“Orlando, you go,” Hugh said. “Get everyone out of here. Tell them to run. Get them as far away from the castle as—”
“You, too, Hugh!” Phillipa clutched at his mantle. “Go now, while you still can.”
“I told you,” he said quietly, capturing her gaze with his incandescent eyes. “I’m not leaving you.” Ignoring her frantic entreaties, he turned to Orlando and said, “Hurry.”
Orlando stood in front of Phillipa, his eyes glimmering, and took her hand. “When first bomba ignite, it will set off the others. Will be very big esplosione.” Gravely he added, “You be very quick to die. Not suffer.”
“Thank you, Orlando.”
“Andare con il Dio.” He lifted her fingers to his lips; she felt a wet trickle on the back of her hand.
Straightening up, Orlando executed a solemn sign of the cross, gripped Hugh on the shoulder, and left.
“Hugh, you’ve got to go with him,” Phillipa pleaded, her chin quivering. “I’m begging you. Hugh, please!”
He was fiddling with the lock, his forehead furrowed. “I might be able to pick this. I need something sharp and narrow. Where’s your eating knife?” he asked, noting the empty sheath on her girdle.
“There—” she pointed to the floor, where the knife had fallen after Orlando was through with it “—but, please, Hugh—”
“Shh. Hold still.” Hugh slid the tip of the knife into the keyhole and jiggled it, staring at it as if he could open the lock by sheer force of will. He worked the knife in every direction, pulling on the collar, but it didn’t budge.
“‘Tisn’t working, Hugh.”
He sighed and tossed the knife onto the iron chair, then closed his hands around her head and kissed her, very tenderly. “I’m not leaving, Phillipa.”
Her tears overflowed. “Oh, Hugh, please. I want you to live.”
“I don’t want to,” he said softly, touching his forehead to hers. “Not without you.”
She looked into his eyes, so close, so fathomless, and was astounded to find them glazed with tears.
“I love you, Phillipa,” he said, his voice damp and raw, stroking her hair with trembling hands. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before. I’m sorry I was so stubborn, so...” He shook his head, a tear meandering through the blood on his cheek. “‘Twas wrong to pretend I didn’t feel what I felt. I was mad to throw you at Aldous, to abandon you as I did. This—” he yanked at the cruel iron collar “—is my fault, my fault entirely, and I’m staying with you no matter what happens.”
“Hugh, I love you, too, and that’s why I want you to get out of here. Please, Hugh, those things are filled with black powder. They’ll destroy this castle with you in it.”
Hugh looked at her as if she’d said something remarkable. “Yes...”
“What...?”
“If a lot of black powder could destroy a castle, perhaps a little—a very small amount—could destroy a lock.” He looked at the collar and then at her.
Phillipa’s gaze lit on a misshapen scrap of iron on the floor—a remnant of the arma that had exploded when Edmee lit it. “It could work,” she murmured.
“It could also injure you,” Hugh said. “Badly. I’m not sure how much to use, and—”
“Do it.”
“Are you—”
“Yes. Now, before it’s too late.”
Hugh sprinted to the other side of the cellar, scooped some black powder into a funnel and lit the taper.
Phillipa looked at the cage, murmuring a prayer when she saw that the fusibili had burned down almost all the way down. “We don’t have long, Hugh. Hurry!”
A moment later, he was back, handing her the taper. “Hold this.” Tilting the funnel at an angle to the lock, he poured a few grains of black powder into the keyhole. “I’m going to start with just a little,” he said, setting the funnel aside and taking the taper. “Turn your face away—that’s right. I’ll shield you as well as I can with my hand.”
“Hugh, I don’t want you to hurt your—”
“There’s no time to argue.” Hugh took the taper from her and aimed its lit end at the lock, while holding his right hand over her face to protect it. Turning his own face away, he said, “Close your eyes. Ready?”
“I’m ready.”
Lightning cracked in Phillipa’s skull, deafening her and snatching her feet out from under her. She was dimly aware of a searing pain on the side of her neck, and a spinning sensation, as if the world were whirling in the wrong direction.
That groan, did it come from her?
Strong arms banded around her. She felt strangely weightless, and opened her eyes to find Hugh carrying her through the cellar—running, because the bombe would explode at any second, but laboriously, because her weight was slowing him down.
“Put me down,” she implored him. “I can run, put me down!”
He set her on her wobbly legs, seized her around the waist and half-dragged her up the stairs, through the deserted great hall—They got out...they got out in time—out the front entrance and down the steps.
They sprinted over the flagstone courtyard hand-in-hand, across the close-cropped grass surrounding the castle toward the gate to the outer bailey, Phillipa’s legs numb, her lungs burning—
A sudden concussion lifted her off her feet, pitched her forward. She felt the roar more than heard it, and then another and another and another, a deafening reverberation that shook the very earth beneath them.
Finding herself facedown on the grass, she started to rise, but something pressed her down—Hugh’s body as he threw himself on top of her, shielding her from the continued force of the blast and the debris raining down on them.
As the cataclysmic rumble subsided, Phillipa became aware of a voice in her ear, Hugh’s voice, talking to her, softly and earnestly.
“...forever,” he was saying. “Always, love. I’ll always be there for you, always. I’ll never leave you again.”
Epilogue
June 1173, London
A butterfly flew in through the window.
Phillipa looked up from the letter she was deciphering to watch the dainty white creature flitter out of the sky as if transported on a ray of morning sunshine. It alighted for a moment on her inkhorn, as if in greeting, before setting off on a roundabout exploration of her library, which took up the entire top floor of the Thames Street town house she had called home for some eight months now.
The butterfly meandered lazily past the books shelved floor-to-ceiling on the windowless north wall, setting down briefly on a stack that had overflowed onto the floor, as if pondering the volume on top—a surprisingly good life of St. Catharine by the nun Clemence, which Phillipa had just finished.
With a tremble of its fragile wings, the butterfly arose once more to drift curiously among the items scattered on the corner table: a stack of correspondence weighed down with Phillipa’s jewel-encrusted dagger in its sheath; an iron candelabra; her old tooled leather document case, in which Aristotle’s Logica Nova and Logica Vetus still nestled cozily; more books of course; and a silver tray bearing the remains of her breakfast, a half-eaten squire’s loaf and a few crumbs of the sharp yellow cheese she couldn’t get enough of lately.
From the table, the butterfly wandered over to the locked cabinet in the opposite corner, which contained a number of rather more arcane items: cipher keys, some devised by Phillipa and some which she’d divined by decoding intercepted dispatches; two different kinds of invisible ink, one invented by her sister Ada; blank seals, wax, ribbons, cords and other implements for resealing letters without revealing that they’d been tampered with; magnifying glasses that fit over the eyes; frequency tables for every language in which sensitive correspondence might possibly be conducted; parchment of all different weights and qualities from every type of animal utilized for that purpose; razor-sharp pen knives for scraping words off parchment without leaving a trace; and various other matriel employed by Phillipa in her capacity as cipher secretary to Henry Planta
genet, King of the English.
Victorious in thwarting the revolt against him, King Henry had punished his wife with confinement of the most liberal sort at Salisbury and his sons with formal censure. As for Queen Eleanor’s hapless co-conspirators Aldous Ewing and Clare of Halthorpe, they were apprehended by Graeham Fox and his men while fleeing the burning rubble of Halthorpe Castle, whereupon Richard de Luci tried them for treason and imprisoned them indefinitely in adjoining cells in the Tower of London. It is said by the guards there that their bickering never ceases.
Watching the butterfly’s circuitous journey, Phillipa fancied that she could feel the beating of its tiny wings in her very womb. She rested a hand absently on her rounded belly, starting when she felt it again, whispery ripples against her palm.
“Hugh!” she called toward the door that led downstairs. “Hugh, come quick!”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs, followed by Hugh bolting into the room as he yanked a shirt down over his head. “Are you all right? Is it...” His anxious gaze lit on her stomach. “Is anything—”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Phillipa said with an indulgent smile. “I just wanted you to feel this. Give me your hand.”
Hugh knelt in front of her, his hair a tousled golden riot, his eyes luminous as glass in the morning sun, and held out a tentative hand—his good left hand, the right, in addition to being thumbless, having been further mangled last summer when he blew that iron collar off her neck with black powder. Better to make an already ugly hand even uglier, he told her whenever she bemoaned his sacrifice for her, than to have ruined that extraordinary face.
That wasn’t his only souvenir of their mission, for the little iron ball that grazed his skull that afternoon had left in its wake a long, narrow scar on one side of his forehead, from his hairline to his eyebrow. Of course, he professed to view his new disfigurements as blessings. The Sheriff of London shouldn’t be too pretty, he liked to say.
Phillipa took his hand and placed it on her belly, where she had felt the soft thumps of tiny feet from within. “Wait,” she whispered. “You’ll feel it—”
Hugh gasped in astonishment when the baby kicked again, and laughed delightedly. “God’s bones!” He put both hands on her then, caressing her stomach with an expression of awe. When he looked up at her, his eyes were shiny. “It’s a baby.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” she murmured as she lowered her mouth to his. He curled his hands around her head as they kissed, sweetly and lingeringly.
A memory came to Phillipa then—her standing in the twilit orchard at Eastingham, filled with wistful fascination as she watched Graeham touching Joanna’s belly as Hugh was now touching hers. Graeham had laughed, and then they’d kissed.
Knowing naught of the world, Phillipa had reflected at the time that some women were meant for marriage and children, some for different things. If she had been told then that, less than a year later, she would be married to the likes of Hugh of Wexford and awaiting the birth of their first child, she would have been utterly incredulous.
And yet here she was with Hugh’s babe frolicking in her belly, and his arms around her, and never in her life had she felt such peace and fulfillment. As Orlando Storzi had put it following their nuptial mass last August, she and Hugh were living validation of the alchemical principle that two opposites can unite to create something altogether new and extraordinary.
* * *
The little white butterfly cavorted around the embracing couple as if in celebration, and then it flew out the same window through which it had entered, dancing out over the thatched and tiled rooftops of London, into the bright warm sun and the infinite blue sky, into the light, into the heat...
Into the world.
~ THE END ~
Contents
SECRET THUNDER
“A marvelous love story from the queen of medieval romance. If you only read one historical romance this year, it should be Secret Thunder!” The Literary Times
Chapter 1
March 1067: The village of Cottwyk in Cambridgeshire, England
“It’s not much of a whorehouse.” Luke de Périgueux tugged on the reins, halting his mount next to his brother’s at the edge of the clearing. He could barely make out the humble cottage against the darksome woods that surrounded it; English forests were black as hell at night.
“At least it’s shelter,” Alexandre said through a yawn. “‘Twill rain soon, and I’d rather be in there than out here when it does.”
A shudder coursed through Luke. He rubbed his arms beneath his mantle.
Alex grinned and punched him on the shoulder. “So, my fearsome big brother feels the cold just like us ordinary men.”
Luke nodded, though it wasn’t the damp night air making him shiver, but a cursed weakness of the body and soul—a weakness too shameful to reveal, even to Alex. His hands fisted involuntarily, and he gritted his teeth. Ride it out, he commanded himself. ‘Twill ease up. It always does. A good, hard tupping should help. Flicking his reins, he approached the cottage.
Alex followed, eyeing the crude wattle-and-daub hovel, a doubtful expression on his face. Yellowish light shone through the skins tacked over the windows, and wood smoke scented the air, but not a sound came from within. “Perhaps we’ve got the wrong place,” Alex said.
“Nay, this should be it.” One of Luke’s fellow crossbowmen had directed him here: There’s just the one wench, and she’s not much, but she’ll spread her legs for anyone with tuppence and a hard cock—even a hard Norman cock. Most of these Saxon bitches run and hide when they see us coming.
Little wonder. Every inhabitant of this miserable, rain-choked island feared and despised the Norman conquerors, and why shouldn’t they? Five months had passed since Luke and Alex crossed the Channel to help William, Duke of Normandy—and now King of England—seize this godforsaken country in a single, bloody battle. Hastings should have been the end of it, and it would have been, if only these English barbarians would cease their pointless uprisings and accept Norman rule. All winter, William’s army—including many landless knights, like Luke and Alex, hungry for English holdings—had confiscated estates and subdued the locals with a pitiless zeal calculated to crush rebellious tendencies. Yet, still the people of England defied them, holding on with pathetic tenacity to lands forever lost to them on the fourteenth of October, 1066.
The deerskin covering the doorway parted, and a figure emerged—the figure of a woman carrying a lantern. She was plump, her bosom and hips stretching the wool of her coarse brown kirtle, and her hair was a mop of flaming curls. Holding the lantern high, she sized up the two strangers on horseback with a whore’s practiced eye.
Alex chuckled. “Seems we’ve got the right place, after all.”
“Do you speak any French?” Luke asked her as another bout of trembling overtook him. Hold on... ‘twill pass.
“Quite a bit,” she answered in a guttural accent. “My husband, God rest him, hailed from Beauvais.”
A stroke of luck. Most of these Saxons didn’t understand a word of their new ruler’s language. Luke had picked up a little English—he had a facility for languages—but he had no desire to struggle with it tonight.
She smiled coyly. “I don’t imagine you came here to talk, though.” Her doughy cheeks were sprinkled with pockmarks, and her teeth were crooked, but Luke wasn’t feeling very particular at the moment.
King William had issued regulations forbidding his knights and men-at-arms from molesting women or frequenting brothels. Unlike some of his colleagues, Luke had no trouble obeying the mandate against rape. Brutalizing innocents held little appeal for him; he was brutal enough on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the only practical alternative was to patronize whatever local brothels would serve the Normans, and he felt no compunction about doing so.
“My name is Helig,” the red-haired woman said. Luke couldn’t remember having asked. Helig, for God’s sake. Why the devil did these Saxons give their women such grotesque
names?
“‘Twill be sixpence for the both of you together,” Helig said. “Tuppence apiece if you want me separately. More if you’ll be wanting something out of the ordinary.”
“Tuppence apiece, then,” Luke said. Alex might not even want her; he could afford to be picky. Handsome and congenial, the young swordsman was remarkably adept at coaxing wenches out of their kirtles. Luke, on the other hand, lacked his brother’s agreeable nature, and his fierce reputation made women uneasy. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had given herself to him for free.
Helig directed them to an attached byre around back, where they stabled their horses, and through that to the cottage proper. Luke squatted on the earthen floor by the central fire pit to warm his jittery hands while his brother went about the pointless business of flirting with this homely Saxon whore.
“Your hair looks like new copper,” Alex told her.
She snorted. “You don’t seem in no hurry to get on with things. Care for a pint, then?”
“Aye, and one for my brother.”
“Ah, I figured you and him was kin.” Helig filled two tankards from a pitcher of ale. “I must say, I never seen such black hair on a Norman as you two have.”
“That’s because we’re from Aquitaine, not Normandy. Folks are darker in the south.” Alex unpinned his mantle and tossed it onto one of the two roughhewn benches facing the table. Luke wrapped his own more closely around himself, hoping his brother wouldn’t notice his tremors. He felt like a cocked crossbow, quivering and ready to fire; his jaw ached from clenching it.
Helig set a tankard on the table with a thunk that made Luke bolt to his feet. Easy. As she reached across it to place the other on the opposite side, Alex came up behind her and lifted her skirt. She had thick legs and a generous white rump, which he fondled freely.
She smirked at Alex over her shoulder as he moved against her. “Seems you’re in something of a hurry after all.”
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 68
