Lord of the Mist

by Ann Lawrence

  His mouth journeyed to her throat, her shoulder, the sensitive tip of her swollen breast. He suckled her, lapping up the sweet milk with his tongue as it trickled along her ribs.

  “Durand,” she cried, filled with an insatiable ache when he moved lower.

  His teeth dragged along her arching hip, his fingertips roaming the soft inner skin of her thigh. Each touch, each taste, fueled the flames that licked through her body. She entwined her fingers in his hair, urged him to the ache he raised.

  But he heeded her not. He nuzzled her inner thigh, then kissed her knee, and before she could beg for what she knew must be coming, he slid up her body to claim her mouth again.

  He tasted forbidden. Earthy. He tasted of hidden places found deep in the forest.

  She would know all of him before the night was ended—mayhap for just this once, but still, know him she would. She urged him to his side and explored every inch of his hips, thighs, ribs, and buttocks with her lips and hands.

  He was molten hot. So was she.

  Her hips arched off the bed as he used his strong hands to spread her legs apart. The rain splashed on the stone sill and she felt the mist envelop them, but it could do naught to cool the fever raging within her. He bent his dark head. She threaded her fingers into his thick hair. When he lifted her hips to his mouth, a luscious, liquid ecstasy cascaded through her. He lapped with his tongue, nipped her with his teeth, then nuzzled his lips…there.

  The pleasure coiled, grew, expanded, flooded from where he feasted.

  The chamber lit with lightning. He looked up and smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the stark glare.

  Simon.

  Not him.

  Lightning streaked across the sky, filling the room.

  She screamed, struggled from hands that turned to claws and raked her thighs. With another scream she scrambled from the punishing hands and fell to her knees on the floor.

  “Cristina!” Someone shouted her name.

  A fist pounded her door.

  She gasped for breath.

  Felice wailed.

  A hand to her breast, she sat back and stared around the chamber and realized she still wore her shift. It was drenched with sweat. The pounding grew urgent.

  Felice’s mad cry was real.

  On hands and knees, she crawled to the cradle and felt for Felice. She swept the babe into her arms and buried her face against the soft blanket in which she was wrapped.

  There was no scent of mist and forest in the chamber, only that of rain and wet stone. Her body trembled, icy cold as she knelt on the wooden floor.

  “Cristina! Open this door!”

  The sentry. She rose on shaky legs and did as bidden, opening the door but the span of three fingers.

  The man pressed his face to the narrow opening. “Are you ill? Hurt?”

  “Nay,” she said, her voice a hoarse croak. “I had a dream.” Heat rushed through her. “Nay. A nightmare. Forgive me for disturbing you,” she finished.

  “Shall I call Aldwin?” he asked.

  “Nay. Nay. Go back to your post. I’m well now.” Despite the rudeness of the action, she shut the door in his face.

  She gripped the latch ‘til it bit into her palm. The pain was real. Felice rooting at her breast was real. The warm trickle as her milk let down was real.

  She lay Felice on the bed, then stripped off her sweat-sodden shift. With brisk motions as the child whimpered behind her, she dried herself. In the meager light of the candle, she inspected her thighs. Her skin was smooth and unblemished.

  This time, when she curled on her side, she had the child within her embrace. She cocooned them in blankets and a fur as the babe nursed. Every inch of her throbbed. Her pulse beat to the rhythm of the rumbling thunder outside.

  How could she have dreamt such things?

  Did her vows mean so little she could tear them to tatters in her dreams but moments after declaring them aloud to him?

  She slept not at all, even as the castle grew silent and the rain stopped.

  * * * * *

  Durand slept little. He rose several hours before the dawn, resolved to right one problem, at least. A stable boy, yawning and scratching, chatted happily about Marauder’s mighty appetite. Durand could not help smiling as the boy then waxed quite eloquently about the length of Durand’s sword, the size of his boots, and the raven’s head on his dagger. It was the boy who changed his mood from near murderous to something more manageable.

  He did not knock on the merchant’s door, but threw it open. After all, every building in the village was his—rented out, to be sure, but still his.

  He climbed the ladder to the second story. It was filled with boxes and stores for the space below. A tallow candle flickered and filled the space with scant light, enough that Durand could see a meager pallet against one wall, a coffer nearby. The space smelled of the stores below and something else—a night of passions spent in close quarters.

  With the toe of his boot, he prodded the woman’s bare arm, which poked from beneath the coverlet. The innkeeper’s daughter sat up. She did not cover her full breasts as she rose and flicked a disheveled blonde braid over one shoulder. “My lord,” Agnes said with a small smile.

  “Out.” Her simper vanished. He tossed her gown to her. She stood up, dragging on her gown, grabbing her clogs, and backing toward the ladder.

  “Aye, my lord. Aye,” she mumbled as her head disappeared from view.

  Simon woke with a jerk and scrabbled up on his knees.

  Durand drew his dagger. He flipped it sharply, pinning Simon by his linen shirt to the rough wall behind him.

  “My lord!” Simon shrieked. He reached back and screamed again as his palm met the razor edge of the blade. “Sweet Mother of Mary!” he cried.

  Durand stood over the kneeling man.

  “My lord! What’s wrong? What have I done?”

  “Done?” Durand crouched down on his haunches. He placed one hand on the blade handle, and with his other encircled Simon’s throat. “What have you done? Beyond breaking your vows? Beyond abusing your wife? I know of nothing, Simon.”

  “Please, my lord, please let me explain.” He was as still as if confronted by a wild boar. His pulse ran wild beneath Durand’s hand. “I can explain, I swear it.”

  But Durand merely squeezed his throat, cutting off his protests. “Nay, Simon, you have no need to explain. You’re merely my merchant, one who has recently signed a lucrative charter, worth a fortune if you deal well with me and mine.” Simon nodded vigorously. “Ah, I see you understand. Let me say just this—the innkeeper is my tenant, a man I imagine wishes to remain in my good graces.”

  Again Simon nodded. He licked his lips.

  “Do not touch your wife again. Do you hear me?” He tightened his fingers. “‘Tis said Agnes has the pox. If you have been with Agnes but this one time, you may be lucky. If you are in the habit of playing night games with her, you will soon know the truth of my words. You’ll not pass this illness to your wife. She cannot serve the ladies of my keep if she is ill.”

  Durand jerked the dagger from the wall and stood up. He stroked his thumb across the blade as if in idle contemplation. “Do not abuse what is mine or your charter is void.”

  Simon remained as if still pinned to the boards. “Aye, my lord, aye, but you have to hear me. Cristina is no virgin angel. She allowed Sir Luke to handle her—”

  Durand froze. “Luke?” He thought of how Luke might have charmed Marion. Had he also charmed Cristina?

  Never. She held herself aloof.

  Simon must have seen something of his thoughts on his face. “Aye, ‘tis truth. I could say naught to Sir Luke for ‘tis a woman’s place to guard her virtue, is it not, my lord? Nigh on to an embrace it was, before my very eyes, my lord,” Simon said as Durand leapt down the ladder to sweeter air.

  He did not look back to see if Simon followed, nor did it matter if he heeded the warnings. There would be pleasure in killing him if the man disobeyed, and acc
eptance if he did as required so that Cristina remained unblemished and unashamed.

  * * * * *

  Durand avoided the hall, where he might run into Luke or Penne. Instead he headed back to Aldwin’s lair. His mind tangled on the prospect of betrayals—Luke’s, possibly, but less likely Penne’s, and now Simon’s.

  Numb, he forced himself to think only of the brigands’ attack and what they might have been after. Certainly a bishop’s fine clothing and jewels were obvious bait.

  The boy lay in the same place he had the day before. His head rolled restlessly and he mumbled through dry lips.

  “What have you done with the boy’s clothes?” he asked of Aldwin.

  With a bony finger, the man pointed to the door. “In the empty storeroom with the belongings of the other dead.”

  “Have Father Odo see to the burials of the other victims.” He left the sickening air of the herbarium and walked deeper into the bowels of the castle. Water dripped down the wall of the empty storeroom. There was a large pile of assorted clothing and saddle bags cast against one wall.

  He went through each piece, more to occupy his mind than for any real purpose. Anything of worth had been stripped by the brigands from their victims. What remained was mostly the mundane uniforms of the guards and humble coarse cassocks of the lesser clerks. Saddle bags held little beyond bread and other foodstuffs.

  With a thud, an object fell from a tunic. Durand lifted the woolen garment. Beneath it lay a linen wrapped bundle, stained with blood. The tunic must have belonged to the youth. There was a blood-soaked rent over the heart where a blade had done its near-lethal duty.

  Slowly, a throb beginning in his temples, he unwrapped the bundle. There in his hands lay the Aelfric he had given Cristina.

  “What have you there?” Penne asked, coming across the storeroom.

  “My Aelfric,” he said, stunned. He leafed through it. “I know ‘tis mine. Look here, where this page is loose.” He saw it in his mind’s eye floating to the floor in Cristina’s chamber. “And here, this small cut in the leather, and here where the gilding is worn off.”

  “What’s it doing in here?” Penne asked.

  “Come.” Durand strode back to where the boy lay. He drew the blanket off the boy’s chest to assure himself that the wound was in the same place as the rent in the tunic.

  The boy licked his lips and opened his eyes. “Father?”

  “I’ll fetch him for you in a moment.” Durand poured a cup of water and, with Penne’s assistance, held it to the boy’s lips. The youth sipped it, then fell back, his color gray and his breathing labored.

  The blade thrust had missed the heart or lungs, else the boy would be dead. Behind him, Aldwin bustled about with little purpose.

  The boy mumbled and rolled his head. “What chance has he?” Durand asked quietly of the leech.

  “Eh, he wakes and sleeps, wakes and sleeps.” Aldwin shrugged. “His wound festers.”

  Durand gently tapped his fingers on the boy’s cheek. His eyes fluttered open—blue eyes, the whites yellow. He licked his lips. A small smear of blood stained his lips.

  “Do you know what this is?” Durand asked, holding the Aelfric before the boy.

  His eyes widened. “The Bishop…‘tis the bishop’s.”

  “The bishop’s?” Durand looked up at Penne.

  The boy shuddered, raised a trembling hand to Durand, and began to weep. “He bade me take it to him. He bade me.”

  Durand took the dry, cold hand in his and thought of Cristina’s recommendation that the patient should be warmed. The boy’s fetid breath bathed his face. “The Bishop asked you to take the Aelfric to him?” Durand exchanged a look with Penne. “I don’t understand.”

  The leech gasped, hastened to the table, and looked with avid interest at the book in Durand’s hand.

  The boy clutched Durand’s tunic. He wept with great sobs that shook his thin body. “Nay. My father. He bade me deliver the book…to the bishop. Have you a priest? He…says I am dying. Can you fetch my father?”

  Aldwin sputtered a protest, which Durand silenced with a glance. “Get Father Odo,” he ordered. Aldwin scuttled off.

  Durand tucked the boy’s hand beneath the blanket. “I shall fetch the priest, but you must be sure to cleanse your soul. Tell the good father all.”

  It did not take long to summon Father Odo. Penne and Durand stood by to discreetly hear the young man’s confession.

  The young man was not, as they had believed, of the bishop’s party, but instead had dressed as one of them in order to deliver the Aelfric volume. The bishop had bought it, the boy sobbed, from his father for three jeweled rings, worth a king’s ransom.

  “I don’t understand,” Durand said after the priest anointed the boy. “The bishop bought my Aelfric for three rings from your father?”

  The boy’s lips were as pale as his skin; his hand trembled. He shivered with fever. “Aye.”

  Durand leaned over the boy. “Tell me who your father is.”

  Father Odo said, “You must tell us, for he is a thief to take our lord’s fine book.”

  Durand scowled the priest silent, but it was too late.

  The boy’s gaze jumped from the priest to Durand’s. “I-I will not tell you.” He began to weep.

  With great gentleness, for the boy looked as if he might die in but moments, Durand tucked the blankets close about the boy as Cristina had done.

  The boy rolled his head. His eyes darted wildly about the room. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he chanted.

  Father Odo made a sign of the cross over the boy’s head and when their gazes met, the priest gave a quick shake of the head.

  Penne spoke at his ear. “Does he not look much like our merchant?”

  * * * * *

  The boy died within the hour. Durand and Penne walked from the herbarium to the counting room.

  “Penne, did you not think the brigands too finely garbed for mere men on the hunt for stray travelers?”

  Penne nodded. “Aye. Their weapons were very good for men on the road, and their horses were fat.”

  “I’ve been thinking they did not idly pick their prey. I’m sorry we didn’t capture one of the brigands and question him.”

  “Was the bishop so influential he needed to be murdered?”

  “This is not a war with the church. It is between John and Philip, although kings at war are always of interest to the church. As with us, the church must choose sides.”

  His thoughts returned to the book in his hand. He opened the coffer and stared into the neatly arranged parchments, tally sticks, and books. He placed the Aelfric on top and withdrew the Aristophanes. Whoever had taken the herbal knew what it was and knew its worth. For in truth, the gilded cover of the Aristophanes made it look far more valuable.

  “You think the boy resembled Simon?” he asked Penne.

  “Aye.” Penne poured himself a cup of wine from a skin hanging by the hearth. “But mayhap I’m dreaming. He has no children that I know of.”

  “A bastard, mayhap?” Durand had had enough of bastards. “But how would Simon come into possession of the book or know where to find it?”

  “Someone gave it to him.”

  Cristina.

  He thought of her immediately. She knew the book’s worth. But she had given it back to Luke.

  He straddled the bench and stared into the hearth flames. The thought that she might have contrived to steal his Aelfric pained him as much as thoughts of Luke and Felice.

  * * * * *

  Durand did nothing to challenge Simon on the identity of the dead youth. Instead, he found himself but moments later on his knees in his hall, accepting the greetings of his king.

  “All omens are good,” King John said when Durand rose. “The weather is fine for hunting and our ships are almost ready. We but await the arrival of William Marshall to know what offensive we must launch.”

  The king then turned and held out his hand to a small woman. “But befor
e we inspect our galleys, let me present Lady Nona, Lord Jean de Braisie’s eldest daughter, Lord Merlainy’s widow.”

  Durand bowed. De Braisie’s daughter. Her holdings were immense, dotting England in the south and France in the Aquitaine.

  “My lady,” he said, lifting her hand and kissing the back. She was slim and young, no more than a score in years. Her skin was rosy pink with good health. Her eyes were as green as peridots, the hair peeking from the edges of her headcovering a soft fawn brown.

  “You may go,” the king said to the widow, and when she was out of earshot, being led by Oriel to the woman’s solar, the king gestured that Durand should take a seat. “Accept our condolences on the loss of our dear Marion. We loved her.”

  Durand inclined his head. The king handed him a ring.

  “Give this to your son Adrian.” The small circlet of gold was studded with fine blue stones. John much loved jewels.

  “With thanks, sire,” Durand said, slipping the ring on his finger. “Is Lady Nona under your protection?”

  “Aye, until she is under another’s.”

  So, it was as Durand had thought. Lady Nona was a candidate for his hand.

  “Ah,” cried the king, rising quickly, “one of our favorite little birds!” He held out his hand and Lady Sabina knelt to kiss it. “What brings this nightingale here? Nay, say nothing, child; you are on the hunt for a husband.” When Lady Sabina colored and glanced at Durand, he merely arched a brow. The king pulled Sabina to his side, and a servant hastily placed a stool for her by John’s side. “You will make a lovely wife, Lady Sabina, but we doubt of this worthy baron here.” The king swept out a hand to Durand. “We have other uses for you. Luke is not wed, and he is surely creaking with age to be so unencumbered.”

  They all laughed with the king.

  When finally King John had finished with Sabina, Durand endured a lengthy meal and an evening of song and music by the king’s side. The royal musicians were the best in the realm, and Lady Nona’s voice sweet, but not quite sweet enough to rival the young Queen Isabelle’s.

  Durand found himself unable to do more than nod to most of the king’s conversation. Too much filled his mind: the dead youth in the herbarium, the theft of the Aelfric, Marion’s betrayal, two females vying for his hand, a hammering lust for Cristina le Gros.