by Kris Tualla
Please, God. Don’t let him die. Don’t let him be already dead.
My baby needs a father.
The door began to splinter.
After more strokes than she felt she was capable of throwing, Eryn was able to jam the handle through the wood and pry the bar out of the way. She dragged the stable door open. The air was smoky, and the roof showed bursts of orange.
The horses in the stalls kicked and whinnied their distress. Rory was first in her efforts. She wedged her way between him and the stall’s rough wooden wall. She untied his tether, shoved him backward, and then ran out the destroyed door with him trotting beside her.
Eryn smacked Rory’s rump and he ran into the surrounding woods. Then she went back for Drew’s destrier.
The roof was burning now. And the horses were frantic.
The huge animal nearly crushed her when she sidled into the stall beside him. And her arm seemed pulled from its socket when he bolted from the stable. Eryn let him run; she knew the horses would come back of their own accord. After the danger passed.
On her third attempt, the air in the stable burnt her throat so badly she could hardly swallow. Her eyes gushed unending tears. She could barely see through the smoke.
Eryn grabbed the animals closest to the door. She tried to rescue two at once, but wasn’t strong enough to hold them both. The gelding streaked away from her, and his leather lead cut her palm as it sliced through the air. She still held the mare.
A strange creaking sound groaned overhead.
One of the heavy crossbeams succumbed to the destruction and bent in half. Eryn screamed. Behind her the beam crashed to the floor of the stable, amidst the horrible death screams of the remaining horses. The fire covered her in glittering orange sparks. The mare reared, afraid to go forward.
Eryn dropped the tether. From the corner of her eye, she saw a tiny flame. Her cloak was on fire.
She ran from the building and in one swift swirl threw her cloak to the ground. She stomped on it. She beat at her hair. She brushed her hands over her clothes. She wiped her cheeks.
She was whole.
The terrified mare charged out of the stable and knocked her to the cold, hard ground, jarring every bone she owned.
Eryn began to cry. She climbed slowly to her feet, rough sobs shaking her torso. Her chest hurt. Her throat hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her ankle hurt. She was covered in ash and soot.
And she had no knowledge of Drew.
She moved away from the growing conflagration and toward the woods. It was hard to breathe; her throat was raw and her chest hurt. But the smoke was lighter here. She crumpled to the ground, amidst tree trunks and dead leaves. Then she turned back to see what had burned.
The tavern itself was gone.
The adjacent stable was nearly so; there was no saving it now. And a building on the other side was smoking, though she could not see flames from where she was.
Please, Father! Please let Drew be alive and unharmed! she prayed again. I’ll never lie to him again, I promise, if you will please just give him back to me. I’ll tell him everything. I swear it.
She made the sign of the cross. Three times. Then she fell to the ground, shaking violently, exhausted beyond comprehension, and hurting in more places than she could count. Eryn made her abused lungs keep breathing as she stared at the hellish nightmare shimmering through her tears.
Drew was roused from his stupor by the inn keeper. “Get up ye drunken fool!” the man shouted, shaking his shoulder. “The place is ablaze!”
Drew sat up. Apparently he had fallen asleep in his chair with the rough wooden table as his pillow. His head was fuzzy. But he clearly smelt smoke.
That snapped his attention. He stood and started toward the stairs.
The inn keeper hooked his arm through Drew’s and swung him around. “Not that way! The fire’s up there! This way!”
He yanked Drew toward the front door.
“But my wife—” Drew objected.
“The fire’s filled the passageway. Ye can’t reach her now.” The man let go of Drew’s arm and sprinted out the front door.
No! I can’t lose her and the babe! Drew stumbled his way through the sea of plank tables and benches to the stairs. He looked up the staircase into a wall of flames from the floor to the ceiling. The heat of it burned his skin. He fell backward.
“NO!” he screeched.
The upstairs ceiling collapsed.
He turned and shoved his way back across the room to the door. He couldn’t breathe, though whether that was from smoke or panic, he couldn’t tell. He burst through the front door of the inn. Outside, the frigid night air helped clear his lungs and his head.
If only I had bedded her… If only I hadn’t been so stubborn… We would be together now… I could have saved her.
The torturous thoughts bashed him endlessly. He felt as if he was in a horrible dream. All he needed to do was wake up. Wake up! A bucket of water was thrust against him.
“Give a hand, eh?” a stocky woman shouted.
He grabbed the bucket handed to him and staggered to the line. Drew passed it to the person beside him and reached for the next one coming. Water sloshed over his boots. He didn’t have a cloak. His teeth began to clatter. The heat of the fire blasted his face, but the rest of him was freezing.
He moved without thinking. Thinking meant the possibility that Eryn and the babe were gone; burned to death only twenty-four miles from home. From safety. From the true start of their marriage.
The water was not enough to save the tavern. And the stable roof collapsed before they could staunch those flames. The horses trapped inside roared their fear and their dying.
Oh, God. Where is Eryn?
The street was full of people. Some wailed their fear and their sorrow. Some did anything they could to help. Others simply huddled and watched, jaws slack and eyes wide.
The sky in the southeast began to glow orange and pink. It took Drew several minutes to realize it wasn’t another fire, but the approaching dawn.
As soon as he could see well enough, he swore he was going to climb through the burnt-out tavern and find Eryn. He’d take her bones home to Castleton and bury them, even if that was all that was left of her. He would not leave her here. Not his wife. Not the woman he would love with all of his heart until long after he joined her in death.
The air lightened. Still thick with drifting smoke, it grew gray, then rosy. Falsely cheerful. Drew rubbed his stinging eyes. The last of the flames were doused. The fallen timbers glowed orange on their way to black skeletons then pale ash. He sat on an upended bucket, away from the milling townspeople, and watched the sun start its rise through the surrounding trees. The day had begun, but his life was ended.
A figure stumbled around the last building on the street, silhouetted by the rising sun at its back. It approached, limping as it moved slowly down the main road looking filthy, shabby, and misshapen. Drew wondered what sort of person had slept through the fire.
What sort of woman, he qualified as the figure grew clearer through the rose-colored haze. Perhaps a whore whose business only completed in the wee hours of the night. After all, some things wouldn’t wait, fire or no. She carried a large bag of some sort over one shoulder, adding to her awkward gait.
Then he caught a glimpse of deep blue wool.
He stood.
The figure stopped walking.
He took a tentative step. And another.
The figure lifted its skirts and began to hobble toward him as quickly as it was able.
He didn’t dare call out her name. He was half afraid she was a shade and not real at all. He glanced around to see if anyone else noticed her, but none seemed aware.
A moment later, Drew clearly saw the most beautiful sight of his life thus far. Eryn—alive.
Her face was blackened with soot, her hair singed and tangled with dead leaves. Her beautiful blue woolen dress was torn with a long piece straggling behind h
er. There were burnt spots on her cloak. The hand she waved at him was bloody. She ran with a marked limp.
She shrugged the satchel off her shoulders, letting it fall unheeded to the ash-covered ground. With a hoarse cry, she launched herself into his arms. Drew wrapped his arms around her and pressed her tightly against his chest. He’d be damned if he would ever let her go.
Eryn sobbed against his shoulder. “I thought you died!”
“I thought the same of ye,” he croaked.
They held each other without yielding. Drew’s chest spasmed; was he crying? He didn’t know or care. But Eryn definitely was.
“How did ye get out?” he mumbled against her hair.
“I climbed out the window,” she said into his armpit.
“Is that how you hurt your ankle?”
She nodded.
He lifted her bloodied hand. “And this as well?”
“No.” she looked up at him. Her tears mixed with the soot on her cheeks. “I used an axe to open the stable’s back door. One of the horses bolted and his lead cut me when he pulled away.”
Drew was astounded. “Ye saved the horses?”
She sniffed and ran her hand under her nose leaving a long, slick swipe of black across it. “I got Rory and yours.”
“Where are they now?”
She pointed with her chin. “They ran into the trees.”
He hugged her again, at a loss for words. She was indeed something special, his wife.
Her voice escaped his encompassing embrace. “How did you get out?”
“I fell asleep in the common room after I left ye.” He felt his face heating with the admission. “The inn keeper woke me, but it was too late for me to get up to ye. Then the upper ceiling collapsed. I thought… Well, ye ken what I thought.”
Eryn’s face paled under the fire’s filth. “Oh! But I wasn’t there!”
He pulled a deep breath and blew it out. “And I ken that now.”
She hugged him again and snuggled under his arm. “I was so afraid I lost you.”
“Are ye truly well, Eryn?” he asked.
“I’m a wee bit battered, but overall well. And you?”
“Aye.” His heart began to pound. He slid one hand inside her cloak and rested it against her belly. Now is the time. No more secrets. “And the babe—is he fine as well?”
“Ach!” She shoved him violently away from her. Her light green eyes looked even paler against her soot-blackened face. Now they flashed with indignant fury. “What are you talking about?”
Drew reached for her arms. He held her firmly in place. “I am asking about the child ye are carrying. My child. Our child.”
“How—how did you know?” she stammered, glaring no less intently.
He shrugged and gave her a wry smile. “I have an admission or two of my own.”
She yanked her arms free and crossed them over her chest. “Start talking. Quickly.”
“Well, to begin with, on the night of the English rescue, it seems our enthusiasm was more than the thread on the sheath could bear…”
Her jaw dropped. “It came undone?”
“Aye. I’m afraid so.”
One fist leapt from her chest and pounded hard into his. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Drew rubbed the offended spot. “Women seldom conceive with one bedding. And, I thought that if ye found yourself with child, ye might tell me.”
She stomped one foot, raising a small cloud of ash. “I didn’t know!”
His head fell to one side. “And ye expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true! It wasn’t until Geoffrey—” She stopped.
“Geoffrey, what?” Drew prodded.
She narrowed her eyes menacingly. “Until he suggested I had lain with you and you had gotten your child on me.”
“When was that?” he asked as if he didn’t know.
“The night—the night he died.” She pulled a ragged breath. “So how did you figure it out?”
“There was a witness to your argument with Geoffrey who heard everything.” Drew waited for the impact of that statement to sink into Eryn’s awareness.
Flashes of revelation flicked over her features. “Someone heard him accuse me?”
“Aye.”
“And this person talked to you?”
He shrugged. “Aye. ‘Twas I that investigated the man’s death.”
“So you knew I was pregnant all along?”
He braced for the next onslaught. “Aye.”
She didn’t disappoint. Her fists flew at him in rapid painful succession. “You are such an ass!”
He flinched and let her punch him for a bit then said, “Aye, but ye might want to hear the rest of it.”
She froze. “What ‘rest of it’?”
He leaned over so his eyes were on her level. “The witness said ye had naught to do with the constable’s death.”
Her brows plunged. “So I’m not charged with murder?”
“No, I did no’ say that.” Drew waggled a finger at her. “Ye were charged fairly. But your name was cleared afore I came to find ye.”
Eryn gasped. “And the chains?” she blurted.
“I only wanted ye to trust me enough to tell me of the child. And to marry me, of course.” He shook his head. “But ye are a stubborn lass, to be sure.”
“Oh! You—” Eryn poked his chest with a stiff finger. “If we were not already married, I’d—”
He grabbed her hand and grinned. “Marry me now?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Drew led Eryn through the crowd and down the road until they found another inn. Drew paid for a single room. “I keep my coin on me as well,” he rasped in her ear.
“And your sword, I see.” She touched the jeweled hilt.
He glanced down and nodded. “Aye. A knight without his sword is no longer a knight.”
“But you lost everything else you had with you,” she said softly.
“No.” He lifted her chin with a dirty knuckle.
She looked into his eyes. The green took precedence this morn. That means he is happy, she thought.
“I have ye and my child. That is all that matters,” he said. “Everything else can be replaced.”
The innkeeper showed them to a room bright with the morning’s sun. He promised a hot bath straight away. Eryn saw the one large bed in the room and a smile she could not hide spread her cheeks. Once the inn keeper left them alone, she looked at Drew. He was smiling, too.
She pointed at the bed. “Does this mean…?”
“It surely does!” he stated with a firm nod. “I’m going to retrieve the horses while ye bathe. I’ll wash after ye.”
Eryn’s belly fluttered with anticipation. She nodded, unaccountably shy of a sudden.
Her bathwater turned murky gray as she scoured the smoke and ash from her hair and skin. She rubbed herself dry and pondered the sudden shift in her circumstances. Two weeks ago, she was unmarried, without a home or income, locked in the Tower dungeon, and carrying a bastard in her belly.
Yesterday she was a wife unconsummated. She was a murderess charged. She had no one to cling to but her husband, and though she loved him more than she could say, she doubted he loved her.
Today she would be bedded, her vows completed. Her child was legitimate and cherished. She was freed from the spectre of murder. And she gained a sister; one who survived multiple births and could help her when her time came. Another area where the nuns were of no help. But one more thing was certain.
Her husband was going to need clean water.
Drew saw the buckets being carried up the steps and wondered if Eryn was only beginning her bath. He hoped not. He had taken his time relocating the horses—stabling his and Eryn’s nearby, and finding the owners of the other three. His intent was to wash well but quickly, and then love his wife well and leisurely.
Thankfully, none had perished in the early morning fire, which was said to have started in the uns
upervised kitchen of the inn. He and Eryn were the only guests and they both escaped the inferno. Only the four horses remaining in the stable died. But the buildings were demolished beyond repair.
Drew stepped aside and allowed a bucket-carrying maid passage. When he entered the room, he halted and stared. Sunlight slanted across the foot of the bed and covered half of the floor. Eryn sat in the bed, the blankets pulled across her chest and tucked under her arms. She appeared to be otherwise unclothed. And she was clean.
“What’s this?” he asked, pointing at the steaming water.
Eryn chuckled. “I’m afraid the water was as black as my face when I finished. So I ordered fresh water for you.”
The maid emptied her bucket and left the room, closing the door behind her.
“Very thoughtful, wife.” Drew unbuckled his sword and sat to pull off his boots. “I do appreciate your efforts, though I think ye will appreciate them more.”
“Did you find the three horses?” she asked, blushing at his jest.
“Five. Two that were no’ tied and three that were.” He stood to remove his tunic.
She examined her palm. “The gelding who bolted and the mare who balked, I suppose.”
“How is your hand?” He untied his shirt and pulled it over his head.
Her widened eyes traveled over his chest. “It will be fine.”
He gripped the waist of his hose. “And your ankle?”
Her gaze jumped to his. “Fine… It will be fine.”
Drew pushed his hose to his ankles. He freed one foot, then the other. He dropped the filthy garment on the pile of soiled clothes. Then he looked at Eryn.
Up to that moment, the business-like tone of their conversation had kept his mind off the fact that he was about to make love with his wife for the first time since they wed. But the awed and eager expression on her face shot sparks through his veins and lit every part of him ablaze. He burnt hotter than the fire.
“Wash yourself,” she breathed.
