“Eventually, though I believe he suffered from double vision for several days afterward. Of course, once Seth sobered up, he felt terrible, or so I am told. He even had a fine sword commissioned for him by way of an apology.”
Martha frowned and settled back in her chair. “And what about you?”
“What? Did Father buy me a sword too?” He chuckled. “I am afraid not, sweeting, for he did not regret what he did to me. He never has, and ’tis unlikely now that he ever will.”
It would be for the best, perhaps, that he and Seth remained at odds with one another, for a fine sword could never begin to repair the damage his actions had wrought. Not all the well-stocked armories in the entire of the Norlands could do that.
If only they could.
“Well?” Apparently Martha was ready to hear the remainder of his sorry tale. But as Anselm looked at her, a pang of remorse pricked his heart. Despite all that he had done, after all the lies he had told, and all the abuse Martha had suffered at his hand, here she was, sitting at his bedside and looking kindly at him. He did not deserve such a friend, but for the rest of his days he would endeavor to do so.
“Are you sure you want to hear it, what with”—he glanced at her stomach—“the delicacy of your current condition?”
She snort-giggled in reply. “Me? Delicate? As if! Be serious, will you?”
“Very well, but I must first lubricate my throat.” He shuffled upright against the pillows. “Hand me that tankard over there, would you? Visiting the past is as thirsty as it is unpleasant.”
For three days and nights he remained in his narrow cell. Endless hours of inactivity during which he alternately raged and wept at his fate. Poor Isobel. What must she think of him? Did she imagine that he had abandoned her? The thought of her suffering was far worse than any of his own discomfort. At least he knew what was happening. What if she now doubted the constancy of his love?
The tiny seedling of hate that had taken root in his heart grew and strengthened with the passage of each hour. One day Seth would pay, he vowed.
His meals and slop bucket were delivered and taken away by silent jailers; sometimes it was Seth, at other times it was one of the village elders, men loyal to the chief. Anselm’s threats and honey-coated pleading proved equally ineffective. They did not listen, because they did not care.
Mother did not come. Neither did Vadim.
On the third day, Will, the old blacksmith, finally took pity on him and stayed long enough to listen to his babbled pleading. Through Will, Anselm learned that Vadim was slowly recovering from his head injury and was still unable to stand without assistance.
“Does he know about me? Please, Will,” Anselm begged through the cracks in the door. “Tell him where I am, that is all I ask. Please!”
“’Tis a terrible affair, and no mistake.” He heard the blacksmith sigh at the opposite side of the door. “As much as I love your Father, I believe he is wrong in this.” He patted the oak planks softly. “Aye, I will try to do as you ask. Leave it with me, lad.”
Old Will must have worked wonders, for as night fell, Anselm heard a curious scuffling noise from outside the door. At first he thought it might have been a rat, but then he heard a familiar and most welcome voice whispering his name in the darkness.
“Anselm? Are you awake?”
“Vadim?” He leaped to his feet and pressed his mouth to the door. “Oh, thank the spirits! Please let me out, I beg of you.”
“Ssh!”
“Hurry!” Anselm hissed, barely able to contain his excitement.
With much scuffling and thumping, at last the door creaked open, and in a trice, Anselm burst outside. “What took you so... long?” With one arm leaning against the wall of the smokehouse, Vadim was bent over, his whole body spasming as he retched and spat in the dust.
Desperate as he was to get to Mullin, Anselm could not leave his friend in such a pitiful state. “Are you still so unwell?”
Vadim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and managed a watery smile. “It will pass. Believe me, brother, I had no idea—”
Anselm touched his arm. “I know. Come. Let me help you back to the house.”
“No. To the privy. That is where I said I would be.”
Vadim was obviously in a much sorrier condition than he let on for Anselm had to almost carry him to the privy hut, he staggered and stumbled so. “How on Erde did you make it as far as the smokehouse?” he asked.
“On my hands and knees for the most part,” Vadim answered with a laugh. “I am only sorry I could not get here sooner.”
“Thank you, brother. I shall not forget this.”
“Yes you will, and much sooner than you ought.” The privy was not far away now. No doubt Vadim could make it at a stagger. “Go!” he urged him. “I can manage from here. Go and claim your girl.”
“Will you be—?”
“Indeed I will,” Vadim assured him, though his ghastly pallor made a mockery of his words. “Now hurry!”
Anselm nodded. Giving Vadim a brief, gentle hug of farewell, he turned and raced away into the night.
With the full moon to light his way, there was no need for caution. He ran until his legs burned almost as fiercely as his lungs, but he did not slow his pace. He could not. Isobel was waiting.
Up steepening slopes and perilous descents he hurtled, his breaths rasping harshly in the cool night air, but he did not stop. The need to be with Isobel governed his speed. Keep running. Every moment they were apart added another interminable moment to her tally of despair, and he could not bear to think of it. How alone and desperate she must feel. How used and abandoned. Curse Father for his interference.
Father! Merely thinking about the drunken boor set his teeth on edge. With effort, he pushed Seth to the back of his mind. He would keep until later. Isobel was all that mattered now.
When he at last reached Mullin, the village was in darkness. Not a light shone anywhere, and even the tavern was cast in shadows. He paused to catch his breath, bending over with his hands upon his thighs, waiting for his heart to slow from a gallop to a walk. One of the village dogs must have heard his gasps, for it gave a half-hearted yap before lapsing once more into the swaddling silence of the night.
Once his breathing had settled, Anselm hurried past the sleeping houses, making his way toward the mill. Like everywhere else, the home of his beloved lay still and silent. Only an owl on the wing heard his frustrated sigh. Damn! As desperate as he was to end Isobel’s suffering, not for anything would he disturb the repose of his angel. He must be patient for a few more hours and wait until morning. Despite this setback, he felt happier than he had in days. If he could not be in Isobel’s presence, being in the place where she lived was the next best thing.
Shivering as the sweat cooled on his skin, he wrapped his arms about himself, briskly massaging his goose-pimpled skin to restore his circulation. He should have grabbed his tunic from the smokehouse before bolting from Darumvale, but he had been much too intent on escape to spare a thought for practicalities, and now he paid the price of that thoughtlessness, for his shirt offered little protection against the elements, and the chilly air bore more than a hint of early autumnal frost.
Tilting back his head, he gazed at the vastness of the heavens. He might be alone, but he was far from lonely, for he had a million twinkling stars to keep watch with him, along with their sister, the moon. Despite the cold, he smiled. At least he was here, safely back in Mullin, and the next time he left this place he would not be traveling alone.
With this happy thought, he headed along the path that skirted the back of the mill. He needed somewhere to wait out the night, and Isobel’s secret hideaway seemed the best option. At least it had a bed, and the memory of their love would warm him better than any blanket.
The river rushed by, grumbling as it cascaded into the mill pool in a never-en
ding torrent of white foaming water before hurrying away, flowing deeper into the valley. The huge mill wheel stood at rest, and Anselm paused for a while to admire the shifting reflection of moonlight at the edge of the pond where the water was more tranquil.
Then he saw it.
Just beyond the broiling water near the base of the wheel, a flash of white caught his eye, billowing in the turbulent water like the sail of a ship. What was that? He squinted, trying to make it out. Certainly not a flour sack, the fabric was much too fine for—
“No!” The cry ripped from his throat for, in a flash of terrible realization, suddenly he knew exactly what it was. He raced for the water, his legs weak and trembling beneath him then, without stopping to think, he ran into the shallows and plunged into the bubbling water like an arrow, fast and sure. The bitter cold almost stopped his heart, and a thousand razor-sharp needles bit into his skin, but he barely registered the discomfort.
Oh, Isobel! Please, let it not be her!
It seemed to take forever to reach her, water filling his sobbing mouth as the cold slowly turned his limbs to granite. He made a clumsy grab for the billowing fabric, but his fingers were too clumsy with the cold, too numb to grip on to it properly. Weeping like a babe, he tried again, and this time he was successful. As he pulled on the shift, for a shift it surely was, his worst fears were confirmed, for he felt the telltale weight of the body it contained, lost in the depths of the dark water.
He kicked for the river bank, swimming on his back and dragging the corpse along with him. He still did not know who it was, and he dared not look, desperate to prolong the inevitable. But somehow his breaking heart already knew.
Not her. Oh, please, not her.
He repeated the words over and over like an incantation to counter a cruel spell. But as he reached the shallows, even this final pathetic vestige of hope was to be irrevocably shattered. Trembling and gasping, uncaring of the water that lapped about his thighs, he knelt in the shifting shingle and rolled the body toward him.
Isobel’s empty eyes stared back at him. Accusing him. Damning him to a life of loneliness and grief.
“No!” He thrashed his head from side to side as if by doing so he could deny the bitter truth. “No. No. No!”
Hauling the dead weight of her slender form into his arms, he cradled her to him, kissing her saturated hair and face and rocking her like a baby, willing her back to life. But deep inside he knew that her spirit had long since fled. There was no bringing her back. Not now.
Dead.
Such a little word. Though it only took a moment to speak it, within those few letters dwelt an eternity of pain and a world of utter despair.
Dead. Gone. Extinct.
No matter how many times he tried, he could make no sense of the words. How could he hope to comprehend the true enormity of their meaning or calculate the true measure of all he had lost?
His stomach spasmed, and he turned his head, vomiting the contents of his sour stomach into the water. Without bothering to wipe away the bitter spittle, he continued to embrace his beloved’s empty shell.
How could she be gone? Why? Why? He had expected her to be angry over his delay, cold even, for her to yell at him or grow cold, but this...
He could not think. Indeed, he could barely breathe.
With his face buried in the sopping cold tangle of Isobel’s hair, he detected the faintest trace of lavender, and in an instant, his mind returned to the last time he had seen her, smiling and lovely in the sunshine. He sobbed until his throat was raw. How could a scent survive when she did not? He inhaled deeply, willing his nose to cherish the memory, to keep it alive forever, for in the empty years that lay ahead, her scent would linger long after the clarity of her image had begun to smudge and fade in his mind.
Forgive me, my love. He clutched her hand, willing life to flow from his body into her icy fingers, to warm her again, but how could he when he was beyond cold himself? A shivering corpse that still breathed.
How long he sat there, weeping and shivering in the chill waters of the mill pool, he would never later recall. At some point, he must have carried Isobel to the bank for when daybreak came, that was where the villagers found them, lying together in the grass, Anselm cradling Isobel’s body in his arms.
Shocked faces surrounded them, crying out with dismay, and suddenly Isobel was no longer his. Gentle hands pried her from him so that the wise woman could check for signs of life.
Someone draped a blanket about Anselm’s shoulders, a simple kindness that required no words, and he huddled gratefully into its fusty-smelling folds. Then the swirl of voices began. And the questions. So many questions.
“Been dead for hours...”
“Drowned?”
“Such a sweet lass...”
The miller and his son were amongst the last to arrive, pushing their way through the crowd.
“Where is she? Let me see her!” A heartbeat later, the miller was down on his knees, poleaxed, pale-faced, and trembling in the grass. With a tenderness Anselm had never before witnessed in the man, John took his niece’s hand and clasped it between his large, doughy paws. “Isobel?” he whispered. “Izzy? By the spirits, no!” In that moment, Anselm almost felt a kinship with the surly miller who was to have been his father. In his own way, he had loved Isobel too.
Jack hung back, though, standing at the edge of the crowd, his pallor the color of ash. He did not speak, nor weep, nor tremble. He just stood there, gnawing on his fingernails as he looked upon Isobel’s lifeless form.
Someone helped Anselm to his feet, gently questioning him while the local crone continued to examine Isobel’s body.
“I j-just... f-found her... th-there,” he muttered through chattering teeth, too numb to feel, too empty to weep. “D-Dead and f-floating.”
Suddenly the crone looked up and uttered the words that would ultimately seal his fate and curse him forever.
“The lass was with child...”
What? Anselm’s knees buckled. He would have fallen if the kindly neighbor at his side had not held him up. Pregnant? How could she be with child already? They had only made love a few days ago.
“Three months gone, or maybe four.” The old woman placed a gentle hand over the unmistakable swell of Isobel’s belly. “Poor lass.”
Anselm gaped, unable to believe what his eyes told him, but neither could he deny the truth, for in death Isobel’s belly betrayed all of her secrets. How could he have not noticed her stomach? But it had been dark in the place they had lain together, and then he had been distracted by those dreadful—”
“And then there are these.” There was something obscene about the way the old woman raised Isobel’s shift, exposing the marks of her abuse for the world to see.
There followed a collective gasp as the horrified crowd realized what had been done to her. Heads quickly turned this way and that as if seeking the mark of guilt on the faces of their friends and neighbors.
“’Twas him!” Jack cried suddenly, pointing a trembling finger in Anselm’s direction. “He is the one responsible for this.” There was no mistaking the undiluted hatred in his eyes.
“No!” Anselm cried. “I would never d-do Isobel h-harm.”
“Then what do you call this?”
“Now then, lad.” One of the village elders, a doddering, silver-haired fellow, placed a hand on Jack’s quaking shoulders. “I know you are upset—we all are—but you cannot go about casting such wild accusations.”
Jack scowled and shrugged off the old man’s hand. “I have seen them together,” he cried. “We all have.” He glanced at his neighbors and received one or two quiet murmurs of agreement. “They were always sloping off together. Ask him. Ask anyone assembled here.” The increasing murmurs of assent seemed to strengthen the youth, and Jack seemed to grow taller where he stood, glaring poison at Anselm. “He forced himsel
f on her, and when Izzy told him she was with child, he killed her for it.”
“No! ’Tis not so.” Anselm protested. The cold and grief must have addled his mind as well as his wits, for his brain, usually so quick and sharp, could not formulate a convincing argument in his defense. “I love her... loved her.” He felt like a dullard, slow and stupid, but somehow he had to win over the crowd, and quickly, for several people were now looking on him with unveiled suspicion. “I was going to marry her!”
“Oh?” Jack actually laughed. “And what did your fine father have to say about that, m’lord?”
To his dismay, Anselm found he had no answer to give.
“’Tis exactly as I suspected.” For a grieving relation, Jack was remarkably composed, especially with his cousin lying there, dead at his feet. If anything, he seemed strangely triumphant, and Anselm felt too wretched to question it. “You abused her and disgraced her, and the poor girl took the only escape route she had left. What else was she to do?”
“No!” Anselm pinched himself, desperate to rouse himself from the woolly stupor afflicting him. “Neither of them is mine, not the child nor those bruises.”
“Liar!”
Feeble or not, he would have gone for Jack then and torn off each of his scrawny limbs, one by one, had the crowd not prevented him from doing so. They moved as one, forming a living wall about the miller’s son, blocking Anselm as he tried to push his way through.
Fear prickled up his spine. The flock had huddled together, excluding him from their midst. Suddenly he sensed the danger he was in.
The miller’s gruff voice acted as a temporary sedative on the increasingly hostile crowd. “Is it true? Did you hurt my niece?” he croaked, tears trickling from his eyes and down into his black beard in a constant stream. Within the space of a few minutes, the man seemed to have aged by several decades.
“No, sir. I did not,” Anselm answered quietly, willing the miller to believe him. “How could I when I love her so?”
Ironheart Page 18
