Exile’s Bane

by Nicole Margot Spencer

  “You would deflower the heiress when you have no continued agreement with my lord?” cried the breathy countess, still in the pink house dress she had worn much earlier in the day. She brought up her fan and fluttered it prodigiously, her jowls wet with perspiration.

  “My betrothed beckons me,” Gorgon spit at her. “Get out of my way. Call off your watch dog.”

  “You will lay no hand on Elena until you are married.”

  The sword moved and Gorgon yelped, bright blood spreading over his fine coat.

  “I will do as I please. You, sir,” he snarled at Duncan, “are a dead man.” He gasped for breath. In the shadows, his long eyeteeth resembled viper’s fangs emerging from his beard.

  Duncan withdrew the sword, but watched for the slightest movement from the devious steward. He smiled his wide, white smile, no humor in it, inviting Gorgon to try, but the larger man turned, took the steps up to his third-story quarters, and slammed the upper door behind him.

  “What . . .?” I gaped at these two unlikely comrades.

  In one quick, shielding motion, Duncan’s arms enfolded me, a kiss touched the top of my head, and he stepped back, aware of the countess’ continued presence. Lips compressed, his face soured in intense dislike as he deferred to her.

  “The captain saw the steward follow you up the stair,” the stout countess explained, her overgrown eyebrows pushed together in disapproval. “He broke into a run, and I made him wait for me. I want no murder on my hands. In terms of your virtue, Elena, I felt it my responsibility to protect my husband’s interest in this matter.” She gave me a look of utmost discomfort, the fan flipping across her face again.

  “Of course. I should have realized.” I looked aside in chagrin.

  They accompanied me to my room where I was forced to say goodnight to Duncan with the countess’ stern glare over his shoulder.

  “Annie has been wanting to see you,” I said to Duncan, hopefully.

  “Not tonight. The morrow will do,” the countess croaked with a huff. “The captain must see me to my quarters as well. We are none of us safe from Gorgon now.”

  They turned away. I closed my door and stripped off my clothes in the dark. Sick with concern for my situation, I slipped into bed without tripping on the trundle bed or stepping on Annie. I snuggled beneath the cool sheets. My mind played over my options, but before any ideas or solutions could emerge, I fell into a deep sleep.

  The dream came, this time . . . to the sound of a sudden trumpet blast.

  “Ironsides away,” screamed a man from far beyond a tangled line of hedgerows that lined a ditch.

  Royalist musketeers scrambled out of the trees where they were meant to be a deadly sniper force to stationary mounted troops beyond the ditch. The foot solders struggled to retreat as the leather and thunder sound of a sudden enemy cavalry charge flooded their hearing.

  As the Parliamentary cavalry made their move, the Royalist Horse rushed into a long wobbly line, men still loading their charges and unsure of their positions, as though they had been taken unaware. They pulled up quickly in tight formation and at their captain’s scream, pulled their pistols and charged. But the Parliamentary troops were already over the ditch and among the Royalist musketeers, whose position between two opposing cavalry charges left them milling around in confusion. They fell back upon one another in useless attempts to get out of the line of fire.

  Pistols discharged, horses screamed, men cried, as the charge disintegrated into a monumental hand-to-hand struggle, the sound of clashing swords accentuating the enormous effort taking place in the smoke-tainted air.

  At the back center of the battlefield, the red-cloaked lifeguard troop clustered around their tall general. The commander’s arm went up and, as one, the elite force galloped to the Royalist right rearguard, where men stood in hopeless disarray. A bounding blur of white followed them.

  “Damn, do you flee?” a voice screamed. The tall commander twisted in his saddle to encompass every man within his sight. “Follow me.”

  My heart clenched, for there was no question as to the identity of that rousing voice.

  Prince Rupert led the second charge into the melee in support of his overrun right. Pistols went off in a unanimous shattering volley. Swords came out with a metallic clang, the tide of the battle a long uneven rush of push and shove, kill and be killed. Men hacked at one another in the heavy smoke. Horses screamed and went down. Men grunted, groaned, and strived. The earth, purged red, trembled with their effort.

  I awoke, my limbs shaking, to sore, reluctant muscles, and the dream’s slow seep from my mind. My head felt like it was stuffed with shifting rocks. Excruciating sunlight blasted through my eyes when I threw back my bed drapes. I clamped shaky hands to my head.

  Peg, brush in hand, and Annie watched me accusingly from the table by the doorway.

  “What?” I croaked at them.

  “I heard what the countess said when you came in last night,” Annie said in her provocative manner. “And Peg thinks—”

  “The countess is right, for once. Ye should heed her word. Gorgon has a black heart, remember?”

  “Thank you for asking Duncan in to see me,” Annie said quietly, looking uncomfortably at her hands, as though they were the last words she wanted to say to me, of all people, her perceived competition.

  “Are ye sick?” Peg rushed over to me, took my shuddering hands and held them against her chest. Her face changed, suddenly intent. “No, ye’re pale as death. A dream ye’ve had now?”

  I shook my head in a quick, painful negative. How could I ever explain to Peg what I had seen and felt on that monumental battlefield? Who I had seen would undo her.

  Peg made a sound of disgust, her troubled gaze still on me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On a sweltering Monday in mid-June, Prince Rupert and the Royalist Army returned to Tor House. Though light showers had cooled the house and its environs overnight, the day had come up unseasonably hot, muggy, and still. The humidity exacted its toll on the army in general, which took the better part of the day to set up camp outside the walls. Musketeer buff coats stood open and loose to allow their owners to breathe, most of the arriving cavaliers’ gear relegated to a roll behind their mount’s saddles. Horses were curried and let out to a well-earned, quickly enclosed pasture. Water was in high demand, house and personal servants making constant trips to fill the troughs and containers required by the army, which would have to be continued until soldiers could re-open the ditch from the spring they had used previously. The artillery finally arrived and settled closest to the walls, their horses and oxen joining the steeds already at pasture.

  I had avoided Gorgon since his most recent attempt to take me, and so, it was with a breath of relief that I stood beside the haughty countess and watched the prince, white Boye bouncing along beside him, the earl, and the prince’s lifeguard come through the inner gates. Relief and yet deep concern assailed me, for Duncan was out on a long-planned raid to Bury. Gorgon took full advantage of Duncan’s absence. He strutted along the top of the steps with a grandiose sneer, like the lord he considered himself to be.

  I greeted the prince, who wore a peaked, white-plumed helmet over his long black hair, a breast plate, his legs covered in leather greaves. Boye bounded up to Peg and then to me. I patted his tangled curly coat. I waved at Sergeant Burke, his scarlet lifeguard cloak and those around him uncannily familiar from my nightly dreams.

  “How have things gone?” my uncle asked with a genial nod. He took my hand, gently this time.

  “I ask that you note my care of the house. May I speak with you at the earliest possible moment?”

  His expression hardened and he passed through the receiving line and into the entry without response, the first to enter. At this, the countess and I looked at one another with widened eyes and raised eyebrows. It was proper etiquette for the prince to precede any lord of the land.

  Luckily for my uncle, the prince was either tired or preoccupied,
for he entered without reaction to the earl’s breach of conduct. This was not like the prince, who generally insisted on precedence, going so far as to physically remove men from his path. Nor was the prince in a mood to deal with Gorgon’s antics. He simply passed him by without greeting or comment and followed the earl into the great hall.

  Later in the day, I attempted to see my uncle to plead my case. He, the steward, and the prince were in deep consultation in the library and had been for many hours.

  “I must see the earl,” I demanded of Sergeant Burke, the apparent head of the lifeguards gathered before the entry.

  He immediately stepped within the library. Within moments, he returned, closing the door securely behind him.

  “You are not to return to this library. The earl’s words, my lady,” he said, unable to blunt the impact of their meaning. “Lord Devlin will summon you if he wishes to speak with you.”

  My face held rigid, I walked sedately away.

  Though the prince would moderate those things that affected him and his men, Gorgon was certainly in that room making demands. I stood in the hall beyond the private tower arch, fingers quivering against my lips. Doubts as to my position and my ability to retain my home assailed me, immediate and pressing.

  I turned into the short hallway that led to the central stair, that stairway closest to my rooms, only to find Thomas in my path. He leaned against the wall in easy unconcern, apparently waiting for me. With a haughty smile, he put out his other arm and gathered me to him.

  “You must not touch me.” I wriggled out of his embrace. “Nor do I want any more of your advice. You may no longer attend me.” This had to be done. His allegiance to Gorgon was reason enough.

  He jerked back into the wall as though I had slapped him. “Just that easily, you discard me for Duncan,” he accused me in an urgent upper octave. Hatred writhed in his face.

  “You are my friend,” I said gently. My heart went out to him, my long-time companion. “Just no longer my confidante.”

  He stared at me in contempt and tramped off.

  Disturbed by this scene, I returned to my quarters, where I felt safest.

  Soon thereafter, I was surprised by an early dinner delivered to the three of us in our rooms. With considerable irritation, I found myself and my friends excluded from the evening victory feast by the countess’ order, which was her right now that the earl had returned.

  The evening dragged on into night and I remained silent in my room, reading a poorly printed novel that Thomas had given me years earlier. The subject was a lovesick maid whining around a lord who ignored her. While I read, Peg left without explanation. I did not get through fifty pages before I threw the book down in disgust.

  Annie kept busy attaching a length of French lace to one of her old dresses. With little choice, I went to bed early, steeling myself for the changes in my dream, for the detail now had become unique and recognizable, the fabric of events tightening into place.

  But I did not dream and awoke fresh and eager the following morning. I was up and about the house early, anxious for Duncan’s return, and for Peg, who had not returned in the night. I had grave suspicions as to her whereabouts. I had not found her in any of her familiar haunts and was on my way to the watch-tower when beyond the great hall’s solemn darkness the blaring light of torches and muted sounds of departure drew my attention.

  I flew down the steps and across the hall to the entry, unable to muffle my heels on the great chamber’s slate floor. Through the open doors, a bright dawn radiated over the distant eastern hills. The early morning simmered like a banked fire, which did not bode well for the coming day.

  The countess stood atop the steps. Her horse, with its distinctive tooled side saddle, awaited her just beyond a wagon in the process of being loaded. A party of six Manx troopers waited closer to the gate. She was dressed in her stylish, wine-colored riding habit. Her dejected gaze followed two moths as they circled one of the entry torches, slowly decreasing their circle until one of them expired on a sudden sizzle of flame.

  “Good morning, Countess,” I said quietly.

  Moments passed. The two of us watched the expanding white light where the sun would soon broach the eastern horizon.

  “I feel for you, Elena,” Marie Louise said finally. She surveyed me with an unlikely look of sorrow and put a comforting hand on mine.

  That incredible act was so unlike her that I shook my head to clear away what seemed like imbedded cobwebs in my mind. But that reassuring palm remained. The warmth of her flesh quickly became sticky and uncomfortable in the heavy atmosphere.

  “What is happening here?” I asked, as Ipulled away.

  “I am off to the isle, sent away actually.”

  “Alone?” Only two horses were saddled. There was no sign of additional travelers. I studied the shadows beyond the steps for evidence of skulking footmen set to truss me up and throw me bodily onto the second horse or into the wagon.

  “No. I have my guard, a small convoy provided from among the steward’s men.” She hesitated, then blurted out “And Father Theobald. What better escort could I ask for?”

  “Father Theobald?” I slumped in graceless shock, my mouth hanging open. “But he has to be the only priest in Lancashire, if not in the northland.”

  “He is my personal priest,” she crowed.

  “Yes, he is.” I was not about to remind her that Father Theobald was also necessary for any marriage the earl and the steward planned to foist off on me. I struggled to keep a straight face. It struck me then that she knew very well what she was doing.

  In the rising light, the inlaid top of a large oak chest, dark with age, shone in its position where it had been shoved up under the wagon seat. I frowned and shook my head, for there lay the answer to Mrs. Lowry’s ongoing questions, and the fulfillment of my own suspicions, as to where the best linens had gotten off to. The chest had been my father’s. It had always held the earl’s linens and stood at the foot of his bed.

  “I might as well tell you,” the countess said with an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders. She pointed a pudgy, accusing finger at me. “As I promised I would do, yesterday I complained to Prince Rupert about Captain Comrie’s insubordination. The prince was respectful, though noncommittal. But later, despite our close relation, he questioned my lord’s ability to control his wife. At that time, Steward Gorgon apparently presented a sly case of female mismanagement against me, which my lord and the prince accepted without question. A hurtful betrayal,” she huffed, her old self for the moment.

  “Steward Gorgon can be a deceitful beguiler.”

  Servants scuttled around us with a heavy chest. The aroma of spices floated past me. Hopefully, she had not completely stripped the spice cabinet. She had certainly had the opportunity when she orchestrated the prior night’s festivities.

  “You have known this? That’s right, you knew him on the isle before the war. Why did you not warn me?”

  A soft boom sounded as the arriving chest dropped into the wagon bed.

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “Probably not.” A great sigh escaped her. She wiped at her face and neck with a lace-edged handkerchief, the aroma of spices mingling with her underarm odor. “Why is it so abominably hot? The sun isn’t even up yet.”

  “The isle will be cooler.” I regained my poise, lost by these multiple revelations, and studied her in genuine concern. “The earl has sent you away?”

  “Something has come over him, Elena.” She nodded slowly, her tight-lipped mouth turned down in dismay. “He did not rail against me, nor did he hit anything or anyone. He was perfectly calm and explained that he could not accept my overlooking his authority, for it had embarrassed him greatly. But he forgave me and insisted that he needed me safely away.”

  “Do you believe him?

  “Yes. I suspect the steward demanded my departure, though it seems to be what my lord truly desires. It is hard to tell, the earl is so serious, so distant.”


  “Could it be the push to York?”

  Yet another chest dropped into the wagon bed.

  “I cannot imagine it. He has often spoken of what a great honor it is to serve with the prince.”

  I nodded, though bitter experience had shown me that what the earl said was not necessarily what he meant.

  “Oh, here,” she whined. She dropped the household keys into my hand. “We held this house against besiegers, you and I, yet our word as women carries no weight.”

  The convenient we now.

  “You should know women are overlooked and underrated,” she went on, her voice rising. “That is one of the things that has always infuriated me about you, Elena. Your high opinion of yourself. You have never kept to your station in life, as though social rules could not possibly apply to you. Well, your self-love did not get you into the library yesterday, did it?”

  Surprise caught me unaware. My face went slack.

  “I needed to see the earl regarding my own matters,” I said. I rubbed nervous fingers together. “He told me I would be summoned.”

  “He will not see you. He told me so.”

  “You were there?” I asked, in the most genuine manner possible, not wanting to startle her out of her comfort in providing these facts.

  “No,” the countess said. She put her finger across her lips in petulant consideration. “The earl confided in me.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “After his accusations against me,” she said with a quick sideways glance of uncertainty. “ . . . Gorgon played the part of a great martyr, which antagonized the prince, for Rupert immediately set out to see to the disposition of his troops and did not return until the victory dinner. After the feast, my lord was exhausted and came to our bed.” And her desires fulfilled, if her earlier protestations were true.

  A dismissive flip of her hand and Marie Louise waddled out to her horse where two burly footmen waited to hoist her into the saddle. Already mounted, Father Theobald smiled sweetly at me, his face shining with otherworldliness. I had not seen him mount, or even approach. He had not come through the entry.