Henry’s shoulders stiffened when the noise began again. He drew out the knife. The ridiculous thought flitted into her brain that little boys shouldn’t play with sharp objects.
She frowned, trying to identify the screeching sounds. She’d heard something similar before. “I don’t think it’s a wolf, Henry. It’s like the cats fighting in Grandpapa’s castle, at night.”
He nodded, his face ashen. “Aye, but this is louder. Must be a big cat.”
Elayne’s mind careened through a host of memories of tales her father had told of forest creatures in the hills and valleys of Scotland. What kind of cat—
The image appeared behind her eyes. She was ten. A large creature with brown fur, its enormous paws lashed to the poles her father’s hunters bore on their shoulders, its head hanging backwards. She’d never seen such long black whiskers. It was dead, but its tufted ears pointed as if listening still.
Her lungs stopped working. “It’s a lynx.”
At that moment, Dugald staggered into the clearing, his torn and bloodied face unrecognizable. One eye hung from its socket. He held out a mangled hand to Henry. “Give me the dagger,” he croaked.
Henry thrust the weapon into his father’s hand as a streak of brown and grey sprang out of the trees onto her husband’s back. Faol barked wildly, nipping at the haunches of the big cat. Dugald struggled to dislodge the creature. Huge paws gripped his shoulders as he flailed with the dagger, striking air. He fell to his knees, dropping the weapon. He looked up, one hand grasping towards her, mouthing something as the cat sunk its fangs into his neck. She knew in that moment they were all going to die.
With a blood curdling yell that belied his tender years, Henry rushed forward.
“No!” she screamed, burying her keening daughter’s head in her breast, but unable to look away.
Henry grabbed the dagger and without missing a stride thrust it up into the cat’s neck. The animal jerked and hissed at him, its long bloodied fangs bared.
Faol launched himself onto the lynx’s back and bit into its neck.
Dugald collapsed to the ground as the cat turned its fury on Faol. Elayne didn’t know where her son found his strength, but he yanked the dagger out of the maddened creature and thrust again. The lynx swiped at his shoulder, sending him staggering backwards, but blood spurted from the deep neck wound that had clearly weakened it.
It spun around, catapulting the wolfhound into a tree, but the dog regained his footing quickly. The two animals faced each other, Faol growling loudly, teeth bared, the hound from hell. The cat reared up on its powerful hind legs, hissing and spitting, front paws raised like a drunken serf spoiling for fisticuffs.
Still holding Claricia to her body in a death grip, Elayne’s eyes darted from Dugald, prostrate on the ground, to her son holding his bloody shoulder, to the courageous dog, to the desperate lynx. She prayed the cat had no mate nearby.
The stench of blood filled the air. Henry still gripped the dagger. Did she have the courage to lunge for it and attack the lynx?
As she wavered, willing her wooden legs to move, a whistling sound caught her attention.
The lynx screeched, leapt into the air and fell dead at her feet, its neck transfixed by an arrow.
~~~
A DOZEN MEN armed with bows, arrows and swords poured out of the forest, shouting loudly. Faol sniffed the dead cat, then slunk off into the trees as the newcomers gathered around the carcass. One braced his foot on the animal’s shoulder and heaved the arrow out of its neck, holding it aloft to the cheers of others. Blood flowed from the wound.
Elayne didn’t know who these men were, but they had saved her children’s lives. They wore helmets and surcoats with a vaguely familiar devise. Soldiers, not brigands.
She ran to Henry, still clutching Claricia to her side. Dropping to her knees beside her son, she sat her daughter on the ground. The girl immediately scrambled over to her father.
Henry winced with discomfort, gritting his teeth. To her relief the scratches were not deep and he hadn’t lost a lot of blood. But the wounds would have to be cleansed and bound. “Your doublet is ruined, young man,” she jested, her voice quivering.
Henry smiled weakly, looking around. “Where is Faol?”
“I don’t know but you and that brave dog just saved our lives.”
Satisfied her son was in no danger, she looked to her husband. Several men had gathered round him, gaping at the weeping child draped across his body.
Elayne rose and hurried to her daughter, gasping at the sight of Dugald’s ghastly wounds. She knelt beside her husband and coaxed Claricia into her arms.
“Dadaidh, dadaidh!” the girl sobbed into Elayne’s breast, unmindful of the blood staining the front of her gown.
The men turned Dugald over carefully. If possible the livid wounds to his face and neck were worse than his mangled and punctured back. Elayne pressed her hand gently to the back of her daughter’s head so she wouldn’t look up and see her father’s face.
“Jésu!” several men whispered, making the sign of the crucifixion across their bodies. They argued what the best course of action might be until she could stand it no longer. “Enough! I will tend him. Fetch water.”
They sneered, seemingly on the verge of ignoring her when a tall red haired man strode out of the forest. They stood to attention immediately, heads bowed.
“Do as the demoiselle asks. Get water for the wretch. Send to the camp for the healer.” He glanced at Dugald. “Parbleu, it’s the prince of the Scots himself. How did he come to be here?” He turned his piercing eyes to Elayne. “And who are you?”
A pulse began its throb, throb, throbbing at the base of her throat as she espied the sprig of broom on the front of the cap he wore. It was a plant she knew well from the hills and dales of Scotland. A suspicion of this man’s identity seeped into her heart. Keeping her eyes on the ground as befitted a servant, she prayed Claricia’s sobs wouldn’t give them away. “I am Elayne, nursemaid to their Highnesses,” she said, pointing to Henry.
The man arched his brows and approached Henry who had managed to sit up. “You are Henry, grandson of King David of Scotland?”
Henry glanced at his mother then thrust out his chin, looking like the teenager he was supposed to be. “I am.”
The man went down on one knee, doffing his cap. “Your Highness, I am Geoffrey Plantagenet, Comte of Anjou.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE NEXT FEW HOURS passed in a blur. Geoffrey insisted on taking Henry and Claricia back to his main camp, which Elayne assumed wasn’t far away. Though she’d wanted to argue, doing so would arouse suspicion, and her place was with her husband.
If they were as close to Caen as Dugald had indicated, she wondered what the Angevin was doing in the vicinity of Stephen’s stronghold.
But she didn’t have time to dwell on the question long as she and the healer from the Angevin camp worked to save her husband’s life. The man was a monk who had no hesitation letting her know what he thought of women, especially when she adamantly refused to let him cut off Dugald’s mangled fingers.
Though he was delirious with pain and had begun to sweat, Dugald’s nod of approval and the desperate cast in his one good eye told her he approved of her decision.
He knows he’s dying.
She was grateful for the cleric’s help, however, when it came to dealing with the destroyed eye. He summoned four burly soldiers who’d remained with them and they pinned Dugald down while he shoved the eye back in its socket then bound his head with a linen bandage.
Her husband’s screams would haunt her for the rest of her life. She squeezed his hairy forearm, hoping he understood her anguish for him.
“You seem to care a lot about this man,” the monk observed.
Panic surged in her breast. “It’s hard to see a proud man so mutilated,” she murmured.
She gently unpinned his clan brooch and eased his torn playd off his body. The monk busied himself cutting off the ruine
d clothing. She was confident he didn’t notice her slide the brooch into the deep pocket of her bloodied bliaut.
Dugald shivered as his massive body was exposed to the chill air, though he was drenched in sweat. As she sponged the ghastly wounds that refused to stop pumping blood, she offered a silent prayer of thanks that her children weren’t witnessing this gory sight.
She glanced up to see the four soldiers dragging the cat’s carcass into the woods. “What will they do with it?” she asked the monk.
He shrugged, continuing to bandage Dugald’s hands. “Leave it in the forest. Nature will soon dispose of it.”
She shuddered, looking down again at her doomed husband. Would he too be left in the forest to be devoured by animals and vermin? He hadn’t been a good husband, but he was the father of her children and the son of a king. She would insist on the proper rites, and surely the monk would support her.
The cleric handed her a salve. “Smear it on only the deepest gouges. No use wasting it. Nought we can do about the puncture wounds in his neck except pad them and hope they stop bleeding.”
Icy dread gripped her innards. The monk too doubted Dugald would survive.
She dipped her fingers in the jar of ointment, uncertain of its aroma, but its cooling properties seemed to ease the pain momentarily as she trailed her fingers carefully over his body.
He was a well made man, yet she’d never felt attracted to him, never experienced the same rush of desire that sparked when she was with Alex.
Guilt crept up her spine. Only a harlot would allow her wayward thoughts to roam to another man while she tended her dying husband.
But the Comte de Montbryce was an honorable Norman who’d been willing to give every part of himself to her.
If Dugald were to die—
Her throat constricted and tears welled in her eyes. She reached to smooth her husband’s tangled and bloodied hair off his face, horrified by the deep gouges in his neck oozing blood. What little food there was in her belly threatened to surge up her throat. She leaned over and gently kissed her husband’s scarred cheek.
He blinked open his good eye and whispered something through dry lips. She frowned and leaned her ear closer to his mouth.
“Imagine,” he croaked. “Me, a warrior, bested by a fyking cat. Caught me unawares at the river.” A coughing spasm racked him. He gritted his teeth as a strangled chuckle emerged from his throat. “If I’d had my dagger—”
His eye rolled back in his head and he breathed his last.
If she’d hoped for words of regret for the years of indifference and brutality, for her children losing their father—twice—they wouldn’t come now.
Dugald would never rise from the dead again.
~~~
IN THE EVENT, there was no argument about the funeral. As he unwound the bloodied bandages from Dugald’s lifeless hands, the monk quickly commanded the soldiers to build a pyre. Her belly churned, but it was what the Viking blood in Dugald would have wanted.
It came to her that his tattered playd still lay at her feet.
Ignoring the sounds of axes chopping tree limbs, she scooped it up, dipped her hand in the river water they’d used to cleanse him and scrubbed. She had little time to render the playd as clean as possible. It was all she had to offer him as a shroud, and no Scot wanted to meet his Maker without his playd.
Satisfied she’d done as much as possible, she wiped her bloodied hands on her own playd and walked over to the pyre.
They’d laid Dugald’s body atop a very large pile of sturdy branches under which sat a thick mat of kindling. The monk was reciting something in Latin, arms raised as if in supplication, the edges of the bloodied bandages peeking out of the deep pocket of his robe. The soldiers stood ready with smoking bundles of brushwood.
“Wait,” she shouted.
The monk turned a disdainful eye to her, but she ignored him and reached to spread the playd over her husband’s body. To her surprise one of the soldiers handed his torch to his comrade, leaned forward and helped her tuck the wool around Dugald. She lay a hand briefly on his chest, said a silent goodbye, then stepped back.
“May we proceed now?” the monk asked haughtily, obviously dismissing her actions as some heathen Scottish custom.
“Aye,” she nodded.
As the flames of the torches bit into the kindling, she began her lament in Gaelic, fixing her gaze on the watery moon just now appearing in the darkening sky, unable to watch as the crackling fire took hold and consumed her husband, the smoke bearing his soul heavenward.
O pale orb that silent shines
While care-untroubled mortals sleep!
You see a wretch who inwardly pines.
And wanders here to wail and weep!
With woe I hereby vigil keep,
Beneath thy pale, unwarming beam;
And mourn, in lamentation deep,
How life and love are all a dream!
The smell of burning flesh filled the air, making her gag. She’d never felt so utterly alone. Though she hadn’t loved Dugald, she would mourn him, fervently hoping love was not just a dream.
The flames burned hotly for a while, then dwindled. The men seemed ready to leave. “Hurry, we have time to get back to camp before it’s fully dark,” the monk urged her. “The fire will burn itself out.”
Is that all there is to a man’s life—and death?
A glint of movement in the trees caught her attention, the last of the flickering flames glowing in the eyes of some creature. She shuddered, fearing another lynx lurked in the shadows.
The animal crept forward, still barely visible.
“Faol!” she whispered.
“What?” the monk said.
She cleared her throat loudly. “Nothing, only the smoke making me cough.”
The dog cocked his head to one side. She’d assumed the wolfhound had followed Henry, but here he was.
“I must attend to the call of nature before we leave,” she said, edging towards the dog.
The monk shrugged and continued gathering his supplies.
Once in the shadows she fumbled to attach Dugald’s brooch to Faol’s collar. The cat had scratched the animal’s skin, but there was no evidence of bleeding. She hoped he’d be equal to the task she was about to entrust. “Alexandre,” she whispered in the dog’s ear. “Find Alexandre.”
The hound sniffed the air and bounded off into the shadows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“YOU MUST GO TO CAEN,” Romain urged.
Alex shifted his weight in his favorite chair by the hearth in his solar, feeling none of the heat of the hearty fire. The notion of traveling to Caen chilled him to the bone.
“For what purpose?” he asked, sounding petulant even to his own ears. Gallien’s message had made it abundantly clear why he had to go to the town he’d sworn never to enter.
Romain rose to the challenge. “Laurent and Gallien are both en route to Caen with King Stephen. It’s our duty to be there to pledge our fealty in person. It will also send a strong message to other Norman barons who may be wavering.
“You will be letting our cousin and our brother down if you refuse, and Stephen will doubt your loyalty.”
Alex grabbed the poker, hunkering down to stir the fire. “What’s wrong with this flue? It’s not drawing.”
Romain had reason to look at him as if he’d lost his wits as the flames roared up the chimney. He eased the poker out of Alex’s hand. “Listen. Why are we arguing? You will go to Caen, even though you want to avoid seeing Elayne.”
Alex bristled, annoyed that there might be more truth to his brother’s remark than he wanted to admit. “There’s more to it than that.”
Romain thrust the poker back into its holder. “But you were born there.”
“Exactly.”
Whatever Romain’s retort was to be, it was cut off by the sudden appearance of young Fernand Bonhomme, the steward’s son, who skidded in, breathless. “Mes seigneurs, forgive me.” He poi
nted to the corridor. “The dog.”
Alex’s heart stopped beating for a moment as he leapt to his feet. “Faol?”
He was in the corridor running for the bailey before Fernand could answer. Bonhomme knelt beside the wolfhound. The dog lay on his side, tongue lolling out, panting hard.
“He’s just about run himself to death, milord,” Bonhomme said, smoothing his hand along the dog’s coat, “and he’s been in a fight with an animal, a cat I’d wager.”
Alex couldn’t imagine any cat that would get the better of Faol, until he saw the scratches in the dog’s skin. He touched them gingerly. “A wild cat, I think.”
Bonhomme held out a brooch. “This was fixed to his collar.”
The blood drained from Alex’s head into his toes and then rushed back. Was it Elayne’s brooch? He took it, relief sweeping over him when he recognized it as Dugald’s. But then the significance hit him. “Something has happened to them,” he rasped to his brother, now breathless at his side. “The Scot would never willingly give this up. Elayne sent the dog. She needs our help.”
Romain nodded, stroking the wolfhound’s head. “Good boy, Faol.”
Alex turned to Bonhomme, but the Steward held up his hand. “I know, milord, prepare for your departure to Caen.”
He shook his head. “Departure, oui, but I doubt they reached Caen.”
~~~
ELAYNE WAS RELIEVED to be allowed to join Henry and Claricia in the tent they’d been given, but dismayed at the large number of tents and pavilions that stretched as far as the eye could see in the dwindling light. There were soldiers everywhere. Why was Geoffrey amassing an army here?
Claricia ran to embrace her when she entered. She knelt to hug Henry, noting thankfully his scratches had been cleansed and dressed. “You were so very brave, my son. A true warrior,” she whispered.
His face reddened as he smiled.
She reminded them in Gaelic. “Now more than ever we must be careful.”
Henry nodded. “Geoffrey believes I am my cousin. He’s been bragging about my bravery and prowess. I took advantage and insisted our nursemaid be allowed to serve us in our tent. Now if my sister would stop wailing about her dadaidh—”
Fatal Truths (The Anarchy Medieval Romance) Page 15
