“I need to talk to you,” Bastian, the General of the Army said as he pushed his way into the room. Bastian stopped when he saw the woman on the bed. He bent over her, frowning as he listened to her struggle to catch a breath.
“I didn’t know where else to take her,” Alan began to explain as he shut the door. “Philippe had given her to the men. I feared what they would do to her.”
“And I fear what they have done,” Bastian replied. He straightened, wincing as he did so, for his recently acquired wounds were new and tender. “She needs a healer, but I doubt very much she will have one,” Bastian sighed and rubbed his eyes, for it had been a very long day.
Alan forced himself to keep his eyes trained on his commanding officer. If he betrayed the knife’s existence with a glance, then it would all be over before it had even begun.
“I need your help,” Bastian finally said, his voice low. “I am breaking them out of here.”
“Who? Alden?” Alan asked. He hoped his eagerness had not come across in the way he said the King of Cerniw’s name, but damn it all, he liked Alden. He respected him, and he didn’t want to see him die.
“Budic too,” Bastian confirmed, although he did not raise his face but kept his gaze fixed on the woman. “But it won’t be easy.”
“What of Merton?” Alan queried. “Did he survive your beating and Philippe’s whip?” Alan could not help the sarcastic way the words had come out. He knew that Bastian would not take such an insult lying down.
Bastian’s head snapped up, and he glared angrily at Alan. “You forget who you are speaking to. How dare you take that tone with me.”
Alan refused to break eye contact. He wanted Bastian to know how disgusted he was with him. Merton had behaved honourably. He had followed The Knights’ Code, but Bastian had abandoned it for a handful of silver.
“I don’t forget who you were, but the man stood before me now,” Alan looked Bastian up and down and then shook his head in disgust, “you are not my general. My general would never do something so barbaric. Merton had spared your life. I saw him do so. But when he surrendered to save hers,” Alan pointed to the woman, “you had him pinned to the ground, and you beat him with a mallet. I wouldn’t have done it,” Alan stated with the confidence of one who had never been in the situation that Bastian found himself in now.
“I pray that you will never have to make that choice,” Bastian said instead of reprimanding Alan for his insolence. “Will you help me?”
“I will never deny my true King,” Alan spoke humbly.
“Isn’t that what Peter said about Jesus? And then that cock crowed, and Peter realised that he valued his own life above everything else. Words are easy to speak, Alan. But if you speak such words and mean them, then know that death will stalk you, and she is no easy companion.”
“I will walk the road with her, if, that is my destiny.”
Bastian chuckled quietly. “Spoken like a true knight. If only there were others like you. But you are a dying breed, soon to be extinct. But before that happens, I need you to go to the harbour and secure passage on a boat to Cerniw.” Bastian tossed a purse full of gold at Alan, who caught it.
“How many souls will board this ship?”
“Budic, Alden, and Merton’s Saxons.”
“And what of Merton? Will he be travelling also?”
Bastian’s gaze rested on the woman again. “Merton is dead. He passed away just now.”
Alan cursed under his breath, although he had been expecting such an answer. No man could withstand a beating such as that. Even the Devil would be hard pushed to keep breathing.
“What about her?” Alan asked.
“I will deal with her when I get back.”
“I could get her on the boat—”
“No,” Bastian stated immediately. “She is to stay here. She must do penance for her crimes.”
“And what crimes would that be?” Alan queried with contempt.
“Her list is long and condemning. And there are many witnesses who saw her attack the King.”
“Was she meant to stand still while he beat her and humiliated her in front of everyone?”
“She behaved like a wild cat.”
“A cat that was trying to defend herself and those she loved.”
“The longer we stand here arguing about a whore’s virtues, then the less time we have to get the people that really matter out of here. Remember, she was Garren du Lac’s wife, and when he died, she moved onto his brother — she deserves everything that is coming to her.” Bastian spoke with venom, but he would not make eye contact. “If we are to do this, then we must go. Time is precious, and soon Budic and Alden will run out of it,” Bastian said as he pushed past Alan and headed for the door.
“Are we to leave her here?” Alan asked.
“For now,” Bastian said, opening the door and stepping outside. “The King will decide her fate. Pray God he is generous.”
Alan glanced back at the place where he had hidden his blade. He hated to leave it exposed, and he wished now that he had waited to bring it out of hiding. He gave a quick prayer to God to keep both the woman and the blade safe from harm, until his return.
The door shut, and silence descended upon the room.
Lady Amandine de Bretagne opened her eyes and stared, for a moment, at the ceiling. A lonely tear slid down her swollen face.
Merton is dead. She had regained consciousness just as Bastian had uttered those three terrible words. Merton is dead. He was dead. A sob escaped her mouth, and her tears choked her as surely as the tightness of her chest did. He was dead. He was dead because of her. All he had to do was kill her, and Philippe would have let him and Alden go free.
“…never forget that I love you, and if there is life after this one, I will find you. I swear it.”
Merton’s words came back to haunt her, and the pain nearly stopped her heart. He couldn’t be dead. Not Merton. No. She didn’t want to believe it. She screwed her eyes tight shut, and breathing became more difficult than it already was.
She needed to get up. She needed to find him. She needed to… He couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t lose him as well, not after Garren. Garren. Amandine opened her eyes and gasped in a breath. If Merton were dead then so was she. But Amandine had not the patience to wait to die of natural causes or by the command of a King who she hated. This was her life, she was the one who should decide when it ends, and it would end…today. She couldn’t live in a world without Merton in it.
Amandine began to rise from the bed, but the pain of her body made doing so very difficult. It felt like someone had stuck a blade in her heart and twisted it. And the more she tried to exert herself the harder it became to breathe. She used her torn bloody hands to brace herself on the mattress, and then she felt it. A cold gift from God. She closed her fingers around the object and brought it into the light so she could look at it.
Amandine knew that suicide was a sin, and she would end up in Hell. But they said that Merton was the Devil, and if he was in Hell, then that is where she wanted to be as well. With shaking fingers, she unsheathed the weapon. For a moment she simply looked at the blade and its deadly promise.
Closing her eyes and biting her lip, she placed the tip of the blade to her throat. Death was easy, simple, quick. She couldn’t bear another moment of this torture.
“I love you, Merton,” she muttered. Opening her eyes one last time, she pushed the blade home.
2
Six months later.
Amandine awoke with a gasp. Her heart was pounding, and she felt a cold sweat upon her skin. Instinctively her hand reached for her neck and traced the edge of a knotted scar. Tears of frustration threatened to fall from her eyes. She was completely useless. She couldn’t even kill herself. If only Alan had not come back to his room looking for his weapon belt, then she would be dead, and she wouldn’t have to endure all this. She had begged Alan to leave her alone that fateful day, to let her finish the job, but he wouldn’t. So n
ow she carried an ugly scar, which condemned her as equally as her love for Merton did.
There was a persistent knocking on the door, which she longed to ignore. An urgent voice whispered, “Wake up. God is waiting.”
She closed her eyes and willed the tears away. The Abbot didn’t like tears — she would be punished if she shed them.
Amandine yawned with fatigue. She had not been allowed to sleep properly in over two sennights, and she was exhausted. The cell, the Abbot had insisted that she slept in, was devoid of any comfort. In fact, it was little better than a pigsty, and even then, she suspected that it wouldn’t be suitable for housing pigs. It was the middle of winter, and there had been a hard frost every night, but she had been allowed no fire. The air was so cold in her cell that she could see her breath as she breathed. It was so cold that even the mice had abandoned this room, seeking warmth and shelter elsewhere.
She stretched, trying to loosen the muscles in her back. Her bed was a handful of straw that had been thrown carelessly into the corner of the room. She should count herself lucky for being given that much, for she deserved no such consideration.
“I am the daughter of Satan…” She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth together, stopping the words, which had been drummed into her by rote, from leaving her mouth.
Amandine sat up slowly, every muscle in her body complaining at the exertion. She had gathered up some straw and thrown it over her body in a pathetic attempt at replicating a blanket. She shouldn’t have bothered, for it only made the stone floor all the harder and had done nothing at all to warm her.
She began to brush the straw from her skirt, but even such a simple task was an effort. But if she did not, then, she would be punished, for God did not take kindly to straw being brought into his Church, or maybe, that was the Abbot. Recently she was getting the two of them confused. It was the Abbot’s, Church. The Abbot’s, rules. God came into it somehow, although Amandine wasn’t quite sure where. Amandine had a suspicion that God would be more forgiving than the man who represented him. She hoped so anyway.
She wrapped her arms around her, shivering from the cold, as she tried to stand. The burning pain in her feet was excruciating. But she daren’t take off her shoes, for she feared that she would never get them back on again. And besides, even if she did take them off, all she could do was look at them, and even that would be impossible without a candle, and she dare not ask for one of those. If she was so undeserving of a blanket, then she certainly wasn’t deserving of a candle. As it stood, she had nothing to wrap her feet in, nor any ointment to soothe the pain. The only way her feet would get better would be, if, by some divine intervention, she was allowed back into the castle. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen while Good King Philippe was away.
When King Philippe came back from the tour of his kingdom, she was sure he would put a stop to this…torment. He had made her his ward after all, and up until now, he had been, not kind, but respectful towards her. It was almost as if he felt guilty for his hand in her beating on that fateful day when God had chosen to abandon the du Lacs, in favour of a pretender.
“Get up.”
Amandine wished she could ignore the summons, but that would be an unwise thing to do. She ran her trembling hand across her shaven head. Her eyes welling with tears as she recalled the humiliation and the pain that had been inflicted upon her. Brother Yannick had not been gentle while carrying out the Abbot’s decree. He had shaved her head so close to the skin that the blood had run down her face to mingle with her tears. With her head bowed and her heart breaking, she made her way slowly to the door, holding onto the cold, damp, wall as she did so.
“At last, what have you been doing? No doubt trying to make yourself beautiful,” Brother Yannick spat the words at her when she opened the door, his eyes were dark with animosity. “Vanity is an abomination and must be stamped upon. Come, the Abbot is waiting.”
Amandine didn’t say anything because she wasn’t allowed to speak, unless it was to repeat whatever it was that the Abbot wanted her to say. But that didn’t stop her from cursing the monk in her mind.
The monk turned on his heels and strode down the dark cloisters. Amandine hobbled after him, each step an agonised torment. She tried not to cry out in pain, for such things were frowned upon here. Everything was frowned upon. Or maybe it was just her who was frowned upon. She was the daughter of Satan, or so the Abbot kept telling her.
She couldn’t take another step for it was agonising. Amandine stopped and leant against a wall. Brother Yannick sighed with annoyance when he realised she was not following him. He retraced his steps, grabbed hold of her arm and tugged unmercifully. Amandine stumbled and cried out in pain. But there was no compassion in the monk’s eyes, only contempt and abhorrence.
“My feet hurt,” she mumbled.
“Silence,” Brother Yannick ordered, with a look of horror on his face. “You know better than to speak. God doesn’t want to hear your voice.”
He gave her another tug, and she bit her lip to stop from crying. But try as she might, she could not keep up with the monk’s rapid pace. She tripped and fell, but the monk simply dragged her along the ground until she found her feet again.
The cold night air greeted them as they stepped outside, but to be fair, it was no colder outside than it was in. The sky was cloudless, and above them, the stars shone down. The ground would have a blanket of frost by the morning. Amandine looked up at the stars, and she wondered if there was a God in the heavens above her, for there was no sign of him in the Kingdom of Brittany.
They crossed the courtyard and headed towards the promised sanctuary of the church. Sanctuary? There was no sanctuary here, just eternal judgment and condemnation.
The monk opened the new, big, oak door, which had been a gift from the King, and stepped inside. Amandine paused in the entrance, and then she stiffly fell onto her black and bruised knees. She had saint’s knees now. The Abbot had pulled her skirts up to look at the state of her knees only yesterday. But according to him, they were not saintly enough. He wanted blood, and he would not be content until he had it.
Amandine crept into the church on all fours, like a dog fearing a beating. She made sure to keep her head down and her eyes averted from her betters. She was a disgrace, and she had to crawl before God if she wanted his mercy.
“You are late,” the Abbot’s voice boomed with annoyance as he stomped towards her.
Amandine immediately lay out flat upon the ground with her arms outstretched as if she were tied to an imaginary cross. If she had not, then she would have felt the Abbot’s boot upon her back — she had learnt that lesson very early on in the Abbot’s teachings. He hated women — she had realised that as well. He really, really, hated them, to the extent that he would see them all burn. He would see her burn if he were given the opportunity to.
The Abbot stopped in his tracks, grunting as he did so and eyed Amandine with suspicion. Amandine held her breath and hoped that her piety would not be mistaken as an insult, for it did not take much to offend the Abbot. If it were taken as an insult, then she would feel the lash of the cane this day. She didn’t think she had the strength to face another thrashing. She managed to stop herself from sighing with relief when the Abbot turned away from her and marched back towards the altar.
The hard flagstone floor was cold and uncomfortable, but at least it kept her awake. She could not imagine what the consequences would be if she fell asleep.
She wondered if this was where she was going to die, and if she did die here, today, would anyone care? Would they bury her body in a nameless grave outside the castle walls as Merton’s body had been?
She had not been allowed to look upon Merton’s body. But the Abbot had told her, with relish, that Merton had lost control of his bodily functions before he died. This proved that Merton was indeed a demon, for only a demon would do such a vile thing. He told her that Merton had stank so badly that by the time they dragged him out of the dungeons, h
is body was swarming with flies and crawling with maggots. No one had wanted to go near him, and no one wanted to clean and dress him, as one would do to a fallen prince. They had dug a grave and thrown him in it.
She would have cleaned and dressed him, no matter what he had looked or smelt like. But, she wasn’t given that option and besides, she had been too weak even to sit up in bed, let alone dress the dead.
Amandine closed her eyes tight shut and tried not to think of it. If she did, then she would start crying, and tears wouldn’t change anything, they wouldn’t make the pain go away. But dear God, she missed Merton. She missed him so much.
The monks gathered around her and the Abbot began to lead his congregation of holy men in prayer. And yet, it was like no prayer she had ever heard before. They painted her out to be a demon, who was not worthy of God’s mercy, let alone love. They accused her of things, terrible things, things she could not possibly of done. But what was worse, what she found the most difficult to bear, was how they condemned the man that she had loved. The man that she loved still, for her love did not diminish just because Merton was now dead. Every day she loved him more, and every day she clung to the hope that one day she would see him again. Merton had promised he would find her — in the next life if this one were denied them. She held onto that promise, because there was nothing else left to hold on to.
The Abbot called forth God’s wrath against the soul of Merton du Lac. He and his men prayed for damnation. They prayed for Hell. Amandine prayed that she would see him again, sooner rather than later.
Brother Yannick nudged her with his toe, and Amandine began to chant the words as well. But with each word she spoke against the man she had loved with all her heart, she would say another prayer in her head, asking God for the complete opposite.
She felt the coldness of holy water being sprinkled upon her, to cleanse her of Merton’s demonic hold on her. She tried her best not to shiver, for shivering was a sin.
By the time they had finished, Amandine could barely move. She clenched her teeth together in a bid to stop them from chattering.
The Du Lac Princess: (Book 3 of The Du Lac Chronicles) Page 2
