“Stop it!” she ordered. “You’re hurting…”
Her words fell on deaf ears. Leather and mail scraped against her bare skin as the four brutes hauled her roughly from the water, ignoring her commands. And to add insult, all the while they struggled with their slippery prize, the Abbot loudly intoned some absurdity about herbs and witchcraft.
She shrieked in outrage, heat suffusing her face, as they set her naked upon the bank. While she stood, drenched and shivering, one of the men pressed a curved dagger to her throat. Another pinioned her arms behind her back, thrusting her breasts forward like an offering to the horrible man who continued to drone on and on about her supposed crimes, brandishing a silver cross and licking his lips like a wolf about to devour a rabbit.
And then he uttered something that struck terror into her soul.
“…proof that she bears the child of Lucifer himself.”
All too soon, before she could understand, one of the men clapped irons on her wrists.
“What is the meaning of—“ she cried, earning a quick prick from the knife at her chin.
Panicked, she glanced at Mary. Surely she could find empathy there. But Mary only stared at the ground, guiltily worrying her knuckles.
“You,” she breathed. It was Mary’s doing. Somehow Mary had divined her secret. And she’d divulged it to the Abbot.
“Gag her,” the Abbot ordered, pointing one bony finger. “I won’t have her casting some witch’s spell upon you good men while you do God’s work.”
They stuffed linen between her teeth to silence her. It was hardly necessary. She doubted she had the power to speak with such outrage and disbelief rattling her mind.
What was the Abbot saying—that she was a witch? Did he truly believe that? And if he did, did he have the power to do anything about it? The church reigned supreme in spiritual matters, aye, but surely the false accusations of one man couldn’t… Dear God—what would he do with her? What would he do with Garth? And what, for the love of Christ, would he do with her child?
She closed her eyes, hardly noticing the slap of branches against her arms as she stumbled barefoot along the leafy path.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.
Garth cursed mentally as he descended the stairs. He’d hoped to steal from the castle to Cynthia’s bathing pool without notice. But the great hall was brimming with people.
A handful of brawny knights wearing scarlet tabards muscled their way forward, hauling some burden he couldn’t make out. Probably a thief, he mused, or a poacher on Wendeville lands. As the men swaggered toward the center of the hall, the castle folk made way for them, gasping and falling back like an ocean wave around a formidable ship.
He frowned.
“My lady!” Elspeth shrieked suddenly from across the hall.
“Lady Cynthia!” Roger groaned from the dais, staring, then tearing his eyes away from the knight’s burden.
Fear catapulted Garth from the stairwell. He strode on wooden legs through the crowd of servants, the taste of dread bitter on his tongue. Please, God, don’t let her be… he prayed wildly, unable to even consider the possibility. Please don’t let her be…
His heart in his throat, he broke through the crowd and spun to face the knights.
For one brief moment, relief filled him like sweet nectar. Cynthia was alive—breathless, a little bloody, but alive. Thank God the knights had rescued her from…
His relief turned quickly to anger. Bloody hell—she was completely naked! Not one of the men who saw fit to call himself a knight had so much as offered her a cloak.
He opened his mouth to launch a scathing rebuke when Cynthia caught his eye. Her face was filled with despair—not shame, not disbelief, but despair.
Suddenly he realized the truth. These men were not her rescuers. They were her captors. And worse, behind them, looking on with morbid satisfaction, stood the Abbot.
He should have been fearful, but outrage took command. Garth drew himself up to his full height.
“Abbot!” he snapped, unmindful of the stir his dominating voice caused. “What is the meaning of this?”
The Abbot started visibly but recovered quickly enough. “I fear I bring unfortunate news.”
Before he could elaborate, Garth jostled a serving girl beside him. “Your cloak,” he demanded.
She sheepishly surrendered the careworn garment.
The Abbot took in a sharp breath. “I wouldn’t stand too close, Father Garth,” he warned, relishing every syllable. “You see, your lady, I’m afraid, is a servant of Satan.”
The castle folk gasped collectively, backing a pace further, then began to murmur speculatively among themselves.
“What?” Garth asked, incredulous. “What nonsense is this?”
He sneered and stepped forward to drape the cloak about Cynthia’s shoulders. The poor lass shivered with cold and fear. Her lips trembled. Her skin was as pale as vellum, and her hair hung in long mahogany strands that did little to conceal the puckered tips of her breasts. He clenched his jaw in ill-suppressed anger. Her hip and one thigh were badly abraded, and her cheek bore a small cut, clearly the marks of rough handling by the armored brutes. Damn, how he wished he had a blade in his hands.
“I warn you,” the Abbot intoned, “this woman is a witch. Approach her at your own peril.”
“That’s absurd! Lady Cynthia is no more a witch—“
“I should warn you also,” said the Abbot, holding up a subduing palm, “that your faith, Father Garth, must be held up to the light.”
“My faith?” What was the Abbot spewing now? Cynthia stood, wet, terrified, quaking before him. What did his faith have to do with…
“Surely you recognize the signs of possession. You’re a man of God, after all.” The Abbot lifted his bony shoulders and let out a whispery sigh of feigned regret. “And yet you did nothing. She used devil’s herbs, and you turned a blind eye. She directed others to break the covenant of Lent, and you looked aside. And now—“
“This woman has saved countless lives. Who gives you the authority to condemn her?” Garth demanded. But already his heart beat madly in his temples. Hell—if the Abbot knew about the herbs and Lent…
“The Lord God,” the Abbot announced dramatically, “gives me the authority. Would you challenge His will?”
At a nod from the Abbot, three of the scarlet knights drew their swords. The crowd scattered back with muffled shrieks.
Garth wasn’t afraid. He was furious. In fact, if he’d had that sword in his hand, he was sure he could best a whole army of knights, so angry was he.
But he didn’t. And it would do Cynthia no good to spill his blood across the rushes. Then she would be left without a champion. Nay, he’d use his wits, not the blade.
“You’d send three warriors against an unarmed priest?” he scoffed. Then he turned toward the people, the servants and nobles who had flourished under Cynthia’s care. “Do you believe these charges?” he asked. “Do you believe that this woman…” He gestured to her, and the hopelessness in her eyes made his voice crack. “This woman who’s stitched your wounds and set your bones, this woman who’s salved your cuts and birthed your babes, do you believe she could possibly be a witch?”
For a long moment, a quiet guilt settled over the castle folk. Surely they wouldn’t betray Cynthia. Surely they owed her more than that.
Then the Abbot broke the silence with cool confidence. “Does anyone here know of the existence of Lady Cynthia’s lover?”
The crowd looked uncertainly about. Garth scowled. What did that have to do with…
“Nay? Then how is it,” the Abbot mused, “that she carries a babe in her belly?”
The room rustled. Garth fired a glance at Cynthia, but her eyes were trained on the floor.
“Who,” the Abbot continued, “but the mistress of the devil could carry a babe in her belly without the benefit of a lover?”
A babe? Garth scarcely heard the mutters of surprise around hi
m. A babe? His babe. Joy swelled his heart for one brief moment before it faded like a falling star against a black night.
He locked eyes with Cynthia. Worry etched her features. But not for herself. For him. Because she knew what he would do. What he must do.
He stretched himself to his full height. His whole being trembled with the enormity of what he was about to say. It would ruin him. It would stain his family name. Worst of all, it would exile him from the church that had given him some small measure of solace and peace.
And yet, hadn’t he known it would come to this? From the first time he and Cynthia made love, the possibility had been there. With each passing week, that possibility turned into a probability. He couldn’t lie and say he’d never considered the consequences. Perhaps he’d never let those consequences surface, but in his heart of hearts, he knew very well what he was doing…and that this day would ultimately come.
In a strange way, it gave him a sense of relief. The decision was made for him now. His cassock felt like an old snakeskin, ready to be shed.
He raised a hand for silence from the castle folk. “I declare before all assembled here,” he announced, “that I, Garth de Ware, am the father of Lady Cynthia’s child.”
Elspeth bit back a sob, and Roger could not have looked prouder were Garth his own son. But Garth was certain they didn’t believe him. They likely assumed he sacrificed himself for Cynthia’s sake. For one triumphant moment, the Abbot looked very anxious indeed.
Then Cynthia spoke. “Nay.”
Garth looked at her in surprise. Cynthia was shaking her head, her face as cold and unyielding as stone.
“Nay. He is not the father.”
Garth frowned. What in the name of God…?
“He is not the father of my babe.”
His heart twisted. How could she utter those words? How could she betray him? Of course the babe was his. She’d lain with no other. He knew that, knew it…knew it as well as he knew the color of her…
Eyes. Her eyes shone softly toward him, two translucent gems of blue, in silent entreaty. Then he realized the truth. She was denying him, because she loved him. She knew he’d be ostracized from the church if he admitted to siring a bastard. She was protecting him.
The idea that she’d sacrifice so much for him left a choking lump in his chest.
In all his searching, all the hours spent in prayer, all the days copying the holy Scripture, all the weeks and months and years of enduring the poverty of the flesh to aspire to heaven, he’d never even come close.
This was heaven.
Not some black-haired wench twisting and writhing under his hips. Not the sweet plainsong of holy men echoing through a monastery. Not even carefree summer days spent frolicking in grassy meadows. Heaven was the love of the most precious woman on earth.
“Whether the babe is mine or not,” he said with more conviction than he’d ever put into a sermon, “I lay claim to it. And to the woman you so unjustly condemn.”
The crowd’s murmurs rose to a dull roar.
The Abbot licked his thin lips, his beady eyes darting about, and then raised both arms. “Silence! Silence!”
Garth furrowed his brow. “And if there no other way…” He clasped the wooden cross about his neck, jerking it downward to break the chain, and let it drop to the ground. “I renounce my priestly vows to do so.”
The bystanders gasped as a single being, and it took far longer this time to hush their amazed chatter.
Garth stood tall. He was free at last. Now he could rescue his lady. Now his life could begin.
The Abbot made a face that looked as if he’d been chewing green oranges. Then his eyes gentled unexpectedly, and he gave Garth a perfidious smile of pity.
“I fear, good people,” he said, interlacing his fingers piously before him, “it’s already too late. Obviously, Father Garth has been bewitched by your mistress. We must pray for him. Perhaps, once temptation is removed from his path and he is no longer under the witch’s influence, he will recover his wits.” He pointed a bony arm in the direction of the dungeon. “Take her below.”
“Nay!” Garth exploded as two guards dragged Cynthia toward the dungeon stairs. “She’s innocent! You can’t—“
“You poor, poor man,” the Abbot announced, shaking his head sadly. “She’s apparently ensorcelled you. I shall pray for your soul,” he promised.
“Nay!” Garth yelled, hurtling wildly after her. “Nay!”
The remaining two guards seized him by the arms and wrenched him backward. He struggled with all his might to escape their hold, but he was no match for the armed giants. The last thing he saw was Cynthia’s pale bare foot as she stepped down the first stair toward the dungeon. Then someone drove a mailed fist into his cheek, exploding stars across his vision that faded to leave a deep black canopy.
“There, that’s a lad.”
Droplets sprinkled Garth’s forehead. He flinched.
“Coming around now, are you?”
He opened his eyes. Elspeth’s lined face wavered above him.
“Clouted you good, he did. You’ve been sleeping most of the day.”
He sat up instantly. That couldn’t be right. It seemed as if he’d just watched Cynthia being dragged off.
“Here, have a care,” Elspeth chided, bracing his shoulders. “You’ll be wobbly as a new foal for a bit.”
He was dizzy. The last time he’d been cuffed that hard, it was for scribbling Latin exercises over his brother Duncan’s love letters, and that was seven years ago. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.
“I must go to her,” he said.
“Nay, you’ll be doing no such thing.”
“She needs my help.”
“She’ll be fine…for the moment. The last thing she needs is for you to get yourself locked up with her. You can’t help her from the confines of the dungeon.”
Elspeth was right, of course. But he couldn’t bear to think about his beloved Cynthia shivering somewhere in the dank bowels of the castle while he sat…
Where was he? A row of waxed cheeses hung from the low ceiling. Glazed earthen jars winked in the candlelight from beneath shelves of warped wood, where various cloth-wrapped bundles and bottles crowded together.
Elspeth answered his unasked question. “The buttery. Roger thought it would be best to keep you from beneath the Abbot’s nose for a bit…for your own good. As far as the Abbot knows, you roused and ran off.”
“I won’t hide here like a frightened rabbit while—“
“You’ll only endanger Lady Cynthia and your child if you—“
“My child.” He snapped his eyes toward her. “You know?”
“What?” Elspeth said with rueful snicker. “That the child is yours? Well, after all the tumbling the two of you’ve done in half the chambers of the castle, who else’s would it be?”
To his chagrin, Garth blushed. “I never meant to…”
Elspeth tugged the cassock up around his shoulders in a motherly fashion. “Truth to tell, lad, you never had a prayer, priest or not. Once Cynthia makes her mind up about a thing…well, you’d have to swim harder than a salmon upstream to resist her will.” She patted his hand. It felt strangely comforting. Then she clamped her lips together tightly. Her eyes watered. “But now she’s in the hands of the devil, and, will or no, she won’t wish to drag you into that hell. She’ll deny the babe is yours till they tie her to the stake and—“ Her voice cut off with a choking sob.
Garth slammed a fist against the wall. Flakes of plaster fluttered to the hard-packed dirt floor.
“I have to go to her,” he muttered between his teeth, scrambling to his feet. “I have to go.”
“Please,” Elspeth begged, bunching his cassock in desperate fingers. “You mustn’t. You’re her only nope now. But you’ve got to find another way.”
He took her by the shoulders and looked back and forth between her two brown, tear-bright eyes, his mind running quickly over ideas like a pen scribbling on parch
ment.
“The Abbot can’t sacrifice an innocent babe,” he said. “The church forbids it. The mark of the devil must be proved. The child must be born.” He ran a hand across his mouth. “So we have…”
“Six months, maybe seven.”
He gazed pensively over her head, past the jars and bottles, past the cheese, past the peeling plaster of the buttery walls, to a place in his mind’s eye that had grown dusty with disuse.
It was time to wipe away the cobwebs now, time to don the faded surcoat and rusty mail of the youth who once knew how to wield a sword, time to rub oil into the squeaky hinges of the war machine.
“Bring me parchment, ink, and quill,” he said, surprised by the authority of his own voice. “And a trusty servant who can ride like the wind. Nay, three servants.”
Elspeth nodded and hurried to do his bidding, wringing her hands and casting one hopeful glance backward before she left him in the buttery alone.
He ran a hand over his cheek, wincing as he found the tender place where the knight had doled him the blow. For four years, he’d turned the other cheek. It was time now to fight.
His brother Holden would be amazed to hear from him. But he’d come. Garth knew he would. And, with God’s grace, in time. If there was one thing in this world he could depend on, it was his brother’s love of a good battle.
CHAPTER 21
Cynthia scratched a mark into the stone wall with a fragment of beef bone. She’d salvaged the tool from her first supper in the dungeon—two months ago, according to her tally.
So it was October, then, the time for sowing peas and beans, for transplanting leeks and spreading cinders under the cabbages. There was so much she missed…the changing of the seasons, birdsong, her garden.
Most of all, she missed Garth.
At first, she’d tried not to think about him. Instead, she focused on the babe growing inside her. Her belly was as round as a plumped goose now. It amazed her that the child continued to thrive, heedless of the lack of fresh air and sunlight. She supposed babes were as stubborn and hardy as weeds, able to grow in the most infertile soil. But she longed to give this babe the healthy start it deserved. Her aching back and idle muscles and pale skin yearned to feel the restoring touch of nature. She was weary of this dank, dark place, where moss sprouted from every crack in the stones and it was cold all the time.
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