“I can re-open that door at your command, my lady,” Wallace muttered in his crisp baritone, still beside me, his bloodied sword at his side.
We turned into glaring light. Every torch was lit, casting grotesque shadows across the room.
Duncan hung by his bound wrists between two of the windows from a manacle embedded in a ceiling beam, his feet inches from the floor. The short chain of the manacle had been extended by a woven length of leather strapped to the manacle itself on the upper end and splinted into the stout jute rope that encircled his wrists on the lower end. His feet were similarly bound. Damp russet hair hung in his face. Eyes closed, mouth open, his strong chest rose and fell heavily as though recovering from a blow. A huge tear had rent his shirt, baring the red-gold nest that resided on his chest.
“Holy Mother of God.” My heart clawed at its cage deep within me. I rushed to him, knowing only that I must help him.
But Gorgon grasped my sword arm as I approached, his face livid with contempt.
“Oh God.” Duncan opened his eyes and frowned down his nose at me. “What are you doing here?” he asked in a throaty voice. “Wallace, I told you—”
“She would have none of it, Colonel.”
“So it was you who released her,” Gorgon said to Wallace, his face vivid with fury.
“It was. And your guard is being decimated beyond that door.”
Gorgon leered at Wallace and his drawn, bloodied sword. “Threaten me and Comrie dies horribly.” He shoved Wallace away.
“I stand and fall with you,” I said, looking up into Duncan’s battered face.
He set his jaw then, with a curt nod. My presence lent him strength, just as being near him made me strong, no matter the circumstances. We were one.
“How sweet. And fall you both shall.” Gorgon pushed me away, as he had Wallace, then glanced up at Duncan and slapped the flat edge of a dirk against the palm of his opposing hand. “Actually, Elena, you have arrived just in time.” He studied me, at a distance now, raw hatred burning in his face. “You can help me decide where to cut.” He motioned at Thomas with a jerk of his hand. “She can be quite dangerous with that sword. Take it away from her.”
“Found that out, did you?” Duncan said in a hoarse voice, looking down on us with a pained smile.
“Wallace’s, as well,” Gorgon said, though he had turned away.
Beside me, Wallace refused to give up his sword. Thomas was hardly prepared to fight for it. He considered the bloodied sword hanging from Wallace’s hand and shrugged.
My childhood friend pulled the sword from my lax hand with a quiet, “sorry,” and stood the weapon beside the door, as though he would rearm me when I left. Did he not realize that matters had progressed far beyond everyday manners?
Wallace’s hand tightened around his sword hilt and he swung it forward, but it was too late, Duncan’s life at risk. I caught Wallace’s eye and shook my head solemnly.
I should have gone for the monster the moment I entered the room. As it was, I looked around at the fire-shadowed, wrecked library. The book shelf was pushed over, books thrown everywhere, the chairs broken into pieces. Clearly, Duncan had fought. I considered abstractly how many men it had taken to bring him down.
Gorgon’s doublet was nearly ripped apart. His graying brown hair shone with perspiration. Wet curls hung in his face. The dirk in his hands, he stood before his captive in an attitude of introspection.
Duncan’s bag of gold, that gift from Prince Rupert, sat on the document table that had been moved off to the left of the strung up prisoner, like a work table, the shorter record cabinet extending it.
The latent brutality in the room was so far removed from my memory that it stunned me. Was this the same library? But it was, just wrenched apart, and put to a mindless, evil purpose. The reek of extreme male exertion overlaid by disturbed dust cut at my breath.
Duncan’s clothing was torn, his big riding boots had been removed from his feet and thrown to the floor beside the table. His pistol, his sword, and a knife lay in a clumsy pile beside the top-heavy boots.
Stark anger at Gorgon’s viciousness, coupled with my memory of Annie’s silent, thrashed body, roared through my veins, pounded at my temples, and enervated my limbs. I strode back to Gorgon and slapped his face so hard the sound shot around the room. Then, again on his other cheek, so hard my palms stung.
The dirk tucked away, Gorgon’s hands came up and pulled mine down by the wrists.
“For Annie, may you be damned to hell,” I cried, beating at his chest.
“What about Annie?” Duncan asked in a shrill rasp.
“I just found her. He has raped her brutally and murdered her in the process.”
I kicked Gorgon’s shins and he threw me to the floor.
Duncan cried out, a haunting, heart-rending cry. He jerked at his bonds. His face reddened in helpless anger.
“I do not want to cut your throat—” Gorgon bashed Duncan in the face with his fist. “—just yet. So keep quiet.”
I gasped for breath at Gorgon’s cold-blooded intent.
Wallace rushed forward, and, with a baleful glare at Gorgon, helped me up off the floor.
“She begged me.” Gorgon expelled an impassioned breath, unfocused eyes lost in memory. “Pleaded with me to take her. Then drove me on.”
Thomas’ face assumed a look of horror, the white in his eyes overrunning the brown. He bit at his lip.
“You son of a dog,” Duncan mumbled, blood running off his mustache, dripping on the floor beyond his feet. “Let Elena go. You have me.”
“I need her right now, but you are and have always been in the way.”
“Twas my pleasure.”
Gorgon’s face flattened into sour indignation. He turned toward the table in possessive pleasure. What had once been a modest document table was covered with old metal objects, Duncan’s gold set off to the side. A chill walked around my heart. They had all once been shiny metal, but were now black with age.
“What is all this?”
Gorgon picked up a tiny, vise-like mechanism. “This is a thumb screw. Very painful I am told, but persuasive. You can be delicate in your method, see? Just tighten the screw to the level of response you desire. Can be used on toes, as well as fingers, I suspect. I shall find out,” he mumbled with a glance at Duncan’s swinging form.
“You beast.”
“Actually my men found all these.” He pointed along the table at the various contraptions, most of them much larger than the one he held in his hand. He replaced it on the table. “These ancient torture devices came to light in a room off the dungeons.”
Appalled, I stepped away from Gorgon and his table of horrors.
“Your family’s dark past unveiled.”
“I do not believe you.” Yet reason told me it was true. Tor House’s history was replete with cruelty, Amilie the proof of it.
“I intend to try them out on this lovely specimen. I had thought to have my pleasure with him first,” he murmured. His thin tongue wetted his lips, and he ran a hand down Duncan’s pants leg.
“No, you will not,” Duncan said, hoarsely. He recoiled in disgust, which set him in agonizing motion.
“No matter,” Gorgon said blandly. “Mistress McGuire was quite satisfying. I would really rather try out my new trinkets.” He stroked one device after another and looked, not up at Duncan, who was surely his intended victim, but across the room at Thomas, who cringed, white-faced, against the only exit. “You have failed me,” he yelled at the cowering figure across the room. To my relief, he left his victim and prowled the room, his interest in Duncan overcome by sudden anxiety. “Fairfax gave me terms. His courier came in no more than a hour ago. He will have Tor House, one way or the other.” He grabbed Thomas from behind and slid his dirk under his chin.
“What terms, my lord?” Thomas asked in a strident upper octave.
“He agrees to give me my life, not yours, worm.” Gorgon sneered, then shoved Thomas away and continu
ed pacing, kicking books and shattered pieces of wood out of his path.
Thomas scrambled for the door, where he settled to the floor, purple panic flooding his face.
“He offers me my life and freedom in exchange for Tor House and the witch here,” Gorgon continued, with a mollified smile. He stopped before me. “You see? You are some use after all.”
“Why would they want her so badly?” Duncan asked in a cracking voice.
“A stake awaits her.” Gorgon’s teeth appeared, and his protruding eyeteeth underlined his hostile glare. “As she deserves.”
“Not while I live,” Wallace muttered beside me.
I placed a restraining hand on Wallace’s sword arm.
“You are insane. Let me at you. Man to man,” Duncan cried, though I could hear in his strained voice the tearing effort it cost him. He struggled with his bonds and whipped russet hair out of his face, but only succeeded in swinging uselessly around on his wrists. He groaned. “God, let me down. My shoulders are agony.”
“Why would I do that?” Gorgon sauntered to his victim in arrogant hostility. “When I can torture and eventually kill you in ways most pleasing to me. Much more satisfaction than just running you through.”
I sucked in a gasping breath, and even Duncan paled, staring down helplessly at his tormentor.
Since I had denied him, Wallace had been careful to keep his sword obscured at his side, but now he came up beside me, unsheathed sword clearly visible, and patted my quivering hands with his free hand.
Gorgon glared at him. He fingered the ribbed handle of the old battle axe that lay atop the record cabinet.
“You deceive yourself if you think your guard can overcome mine,” Gorgon said, with a scowl at Wallace.
“But they will, Warden. Your men have grown soft and slow.”
Gorgon chuckled. “We can just wait here for Fairfax’s army, which is due in the morning. Then, we shall see how long your men last, if they have not been overcome before then.” He returned his attention to his collection of implements.
Talk of Parliamentary arrivals and Gorgon’s intention to torture Duncan unnerved me. My gaze rose to the smoky stream of torch light above and caught on the wavering heat and trapped smoke that had accumulated in the heights of the room.
Death by burning. If Duncan died the horrible death Gorgon planned for him, I would welcome the fire. I shivered. In mute shock, I tried to think. How could I save him? How could I save us all?
I slipped my hand into the comforting crook of Wallace’s arm. Duncan yelled, and I looked down in time to see the blow coming. I screamed, but it was too late, for a moist thump sounded beside me and Wallace crumpled at my feet. A widening pool of blood quickly spread under his head.
A pathetic, terrified Thomas ran to my side.
Destitute, yet another shock slowing my reactions, I knelt beside my fallen captain, the man who had replaced my father in so many ways.
“No man turns on me,” Gorgon growled, deep in his throat, like the animal he was. He stood over us and smirked, self-satisfied, still clutching the blood-spattered battle axe.
In teary-eyed sorrow and disbelief, I tugged at Wallace’s sleeve, but his body lay like cold clay, his essence gone. My gaze fell on his sword, still at his side.
Gorgon roared with laughter and dropped the battle axe with a ringing boom. He turned back to his next victim and waggled the dirk in Duncan’s face.
“Let us start with a slash along the jaw,” Gorgon rasped, a shrewd smile spreading across his face. His fingers rubbed at the scar within his beard. “To match my own.”
Duncan spit in his face and received a blow to his ear in return, which set him swinging in a wild arc.
I cringed at sight of Duncan’s bloodied ear. In my horror it took a moment to register, but Gorgon had completely turned his back to me to gloat over his handiwork.
Priceless opportunity.
By his death, dear Wallace gave me the impetus and the means. I reached deep within myself for the strength. My breath came in ragged bursts. I grasped Wallace’s sword, stood up, and set my feet. Shaky hands clamped down on the unfamiliar hilt. I whipped the blade up over my head and brought it down with every shred of power I could summon.
He went down, his left shoulder cleaved through at the neck deep into his chest. Blood flowed as from a spring. I stepped back in relief, yet in horror at what I had done.
Thomas elbowed me aside and, feeling no such horror, stepped forward, pistol aimed at the writhing, hewn figure on the floor.
The gun went off with a crash.
Gorgon jerked and a red hole erupted over his heart.
Blood lay about us in pools. The cloying stench of it turned my stomach.
“Had to be certain of it.” Thomas stood wide-eyed beside me. His face was gray, hands shaking.
“Good strike,” Duncan croaked. “Cut me down.”
“Get up on the desk and do it,” I demanded of Thomas.
The sword I held dropped with a clang. I stepped over the fiend on the floor and retrieved the dirk from where Gorgon had let it fall in his death throes.
“No. I will not take him down,” Thomas shrieked. “He will kill me. Leave him where he is.”
I glanced around at him in disgust.
“I have something to tell you, Elena.” He motioned for me to come to him.
“Cut him down first,” I yelled, my patience with Thomas long over.
Thomas dropped the expended pistol, pulled his knife, and climbed onto the desk. He stepped over the bag of gold and, standing among the torture implements, reached high and cut the leather cording.
Duncan crashed to the floor and landed in a heap.
I ran to him, held him, crooning, then carefully sliced the cords holding his feet together. The dirk had a sharp blade and went through the heavy rope easily. The thought of what damage it could have caused to his face or body made me ill. The cords loosened. Duncan groaned and leaned forward in agony.
“Get away from him. I did as you asked. There is a truth you do not yet know,” Thomas railed. In fearfulness, he returned to the far side of the room, nearer the door.
I placed the dirk in Duncan’s bound, swollen hands. He nodded, and his fingers clasped the weapon.
Careful to avoid either bloody corpse on the floor between us, I approached Thomas.
“Elena, Elena.” He dropped his knife and grasped my shoulders in urgent appeal. “I had to wait until I was certain. Until this deed was done.”
“Yet you arranged a turnover for Gorgon?”
“It only appeared that way. I was working for us, you and me.”
Had he lost his mind? This, I had done to myself, for Peg had known of his doings and his instability for some time, and I had not believed her.
“Tell me of it.” I walked around him, my brows lifted in feigned interest.
He turned to face me, his back to my beloved.
“Witch hunters have condemned me and plan to take me to the stake. What else is there?” I asked.
“That was Gorgon’s doing.” A feral smile broke across his face. “But he is gone, thank God. We must flee. But now we can be married.”
“What?” The man was indeed mad. “Have you not heard what I have long tried to tell you?”
“I am the old earl’s son. His bastard, but nevertheless his true son.” His face cleared to a beatific glow. His fingers stroked my cheeks. “Do you remember the big chair in my mother’s house?”
I nodded. Perhaps he was what he claimed. It did not change what he was.
“It is the old earl’s chair. There were two of them, you know.”
“I cannot—”
“He delivered it, because he spent so much of his time there.”
I had noticed long ago that the chair in Thomas’ house was similar to the chair on the dais in the great hall, but had thought it merely a poorly wrought copy.
“He was very elderly when I was born. But he loved me, nonetheless. Why else do you th
ink I was raised at Tor House?”
“No wonder Uncle Charles banished you.” I studied his poor, misguided face. “You are his bastard half-brother.” This knowledge was clearly the source of my uncle’s fear of Thomas, the supposed foundling. Gorgon had known who he was and had used it against Devlin to get what he wanted.
“Yes, but I was smart enough to keep it to myself all these years. How long do you think I would have lasted if I had made my relationship known?”
“Not long. But, then, you did not belong at Tor House.”
“Yet it was my shot that finally killed the beast—” His face darkened into an imperious frown. “—with the pistol you so kindly supplied to me for protection.”
A thump sounded behind us, and then another.
“My pistol,” Duncan snarled. He was free and had on his boots. He meant for me to get out of his way, but I held my position before Thomas, grinning at him as though we were still childhood conspirators.
“Be serious.” Thomas rolled his eyes. “We are free, Elena. With our shared Roland blood and your jointure deed we can hold Tor House legitimately.” He put out a postured hand for me to place mine in his. “We will flee to the isle and be married, thereby supplanting Devlin and his countess. We will raise an invasion force to retake Lancashire—as Royalist or Parliament ally, it hardly matters which. Give me your hand. We can do it. You must abandon this barbarian.” He began to turn, hand outstretched, to demonstrate his words.
“I have told you this before.” I clasped his shoulders and held him in place. “I will not marry you. Even if you were a legitimate, great lord, I would never marry you.”
Thomas shook his head in stubborn denial, as though he did not comprehend my words.
My hands dropped away.
“She is spoken for,” Duncan growled, looming large behind him.
Thomas’ horrified gaze came around and rose. He squealed. Duncan jerked his collar up around his neck. But Duncan’s hand was swollen and clumsy, and the miscreant wriggled out of his grip. Thomas backed away, only to stumble over Wallace’s body.
Exile’s Bane Page 30
