“Lower your swords; we know these men. They are knights of Baron de Bressott.”
The men lowered their swords but didn’t release them and remained wary as the four knights trotted into camp. Sir Kent, Sir Fritz, Sir Walter, and Sir James had returned. They were dressed in light mail and armed with both sword and dagger. Sir Kent was the first to recognize Ellalee, Daniella, and Christopher.
“You are alive,” Sir Kent snorted a short laugh when he saw Ellalee. Neither he nor the other knights dismounted. “A bit worse for the wear,” the knight remarked with a gesture at his face obviously taking in the healing bruises from Ellalee’s tumble down the stairs. “We took bets and figured you’d be the first one to push the earl far enough for violence.”
Ellalee touched her forehead and frowned. “Why are you here?”
“Ah, but the better question is why are you here? Escaping? Shall we finish your punishment here and now? You were warned, were you not, what would happen if you left the service of the Earl de Avium?” Sir Kent replied and waved back Sir Walter to halt his protest. “No, Sir Walter, do not interfere until we know what is afoot.”
“He bade us go,” Ellalee said. “We need your help. I fear the earl is in great danger. We must go back to him.”
Mark swung around to face her incredulously. “Are you mad? We have a letter allowing us to leave that cursed manor, and you still want to return? You must truly have death wish,” Mark shook his head in disgust. “I am not going back because the earl has some infatuation with you. Lady Ellalee was a joke.”
Ellalee sputtered, “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“What, indeed?” Sir Kent said. “You are pretty enough to catch the eye of any man, but do you like your men scared and deformed?”
“That is a terrible thing to say! The earl gained those scars trying to save his father, Sir Kent,” Ellalee responded hotly.
Sir Kent raised an eyebrow. “You’re are a washer woman. You’ve no place with nobility.”
Ellalee was stung just as she had been when Sir Kent had scorned her on her trip out to Castle de Avium, but any embarrassment now was unmatched by the fear for those left at Castle de Avium. She put a hand on her hip raising her chin in the air. “Yes, and a liar and a thief. You have discovered our plot. We are escaping. I have no doubt the earl would reward you well for our return.”
“Stop it, Ellalee, we have the earl’s letter,” Mark said.
Ellalee turned towards Sir Kent. “I am literate; could I not have written the letter?”
Mark was now angry, and Charlie fairly bristled. Irwin was just catching on as his face abruptly showed concern for the direction the conversation was moving. But Charlie was the first to act, rifling through his saddle bags to produce a scroll bearing the earl’s own seal. “Good knights, the letter is sealed with the lord’s own seal to prove this missive is from his own hand.”
“Am I not a confessed and convicted thief, could I not have stolen the seal?” Ellalee baited.
“Stop it Ellalee, as usual, you are not helping,” Daniella replied putting a hand on Ellalee’s arm which Ellalee brushed off.
Ellalee smirked up at the knights. “Shouldn’t you take us back to be sure? Doesn’t it at least warrant your investigation? Did Mark mention we have a good deal of money as well? Might we have come by it by dishonest means? Have these men dropped their swords in the presence of knights?”
Mark stared at the sword in his hand as though it burned him and dropped it as did the other men.
“Honorable knights,” Charlie began. “We have a note that promises passage with the earl’s own seal and our earned wages given by the earl’s own hand.”
But Ellalee continued to push. “Wouldn’t the earl want to see to our punishment? Did he not ride down that man Dessi and put him in the gibbet himself the very day he took us from Bressott?”
“Dessard ended up in a gibbet? Sweet justice, for sure. I hope it was a slow death,” Mark swore.
“What?” Ellalee was shocked, but then of course the men here would have known Dessi. She wondered why she had never thought to discuss him before, never time what with one thing after the next. “I know he stole from the earl…”
“That’s not the least of it,” Mark replied darkly.
Charlie rubbed his face with the back of his hand and then went to Mark putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Then he turned back towards Ellalee and explained, “Mark was in love with Annalise, the upstairs maid.”
“Oh no! The one who died and was found in the well?” Ellalee asked, aghast.
Charlie nodded as Mark turned his back to the rest of the group.
Ellalee rushed to Sir Kent’s stirrup, “You must take us back. We should leave now, before any more light is lost.”
Sir Kent was unmoved and hollered to Charlie, “You there, tie and gag this one. Without her machinations, we’ll have a better chance of getting the truth,” Sir Kent said pointing at Ellalee.
Charlie gave Ellalee an apologetic look and accepted the rope tossed to him from Sir Fritz.
Ellalee backed away from Sir Kent’s horse, raising her skillet between herself and Charlie, shaking her head. “We do not have time for nonsense.”
Charlie gave Sir Kent a shrug. “I’m not going near her when she is armed, and I am not.”
Sir James actually laughed out loud. “She holds a skillet, you coward.”
“Call me you any names you like. She saved Lord Valen’s life wielding nothing more than that skillet against three giant, possessed wolves that nearly tore him limb from limb. He came in bloody and senseless, and she came back without a scratch. She rarely goes anywhere without it. I fear her skillet as much as I fear your sword.”
“Then you are a coward and a fool!” Sir James said with disgust.
“We get nowhere,” Sir Kent seethed. “The only thing we are killing is time.”
“Yes, and we can least afford it,” Ellalee begged. “We must go back.”
“I think we must go as the lady says,” Sir Fritz said. “This one,” he said pointing at Ellalee, “is desperate enough to bring punishment upon herself in order to return. I believe that the earl is truly in danger, and are we not sworn by the baron to see to his safety? Was not our mission to make sure that all was as it should be at Castle de Avium?”
“First, tell me about that man in the gibbet,” Sir Kent said to Charlie.
“We had a third footman at the manor named Dessard. We called him Dessi. Lord Valen took him from a gibbet where he was certain to die. He gave Dessi the option to be a servant at the manor or stay in the gibbet. No one would have chosen otherwise. We’ve all come to the manor one way or another, and most of us are grateful, curse or no. Dessi swore that he had been innocent of the theft and other crimes that had landed him in that cage.
“Most people who come to Castle de Avium come in under fear of the curse. Oh not Dessi! He came in fancying every aspect of it, conjuring images in our minds, conceiving stories to frighten everyone more. Then things started going missing. He, of course, claimed it was the curse making our belongings disappear; however, we began to suspect Dessi. I think that Tom, the barn boy, died because he witnessed Dessi’s theft, but I can’t prove it. Dessi certainly always seemed to have money and was forever sneaking out to the village. Still we couldn’t prove anything.
“Oh, he loved the curse because he found freedom in it. He didn’t have to be a better man, not with the curse there to blame. When he took an interest in Annalise things went from bad to worse. Annalise and Mark had an understanding. They wished to ask the blessing of Lord Valen, but Annalise was having a difficult time avoiding Dessi who pushed his unwanted affections on her. He seemed to find her disinterest desirable and her avoidance a challenge. Mark and I tried to keep an eye on her, protect her, you see, but we couldn’t be there every moment.”
Mark swore and left to go stand by the brook. Ellalee watched him go. Her heart went out to him. Char
lie watched him go too, then continued, grim-faced.
“She came to Mark tearfully and told Mark that she could not see him anymore. She explained that Dessi would hurt her or hurt Mark. She believed he could do it too because so many disappearances and deaths had been blamed on the curse. What was one or two more? It seemed if Dessi couldn’t have her then no one could.
“Mark convinced Annalise to meet him one night by the well. Mark had talked to Lord Valen and convinced Lord Valen to rid the household of Dessi the next day. Annalise was so happy that she kissed him, and that was all it took. The next day she was missing, and Dessi was gone as well. I think he assumed we’d all believe it was the curse once more or that they had run off together, but Lord Valen promised to investigate Dessi’s disappearance. However, an illness took the castle delaying him.
“We finally found Annaliese in the well, and as soon as Lord Valen was better, he left Castle de Avium and came back with these three. All he said about Dessi was that justice had been done. Never any more than that, and I never asked again. But if Lord Valen put him back in that gibbet, it was no less than he deserved.”
“Is that why you have been so protective?” Daniella asked Charlie with tears in her eyes.
Charlie ducked his head. “You were sweet and beautiful, like Annalise. We weren’t able to protect her, but we swore we would protect you. That’s why one of always stayed with you. Your sister, well, we figured between that fearsome tongue of hers and that flying skillet, she could take care of herself,” he said thumbing towards Ellalee. Ellalee rolled her eyes. “I’m only sorry we weren’t able to protect Elise.”
Mark came back with a morose look in his eyes. “That’s not entirely true, Daniella. We would have protected your sister as well, and tried to, following her at night after everyone had turned in. But we never knew what fool thing she would do next. She was always tearing off somewhere, doing something no one could possibly predict her to do.”
“And you believe Lord Valen is now in trouble?” Sir Fritz asked Ellalee.
“There is a man who has been able to get in the castle. I believe he has been behind the attacks on the other maid, Elise, and on Lord Valen. I believe he uses the old passageways under the castle. Lord Valen is all but unprotected. He sent us away to save us, but in the process left himself without aid except for a few of the older household staff. We must go back. We need your help.”
“And you know of this man how?” Sir Kent asked.
“He left me notes and promised to help me. I think he killed Elise, and he might have killed me thrice as well were it not for Charlie or Lord Valen arriving in time.”
“Why was he leaving you notes? Were you in league with him?” The look on Sir Kent’s face as he suggested this infuriated Ellalee.
“No! Never. I didn’t know who left me the first note. He found me. I never tried to meet with him again until I tried to capture him.”
“Her and her skillet,” Charlie added.
“That is how I got these bruises on my face. Charlie came in time.”
“It was a terrible plan,” Daniella muttered, and Christopher added his sincere agreement to his sister’s assessment.
“The plan was good, until Elise screamed.”
Charlie looked confused and Mark shook his head, stating, “No, Ellalee. It could not have been Elise. I saw her body that night as we searched the manor.”
“She had been dead for days, probably since the day she went missing,” Charlie added.
“But,” Ellalee pondered that thought, unpacking it, drawing it out in her mind. “I heard a woman scream.”
Her mouth fell open, and she felt sick. A stream of words came back to her. Mistress Murry said they’d been drinking parts of her, not we’d. She said that she’d replaced the cook, and nothing had happened to her. Mistress Murray had said that she had a brother in town, and Ellalee bet she knew this brother as the disappearing stranger. The noises Ellalee heard in the night. They weren’t coming from the wardrobe. They were coming through the wall from Mistress Murray’s room. Someone had to have the keys to open all the doors to the bower. Mistress Murray had a master set. That’s how the stranger was getting into locked rooms. That’s why Valen couldn’t find the entrance. The entrance must have been in Mistress Murray’s room.
“Oh dear God, why didn’t you give me the eyes to see? It was Mistress Murray. That’s his friend in the manor. That’s how he knew all those things about us. That’s how the notes were left in my room.” Ellalee wanted to pull her hair out.
“I’m going back,” Ellalee announced and with that she swung around, skillet in hand, grabbed her bag from the wagon, and began walking back toward the castle. She would not waste one more second or one more breath on these stupid, indecisive men as she trudged back up the trail on foot. She was only glad that no one had tried to stop her.
She hadn’t made it five minutes back down the trail when Sir Fritz came riding up on horseback, but she held up her skillet. “I’ll whack you silly if you try to get me to go anywhere but back to Castle de Avium.”
Sir Fritz scowled at her. “Give me your hand, foolish girl, but don’t hit me with that pan when I haul you up. I am sworn to assist Lord Valen, and I will see you there. You will go faster on horseback.”
Ellalee hesitated, and then pressed her hand into his and allowed him to swing her up behind him on the horse. Several other horses came up behind her. Apparently, they’d abandoned the wagon carrying their bags and weapons as they could. Daniella, looking faintly pink in the cheeks, rode behind Sir Walter who looked very pleased as they passed Ellalee. That horse was followed closely by a frowning Charlie on one of the horses that had been pulling the wagon.
Mark rode up beside her and leaned towards Ellalee before passing her as well. “We are idiots, you know. We could have lived happily ever after. But oh no! Here we are going back to a curse, a madman, and a murderer,” he growled at Ellalee but then added as he trotted past, “I suppose I owe it to Lord Valen and to Annalise.”
Irwin nodded at Ellalee as he rode forward on Raptim, and Michael said nothing as he rode past her on Nim. She had to wonder what Irwin made of all of this. Michael she hardly knew.
“We are getting left behind, Sir Fritz,” Ellalee said. “They are all passing us. We should hurry.” But Fritz ignored her.
Christopher passed them next, riding behind Sir Kent. Her brother appeared to be glorying in the experience. He was holding his crutches in front of him with one hand and with the other he held onto Sir Kent. His splinted leg was splayed out to one side. Ellalee was delighted in his delight until she caught what he was saying.
“And then Ellalee came bursting into the dungeon wielding a huge knife, screaming at the Earl that she would murder everyone then and there….”
“Oh no, you don’t, you little rat fink! No telling stories about me,” Ellalee hollered.
Christopher nudged Sir Kent. “If you want to hear the rest, you better go faster.”
“Hold on, little man,” Sir Kent said as he gave Ellalee a dry amused look and urged his destrier forward. Christopher looked over his shoulder and said extra loud so Ellalee would be sure to hear, “And you’ll never guess what she did then.”
“Oh please, Sir Fritz, please catch up with them. Christopher is telling stories again,” Ellalee begged.
“Are they true stories?” Sir Fritz asked drolly.
“It is the way that he tells him. Really, if I could just explain,” Ellalee said, but Sir Fritz only increased the distance between him and the horses ahead.
Ellalee muttered, “I could walk faster.”
“You are a difficult lass, Miss Ellalee. I would certainly allow you to try, except that you do seem to be a loyal to the earl. Anyone who was truly escaping would have justified their presence in the woods rather than casting doubt and aspersions upon themselves.” Sir Fritz snickered. “You did everything you could to prod and prick Kent to take you back to the manor, and you’re lucky he didn’t afte
r first tying you to his horse, gagged and upside down.”
“I’m sorry. I truly believe that Lord Valen is in mortal danger. I wish I had spent time today putting the pieces together rather than trying to figure out how to get our little group to turn around.”
“Well, you were successful in the end. Despite those young men’s obvious care of your sister, when you began walking back, your fellow servants followed you.” Sir Fritz was silent for a moment. “So, tell me about these passages and everything you know about this man who threatens Lord Valen. You better start at the beginning on the day we left you.”
And so she did.
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Thief in the Wood and the Sole Defender
Ellalee could barely sit still behind Sir Fritz as they rode through the night back to Castle de Avium. She remembered her last trek through the woods by the cold light of the moon and was filled with a heavy foreboding.
“If you don’t sit still back there, I will leave you in the woods to find your own way,” Fritz said with exasperation. “We can only go so fast in the dark. The moon is rising. We will have more light soon.”
“I just have a terrible feeling,” Ellalee whispered. “I shouldn’t have left, no matter what he said.”
“What were you going to do? Beat everyone over the head with your pot? The best thing that could have happened is that you left and ran into us,” Fritz replied. “I don’t, however, even half believe that story of giant slavering wolf-dogs though, just so you know.”
“Now, see here,” Ellalee responded hotly.
“Quiet, something moves ahead off the path,” Fritz whispered. “Hop down. We are close, and that person moves with too much stealth.” He turned, grabbed Ellalee under her arm and helped lower her down onto the beaten path, and then he gave a whistle to which the knights looked up and around. “James with me!” With that, the two knights charged through the woods after the shadowy figure.
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