Temptress

by Lisa Jackson

  “Why not?” Morwenna demanded. “Nygyll needs to examine the man immediately.”

  Isa didn’t reply. Her feelings against the physician were strong.

  Morwenna ignored them. “Have the wounded man brought into the keep, where it’s warm. Mayhap he can be saved.”

  “ ’Tis unlikely.”

  “But we shall try.” Morwenna’s gaze swept the corridor to land on the door of a room now unoccupied. “Take him to Tadd’s chamber.”

  “Nay, m’lady,” Isa said swiftly. “ ’Tis unsafe . . . only a few doors down from you.”

  “Did you not say he is near death?”

  “Aye, but you cannot trust him.”

  “You, too, think he’s a spy?”

  Isa nodded, her wrinkled face becoming more so as she thought. She glanced at Morwenna, worried the hem of her sleeve with gnarled fingers, and then looked quickly away.

  The hairs on the back of Morwenna’s neck rose. “There is something you’re not telling me,” she said and remembered the feeling in her dream, that she was being watched from unseen eyes. “What is it, Isa?”

  “There is trouble brewing, something I sense but cannot yet envision.” The old woman suddenly gripped Morwenna’s forearm and her eyes were instantly dark as midnight, her pupils dilated as if she had, indeed, just experienced one of her premonitions. “Please, Lady,” she whispered, “ ’tis your safety I fear for. You must not take a chance.”

  Morwenna wanted to argue but couldn’t. Too many times in the past Isa’s premonitions, her visions of the future, had proved true. Had she not declared that the potter’s wife would have triplets, all boys, and die with the birthing of the third one? Hadn’t Isa predicted the lightning strike in the bailey at Penbrooke, and within a fortnight, the tree in the bailey’s center had been cleaved and charred from a bolt that narrowly missed Morwenna’s brother Tadd? Then there had been the mysterious death of a merchant’s wife. Isa had sworn the woman had been poisoned, and when all was said and done, it was proved that her husband had, indeed, forced the poor woman to drink hemlock because he’d discovered that she’d been bedding the miller. For most of her sixty-seven years Isa had been able to see things others could not.

  “Fine,” Morwenna said. “See that the man is brought into the great hall, where it’s warm, and have someone . . . Gladdys, open the hermit’s cell in the north tower. ’Tis large enough for a pallet and has a grate for a small fire. Get the fire started and sweep out the vermin. Then make certain that the man’s wounds are cleaned and that the physician examines him before he’s moved into the tower.”

  Morwenna pretended not to notice the shadow of distrust that passed through Isa’s clear eyes at the mention of Nygyll, the castle’s physician. Isa and Nygyll had never gotten along and barely tolerated each other. Nygyll considered himself a man of reason, a practical if God-fearing man, while Isa believed in spirits and the Great Mother. Nygyll had been with Castle Calon for years, while Isa had moved here with Morwenna less than a year ago.

  “It may be too late to save the injured man,” Isa reminded Morwenna.

  “Then send someone for the priest.”

  There was another nearly imperceptible tightening of the corners of Isa’s mouth. “The priest will not be able to help—”

  “Did you not say the wounded man was near death?” Morwenna reminded her. “He may be a man of faith. Should he not have a priest’s blessing and prayers if he’s about to die?” Morwenna didn’t wait for an answer. “Send someone to find Father Daniel. Have the priest meet us in the great hall.”

  “If you wish.”

  “I do!” Morwenna snapped.

  The hunter took off at a fast clip and Isa, too, hurried away, presumably to carry out Morwenna’s orders. Her long cape billowed behind her as she hastened to the stairway, where, before she disappeared, she glanced over her shoulder at Morwenna, her old face knotted in worry. She appeared to want to argue further, but she reluctantly descended.

  “By the saints,” Morwenna whispered once she was alone again.

  Sometimes Isa seemed more trouble than she was worth. Considered odd by most who met her, she had helped raise Morwenna and her siblings. A faithful servant to Morwenna’s mother, Lenore, during her lifetime, Isa was now steadfastly at Morwenna’s side.

  “Fie and feathers,” Morwenna muttered as she walked deeper into her room, tossed a mantle over her head, and stepped into her shoes. She’d just made her way out of her chamber, Mort at her heels, when a door creaked open and Bryanna poked her head into the hallway. Sleep lingered in her blue eyes and her curls were a tousled dark red mass around her head. “What’s happening?” her sister asked around a yawn. Though sixteen and nearly four years younger than Morwenna, the girl often seemed a child.

  “A wounded man was found near the keep. ’Tis nothing,” Morwenna said, hoping to stop the tide of Bryanna’s ever-rampant curiosity. “Go back to bed.”

  Bryanna wasn’t to be easily deterred. “Then why all the noise?”

  “Because of Isa. She is certain the man is a spy or enemy or something.” Morwenna rolled her eyes. “You know how she is.”

  “Aye.” Bryanna stretched one arm over her head, but she seemed no longer to have slumber on her mind. “So what is to be done with him?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Questioned and fed. Mayhap cleaned a bit.”

  Morwenna nodded and kept the news to herself that the man was about to expire. What purpose would it serve to tell Bryanna about his condition? Until Morwenna had seen the man herself, she decided she would seal her lips. As it was, gossip about the wounded warrior would travel lightning fast through the keep and Bryanna wasn’t known for her ability to keep a secret.

  “What kind of man is he? Another huntsman? A soldier? A merchant attacked by thugs?” Bryanna’s imagination was beginning to run away with her. “Perhaps Isa’s right. Mayhap he’s a spy, or worse. A henchman for—”

  “Stop!” Morwenna held up a hand and cut off her sister. “I know not who or what he is yet, but I will as soon as I speak with him.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Morwenna sent her a look guaranteed to intimidate even the boldest of men. “Later.”

  “But—”

  “Bryanna, let the captain of the guard question the man, determine if he is friend or foe, allow him to be seen by the physician and get some rest, and then if he awakens and I think it’s appropriate, you may see him.”

  “You think it’s not safe?” her younger sister challenged as her eyes sparkled with excitement.

  “I don’t know,” Morwenna said, realizing belatedly that she’d used the wrong tack, that she was only whetting Bryanna’s appetite for adventure. Exasperation tainted her words as she said tersely, “We’ll wait. That’s all.”

  “But—”

  “I said, that’s all!”

  “You cannot tell me what to do!”

  Morwenna lifted one black eyebrow, silently challenging her sister. “I have no time for this.” She turned quickly and made speedy tracks along the hallway, leaving her younger sibling pouting as she leaned against the doorframe of her room. Morwenna felt Bryanna’s rebellion seething behind her but ignored it. Let the inquisitive girl stew in her own juices. So what if she was angry? Bryanna was always getting into trouble.

  Just like you, her conscience reminded her.

  “Bother and broomsticks!”

  She heard voices floating up the staircase and scurried down the two flights of steps. Smoke from recently lit rushlights touched her nostrils, and the aromas of sizzling meat and baking bread wafted from the kitchen and through the labyrinthine hallways of the keep. Servants were scuttling from one chamber to the other, carrying laundry, cleaning grates, sweeping stairways. Candles were being replaced and lit, and they offered a bit of warm light on this chill winter day.

  As Morwenna reached the first floor and stepped into the great hall, the main door was thrown open. Several soldiers haule
d a stretcher upon which a man, or what was left of him, lay unmoving.

  Morwenna’s breath stopped at the sight of him. Though she’d warned herself that he would be difficult to gaze upon, she hadn’t realized how fiercely he’d been attacked. His face had been pulverized and was now swollen and bruised, blood crusting over the wild gashes upon his cheek and forehead. Dirt and leaves clung to hair as black as obsidian, and his eyes were mere slits cut into puffy lids that were varying shades of purple and green.

  His clothes were matted with soil and blood, his tunic slashed to reveal his bare chest and recent bloody gashes that were still raw.

  Morwenna’s stomach turned over.

  “By the gods!” a horrified voice behind her whispered. “Is he alive?”

  Morwenna’s heart sank. Turning, she spied her sister standing on the stairs between the first and second floors. Bryanna had tossed a rust-colored tunic over her chemise but hadn’t bothered with shoes. Standing in her bare feet, she shivered and gaped at the scene in the large room below. One hand was raised to her mouth; her eyes were round, her skin as white as alabaster.

  “Of course he’s alive!” Morwenna said.

  “Barely,” one soldier muttered. “Poor bastard.”

  Bryanna’s face twisted. “He looks horrid. Dead.”

  Morwenna snapped, “Didn’t I tell you to go back to bed? Leave us!”

  Having seen enough of the gruesome display to satisfy her morbid curiosity, Bryanna rapidly made the sign of the cross over her chest and then raced barefoot up the stairs as if the devil himself were chasing her.

  Good! Morwenna was in no mood to deal with Bryanna’s histrionics while attempting to calm everyone.

  The great hall, so recently asleep, was teeming with activity. The castle dogs, too, were unsettled, the old bitch pacing and growling while Mort, sensing a chance to best the beast, stole her spot near the fire.

  Servants hurried in with fresh towels and steaming pots of water. Others lit candles and cast worried looks at the wounded man. Sheeting was laid upon a table near the fire where two boys were busily adding wood and pumping the bellows.

  The man on the stretcher moaned though his eyelids didn’t so much as flutter as he was transferred onto the table. Who was he? Why had he been attacked so violently? He whispered something, a word, and yet it was indistinguishable.

  “What’s going on here?” Alfrydd, the steward, strode into the room. He was a scarecrow of a man, his tunic always hanging oddly from his scrawny shoulders. His voice had a nasal goose-squawk quality to it and he was a worrier who sometimes put Isa to shame, but he was loyal and true, a brave heart trapped inside a skeletal body. “Oh, m’lady,” he added quickly as his gaze fell upon Morwenna. “Excuse me, but I heard that a prisoner had been brought up here rather than to the dungeon and I was uncertain that this was a wise decision.”

  “ ’Twas mine,” Morwenna said, motioning to the wounded man, “and he’s not a prisoner.” Again the man tried to whisper something, but it was unintelligible.

  Alfrydd nodded as if in agreement, but he couldn’t hide his shock when his eyes landed on the bloodied, beaten piece of humanity laid upon the table. “Has the priest been called?”

  “Aye, and the physician,” she said and then added impatiently, “Where the devil is Nygyll?”

  As if he’d been waiting to hear his name, the physician burst through the outer door, bringing with him the scent of fresh rain and a gust of wind heavy with the promise of snow. A tall man with an easy gait and an air of arrogance, he walked purposefully toward the table where the wounded man lay. Isa was on his heels, taking two steps to his one. “Isa claimed there was an emergency,” he said. “Ah . . . I see. Who is he?”

  Morwenna shook her head. “We know not.”

  “Friend or foe?” Nygyll was already cutting away the rest of the man’s tunic and leaning near, listening to his rasping breath.

  “Again, ’tis not known.”

  “His clothes are those of a poor man.”

  Yet he was suspected of being a spy. How odd . . .

  “Where’s the hot water?” the physician demanded, and a serving girl set a pot on a nearby table while another placed a stack of towels near the steaming water. “I’ll need a mash of yarrow.” His eyes narrowed on the first serving girl. “Send someone to the apothecary.”

  “I’ll go,” she said and hurried away, her skirts billowing.

  Carefully Nygyll began to clean the wounds, first tackling those that seemed the most life threatening.

  Again the main door opened, and this time two men talking low entered in a rush of biting winter wind. Alexander, captain of the guard, a muscular man with curling brown hair, a square jaw, and eyes as brown as sable, was leaning down and talking to Father Daniel, the keep’s priest, who appeared as weak as the soldier seemed strong. No matter what the season, the priest forever remained pale, his skin nearly translucent, his eyes an icy blue, his red hair thick and wiry, his expression dour. He was a man of the cloth who seemed to take the burden of being God’s messenger as a heavy, sometimes unbearable load. His eyes met Morwenna’s for but an instant, and then he quickly looked away.

  Before the door could close, Dwynn, the half-wit, slipped through. A man of twenty-odd years, he’d been cursed from birth with the mind of a child. He caught Morwenna’s eye and sidestepped around the priest, slipping out of her direct line of vision. She’d never understood his fear of her, for she’d tried to be kind to him, but he seemed to want to always avoid her, which, this morn, considering her foul mood, was just as well.

  Isa, watching the physician tending to the man’s wounds, sidled up to Morwenna. “We cannot move him”—she jutted her bony chin toward the beaten man—“at least not to the hermit’s cell in the north tower as the floor has rotted through. Also, the cell in the south tower is occupied by Brother Thomas, so that leaves us with the dungeon or the pit or—”

  “The drawbridge pit? The dungeon?” Morwenna said, shaking her head vigorously. “Isa, no. We will not treat this man as our enemy. We will put him up in Tadd’s chamber with a guard at the door if you feel unsafe. There is no reason to assume this . . . man, near death as he is, will do us any harm.” She studied the older woman’s worried eyes and noticed Dwynn, ever nearby, fiddling with the ragged hem of his sleeve. How much of the conversation did he really understand? Though everyone claimed him to be an idiot or a half brain, Morwenna often wondered if his dull-wittedness was a ruse. “Come, let us give Nygyll some room to work.” She pulled Isa into an antechamber beneath the stairs. “Why does Sir Alexander think the man to be a spy?”

  “I know not,” Isa whispered.

  “But you believe it.”

  “ ’Tis not just that, m’lady,” Isa said, lowering her voice, her eyes not meeting Morwenna’s.

  “Then what . . . Oh, by the gods, don’t tell me it’s one of your visions again.”

  Isa’s thin lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. “Do not mock me, child,” she said, reverting from the affable servant to the nursemaid who had raised Morwenna. “The things I’ve seen have proved true and you know it as well.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Most times. Did you not notice his ring?” The old woman’s eyes had grown dark.

  “What ring?” Morwenna asked, a growing sense of dread invading her.

  “The gold ring the wounded man is wearing. ’Tis a ring with a crest. The crest of Wybren.”

  Morwenna’s heart seemed to stop. The castle walls closed in on her. “What are you saying, Isa?”

  The old woman’s eyes were sharp, the wrinkles around her lips more pronounced. “That the man who lay near death in the great hall may well be Carrick of Wybren, and the ring he wears is cursed.”

  “Cursed? Carrick? By the gods, Isa, have you gone mad?” Morwenna demanded.

  As if he’d heard the name, the man cried out in pain, and then deliriously he whispered, “Alena.” Morwenna froze. No . . . it couldn’t be. But the raspy voi
ce again murmured in desperation, “Alena . . .”

  Morwenna’s heart dropped as she heard the name of the woman who had become Carrick’s lover, his own brother’s wife. Alena of Heath, younger sister to Ryden of Heath, the man to whom Morwenna was now betrothed. Oh, God. She felt sick inside and felt as if the eyes of everyone attending the wounded man had turned to her.

  “I knew it,” Isa whispered, but there was no hint of triumph in her voice. Her lips tightened as she looked from the beaten man to Morwenna. “I believe this man is indeed Carrick of Wybren,” she said softly, her old fingers worrying the stone that was suspended from the cord she wore around her neck, “and if he is the cursed traitor, the murderer, may the Great Mother save us all.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “This cannot be,” Morwenna said, feeling faint and chiding herself inwardly for her weakness as the wounded man’s desperate cry for Alena echoed through her brain. “Carrick . . . Carrick is dead, along with the others.” Suddenly chilled, she rubbed her arms and repeated what she’d believed to be true. “He and his family all perished in the fire.” As did his lover, Alena.

  Isa shook her head, and her face was lined with worry. “There was talk that he escaped. A stableboy claimed he’d seen Carrick ride off on his favorite steed a short time before the fire was discovered.”

  “Idle gossip,” Morwenna insisted, though her confidence was waning.

  “Charred remains. Only identified by the pieces of clothing and jewelry that weren’t destroyed. All that was left of the family members were blackened corpses that were little more than bones.”

  “You were not there.” Morwenna’s stomach turned at the picture Isa painted. Her head was pounding, her pulse thundering in her ears. Could it be true? Could Carrick truly have survived and was he now lying half-dead in her keep? Nay, she would not believe this nonsense. ’Twas only an old woman’s deepest fears.

  Isa let out her breath slowly, as if sensing Morwenna’s disbelief. “See for yourself, m’lady.”

  Morwenna did just that. Without waiting for Isa, she made haste to the great hall, where the crowd was yet gathered around the beaten man. The servant had returned with a mash of yarrow and Nygyll was carefully applying the healing herb to his patient’s wounds. The priest moved his hands and muttered prayers over the stranger’s beaten body, which was all the more visible as he’d been stripped of his filthy, blood-soaked clothes. His chest was bare, black hair swirling over flat, thick muscles to arrow downward and disappear beneath a sheet draped over the lower half of his body. Dark impressions, bruises, and ugly bloody gashes covered the taut skin stretched over his torso, shoulders, and arms.