were neighing and rearing at the smell of smoke. With wild, white-rimmed eyes, flashing legs, straining muscles under coats lathered from nervousness, they struggled to break free.

  Tara reached her mare and patted the horse on her nose. “Shh, Dobbyn, ‘tis a good girl you be,” she whispered, though she was as terrified as the animals. Acrid smoke filled her lungs, and the fire raged on, sending bright sparks into the black, smoke-riddled heavens. Tara’s fingers fumbled, and she began to sweat as she untied the tether and pulled hard, separating Dobbyn from the other horses. A dappled gray reared, his haunches tight, his front legs flailing. Pigeon untied his lead and he took off, propelled by fright, streaking across the bailey. “Hurry!” she whispered to Tara.

  Holding the single rein tight in one hand, Tara swung onto the mare’s smooth back. Other horses whinnied. One reared. Another lashed out with a swift hind leg.

  Tara paid little attention. Already, from atop the horse, she saw more than twenty men slogging water and throwing dirt onto the fire that burned within the shell of a hut. The flames slowly recoiled, hissing like angry snakes as water drenched them.

  Tara pulled on Dobbyn’s reins and with a prayer to any deity inclined to listen, kicked the mare hard. “Save us!” Like the shot of an arrow, the bay sprang forward, galloping full tilt around the perimeter of the bailey. Hooves pounding in fear, the mare raced over the soft loam. Another horse, eyes wide with hysteria, sped past.

  From the corner of her eye, Tara saw Pigeon releasing the horses and slapping them hard on their rumps. One by one they ran, terrified, neighing, zigzagging and galloping in all directions. The orange glow receded. As Pigeon had foretold, the fire was dying.

  Tara steered her horse toward the crevice in the wall. It loomed large and dark, a craggy portal to freedom. “Run, Dobbyn!” she yelled into the smokeladen air. “Faster! Faster!”

  “Hey!” a man yelled. “The horses! Hey! Oh, bloody hell, now what? The damned horses! How in the name of—”

  More shouts and terrified neighs punctuated the night.

  Dobbyn didn’t falter. She gathered speed and raced headlong to the jagged opening. Through the black cleft. Without missing a stride, the mare sailed over a pile of rubble to land with a bone-jarring thud outside the chipped curtain wall.

  Tara clung tight. With the ring tied securely to her waist and a taste of freedom in her heart, she rode into the gloom of the night-shrouded forest, determined to put the imprisoning walls of Broodmore and any thoughts of the Bastard Outlaw behind her forever.

  “What do you mean ‘she’s gone’?” Rhys thundered as he stood in front of the smoldering pile of ash that had once been a part of Broodmore. Charred timbers still glowed fiery red in a few spots, and all of the men in the robber band stood on the wet, trampled grass, surveying the damage to what had long ago been an apothecary’s hut. Pieces of chipped pottery, remnants of jars, and a smoke-stained jug poked out of the ash. ‘Twas a miracle that the kitchen itself hadn’t burned.

  Rage boiled through Rhys’s bloodstream. Tara! She was behind this. The witch had brazenly defied him. Deceived him. Outsmarted his men. His fists clenched in frustration. Had the men not been so tired and defeated, he would have taken them on—each and every one of them.

  “What I meant was that Tara escaped. In the confusion.” Kent, clearly annoyed at himself, stared Rhys squarely in the eye. His usually clean and well-kept clothes were a shambles—ripped mantle, breeches split in the knee, mud and soot covering not only the fabric but his face as well. In the poor illumination of the single torch that Rhys held aloft, Kent looked gaunt and haggard, a criminal who had no home or loved ones of his own. A man such as himself.

  “I don’t understand how that could happen.” A pulse throbbed at Rhys’s temple, and his fingers, encased in leather gloves, dug painfully into his palms. “How did she escape? Was she not guarded?” He leveled a hard, uncompromising glare at each man and most of them looked away, or to the ground, shuffled their blackened, muddy boots, or cleared their smoke-singed throats.

  Kent coughed, then squared his shoulders. “Somehow she started the fire, then as everyone was trying to put out the blaze, she set the horses free and took off.” Kent’s lips pursed into a blade-thin line of disgust. His eyes became slits. “She put the castle and everyone’s life at high risk. ‘Tis evil she be.”

  “Is this true?” Rhys asked, turning to the other men.

  They nodded and shrugged, grunted their agreement and stared disconsolately at the remains of the fire. Soot streaked their faces, smoke clung to their clothes. Benjamin’s eyebrows had been singed and Oliver’s arm bled from the fall he’d taken when he ran for a bucket of water.

  “ ‘Tis just how it happened,” Pigeon offered, her lips trembling in a nervous little smile. She looked up at him with shining eyes. “I saw it meself. She went from the apothecary’s hut to the wagon where the horses were. She let ‘em all go, slapped them on their behinds she did. I … I tried to gather the horses together, to stop her … but …” She turned her palms upward and glanced at the ground as if ashamed. “ ‘Twas too late. The animals, they scattered when she released them. Scared they were. As … as we all were.” She swallowed hard, and her little chin quivered. “ ‘Twas horrid.”

  “Shh,” Rosie said, surrounding the girl’s thin shoulders with a fleshy arm. “Never would I have believed this of the lady. We were good to her and … ah, well, we survived. All. The Lord was with us this night.”

  Rhys wasn’t so certain.

  “We should all pray that—”

  “Later!” There was not time for kneeling and talking to God. Not just yet. Rubbing his jaw, Rhys glared at the remaining walls of the keep. Had any passerby seen the glow of the fire through the trees? Had the safety of their lair been compromised by the witch? Hell! Soon they would have to move. Very soon. His thoughts darkened at the thought of the sabotage.

  “Dinna ye say she be a witch?” one man asked.

  “Aye,” another agreed. “I seen her meself, drawin’ in the ground, talkin’ to the evil ones. Rosie, here, she had to put a stop to it. And a good thing she did, or maybe Satan himself would’ve been here.”

  “He was. Bloody hell, Lucifer was here!” Rupert said with a nod. He spat on the ground in conviction.

  “Enough!” Rhys said
sharply, irritated at the gossip and angry that Tara had eluded him. His head pounded, his fury was as forbidding as the night. “How did she get out of her room?”

  “Through the window,” Pigeon offered.

  “She did not go through the door,” Kent agreed. “I was at my post until the alarm.”

  “So was I!” Rupert hoisted his chin. He folded his beefy arms indignantly over his chest and refused to be intimidated. As if fearing he would be blamed for the conflagration, he said, “She came not through the window.”

  “It matters not,” Rhys thought aloud. “Somehow she got away. We only be lucky that no one lost his life.” He scanned the rubble, the smoldering timbers and ash that littered the bailey floor. Kicking at a piece of charred limestone, he fought the demons clawing at his soul. He didn’t wonder where she had gone—he knew that she would ride to Twyll if she could get there.

  The thought burned hot in his gut. “You,” he said, singling out Kent, “will have the first post. Stand guard here and watch that this fire doesn’t flare again. The rest of you will take turns as well. I will fetch our prisoner back to us.”

  Pigeon’s smile fell and her lower lip protruded a bit. “Why would ye want to do that?” she demanded and received a cuff on the shoulder from her mother.

  “ ‘Tis sorry I am,” Rosie said, grabbing Pigeon’s arm. She growled in her daughter’s ear, “Never question Rhys or Abelard. They be our lords. Ye best be rememberin’ that.”

  “Hey, the girl’s got a point, don’t she?” Bertrand demanded. “Lady Tara’s been nothin’ but trouble—and a witch to boot. I don’t know about ye, but I don’t like takin’ me chances with the dark arts.”

  A few others grumbled their agreement, but Rhys cut them off. “Argue not. She will return with me.” He pointed a finger at each man in turn. “And you will obey Kent while I’m away.” To Kent he added, “If there be any more trouble, the blame will fall on your shoulders.”