And Elizabeth? Did she fit with these women? She wondered if she could stand up under Judith’s scrutiny.
They purchased horses as soon as they stepped ashore in France and Judith led them southwest. For the last day Judith had been agreeing with everything the men told her. Once Bronwyn punched Elizabeth so that she looked up at John Bassett when he swelled out his chest as he lectured Judith. Tam also gave Bronwyn curt orders. Sir Guy spoke only once to Elizabeth.
Glancing up at him through her lashes, looking demure and angelic, she asked him how his toes were. The giant’s scar whitened and he walked away. Bronwyn held her ribs as she nearly split her sides laughing. Judith, when told the story of Sir Guy’s toes, gave Elizabeth a look of admiration and speculation.
Alyx merely tuned her lute and that act seemed to show whom she thought was going to win the power battle.
John Bassett rented rooms in an inn not far from the duke’s estates, the one the locals said he was residing in at present. The three men had to leave the women alone as they went to search for the husbands. John looked as if he were going to cry when he met with stubborn silence as he begged Judith to swear to God that she would wait for the return of the men.
“Must I put a guard on you?” John asked, exasperated.
Judith merely looked at him.
“I’ve a good mind to take you with me, but we’ll have to split up and it takes more than one mere man to control a hellion like you. There should be a special saint to guard husbands like Gavin.”
“You’re wasting time, John,” Judith said patiently.
“She’s right,” Guy said, not looking at any of the women.
John caught Judith to him, kissed her forehead. “May the Lord protect you.” With that, the three men left.
Judith leaned against the door and let out a deep sigh. “He means well. Now, shall we get to work?”
Elizabeth soon came to realize what a magnificent planner Judith was—and she knew how to use her gold. She hired a total of twenty-five people to spread word of the world’s greatest singer and the universe’s most exotic dancer. She planned for the excitement of expectation to be feverish by the time Alyx and Elizabeth appeared, for she wanted all eyes on them while she and Bronwyn slipped away.
In the early afternoon, Judith dressed in rags, blackened one front tooth with a nasty mixture of gum and soot and delivered fresh-baked bread to the duke’s castle. She came back with wonderful news.
“Miles is alive,” she said, scratching and discarding the filthy clothes. “The duke always seems to have prisoners and he always keeps them in the top of the tower. This tastes awful!” she said, scrubbing at her teeth. “It seems the whole Lorillard family are masters of torture and right now they’re working on the girl.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” Judith added quickly. “From the gossip, I don’t know if she’s still alive or not, but the two men are.”
“What about Miles’s wound?” Elizabeth asked.
Judith put out her hands, palms up. “I couldn’t ask directly and all I could find out was that the prisoners are always kept in the top of the tower.”
“That should be easy,” Bronwyn said. “We merely attach wings to our horses and fly to the top.”
“There’s a staircase,” Judith said.
“Unguarded?” Bronwyn asked.
“The door to the rooms where the prisoners are kept is guarded but another stair branches up to the roof.” Judith slipped a clean shift over her head. “There are windows in the rooms and if we could go down from the roof…”
Only Bronwyn was aware of the tight white lines forming at the corners of Judith’s mouth. At times Judith seemed fearless, but she had an absolute terror of high places. Bronwyn touched Judith’s arm. “You stay and dance to Alyx’s music. Elizabeth and I will lower ourselves and…”
Judith put up her hand. “I could as likely dance as I could make the horses fly. Alyx would be singing, I’d never be able to keep the rhythm and I’d start looking at the tables and thinking of how many storage bins were needed for that much food. I’d probably forget to dance and start ordering the servants about.”
All three women unsuccessfully tried to suppress giggles, both at Judith’s accuracy and her forlorn expression.
Judith rolled her eyes at them. “I’m strong and I’m small and I can most easily go down a rope and slip inside a window.”
No amount of talking could persuade Judith of any other course and soon they sat down to rest, each with her own thoughts of the dangers to come. Elizabeth never spoke of her fear of the men touching her and Judith’s terror of high places wasn’t mentioned again.
As dusk approached, Judith sank to her knees and began to pray and soon the other three women joined her.
Chapter 20
ALYX WAS THE ONE WHO SURPRISED THE WOMEN THE most. For the last few days she’d had the least to say, had followed her outspoken, beautiful sisters-in-law without a suggestion or complaint. But as soon as Alyx had a musical instrument in her hands and was told to perform, she far outstripped her sisters in flamboyance.
Judith and Bronwyn, dressed in filthy, concealing rags, blended into the procession that followed Alyx and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, strutting, already drawing attention to her well-endowed body, wore cheap cloth of garish, outlandish colors that would have attracted attention on their own.
As soon as Alyx entered the Great Hall of the old castle, she let out a note that made everyone pause. Bronwyn and Judith had never heard the full volume of Alyx’s voice and they halted for a moment, listening with some awe.
“I’ll give you a rhythm,” Alyx whispered to Elizabeth. “Follow it with your body.”
Every eye was on Alyx and the beautiful woman beside her. Abruptly Alyx let her voice drop and once again the audience began to breathe, and with a mixture of laughter and applause, they began to move about. “Now!” Judith hissed at Bronwyn and the two women disappeared into a darkened hole in the wall.
With their very heavy skirts flung over their arms, they tore up the old stone stairs, up two flights, three flights, and as they neared the top, a noise made them flatten themselves against the wall. Listening with every pore, they waited for the guard to pass the opening.
Judith pointed to a crack of blackness on the left, away from the vigilant guard. They slipped into the opening with a whisper of sound. Rats squealed in protest and Bronwyn kicked one of the nasty things back down the stairs.
At the top of the stairs was an overhead door—a locked door.
“Damn!” Judith whispered. “We need a key.”
But before she even spoke, Bronwyn went to the narrow trapdoor and began to run her hands along the edges. As she reached the far edge, she turned and gave Judith a triumphant smile, her teeth and eyes showing white in the darkness. Bronwyn threw an iron bolt and the door swung up easily. One loud squeak made them stop but they heard no sound of footsteps on the stairs. They squeezed through the opening and were on the roof.
For a moment they paused and breathed deeply of the clean night air. As Bronwyn turned to Judith, she saw the little woman was looking at the battlements with fear in her eyes.
“Let me go,” Bronwyn said.
“No.” Judith shook her head. “If something happened and I had to pull you up, I couldn’t do it. But you can lift me.”
Bronwyn nodded as she saw the sense in Judith’s words. With no more sound, they removed their outer, coarse woolen skirts and began uncoiling heavy rope from the underside. Judith had paid four women to spend the afternoon sewing these skirts. Now the moonlight shone on their skirts of plaid, blue and green for Bronwyn, golds and browns for Judith.
As soon as Bronwyn’s rope lay in a coiled heap, she went around the roof of the round tower to peer down from the crenelated battlements. “There are four windows,” she informed Judith. “Which one holds Miles?”
“Let me think,” Judith said, rope on her forearm. “That window is over the stairs, the opposite one facing the sta
irs, so the cell must be one of those two.” She pointed to her right and left.
Neither of them had to mention that if Judith appeared in the wrong window it could mean her death.
“Come on, let’s go,” Judith said as if she were on her way to her own execution.
Bronwyn had used ropes all her life and, easily, she knotted a sort of seat for Judith. The full tartan skirt was pulled between her legs and fastened into the wide leather belt. Her heart already racing, Judith stepped into the rope sling, part around her waist, some between her legs.
As she stood on the battlement, Bronwyn smiled at her. “Concentrate on your job and don’t think about where you are.”
Judith only nodded since fear had already closed her throat.
Bronwyn wrapped one end of the rope around a stone crenelation and used that to lower Judith slowly.
Judith repeated psalms to herself, swearing her trust in God, as she looked for toe holds. Three times pieces of wall crumbled away under her feet and each time her heart jumped to her throat as she paused, expecting any moment to have a guard above her cut the rope that held her life.
After long, slow moments, she reached the window and as her foot caught the stone sill, a hand grabbed her ankle.
“Quiet!” a voice commanded as Judith gave a sharp gasp of terror.
Strong hands caught her calves, then her hips, and pulled her inside the window. Judith, so very glad to once again be on firm ground, clutched the inside of the sill so hard she threatened to break her fingers.
“Aren’t you the one that’s terrified of high places?”
Judith turned to look into Roger Chatworth’s calm face. His shirt hung in rags on his strong body. “Where’s Miles?” she said in a half-gasp, half-croak.
A sound from outside the cell made Roger grab her protectively.
“Talkin’ to yourself, Chatworth?” the guard called out but didn’t bother to walk toward the cell.
“No one better,” Roger called back, holding Judith’s trembling body.
“Who is above?” Roger said into her ear.
“Bronwyn.”
Judith’s answer was rewarded by an under-breath curse from Roger. She wanted to pull away from him but at the moment any comfort felt good. Roger drew her, still attached to the rope, to a far corner of the little room. “Miles is in the opposite cell,” he whispered. “He’s been wounded and I’m not sure he has the strength to climb your rope. The guard will sleep soon and we’ll get out. I’ll go first and then pull you up. But you cannot stay in this room alone. You must sit on the sill and if the guard looks in, you must jump off. Do you understand? As soon as I reach the top I’ll pull you up,” he repeated.
Judith let his words sink in. This was her family’s enemy, had been the cause of Mary Montgomery’s death. Perhaps he meant to kill Bronwyn and cut the rope holding her. “No…” she began.
“You have to trust me, Montgomery! Bronwyn can’t pull you up and you couldn’t possibly climb the rope. Damn women! Why didn’t you send some men?”
That did it. Her eyes blazed. “You ungrateful—”
He put his hand over her mouth. “Good girl! Whatever I don’t like about the Montgomerys, I like their women. Now let’s waste no more time.” With that, he led, half pulled, Judith to the window, picked her up and set her on the sill. “Put your hands here”—he indicated the ledge of the sill—“and hold on. When I start to pull you up, use your hands and feet to keep from hitting the wall.” He gave her a little shake since Judith was staring glassily at the ground far, far below her. “Think about your husband’s anger when he finds out you rescued a Chatworth before his brother.”
Judith almost smiled at that—almost. She did lift her head and visualized Gavin and imagined being in his safe arms. She swore she’d never again do anything so stupid as try to rescue a man again. Unless of course Gavin needed her. Or his brothers. Or one of her sisters-in-law. Or perhaps, too, her mother. And her children by all means. And—
The tug on the rope as Roger grabbed it above her head nearly sent her flying. “Mind on your work, woman!” he commanded.
She ducked his feet as he swung above her and, her senses once again alert, she tilted her head back and watched him climb the rope, hand over hand.
Bronwyn greeted Roger at the top with a knife aimed at his throat and held him there, suspended over the wall, hands supporting his body weight.
“What have you done with Judith?” Bronwyn growled.
“She waits below for me to pull her up and every minute you delay comes closer to costing her her life.”
At that moment, several things happened. One, Judith, either in fear or necessity, swung away from the windowsill and the momentum almost made Roger lose his grip.
“Guards!” came a shout from below.
“The door!” Roger said, fighting to stay on the wall. “Lock the door!”
Bronwyn reacted at once, but by the time she reached the door, a guard was already through it. She didn’t hesitate as she slipped her knife between his ribs. He fell atop the door and Bronwyn had to push him aside to shove the bolt home.
She ran back to where Roger was pulling on Judith’s rope, and leaned between the crenelations to help. “What happened?” Bronwyn asked before Judith was even over the roof.
“Alyx and Elizabeth were tossed in the cell with Miles. I stayed and listened as long as I could but when the guard looked for Chatworth, he called out. What happened to him?”
Bronwyn assisted Judith onto the roof. “There,” she nodded toward the dead man not far away.
“Who heard him call?” Roger demanded.
“I’m not sure anyone did,” Judith said. “Hurry! We must get them out of this place.”
“There isn’t time. Where are your husbands?” Roger asked.
“Here in France but—” Judith began but stopped as Roger took the second rope from the roof floor and tied it to a battlement. “They’re on the other side.”
Roger ignored her. “There isn’t time. The old man will be up here in minutes. We’ve got to get down and get some help.”
“You coward,” Bronwyn hissed. “You escape. Judith and I will rescue our family.”
Roger grabbed her arm harshly. “Shut up, you idiot! Do you forget that Elizabeth is my sister? I haven’t time to argue but if we’re all caught there’ll be no one to lead a rescue. Now, can you get down that rope yourself?”
“Yes but—” Bronwyn began.
“Then do it!” He half tossed her over the wall, all the while securely holding her hands. “Go, Bronwyn!” he ordered, then gave her a quick smile. “Show us some of your Scots blood.”
As soon as Bronwyn disappeared over the side, Roger grabbed Judith by the armpits and lifted her. “Good! You weigh no more than my armor.” He half squatted. “Hang onto my back with all your strength.”
Judith only nodded and obeyed, buried her face in Roger’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She didn’t look when he lowered himself over the side. Sweat broke out on his neck and she was aware of how he was straining.
“Are you going to let an Englishman beat you?” Roger spat across the void to Bronwyn.
Judith opened one eye and looked with admiration at her sister-in-law. Bronwyn had the rope wrapped around one ankle, the opposite foot on top, her hands easing herself down. At Roger’s words, she speeded up her travel.
Judith didn’t even consider leaving Roger’s safe, broad back merely because they stepped onto land. As if it were something he did every day, he peeled her hands then her legs away from his body.
Trembling, Judith watched as he ran to the bottom of Bronwyn’s rope. She was still several feet from the ground. “Jump, Scot!” he ordered up at her.
There was a slight hesitation but Bronwyn obeyed, let go of the rope and landed heavily into Roger Chatworth’s waiting arms. “You must weigh the same as my horse,” he murmured while setting her down. “Is it too much to hope that you women have horses nearby?”
&nb
sp; “Come, enemy,” Bronwyn said, motioning with her arm.
Roger grabbed Judith’s arm since she was standing still, looking straight up with horror to where she’d been. “Run!” he said and gave her a sharp slap on her rump. “Let’s get my sister and Chris out of this!”
Miles was standing in the middle of the room as if waiting for them, when the door was thrown open and Elizabeth and Alyx were pushed inside.
“To keep you company, Montgomery.” The guard laughed. “Enjoy tonight because it’ll probably be your last one alive.”
Miles caught Elizabeth before she fell, then reached for Alyx.
Without a word, expertly, he sat down on the floor, arms about both women’s shoulders, as Elizabeth began kissing his face enthusiastically.
“They were told you were dead,” Elizabeth said between kisses. “Oh Miles, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
Miles, smiling slightly, his eyes alight, kissed each woman’s forehead. “I can die peacefully now.”
“How can you joke—?” Elizabeth began, but Miles kissed her lips and calmed her.
The three of them came alert as the single guard called out as he ran up the stairs toward the roof. A heavy thud followed the guard’s disappearance.
In the silence, eyes looking upward, Miles said, “Bronwyn?”
Both women nodded.
Miles took a deep breath, sighed. “Tell me what you’ve done.”
Alyx was quiet as Elizabeth told of their rescue plan, how Judith was going down the wall and into Miles’s cell. Alyx was watching Miles, leaning against his strong shoulder, happy for his comfort, and she saw his eyes darken. Raine would wring my neck if I told him of such a plan, Alyx thought and hot tears came to her eyes.
“Alyx?” Miles said, interrupting Elizabeth’s story. “We’ll get out of here. Right now my brothers…”
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