Exile’s Bane

by Nicole Margot Spencer

  Who would be coming in from the front entry? Had Gorgon gone out for a reconnaissance with his guard commander? My fear for Wallace’s safety made me wait, handing Kalimir off to a wide-eyed stable boy who stood so still he seemed to be holding his breath. Another clank echoed out from around the building. Kalimir began his skittish dance, the boy barely able to contain him. But the wiry youngster got a solid hold on the horse’s bridle and quickly led him back into the stable.

  The steed that came slowly around the corner was maimed and exhausted, head drooping, his rider in little better condition. I dropped my saddle bags, Wallace forgotten for the moment, for I did not recognize this bearded, beaten soldier. How had he gained entry through the front gates?

  I strode forward to challenge him with no weapon but my determination. Moving closer, my uncle’s face appeared under the layers of hair, dirt, and dried blood. My forward motion ceased, and I stared in shock.

  He wore no helmet, his fly-away hair plastered to his skull by the bloody remains of a scalp wound. His stench, that of stomach-wrenching filth and death, wafted my way. Though I wanted to cover my nose, I instead left my hand quivering at my side and breathed through my mouth. He was so gaunt it amazed me that he kept to his horse, much less supported the back and breast plates and the metal greaves that he still wore. His desperate eyes stared down at me.

  He dismounted and called to the stable boy.

  I followed the earl’s annoyed gaze to find the boy standing there, terrified of this specter in our stable yard. The stable hand finally came forward, but with reluctance.

  “Feed and brush him,” the earl demanded. “Clean his saddle and tack. Have him ready to go tomorrow early.”

  “You look in no shape to be going anywhere soon, Uncle,” I managed to say against the lump in my throat.

  He waved me away and staggered toward the house.

  “What has happened?” I cried. My knees turned to water. I remained planted where I stood. Did my uncle’s desperate arrival mean my dream had played out? “Are you all right? Where are your men, the prince?” Captain Comrie? I ached to ask. My breath came short, and my heart pattered crazily.

  He shrugged and shook his head in misery. “Where is Edward?”

  “Edward? You mean Warden Gorgon?”

  “Just get him.” His bulging eyes flashed at me in familiar resentment. “I need water. And food. Some ale or wine. Whatever you have.”

  Within the hour, I exchanged my riding boots for soft house slippers and arranged a small meal to be set out on the gallery sideboard. Mrs. Deane brought up a platter of sliced ham. The kitchen help was either busy or missing, a new, disturbing, and altogether too frequent occurrence, for Mrs. Lowry came in behind Mrs. Deane with hot bread and a small crock of butter. Ale followed.

  I filled my plate and took my seat beside the head of the table, facing the screens. The shock of the earl’s return had not left me, and I sweltered in the still heat, my body damp, my clothing wet where the dress hugged my bodice.

  Thomas came in silently and slid into the extra chair beside the hearth.

  “Have some ham and bread.”

  “I will await my lord’s appearance,” he said. He bent his head to study his fingernails and bit at his lower lip.

  Peg, her manner stoic and clearly expecting the worst, arrived with Annie, who was pale and shaky. They stepped aside, blond and auburn heads lowered, and the earl walked in beside Gorgon.

  To my unaccustomed eye, Devlin looked strange with his clean shaven face, his hair still damp, but clean, the head wound not in evidence. He wore a flowing black taffeta house robe. Devlin glared at Thomas as he passed him, his mouth turned down. He heaped a plate with a large portion of ham and two thick slices of bread and went to the far head of the table, near the east entrance to the gallery, where the countess generally sat. This arrangement surprised me. To leave the earl’s dinner chair to the warden was a mark of sublime favor.

  Gorgon went to the mounted basin beside the sideboard and washed his hands extensively, drying them on the towel beside the washstand. His left arm was still stiff and essentially useless from the wound I had inflicted on him a week or more ago. He did not appear to blame me, yet I dared not let down my guard. He would one day attempt to make me pay for the attack that had taken the use of his arm, however temporary that disability might prove to be.

  Mounted basins in the gallery and in the great hall had been one of his first demands as house warden. I had often wondered in the early weeks after his arrival why his hands remained rough and chapped. It had been a relief to know that it was a simple obsession with cleanliness and not a skin disease.

  With measured steps and a look of lofty intensity, which his bulk accentuated, Gorgon moved to the sideboard and knifed four large pieces of ham onto a plate.

  “I do not want him in the same room with me,” the earl spouted, pointing across the table at Thomas, still seated beside the hearth. He sighed and raised his eyebrows in seeming resignation. “Though I suppose it no longer matters.”

  With his good hand and without looking at him, Gorgon waved Thomas away, who stalked sullenly out of the room. He should have eaten, for now he would get nothing until evening.

  Peg and Annie took their accustomed seat with their backs to the screens. Gorgon took his lordly position at the head of the table, Annie on his right and me on his left. The chair beside me remained empty, its occupant currently exiled. It was just as well, for Thomas seated beside Devlin would have created a dreadful scene.

  To my embarrassment, my stomach growled hungrily. Eyebrows rose around the table. I quickly busied myself with my meal.

  “I would leave for the isle straight away,” the earl said, after long moments of frenzied eating. “But I doubt my horse would make it in this brutal heat. Besides, I have always enjoyed the regal comforts of this house.”

  Gorgon nodded sympathetically and Devlin smiled, his eyes brightening for a moment, unusual as that was. I had rarely, if ever, seen him smile.

  “We have discussed this, Edward, but for these ladies assembled here I must announce that . . . “ He caught each of our gazes one by one. “The Royalist Army has been ingloriously and soundly defeated.”

  “But how could that happen?” Annie cried, a quiver in her voice.

  “Though we had twenty thousand men and more,” Devlin went on. “The Parliamentary armies opposed to us were joined by the Scots. Between them they had almost two men to our one. They enveloped our center, and terror ran like a sweeping wind across our forces, throwing all into deadly confusion.” His chin rose in arrogant disdain. “Most fled the field. I alone gathered my men and fought until there was no man left standing around me.”

  I squinted suspiciously at my uncle, for it was Prince Rupert who had led the second charge and attempted to rally his men. I had seen it. But not even the prince could overcome the sheer panic on that battlefield. I clenched my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking. So it had come after all. And Duncan?

  Peg sat pale and patient, awaiting answers to the same questions that flooded my mind.

  Untouched by the tragedy of Devlin’s words, Gorgon studied the earl like an opportunist about to spring.

  “The North is lost to the King,” the earl pronounced in morbid satisfaction. “Our defenders lie slaughtered on the moor.”

  My heart sank into my queasy stomach.

  “Does Prince Rupert live?” Peg asked with an anxious frown. She pinned the earl with her piercing gaze, her high cheekbones standing out like dark slashes across her flushed cheeks.

  “I know not,” he said. He wriggled uncomfortably in his seat. “Men cried out that he was dead. And then later I was told he had been captured. Just the other day, a soldier told me the prince had survived and fled to the west. I have not seen him since we gathered for battle.”

  “Oh, he knew. He knew,” Peg whimpered, her eyes closed, tears squeezing out onto her cheeks.

  “And Captain . . .” The swelling
in my throat took my words, threatening tears. “. . . Comrie?” I finally finished, with a knowing glare at my deceitful uncle.

  Gorgon’s gaze whipped around at me, its intensity, like ripples of hate, underlined by his guttural growl.

  Annie looked up in fretful misery and nodded at the earl, seconding my query, her many-colored eyes flashing.

  “I told you,” he croaked, irritated, the old temper-bound earl back among us. “I did not see him. He was with the prince in the center rear of the battlefield and I was on the right flank, between us tide after tide of carnage.”

  “But would you not have seen their red cloaks?” I asked, my ire rising, well aware that Rupert’s lifeguard was imminently visible on that deadly field.

  “You know not of what you speak, woman.” He snorted and banged his fist onto the table.

  His attitude made me wonder exactly where on that right flank he had been. At the rear? Where the panic began?

  Since I had not been allowed into his presence when the earl returned from Liverpool and had been spirited away before he left for York, I had not seen him since the countess departed. There was no sign of the calm, forgiving man the countess had described to me. Had the countess misled me or had the earl misled the countess? Either way, the deception left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  At the head of the table beside me, Gorgon nodded at Devlin’s account of the disaster, unaware of me for once. He grimaced and his beard parted along his scarred jaw, his dismay shallow and meant to impress.

  “Edward,” the earl said in that odd addition to his vocabulary, “has convinced me that we must dismiss the servant staff and escape to the isle where we can mount an adequate defense against the attack we believe is in preparation.”

  I drew in a stunned breath. Shock drained away, and anger began its slow climb up through my distraught thoughts.

  Gorgon, with a devious, amused look, patted my hand, then took a hefty bite of ham.

  Peg and Annie looked at me from across the table in rising terror. I forced calm upon myself, motioned at the sideboard, as gracefully as my shaking hands would allow, and urged them to fill their plates. But it was only Peg, in distressed silence, who moved away from the table.

  “Yes,” Gorgon said, pleasantly. He looked from face to face around the table, as though counting his supporters. “We must move quickly. You are right to go on, Lord Devlin. They will need your able direction on the isle.” He leaned toward me and, with his good arm, reached behind me and caressed my back with a gentle rubbing action.

  I stiffened against this unwanted contact.

  “Elena and I shall follow as soon as I can close up the house.” He laughed in his cold manner, though he quickly retracted his arm and straightened in his chair. “Besides, it is best that Mistresses Carey and McGuire remain with us.” He leaned forward and patted Annie’s cheek. “. . . in the event their rightful caretakers have survived and come to claim them. They will keep Elena company.”

  Who did he think he was fooling? He cared not a twig for my friends. His smooth niceties further confirmed my belief that he had coddled the earl, literally pushed him out with a threatened attack on the isle, which I suspected was a ruse. If I had learned nothing in these last months, it was that Gorgon had always meant to hold Tor House, no matter how he had to do it.

  “In the end,” Gorgon said with his usual sneer. “I intend to leave nothing useful behind.”

  In that moment of shocked silence around the table, Gorgon’s gaze fell on me. His sneer softened, his mouth parted, lips quivering, and he expelled a breath of consuming desire, for his eyes burned with what he wanted of me. But, fearful that I might summon the ghost and her powers, he had been forced to restrain himself, something he was sorely unused to doing. How long that restraint would last was a matter of serious concern to me.

  Peg returned to the table, but merely stared at her plate. Beside her, Annie watched Gorgon in fascination. This was not the first time I had witnessed the girl’s fascination with the warden. She had clearly never had a breast mauled by the brute.

  “Follow with Elena or leave her behind.” The earl brought my attention back to the table with a disparaging motion. “I care not which.”

  My mouth fell open in shock and disbelief, though I had long known these were my uncle’s true feelings for me. If I could not benefit him, he apparently had no use or concern for me.

  “Huh,” Gorgon said, with a magnanimous lift of his bearded chin and an affected sniff. “Never fear, I shall bring her and take her to wife. She has many talents, Charles, as you will come to see.”

  Peg and Annie looked at me in questioning surprise.

  I smiled gracefully, though dread wound around me like a shroud. Deceit was rampant. My mouth went dry, and my stomach churned. Was there no one I could trust? The answer to that question left me bereft, for I had rejected Duncan just as surely as I had loved him. My limbs shook and tears threatened.

  “How many men did we lose?” I asked in a trembling voice, searching for some hope for Duncan and his prince.

  “Thousands,” came Devlin’s belligerent answer, after a moment of consideration. “At least five thousand, an entire moorland littered with dead men piled three high. Another, oh, at least two to three thousand wounded, thousands more captured. We were soundly beaten with heavy losses, our cannon captured, and forced to surrender or flee the field. As I have told you, I was lucky to come away with my horse and my life.” His dark eyes watered. “Tor House cannot stand against the unopposed tide of Parliament and their Scot allies. Worse than that, I have been warned of a pact among certain Parliamentary and Scottish generals to tear this house down, block for block.”

  “What?” I croaked. Anger spiked in my racing blood, strengthening me, my face suddenly hot. I leaned back in the chair and looked around at the comfortably furnished gallery, at my ancestor’s portraits lined along the walls, the screens, the chairs, the massive hearth that gave such comfort in winter. “Surely that is just rumor. Why would they—”

  “That is how much they hate the King—which is what this place stands for. This great house has been my life, Elena. I am inconsolable over this. Yes, someone other than you loves this fortress. Yet, if I cannot have it, I would rather the Roundheads and the Scots tear it down. I leave for the isle first thing in the morning. You ladies will follow with Warden Gorgon, as he has stated.”

  “You would abandon this house to certain destruction?” I cried in disbelief.

  Everyone at the table gawked at me, Gorgon and Devlin in amazement, Peg and Annie in alarm.

  “What would you have me do? Die defending it?” my uncle said snidely, as though such a thought was unconscionable.

  “We must leave while we can,” Gorgon said. He shushed me with a nudge at my arm and a calculating smile. Conspiracy blazed in his amiable gaze.

  Peg had not touched her food, and Annie had been too overcome to serve herself. Both near tears, they begged to be excused and left the gallery, anxious to get away from the impending doom the earl had brought with him.

  There was no reason to stay, and I followed, but instead of going left to our rooms, I turned right at the door and went slowly down the great stair, my mind lost in reverie. The uncertainty of Duncan’s fate tore at me. Yet my dreams had told me what I should have known all along. Over and over it had played out before me. Talented fighter that he was, his chances were slim, especially if he stayed with the prince, whom he would not abandon. My heart ached like a burning boil in my chest at the thought of him dead on that field.

  Quiet voices floated down to me from above. I looked up and stopped above the center point of the stairs, just under the gallery’s open lattice.

  This particular step, close under the screens at their starting point, was in a position where I could not be seen. Yet I could distinctly hear the earl’s words, as though he were right beside me.

  “He doesn’t know, does he?” said the earl, in a hoarse whisper.

  I s
topped, my slippered foot left dangling over the next step, like a statue along the stair banister. Interest piqued, I settled on the step.

  “No. From what I understand of Thomas’ ramblings, the old earl never told him,” Gorgon said from a distance.

  The sounds of clanking cutlery came to me. Another moment passed.

  “Had I known we would ultimately lose Tor House,” the earl murmured, “it would not have been necessary to dispose of that decrepit old man. He cried, you know, like a baby, on this very floor.”

  Who were they speaking of? My father, John, had never achieved the earldom. Which meant . . .

  “Nice to realize that, with him dead in his grave these two years past,” came Gorgon’s sardonic voice. A chair scraped across the floor.

  My aching heart thumped noisily in my ear. They had poisoned my grandfather? There was no other meaning their words could take. But what had the old earl kept from whom? And why would he bother to do so?

  “You might consider a similar fate for Thomas. He remains a problem best eliminated.”

  Stunned, I clasped my hand over my mouth.

  “He has been useful,” Gorgon responded, close to the screens. “With the loss of the house, however, it is true, his appeal degenerates. He is incapable—a fool and a braggart.”

  “Why, then, have you kept him around you? To keep me close to you, perhaps?”

  This last question made no sense to me. The last thing Gorgon wanted was the earl skulking close by.

  “In a manner of speaking.” Gorgon’s cold laugh sounded. “Let us call him insurance.”

  “Do you not think that a moot idea?” my uncle crooned. I could imagine his ironic half-smile, though I had no idea what he meant.

  “This will be our last night truly alone,” Gorgon said to the sound of crushed taffeta.

  Silence fell heavily through the lattice.

  “You will come to me?” the earl asked. He must have turned back into the room, for his voice trailed away.