Knight Tenebrae

by Julianne Lee

  “But if the messages were to fall into the wrong hands, the very people you wish most not to read them will still be able to.”

  Douglas shrugged to acknowledge the point. “What do you suggest?”

  Alex lowered his voice and began to explain the letter-replacement code. It was the simplest of all codes and the easiest to break, but in these days of creative spelling and multilingual populace Alex figured he could throw in a few new slants on the idea. Douglas listened raptly, nodding and smiling.

  Retreat to Lochmaben was in late May, and there was revelry all through the castle newly alive with victorious men. The Great Hall echoed with music and voices, and was stacked with foods hard to find north of the border, or even north of the English Channel. French wine flowed freely, and late in the evening Alex found himself parked at a table near a corner, sitting on a crooked stool. It had three legs, and he wasn’t entirely certain whether they were horribly uneven or he was simply too drunk to sit up straight. In any case, he was too wasted to stay on by himself, and so leaned heavily on the table while idly sucking the marrow from a broken beef rib.

  An extremely cheerful James Douglas heaved himself, laughing, onto the bench opposite, pulled his mistress down next to him, and began making out with her. She made it plain to the entire room exactly how pleased she was to see her lover again. One tit was hanging out the drawstring neck of her shift, which was all she wore, and Douglas was pawing it while sticking his tongue as far down her throat as he could get it. Alex was himself too drunk to care, or even realize, he was staring at Douglas’s hard, dark fingers kneading deeply soft, white flesh.

  Douglas took his mouth from the girl, turned to Alex, gazed stupidly for a moment, then said, “MacNeil! My friend! Would you care for a bit of this?” He jiggled the woman’s breast.

  Alex gaped, equally stupid for the moment. He would, indeed, care for some of that, but was taken aback at the generosity. He stammered, “Uh, your mistress...”

  “She’s nobody.”

  “I like that!” The girl had some cheek, at least, if not much intelligence.

  Douglas shrugged. “Very well, you’re somebody, but I don’t own your bastards is my meaning.”

  “You could.”

  “I would if you had your way, but I’ll have none of it. You’re comely and I love you, but I’ve no illusions about how you spend your time while I’m away.” He slapped her hip. “Now, get over there and give the Hungarian a warm welcome. He’s handsome enough for you, and I happen to know his purse is a heavy one.”

  The girl eyed Alex and shifted in her seat as if pleasuring herself against the bench. “And what of his other purse?”

  “Now, that I couldn’t say. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

  She grinned and began to climb over the table, hut Alex held up his palms.

  “No. No, thank you.” Suddenly he was flashing on the look on Lindsay’s face the morning after he’d banged that whore at Linlithgow. What she would say about this now as his wife was ringing in his ears and echoing in his skull, though she was hundreds of miles away.

  “No?” Douglas seemed genuinely shocked. “You insult me, MacNeil!” It was said with a grin, but also an edge to his voice.

  Alex shrugged. “Well, she’s pretty and all. And I do appreciate the gesture. I think I’d rather wait till I get home to my wife.”

  Nemed’s voice in his head said, “And do you think your wife is waiting? All alone in that castle, unhappy with you, surrounded by guardsmen. She’d be glad to know you were sticking yourself into a cunny that wasn’t hers.”

  Alex looked around for the source of the voice, but of course found nobody. He thought as loudly as possible, Don’t you ever sleep, you freak?

  Nemed’s reply was nothing but a laugh.

  Douglas laughed. “Saving yourself for your wife? I daresay my wife would as soon see me worry the livestock as to bother her.” An enormous, small-toothed grin spread across his face. “The poor woman cannot keep up with me, you see. I come home and she barricades herself in her bedchamber for fear of my enormous member.” He reached under the table. “Would you like to see?”

  Before Alex could demur, Sir James had his tunic up, his trews down around his knees, and was standing with his semi-erect penis lying on the table. “See? It’s huge!” The girl squealed and reached out to pet it. Alex, gawking with a head full of wine and mead, couldn’t help a mild relief the thing didn’t seem all that large and was in fact noticeably smaller than his own.

  Then Douglas said, his voice overflowing with drunken glee, “So, MacNeil! Show us—”

  He was stopped dead in mid-sentence as the girl bent down to take the organ into her mouth. Douglas emitted a loud moan that reverberated across the room over voices of other revelers, and sank back onto the bench behind him. The girl’s mouth kept with him and she disappeared behind the table as Douglas threw his head back to enjoy, his Adam’s apple poking from his long neck. Wanting to compare tools with Alex was entirely forgotten. Alex took the opportune moment to slip quickly and quietly away, still limping from his leg wound, giggling helplessly.

  Drunk as he was, he made his way carefully up the winding stairs to his bedchamber and shed all his clothes to crawl into the narrow bunk. Delicious, wild images tumbled in his brain, of the girl sucking on Douglas. Then he imagined himself with her. That was nice. He rolled over to press himself against the mattress as that image danced pleasantly in his head and the room spun around him.

  Then, unbidden and unwelcome, came a picture of Lindsay doing the same to Orrin... No, Orrin was dead. To Cullan, then. No. Cullan was dead. The image shifted to her bending over to receive Nemed. She was doing it with Nemed.

  Heart thudding wildly in his throat, Alex sat up in his bunk and nearly fell out of it. He couldn’t see past the image. It was clear. Perfect. Every detail, every hair on the elfin ass, every nuance of the pleasure in her voice. Not rape. She wanted it. God help him, she wanted it.

  “Stop this.” Pain filled him. He needed this to end or he would go crazy. “Stop this now!”

  His sight cleared, but the memory lingered. Lindsay and Nemed. As if it had actually happened, and he had been there to see it. He shook, trembled with the terrible uncertainty, and as the sweat cooled on his body he shivered with the cold. He lay back down under the blankets and shut his eyes tight to sleep, knowing that even in sleep, deep within the castle keep, he wouldn’t be safe.

  Chapter Twenty One

  In early August, having served the number of days due his liege and bolstered by commendations from Sir James and hints of a peerage title in his future, Alex was released from service for the year and made his way back to Eilean Aonarach with his men. This year, in spite of losses sustained in battle, Alex headed home with more men than when he’d left. In addition, he brought back an entire boatload of goods and gold. Mostly goods, but he was now far wealthier than he’d been in April. The influx of livestock and materials would be a huge benefit to all the MacNeils and MacConnells on the island. He sailed from the mainland with light heart, eager to see home again, and Lindsay.

  Eager to tell of his prospects for elevation, Alex could hardly contain himself as he leapt from the ship to his quay and strode through the barbican gate. Gaze flitting here and there in search of his wife, his heart fluttered against the fear of being greeted with bad news. There had been no communication between them for the entire four months, for sending messages and letters was an expensive and undependable proposition easily accomplished only by the very rich and powerful.

  In the barbican, his breath was taken away by the sight of Lindsay hurrying down the steps along the cliff, her skirts in her fists and a huge, white smile on her face. Her eyes were wide and bright as they searched his face. He hurried to her, and at the bottom step she leapt into his arms.

  His heart soared that she was still alive and happy to see him, and as she hugged his neck he nuzzled hers. The scent of her hair was home to him, and his soul ca
lmed. Others moved around them, knights making their way through the barbican toward the keep, then beyond that the bailey and barracks, and they went ignored. Alex had regained his other half, and now he felt whole for the first time in months. He set her down gently and went to kiss her, but she stopped him.

  “Alex, guess what.” Her voice was so soft in his ear, he could barely hear beneath the din of arriving men. There was news, but he was reluctant to hear it. He went ahead and kissed her so she wouldn’t spoil this perfect moment. Her lips were warm and welcoming. Her body felt wonderful in his arms. He held her to him and felt of the smooth, silken dress, her back and hips. He held her waist, and that was when he realized. Their lips parted, and he looked into her face, stunned. Her stomach was no longer flat. She’d gained weight, and he could only hope...

  “Alex, I’m pregnant.” The whisper was feather soft.

  All he could do was gape at her. Anything he could possibly say now would sound shallow and unimportant. Pregnant. The image of her with Nemed rose, but he blinked it from his mind. That had been a trick. He needed more than anything to believe that, and it became true in his mind.

  A worried look crossed her face. “This is what you wanted, yes?”

  Finally, he smiled and sighed. “It’s wonderful.” Beyond wonderful. So far beyond wonderful that his vocabulary failed him. He held both her hands in his and kissed them, then knelt and pressed his face to the slight bulge of her belly, his hands splayed against her sides. He didn’t care who might be watching, or making comment on his weakness. “On my soul, Lin, it’s the most wonderful thing that could ever happen.”

  “If the little parasite lives.”

  Alex’s gut clenched and he looked up. Nemed. A shiver took him as he realized how vulnerable he’d just become, and he looked around. No elf. Alex stood.

  “He’s here.” His voice shook with rage and he stood.

  “Who is?”

  “That Nemed.”

  Lindsay looked around. “You see him? Why won’t he show himself to me?”

  Alex glanced at her, and for a moment wondered why she wanted that. “I heard him.” He looked around. “I swear, I’m going to kill that sonofabitch.” His fingers touched the hilt of his sword, and he held her hand to take her into the keep.

  “You can’t kill him.” She held her belly as she climbed, and he put an arm around her waist for support.

  “Sure, I can. I get my hands on him, he’s one dead elf.”

  “He’s the only one who can send us home.”

  Stillness overcame Alex. He stared at her, unbelieving. Incredulous. “We can’t go home.”

  “We must.” She continued to climb, and he followed her into the stairwell.

  “We’d lose everything.”

  “Lose what? What everything?”

  “Our home. Our life here. Lin, there’s talk of making me an earl.”

  But she ignored that. “You wanted a baby, now we’re going to have a baby, and now we have to go home to save its life.”

  “Lin—”

  “Alex.” Now it was her turn to stare, uncomprehending. Inside the Great Hall, she let go of her skirts and gaped at him. Her wide eyes glittered with tears, and her voice shook. It appeared she’d been thinking about this for a long time. “Do you know what the infant mortality rate is here? Have you even noticed the death rate in general? Even among those who aren’t soldiers? People don’t live very long. The life expectancy here doesn’t even come close to retirement age for us. Most babies don’t live past the first year. After that, children can’t be counted on to live to adulthood unless they’ve reached the age of ten or so. We must go home, for the sake of our child!”

  As she spoke, his head moved slowly, side to side in denial. “No. Are you nuts? I can’t go to Nemed and ask him for this. I can’t ask him for anything, let alone this. He’s dangerous and he hates us. He’d do something terrible. I won’t put us in that position.”

  “Alex—”

  “No.” He turned to walk away, headed for the stairs down to the living quarters. He didn’t want to talk about this. This life they’d happened upon was a done deal, and there was no changing their circumstance.

  Lindsay followed. “You can, and you will. Or I will. Danu says—”

  “No.” At the top of the stairs he turned. “Danu knows nothing. You’ll ask that elf nothing. Not that you need to; now that you’ve said it aloud he probably knows what’s on your mind.” Alex glanced around, half expecting to see those red eyes floating among the shadows, and shuddered. Quickly, he descended the steps to get out of the hall. Lindsay followed.

  “Alex, listen to me.” At the bottom of the stairs she stopped, but he kept walking. “Alex.” He headed for the door to the living quarters anteroom. But at her next, strident, words, he stopped short. “Bubonic plague, Alex.”

  He turned toward her. “What?”

  “In about thirty years. Plague will wipe out more than half the population of Europe. Whole towns will be emptied of people. Religious fanaticism will run rampant.”

  Alex snorted. “Worse than now?”

  “Far worse. Unimaginably worse. There will be economic chaos. Widespread and chronic emotional depression. It will be a horror most modern novelists would find impossible to write, because nobody would believe it. And it will only be the first of several pandemics. Only the first, Alex.”

  “You and I are descended from people who survived the plague.”

  “And who survived smallpox, but we’re not immune to it without vaccination. I wouldn’t care to be exposed to plague. I certainly don’t want my child...” Tears choked her and she blinked them back and forced the rest through her throat. “...my child to contract it. Our child, Alexander.”

  He had no reply to that, but only stared at her. They couldn’t go home. Nemed would never send them, he knew it. And he would rather cut off an arm than to ask anything of that creature in any case. “We’ve built a life here.”

  “We had lives before we came here.”

  But not together. She was thinking of that Derek guy, he was sure of it. Flatly, he said, “It isn’t an option.” Then he turned to enter the apartments, and strode on into the bedchamber.

  She followed him, “Alex, you must—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this. I said, it’s not an option. We can’t do it. Nemed would never cooperate.”

  “We can try. Try to contact him.”

  “No.”

  “I said, no!” He began to strip, first wriggling from his hauberk and flinging it across the room to slide up against the far wall in a jingling mound of tiny iron links. “Now, send in Mary to fill the bath. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’ve got something insectile crawling around in my hair I want gone.” He poked his fingers into his hair in search of a bug that had been driving him nuts all day.

  She stared at him, unmoving.

  He stopped to turn and address her. “Now.”

  Then she turned on her heel and left, presumably to find Mary.

  Alex collapsed into a chair by the hearth, propped his elbows on his knees, and laid his face in his hands until his anger passed. Then he sat back and stared into the flames, his mind turning fitfully with everything he’d just learned, and one thing rose to the surface to fill his consciousness. If he could only get his hands on that elf, he’d fix it so Lindsay would stop thinking they could ever go home. And while he was at it, he might have a turn at Danu as well.

  Once he was in the bath he felt better, though Lindsay was silent, staring out the window and declining to help him scrub. He’d be damned if he would ask her. So he washed his own hair and picked out the flea by himself. Then he stepped from the tub to stand by the high fire and toweled off with a large piece of linen. The towel was a little stiff with a grease residue, though it had been laundered; he would need to have a talk with Mary about letting the kitchen use the towels meant for his bath. As he reached for another towel, he glanced over at Lindsay. Tears glistened on her
face.

  “I really am happy about the baby.” The towel went around his waist.

  “I expect you are.” Her voice sounded bitter.

  “But you’re not?”

  “I’m terrified.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  She turned to him, and her face crumpled to weeping. “No, it won’t. It’s already not all right, for I’m married to a man who won’t even try to do what’s best for his child.”

  “There’s nothing to be done.”

  “Says you.”

  Anger rose again. “Yes, says me. Nemed is dangerous. He has powers I don’t understand and can’t counter. Going to him with my hand out is too big a risk. Going anywhere near him is dangerous. I won’t take the chance.” He went to her and took her hand, half-expecting her to dodge him but she didn’t. She only stared into his eyes, her jaw set firmly. He forced his voice into a softness he didn’t feel. “We’ll be careful about the baby. We’ll make sure you eat right, that you stay away from sick people, that your food isn’t contaminated. I’ll see to it.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “It’s all we can do.”

  She looked away, defeated. He kissed her cheek, and a hiccupping sob shook her, then he took her in his arms and held her. The slight thickening of her belly pressed against him, and he put his hand against her side. A baby. Holy crap.

  * * *

  Alex held his son, so proud he nearly burst out laughing. The boy was perfect, pink and healthy, and everyone agreed he was the image of his father. Life was perfect. The world was perfect.

  “My lord,” said the soft-voiced maid, “‘tis your wife.” Fear tinged Mary’s words. Alex frowned. “She...seems to have taken ill.”

  Alex handed the baby off to someone, and hurried to Lindsay’s side. She lay on the bed piled high with blankets, pale and sweating. Her lips were white and dry, a terrible change from the health she’d displayed only moments before. “Lindsay, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m dying, Alex. I’m bleeding out.” At that moment a rose of blood blossomed on the covers, and spread so fast he knew she was telling the truth. Wailing of the servants echoed in the room, and Alex then realized his voice had joined them.