Alexandre reined up with a clatter of pebbles. "Why did you leave your escort?" he demanded curtly. He was flushed and perspiring, more so than the early spring warmth warranted.
"I wanted privacy, milord," Liliane replied, waving a hand at the foaming surf and low wind-shirred white clouds. "Your castellans are polite but not poetic."
"My castellans are not obliged to be poetic but to be guarding you."
"For what purpose, milord?" she countered. "To keep me safe . . . or you?"
He ignored her implication. "Hereafter, milady, you will go" nowhere alone. The castellans have been punished, so I warrant you they will be less easy to lose next time." Alexandre leaned over his saddle pommel, "And if there is a next time, you will be confined to the castle."
Liliane's crimson cheeks matched his. "Do you intend to treat me as a prisoner, sir?"
"I will be obeyed, lady. How you are treated is entirely up to you." His eyes took in her boy's attire with a scathing glance. "I told you I would not have my wife appear before my people in unseemly dress. Wear that garb again and I will burn it!" With that, he sharply motioned her to ride before him back to the castle.
The hard glint in his eyes warned her not to try his patience now. She wondered if he was ill. He sat gingerly in the saddle as if it hurt him. In no mood to be sympathetic, Liliane pelted past him.
Alexandre left her in the castle courtyard and rode out again to resume his unfinished task. She wondered briefly where he was going; he did not look well enough to go very far. No doubt he was just angry, for his cold seemed to have passed. She had not heard him sneezing and coughing since their wedding day.
Once he was gone, her anger began to subside. After all, she grudgingly conceded, her boyish attire and lack of chaperonage was unconventional, and her new husband appeared to be an exceedingly conventional man. She would gain little by flying flamboyantly in the face of his social prejudices. Certainly his retinue was equally conservative, and she wanted their respect, as well. Until everyone grew accustomed to her, she must play the decorous lady. And so, to keep peace with Alexandre and his retainers, Liliane donned a smoothly draping blue bliaud that laced at the sides over a white chainse.
Properly clothed, she set out to inspect the castle. As she descended the winding staircase, she ran her fingers along the inside wall. Upon first entering the castle, she had been determined to discover a hidden escape route. Every old castle had secret tunnels and exits in the event of a siege. She had soon noticed the stair's curve did not encompass the entire width of the tower. Another private staircase might well wind within the first. When she had been alone in the turret chamber, she had searched for a door to the secret stairs, bat so far she had found none.
Upon reaching the courtyard, Liliane headed for the less frequented part of the castle. The rooms she had seen on her arrival were virtually the only ones intact; most of the ones on the south side at the rear of the castle were damaged. There, countless sieges and wars had left pocked walls and cascading nibble where a band of masons clambered on new scaffolding. Alexandre had wasted no time in repairing his defenses. Two of the workers noticed her and waved furtively to their foreman. By the time his head swiftly turned, she had disappeared from his view, but she knew he would inform Alexandre that she had been watching their work. He would undoubtedly think she was spying.
Putting aside that chilling thought, Liliane went to the kitchens; they were huge, the fireplaces so sooty and poorly drafted that the food cooked unevenly. The cooks were willing and knowledgeable, but they were hampered by their inefficient facilities. While they greeted her politely, they clearly did not welcome her presence. The sturdy maids also performed their work with reasonable diligence but steadfastly avoided her. All the servants eyed her now with open suspicion, and why not, Liliane thought, when they were expected to follow their master's lead? At dinner the previous night, Alexandre had scarcely said a word to her.
That night he did not even appear at dinner. A wave of anxiety washed over Liliane. No one else appeared to be disturbed; they seemed to take his erratic habits for granted. Had he gone wandering like his brother Jean? As the hour grew late and the fire's glow crept low upon the castle walls where she sat alone in the hall, Liliane doubted if Alexandre meant to return that night. If he did, he would not come to her chamber. The castellans were now abed and he would not hear of her "spying" until the morning.
Lost in her thoughts, she tapped her fingers on her chair arm. The night was hers, if she cared to take it. If she were to go out alone, she must do so at night. She could not pass through the guarded gate, but there were places in the battle-scarred wall where a clever climber might wriggle through. Aye, best try her lack tonight, for she knew Alexandre's mind now. The castellan guards were just the beginning; he would make sure she saw no one alone, sent no messages to Jacques. She must see if she could get out of the castle and saddle her horse, if only for a brief ride. Tonight, her sole desire was to escape through the castle walls and return without discovery. In the future, she would have to repeat tonight's performance.
Liliane went up to the turret chamber and, holding her candle high, minutely examined the stones of the inner tower wall. After nearly an hour, she finally found a stone near the floor that was unlike the rest. By candlelight, its shadowed lower edge was set a little higher into the mortar than the other stones. She pressed both ends individually, but nothing happened. She gave the stone a hard blow with her hand on the right side, then the left. With a faint grind from behind its stone face, the wall developed an irregular crack from floor to ceiling. She hit the stone again and the crack groaned open until it could accommodate a body only a little wider than her own. From the look of the well-oiled leverage workings, the stairs had been recently used.
After she changed to dark hose and a short, hooded cotehardi, Liliane took a long silken cord from her wardrobe. Before she had left Spain with Jacques and Louis, she had made her preparations. At her shoulder, an iron mantle pin was mounted with a decorative brass stud; about her waist, a heavy braided silken cord was many times wrapped with knots every span or so.
After glancing, out the window to make sure the courtyard was empty and the guards preoccupied on the ramparts, Liliane took the candle and stole down the secret staircase. The stairs were only an inch or two wider than her body and ended abruptly against a stone wall perhaps seventy-five feet down. Assuming that the stairs continued beneath the castle wall and led to some point outside, Liliane looked for another opening, but without success; Finally, giving up and exploring the outer wall, she needed only a few minutes to find, the sister mechanism that would open the door to the courtyard. Dousing the candle, she shivered slightly in the murky darkness that filled the stairwell. Hastily, she struck the stone and the door ground open. The sweet, pungent scent of newly sprouting vegetables and flowers drifted into the stairwell from the courtyard garden. She slipped outside the door, then fumbled to close it before the guards took notice of her. She ran carefully over the stepping stones in the garden, guarding against leaving telltale footprints in the moist earth.
Beyond the garden lay the rear wall. Liliane climbed a rubble pile to the lowest of the gaps that would accommodate her body. On the other side, the wall dropped away some fifteen feet to the craggy base of the castle. She unfastened her iron pin and angled it between two solid stones, thrusting it inward, and testing it with a hard jerk. The pin slipped and, on the second jerk, worked loose. Liliane bit her lip nervously. If the pin gave while she was dangling from the wall, her fall would be sure to break bones. She found a new spot, angled the pin until it resembled a fishhook, drove it in and jerked it. The pin held.
Liliane smiled in the darkness. The Moors had many tricks, and she had learned several of them well. The guard watching the wall had his back turned, as he was looking for someone trying to enter the castle, not leave it. In moments, Liliane had slid down the wall. The moat was easy enough to cross, although it was smelly and unpleasantly c
hilly. Dripping, Liliane scaled the rocks on the moat's far side and crept toward the smithy on the edge of the small market beyond the castle gate. When Alexandre had brought her back that afternoon, she had noticed several destriers and peasant plow horses outside the smithy: too many for the smith to reshoe in an afternoon. She checked the string of horses. The destriers had been shod and were now stabled at the castle. The remaining unshod plow horses were plodders except for one likely prospect with an unfinished shoe.
Liliane was good with horses. After wrapping woolen rags on its hooves, she had the mare untethered and cantering into the darkness without the drawbridge guards noticing more than a slight shuffling among the string. Soon Liliane was beyond the castle, its black bulk rising against the moon. She and Jacques had designated a place to leave messages near the Signe border, but she had no need to go there tonight. Jacques would not expect her news for at least a month. As Liliane rode toward the sea, she felt giddy with glee at her escape.
Liliane would have been far less self-satisfied had she known that she had been watched from the moment she crossed the courtyard. As every ship had a rat, so did every castle have a malcontent. Mentally composing his report of the castle's activities, he had been sitting idly in his window watching the guards' movements on the wall. A stealthy figure under the garden trees had drawn his notice. He did not recognize the figure in the shadows, but once it ventured into the open courtyard, he readily guessed from its undisguised walk that the person was a female despite the male costume. Also, from what he had been privately told of her purpose at Castle de Brueil, he was reasonably sure that the woman was Liliane. With an intrigued smile, he watched her wriggle through the hole in the castle wall and anticipated the pleasure her adventure would give his master.
* * *
Liliane rode along the shore toward the spot where Alexandre had intercepted her on the beach. She saw no sign of him. The sand and water were pale, the tumbled rocks echoing the wind and sea. She thought longingly of the forest where she had met Jean, but it was too far away to go there and be back before dawn.
She did not expect to encounter Alexandre prowling about. He probably had a mistress among the serfs, but this thought did not arouse her jealousy. Only Jean could make her jealous. After all, Alexandre had a life before her arrival. Indeed, they were virtual strangers!
Still, she was concerned about his appearance this afternoon; he had looked ill. He had also been filthy, with drying mortar on his hands. She had not seen him working on the castle, and as she quietly passed the few outbuildings that were being repaired, she looked surreptitiously for him. As might be expected at this late hour, all was still and dark.
After checking the last dilapidated byre, Liliane decided to head home. Her clothes had begun to dry, but she was shivering and eager to seek her warm bed. After all her exertions, her ride of freedom was proving less enjoyable than she'd anticipated. Some three miles from the castle, she trotted along a worn path winding near the river that fed into the sea. Beyond a fringe of trees and down a steep bank, the river gurgled and murmured . . . with a voice that sounded almost gutturally human.
Liliane instantly halted the nag and went breathlessly still. The moon shone down through the trees, and flickering leaf shadows played along the path. The water ran below the trees through a long, winding black gully. The rush of water crashing down rocks surrounded her. Liliane strained to listen above the churning river, and she could almost swear she heard someone moaning. She slipped from her horse and tethered it, men drew her poignard from the sheath concealed within her sleeve. Silently she crept down the bank. On the edge of the river, she crouched, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Soon, she was able to define the shapes of the trees towering above the underbrush and bracken, the sharp rocks of the higher river, and the pool of quiet water below them gathering before it formed another rocky cascade. Among the reeds along the bank lay a dark form that could easily have been mistaken for a log.
The limp body was breathing fitfully with a soupy rasp. A hand stirred in the reeds, plucked at a bit of river debris, then fell limply. Liliane crept forward like a squirrel. She might have happened upon a drunken serf, who was in danger of either drowning where he lay or being drawn into the river's current. To help him was to risk discovery and its nasty complications; she might well be packed back to Jacques or something even worse if Alexandre felt so inclined.
Liliane's eyes narrowed as she peered at the body on the bank. To leave the man would be committing murder, and that she could not do. She tossed a pebble at him, but he remained motionless. She eased down the bank to his side. He lay on his face in the mud, his arm and lower body submerged in the rushing water. Her poignard poised near his ribs, she turned him over. It was Alexandre, his face nearly covered with mud and leaves. He gasped in pain at the movement, and his eyelids flickered but did not open. The water was cold with melted snow runoff and his skin was icy.
Madre de Dios, Liliane thought with pity and dismay. Better a drunk! Alexandre must have fainted sometime in the afternoon while working, then recovered his senses long enough to mount his horse and try to reach the castle.
Panting with effort, Liliane dragged him up the bank, then she began to rub him briskly until he coughed and stirred. She retrieved the gray plowhorse, then, gathering all her strength, placed his foot in the stirrup and, pulling, forced Alexandre to lift himself into the saddle. While both relieved and perturbed that he did not seem to recognize her, she took care not to stimulate his memory by talking to him. When she finally had him securely upon the plow horse, she led it wearily up the bank.
Suddenly the nag whickered. An answering neigh sounded from an upper glade. Just as Liliane debated retreating into the brush, the shadowy bulk of Alexandre's destrier materialized through the trees. This was luck—she would have to ride double with Alexandre to keep him mounted, but she had another use for the sorrel. After luring the horse near enough to snare him with her cord, she mounted behind the mumbling Alexandre, nearly pitching him off in the process, and headed home at the fastest pace he could tolerate. Dawn was close; she was already pressing her luck. The trip was difficult—Alexandre's large body was limp and she could scarcely keep him conscious enough to maintain his balance. Finally, she let him lie along the nag's neck. The stars were paling when she came as close as she dared to the castle drawbridge. She let him slide off the horse, not bothering to hide the noise, and immediately a demanding shout came from a guard.
"Who goes there?"
In a flash, Liliane had wrapped the sorrel's rein about Alexandre's lax wrist, vaulted onto the nag and disappeared into the darkness.
The four guards looked at one another. "Something's out there; I heard it," insisted the one who had called out.
"As did the rest of us," another guard replied calmly. "Want to go out and take a look?"
Not past his teens, the first guard flushed. He could not yet see the horizon, and to venture beyond the walls by dark might invite an attack from whatever was wandering beyond the bridge. " 'Tis a short while until dawn. We'll see what it is, quick enough," he muttered.
The other guard laughed derisively. "We've the makings of a veteran, lads."
* * *
Dawn had scarcely brightened the sky when a pounding came at Liliane's door. She stripped off the last of her garmets, shoved them under the mattress, then pulled on her sleeping shift and slid under the covers. "What is it?" she demanded breathlessly.
"The count is desperate ill, milady!" came the urgent reply.
Her fingers dug through her forgotten braid, unravelling it as she went to open the door. Fortunately, she had thought to pile her hair atop her head under the hood of the cotehardi; otherwise it would now be suspiciously wet. Alexandre, unconscious and borne by two men, looked worse by gray daylight. His closed eyes were smudges in his white face; his clothing was sodden. "Put him on the bed," she commanded. "What on earth happened to him?"
"We don't know, milady,"
the head guard answered as he and his companion lowered Alexandre to the bed. "We found him fallen off his horse near the drawbridge at first light. Looks like he's been in the river. He must have tried to make it back, but fainted on the way." He started to thrust back the cover.
Fearing he would notice the unrumpled linens, Liliane intervened quickly. "I shall do that. If you will see that the servants bring hot water from the kitchen . . . also more linens and enough cord to string them high about the bed."
Seeming relieved that she had her wits about her, the guard nodded and went to dispatch his duties. The other guard, a broad young man with fiery hair and a stubborn jaw, did not move, and Liliane had an idea why. "You require other instructions?" she asked quickly.
He held his ground. "I think I should stay, milady. You need assistance."
"With milord's clothes or with poison, sirrah?'' Her eyes held a sympathetic understanding that belied her ironic tone. "You need not be concerned. I am neither overly shy nor a murderess. My first husband lived to a ripe age."
"You will forgive me, milady"—the young man's head came up—"but one might observe that your former lord's demise fit well with your uncle's ambitions.''
Angered and amazed at his gall, she stared at him. "Do you propose, sir, that I dispatched my husband?" When he simply looked back at her, she wanted to explode with exasperation. So this must be the castle gossip. And why should Alexandre's retainers not think Diego's death quite convenient? It certainly had been timely, and damnably so.
Liliane glanced at the bed's inert occupant. No wonder Alexandre was reluctant to bed her; he would rather tangle with a scorpion. She sighed. "You are to be commended for your loyalty, guardsman, if not for your deference. Come, help me with my lord Alexandre. While we debate, he freezes."
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