Exile’s Bane

by Nicole Margot Spencer

  “His brother, Paul.”

  “Ah, the Simpson twins.” He expelled a long breath and nodded slowly.

  “Where is Denis?”

  “I have no idea.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It is hardly my fault that you cannot keep track of your own servants.”

  “You murdered that boy for your own pleasure.” I glared at him, daring him to deny it.

  “The answer to your question . . .” He splayed his hands before him on the table and wiggled his fingers, like a child caught cheating. “. . . is that he was available and willing enough.”

  “How can you say that? How could he know what you intended?”

  “Oh, I go through boys too fast, that is all,” he said, sounding bored. He threw up a hand, as though it did not matter in the scheme of things.

  “Have you no shame?”

  “Why bother?” His heavy hand came down atop mine. His other arm came around me in a forced cuddle. He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

  I did not move. He leaned toward me, and his beard scraped my face as he attempted a kiss. I thought of my sword and the unprimed pistol beside it in the linen chest, behind me. I turned my face away from his grasping mouth.

  “I have allowed you time to adjust, but now I want you,” he growled. He seized my chin and jerked it back so that I faced him again. His mouth pressed into a determined grimace. “You are mine. I hunger for you. The mere sight of you stirs my blood. Not to mention . . .” He buried his nose in the curve of my neck. “. . . your scent.”

  The chair scraped backward as I rose.

  “Ah, come,” he said. “Let us be at peace and enjoy this. And you will, I promise.” He pushed back and leaned forward to stand.

  In that moment of words, intent, and distraction with bringing his bulk up out of my slender gilded chair, I turned, flipped up the linen chest lid, and retrieved my sword. No time for simple threats, I took my one chance and swung the sword around. I put as much force as I could garner into a high, two-handed slice.

  I yelled and the sword sang. Gorgon gasped, retreated, and then groaned. Hands numb from the impact, I jerked back the sword, ready to try again. Blood flowed down over the torn sleeve where I had hit him high in his now limp left arm. The door banged open. Captain Wallace rushed in, rebounded a step or two at the sight before him, then dutifully held the bleeding warden at sword’s length. I lowered my own sword, suddenly so weary it was all I could do to stand.

  “Get out,” I yelled with everything left in me. It was all I could do to hold my weapon, I shook so hard.

  “Blood other than mine will flow for this.” Large hand clenched over his bloody wound, Gorgon glared at Wallace and pushed his way out the door.

  Wallace and I stared at one another in nervous wonder. Moments later, my only ally watched the door while I carefully cleaned my blade and returned it to the chest.

  “Are you all right, my lady?” he asked in concern.

  “I must get out of here. I have to think.”

  He bowed and opened the door for me, ready to accompany me.

  “No,” I said, a restraining hand on his sleeve. “I want you to leave Tor House immediately. Do not even stop for clothes. Find a place, anywhere, so long as it is safe from Gorgon. And stay there. Let me know where you are. I will provide for you.”

  “But he may be back tonight,” he said. He sucked in an alarmed breath. “I cannot leave you to his wiles.”

  “I shall ready the pistol and finish him if he dares return.” I opened the chest and withdrew Duncan’s fine weapon.

  “I believe you will,” he said in his old crisp baritone. “Let me charge that.” He pulled out the powder horn and the ball bag, then loaded the gun and primed the flash pan.

  He handed it back to me and I returned it to the chest, expecting no trouble any time soon. Gorgon was sorely wounded, as he deserved. He had been warned, after all.

  Wallace and I walked out of the house to the stables and I saw him safely off through the postern gates disguised as one of Mr. Biggs’ hostlers.

  I spent some moments with Kalimir, but he was fractious and not interested in my presence, so I went over to Amilie’s tower with the thought of ascending to her roof to safely reflect on what I would do now that I had surely made a deadly enemy out of the man I was sworn to marry.

  I entered the tower door, carefully closed it behind me, and felt my way up the stone steps.

  “Amilie,” I called out well before I got to the second floor, not that I expected an answer. “I need your help.”

  Rose-scented air whistled down around me. I threw up my hands in surprise and an invisible hand gently supported me up the stairs.

  “May I sit in your chair?” I asked, feeling as foolish as a child talking to an imaginary friend. I had meant to ask for entry to her roof, but something in me needed her attention.

  The room was relatively light from daylight pouring down the roof stair. The chair sat beside the bed, an old-fashioned, flat-bottomed seat with open, rounded arms.

  “Yes-s” soughed the breathy answer from right beside me.

  I carefully moved into the dim room and dropped down in the chair, my heart racing. Silence governed this tower, which was one of the reasons I had resorted to it lately. But now something unexpected confronted me.

  The air before me coalesced into a small woman, black hair hanging down her back, and dressed in an odd, terribly outdated dress. My eyes widened, for I could clearly make out the hearth ledge through her image. She smiled and reached for my hand. I froze, unnatural terror running up and down my backbone. Very pretty, with a little turned up nose, she was nevertheless no more than a living cloud of vapor with color and form.

  “Oh. I am so glad you have allowed me to see you,” I managed to get out, though it was all I could do to keep my seat rather than jump up and run away.

  “I feel your terror. And I s-smell blood. I wanted you to s-see me as I was when I lived, not as a ghoul, s-should I have to defend you.”

  “Oh, Amilie. You are no monster. You’ve been nothing but kind to me.” My fears melted away, though what blood had to do with anything or that she could even smell it gave me an uncomfortable jolt.

  “Of course,” she breathed. She seemed so sweet, so very needy. Her soft, cold hand settled on my very moist one. “But I s-sense—”

  At that moment, the lower door banged open and rough voices entered the downstairs level, Gorgon’s cold growl loudest of all.

  “Where are you, Elena?” he cried. Confused voices joined his call.

  “Are you up there?” he screamed, apparently realizing I was not on the lower level. “Come down. Or I will come up and get you. I am going to beat you for your sin against me. Come and take your punishment!”

  Boots echoed on the stair.

  Amilie went rigid. She put out her hand, palm down, and the stone floor began to vibrate under my feet. A sound arose above me, a scraping, roaring sound. The walls began to visibly shudder.

  “S-stay here, in this chair. No matter what happens. I will return.” Amilie’s ghost stepped away toward the stair, melted into a trailing, vaporous wraith, and disappeared up the roof stair.

  The sounds above got louder, rivaling the voices on the lower stair.

  “What is that noise?”

  “My God, the whole tower shakes.”

  Suddenly the roof stair, the landing, and the steps to the lower story were alive with a screaming whirlwind of swirling rock, small and large, interspersed with sinuous wraiths, screaming faces, reaching hands, dirt, leaf, and all manner of debris from the roof, as if a door to hell had opened and spewed out its filth. Men howled, some screamed. A yell and distant thump left no doubt that someone, or something, fell off the stairs to the dark floor below.

  “Holy God. ‘Tis a ghost. Look at that.”

  “I told you they called this the mad tower. No one believed me. Ow!”

  The loud clang of rock pelting metal reached my ears.

  Over the hideous s
hriek of the whirlwind, more men called out. Rushing boot steps, a frantic call for retreat, and, finally, the lower door slammed shut.

  Ghostly silence descended around me. I waited a long time and finally Amilie returned to me, again taking see-through human form as she approached the chair. A sheepish smile crept over her face. After a while, she escorted me to the roof stair, where I ascended to a spotless rooftop and spent the evening in thought, for I had to return to life with Edward Gorgon where I would have to submit to the man or kill him, and then, face the cruel consequences of that act.

  My return to the house was uneventful, though I carefully locked my door behind me when I came in. I rose early the next morning, anxious to determine Gorgon’s position after being severely tromped. Ready for the worst, I would fight to live and to remain at Tor House.

  I dressed and passed through the empty, quiet corridors of the house until I came to the gallery. With an expectant breath, I entered through the double doors to find Thomas slumped in a chair, deep in thought. He gave me a flat, suspicious glance. Even the maw of the cold hearth gaped back at me in a similar manner.

  I ignored him, and with the same dull resentment, picked at the thin venison on the sideboard, and took a bite of apple. The room was already warm and the air heavy.

  The tumultuous sound of many rushing feet sounded in the hallways behind and around the gallery. Boot steps rushed up the great stair, and Gorgon’s distinctive heavy gait pushed into the gallery. My back to the gallery entry, I froze in place.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said in a reasonable voice, as though nothing of the night prior remained in his memory.

  I turned into a battered face covered with bruises and tiny open sores, as though he had been thrown into a wine press with a load of river gravel. His left upper arm was heavily bandaged under his loose, oversized doublet.

  “To the great hall with you.” He waved a dismissive hand at Thomas. “We have guests.”

  Undoubtedly catching the growl in Gorgon’s voice, Thomas jumped up and sauntered out of the gallery.

  Gorgon bowed before me, his mouth turned down in bitterness.

  “Guests?” My face brightened, and I moved toward the screens.

  “My new guard captain just left to bring them through the gates. I will escort you down directly.”

  “Who is it?” I moved back toward him, my hand extended in query, wanting to know who had arrived, but he stepped quickly away, his right palm raised against me.

  “Your latent powers excite me, Elena. I had no idea. To find you aligned with ghosts and powerful spirits makes me fully appreciate your offer to complete our betrothal contract.”

  Aligned with a ghost, yes, and apparently a powerful one. So I took his comment as capitulation and pressed my luck.

  “You promise? There will be no beating, I assume.”

  “No beating. Nor need you have any fear for your honor.” His gaze dropped to my breasts. His keen eyes sparkled, and he chuckled. “I happily await our marriage bed. Your aggression excites me. Ours should prove a powerful union. No one can stand in our way.”

  At my look of stunned amazement, his mouth spread in a predatory smile.

  “You can control the elements around you, is that it? When you get angry?” He cocked his head to one side. “Well, that is not a bad thing to have in our camp, now is it?” His dark gaze came at me full bore, accepting no argument. “Your powers far outstrip my mother’s simple sight. Yet, she must have foreseen this, for her last words to me were, tread carefully where next you go. Ha, ha, yes.”

  A clatter arose, the sound coming through the gallery screens from the entry doors on the far side of the great hall below us. Our guests had arrived.

  We hurriedly left the gallery and descended to the great hall. Guards, many of them covered with bruises and suspicious lacerations, flooded out of the central hallway at the base of the stair. One guard had his arm in a sling. Perhaps it was he who fell—or was pushed—off the steps in Amilie’s tower the prior night.

  The rumble of distant thunder rolled into the room. The wall tapestries flapped to a sudden breeze that blew through the open doors. It smelled of rain. Ash whipped out of the unswept hearths and dissipated in a high gray swirl within the huge room.

  Across the great hall, to my utter amazement, her cloak billowing around her, Peg Carey walked wearily through the double entry doors, Annie, and Sergeant Burke close behind her, his red cloak flapping noisily. They looked travel worn and uncomfortable at sight of us.

  I raced across the slate floor, my shoes clacking like a broken windmill, passed a lagging Thomas, who seemed to have regained his aplomb, and threw my arms around my dear friend and cousin.

  Beside us, Thomas took a weeping Annie into his arms. After a stiff, formal hug, he released her and stepped back. Gorgon then gently gathered the sniffling girl into his massive embrace like a beloved doll.

  Peg’s cold view of Annie’s reception mirrored my own. But we smiled at one another and decided in unspoken unanimity to let it go as the excitement of the moment.

  It struck me then what a charlatan Gorgon was, for he had attempted to murder both of these women just as surely as he had attempted to murder me.

  “What happened?” I asked Peg, my face hot with excitement. This close to her, I could see tiny dirt lines that creased her normally immaculate skin, yet her face shone with confidence.

  “Prince Rupert sent us back, with the sergeant here.” She sighed and shook her head in seeming frustration, then extended a hand to indicate Sergeant Burke, who, in an attempt to keep from smiling broadly, merely wiggled his extensive mustache at me.

  I looked beyond the sergeant, but the hall doors opened on an empty wagon surrounded by three mounted cavaliers. My face fell. No Duncan.

  Sergeant Burke bowed, his suspicious blue gaze on Gorgon and his guards that formed up around us.

  “But why, Peg? I thought . . .”

  My words died away, those particular comments between us inappropriate for general discussion. Gorgon moved respectfully to my side, listening attentively, more interested in what Peg had to say than in her presence.

  “He claimed the advance had become too dangerous, that we had to come back.”

  Burke stepped forward, whisked off his big plumed hat, and bowed before Gorgon.

  “Warden, Prince Rupert asks that you care for these ladies with your very life. He will attend them personally after the coming battle. Treat them as you would the prince himself.” The way Burke delivered this request, it was more of a demand, undoubtedly at the prince’s instruction.

  “Certainly,” Gorgon finally said, low and with underlying meaning. He looked Burke over in antagonistic detail.

  They came with us up to the gallery, where we offered them breakfast. I did not even know if Gorgon had eaten. Nor did I care. Annie took a plate, two or three slices of venison, and a hard-boiled egg. She poured herself a tumbler of water and sat down at the table.

  “I cannot stay,” Burke protested, in his measured manner. “I have to get back. As it is, I will probably miss the initial charge.”

  My old dream of the prince trapped among the enemy and Duncan’s determination to prevent it washed over me. I shuddered.

  Gorgon mumbled sympathetic agreement with Burke’s position. The man could be a prince of civil formality when he wished to be. He sickened me.

  Peg hugged Burke and wished him luck. I pressed a linen napkin stuffed with the remaining venison into his hand, and Annie waved cheerily at him from her seat at the table.

  Gorgon and Thomas accompanied the sergeant to further impress him, I felt certain, and thereby the prince, with their sincerity. And to be certain of his departure, as well.

  “Have things changed? Did your fantasy prove false?” I asked Peg, after they departed the gallery. “Is he not what you expected?”

  She stood with her back to me, her hair dull and thick with dust and oil. Her piercing eyes flashed suddenly around at me, insolenc
e and pride lifting her chin.

  Where had she gotten that expression? And it hit me like an unexpected door in my path. The prince; it was his expression.

  “He is everything I knew he would be. Ye should have come with us,” she said in her old I-told-you-so tone of voice.

  “He has no faults?” I asked, surprised to the point of challenging her. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “He has a fault.”

  “One?” An incredulous smile—the first since she left—burst upon my face.

  “Oh, a vile temper. Never with me, thee must understand. But if he or his beliefs are insulted . . .”

  “This scares you?”

  “No, for he be right, every time.”

  “You are besotted,” I pronounced.

  Peg’s happy laugh sounded. It was the best medicine I could have asked for in my cheerless new life.

  Even Annie smiled and seemed pleased with herself. She had reclaimed some of the raw-edged naiveté that demonstrated her basic lack of propriety. But we would have time to deal with that now.

  It wasn’t until later, as we three strolled arm in arm toward our quarters that I truly understood what this arrival meant. I stopped in mid-stride, exultant.

  He had not accompanied them, but Duncan would be back, if for no other reason than to retrieve his cousin.

  Chapter Twenty

  The following Friday, I tightly wrapped the bread, meat and fruit I had prepared and placed them in my saddlebags with a sealed bottle of ale. I did this every other day, sometimes daily, ostensibly taking my horse out for exercise. Of course, the abandoned cottar’s hut just inside the wood on the Sheffington Road, Wallace’s hidden lodging, was my destination.

  I spent very short periods of time with Wallace. He was anxious and unhappy in his inactivity, but thankful for my continued support. Kalimir enjoyed these trips, and Gorgon had not missed me, for I was careful to be gone during his morning meetings with his guard commander.

  The stable yard, which was normally a busy place at this time of day, seemed unusually still. Eager to complete my trip before the unbearable heat of mid-day, I raised a booted foot toward my horse’s stirrup when the eerie silence accentuated the loud clopping of shod horse hooves on the stone road beside the house. A rhythmic clank followed, that of a sword knocking against armor.