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To my sisters, Billi, Stephanie, Peggy and Elizabeth, who have the gall to be taller than me (oh, for three more inches!) and to Amberly who has both Nicola's hair and height.
And to Justin, who will be Gilliam when he grows up.
Late June, 1194
Something heavy hit the bed, and a door slammed. John of Ashby jerked, startled out of his fever-glazed musing. From his hall outside and to the left of his bedchamber door, folk screamed in terror. An attack!
He wrenched himself upright. The gash on his side reopened, destroying all his daughter's fine needlework. Fiery pain erupted from the wound as the bandages swathing his massive middle grew damp with blood. Blackness whirled in on him, but the ache was a vicious reminder; it was the memory of his sin that kept John conscious.
Oath breaker, he cursed himself. He leaned gingerly against the headboard, and stared in depression at the dark draperies curtaining his bed. What he heard happening in his hall was no enemy assault. 'Twas Rannulf of Graistan's rightful retribution on the vassal who dared raise a murderous sword against his liege lord.
Shame burned in John's gut, hotter than the infection that ate at him. Even if this wound did not take him, his life was over. He'd done worse than shatter his vow of loyalty to Rannulf, he had violated every principle he held dear.
Lord God, but he was a thickheaded fool. His new wife had curled her sweet body around him until he was besotted with lust and blinded to her lies. How easily she had molded his quick temper and slow wits into her weapon. At least what he heard in the hall suggested her plot to kill Rannulf had failed.
John listened in helpless sorrow as the terror-filled screams grew to a louder pitch. Every soul within Ashby's walls would pay for his mindless rage. Threaded into the sounds of panic were a paltry few voices raised in command. His daughter would be one of these.
Nicola.
John's eyes closed, and tears filled their leathery corners. Of all the pains he bore just now, the realization that he had killed his daughter dug the deepest. When she was dead, their family line would be no more. Such was a traitor's fate.
How much longer did he have before Graistan's men reached him? John slumped in sorrow, only to have his soul cry out in protest. This was no way to finish his life. Be damned if they'd find him hiding abed like some craven coward. John buried his hands into the thick drapes, and slowly shifted his huge bulk across the straw-filled mattress, each movement an agony. The bedclothes spilled over the bed's edge before him.
By the time he set feet to the floor, John was again blinking away darkness. Cold metal touched a calf. He glanced down. His sword lay tilted against the bed frame, hilt upward and blade, bared. Who had been so careless with his precious weapon?
He closed a hand about the familiar grip, its leather wrap long since softened into the shape of his palm, then lay the heavy blade across his lap. John stared at it in regret. Would that he could meet his end with weapon in hand, but a traitor had no right to so honorable a demise.
When he again raised his gaze, it was to glance around his bedchamber in loving farewell. Extending from a small, stone keep tower, his home was little more than a barn, with wooden walls and thatch to keep out the rain. Still, the wide window with its dusty shutters in the eastern wall, his armor chest beneath it, even the rising pegs in the warped floorboard were all friends of long acquaintance.
When he was dead, Rannulf would give this place to another man. This new vassal would be the one to collect Ashby's plentiful harvests and hunt in its thick forests. So, too, would Ashby's new lord marry and watch his children take life in this bed, just as John had watched his children come into the world.
John sighed. God had cheated him in his offspring. His son had been a weakling who died five years past, while his daughter was a warrior witch who had learned to use her sword at his knee. From her eighth year Nicola had burned with the desire to hold Ashby as her own fief. She still clung to that childish dream, refusing to believe it was not possible.
He should have forced her to give it up, and insisted on marriage long ago. Many men had offered for her even though Nicola was overly tall and plain, her manner lacking even the slightest trace of feminine softness. Aye, if only John had insisted on her wedding an acceptable husband, he would never have remarried and the events of this day would not have occurred.
His breath hissed from him in the tiniest hint of laughter. How foolish of him. God's teeth, despite the rich contract he and Hugh de Ocslade had drawn between them, Nicola vowed to murder the man if he insisted on marriage.
Nay, forcing his daughter to the altar would have created an equally violent outcome. It would have destroyed John to watch some man beat the spirit out of Nicola. Or—he lifted a brow in brief amusement—shamed him to watch her beat someone like de Ocslade into a bloody pulp. 'Twas best Nicola died in this battle, for were she to live without her father's indulgent protection her life would surely be someone else's hell.
Now at peace with his life's end, John turned his attention to the bedchamber's door only to squint at it in closer study. Gray tendrils of smoke curled into the room from between door and lintel. Fine wisps snaked up the plastered wall, touching and lifting, as if testing for weakness. Even as he watched, a misty cloud began to puddle beneath the reed ceiling. With it came a new, deep rumbling from the hall. Its volume swiftly grew until it was a wicked, rasping roar.
John stiffened in terror. Ashby burned! Jesus God, 'twas better to hang than burn. Even in that short instant, the fire's voice strengthened, drowning out all other sound. The need to escape shot through him.
With his sword's tip braced against the floor, John levered himself off the bed, only to sway weakly in exhaustion once he was on his feet. How in God's holy name was he to escape a fiery death if the simple act of standing was beyond him? The answer was simple; he wasn't. John bowed his head in understanding. He would burn.
When he looked up again it was to stare at the smoke above him. It had grown thicker and darker. Smoldering reeds added an acrid tang to wood smoke, and he coughed as the smell stung his nose. The bedchamber door flew open, ancient leather hinges croaking in startled protest.
Coughing violently, Nicola leapt into the room, a coil of rope over her shoulder. Her hazel eyes were round in fear, her thin face was streaked with soot, her gowns charred. She hurled the rope across the room and slammed the door behind her. It rebounded. She caught it with her back and threw her weight against it, her feet braced to force it shut.
John stared at the rope by the window. His daughter meant to rescue him. Her care for him was deeply touching, but what she wanted to do was impossible. Not only did he weigh more than twenty stone, but the rope would finish what Rannulf's gash had started; he would be torn in two. "Daughter," he said to her, "you cannot save me."
"Papa?" Nicola yelped in hoarse surprise. In that instant, the door exploded open behind her, striking her mid-back. She tumbled across the room to land, facedown and stunned, near the window.
In the doorway stood a knight, tall to the point of being a giant. His surcoat was foul with blood, and his sword rusty with the lives of Ashby's folk. Although his mail coif and his helmet concealed his face, John knew him. His great size alone named him Gilliam FitzHenry, brother to Lord Rannulf of Graistan. The young knight silently entered the room, his blade held defensively before him.
So, Rannulf had set Ashby afire, not content to simply destroy its folk. John's overlord meant to expunge from this earth all trace of him. Such was a traitor's fate.
John relaxed, ready for death. His grip on his weapon eased. He'd not compound the sin of attacking his overlord by resisting his rightful execution at the hand of that man's brother. At the very least, it was a far swifter death than the fire offered.
"Here is where the traitor hides," Gilliam FitzHenry said, stopping a blow's length away. His deep voice was thick from smoke. He pointed with his sword toward the bloody bandages aroun
d John's middle. "So, my brother was not as helpless as you might have wished him, eh? Lift your weapon and taste the steel of another of Graistan's sons." The words were cold and hard.
John only stared in disbelief at the young knight, certain he had misheard. An executioner's victim did not put up a defense. In the hall, walls howled in pain, beams groaned in agony. John's lungs spasmed with the bitter smoke. Time was very short. Why did the lad not strike?
Across the room, Nicola stirred, gasping for breath as she returned to her senses. She fought her way onto her hands and knees, elbows trembling. "Nay," she coughed out, "stop!" Her voice was choked and tight.
Gilliam FitzHenry paid her no heed. "Raise your sword," he demanded of the older man, "unless you'd rather burn."
At his words, John's heart tore between sadness and elation. Lord Rannulf's youngest brother was offering this godforsaken traitor an awesome gift: the chance to die like the man of honor John had once been.
It took every bit of his remaining strength to lift his sword tip from the floor. John strove to hold his shoulders level, thus offering the knight a clear target. In doing so, he also assured himself a swift and nearly painless exit from life.
Gilliam nodded once, that simple motion communicating respect for his opponent's courage in facing his life’s end. It was enough to restore John's shattered soul. He closed his eyes, his spirit soaring free even before the sword bit into his neck.
November, 1194
God be damned. De Ocslade had to come. Only the contract they'd drawn last spring could save her.
Nicola of Ashby gave an angry huff, her breath clouding in the chill air. She chided herself for doubting. She needed to believe her suckling sister had not failed to deliver the message, else there'd be naught for Nicola but forced marriage to the man who had murdered her father and destroyed her village and home.
‘Twas better she died than to make Gilliam FitzHenry Ashby's lord. Nay, 'twas better he died.
Four long strides took her from one side of the tiny chamber to its door, and she stared at its handle. Pride demanded she try; the latch did not lift. Since Lord Rannulf had held her prisoner for four of the five months she'd been his ward, this was hardly surprising.
With a sharp turn that set her unbound hair bouncing around her hips in lively brown ringlets, Nicola started back across the room. Past the stool and chamber pot, past the coarse straw pallet that was last night's bed, she went. The skirts of her expensive gold and green gowns, created for a wedding that she refused to allow, flew wide with each long step. Her warden should have returned her everyday gowns if he'd wanted these finer garments to remain undamaged. She'd slept in them last night apurpose.
Nicola halted at the tower chamber's far wall. Here, the thick stone was pierced by a slender arrow loop. Neither it nor its mate in the adjoining wall had a shutter. She put her face into the narrow, defensive opening and peered out into a world beyond her reach.
Although dawn had come over an hour ago, the day was yet dull and gray, and the sky unreadable, thick with early November clouds. The loop let her see a segment of the town clinging to Graistan keep's outer wall. Houses were crammed one against the other in a degree of closeness a country girl like herself could never abide. Even still, she envied them. These townsfolk had what she did not; their own homes, beds, and clothing, while she was trapped in someone else's house with nothing of her own save a bit of jewelry.
The heavens chose that moment to release a gentle veil of mist. It turned slate roofs to silver, and woke the tangy scent of gardens slumbering beneath a blanket of mulch. Nicola breathed deeply in homesickness. 'Twas this smell, the scent of growing things, that reminded her most of Ashby's woodlands and rolling hills.
She sighed against her heartache. Home called to her. In all her life, she'd spent no more than two weeks away from Ashby. To have been separated from it now, during the time her folk needed her most, was almost more than she could bear. Who knew better how to rebuild the place, she or that buffoon who had destroyed it?
Guilt, sudden and swift, stabbed through her. If not for her, there'd be no need to rebuild at all. Aye, her stepmother had urged Papa to attack Lord Rannulf, but it had been at Nicola's command that the gates remained shut when Gilliam FitzHenry came knocking.
Nicola slammed her fist against the stone wall and let rage wash away self-blame. Ashby's fall was not her fault. All she had ever wanted was to keep her home as hers, alone.
Rage grew. Aye, if the world were a just place, she would never have attempted subterfuge in order to trick Lord Rannulf into ceding her Ashby. She could have been as good a lord to her home as any man. Damn the laws that saw no value in a woman save for the property she brought with her. Why should Lord Rannulf have control over every aspect of her life, simply because she was female?
Keys clanked at the other side of the thick, oaken door. Nicola leapt into the chamber's deepest corner, every muscle tensed in expectation of battle. The door groaned open.
Two burly men, dressed in steel-sewn hauberks and metal caps upon their heads, stepped inside the door. They were armed far beyond the norm for simple guard duty, their hands upon their sword hilts and their eyes wary. Then again, she had knocked one of them senseless on her last try at escaping. Nicola let a tiny smile touch her mouth.
"Cowards," she jeered at them. "Are you so frightened of one, defenseless maiden?"
"Have a care with your tongue, vixen," one snarled, "or we'll not let the girl in."
Nicola straightened in surprise. Graistan was empty just now, the household having moved to Upwood for the season. Yesterday, her maid had been a grandmother from a local merchant's household, and she'd expected the same woman today. Nicola guessed overlord chose an elderly servant, believing Nicola would not attack the helpless; he was right, she saved her violence for her captors. "What girl?'
They stepped back to reveal Tilda of Ashby on the landing behind them, a tray of foods on one arm and a bucket of water over her other arm. Nicola's heart leapt, but she bit back the urge to scream in joy and relief. If her gaoler’s guessed Tilda was her ally, they would swiftly exile the girl.
The soldiers leered as the petite commoner entered the room, their masculine appreciation of her lush form and fine features written clearly on their faces. Drab gowns did nothing to dim Tilda's honey and cream coloring, and her hood was thrown back to reveal her wealth of tawny hair. Brown eyes were bright with carefully subdued amusement.
"Put your cocks back into your chausses," Nicola called, her voice scornful. "I'm certain she wants none of what you'd offer her."
"Good morrow, Lady Ashby," Tilda said in her horrible French. "My grandmama sends her excuses this day, for she is ill. I hope you can tolerate my presence in her stead."
Nicola coughed to hide her laugh. Although her friend knew the Norman tongue, she and Tilda had always spoken English. Tilda's mother, Agnes, had been Nicola's nurse, and the girls had been inseparable ever since that time. The commoner set her tray down on the stool, then turned on the men. "A little privacy, if you please. I would see to the lady's personal needs."
" 'Tis not allowed," one replied. "Make haste completing what you must do." The two retreated to block the exit and watch that nothing untoward happened.
Tilda turned her back on them with a casual shrug.
"Here, now, Lady Ashby, you've gotten yourself all atangle," she said, her accent making mincemeat of her words. "Lift your arm so I can rearrange your laces."
Nicola did as asked, and the girl loosened the knot. But, instead of drawing the string tighter, Tilda pulled it free of the gown altogether. Nicola drew a breath and glanced over her shoulder at the guards. Where any woman would have recognized this as unnecessary and a blatant attempt to stall, it flew unnoticed over the heads of men.
She looked back at Tilda and saw the pretty girl's lips rise in a triumphant smile. Four months of separation had dimmed Nicola's recall of how much her closest companion enjoyed tweaking those who thoug
ht they could control her. And, God forbid that Tilda came to hate someone; her revenge could be vicious.
As the smaller girl smoothed and patted the creases from the now loose garments, Nicola bent her head as if to watch. "Will de Ocslade come?" she whispered.
"Do I look like a nobleman's confidante?" Tilda hissed into the folds of the gown as she rethreaded the lace. "You asked no more of me than to deliver your message." She glanced up with a disbelieving frown. "Why do you care? You surely do not mean to marry him," Her words were barely audible.
"I must," Nicola breathed. "I cannot give Ashby to FitzHenry. Hugh, I can control."
"Nay, not. Too canny." Tilda's whispered warning came around the string in her mouth as she drew its frayed end into a point.
Nicola let a lift of her brows shrug for her. "Then, I'll marry the little man and make myself a widow." A widowed noblewoman sometimes bought control of her estate from the king. Only in that way could a woman manage her own properties with no man at her side.
Tilda blinked, arms outstretched as she evened the string in its eyelets. "Let me straighten your collar, Lady Ashby." She stood on tiptoe to do so, leaning close to whisper, "You are mad. Those women have hair on their chin and grown heirs."
Nicola clenched her fists, not wanting to hear that her plot was flawed; she already knew that. "Little maid," she said aloud, "do you know my tale? Although I tell Lord Rannulf I am betrothed to Hugh de Ocslade, my warden would force me to wed his brother, Gilliam FitzHenry. It matters naught to him that this is the man who murdered my father. Tell me, am I the only one who sees no justice in this?"
"Lady Ashby," one of the guards called, "say no more or I shall remove the maid."
"Consider me muzzled," Nicola said, shooting the man a hard look.
Tilda smoothed the gowns over Nicola's slender waist and hips. "There, that is much better. Now, you sit and eat, while I comb your hair."
The Seasons Series; Five Books for the Price of Three Page 69
