LordoftheKeep

by Ann Lawrence

  Nicholas began to pace. “My father swore that never would you have lied. He insisted you left William alive and another killed him. He said there was no time…no more time to discover the truth as you had been found guilty and were to hang today.” He took a breath; Emma’s face had drained to an ashen white. He took a step forward to catch her should she faint, but she gestured sharply and he withdrew.

  “He said he could not bear your death. He said he was going to confess to the murder.” His voice became even harsher. “He said he had lived his life.” Nicholas had trouble continuing. The magnitude of his father’s sacrifice had kept him awake all night; his own fear for him was a painful thing.

  Tears welled and fell from Emma’s eyes. How could she still cry? Yet the tears continued.

  “I want to see him.” Her voice was hoarse.

  “Of course.” Nicholas shrugged. “Come.” He extended his hand.

  She ignored it. She wanted to shun him. There was no comfort in him. Just cold, hard accusation. ‘Twas obvious to her he blamed her for Gilles’ death.

  She blamed herself for Gilles’ death.

  As she rose, she wobbled on legs barely able to support her.

  When they left the Duke’s prison cells, Emma stepped into dazzling sunshine. It must be near midday! She looked about in wonder, drawing to a halt, causing Nicholas to stop and turn back to her.

  “The pain,” she moaned. “I know the moment. I woke, thinking it deep night, but I see it must have been dawn. I know the moment he died.” She could not speak again, her breath sharp and cold in her chest. She clutched Nicholas’ fingers tightly as she staggered at the knowledge. She no longer noticed if he held her hand or paid her any heed.

  Nicholas led her to a small chapel in the lower crypt of the Duke’s palace.

  A priest, the one who had shriven her the night before, met them. Nicholas handed her off to the man and strode away without a word. The priest clucked and patted her hand. “‘Tis his lordship’s wish that he be laid to rest beside his father in the family crypt at Hawkwatch Castle. I was preparing him to be taken. Come, my lady.”

  For a moment the name did not register. Then she realized that she had become a lady, and that the man she was to view was not just the love of her life, not just her soul, not just her reason for life itself, but also her husband. It took both of the stout priest’s arms to support her into the dimly lighted chapel.

  The man lying silently at the fore of the altar looked like a marble effigy in a great cathedral. She walked as if in a trance to his side and reached out her hand.

  He was cold.

  Grave cold.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Gilles appeared merely asleep. The priest had covered him to his chin with a coarse blanket to hide the mark of the hangman’s noose. Despite her wish to find him but slumbering, she knew there was no question—Gilles was dead. The hand she held to her cheek was icy. She traced the scar that crossed the back of his fingers, knowing it well.

  She turned to the priest. “I want to be alone.” The man patted her shoulder gently, bowed assent, and withdrew.

  Roland watched from the curtained alcove of another side chapel. He did not want Emma to do anything harmful to herself, and he prayed that Gilles would not choose the next few moments to stir back to life. Roland suspected that such a happening would be too much for Emma.

  As he watched, she drew the blanket from Gilles’ body. Roland turned away, his cheeks flushing hot as Emma bent over Gilles’ naked body. He turned his back, leaned against the chapel wall, and fervently wished they’d not promised Gilles to keep their plans a secret from Emma. In truth, his promise to Gilles held him silent whilst he suspected Nicholas’ agreement with his father was for nothing more than spite. But the result was the same. They were bound to silence.

  Emma knelt by the side of the slab on which Gilles’ naked body reclined and pressed her head to the cold stone. For many moments she stayed there, lost in prayer. Then, rising, she stood and looked over her beloved’s body. She touched each scar on him from his feet to his face, trailing her fingers lovingly over him. She covered him with the blanket to his shoulders and broke down. She railed aloud at him and fate. She cursed him for leaving her, then begged his forgiveness. She cupped his face and pressed her lips to his cold ones, breathing her warmth on him, trying for one frantic moment to bring him to life.

  Roland rushed forward and touched her on the shoulder. She whipped around and stared, disoriented. When she finally focused, she gave him a wan smile and turned back to her dead husband. Husband. For but a few hours.

  “Ah, Roland. Why, why?” She would never understand, never know what lay at the heart of Gilles’ sacrifice. She pressed her hand over his heart and stroked from the rise of his chest to his strong shoulder, remembering how she’d caressed him often in love. “He is so cold, and I know ‘tis madness, but somehow I sense his presence. Do you believe in the soul, Roland?”

  He touched her hand. “Aye.”

  “I feel his soul. Here with me.” She swallowed hard. “It gives me no comfort. He was so proud, Roland. Now, he will be remembered always as a man who murdered his own son. I don’t understand. I know he didn’t kill William. Why? Why? Why…” Her voice trailed off into sobs.

  “Gilles said you would ask me just that. He said to say that he was a sworn knight, that without thought or regret he would have laid down his life for his king, so why not for love?”

  Why not for love?

  She stared at Gilles’ face. She could almost hear him saying the words. She knew now why he had done it. She understood. It was just as it had been at the manorial court when first she’d seen him. She could hear his voice just as if it was but a moment ago.

  “Emma, did you not realize the consequences when you took a lover? Why did you give your most precious possession away?”

  Her voice was very soft, but not as anguished as she spoke, “Oh, Gilles. You, too, have given away your most precious possession, your honor—for love.” She groped for his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “He did this for Angelique and for me. He gave away his name and his honor. I will try to be worthy of such a sacrifice.” Reverently, she smoothed the blanket over his body, her hands lingering for a last touch. She brought her lips to his a final time, then turned to Roland.

  “I want him dressed in the surcoat in which he was married.”

  Roland went for the priest. Emma bathed and dressed Gilles herself, the priest and Roland only helping her to shift his body when it proved too heavy for her. Roland hovered in the background, no longer embarrassed by her reverent care of Gilles’ body, but fraught with nervous tension that during her loving treatment and frequent pauses to caress Gilles’ hand or to arrange and rearrange his garments, Gilles might begin to wake.

  Emma clothed Gilles in the silvery gray coat she’d woven with her own hand, and looped at his hips the first belt she’d given him. It was woven in the colors of heat, and represented the flame of hot love she felt inside. She groomed his beard and hair herself, stopping every few minutes to take a deep breath, and wipe the tears from his cheeks as they fell to splash upon his skin, ashen and waxy in death.

  When there was no other excuse to linger over her beloved, several monks laid him in a wooden casket, ornately painted with hawks in flight. ‘Twas like no burial cask she’d ever seen. Before the lid was lowered into place, Roland laid Gilles’ sword upon his breast and folded his hands about the hilt.

  “Nay,” Emma cried as they made to place the lid upon him. She darted forward, and groping in her gown, she withdrew her mother’s cross. She took Gilles’ scarred hand and wrapped the chain about his fingers, then folded them so the cross lay clasped in his palm.

  “Now,” she whispered. She took one last look. “Wait in God’s holy love until I come to join you.” She kissed his hands, his face, and then stood back to finally let the monks secure the lid. She almost screamed at them to stop, almost screamed at them to let her have anoth
er look, but she was restrained by the strong hold Roland had on her shoulders. There was nothing left to say.

  “I am ready, my friend,” she said.

  Roland took her arm and led her away. He was beyond agitated. He feared the worst, that his friend would never regain consciousness, for ‘twas an hour past time for Gilles to rise.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Gilles awoke in darkness. He stretched and met the wall of his confinement. Confused, not able to see, he felt naught but walls about him. Panic rose in his throat.

  His throat. His throat burned and ached. To swallow was agony. Just as he almost lost control of himself in the small dark space, he remembered.

  He was dead.

  He heaved his sword aside. Something was tightly wrapped about his fingers. Breathing deeply, stilling his thundering heart, he ran his bare hand over the other. In an instant, he recognized what held his fingers prisoner. A delicate chain, a cross.

  Emma’s cross.

  So all they’d planned had come true. Pressing carefully on the lid of his coffin, he pushed. Nothing. He pushed again. His arms trembled and in a moment of near panic he realized that they’d not thought he might be too weak to open his coffin.

  Gilles turned his head and saw pinpricks of light coming in from small holes hidden amid the ornate paintings on his coffin—a coffin he’d chosen for himself. At least he had air. He gave another attempt to lift the lid and felt a small shift in its position. Then it flew off and bright light blinded him.

  “Thank God. We were about to take you out, servants about or no servants about to see you.” Nicholas reached in and grasped his father’s arms. With Roland, he dragged Gilles to a sitting position.

  “Don’t move him,” Catherine admonished. “I do not like his color,” she whispered aside to her husband. She placed her hand on Gilles’ chest and felt his heartbeat. “‘Tis too slow. Get him out.”

  “Take his feet.” Nicholas grasped his father’s ankles and with Roland, shifted him from his coffin bed to a chair by the fire. They stood back and let Catherine take over.

  Gilles felt curiously lethargic. He could barely bestir himself, was not even embarrassed as Catherine swept her hands over his body, touching him, lingering especially over his throat. He tried to speak but could not.

  “Gilles, please squeeze my hand.” Catherine took his hand in hers and chafed his wrist. With a sigh of relief, she felt the strength of his grip. “Now, can you speak?” Catherine had had two fears from her role in this scheme. One that Gilles would die and two that he would have lost his senses—suffered damage to his mind—even if he did awaken.

  Gilles opened his mouth and a croak issued forth. After several tries he could rasp out a few words.

  “Honey.” Catherine snapped her fingers and Nicholas put a stone pot in her hand. Nicholas held Gilles’ shoulders while Catherine spooned some of her honey mixture down his throat. “There’s more than honey in the pot, my lord.”

  It cost him dearly to swallow, and he held the concoction in his mouth as long as he could, stalling to avoid the pain. Finally he let the warm, sweet mixture slide down his throat and was pleased that it hurt less than he’d anticipated.

  Catherine examined him for a moment, turning his head this way and that, then peering into his eyes and laying a hand to his chest. “Now, tell me how you are.”

  His voice was a whispered rasp in the silent room. “I feel quite marvelous for a dead man.”

  * * * * *

  Emma paced the small bedchamber Lady Catherine had led her to in the rented townhouse, fingers busy with her spindle. As she spun and walked, round and round, back and forth, she yearned to hold Angelique. She needed the comfort of her child’s embrace and innocent scent.

  She went to a chest where Catherine had placed a cup of wine containing a sleeping potion. She lifted the goblet and swirled the deep red liquid. Her throat seemed hot and scratchy, mayhap from her weeping. And when she’d dozed, she imagined she heard Gilles’ voice. Far away, echoing in her head as if in a cave. Her hand trembled. In the lower reaches of the house, someone laughed.

  “How dare they!” she whispered, and drank the drugged wine to block out the laughter below. “How can there be pleasure when Gilles is lying cold in a box?” The thought made her throat tighten, her eyes burn. She stretched on the bed and waited for blessed sleep to claim her.

  * * * * *

  Roland lifted his sharp knife and severed a long lock of Gilles’ hair.

  “Emma will sleep away the night?” Gilles asked.

  “So Catherine assures me. ‘Tis a powerful potion. You will gone before dawn, and we’ll take your box to Hawkwatch and bury you with all due ceremony on the morrow.”

  “I fear for her. Mayhap this is a mistake.”

  Nicholas and Catherine drew near. “We have gone round about this a dozen times,” Nicholas said. “She must appear grieved.”

  Catherine stepped in. “I, too, worry for her, but I have come to think the men are right, my lord. Whoever killed William wished her ill, too. If she does not display the proper demeanor, the killer may wonder. That wonder might extend to more deadly thoughts.”

  Gilles sat with no energy, curiously detached and outside himself with his troubled thoughts as Catherine and Roland prepared his beggarly appearance.

  Was it right to leave Emma in ignorance?

  When Catherine swept the long hanks of his black hair into a pile, gathering them to be burned, he rose shakily to his feet.

  “Wait,” he managed. His voice still hoarse and barely audible. He accepted the offer of Nicholas’ arm and walked slowly to where Catherine stood patiently waiting. He stooped and plucked up a lock of his hair. He leaned on the table and fumbled about his chest, sweeping his hand along, searching.

  “What is it?” Catherine came close.

  “I had a…a—”

  “Is this what you want?” Catherine understood, rushing to a pack by the door.

  “Aye, ‘tis what I sought,” Gilles whispered, accepting the lock of golden hair Catherine extended to him. “I cut this from Emma’s hair myself in the prison. She didn’t understand why I wanted it. How long ago was it?”

  Catherine rested her hand on his arm, alarmed at the anguish in his voice. “You’ve no need to speak of it.”

  “When was it?” he asked again, smoothing a thumb over the loop of silky hair.

  “You were senseless for more than fourteen hours,” she answered.

  Gilles lay the two locks of hair, the gold and the ebony, side by side. He untied the ribbon that bound the golden tresses and sifted the strands together with his fingers, like the wind had entwined them when first they’d kissed and come to each other as lovers. He bound them as one and offered it to Catherine.

  “For her.” He extended the token. Catherine nodded as she took it, then left the room. Roland and Nicholas stripped Gilles naked of his finery. “Have a care of the coat, for it is precious to me,” Gilles said, in his new gravelly voice. He strode to them, near at the limit of his strength. He took up Emma’s belt and wrapped it about his waist, against his skin.

  With a nod, Roland folded the coat in Gilles’ linen shirt and tucked it into his saddle pack. The two men then dressed Gilles as if he were a helpless babe—indeed he almost felt like one. He’d used what energy he had, and found none left except to drop Emma’s silver chain and cross over his head so they might lie upon his chest.

  When Gilles was garbed to Nicholas and Roland’s satisfaction, they called Catherine for her approval. She clapped her hands to her mouth then rushed to her own saddle pack and withdrew a looking glass of polished steel she’d brought for just this moment. She held it before Gilles.

  The man who looked back at Gilles was a stranger. He appeared elderly and gaunt, half starved. He wore tattered clothing and appeared to have a scabrous condition of his bald scalp. Gilles’ heart beat frantically in his chest. He didn’t know the man, didn’t recognize himself. His heartbeat slowed and he b
egan to smile. “‘Twill do,” he rasped. “Now, dawn is not far off, and ‘tis a long way to Hawkwatch. Roland—”

  “Aye, I found just what you need. There is a party of pilgrims who travel near to Hawkwatch—they’re off to the abbey and a viewing of the relics there. They are in need of a few pennies and will take you that far if you will but present yourself at the city gate.”

  “And Emma—”

  “I will guard her with my life,” Roland answered as he opened the door for Gilles. A mist had risen and crept over the threshold in fingers of white.

  He nodded once and disappeared into the mist.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Two weeks later at Hawkwatch, Emma stared about the hall from her place at the high table. The food tasted of ashes on her tongue. All about her, the men and women of the keep moved through their lives. Hers felt over. Even Angelique’s sweet smiles and pats did not raise her spirits.

  Beside her, Nicholas d’Argent sat at ease. Had he no grieving feelings for his father? He’d stepped into his father’s place with little disturbance. Indeed, the people wanted guidance, and as Roland remained steward, the transition was smooth, but Emma felt horribly out of place in her position flanking him at table with his wife on the other side.

  She imagined many of the folk in the hall held her responsible for Gilles’ death. She imagined the women believed her to have murdered William. Fortunately, Nicholas’ speech on the night they’d returned to the manor had compelled the people to keep their speculation to themselves. Nicholas had announced to one and all that his father had killed William, effectively silencing the doubters—or silencing them when any of the family was present. Only Nicholas’ further admonitions that his father’s widow must be treated with due respect kept the braver sort from lashing out at her. They were as yet unwilling to test the new lord’s limits.