The Protector

by Becca St. John

  THE PROTECTOR

  By

  Becca St. John

  The Protector©2013Martha E Ferris

  All rights reserved

  Cover Art © 2012 Kelli Ann Morgan / Inspire Creative Services

  www.inspiredcreativeservcies.com

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Thank you, to my readers.

  I humbly dedicate this to you and your joy of reading.

  You make this journey worthwhile.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE ~ IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1226

  CHAPTER 1 ~ TREACHERY

  CHAPTER 2 ~ CORNERED

  CHAPTER 3 ~ HIDDEN WOUNDS

  CHAPTER 4 ~ SETTLING IN

  CHAPTER 5 ~ VIPERS

  CHAPTER 6 ~ BREAKING BOUNDARIES

  CHAPTER 7 ~ LESSONS FROM THE PAST

  CHAPTER 8 ~ POISON

  CHAPTER 9 ~ HIDDEN MISSIVES

  CHAPTER 10 ~ DIVISION

  CHAPTER 11 ~ GIFTS

  CHAPTER 12 ~ TAKING A STAND

  CHAPTER 13 ~ DREAMS

  CHAPTER 14 ~ VERI’S PEOPLE

  CHAPTER 15 ~ BEAR

  CHAPTER 16 ~ CONFLICTS

  CHAPTER 17 ~ INFLUENCES

  CHAPTER 18 ~ TWO PRIESTS

  CHAPTER 19 ~ DEATH

  CHAPTER 20 ~ DISTRACTIONS

  CHAPTER 21 ~ HERITAGE

  PROLOGUE ~

  IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1226

  “Do you think he means to find her?”

  “If it be true, I pray the Lord he fails.”

  “He ne’er fails,” an old voice prophesied from deep within the corner.

  Shadows danced upon the kitchen walls as three young serving maids abandoned their sleeping pallets to huddle closer together within the kitchen.

  “Gelda, is that you?” Maida, the oldest of the girls, asked.

  “Aye, ‘tis me.” Bow-backed and wobbly, Gelda moved into the light from the dying fire, her cane tapping the floor with each shuffled step. “And true as my word, he will find her. He will find her and bring her back here to burn for her sins.”

  “‘Tis true then?” Maida’s best friend Bertha, whispered in fear. “She truly bewitched all the men in the castle?”

  “Every one of them!” Gelda announced. “And finally, Sir Roland is back to hear the full of it, to hear how his men would gather for wild nights of wantonness. That his wife would have them all, bewitched every one of them!”

  “The knights speak naught of this!” Cwen, the youngest, stated boldly.

  Gelda’s eyes glinted in the firelight. “Do you think a mighty warrior wants to brag of a witch’s spell over him? Besides, there are others for the telling, others who have seen.”

  Maida and Bertha shook their heads in answer before Maida hissed, “She poisoned his father, then drank of the poison herself. My auntie told me.”

  “Aye,” Gelda affirmed, “But she did not die of the foul brew. ‘Tis testament to her witchery.”

  Cwen stepped toward Gelda, as if no shadow could cast fear her way. “My mum told me his lordship's wife is no witch. ‘Twas her who saved his lordship’s life and the life of his father.”

  “Nay,” chorused the other girls, “she’s a witch, to be sure. How else did she escape the room where she was held?”

  Gelda watched young Cwen closely, but the child held her ground, flinching only when the old hag lifted her cane to point toward her courageous stance.

  “Aye, she is a witch. ‘Tis well known that witches are shape shifters, that they be cat or bird or any number of beasts as easily as they be women. That’s what she did, she did. She shifted herself into a huge bird, to fly from the window.”

  Bertha squeaked in fear. “My father saw such a thing once, when he went to the woods with Father Ignacious.”

  Gelda moved back, blending into the darkness, thinking her mistress would be well pleased with this night. Fear grew like the mustard seed, easily fed, easily spread. Standing silently, nodding, Gelda listened as the disquiet she had so artfully planted, ripened.

  “They’d gone to burn the witches of the woods.” All eyes were upon the teller of the tale, “But the witches brought the hail down.”

  “Aye, that’s the truth, my granny told me of that day. The crops were heavy, ready to harvest. They were ruined. ‘Tis true!”

  “‘Tis that, indeed. And after they brought the hail they turned into a flock of crows, flying away, just as easily as you please, escaping the wrath of God and his vengeance.”

  “God will get them one day, he will.”

  “And God alone knows the truth of it!” Cwen scorned, “My mum told me Lady Veri is no witch.”

  “That’s ‘cuz your mum was bewitched by her. T’would be easily done, as she was her maid when Lord Roland brought her home with him.”

  “M’ mum was no prisoner of witches!”

  “Shhh,” Gelda hissed, “lest you wake those out in the hall.”

  The fire popped and hissed. Bertha and Maida darted into each other’s arms, trembling with fear. Even Cwen pulled her robe tighter about her, as she looked to the darkened corners of the kitchen.

  “‘Tis time you sleep,” the old woman admonished, “‘twill be a long day on the morrow, what with his Lordship just back from the holy wars.”

  “Who could sleep for fear she might come to take him?”

  “She wouldn’t be doing that. She’ll stay clear of Oakland Castle.” Maida assured, confidently.

  Bertha shook her head, “I’ll be praying he doesn’t find her. I’ll be praying mightily.”

  “Pray all you want, but that won’t stop him from finding her and seeking vengeance.”

  “What if she were to kill him and eat him first?”

  “Witches don’t eat grown men.” Maida snorted, “They eat children.”

  “Nooooo,” Bertha wailed.

  “They eat children for sure, but she’ll not be coming here. Father Ignacious blessed this house once she was gone. She’ll melt to a puddle should she try to return.”

  Round-eyed Bertha stared. “What do you think she looks like now?”

  “No one knows for a surety.” Maida whispered, knowingly. “Witches can look anyway they please, but I heard that Taylor’s son once saw her as an eagle. So, ‘tis not a worry. Even if his lordship were to find her, he’d never be able to catch her. She’d just fly away. ‘Tis how it’s done.”

  Heads came together, two in consultation, one with cautious curiosity, as Maida continued, “Come All Hallows Eve we’ll see her shadow against the full moon. That’s the time to worry. But not now. Not when Lord Roland is home. He’s a mighty warrior who fought for the Jesus. He had God on his side. He will slay her just like he slayed the infidels.”

  CHAPTER 1 ~ TREACHERY

  Not yet morn, too early to wake, yet here he lay, alert. Abruptly so, though he offered no sign of wakefulness, knew better.

  Eyes closed, Roland Montgomery, Earl of Oakland, lay upon the bed he’d been born in and listened for another creak of hinge. When it came, it wasn’t sound that alerted him to danger but a soft swoosh of stale air wafting across his face with a fusty, dank scent.

  He fought, and won, to steady his breathing, to keep a slow steady cadence even as rage gripped every muscle, battle ready.

  No living soul, no person he cared to see, knew of the hidden entrance to this, the Earl’s bedchamber. Yet, it had just been breached from the far side of the moat, through a tunnel both steep and slick.

  He almost smi
led. Almost. But that would have alerted his intruders. Instead he mimicked sleep as he studied the eerie, shifting shadows aided by the meager fire light.

  In an instant the heavy silence shattered on a careless rasp of stone door scraping a stone threshold. His assailant’s did not know the door was weighted to swing wide at a mere touch.

  Nor did they know about stealth.

  A rustle of activity, fevered whispers followed by footsteps brushing across the gravel dirt of a derelict pathway. Each step so distinct he counted nine pairs of soft boots cross into his room. Another grating of gravel as the door to the secret passageway swung shut, closing them in with him.

  Did they truly believe he survived ten years as a crusading knight to fall prey now? Did they imagine that upon his return, he would fall back into the naïve and gullible soul he had once been? And he had been, even up to this evening.

  Ten years of perilous travels sustained on dreams of his innocent bride. A child when he left, married in name only. He clung to the memories of her pure tenacity, believed in the strength of her goodness, certain that in this wicked world, she alone had the inner fortitude to remain untouched by an insatiably greedy and cunning world. That she would remain a chaste young woman.

  He had been wrong. Foolishly so.

  Harsh and cruel truth fueled fury, as his own gullibility readied him for the kill.

  He snorted, a sleepy sound, shifted, stretched, eased back as though in slumber. He’d gone to bed with a dagger under his pillow and a sword running parallel to his body, each now in hand.

  He could see them now. The nine of them huddled within the entrance, shrouded from head to toe in black capes. Their whispers low, indistinct murmurs, as they divided with the soft shuffle of feet. Three crossed to the door, four toward the raised alcove on the other side of the room. Two stood near the tunnel entrance, until one of them separated, moved without weapon, to the bed where Roland lay.

  An innocent approach. Roland had learned well the deception of innocence.

  Still, he waited.

  One step, two steps, the intruder drew near, almost aligned with Roland when, with one misguided move, the man stilled, looked over his shoulder, handing over any chance of control.

  Roland leapt naked from bed, his attack so swift all was accomplished before the echo of his mighty war cry could fade. With one arm he pinned his victim against his chest, a dagger to his throat. His other arm stretched out, sword at the ready, to defend against approach.

  Short of leg, the captive stumbled. Roland forced him backward until they stood with the stone wall at their back. A well-orchestrated move, it gave him a hostage, freedom to attack and the vantage needed to judge the room and the people within it.

  A battle waged at the door to his chamber. Alerted by Talorc's shout, Ieuan, his page, who slept on a pallet just outside Roland’s chamber, fought to force his way in. Three caped figures struggled against Ieuan’s strength as they wrestled to bar the door with a wooden beam. If they managed to slide it into the iron slot, they would effectively lock Ieuan out and Roland within. With great effort, they gained the advantage.

  Roland gauged the danger.

  The three by the door were too weak and fumbling to be a concern. Their capes quivered with their fear. The figure before the fire stood tense and erect, perhaps on the brink of escape. Certainly close enough to the tunnel to get out unnoticed, if Roland allowed it.

  He would not.

  Three, much like those who had battled Ieuan for the door, huddled fearfully within the windowed alcove. Separate from them, yet within the same alcove, stood another, deep within the night's shadow, observant, with no quivering sign of any emotion beyond curiosity. This one drew his caution. The greatest adversaries were those whose sense over-rode emotion.

  The strangled croak of his name from the man in his hold, pulled Roland back to his captive. His knife had cut far enough into a fleshy neck to bring a fine line of blood to the surface. Easing the pressure, Roland looked to the man’s face.

  God’s teeth!

  Galvanized by horror, Roland thrust the man away. As he did so, a collective wail filled the room. The other intruders spun away, their capes billowing like kites full of wind. One moment he’s surrounded by assailants, the next they turn their backs.

  He stands, armed for attack, and they offer him their most vulnerable side?

  What fools! What bloody useless fools!

  Nothing made sense, nor did it offer the release Roland so desperately craved. He needed revenge, to exorcise the demons within him.

  He had come expecting to find his father proud and strong and his wife, Veri, a virgin bride. Instead he found his father dead and the winsome, eerily intelligent woman- child he left behind, now a calculating, seductress who enticed good men to whore against their allegiance and assassinate a great lord.

  He wanted to avenge his father's death! He wanted to thrust his sword, slice with his knife, draw blood and prove that he was neither weak nor a credulous fool.

  “Friar Kenneth!” He roared at the one familiar element in this surrealistic scene. “What the devil is happening here?”

  With hand that trembled badly, the friar dabbed at his throat causing Roland’s scowl to deepen.

  Deep in a pit of hatred, he hadn’t known how brutal his fury was, until he faced the one man who would not allow such vengeance; the one man who would force Roland to face the anger, to soften the hatred.

  ‘Twas the ugliest irony of fate.

  “Your timing is pitiful,” he accused.

  “Yours is much better, had I been your enemy.”

  “Perhaps you are,” Roland suggested.

  The portly friar eyed him sharply, before shaking his head with a weary sigh. “It is true then. You have been much hardened by your ordeal.”

  Roland’s eyes widened in disbelief. A flash of reaction before he shuttered his expression and leaned against the stone wall behind him.

  “I am no harder than the experiences your God has thrown to me.”

  “My God?” The friar questioned, but didn’t expound. Instead, he looked toward the other intruders, noticed their backs. Even in the meager light offered by a banked fire, Roland could see the man flush.

  “Perhaps,” Kenneth suggested, as he dabbed at beads of sweat upon his forehead, leaving little smears of blood from the cloth that had staunched the bleeding of his throat, “if you would dress, we could discuss our reasons for descending upon you in this manner.”

  Roland looked down at his naked state and frowned. Were the clergy so modest? Those he had met on crusade had not been, but it mattered not to him. He reached for a robe, shrugged into it as he looked toward the others, then back at Father Kenneth.

  Something in the friar’s discomfort, the decided embarrassment, sent Roland’s mind scrambling back to moments before; collective gasps, turning of backs, the struggle with the door beam.

  The small stature of his captives.

  Awareness dawned. He slung it back. Absurd, except for the evidence.

  “You’ve come to my room with an army of women?” He asked in disbelief.

  Father Kenneth reached for the heavy cross that hung from his neck. “Aye, the sisters of Our Lady’s Convent.”

  “You bring nuns to my room?” In disbelief, Roland’s gaze raked over the scene before him, “You come in secret? Using a passage that my family knows nothing of? As though women such as this could not be met within the hall, and with respect?”

  An explosive shudder sent the women into high flutter. Barred from the room, Ieuan rammed the heavy wooden door from without.

  “Hold free!” Roland barked. “Hold free, Ieuan, I am in no danger!"

  No doubt, with the first of his warrior’s cry, the passage beyond his room had filled. The whole of the castle would be on the other side of that portal.

  "They have locked you in, m’Lord." His page argued.

  "Aye," Roland rolled his eyes, "it took three of them against one of you,
and you are no more than a tyke! I am safe, so desist. It is naught but the friar and nuns.”

  Silence hung ominously in the air. Roland glared at Kenneth. The friar hesitated, softly patting his cross. “We’ve come to speak of your lady wife.”

  Like a storm, the stillness shattered. “Lady wife?” He tilted his head in question, “I have no lady wife. No.” He leaned back against the poster of the bed. “The only woman in my life is a murdering whore who hides behind a worthless marriage document. Though she is no virgin, our bodies never ‘joined.’ The union was not secured.”

  “Roland!” Kenneth warned, but the knight refused to listen.

  “What is it you have to say about this woman? Has she stolen from the convent? Has she murdered any children? Turned to sorcery?” Fueled fury carried him away from the friar, three great strides before he spun back. “What could she have to do with you?”

  He stopped, stood, sucked in deep draughts of air. He tried, unsuccessfully, to calm himself.

  “Speak!” He bristled, but still Father Kenneth said nothing, as if waiting for the fury to burn itself out.

  A man of small stature, round at the center, Kenneth’s brown hair encircled his bald crown much like a halo, in keeping with his benign countenance. With no fear for his own safety, he reached up to rest a hand on Roland’s shoulder. A touch to calm, to ease tensions, much as he had done when Roland was a boy.

  Roland flinched, but did not pull away.

  “Come by the fire, son, so we can talk of these stories you have heard.”

  “Stories?” Roland wrenched his shoulder from the friar’s touch, and stalked to the fireplace. "Was it a mere accident that my wife gave my father a goblet of poison? Did she not run away with my sister’s husband? Was he not found? Tortured? And all for a pack of stories?” Arrogantly, he lifted the chin of the woman who stood there, to more clearly see a face lined with years and experience. Her tension, though clear, was based neither in fear nor anger, but something else.