Lady of Valor

by Lara Adrian

  “No gold in the streets, you say? Indeed not, but then how could anyone be sure? Jerusalem's streets ran ankle-deep with Saracen blood on the day I marched through the city.”

  A pall of silence now cloaked the hall, everyone shocked with this unseemly interjection. Emmalyn wanted to beg Cabal to cease, but her voice was nowhere to be found. She could only stare at him, fearful of what he might say, yet compelled to let him speak.

  “While you noble officers remained leagues away from the fighting, gorging yourself on figs and sleeping on clean sheets with servants to see to your every need, the soldiers took to their pallets hungry each night but too sick from exposure to eat. We bedded down sometimes a dozen to a tent, all of us caked in sweat and blood. Most of us didn't dare sleep for fear that the rats or desert predators would come to feed if we chanced to close our eyes.

  “What lingers best in my memory is a hot summer day in August of last year,” Cabal said with chilling calm. “An assemblage on a hill outside the city of Acre, where the English forces had grouped together more than two thousand prisoners of the cross, including their wives and children--”

  “That is quite enough!” Lord Spencer barked, his corpulent cheeks turning an unhealthy shade of crimson. “You, sir, have had too much wine with your sup. I warrant there is no one here who wants to hear your drunken ramblings--least of all, your queen!”

  But Eleanor said nothing. She sat in stoic silence as Cabal continued, his voice distant and hard with rage. “Like vicious animals, we slaughtered twenty-seven hundred innocent people on that hill.”

  “Oh, Stephan!” Josette cried. “Please, make him stop!” But even Josette's husband seemed too shocked for words, staring at Cabal in mute astonishment, as if the devil himself had come to dine in Beaucourt's hall.

  “We cut them to pieces in a matter of moments,” Cabal added woodenly, his haunted gaze now sliding to Emmalyn, who stood with her hand at her breast, shielding the ache in her heart. “When it was done,” he continued, “a few stayed behind to sift through the bloody remains, looking for any gold or jewelry that the prisoners might have swallowed before we captured them.” Cabal's chuckle was brittle, humorless. “Such a proud time for England, wouldn't you say?”

  On the other side of the queen, Josette let out a little gasp and swooned, slumping daintily into her husband's arms. While the dais and the rest of the hall erupted into shocked exclamations, Emmalyn could only stare at this bitter, wounded man that she so loved, aching for his pain and wondering if she would ever know him fully.

  “Oh, Cabal,” she whispered, feeling hot tears leak from her eyes to stream down her cheeks. She reached out to him, ignoring the shocked gasps of the other guests--not even pausing to see if her compassion for him in this moment would anger the queen.

  She said his name again and nearly jumped out of her skin at the sharp bark of sarcasm he spat back at her. “Don't call me that,” he said harshly, his eyes blazing with anger and pain. “Don't ever call me that again.”

  He knew.

  Oh, God, Emmalyn thought desperately, somehow he knew about his name. Cabal looked at her now, his eyes blazing with emotion, as if she had been the one to wound him. As if she had betrayed him. Heaven help her, but in not telling him about his name, in letting him puzzle it out on his own, mayhap she had betrayed him. Mayhap even more so than his negligent sire.

  With a final, scathing glance at her, Cabal turned abruptly and quit the hall, storming past the sea of stunned faces in a veritable thunderhead of rage.

  “Your Majesty,” Emmalyn said, pivoting at last to face the stoic, unruffled expression of the queen. “I am...so sorry.”

  She did not wait for royal reprimand or pardon. Her heart breaking for Cabal's certain pain, Emmalyn stepped away from the high table and dashed off the dais. Scandalized whispers and aghast expressions of disbelief for what had just transpired before the queen and the other hundred guests followed her flight from the hall. Emmalyn paused for none of it, running out into the torchlit corridor and along the snaking hallway toward Cabal's retreating form.

  Her frantic steps brought her up behind him, several paces from the arched entry of the pentice that led out to the bailey. “Cabal, wait! Please!”

  He kept walking, more purposeful now, his hands fisted at his sides, his gait strong, angry, unrelenting. Emmalyn followed him through the dark, tunneled gateway of the pentice and out to the courtyard beyond the keep stairs. A steady rain had begun outside, casting big, heavy drops from the canopy of a starless night sky. Cabal stepped out into the midst of the deluge, intent it seemed, on leaving her behind.

  “Cabal, I know you are hurting, but please, talk to me!”

  “Go away, Emmalyn,” he called without turning around. His voice sounded strangled, thick with fury and emotion. “Leave me alone.”

  “Cabal, please wait.”

  “Go back inside, my lady. That's where you belong.”

  Emmalyn caught up with him and reached for his arm. “I belong with you, my lord. You are all that matters to me.”

  He swore, tearing himself out of her grasp and rejecting her declaration with a harsh, self-directed oath. “I'm a fraud, Emmalyn. God's blood, I'm worse than a fraud. I am nothing.”

  “No, you are not. Don't say that.”

  “What an idiot I've been,” he scoffed. “Gone about all my life never knowing I'd been branded a fool!”

  “Stop it,” she croaked, on the verge of tears, she hurt so badly for him. “Don't say such things. Do not even think it--”

  He laughed suddenly, a terrible, pain-filled sound. “Come now, my lady. Don't you see the humor in this? I'm a goddamned walking jest!”

  He reached into the neck of his tunic as he strode away from her, savagely working to rip something free. It took only an instant for Emmalyn to know what it was. “Cabal, don't,” she said miserably as he whirled around, full of rage.

  Ignoring her, he pitched his father's ring against the stone wall of the tower keep. It sparked high on the jagged bricks with the force of his anger, the sharp metallic ping as it hit the wall making Emmalyn flinch. It dropped to the ground then, swallowed up by a pool of muddy water.

  “I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” she said as he headed deeper into the rain. “I should have, but I didn't want to see you hurt. Please, Cabal, let me help you.”

  “I don't need anyone's help!” he barked, putting distance between them. “I'm not some misfortunate waif in need of your nurturing, Emmalyn, and I don't need your damned pity. Christ, all I need is to be left alone.”

  “No, you don't,” she challenged stubbornly. “Being alone is the last thing you need. I think you've been alone far too long.”

  “Don't push me, Emmalyn,” he warned sharply.

  “No,” she said, feeling her frustration claw at her. “You seem to be the one intent on pushing tonight, Cabal. In fact, I think at present you would push me away from you for good, given half a chance. That's what you were trying to do in the hall, was it not? You thought you could turn me against you with that horrific account of the prisoners' slaughter. Look at me, my lord. I am still here.”

  She saw his step falter and slow, but he was still walking away from her. Still intent on rejecting her love, the same as he rejected everyone else's affection.

  “Don't you understand?” she cried, desperate to reach him. “You give your name honor, Cabal. The way you choose to live your life now gives it meaning. It doesn't matter what you have done in your past. It doesn't matter what you are called.”

  “It matters to me!”

  “That's it, then?” she shouted when his angry strides carried him almost out of her sight. “You expect me to just let you walk away like this?”

  He did not answer, and chasing him was only pushing him farther away. Emmalyn stopped where she stood, letting the rain drench her, feeling it soak her hair and ruin her gown. “Cabal,” she called after him, “Cabal, I love you!”

  He stopped and spun around to face
her then, chuckling. “No, my lady. There you are wrong.” How cold his voice was now, sharp as the edge of a blade. It lacerated her, but not nearly so terribly as did his hard eyes. “If you really want to know who's been sharing your bed these past days, ask those assembled in the hall. Ask the queen. They'll tell you who” --he scoffed suddenly-- “they'll tell you what I really am.”

  Emmalyn stared into his bleak gaze through the pelting rain, recalling his detachment, his determined reluctance to get involved with her and her folk. She recalled how easily he had slain the robbers who attacked her, how coldly efficient he had been. Now she was beginning to understand his self-imposed solitude, his eagerness to push away anyone who threatened to get too close to him. He could not risk attachments. He could not risk feeling because of who he was, what he had been bred to be.

  “Blackheart...” she breathed, feeling the epithet leak out of her, a barely audible gasp of air.

  Cabal's mouth twisted into a ruthless half-smile. “Now tell me how much you love me, Emmalyn.”

  He turned on his heel and left her standing there, shaking, numb with shock as he stalked into the darkness, vanishing all at once behind the curtain of blinding rain. Emmalyn's tears mingled with the wetness that streamed down her cheeks and off her chin. She stood in the dark emptiness of the bailey, soaked by the swelling downpour, the weight of her drenched skirts making it hard to withstand the heavy burden of her heart.

  She did love him. Heaven help her, but she had never loved anyone the way she loved this man. This fierce, formidable, frightened man who was so convinced he needed no one.

  Emmalyn turned, forlorn, and headed back for the castle. A glint of metal reflected faintly out of the mud, catching her eye as she neared the towering wall: Cabal's discarded ring, all but concealed in the swirling, thickening mire. She bent down and retrieved it, clutching the knot of cold metal and stone to her bosom, the only piece of him she might ever be able to hold close again.

  Chapter 24

  Cabal was nursing a wicked headache by the time morning dawned that next day. He had spent the night outside, where, specifically, he could not recall. Never one to imbibe so carelessly, he was disgusted with himself to think back on his spectacle of the night before. Once he was conscious, finally able to peel his eyes open and drag himself back to the castle at Beaucourt, he was certain of only one thing: He had an apology to deliver.

  He could not be sure how it would be received; he had behaved appallingly. The maid who granted him entry to the antechamber to await his requested audience gaped at him in utter shock when she opened the door and saw him standing there. He had freshened up a bit, but no doubt he still looked as awful as he felt. He took the seat the servant girl offered him and watched as she disappeared behind another door to inform her lady that a visitor had arrived.

  Cabal waited the long moments it took for the maid's return, then, at her bidding, he followed her into the lush chamber on the other side of the wall.

  “Sir Cabal,” Queen Eleanor said as he dropped into a humble bow before her. “I trust you have not come this morn to regale me with more grisly accounts of your time on Crusade.”

  “No, Your Majesty,” he replied, chagrined to hear her sardonic tone. “I have come to offer an apology for my actions last eve. I had no right to behave the way I did.”

  “No, you did not,” she agreed mildly, then bade him rise to speak freely with her.

  A pointed glance at her attendants sent the women out of the room, but two armed knights remained poised at either side of her cushioned chair. Bodyguards meant to protect the dowager from a possible madman, no doubt.

  “Your Majesty, I have come to apologize and seek your pardon, but also to make a request.”

  Eleanor's brows arched. “This is becoming quite a sennight for requests of royal favors,” she quipped supremely. She leaned back in her seat, a vaguely bored stance that she likely adopted for many a solicitous visit. “What is it you would seek this morning, Sir Cabal?”

  “Granted, I have no right to appeal to you for anything,” he began, surprised to realize just how nervous he was in the queen's presence. But it wasn't apprehension for the mother of his king that made his palms sweat now; it was the understanding of what his self-pitying, reckless negligence might have cost the woman he loved. “Your Majesty, my behavior at the feast last eve was reprehensible. I can think of nothing to say that would excuse it, but I beg you, do not allow my careless actions to reflect poorly on Lady Emmalyn. The blame--and Your Majesty's reproach--should rest squarely on me.”

  Queen Eleanor's eyes narrowed slightly; her chin lifted an almost imperceptible degree. “You have come to seek my benevolence on behalf of Lady Emmalyn?”

  “I have, Your Majesty. I care not what should happen to me, but I need to know that she--that Lady Emmalyn--will not suffer your disapproval for her association with me.”

  “I see,” said the queen. “Would it surprise you to know that I received a similar request some hours ago from her?”

  “Your Majesty?” Cabal frowned, astonished.

  “She came to me, asking that I hold her accountable for your unseemly outburst at supper. She endeavored to have me pardon you, Sir Cabal, for she felt that she was in some way responsible for contributing to your distress last eve.”

  Cabal bit back a curse. “No. 'Twas my fault, Your Majesty. She had nothing to do with it--”

  Eleanor silenced him with a gentle shake of her head. “Leave us,” she instructed the two guards who flanked her. They departed the chamber at once. The queen then regarded him with an assessing, watchful eye. “I know you,” she said thoughtfully. “You are the knight known as Blackheart, are you not, Sir Cabal?”

  Cursing the abominable reputation that seemed destined to follow him all his days, Cabal replied, “I am, Your Majesty.”

  She studied him in silence for a long moment, her expression unreadable, distantly reflective. “The king spoke highly of you on many occasions.”

  “King Richard is my liege,” he answered without hesitation. “I would do anything for him.”

  “I do not doubt that, my lord,” said the queen. “You have always been loyal to my son. But actually, I was speaking of my late husband, King Henry.”

  Cabal's confusion must have shown in his face, for Queen Eleanor offered him a placid smile. “I had already been exiled for some years when he had you brought to London, but I had friends who kept me abreast of the palace happenings in my absence. And I heard quite a bit about you, of course. The orphaned son of a dancing girl who'd once caught my husband's eye. Oh, she wasn't the first, nor by any means the last,” Eleanor added wistfully when Cabal stared at her in frank astonishment. “When I heard about the ring you had in your possession--the black diamond that once belonged to Henry--I suspected his reasons for bringing you to London went deeper than the early recruitment of another knight for the royal garrison. Seeing you for myself would have obliterated any doubt, for there can be no mistaking your features.”

  “Y-Your Majesty,” Cabal began, stammering for the first time in his life. “I don't understand. Why are you telling me this?”

  Queen Eleanor smiled. “Because my husband has been dead many years now and soon enough, I will follow him. I tell you because I have long known of your loyalty to my son, and I am grateful. But most of all, I tell you this now because I think it will help you to know it.” She fixed him with a wise, level gaze that seemed to look right through him. “Despite the infamy surrounding you, Sir Cabal, you are no Blackheart. I don't think you ever were. And I know that you have too much honor to go back to the life you once knew.”

  “War is what I do,” Cabal said, clinging to safe ground. He felt too vulnerable after last night to consider any alternative to what was real to him, what was true. “There is nothing else for me. I know of no other way to live, Your Majesty.”

  “I think you do,” Eleanor answered. “If 'twill help you find your way, perhaps I should tell you that Lady Emmalyn
has been granted permission to remain on at Fallonmour for the rest of her days.” Cabal's head snapped up, his chest swelling with elation. “She has also been awarded the right to choose whether or not she marries again, and to whom.”

  Cabal felt a bittersweet jolt on the tail of that news. She would never choose him now. Not after last night. Not after he told her the secret he was still keeping from her, a secret that gnawed at him even more than the revelation of his ignoble past. But it did not matter if she would have him or not. He owed her the truth, and he would delay no longer.

  “Your Majesty, I thank you for everything you've given me today, but I must beg your leave. I have to speak to Lady Emmalyn at once.”

  “Then you'd best hurry, my lord. She and her party left Beaucourt immediately after she spoke with me this morn.”

  She had left without him? Although he well deserved it, a sudden panic bloomed in Cabal's heart. He had to reach her before his sins caught up with him.

  Sparing the queen no more than the briefest of good-byes, Cabal flew out of the castle and away on the road that led back to Fallonmour, praying for a chance he likely did not deserve.

  * * *

  Emmalyn reached Fallonmour just before dusk that same evening. It pained her to leave Lincolnshire without Cabal, but he had been nowhere to be found that morning and for all she knew, he had no intention of returning. The queen had assured her that she harbored no malice toward him and that he would meet with no reproach from the crown for the unseemly display in the hall. Seeing Emmalyn's distress, Josette was equally forgiving, offering her a much needed shoulder to cry on and sending her off with assurances that she was never too far away if Emmalyn ever needed anything.

  Upon her arrival on Fallonmour's lands, Emmalyn felt a little of her sadness disappear, though nothing would ever wipe away the pain of loving--and losing--Cabal. She ordered the driver of the supply cart to distribute some of the goods in the village. The two Fallonmour knights who had remained with her in Lincolnshire stayed to help unload, while Emmalyn rode ahead on the winding path toward the castle.