“How many are left alight?”
Branches snapped from the undergrowth stopped his answer. The wolves turned as one to look.
With a terrific snarl, the burned one took off toward the source of the noise. The bushes moved in abrupt movement, then a wheezing thump ended in a whine.
The dense growth parted. The monstrous form of le Bret emerged, a dead wolf impaled on his huge broadsword, Fitzurse and de Tracy close behind.
“You look like you need our aid, Sir Palmer,” said Fitzurse.
Theodosia’s breath stalled. How? How?
Le Bret heaved the dead wolf off his blade, and it thudded into the fallen snow and rolled over, blood seeping from its side.
The pack converged on the strangers. Their snarls and howls of rage echoed through the woods.
Le Bret swung his sword again and caught another wolf’s ear. With a yelp it scuttled backward, the others close around it.
“Forgive the delay. We won’t be long.” Fitzurse’s blue gaze locked on hers through the curtain of falling snow, worse, far worse, than the wolves’ orange eyes.
She looked to Benedict.
He wasn’t there.
“Hey!” De Tracy’s yell told her he’d found him.
She looked in the direction of his pointed sword. Dear God, no.
Benedict ran for Quercus, the distraction of the wolves momentary but enough. He leapt into the saddle and yanked the reins free. With a shake of his head to Theodosia, he kicked hard at the horse’s sides. Quercus took off through the trees.
He’d left her to them. She swayed on her feet, sounds blurred. She fought her faint, clinging to her branch.
“Leave him!”
She turned, stumbling, at Fitzurse’s clipped order to the knights. They stopped, watching their leader.
He raised his weapon to the leading wolf. “I’m sorry, my beauty,” he said, “but you leave me no choice.” He raised his sword in both hands and sideswiped. With a sickening crunch, he sliced through the animal’s neck and took its head clean off.
CHAPTER 14
“God’s eyes, what a strike!” De Tracy’s roar echoed out as Theodosia ducked away with a cry.
Blood sprayed from the animal’s severed neck, and its head bounced and rolled through the snow in a slash of scarlet.
Her faint increased, darkening her vision, numbing all sound.
Fitzurse advanced toward the pack with his stained sword up, boots ploughing through the lividly stained snow, as uncaring of the carnage as he had been in the cathedral. “I’m ready.” His voice was soft, measured.
Far away.
The animals turned and fled to guttural calls and hoots from the other two knights.
Theodosia gulped in deep breaths, struggled to keep hold of the branch in hands that seemed to weigh a ton.
Fitzurse turned to her. “Sister.”
She held her branch out and waved it, her last feeble defense. “Stay away from me.”
He clicked his fingers, and his companions stepped to him.
“Or what?” Fitzurse stepped toward her through the blood-soaked snow, flanked by the other two monsters. He gestured to the dense trees. “You’ll run in there? Oh, no, you can’t. You’ll get eaten.” He stepped closer.
Theodosia raised the branch.
His sword flashed out and struck it from her hands, the wood grazing her palms with the strength of his blow.
“No!” She jerked back, fighting for balance. She fell to her knees, hands grasped before her, urging a blow that would take her head from her shoulders too. Take it, and with it her secret of where her mother was. With her gaze defiantly fixed on Fitzurse, she summoned her act of contrition, ready for her end. “Deus meus, ex toto corde p-paenitet — ”
Fitzurse’s clout to her cheek sent her sprawling into the snow.
“Shut up.”
Her skull hammered from his strike, the sight of the three knights’ boots swam before her. She struggled to draw breath, to carry on with her prayer, but a sob of pain and shock choked her.
“Get her on her feet, le Bret. De Tracy, keep an eye out for those animals.”
The huge knight’s hand grabbed her shoulder and hauled her upright.
Fitzurse regarded her with complete, icy calm. “You are shockingly uncooperative.” He stuck his sword point-first into the snowy ground. “But even you’ve got more virility than Palmer.” He removed a couple of coils of rope from his belt. “Running away, like a yellow-breeched knave, just like I accused him on the riverbank.” He gave a tight smile. “Not able to see a job through, remember?”
A job. That’s what she’d been to that coward, that renegade Benedict Palmer. It was what she was to them all, what Mama was. A job that had to be finished. She’d not help them in their foul work, any of them.
“You’d have done well to listen to me, then,” continued Fitzurse, uncoiling the rope with swift movements. “Carried on running yourself, instead of stopping the noble Hugh de Morville ending the dog.” He nodded to le Bret. “Put her hands behind her back.”
Le Bret shifted his iron grip to wrench back one of her wrists. Pain sparked up her arms as he crossed it with the other.
“Let go of me!” She struggled uselessly in his hold as Fitzurse coiled the coarse rope tight around her wrists, then bit into her skin as he secured it with firm knots.
Benedict had said Fitzurse wanted her bound before he burned her to find out what she knew. The fire behind them. Damped down by the snow but still hot. She pulled all her weight against them, tried to kick out with her feet, to sink her teeth into le Bret’s chain-mailed arm.
“You see what I mean about lack of cooperation, le Bret?” Fitzurse sounded amused as he passed the rope around her body, looping it across her chest.
She gasped in pain as he pulled it cruelly tight to knot it at the back. Her arms were now completely pinned behind her, the rope cutting into her breasts if she tried to move her hands. Still she kicked.
“De Tracy,” came Fitzurse’s clipped command. “We need another pair of hands for the sister.”
De Tracy complied, coming to stand before her as she struggled.
“Bend her over,” said Fitzurse.
De Tracy gave a wide leer. “This should warm us up.”
Her stomach lurched. Dear God, they couldn’t. Not her virginity, her chastity. “Stop it, please, stop it!”
De Tracy grabbed her by the neck and forced her down until she was bent double.
A noose went round her neck and panic overtook her. She thrashed in the knights’ grasp, screaming for someone, anyone, to help her.
Fitzurse crouched behind at her ankles and tied them as tightly together as he had her arms. Then his hands were busy at the front of her neck.
“Let her go,” he said.
The red-bearded knight stepped away as le Bret loosed her. Fitzurse stood before her.
“Stand up,” he said.
Theodosia staggered upright. The noose squeezed tight around her throat, pulled by the cord attached to her ankles, stopping her breath, her voice. Blood pounded in her face, her head. She tried to scream. None came.
Fitzurse nodded. “That will suffice.” He grasped the back of her neck and forced her over again.
The rope around her throat loosened, and she pulled in fast, frantic gasps of air.
He brought his face close to hers with blue eyes that shone with an unnatural pleasure. “You need to keep very, very still, or you will throttle yourself. Do you hear me?”
She returned Fitzurse’s gaze, though her heart seemed to want to break from her chest. “I hear you.” Her voice came thick with her own spittle. His warning had given her a tiny hope. Thrown on the fire, she’d struggle like a dervish. Fitzurse’s ropes would take her more mercifully than the burning embers; she would die without revealing Mama’s location.
Fitzurse clicked his fingers to the waiting le Bret. “Bring her back to the horses.”
The horses?
Le
Bret’s enormous arm went around her waist, and he flung her over his shoulder.
The huge knight’s odious smell caught the back of her throat. Worse, he steadied his hold on her with one huge hand wedged between her thighs. But she kept completely still. Fitzurse’s hideous snare might well prove her salvation, but only if certain death was the only alternative. Horses were not fire, not death, at least not yet. The snow-covered forest floor swayed beneath her in time with le Bret’s giant strides, purest white now they’d left the blood-ravaged clearing. The hoofprints of a single horse were rapidly filling in with the relentless snow. Quercus’s tracks, from when that betrayer Benedict had fled when he could. Fled to save himself. Abandoning her, throwing her to the savage dog that was Fitzurse.
“Put her on mine.” Fitzurse again.
Le Bret swung her up and over the horse’s back. She landed smack on her stomach on the saddle, and her breath gasped out.
Fitzurse appeared next to her at his mount’s neck, one hand on the reins. “Secure her, le Bret.” Another rope was lashed across her back, tightening her as hard against the saddle as Benedict had tied their bundle of clothes.
Fitzurse raised a gauntlet-clad hand and grasped her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “I had such delightful plans for you. Thanks to that knave Palmer, they’ve been thwarted.”
“Good.” She forced the word out.
“Thwarted. Not stopped.” He tightened his grip. “When I get to Polesworth Abbey, I will have double the pleasure. Your mother first, then you.”
He knew. She stared at him, stomach contracted. “Who betrayed us?” she whispered.
“You did, you clever girl.” He let go her jaw and tapped her playfully on the nose. “Clever and pretty, so those idiot pilgrims remembered you.”
It was her fault. Her stupid, sinful pride in her wits. She wanted to scream out as Fitzurse gathered the reins and mounted the stallion beside her.
She’d led Fitzurse to Mama, led death to Mama’s door like she’d sworn she never would.
Settling in the saddle, he crushed her ribs against the saddle horn to her right. He patted the back of her neck. “But I’m not sure just how I will dispatch you both. The Bull’s only one option, and I have many, many others. It’ll pass the time to Polesworth if I tell you about them.” He clicked to his horse, and it set off. “But I promise you, Sister. For all the trouble you have caused me, I will make sure you get something very, very special.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Palmer sat astride Quercus in a thicket of concealing evergreens, watching out for the party of knights. And Theodosia. What could be taking them so long?
He had no guarantees they’d come this way, but it was the only route through this thick-grown woodland, a rough path with the signs of few travelers on it.
He peered ahead through the darkness. Still no sign. His guess might be wrong, Fitzurse might have taken a different direction. No. This was the quickest route to Polesworth. And Polesworth would be where he was headed. Another guess, but Palmer had no other choice.
The snow had near stopped, with only a few lazy flakes drifting down. With the clouds clearing fast, weak starlight and the sliver of moon gave some light, made many times stronger by the reflection of the bright fallen snow. He cursed it quietly. The cover of darkness would’ve been better. At least it gave him an early warning on the wolves. They still patrolled the night, and their distant howls sent fear right through him. But he needed the beasts. They were his only chance to secure Theodosia’s freedom. If she was still alive. Doubt knotted his guts.
A horse snorted in the distance.
Palmer went rigid in the saddle. This could be they.
A male voice, not taking any care to lower or hide it. De Tracy. It had to be.
He kept his gaze fixed on the direction of the sound.
Another grunt of a voice. Le Bret. Surely.
Then he saw them, the three knights on their fine mounts, riding in single file. And before Fitzurse, slung across the saddle, Theodosia’s still form, her wrists and ankles secured like a prize hog’s at a fair.
Palmer’s fists clenched to hold back his rage. They’d killed her, the bloody, bloody, damnable cowards. It was all his fault. He’d abandoned her, the woman who’d had the rash, foolish courage to stay and fight for him against de Morville.
But he’d had to. He’d had a split second to make a decision when the knights had stepped from the bushes, and he had made it. His battle sense, he called it. It had never failed him before. Now it had. And how.
Palmer’s hand went to his dagger. He was going to make them pay. He’d take at least one out, maybe even two if luck fell his way. If he was killed, so be it. He’d no right to walk this earth while she rotted cold in the ground.
The group passed by, unaware that he watched. Their voices echoed over to him, full of cheer at their devilry.
Palmer caught a familiar word. Polesworth. So they knew. He looked at Theodosia’s body, trussed so carelessly to Fitzurse’s horse. What had they done to her to make her tell? He should do for them now, the bastards. But he held back.
He needed to see if his plan worked. If it did, there’d be no need for his weapon. No mind. Either way, he was going to avenge the woman who’d fought so bravely for him. Fought, but lost.
♦ ♦ ♦
Theodosia’s head throbbed from being tipped half upside-down. Fitzurse’s bonds, tight when he first made them, tortured her more with each stride of the animal beneath her. Her arms cramped right down to her fingers, and her bound breasts bumped hard against the saddle with each step the horse took.
Fighting down the pain, Theodosia asked God in her soul for mercy. Asked, asked, asked. Begged. Not for release from this awful journey slung on Fitzurse’s horse, but for her mother’s escape. But God wasn’t listening.
One of Thomas’s sayings came back to her. “He always listens, my child. It’s just that we don’t always get the answer we want.”
But why wouldn’t God listen about Mama? True to his dreadful promise, Fitzurse had told her the first of his depraved options, describing it in minute detail, with the unspeakable agony that could be inflicted on a woman’s body. The Pear of Anguish. Sickness roiled through her stomach at the hideous pictures Fitzurse had planted in her mind, and she swallowed hard. If it were her fate only, she could understand. She’d sinned so badly, disregarded her vows. Mama had given her to God, and she’d spurned that generosity. Instead of passing on the gift of holiness, she’d squandered her gifts in wild, foolish actions. She deserved God’s abandonment. But Mama? Her pure, noble Mama. Why should she be rent apart by these men? She had to keep praying. She focused on the monotonous snowy ground that Fitzurse’s horse traveled over. She would ask Our Lady, a woman and mother who might intercede if offered up a sacred rosary.
Theodosia blinked hard. Now her vision played tricks, with dark red blobs appearing on the virgin snow. She opened and closed her eyes several times, but they remained, some tiny, others large as a spoon.
She turned her head to the right as much as she dared. De Tracy rode directly in front. A corner of his canvas saddlebag had a dark stain. As she watched, it dripped onto the snow to form another blob. It looked like —
Another followed.
It looked like blood.
♦ ♦ ♦
Palmer tracked the group, tensed for action, staying well hidden by the trees. His plan had failed. The woods were silent again. The wolves must have moved on, forcurse them. What bad fortune had led them to him and Theodosia? No doubt the same bad fortune that had led the knights. There was no point in blaming fortune. His own poor judgment had finished Theodosia.
He caught sight of her lifeless body before Fitzurse again. Regret lumped in his throat. Cursing himself for carrying on like a maid, he set his will and prepared to make his attack. A shadow flicked at the edge of his sight. He turned to look and caught his breath.
One wolf, then another, and another, ran down the trail of blood that d
ripped from de Tracy’s saddlebag. Noses to the ground, they ran faster toward the unaware knight.
“Come on, Quercus.” Palmer urged his horse forward. Some of his plan could still work. Just not the part that could have saved his brave Theodosia.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Pick up the pace, men.” Fitzurse’s order sounded above Theodosia, interrupting her rosary.
A faster pace would be even more painful. But she would endure, lose herself in prayer. She gritted her teeth as she tried to start again.
A dark blur shot past on the snow below, then another.
“Wolves!” Fitzurse’s warning echoed through the trees.
Snarls came from ahead, then de Tracy’s shout.
“Get off, you bastards!”
Theodosia twisted in her bonds, frantic that the animals would try and grab for her as she dangled from Fitzurse’s horse.
“Stay still, or you’ll have us over.” Fitzurse’s hand clamped a warning hand on the back of her neck. His stallion skittered beneath them with terrified whinnies and tried his best to bolt, flinging her harder against the ropes that held her. “Use your sword, de Tracy!”
“I’ll lose my hold! I need to — ”
Yowls and snarls drowned his calls.
Theodosia wrenched her head to one side in Fitzurse’s grasp.
Wolves surrounded de Tracy as his horse spun to try and escape leaps, jaws, teeth, claws.
Fitzurse’s stallion bucked, and the ground tipped up to her. She cried out. If the ropes gave, she’d be on the ground.
“Back him, le Bret,” said Fitzurse.
The huge knight urged his powerful animal toward the stricken de Tracy, but the horse would have none of it. It backed away with rolling eyes and flared nostrils.
With a grunted oath, le Bret swung himself from the saddle, stained broadsword in hand. His animal jerked from his grasp on the reins and took off through the trees.
“You oaf!” shouted Fitzurse.
“Sorry, my lord.” Le Bret waded in with his broadsword to slash at the group. He connected with one, and it fled with a howl.
Another clamped its jaws on de Tracy’s bloodstained saddlebag. The bag gave with a loud rip and spewed its contents onto de Tracy’s leg.
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