13
“Up, milady! The bell for prime has rung, and we must be gone. You’ll not want to keep the horses standing, for ’tis cold as a witch’s teat, and snowing besides.”
Cate moaned at the sound of Gwynne’s voice, for it seemed she had only just fallen into sleep. The night past was a hodgepodge of images and sensations in her mind, most so incredible she blushed to recall them. She had never dreamed there were so many ways to make love, most of them sinful, according to the holy fathers who condoned one position only and that with as little touching as possible. Ross surely had pagan leanings, for he brushed aside all such prohibitions. Any way of seeking such joy was good, he said, and priests who preached otherwise merely begrudged their parishioners the pleasures denied to them.
Turning with a grimace due to soreness in muscles she’d never dreamed she might use, Cate opened a single eye. Her voice husky with sleep, she asked, “What horses?”
“Those readied for your travel, of course. We leave the instant you are dressed.”
“Leave?” she asked in confusion.
“For Braesford Hall? Did yon Dunbar not tell you?”
Cate gave a slow shake of her head.
“Just like a man, to leave the telling to someone else. Doubtless he’d no wish to hear you moan.”
That was not true at all, Cate thought, closing her eye. Ross had seen to it that she moaned and cried his name any number of times in the night. He had encouraged it, reveled in it, from what she remembered.
Abruptly, the sense of what Gwynne was saying penetrated her fog of satiation and weariness. “Braesford? We’re going to Braesford and Isabel?”
“Have I not been telling you? Come now, there’s no time to waste. Up with you, wash your face and let me dress you. Lady Marguerite is already waiting in the great hall.”
The day was a wretched one for a journey, just as Gwynne had said. Cate discovered exactly how miserable it was the instant their cavalcade emerged from the protection of the palace and the snow-ladened wind struck them. By the time they were beyond the town, they were chilled to the bone in spite of fur-lined mantles of boiled wool with layers of padded clothing underneath.
Holding the hood of her cloak over the lower portion of her face, squinting into the white pall, she envied the armor worn by their escorts, and even the cuirass worn by Ross, for the breastplate must surely ward off the wind and hold body heat inside it. She was also certain Gwynne, riding pillion with her arms around the waist of a man-at-arm, was better off for the extra warmth of her companion, not to mention for his broad bulk as protection from the sheets of blowing snow. Cate, mounted on Rosie, had no such shield, nor did Marguerite on her own palfrey.
They stopped often to rest the horses and heat cauldrons of ale and wine over the fires lighted to warm them. It was little comfort. No sooner were they back on the road than the chill found them again. It was an excellent thing the Great North Road was well marked or they might have lost it in the swirling whiteness.
“What can be the king’s purpose in commanding our travel in the teeth of a winter storm?” It was Marguerite who posed that question in disgruntled complaint during the third rest of the day, standing with her back to both the wind and the fire. Smoke swirled around her until she appeared like some witch being burned at the stake, but she did not seem to regard it.
“Quietly, my dear,” Cate said, with a quick glance toward the men-at-arms around their separate fire.
“Why, because I may be taken up for treason? What odds, when we’re being sent to our deaths, anyway?”
“’Tis a matter of security,” Ross answered.
He stood near Cate. Accident or not, his wide shoulders blocked the worst of the wind and smoke from reaching her. His fur-lined cloak was a gift from Henry, a part of his wedding raiment he had scorned to wear until driven to it by the biting cold. He had even donned hose under his plaid.
The additions gave him more the look of an Englishman. Oddly enough, she was not sure she approved.
“His royal majesty’s security, I’ll be bound, for it cannot be ours,” Marguerite muttered.
“What else? It’s the first priority of kings, protecting their realms.” Irony laced Ross’s voice, though his gaze was on the men-at-arms who were melting snow at a separate fire, using it to water the horses. “Though the fewer who know of our journey, the better our chance of getting through with his orders.”
Cate glanced up at Ross. When she spoke, she kept her voice to a murmur. “Orders for Braesford?”
“Aye.” Her husband answered just as quietly.
“Henry suspects a threat from the sea?”
“So it would seem. The order is that Braesford man the pele tower attached to his manse, ready to kindle the fire atop it that will warn of invaders.”
At least he did not scorn to answer her, or tell her to hold her tongue and leave such matters to men. “Sent by the Yorkists, I suppose, but I fail to see…”
“The dowager duchess of Burgundy despises Henry, views him as the Antichrist himself. She froths at the mouth to see him dead.”
Such talk concerning the lady, once a princess of the house of York, had been current at court for months, but Cate was too grateful for Ross’s protection just now to point that out. “So she has provided recognition of the pretender. Can she really believe he is her nephew?”
“Who can say? She stirs this particular pot with a long spoon, as she is still in Burgundy. Whoever the poor little sod being made much of in Ireland turns out to be, he’s still no more than an excuse for toppling Henry. True prince or not, he’ll serve as a cat’s paw for those who would snatch the crown when he falls.”
“Such as John de la Poole, once Richard’s appointed heir?”
Ross inclined his head. “A noble malcontent who feels he was done out of his due when Henry took the crown at Bosworth.”
“There will be fighting,” Cate whispered, as the realization struck her. “Oh, aye.”
“And you are now expected to aid Henry.”
Ross tipped his head with its Scots bonnet in assent. “I’m to begin gathering men and arms.”
“So you’ll do it?” She searched the hard lines of his face, shivering a little at the implacable look in his eyes.
“So long as Scotland stays out of it.” His accent was stronger, a sign of his disturbance of mind.
“And if King James does intervene?”
“We’ll see when it comes to it.” Turning away, Ross called for the fires to be doused, and set the troop back on the road again.
Toward midafternoon, the snow began to thin. It soon ceased altogether. The sky remained gray and heavy, however, and the wind picked up the snow disturbed by their passage, and scattered it like fairy dust behind them. The land lay white and near silent, an endless sea of snow with the tops of hedgerows winding through it, and rounded humps where brambles and old haystacks were covered over. Nothing moved other than their thudding, jangling column with Henry’s official banner fluttering above it. The houses of the few villages they passed were closed up tight, with wisps of smoke drifting over snowsmothered rooftops, and barking dogs the only signs of life.
Their party lost their way due to a marker buried in the snow, so had to backtrack for several leagues. The extra effort sapped their endurance and strained tempers. Some small distance ahead was the monastery where they could expect to find shelter for the night. As the early winter dusk began to draw in, they listened for the vesper bells that would lead them to it.
They still had not heard them when they approached a ford. It was a gray-purple and steep-sided runnel, overhung by leafless trees with ice-coated limbs that clacked and rattled like dice played on a marble floor. The stream at the bottom was almost certainly frozen, under snow that appeared deep enough to touch the bellies of the horses.
Ross led the way down the bank. Half the complement of men-at-arms followed close behind him, with Cate and Marguerite among them. The remaining men-at-arms, including the man with whom Gwynne rode pillion, brought up the rear. The footing was slippery, and Cate gave close attention to Rosie as the palfrey picked her way over the unseen ice.
A shout rang out as she started up the opposite slope. Mounted men charged from right and left. All was confusion as yells and curses rang out and snow was thrown up by flying hooves.
Ross and the men-at-arms with him swung to form a protective cordon around Cate and Marguerite. Their swords whined as they drew them. Hoarse calls and grunts echoed around them.
The horses, wall-eyed with terror, screamed and reared, slamming into friend and foe alike as they fought for purchase in the slippery ford. Swords whistled, clanging on metal like an insane, cracked-bell dirge.
An armored man, a dark shape in the boiling fury of snow and ice, flailing blades and struggling horses, reared his mount and forced his way through the tumult. He shouldered Rosie away from the others and leaned to grab for Cate’s bridle.
Her poniard was in her hand, though she had no memory of drawing it. A quick stab at the gloved hand that held Rosie’s head, and she was free again. She jerked the palfrey back inside the protection created for her and Marguerite, and then gave her attention to making certain she remained there. Ross and the others could not fight so mightily if they had to watch that she wasn’t caught up in the melee, or worse, snatched away beyond it.
Swinging her head to search for Ross, she saw he was looking in her direction. His eyes blazed through narrowed lids and his mouth was set in a grim line, but he gave her a hard nod of approval. Her heart throbbed and her breath was hot as she jockeyed and backed her mount, yet wild exhilaration sang in her veins. Meeting the gaze of the warrior who was her husband, she tipped her head in return.
A bloody gash opened on the flank of Marguerite’s horse. Maddened with pain, the beast leaped and curveted. Cate feared her sister would be thrown, but she managed to control her mount. In that same moment, a man reached as if to snatch her to him. Marguerite whirled on him with a shriek, using her rein ends as a whip across his face. The man drew back sharply. Then he wheeled to stare toward Cate.
Ross thrust his destrier between them. The man was forced outside the cordon once more.
By all the saints, was that what this was about? Could it be another try at abduction?
Cate, her mind afire with white-hot logic, could see no better explanation. It seemed no mere robbery attempt; the assailants were too many and too well armed. And who would dare such a thing other than Trilborn?
Yes, but to what purpose? Why, what else except rapine to spite the Scotsman, to sully his bride and so sting his pride? Or was the purpose to force Ross to come after her, the better to kill him?
She would not be taken. She would not.
But suppose that was not it at all? Trilborn’s first aim could be to slay Ross in this vile ambush. Then he could ride away with her to some isolated keep, there to make sure she rued her rejection of him.
Marguerite and Gwynne could not be left alive to tell the tale, nor could a single man of their escort. Cate’s heart constricted in her chest as that obvious fact came home to her.
Rosie pitched and shrieked, and Cate fought with strength she scarce knew she possessed to control her. A man-at-arms went down, his blood splattering bright red against the pure white of the snow. Ross slashed at the attacker who slew him, connecting with a body blow that sent the man reeling over his charger’s neck as the horse bolted for the upper bank.
Three of their assailants converged on Ross. He gave battle like a demon, his eyes narrowed upon the blades that came at him as he swung his mighty sword, so much longer and heavier than those used against him. It shrieked with vicious purpose as it bit into metal, clanged against armor, thudded into the side of one man with the sound of breaking bone.
Abruptly, the way before him was clear. “Cate!” he shouted, and whirled his mount to find her. “To me! To me!”
She was beside him in an instant. He collected her sister and the man who had Gwynne with a single commanding glance. And then they were plunging ahead, thrusting their way up the slope toward the open track that lay beyond.
They reached it and kicked their horses into a run. The other men-at-arms of their party fought free, streaming out behind them. Their pursuers followed like dark, thundering shadows.
The galloping column plunged through rolling yet open country as the day closed in around them. Lavender and purple shadows smudged the snow, turning dark gray in the hollows.
Then it came, the sound they most longed to hear. For somewhere just ahead, over the brow of the next hill, rang out the melodious and infinitely welcome chimes of vesper bells.
The monastery came into view, a low building of yellow-brown stone attached to a modest chapel and protected by stout stone walls. The instant it was sighted, their pursuers fell away. Ross did not slacken the pace, however, but led Cate and the others on. They breasted drifts of snow, driving through until they reached the great wooden gate, which swung open to receive them.
Pigeons flew up from the monastery eaves, wheeling against the darkening sky, as they clattered inside and pulled up in the cobblestoned court. Dim light shone through cracks in the shutters of a long chamber that ran along one side of the ancient structure. There was no brick here, no glazing, no stained glass in the chapel windows. Norman arches in the squat structures suggested the place had been protecting travelers since the time of William the Conqueror, however. The gate that crashed shut behind them, closing out their enemies, was as thick as a man, and strapped and studded with iron.
They were safe.
Cate slewed around in her saddle to stare at Ross. His face was streaked with blood, his cloak spattered with it, and his gloved fist red to the elbow. Worse, his knee was covered in gore where it was protected only by hose.
“You are injured,” she exclaimed. “Where? Get down, and let me—”
“Nay, sweet wife. The blood is that of other men. And you?” He rode close and removed his glove, leaning to take her chin in his hand and rub his thumb over an itchy spot on her cheek. “Were you cut?”
She shook her head, warmed, unaccountably, by his touch and the look of concern on his hard features. “As you say, the blood of others.”
He glanced behind her to Marguerite, who shook her head though she breathed heavily through her mouth, holding her palfrey’s mane. Gwynne sobbed against the back of the man-at-arms who had her up behind him, but seemed to have suffered only a minor cut down one leg and a fair-size rent in the back of her mantle.
Others among their escort were not so lucky. One reeled from a blow that had dented his helmet, and two more had slashes to arms and legs that needed immediate attention. That seemed forthcoming, for the man at the gate was ringing an alarm. Men in the plain brown garb of their calling poured from the lighted room at one side of the court. They surrounded the wounded, assisting them from their saddles with care. In no time, they were borne away inside.
Ross swung from his destrier and came to help Cate down. She clung to his arms while she shook with tremors. It was not fear, she thought, but glad relief and the awakening from some strange, cold savagery.
“You are certain you are unhurt?” Ross asked, bracing his feet as he held her, his cloak blowing around them both.
“Yes, but…I wish I’d had a sword out there. I was so… I wanted to run them through for what they did, to kill every one.”
A laugh shook him. “And would have, I expect. It’s just battle madness, my apple, my sweeting. It will pass.”
“I would that I might have aided you.” She rather liked those curious endearments spoken in his quiet Scots burr.
“You did, by staying behind me.”
She grimaced. “Hardly a brave showing.”
“But a wise one that proved your trust, for which I am grateful.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction the injured had been taken. “And now…”
“And now you must see to your men,” she said, straightening her shoulders. “Go. Marguerite and I must look after Gwynne, as well.”
“Later, then,” he answered, and swung away.
She did not ask what he meant, though she watched him until he passed into the doorway of what must be the infirmary, and was lost to sight.
Gwynne’s cut was not deep, but it was long and painful. Marguerite dosed the serving woman with several cups of new wine while Cate bound the wound. Afterward, they left her, snoring from the libation and exhaustion, in the small cell with its two benchlike beds of stone that Marguerite was to share with her.
The chamber allotted to Cate and Ross was no larger, nor was it more luxurious. The stone bed was softened only by a thin mattress stuffed with straw, and had a single wool blanket for cover. The room had no window, no fireplace or fire pit, not even a brazier. A few rushes scented with rosemary served to ward off the chill of the stone floor. A tallow candle illuminated the three-legged stool, narrow table holding a wooden basin and crude prie-dieu that completed the meager furnishings. In short, there was nothing to encourage overstaying their welcome with the good brothers of the order.
Cate and Marguerite, being female, were forbidden the communal hall, so were served their evening meal in this small chamber. The repast was no more sumptuous than the accommodations, being watered wine, cold bread and a few bits of meat drowned in lukewarm broth. It was brought by a monk so elderly he was past all chance of sensual temptation, though he had a singularly gentle and pleasant smile.
“Well?” Marguerite asked, when the stooped brother had shuffled away with the front hem of his robe dragging in the dust that coated the stone floor.
“Well, what?” Cate, cold to the marrow of her bones, warmed one hand on the pottery bowl that held the broth, while dipping her bread into it with the other.
“You know very well what I mean! What is it like to be a wedded wife?”
“It is well enough.”
“You seem all right, but you barely moved when I looked in at dawn before sending Gwynne to you.”
“How should I look?”
“As if you had been properly bedded by a loving spouse?”
“Really, Marguerite,” she said, without quite meeting her eyes. “It’s not as if it was the first time, after all.”
Her sister watched her with an intrigued air. “So what passed between you? How did—”
“Never mind!” Cate interrupted in haste. “It’s enough to know that all is as it should be.”
“Yes, but did your Scotsman say nothing concerning the curse? Has he sworn to love you forever, that he’s still able to walk among us?”
“Ross has no belief in curses.” Cate huddled on one end of the hard bed, as she had allowed Marguerite the stool. Why her husband’s lack of belief in the curse should make her feel colder than she was already was more than she could say.
Marguerite lifted a brow. “Pray, what has that to do with it? Come, Cate, he must know how he escaped the fate that removed all your suitors who came before him. He has had full many an opportunity to die, you know. He might even have done so this day.”
“Don’t, please don’t say such a thing,” Cate begged her with a shudder.
Her sister sat back, staring at her. She lifted a corner of her veil of plain linen, nibbling on it. After a moment, she lowered it. “So that’s it.”
Disquiet assailed Cate at something she saw in her sister’s penetrating gaze. She returned her attention to her broth. “You’re in love with him.”
“Don’t be foolish.” It could not be. She was too sensible, too wary. Surely it was impossible?
“Wouldn’t it be interesting if that is also a key to vanquishing the curse—if our love for a man worked as well as his for us?”
“You would like to think so, I’m sure,” Cate said. “Then all you need do is persuade Henry to choose a man you can adore.”
Marguerite shrugged. “Oh, Henry. As I’ve said before, I shall not heed his command to wed.”
“I should like to know how you will avoid it,” Cate said in sisterly annoyance. “But I’ve no idea why Ross still lives. Mayhap it’s because he was born Scots.”
“Instead of English? Being foreign born didn’t save your betrothed from Bruges.” Marguerite put a corner of her veil between her teeth for an instant, her gaze intent. “But we could ask Isabel. She may know, being eldest.”
“I suppose,” Cate said, though she could not see how having a husband some few months longer gave their older sister any additional expertise.
“She may also know if the curse can carry off a man once we are wed.”
“Marguerite!” The very idea gave Cate a choking sensation, as if her leaping heart had clogged her throat.
“It must be considered.” Her sister reached for her bowl of broth.
Cate didn’t want to consider it. That very reluctance made her wonder if her younger sister could be right, at least in part. Cate might be somewhat attached to the Scotsman who was her husband.
Oh, but that wasn’t love. Was it?
No, of course it wasn’t, she thought, wrapping an arm about her waist under her mantle. Love was more than admiring a handsome face and manly form, more than being awed by his prowess with a sword. It had nothing to do with the pleasure she enjoyed in his arms. Love was warm affection that grew from years of living side by side, of sharing the joy of bearing children and the sadness at the inevitable loss of a few. It was respect and appreciation for a man’s protection. It was working together to build a life.
No, she wasn’t in love with Ross. How could she be in love with a man who thought she just might have tried to have him killed?
Marguerite went away to check on Gwynne and retire for the night in the bed next to her. Cate wrapped her mantle and the threadbare wool blanket around her shoulders, and braced her back in the corner where the bed was placed in the angles of two walls. She was still there when Ross finally made his way to the chamber.
The candle had burned down to a flickering, malodorous stub. Her husband was hardly more than a shadow as he stepped inside and pushed the door shut behind him.
“Still awake?” he asked. “I thought you would be abed long since.”
“I am abed, but…” She shook her head.
He glanced around, located his sword which he had sent to the chamber earlier, as he could not appear with it in the hall. Assured it was near, he swept off his cloak, removed his jerkin and began to loosen the belt that held his plaid. “You are troubled by the deaths this day?”
“I…suppose so.”
“Your teeth are chattering. You’re cold.”
She tried to control the small sound to little avail. “Who…would not be?”
He tossed the plaid onto the bed, where it fell across her feet. Even through the blanket that covered them, she could feel the body heat that lingered in its folds.
“You were cold that first night, there in the forest,” he said with gravel in his voice. Nimble of finger, he freed the points that held his shirt to his hose.
Her glance was exasperated. “It was snowing.”
“I could hear your teeth chattering then, too.” He shook his head before ducking to pull his shirt off over it.
“You built up the fire.” She almost lost track of what she was saying as the dying candlelight gilded the hard ridges of muscle that wrapped his chest and upper arms.
“It wasn’t what I wanted to do.” He sat on the opposite bench to strip away his boots and the hose he was not used to wearing, though he watched her instead of what he was doing.
“No?” The single word came out in breathless anticipation as he rose and came toward her in hard and naked splendor.
“No,” he answered. Kneeling on the thin, narrow mattress, he began to unwrap her blanket with ruthless efficiency.
“What did you prefer?” She helped him, the saints forgive her. At least she stripped off her mantle and allowed him to unlace her bodice.
“To lie with you, to warm you, hold you.”
“I wish you had,” she said, her voice not quite even.
“To be warmed by you.” He pushed up her gown and shift, and then drew her up to kneel with him so he could rid her of them.
His hands were cold, as was his nose, his forehead and everywhere else that had not been covered. Shivering, she twined her arms around him, drawing him to her as she pressed her body with its rash of goose bumps to the wondrous heat and strength of his torso and what was below. “Lie with me now,” she whispered against his neck, “and we will warm each other.”