Castles in the Air

by Christina Dodd

  “Aye.…” She remembered. Her teeth chattered, but she remembered. She must rescue Margery. She had only to avoid Sir Joseph and above all, stay away from Raymond.

  Stay away from Raymond.

  But how? She darted a desperate glance around. Cups and trenchers from the spilled table littered the floor. Bows and arrows had been abandoned where they dropped. Servants had fled. There was no place to hide, no exit in easy reach, and in the near corner a pile of cloth quivered.

  Margery?

  She clamped her mouth shut over her instinctive call. She wanted no one to remember Margery.

  Sir Joseph stood well back as the circle of mercenaries drew close. Beside her, she heard Raymond take a breath. Then another. Slow and deep, he breathed in the essence of incipient battle, and, as he breathed, he seemed to suck away the courage, the skill, the very mass of his attackers. Before Juliana’s eyes, the mercenaries shrank, their valor shrivelling before Raymond.

  And Raymond—oh, God, Raymond seemed to grow in height, in muscle, in the merciless determination of an animal whose family is threatened. In the faces of the mercenaries, she saw dread, and remembered her own terror in the meadow when she believed Raymond to be a demon or a bear. Slowly, slowly, she turned her head and looked on him.

  A bear’s strength and agility. The relentlessness of a badger, the cold indifference of an adder. An eagle’s swiftness and cruelty.

  He was all those things, yet still a man. With a cry, she fled his side, straight through the line of mesmerized soldiers. Toward Sir Joseph.

  Behind them, battle cries and the hiss of steel told of the battle joined, and she couldn’t halt herself as Sir Joseph rushed to intercept her. She rammed into him even as she struggled to unsheathe the knife. The blade flashed with black sparks, but before she could wield it, he grabbed her wrist.

  Grinding the bones together, he hissed, “You slut. You’ll die for me and all the lands will be mine. Just as I always dreamed.”

  She struggled to keep her clasp on the hilt. “You can’t kill enough people to take my lands.”

  “Perhaps not, but you, poor thing, will die, regardless of the final results. You and your children.”

  For my daughter, she thought. For my Margery. She tried to knee him in the groin, but his cloak rendered her ineffectual. Remembering the slap that had broken Felix’s nose, she lunged for his face, but he remembered it, too, and grabbed her arm away with a painful twist. With both her hands captive, he put the point to his own stomach. “You’re so close, but your strength is the strength of a woman, and no woman will ever be stronger than I am.”

  Seeking to stab with words if she could not stab in fact, she stated, “I am your lady. Let me go.”

  His blue eyes, so like her own in color, erupted with hatred. Steeped in the bitter brew of his resentment, he began to turn the knife on her.

  Using all her strength, she pushed it back at him. Their gazes locked as her youthful power fought his seasoned skill, but the outcome could be foreseen.

  She would die on her own knife, for sometime she would not be able to turn the knife away. But not yet. Not yet.

  She struggled, turned the point to him again—and he jerked, stumbled forward, fell with his weight on her. The blade, held rigid by his own grip on her, pierced the cloth of his cotte. His skin halted the point, then it wrenched in with a sickening thrust. As it sank to the hilt, his mouth dropped open and he sighed. “How?” His grip on her wrists loosened, and she snatched her hands away as he swayed.

  Behind him tottered Margery, the impetus to his self-impalement. Her feet were tied, her hands were tied, a rag stuffed her mouth, but her eyes—like Sir Joseph’s, like her mother’s—blazed with a blue fire. Without the support of her two feet, she toppled.

  The blade Juliana needed to cut Margery’s bonds lay buried in Sir Joseph’s bowels. She didn’t want to touch the corpse, but the loathing that crawled through her veins was less than her love for Margery. Grasping the hilt, she jerked the blade free of its sheath.

  Blood splattered her, the obscene shouts of the mercenaries assaulted her ears; from Raymond she heard nothing. But he still stood, she knew, for she heard the chain rattling, the thick cut of iron into flesh, a skull crack as it struck the stones.

  Catching Margery under the arms, Juliana dragged her to a corner, removed the rag from her mouth, and huddled there with the taste of death thick on the air.

  21

  Raymond let the madness flow over him again, the madness that had spewed from him while he was chained. Lifted from the plain fury of fighting to a plateau above, he killed with complete, silent concentration, and the mercenaries were no match for him. The chain that dangled from his wrist disarmed the blades and broke bones. His short sword danced to the tune of death. Swinging the chain like an extension of his arm, he wrapped it around a mace and sent it flying, then with another heave broke the bones in the hand that wielded it. The mercenary looked at his mangled fingers, then staggered away, screaming, “The berserker will kill us all. Retreat! Retreat.”

  The weakened circle around Raymond wavered, and Raymond whipped his chain around. Spitting teeth, three panicked mercenaries ran, but one held his ground. “He’s going to kill us anyway, lads. May as well go brave.”

  Raymond smiled at the armorless soldier, tasting conquest, strong and sweet. The soldier smiled back—with a little too much humor, and Raymond stiffened with alarm. Too late, he realized another mercenary stood behind him. A rope flew past his face and jerked around his neck. The familiar panic twisted his guts as the rope tightened and a voice murmured in his ear, “Like before, isn’t it?”

  But it wasn’t like before. This wasn’t the Saracen. It was only an impoverished knight forced to kill for his living. The mercenary descending on him with sword bared was no exotic torture master, but a common peasant who had abandoned the plow.

  A roar exploded past the blockage of Raymond’s battered throat. As the daunted mercenary captain dragged at the rope, Raymond plunged like a maddened bull and tossed him over his shoulders, into the oncoming blade.

  With a shriek, the peasant picked up his arm, amputated at the elbow, and fled. The knight rose, unharmed, saved by his armor, and fled. And tasting victory, true victory, once more, Raymond chased them.

  As Juliana sawed through the ropes binding Margery’s feet and wrists, the cessation of noise broke her concentration. Facing the room warily, she found Raymond was gone. The mercenaries were gone. A few bodies stirred and groaned, but nothing else moved. “Where are they?” she whispered, and jumped when Margery answered in a normal voice.

  “Papa chased them out.” Fiercely, she added, “He was killing them all.”

  “Oh.” Still reacting to the violence, the fury, Juliana put her hand to her thumping heart. All she could do was ask, “Did they hurt you?”

  “They didn’t rape me, if that’s what you mean.” Margery’s hug contradicted the callousness in her tone. Juliana stroked her daughter’s hair, and together they shuddered. When Margery spoke again, her voice had softened. “They argued so much, they hardly knew I was there.”

  “We’ll say a prayer to Saint Mary, for she watched over you,” Juliana said.

  “I have to go on a pilgrimage to Ripon Cathedral,” Margery mumbled. “I swore if I left here unharmed, I would go there and give thanks to Saint Wilfrid for the preservation of my virginity and myself.”

  “Then so you shall,” Juliana said. “We have men outside the keep. Raymond is probably even now admitting them, and we’ll”—she looked at Sir Joseph’s bloody body and trembled—“see if we can find the keys on Sir Joseph to free Raymond from his bonds.” She didn’t want to. Not really. That one corpse held more fear for her than all the living mercenaries in the troop. But to observe Raymond’s pleasure as she unlocked his collar…maybe he’d forgive her for her failures and her fears. And if he didn’t, she’d still have his pleasure to remember. “I’ll just take the knife,” she said, falsely cheerful,
“and look for those keys.”

  Margery seemed to hear more than Juliana said. “Mother, if you’re afraid…”

  “Afraid?” Juliana scurried forward on her hands and knees. “Why should I be afraid?” Halfway to the body sprawled in broken splendor across the stones, she stopped.

  Sir Joseph was dead.

  She’d put the knife in his gut herself. She could see his lips were blue. Blotches of red burned in his cheeks, but the rest of his skin looked like parchment. So he was dead. He lay unmoving. She came close and leaned over him, watching for signs of consciousness. A flicker of his eyelid, a twitch of his mouth, some sign of life.

  Nothing.

  “He is dead,” she whispered.

  The words had hardly left her mouth when his hand flashed up and caught her wrist.

  The pain, immediate, intense, made her drop the knife onto his chest, and he snatched it up. The fear, immediate, intense, swept her into its familiar embrace. Sir Joseph’s eyes opened, their eyes locked, and the square of his mouth smiled horribly. “You stupid woman.”

  He said it as if it were the most obscene epithet he could imagine. Margery leaped forward, but he shifted around and lifted the point of the knife under Juliana’s chin.

  “Don’t, Margery. Oh, sweet Mary, please don’t come near him.” Juliana twisted her wrist in his grasp.

  “That prick from your knife couldn’t kill me.” He raised himself on his elbow, crushing her hand beneath his, while Raymond’s feet thumped on the stairway. That horrible square smile shone again in Sir Joseph’s skinny face.

  Raymond charged through the door, crying, “How is Margery?” and skidded to a stop with a rattle of chains. “Juliana.”

  Her name sounded like a prayer on his lips, but Juliana did not dare remove her gaze from Sir Joseph’s. Her whole world was shackled with blue eyes, blue flames, a fanaticism that sucked her in and wouldn’t let her go. Triumph blazed in his blue orbs, yet in the rank odor of his breath, she smelled his death warrant. His intestine had been pierced—a grievous injury, but slow to kill. “You’re dying,” she said.

  “And I wish company.” He caught her shoulder before she could scramble away and hoisted himself to his feet. Using only the tip of the knife as an urging, he pressed it against her tender throat and commanded, “Get up, Juliana. Get up.”

  She wanted to swallow; she feared to swallow. She feared to move, and feared not to. Tucking her feet under her, she rose stiffly, and she heard Raymond suck in his breath at her clumsiness. Sir Joseph stepped close against her, and his free hand caressed her chin.

  “Put her away from you,” Raymond commanded, smooth and urgent.

  “Why should I?” Sir Joseph asked.

  Chilled by the call of death, Sir Joseph’s papery skin repulsed her. Yet nothing could make her insensible to the contempt in Raymond’s voice, and she flinched when he said, “She’s a woman, inadequate and lowly, not a fit shield for you to hide behind.”

  Sir Joseph threatened, “She’s a fit sheath for my knife.”

  “’Tis Salisbury’s knife,” she murmured, and thought longingly of the old tracker. He had faith in her, more faith than she had in herself. “I’m your kinswoman,” she said. “You don’t want my blood on your soul.”

  He blinked at her, and she was momentarily released from his mania.

  But he captured her again with a piercing stare, and when he sniggered something inside her shrivelled. “What a feeble sentimentalist you must believe me to be. If you weren’t my kinswoman, I wouldn’t care if you lived or died. I’ve dreamt of your murder most of my life.” He circled her and warned, “Keep yourself in my view, Lord Raymond, or I will cut all your hopes of saving your wife.”

  Raymond spoke from beside Margery. “’Strewth, what matter? If you kill my wife, I have another at hand.”

  Three people stared at him in various degrees of distrust.

  “Papa, how can you say such a thing?” Margery whispered.

  Blotted with blood, still Raymond’s countenance shone with grim humor. “Does Sir Joseph think he is the only one who takes advantage of another’s gullibility?”

  His words were as knives, sharper than the blade at Juliana’s throat, more deadly for they sliced her heart. She looked at his face, still handsome despite its injuries; at his form, so noble in its shape. She saw the disdain for her, the way his hand caressed Margery’s head, and she realized there was no help to be had from him.

  She was betrayed.

  If she was going to outlast Sir Joseph, she would have to outthink him.

  Sir Joseph laughed, a burst of noise that ended in a painful hiccup, and saluted Raymond. “I should have known a man raised by such parents would understand treachery.”

  Wiping the blood off his sword with his cloak, Raymond asked, “My parents? Did you help them with the kitchen fire?”

  Sir Joseph’s hand shook in a seizure of palsy, and Juliana’s ears buzzed as she imagined that sharp edge slicing her windpipe. “You are astute,” he commended. “For all her look of delicacy, this one doesn’t die easily, but she’s stupid. Stupid as her father. He never suspected me, not even when I urged a siege on Felix’s castle.”

  Juliana’s heart beat heavily, pulsing through the veins in her neck. Her breath rasped at her throat, making her aware of the fragility of her existence. But she had to survive. What did she wish to teach her daughter about survival? Juliana had to use strategy and intelligence and all the characteristics she wished for Margery. So she took advantage of Sir Joseph’s conceit. “No doubt you had a daring plan, so tell me—why besiege Felix if he had taken me?”

  Sir Joseph tried to speak, then faltered; staggered slightly, but caught himself.

  Raymond answered for him. “Sir Joseph is canny. He urged a siege because you would die, and your father, too, I trow. But I am not your father, and I will not die here, for I am not your father.”

  She listened to the repetition, and listened to the meaning. He was assuring her he wouldn’t betray her, and she blinked tears of relief away. “Nay, you’re not my father, are you? He was a weak man, one who listened to a counselor who’d sold his soul”—she looked again at Sir Joseph—“to the devil.”

  Guilt and terror twisted the aging face, and he whispered, “Aye, I think I did sell my soul to the devil. But I’ll not pay the price, not when I haven’t had the pleasure of my reward. You’ll die with me, and I’ll clasp your heel and fly to heaven in your draft.”

  As she stared at that livid face, smelled the odor of aging body and envy, something happened inside her. The mechanism that remembered terror, created fear, sent her scurrying inside her castle at the first hazard, snapped—from overuse, she guessed.

  She was no longer a coward, forcing bravery from herself—she was brave. “You’re not going to kill me,” she said, and with swift impatience, she jabbed her elbow in his gut.

  He staggered backward and, with a yell, Raymond threw his short sword. It whistled through the air, whipping through the flesh of Sir Joseph’s throat. It severed the windpipe, the spinal cord. The body, already empty of its soul, catapulted across to land on the hearth.

  Raymond sprang after the sword, grabbed Juliana by the shoulders and shouted, “Why did you let him near you? You could have been killed!”

  “Don’t touch my mother. Don’t touch my mother.” Margery pulled on him and sobbed.

  Head down, hands over her ears, Juliana ordered, “Stop!”

  Silence descended, and she looked up. To Margery, she said, “Raymond will not hurt me. He said those things to disarm Sir Joseph.” To Raymond, she said, “I wanted the keys off his belt. I wanted to unlock your shackles.”

  With a snarl that showed sharp teeth, Raymond tugged at the iron collar at his throat. “Couldn’t you have borne the disgrace of this for a few more moments? Did you have to risk getting yourself killed for a key?”

  Margery sobbed again, the soft crying of a woman who had left childhood behind, and Juliana gathered he
r in a hug. From the doorway, Valeska called, “Come to us, child. We’ll take you away from this pestilence.”

  With a final hug, Juliana pushed her daughter toward the old ladies who peered in the door.

  Layamon stood at the door next, fumbling with his jerkin. “Is there aught I can do fer ye, m’lord?”

  “Secure the castle against wolves. We’ll leave it empty, for any who pass and have the ballocks to enter this damnable house may take it.” Raymond went to Sir Joseph and jerked the body off the hearth. Cutting the keys from the belt, he returned to Juliana and pressed them into her hand. “Unlock me, then.”

  The ring was heavy with keys, large and unwieldy. Keys to Lofts, keys to Bartonhale, keys that Sir Joseph should not have had in his possession. And somewhere the keys to the shackles. Selecting the smallest key, she fit it into the handcuff with the short chain. It fit, but the cuff wasn’t easy to open. “I’m sorry I was stupid. I just wanted to free you.”

  “You believed me, didn’t you?”

  His bitterness was so palpable she could almost taste it. “Believed you?”

  The cuff clicked open and fell to the floor with a thunk. He rubbed the flesh beneath it and said, “You believed I would betray you. Let him kill you. Marry your daughter.”

  “I…” She took his other hand in hers. From this cuff hung the chain which he’d used as such an effective weapon, and he winced when she pressed the key inside it. “Does that hurt you?”

  “You hurt me.”

  “I believed you.” Staring into his eyes, she willed him to vindicate her. “For just a moment. It was madness, but—”

  “Open the cuff.”

  His bleak expression frightened her, as did the way he watched her, and she struggled to obey him. When the iron separated, she gasped. The skin beneath had been flayed away by the weight of the chain as he had wielded it in his vicious attacks on the mercenaries. Guilt consumed her, and she touched the flesh with shaking fingers. “Raymond…”