Faerie (12 page)

But Rufus didn’t know the real truth, and Philippe dared not tell him. Rufus was right: they were all pawns to necessity.

“Do you defy me?” Rufus demanded.

Philippe sucked in a heavy breath. He did not. Never would he betray his oath, no matter what his king did. He shut his eyes. “Nay, Sire. I am yours to command.”

“Then kneel before your king, sir knight.”

Philippe’s blood throbbed in his veins. But he was honor bound, and that loyalty he owed at the cost of his life. He knelt on the stone, as cold as the anger in his heart. He bowed his head.

“Philippe le Peregrine, you shall marry the heiress Leonie of Bosewood, and take the castle of Bosewood as your fief held in my name. You shall defend it with your life and your strength. And on forfeit of your honor and your life, you will protect your wife, Leonie, with all your strength and courage, holding her life dearer than your own.”

“I do so swear, Sire.”

“Then rise and go to find the bride and bring her to the church steps for the wedding.”

Rufus sighed as his knight backed the proper distance, then turned and walked away. Something almost like despair plummeted from his heart to his stomach. It was the look of betrayal in his knight’s eyes that pained him most. The Peregrine would do as his king commanded, aye. But gone from his heart was the honor and trust that Rufus had treasured, and now had been obligated to throw away.

Rufus sighed. A king must have no heart. A king must have no friends.

The shadow on the stone wall beside Rufus shifted. Rufus drew his mouth thin. “Well, old woman, I hope you are satisfied.”

The old woman in her rags formed from the mists, her image rippling like water in a pond when a stone is cast into it, then stilled as she took shape. “I am, Red King.”

“I know it must be. Still, I hope they may find happiness.”

“It will be what they make of it.”

“Did you plan this?”

“I cannot foretell or make the future any more than you.”

“Was it foreordained, then?”

“Nothing is foreordained, save death.”

Rufus frowned. “But you said—”

“That you would find the opportunity? Aye. I know you, Red King. You will always find opportunity when you need it.”

Her ragged laugh seemed to crack. The shadow shifted again.

“Wait! What about Malcolm? Where is the Scottish king? You told me—”

The shape that had been an old, haggard female shimmered as it came before the wall, then thinned. Rufus saw only shadows.

F
ROM THE DARKNESS
of the woods, Leonie glanced back at the castle and saw no great horde of men surging down the hill after her. So far, so good. The castle had been buzzing with the excitement of an unplanned wedding, and no one had even noticed that the bride had chosen to absent herself. She had walked brazenly out the postern gate, her bow and quiver slung over her shoulder, and wearing a second cloak beneath her usual one, her large gathering basket slung over her arm.

“Flowers,” she’d said, smiling, and the guard had smiled back benevolently. He hadn’t even bothered to notice the basket was full of things no maiden would ever need in gathering flowers for her wedding.

But she had no time to waste. Leonie wrapped the food and supplies she’d brought in her inner cloak and tied its corners around her waist, then tossed the now useless basket. They’d know she would take the path, so she raced along it, making no attempt to hide her trail.

She crossed the beck and made a show of entering the far side woods. But she knew how to leave a trail and how not to. Quickly, her tracks vanished onto rock.

Behind her, something crackled, and she crouched and froze, her eyes searching the forest from behind the dense undergrowth, her heart racing. A doe and her nearly grown fawn
moved cautiously through the brush. When Leonie stood again, they vanished in a flurry of rustling leaves.

She returned to the beck and walked along the bank where it was stony, and entered the water whenever necessary to avoid leaving tracks in mud or sand. She would regret her wet shoes and hose later in the night, but she could not afford any damage to her feet.

Where the beck turned to the east, she waded again until she reached a low waterfall. She had hoped for better luck, that the beck would take her farther north and east, for she had a long way to go before she reached Scotland.

Or, by chance, the Summer Land. And her mother. Perhaps her mother would at last take pity on her, for like her mother, she, too, had to escape a brutal man.

Why Herzeloyde had abandoned her daughter to be raised by mankind, Leonie didn’t know. People often talked of the Fae as they did dragons, water horses, and the like, as if they knew of them yet did not quite believe they existed. They were not like men, she knew. But something in her heart remembered her mother’s love, if not her face.

Yet how could any woman leave her baby daughter behind?

Leonie shook her head. Such thoughts were useless. If she didn’t hurry, her escape would be fruitless. She was Rufus’s ward, and he was not a king who brooked disobedience. His wrath would fall hard on her.

The beck tumbled over a jumble of boulders no higher than she was tall, and she climbed around it swiftly. She was hungry, but she could keep going, thanks to the Faerie sight that let her see through darkness better than a cat. Few men could follow her this night in the darkness of the new moon. She would gain many a mile while the Norman knights waited for dawn.

Except that they had horses.

Leonie shivered, noting the wind was picking up and turning chilly as the sun faded behind the horizon. She hoped the night did not turn cloudy, or she would have no stars to guide her. She tightened the knots that held the cloak full of her few possessions and fingered the knife at her waist cord. Now she headed away from the beck, bearing north into tall, rugged hills.

Clouds were coming in, as surely as the sun was setting. Darkness moved upon her rapidly. The terrain grew steeper and rockier, the forest denser.

Darker. She should be able to see better than this, for the ground at her feet was becoming greyer, indistinct, as if it faded into oblivion.

At the top of the hill, Leonie reached a stony outcrop and turned around to survey the valley behind her. Only a dim band of light separated the far horizon from the starless sky, and everything was dark below. She could see nothing but darkness. She turned back. The trees beyond the outcrop were barely visible, like dark lines against black. Something was wrong. Fear pounded in her veins. She could not see where she was. That pale sort of glow that had always illuminated her way in the dark—that secret advantage that ordinary people didn’t have—

It was gone.

The darkness pressed down on her like a smothering blanket. It was like the inside of Hell, with its fires gone out.

She was lost.

Philippe stopped at the edge of the rocky streambed. It was nearly too dark to continue. It had been easy to determine her
direction, which showed she headed for Scotland. When the hills grew rugged, there would be only a few ways she could go, and they all led to this point. He could easily cut her off by taking the road. She wouldn’t know that, of course, for likely she had never traveled the road before. Nor would she have known how much the beck meandered in its journey from mountains to sea. Now it was too dark to track her, but fortunately, she would also have to stop in the dark.

He tethered the horses where they could both graze and drink and went back to the beck. Hands on hips, he studied the steep cliff across the beck. He could barely see the top, which was obscured by tall trees and encroaching night.

He saw a movement, but as he blinked, he was no longer certain he saw it. And the longer he scrutinized the spot, the more the something became nothing and disappeared into the gloaming.

Damn the girl! Why in God’s Heaven had she come up with that lie? He’d always dismissed her interest in him as a young girl’s silliness, but never had he thought she would resort to such a trap. Yet if she had meant to trap him, why had she fled? Had the rage on his face sent her fleeing?

Heat rose in his face. Now he dared not let anything happen to her. Rufus would excuse nothing, not even her running into the wilderness and being devoured by wild beasts. Maybe she’d just drop dead of some dread disease that even Rufus could not blame on Philippe.

He sighed. He didn’t want her dead. He just wished she’d picked someone else to accuse so she could marry. But he was stuck with her now, and he had to make the best of it.

He grumbled unintelligible sounds that could not even be called words.

Philippe made a fireless camp and sat down on a boulder. Hungry though he was, he hardly appreciated the sausage and
cheese for his supper. He rolled up in his cloak with his soft saddle as his pillow.

Taking the horses up that hill beyond the cliff would be hard.

No matter. He’d do it. He was charged with her life, and by God’s grace, never mind hers, he’d see that she stayed alive. He’d be damned if he’d die dishonored because of a plaguey, lying female.

But that wasn’t what worried him. He had to send her off to one of her estates in the south as soon as possible. Surely that would please her to no end.

Rufus had no idea how unsafe any woman would be as his wife. For if there was anything of which Philippe was certain, it was the power of Clodomir’s curse. Philippe was the kind of man who loved, and if he began to love her, it would be his own hands that killed her.

He supposed, if nothing else, he could persuade her to remain disagreeable.

Leonie forced the tight curl out of her fists. If she’d just known it would be so hard to see, she would have picked a spot to spend the night before dusk. But it was too late for that now, and there was no sense in frightening herself.

First she secured her bow and quiver and her damp shoes in the safe branches of a scrubby oak, then she cleared a level spot to eat and sleep. The bread and hard cheese she’d stolen from the kitchen could never have been tastier. It ought to last three days, and by then, she could take time to hunt.

Her leftovers she bundled and stowed high up in the branches where they would be safe from predators, and then she lay down, wrapped up in her two cloaks.

She closed her eyes. Exhaustion flooded in. She didn’t even care that her hose were still damp. Quickly a meandering reverie took over and led into sleep.

Something stirred. Leonie jumped awake.

Rustling leaves. Beneath the scrubby oaks on the hill. She stifled her shriek before it came out. Man? Beast? She could hear snuffling. A grunt.

A pig. No—a boar! She gasped.

The underbrush came alive. Leonie ducked behind the tree as the grunting creature charged. She grabbed a branch and swung up, hooked a leg over the branch, and scrambled upward, but fiery pain seared through her dangling ankle.

Screaming despite herself, she climbed higher while the wild boar below her pawed at the ground and butted the tree.

Her ankle throbbed with fierce pain, and her hose grew warm and wet with blood. Below, the enraged boar slammed against the tree, its grunts like growls. It must have scented the blood. She had to stop the bleeding and heal the ankle enough that she could walk on it in the morning.