Castles in the Air

by Christina Dodd

  His urgency scattered the servants, and he shouted after them, “Be back here before full dark.” He peered down at Juliana, and in the light of the dying day his skin appeared gray. Furrows lined his brow, and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked all of his thirty-five years.

  Alarmed now, she asked, “What is it you fear?”

  “They’re alone. It’s going to be dark soon. There are wolves and boars in those woods.”

  “Tell me the truth,” she demanded.

  “I took Denys to task for worshipping Margery from afar, and the lad resented it. I’m afraid—”

  “Sweet Mother of God.” Juliana interrupted him, remembering her conversation with Denys, remembering his unadulterated hero worship of Raymond. “You fell off the pedestal.”

  “What?”

  “He thought he could never be as noble as you. He thought he was hopeless. So why not do his worst and…abduct Margery?” She read the confirmation in Raymond’s face, and pushed her rising panic down. “He won’t hurt her,” she said, as much to reassure herself as Raymond. “He’s a good youth, he’s just misguided.”

  “He’s a love-crazed, land-crazed youth,” he said. “He has taken her for his own gain. I’m sure of it. I knew there was something wrong, something he wasn’t telling me, but I was too distracted—”

  She put out her hand and grasped his. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Whose, then? My responsibility is the safety of everyone on your desmesnes. Especially the safety of our children.”

  Our children, he called them. Our children. She dashed a tear off her cheek. “Perhaps my fault. You warned me she shouldn’t practice her lures on him, but I thought he was safe.”

  “My fault,” he insisted.

  “We’ll share the fault.”

  “Share it, be damned.” He started toward his horse. “I’m going after them, and I won’t be back until I find them.”

  She caught him and said, “You can’t track at night. You’re no huntsman. You’ll confuse the tracks if you go galloping through the trees. We’ll send Tosti.”

  “Tosti?” Flabbergasted, Raymond asked, “What do you want that dirt digger for?”

  If Juliana could have smiled, she would have. “He’s my tracker. He comes from a long line of trackers. His father…his father found me after I escaped from my abductor, patched me up, and took me to meet my own father. Tosti and his father will find Margery, you’ll see.”

  “I remember,” Raymond said slowly, doubtfully. “But—”

  Tosti came forward as if he’d been waiting for the call. The spritely fool had disappeared, and in his place stood a responsible man, aware of his value to the demesne. “M’lady, do ye want me t’ start after them at once?”

  “Of course,” Raymond snapped.

  Juliana lifted a hand. “Do what you need to. If you wish to have your father—”

  Tosti cinched up his belt. “’Tis more than twice as fast wi’ me father, an’ I’ve already sent one o’ th’ village folk back fer him.”

  “Good,” Juliana approved. “Salisbury’s got the instincts of a hunting hound.”

  “Aye, if not th’ hound’s stamina. Not anymore, anyways. We’ll start tonight, m’lady.” Tosti squinted at the sky. “Moon’s close t’ full.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Raymond said decidedly.

  “Nay, m’lord, if ye please.” Tosti seemed to be begging. “Leave it t’ those wot know wot they’re doin’.”

  “I can help,” Raymond insisted.

  “M’lord, I must speak th’ truth. Ye’d be in our way.” Without apparent thought to their different stations, Tosti patted Raymond’s shoulder. “Ye don’t do th’ trackin’, an’ we won’t do th’ fightin’.”

  Raymond clearly struggled, but at last he nodded.

  “When you’ve found the trail, send a message to us. We’ll go back to Lofts and prepare to travel. If you find Margery”—Juliana drew a breath—“send word to us as quickly as you can.”

  “What do you mean, we can’t go?” As Valeska helped Raymond don the chain-link hauberk that protected his chest and back, her booming voice broke the funereal silence of the great hall. “We always go with you.”

  Raymond rubbed his eyes, sandy from lack of sleep. No one in the castle had slept all the night through, and now the old women were taxing him with their displeasure. “I’ll go faster if I go alone.”

  “I’m going with you,” Juliana said.

  He swore in languages he thought he’d forgotten.

  “Don’t use those heathen tongues on me. I’m going with you.”

  He stared at his wife. She looked better than any woman who’d passed such a night had the right to look. All night long, they had lain in bed, shoulder to shoulder, so alone they might not have been together. When Salisbury arrived, they came to their feet without a word, dressed and ready to go.

  The toothless old man spoke to Raymond. “Didn’t find yer daughter or th’ youth. Found an area showed signs o’ a fight.” He stood before the fire, twisting his hat in his hand. “Two roods from th’ place where th’ castle folk ate. Proved th’ little lady didn’t know his plan. M’son’s waitin’ there.” Again he twisted his hat, and turned his head toward Juliana. He looked through her and spoke to the air, but the reassurance was for her. “Couldn’t see no signs o’ blood.”

  Raymond glanced at Juliana, and he died inside.

  His gentle wife looked hard and determined, like a commander who faced battle alone. He had betrayed her trust, and he knew what she knew—she no longer depended on him. Last evening’s sharing of the fault had been pretty words, no more, for if she willingly left the safety of her castle walls despite her own ferocious fears, it could mean nothing less than the total collapse of her belief in him.

  And after all, why else had she needed him? She had children, she had properties, she had food and clothing and servants. He wasn’t worth much as a husband, but he’d thought to ingratiate himself by giving her unconditional security.

  He’d failed.

  Yet now he had the chance, not to redeem himself, but to offer reparation, and he’d not allow anyone to get in his way. As he buckled on his sword, he repeated, “No one’s going with me to search for Margery.”

  Juliana said, “Valeska, Dagna, I want you to remain for Ella. She’s come to depend on you, and when she wakes she’ll be wild if she’s alone.”

  “Layamon represents security,” Dagna argued.

  “He’ll be patrolling the walls with his men.” Conjuring a threat from thin air, Raymond warned, “Someone may hear of Margery’s plight and seize the chance to attack Lofts Castle. That’s why you must stay within the keep.”

  Clearly uncomfortable with the presence of females, Salisbury added, “Rough terrain. No delicate castle women.”

  Valeska snorted. “Delicate.” She looked at Dagna. “I’m flattered, sister, aren’t you?”

  Made patient through weariness, Raymond said, “You’d slow me down.”

  “I won’t,” Juliana said.

  “You aren’t coming.” Raymond was adamant.

  “I am.”

  A man’s resolution, Raymond found, was for naught when placed beside a mother’s anxiety. The night had not yet yielded to the sun when they rode over the drawbridge. The ride was silent, broken only when Raymond said, with some surprise, “Why Juliana, you have no hunting dogs.”

  “Nay. My father did not hunt in his last years. They cost to feed, so he sold them and I never replaced them.” They had left the road and entered the woods before she thought to say, “We’ll get more this summer for your hunting.”

  A sop, he thought, to keep her noble, useless husband entertained. “They would be useful today,” he said.

  She agreed. “All the more reason to acquire them.”

  When they reached the glade where the struggle had taken place, no one was there. Stopping his horse just outside the circle of trampled grass, Raymond asked Salisbury, “W
here is he?”

  “Don’t know. Gone on ahead.”

  “In the dark?” Raymond said, but Juliana shushed him.

  The old tracker looked worried. As the light had improved, he examined the ground. “Strange markin’s,” he said with a frown. “Some one here after I left. Lotta someones. On horses.”

  “What kind of horses?” Raymond frowned. “Farm horses?”

  “Big horses. Knights’ horses. Seen th’ print o’ this one afore.” He got on his knees beside a mark almost invisible to Raymond. “From m’lady’s stables.”

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Juliana told him. “No one left the castle last night. It couldn’t be from my stables.”

  He peered at it again. “M’lady’s,” he insisted. Putting his face close against the ground, he sniffed.

  Like a hound, he followed his nose around the ground until Raymond demanded, “What are you doing?”

  “Blood.”

  Brief and terse, but the one word galvanized the mounted couple.

  “Whose?”

  “Where?”

  “New.” The old man prowled along, sniffing, stiffening with alarm. “Not here last night. Wish m’son was here. Good snout. Good wi’ tracks.” He quivered when he found something. “Holy Mother. Lookee this.”

  He held a rope knotted with two bloody knots, and Raymond loosened the knife at his belt. Chills crept up his spine; he felt as if some malevolent presence watched from the surrounding trees. He slid out of his saddle as Salisbury crawled into the bushes, and Juliana swung her leg over and landed beside him.

  Catching his arm, she said, “Nay, you don’t.” She didn’t speak aloud, but whispered as if the atmosphere affected her, also. “You’re not following him and leaving me alone in this eerie place.”

  He wanted to tell her that this was why he hadn’t wanted her to leave the castle. He couldn’t concentrate on the business at hand when he must worry about her, but reproaches were too late. She was here and frightened, and quite right when she said she couldn’t be left in a glade that had proved to be a menace to someone. To Tosti? “Come, then.”

  Bent almost double, they trailed Salisbury through the underbrush. A thin strand of blood led them, and Raymond thought he could smell it, too. Smell blood, or fear, or both.

  Salisbury muttered as he scrabbled through the bushes. “Bad smell. Bad feeling. Wish Tosti—”

  He broke off with a gasp. Raymond leaped forward. One horrified glance verified that the body stretched out on the green moss was, indeed, Tosti. Looming over Juliana to block her view, Raymond instructed, “Don’t look. Go back to the clearing.”

  A keening rose from Salisbury, wild and forlorn, and she tried to push her way forward. “I’ve got to help.”

  Raymond pushed her. “Tosti’s been tortured.”

  She began, “Salisbury—”

  “Salisbury wouldn’t want you to see him like this.” She wavered, and he pressed his advantage. “I’ll do what must be done. Go back.”

  It went against her instincts, but she did as instructed. Salisbury had been good to her once, treating her with the care of a mother, and she owed him that same care. But Raymond was right. Salisbury would not appreciate her seeing him in his weakness; he was a man to whom weakness was an embarrassment. That explained why he seldom spoke to her; the memory of her collapse and his own compassion mortified him.

  But now the knotted rope gained new significance in light of Raymond’s revelation. If the murderer had wrapped the rope around Tosti’s head and tightened it with those knots over his eyes—she grabbed a branch and swayed. Bile tasted sour on her tongue, and she whispered, “Margery.”

  There were murderers abroad, and her daughter blundered lost through the woods with a skinny youth. Imitating Salisbury, she searched the edge of the clearing, looking for tracks made by two children.

  She couldn’t find them. Only trampled grass and broken bushes that signalled the passage of a troop of horsemen. “Raymond,” she screamed. “Raymond!”

  He came dashing out of the underbrush with Salisbury on his heels and found her mounted on her palfrey. “They’re going after my Margery. We’ve got to go.”

  “Aye, you’ve got to go,” he agreed, his mouth set in a grim line. “Back to the castle. When we started, we were seeking a boy and a girl. Now we’ll be following a troop of warriors. We don’t know what Tosti told them before he died, but I would guess the warriors will take Margery and Denys for ransom.”

  She leaned from her horse. “You don’t understand. I’m her mother. I’m not going back.”

  “Someone has to fetch Layamon,” Raymond said sharply. “I can’t defeat this troop single-handed and without the weapons I need.”

  A sound argument backed by Raymond’s gimlet gaze dented Juliana’s certainty. Someone did indeed need to go for help.

  “I’ll go.” Salisbury looked right at her, acknowledging her for the first time and expressing himself so even Raymond understood without difficulty. “Ye go wi’ th’ knight, m’lady. Get yer child outa their hands. Men that’ll do such t’ a man such as Tosti’ll do worse t’ a helpless girl.”

  Raymond’s breath hissed through his teeth. “Tosti must be buried.”

  The old man met his gaze. “Tosti’ll not go anywhere. Take m’lady. I’ll go fer Layamon.”

  Exasperation exploded from Raymond. “Damn it, Salisbury, she’s a woman. She shouldn’t ride into battle.”

  Salisbury met Raymond’s gaze. “She’s strong. Ye trust in her, m’lord.”

  Raymond’s eyes narrowed, then his expression went blank, and he carefully spaced his words. “If my lady wishes to ride on with me, then of course she must go. However, she must do as I tell her for her own protection.”

  “I will,” Juliana said.

  “Let us go, then.”

  Salisbury pointed at the broken shrubbery. “Easy path. An’ m’lady?”

  “Aye?”

  He came to her and pulled a dagger from his belt. Weighing it in his hand, he said, “Not a pretty knife. Made it meself. Hew wood an’ cut rope an’ slice a man’s liver t’ hash.” He handed it up. “Take it. Use it fer me, fer Tosti.”

  “We will avenge his murder.” It was a prayer and a vow.

  Tears glinted in Salisbury’s eyes. He looked down at his shoes and dabbed his nose with his sleeve. “Yer daughter’s strong, too.”

  Tucking the knife into her belt, she hurried to catch Raymond. They followed the trail of slashed foliage and horse droppings. The brown of winter still clung close to the earth, while high above them, the leaves of spring were making their appearance. The forest floor exhaled a damp, mossy scent as the morning became afternoon, and Juliana’s tension grew. Her neck ached from bending to avoid branches. Her eyes ached from holding them wide, sure that if she so much as blinked, she’d miss something important, some clue that would lead them to Margery.

  She wanted to speak to Raymond, to ask him what he thought, where they were going, what his plans were, but the stony cast of his face blocked the words in her throat. His resentment slashed her with the force of a gale wind, snatching her breath and her warmth, and she was sorry for it, but she wouldn’t turn back. She’d walked in Margery’s shoes. The longing for home, the anger, pain, and embarrassment Margery must be experiencing formed part of Juliana.

  Raymond stopped in a clearing where an abandoned hut stood. “We’ll eat a hasty meal here,” he said.

  “Should we stop? I thought we were closing in on them.”

  Without a glance at her, he said, “We’ll need food to fight this battle.”

  Grudgingly, she nodded and dismounted. Loosening the bag that held the food, she rummaged in it while he searched the area. When he hoisted one sturdy branch on his shoulder, she couldn’t restrain her curiosity. “Of what purpose is that?”

  He smiled, and she eyed the savage gleam of his teeth uneasily. “Believing our expedition was a peaceful one, I brought only a sword. I take this as another weapon.
” He leaned it against the wall of the hut. “Is there a bucket?”

  She stared. “A bucket?”

  “I hate to eat with hands so recently stained with blood. If you could fetch me water from the brook, I would wash.”

  “Oh.” She bit her lip on the suggestion he walk to the brook and wash himself. After all, Raymond had the right to act as helpless as any horse’s ass of a man when he chose. “I don’t see a bucket.”

  “Maybe there’s one inside.” Rubbing his fingers together, he frowned. “’Tis a shame when I carry such proof of Tosti’s death.”

  The sadness in him roused her guilt, and she volunteered, “I’ll go see if I can find you a bucket.”

  “As you wish.”

  He sounded so meek, she scrutinized him, but he was removing the extra bags from his destrier and she couldn’t see his face. The door of the hut opened with a creak, and she peered into the dark interior cautiously. Sunlight, filtered by leaves, entered through the door. One shuttered window put a feeble stripe against the wall, and she could see that whoever had left this place had stripped it except for a pile of wood left for weary travellers. “There’s nothing in here,” she called.

  “Surely they left a bucket in a corner.”

  He sounded closer, but when she glanced over her shoulder it seemed the horse had moved and he with it. Raymond was tightening the girths of the saddle, preparing for battle.

  “I don’t see one.” Stepping inside, she wrinkled her nose at the musty odor. “Plenty of cobwebs and dust—” She squinted and started forward. “Wait. You may be in luck.”

  At the door, his shadow blocked the light. “I know I am, my lady.”

  She whirled on her heel, but too late. The door shut with a wholesome snap, and she heard the thump as he wedged the log against the wood.

  18

  Juliana ran at the door of the little hut, clubbing with her shoulder, and from the other side of the barrier, she heard, “Good English construction, good English oak. Farewell, my lady. I’ll be back for you when the fighting is over.”

  “Raymond!” She struck the wood with her palm, but no one answered her. Running to the little window, she shook the shutters and peered through the crack that ran vertically between them. She could see him, preparing to mount his destrier, and shouted, “Raymond, you’ll not succeed with this.”