Bay of Fear (Battle Lords of de Velt Book 3)

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Mawgwen didn’t see much use in cleaning the hearth now, but she went about it, anyway. She’d done what had been asked of her by the big, redheaded Scots pirate who had shown up at her door before dawn. He knew her, and had for years, and he knew about the rolled hide that was in her family’s possession. Nearly everyone in Bude knew it, too, so it wasn’t a secret. Mawgwen Coombe’s family had been in the area for centuries, and everyone knew of their link to Baiadepaura. The pirate had given her a sack full of gold coins in exchange for that rolled hide and a little visit to the castle her ancestor had once sacked.

  Now, all there was to do was wait.

  The curse, or the fear of it, would take care of the rest.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Contrary to what Annalyla had told Mawgwen, she didn’t seek Tenner.

  Quite honestly, she wasn’t sure she would. Her reasonable, stalwart husband didn’t believe in curses or ghosts; he’d made that clear. Therefore, she didn’t want to look like a silly fool by bringing in an old curse written on a sheep’s hide if, in fact, it was even a curse.

  She wanted to check it out for herself.

  Heading out of the kitchen and into the afternoon, which was turning cool as clouds once again began to gather and a stiff breeze came from the sea, Annalyla could already see men with foodstuffs for the kitchen departing the hall and heading in her direction. She paused a moment, pointing to the kitchen stairs and telling them to deliver their goods down into the kitchen and attached vault, which reminded her that she needed to check the vault sooner rather than later.

  She had many duties to complete and little time to do them in, but she was happy to be busy. More men moved past her, swiftly, and she could see Graham also heading in her direction. The older knight looked weary, his weathered face lined with exhaustion.

  “You should rest, Graham,” she said as he came near. “You look very tired.”

  The man nodded, running his fingers through his graying hair. “I am,” he said. “So many years at Roseden with very little to do, and suddenly I am back in action, as I was when I was a young knight. It is rather exciting, I must say.”

  Annalyla grinned at his enthusiasm. “Even so, you should rest,” she said. “Tenner is in our chamber even now, sleeping. The mattresses were stuffed a little while ago and when I left him, he was crawling into bed. There are several chambers on the floor of the keep. You may take one for your private use if you wish. There is one near the entry that may be quite suitable for you.”

  Graham looked in the direction of the keep. “Indeed,” he said, finally letting his guard down. Exhaustion was in everything about him. “I shall do as you suggest.”

  “Good,” Annalyla said. “And – Graham?”

  “Aye?”

  “Those women you brought… where did you find them?”

  He threw a thumb in a generally northward direction. “There is a tavern at the southern edge of Bude,” he said. “They were all there. In fact, it was rather odd… as if they were just waiting for me to come in there and offer them jobs.”

  Annalyla cocked her head. “That does seem strange,” she said. “Did they say they were waiting for a job – any job?”

  He nodded. “The innkeeper told me that people often gather there in the hope that merchants or ships will need workers, so it is evidently not unusual for the desperate and unemployed to gather there,” he said. “Still, when I entered and mentioned where I was from, they all seemed very eager to go with me.”

  “Even the old woman? Mawgwen?”

  “Especially her,” Graham said. “She told me that it was fortuitous that I had come to the tavern because she was preparing to come to Baiadepaura and offer her services. She was the most eager of all to come. Why? Did she say something to you?”

  Annalyla eyed him. She didn’t want to tell him what the woman had really said, at least not all of it. She was afraid Graham would go off on more tales of curses about Baiadepaura and how he had been right all along. She didn’t think Tenner would like it if he caught wind of such a thing, because he’d been annoyed from the outset that Graham had told her stories about Baiadepaura. Therefore, she kept silent on the matter.

  “Not really,” she said after a moment. “But she does know a great deal about Baiadepaura. She said her grandfather’s grandfather was part of the mob that killed the wicked lord of Baiadepaura.”

  “Is that so?” Graham looked interested, but only momentarily. “Then, mayhap, that was why she was so eager to come – to return to the scene of her ancestor’s crime.”

  Annalyla snorted. “Mayhap that is true, but I think she will be a wealth of information on the history of the castle. What we know seems to be legends and rumors, nothing of fact. She may know fact.”

  “Or she may make things worse.”

  “Time will tell, I suppose.”

  Graham scratched his head again. His interest in old Mawgwen was finished as thoughts of sleep filled his mind. He pointed to the keep.

  “A chamber near the entry, you say?”

  Annalyla nodded. “To the left,” she said, pointing. “It is yours, Graham. But be mindful – Tenner is sleeping upstairs. The last I saw, men were trying to hang the doors to the keep, so tell them to be quiet.”

  Graham waved her off, heading towards the keep. Annalyla watched him go for a few moments before returning her attention to the brittle hide in her hand. She very much wanted to unroll it and see what was really written on it, if anything at all, but she didn’t want to do it out here for all to see. She wanted to look at it privately, like a wicked little secret she wanted to keep concealed for the moment. Therefore, she followed Graham’s path to the keep because that was a place where she could find some privacy.

  She knew just the room.

  Tenner had already laid claim to the large chamber overlooking the bailey, with the view of the gatehouse and hall and nearly everything else. It had four big lancet windows that assured an excellent view of most of the complex, and Annalyla knew that Tenner wanted this chamber as his solar, a place for him to conduct his business as garrison commander.

  It was a chamber to the right off the entry and across from the room she’d suggested for Graham. It had big double-doors that were surprisingly intact even if they were a bit warped. Heading into the cold, dark chamber, she closed the doors for some privacy before moving to the windows where there was still a good amount of light filtering in.

  For a moment, she simply inspected the hide. It was cracked and fragile, and she carefully unrolled it, wondering what she was about to see. It could be nothing, or it could be everything Mawgwen said it was. It could be a fraud, but there was no way to know that. It certainly looked old enough that it could have been written two centuries earlier, but she truly had no idea if it was or not. She unrolled it completely and turned it around to the bare surface, seeing the faint etchings on the hide that were stained deep into the flesh.

  There was something there.

  Curiosity overtook Annalyla as she held the hide up to the light see what, exactly, had been written. The ink was faded, and brown, but it had stained the hide long ago, so much so that even the passing of the years couldn’t erase it. The print was legible and she could immediately see that the words were Latin. Having been educated in a fine house, Annalyla had been taught to both read and write Latin because it was the language of the church. In order to read one’s prayer book, one had to know how to read it. Most noble women knew Latin. Peering closely at the words, she began to read.

  Quidam amici – doleo propter passionem consummare. Ego quoque sum patiens. Hoc est quod fecit te fecit etiam valetudine mea. Permitto tibi. Mea uxor, mea Anyu, quia bene pati. Nos innocentes. Ego oro ad finem doloris tui. Si potui loqui, ut non dicam tibi quod sit in corde et lingua mea capta est natus.

  Nolite quaeso odio. Placere parcere. Obsecro per misericordiam, et miserationes. Ego autem non haec languorem vobis.

  Annalyla’s breath caught in her throat.

 
She read it three times in full, and then skimmed through it, picking out certain phrases. The truth was that the missive could have been written by anyone, and it could have addressed a dozen different situations with the message the words conveyed. But the signature at the bottom told her that, indeed, she had something authentic on her hands. The name signed at the bottom of the document said it all – di Paura.

  But it was more than that.

  The message didn’t contain a curse. She’d been clearly led to believe that it had, but it didn’t. In truth, what she was reading was horrific at best, considering what she’d been told about the legend of Baiadepaura – that a wicked lord and his wife had been killed for their evil deeds, and old Mawgwen had sworn that what was written upon this hide was a curse written by the lord himself. Something wicked, spit out of the fire-tipped fingers of a wicked man.

  But what Annalyla read was anything but wicked.

  Confusion swept her. Taking a deep breath, she read aloud in hushed tones.

  “Kind friends – I am sorry for your suffering. I, too, am suffering. That which has caused your illness has also caused mine. I suffer with you. My wife, my dear Anyu, suffers as well. But we are innocent. I will pray for your suffering to end. If I could speak, I could tell you what is in my heart, but God has taken my voice.

  Please do not hate. Please show mercy. I beg for pity and compassion. I did not bring this sickness upon you.”

  Shocked, she simply stared at the words. It sounded like pleading. Begging. The man who wrote it was asking for pity and compassion. He wasn’t slinging curses and hatred.

  Nay, this didn’t make any sense at all.

  “Di Paura,” she whispered. “God’s Bones… why did you write such a message? Is all not what it seems?”

  There was no reply to her softly-uttered question. She hadn’t expected one. But the more she looked at the writing, the more it began to occur to her that, indeed, perhaps not all was at it seemed. Perhaps the legend was about someone else for, certainly, it could not be about the man who had written these sorrowful words.

  It was a mistake.

  Perhaps the entire legend was a mistake.

  “But God has taken my tongue,” she murmured to herself, reading over those words. She thought hard on them. “The man could not speak? Surely… surely this cannot be the lord who roams these halls. It must be someone else. Clearly, this man is pleading for his life.”

  Only the wind answered. At least, she thought it was the wind. Something brushed up against her and when she glanced up, all she could see was a mist. It was like the fog that so often settled on these cliffs, but at the moment, there was no fog. The sun was still shining even though clouds were gathering.

  The air was clear.

  But there was a fog inside the chamber. Baffled, Annalyla watched as the mist seemed to take a shape. It all happened rather quickly, so there was no real time to react. But the mist undulated into the shape of a man and a ghostly hand reached out, brushing against her. The moment it touched her, it felt as if great shards of ice raced through her body. Everything turned cold.

  “Anyu equi.”

  Annalyla heard the words, but they weren’t spoken. It was as if someone had exhaled in her ear; the words were mouthed upon a breath, a hiss of something unseen and unknown.

  Anyu equi.

  Before Annalyla could show any fear at all, the misty man disappeared, fading away as if he’d never been. Once there, he was now swiftly gone, causing Annalyla to question what she had really seen.

  “Annie?”

  A shout on the other side of the door nearly scared Annalyla right out of her skin and she shrieked in fear, unable to stop herself. The door suddenly flew open and Maude was standing there, looking at her with a mixture of concern and fright.

  “Annie!” she gasped. “What’s wrong?”

  Annalyla was nearly stiff with terror. Her mouth was hanging open and it took her a moment to reclaim her wits as she realized she’d just seen a ghost. A ghost who put words in her ear!

  She waved her hand frantically at Maude.

  “Close the door!” she hissed. “Close it, I say!”

  Confused at the sense of urgency in Annalyla’s manner, Maude did as she was told. She closed the warped door and turned to Annalyla, greatly concerned.

  “Why?” she demanded softly. “Annie, what’s wrong?”

  Annalyla’s eyes were wide as she looked at Maude. She hardly knew where to start. “I…” she stammered. Then, she swallowed and started again. “Oh, Maude… you must look at this. It is written in Latin, but you must… you must read it.”

  Maude was puzzled. She went to Annalyla, looking at the hide in her hands and the faded writing upon the brittle yellow skin.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Annalyla realized that she was shaking. “The old woman, Mawgwen, gave it to me,” she said. “She told me that the curse of Baiadepaura is written on this hide and that, now, the curse belongs to me.”

  Maude looked stricken. “A curse!”

  But Annalyla shook her head quickly. “It is not,” she insisted, extending the hide to her. “Maude, she told me it was a curse, but it is not. I do not think she ever read it, ’else she would not have told me wrongly. I swear that it is not a curse. You must read it for yourself.”

  Maude eyed her; the woman wasn’t making a lot of sense, but she dutifully read the missive in the faded brown ink, reading it carefully not once, but twice. By the third pass, her eyes were wide with astonishment.

  “Who wrote this, Annie?” she asked.

  Annalyla’s gaze trailed to the signature at the bottom of the message. “It is signed di Paura,” she said. “The castle is named for the family.”

  Maude was becoming increasingly astonished. “This is a… a plea. The man who wrote this is begging for mercy.”

  Annalyla nodded, her hands at her mouth as she tried to regain her composure. “I know,” she murmured. “Mawgwen told me it was written by the wicked lord of Baiadepaura and that it was a curse. She said the very ghost that haunts these grounds is of the man who wrote it. But you have read what it says… clearly, it is not a curse. It is a missive written by a man pleading for compassion and understanding.”

  Maude nodded, looking back to the faded writing and read a passage that stood out to her. “If I could speak, I could tell you what is in my heart, but God has taken my tongue.” She looked at Annalyla again. “What do you suppose he means?”

  Annalyla shook her head. “Mayhap… mayhap he was born without the ability to speak,” she said. “Mayhap he was born without a tongue. Think on it, Maude; he could not speak, so when the villagers came, he could not tell them the truth. He could not tell them anything at all.”

  Maude pondered her reasoning, looking to the hide once more. It was as if she couldn’t look away from it at all. “But he could write,” she said. “That means he had some education, even if he could not speak.”

  Annalyla looked at her as if something great had just occurred to her. “Graham told me that the last lord of Baiadepaura was responsible for a plague that swept the area,” she said, pointing to the writing. “Wouldn’t you say that this message alludes to that? He says he is sick and so is his wife, Anyu, but he also says he did not bring the sickness. That would confirm that at least part of the legend was true – that there was a sickness.”

  Maude nodded firmly. “It must have been something terrible,” she agreed. “He asks for compassion and mercy. Annie… if this is the same ghost everyone speaks of, the one roaming the halls, what if he does not roam because of a curse. What… what if he roams for vengeance? Because he was wrongly killed?”

  A great burst of wind suddenly hurled through the chamber, from one end to the other, causing both women to shriek in both fear and surprise. Annalyla and Maude latched on to one another, terrified as an icy wind enveloped them. In fact, the wind caught the hide in Maude’s hand, tugging at it and, frightened, she let it go. It fell to the
floor, kicked around by the wind, but as the wind escaped through the lancet windows, both women clearly heard a breathy whisper…

  Anyu equi.

  As quickly as the wind came, it was gone. The women looked at each other in fear before Annalyla released Maude and bent down to pick up the hide. Her hands were shaking worse than before.

  “That happened before you came in,” she said, her voice quivering. “You heard me cry out; it was because something touched me and I heard those same words – Anyu equi. Maude, the ghost knows we are here. He knows we have read his missive!”

  Maude was pale with fright. “Will he turn his vengeance against us, I wonder?”

  Annalyla took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “I do not know,” she said. “I hope not. Mawgwen told me that the ghost is looking for his wife’s lost amulet, which was stolen from her when she was killed. The man who stole it was killed, also, so it is believed that the amulet itself is cursed. Mayhap, that is the true curse of Baiadepaura – the amulet itself. And mayhap, the ghost is not here to seek vengeance as much as he is here to reclaim the amulet that belonged to his wife.”

  Maude wasn’t so sure. “How could you know that?”

  Annalyla shook her head. “I do not,” she said. “But what we heard – Anyu equi – means Anyu’s horse. Even old Mawgwen said that the amulet is that of a horsehead. I have heard that the ghost is out to wreak havoc, or to curse anyone who sets foot in Baiadepaura, but Mawgwen told me he is looking for his wife’s amulet – and somehow, I cannot believe a man who would write such a sorrowful missive to be so full of hate that he is looking to wreak havoc upon anyone who comes to his castle. Mayhap, he is simply here because he wants to find what had belonged to his wife. It must mean a great deal to him.”

  The more Maude thought about it, the more it made sense. “So how do we find it?” she asked. “It has been nearly two centuries, from what I’ve been told. The amulet is probably long gone. I would not even know where to start.”

  That was very true. Annalyla was feeling some defeat even as she nodded her head. “Mayhap,” she said softly. “But I know someone to ask.”