Surely the world was coming to an end, she feared as the panic and confusion around her began to seep into her too. Surely this was hell and the black bear outside their door was the devil himself come to call.
Axton de la Manse sat astride his mighty destrier just beyond the village gates, staring up at Maidenstone’s sheer stone walls. Black plumes of billowing smoke turned the sky gray and made his boyhood home a perfect picture of hell. But it was only barns and outbuildings he’d fired, and an occasional shop or storage building in a strategic location. Still, as the acrid stench curled up and drifted from the village to swirl around the castle walls, it was enough to terrorize the hapless villagers—and enough to strike fear into the heart of Edgar de Valcourt and his family of two-legged leeches.
“The villagers are trapped between us and the moat,” said Sir Reynold, Axton’s captain and most trusted man.
Axton nodded. “Keep the fires going until the bridge is lowered and the gate raised. And bring de Valcourt’s son to the front.”
“He has fainted and is barely alive.”
Axton shrugged. “He fought a good fight—for a de Valcourt. If he should die, so be it. But it will not alter the outcome of this day’s work.” That he felt a savage satisfaction at having struck the disabling blow to Maynard de Valcourt’s arm did not have to be stated. Axton and Reynold had fought many a battle together and they’d lost many a valiant compatriot in the process. But that was a knight’s lot in life. To fight a good fight and then die from your wounds on the field of honor was as much as Axton and Reynold had ever expected of life. As much as they’d ever hoped for.
Until now.
Now he wanted to live to a ripe old age, to put away the tempered steel of sword and dagger and the forged iron of mace and spear. He meant to win back his home this day, and though there would always be service to give his king—or scutage to pay in its place—he meant to settle down at Maidenstone, to bring what little remained of his family back to this place, and to regain everything they’d lost so many years ago.
Only they could not regain everything.
His leather-clad fist tightened on the reins and his warhorse danced in a nervous circle. Christ’s blood, but his father should be here at this moment, to savor the victory that had been so long in coming. Likewise his brothers William and Yves deserved to be here to share in this triumph.
But they weren’t here. He was the only man left in the family. That meant he must savor the victory for all of them, he told himself as the cart bearing the younger de Valcourt rumbled forward. Four times over he would savor his victory this day, once for himself and three times for his father and older brothers. Four times the drinking. Four times the feasting. Four times the wenching.
He smiled grimly at that. He’d been weeks without a woman. If he weren’t so accursedly weary he’d call for four wenches in his bed tonight, all at one time.
He stared up at the castle walls. Soon they must surrender. It was just a matter of time, and that knowledge banished all thoughts of having any women in his bed. The time was at hand. His victory—and de Valcourt’s fall.
“He has Sir Maynard—”
“He holds the young lord—”
“Sir Maynard has fallen into the enemy’s vile clutches—”
The rumor spread from ramparts to bailey and through the terrified crush into the hall where Lady Harriet barked orders from her place on the raised platform nearest the hearth. Sir Maynard was wounded—dying, being tortured—just outside the moat, lying in an open cart for all to witness his downfall.
They had only to lower the drawbridge—and surrender the castle—to regain their hero and be allowed to tend his wounds.
Linnea heard the rumors just as the others did, and her reaction was much the same. What little hope she’d had disappeared entirely. Without her brother and his army, there was no chance they might hold back the ravenous horde beyond the outer walls of the castle. As long as he was fighting somewhere on King Stephen’s behalf there had been a chance, slim though it might be, that Sir Maynard might somehow hear of their plight and come to their aid. They could have held out against a siege for a couple of weeks at least, if they’d had reason to hope.
But now their last hope lay crushed and broken in a cart outside the wall.
“Poor Maynard,” Linnea whispered as she clutched her sister’s hand.
“We must pray for him,” Beatrix whispered back, and dutifully Linnea followed her lead, bowing her head and praying for the older brother who’d never paid either of them the slightest attention, except when he wanted to blame his “accursed sister,” as he’d called Linnea, for something that was actually his fault. He’d been very good at that as a child, and she’d suffered many a beating or other punishment for something he’d accused her of.
But that didn’t matter today, Linnea reminded herself as she tried to concentrate on the litany of softly worded entreaties Beatrix directed heavenward. “Please, God, save our beloved brother. Save our home and family and people from the vile beast who assaults us now. Please, God, help us, your humble servants, in our hour of need …”
It went on and on, as did a hundred other similar pleadings, filling the tapestry-hung hall with a rising and falling hum until the double doors flew open with a crash. Then Sir Edgar himself staggered into the packed chamber and the prayers fell away to an absolute silence.
Had Linnea been frightened before? As she stared round-eyed at her father’s haggard expression, her fears increased tenfold. She’d seen her father angry; she’d seen him heartbroken, too. She’d seen him cruel and unbending, and she’d seen him recklessly drunk. But she’d never before seen him afraid. Never.
And she’d never seen him defeated.
“Clear a path for my lord. Clear a path!” the seneschal, Sir John, shouted, shoving and kicking people aside so that Sir Edgar could make his way to his family on the raised dais. A pall hung over the place, a chill broken only by the thrum of fear from beyond the solid walls of the stout keep.
Linnea and Beatrix clung together, just to the left of their grandmother. She still stood, leaning on her cane, as she watched her only son’s faltering approach.
For a moment Linnea was actually able to admire her grandmother. Lady Harriet had tormented her all her life. Linnea had never received a kind look or word from her father’s mother. Lady Harriet had lavished all her affection upon Maynard, and to a lesser degree, Beatrix. But there had been no affection whatsoever for Linnea.
Still, Lady Harriet’s steely temperament stood her in good stead this day. As mother and son faced one another, it was clear to Linnea who was the stronger of the pair.
“They have him … Maynard,” Sir Edgar confirmed in a whisper laced with agony. “They have him and he is broken … . Carried in a pig cart for all to see—”
His voice caught, and he covered his eyes with a hand that shook. Linnea’s insides turned to pudding in the face of her father’s emotional display and tears burned in her eyes.
“Poor Maynard. Poor Maynard,” Beatrix repeated, clutching Linnea’s hand with painful intensity.
It was Lady Harriet who stood tall and strong. “Who is this vile emissary from Henry’s decadent court that doth assault us in our own home? Who is this spawn of Satan that wouldst kill our sons and rape our daughters?”
Sir Edgar’s hand fell away from his eyes and he lifted his haggard features to meet his mother’s outraged face. Linnea strained forward to hear, not that she expected to know the name of their attacker. She and Beatrix were kept ignorant of all but the most benign aspects of any matters that dealt with politics. Anything Linnea knew, she’d gleaned from the castle folk or those villagers she’d come to meet during the few times she managed to steal away from her chores.
So when Sir Edgar said, “It is de la Manse—de la Manse—I saw the pennants,” she did not at once recognize the name.
“De la Manse!” Her grandmother’s eyes grew large and her gnarled fingers tightened
on her carved walking stick. “De la Manse,” she repeated, spitting the name out as if it were a curse. Only then did Linnea recall where she’d heard it before.
De la Manse. The family that had made their home at Maidenstone Castle before King Stephen bestowed it upon her father for his loyalty. De la Manse, the family that had supported Matilda’s claim to the throne all these years while living in Normandy. The family that would, no doubt, fight more viciously than any other family to reclaim Maidenstone for themselves.
“De la Manse.” The name raced through the rest of the hall, like fire rushing through a dry field. “De la Manse.”
“Silence!” Lady Harriet screeched, stamping her stick on the floor the way she always did when her furious temper overcame her. She glared down at the frightened people of Maidenstone, stilling them with the force of her personality. There was not a one of them who hadn’t borne the brunt of that temper at one time or another, and they all knew to heed her most carefully.
“’Tis imperative we save Maynard,” she stated, speaking to her son. “Come to my solar.”
When he did not at once respond, but only stared at her with a bewildered expression, she impatiently yanked at his sleeve. “Come along, Edgar!”
Linnea watched them depart, her grandmother leaning on her carved stick, but as rigid and determined as ever, her father slumped in defeat already. Behind them Sir John followed, wringing his hands in worry.
While she could sympathize with her father’s distress in the face of this disaster, there was something in her that wanted him to stiffen his spine, to show even half the mettle and fortitude of his aging mother.
“We must pray all the harder,” Beatrix whispered when the trio disappeared up the steep, shadowed stairway. But Linnea was of a different mind, and she easily disentangled her hand from Beatrix’s.
“I want to see,” she replied to her sister, slipping past the seneschal’s elderly wife and crippled son. She leaped down from the dais and picked her way across the now noisy crowd, heading toward the door to the yard.
“Wait!” Beatrix called out to her. “Wait for me!” But as Beatrix started across the hall, she was delayed at every step by the good people of Maidenstone.
“What is to become of us, milady?”
“Shall Lord Edgar save us?”
“Will our Sir Maynard live?”
At every interruption Beatrix stopped and tried to answer and placate the asker. No such questions had been thrown at Linnea. Though she was relieved at that, for she had no answers to give, a familiar longing nonetheless crept over her. A familiar loneliness. No one ever directed that sort of attention at her, only at Beatrix. Beatrix, who was beautiful and sweet and gentle with one and all. Beatrix, whose soul was purer than that of the normal person—because Linnea’s was blacker. As blessed with goodness as Beatrix was, Linnea was cursed with evil. And though she’d long ago become accustomed to her place in the family—with her lot in life—there were times, like now, when the hurt sprang unexpectedly over her.
Still, she could not blame her sister, for it was no more Beatrix’s fault for being born first than it was her own for being born second. God had ordained it that way, and she must resign herself to it—and fight all the harder against the dark urges that sometimes gripped her soul. Some were easier to contain than others. She could walk when she’d rather skip; she could concentrate on her chores when she’d rather daydream in the garden or learn to play the lute.
At times, however, it was nigh on to impossible for her to repress her true nature, like right now, when she knew she should stay here in the hall and help, but no force on earth could prevent her from creeping back up to the wall-walk.
With a last glance back at her sister, and a regretful half-smile, Linnea pushed open one of the immense oak doors and slipped out into the yard.
The smoke was worse than ever, an angry cloud that circled and settled, only to rise once more like a living creature, never quite content. Likewise a worse sort of panic now seemed to have descended over both the villagers and the castle guard. No doubt it was her father’s defeated attitude that had affected them so. But once Linnea clambered up a ladder to the eastern wall, then scurried toward the north tower, she saw the real reason for everyone’s despair, especially her father’s.
In the open ground between the castle’s narrow moat and the nearest buildings of the village a vast army had gathered. The supply carts that always trailed armies were now rolling up, and even as she watched, a showy tent of pure white canvas was raised with pennants flying from each of the four corners.
It was their leader’s tent, of course, this de la Manse. He made himself comfortable while he burned down the village behind him!
The poor villagers who had been left outside the castle were herded tightly together in a silent throng just below her perch. They were guarded by two mounted knights and several well-armed foot soldiers, but the mix of men, women, and children did not seem inclined to try escaping their captors. Linnea couldn’t blame them for that. Where would they go if they did manage to escape? How would they live?
But where was Maynard? she wondered. She leaned out between two stone merlons, searching the chaotic scene below. Maybe her father was wrong; maybe it was only a rumor—a false rumor.
Then her eyes locked upon a small, stake-sided cart, the sort of vehicle that livestock or produce might be hauled in, and she froze. Someone lay within the cart, a man sprawled on his back.
It could be someone else, she told herself, though her heart had begun painfully to pound. The fact that he was wrapped in the blue cape of the de Valcourts meant nothing.
Then the man stirred, rolling his head to the side, and even through the shifting gray of the smoke, Linnea could see his hair, his bright golden hair, so like her mother’s—and her own.
Her heart stopped in her chest. It was Maynard. Dear God, but it was true.
“You should not be up here!”
Linnea did not even turn at Sir Hugh’s harsh accusation. “He’s still alive!” she cried. “Do they mean to let him die there in front of us without helping him? Won’t they let us see to his wounds?”
Sir Hugh moved up beside her and squinted wearily at the unreal scene spread before them. “He is their negotiating point. We must surrender if his life is to be spared.”
Linnea swallowed hard and stared up at him. “And will we surrender?”
The answer came not from her father’s longtime captain, but from one of the pages who rushed up, skidding to a halt before Sir Hugh. “Milady says—” He paused to catch his breath from his fast climb up to the wall-walk. “I mean, Lord Edgar says to unfurl the white cloth.”
Linnea watched with widened eyes as Sir Hugh nodded, then signaled to a pair of guards who promptly hoisted a length of canvas cloth over the rough stone wall. She could not see it fall, opening as it went. But she could picture it, like the shroud around a dead body, unfurling to expose the corpse. Only it was her family’s life at Maidenstone which was dying and being buried this day.
At the sight of the cloth, an unsettling sound rose up from beyond the castle walls—half sob of relief from the captured villagers, half cheer from the marauders themselves. A rider burst away from near the pennanted tent, a youth urging his spirited horse through the other soldiers, carrying the de la Manse banner like a trophy before him. The red cloth seemed almost to glow in the premature dusk of the smoky sky. The black bears, rearing on their hind legs facing one another, appeared to move and claw each other as the fabric rippled above the nightmarish scene.
The boy rode up to the moat, then circled on his handsome steed, back and forth as the bridge slowly creaked down. At that moment Linnea was so consumed with anger and fear that she prayed the horrible lad would tumble off his horse—that he would fall into the moat and drown. The arrogant brat!
But though her tumultuous emotions focused on the boy, she knew he was not the one they must fear. Somewhere beyond him was this de la Manse. Somewhere
preparing to enter his former home was a man who must despise them all.
She stared at the white pavillion and tried to picture him, this man her father had bested eighteen years ago. It had happened before she’d even been born, yet she knew that one event was having repercussions in her life still. It would change her life forever.
A shiver of fear snaked up her backbone. The bridge was almost down. The smoke had begun to clear. Best that she join her sister and father now. Best that they all stand together while their lives fell apart around them.
Chapter 2
“They’re like dogs with their tails tucked ’tween their legs.”
Despite the conflicting emotions that roiled in his own chest, Axton couldn’t help but smile at Peter’s words. His younger brother’s excitement was palpable. This was the lad’s first experience with war, his first time away from home as his older brother’s squire. By rights he should have been fostered elsewhere, trained in his knightly skills and duties by someone else. But their mother had feared so for him. She’d not wanted him to become a knight at all, not since she’d already lost a husband and two sons to war.
But Peter was set on becoming a knight and he’d worn their mother down. Still, she’d prevailed in her choice of knights to teach him. To her mind, her youngest son would be best trained—and best watched over—by his only living brother, Axton.
Though an unorthodox approach, after almost a year with Peter as his squire, Axton was well pleased. The fact was, his younger brother was far better suited to a life of war than William or Yves had ever been. He was quicker and more decisive, and already displayed considerable skill with both sword and lance. Added to that, he possessed an uncanny ability with horses, from palfrey to destrier.
It had seemed only right for Peter to accompany him on their siege of Maidenstone Castle, the very place the lad should have been raised. And it had struck Axton as particularly fitting for Peter to act as negotiator for the surrender of the castle today. He was the only one of the four de la Manse brothers who’d never set foot in their ancestral home, for he’d been born during their forced exile in Normandy. More than that, however, Axton had known it would humiliate de Valcourt to negotiate with a mere lad, a lowly squire at that.
The Maiden Bride Page 2
