Gayle Eden (16 page)

She moved down, closer to the field while Pagan was waiting in the wings. Beroun was with him, and she saw to the side, that Randulf was there too. The Baron had changed horses. Illara’s heart shook noting how many knights, including his captain, who had won prizes at the events, were standing with his esquires.

Something was not right.

At the warning horn, she watched the Baron heft the lance and put his visor down. He leaned to say something to one of the knights, who then stared at Pagan and nodded. He called his captain over and spoke to him also.

Her fingers tensed against her stomach when the first pass was called. Her eyes afterward, shifting to Pagan, who was naturally focused and alert. The horses charged and the combatants drew closer and closer. Pagan scored. The hit was more of a skimming of Pagan’s lance.

She grit her teeth, discerning it was, in Pagan’s mind to mock and sport with the Baron, since Ryngild had not exactly observed the rules in his matches, and came a hair from outright cheating.

Had she not felt something was—off kilter—she would have applauded him, as it was, Illara could almost feel the fury radiating from Ryngild’s armor.

They used three of their allowed six lances and were still scored even.

The next pass saw Ryngild’s lance shatter and though it rocked Pagan, she had seen him allow this before, in the early matches, simply to measure his opponent. Two more saw Pagan nearly unseat the Baron. The crowd rose and fell, their gasps and groans making Illara feel tenser.

It was obvious Ryngild was their champion.

Whilst the knights readied, she moved her gaze from watching Randulf—who was obviously trying to argue with his brother on something, over to the Baron, and that Knight who had stared at Pagan. He nodded and stepped forward to wave the crowd silent.

He said with a swagger and bow toward Ryngild, “Now your champion will slay the beast of Northumberland.”

The crowd cheered jeered, and laughed.

“He will unseat him—and once he does, he will unmask the fend—the Black Knight—this Pagan de Chevel—and have both his horse and his demon head!” People guffawed and called out, off with his head! Slay the beast!

Not so Illara, there was no humor in such taunts. She feared what was sport and ridicule, what some would see as merely psychological weapons of mockery, had a far more sinister and dangerous menacing.

Her skin burned from the tightening of it. Panic rose in her throat when the horn was blown. Ryngild was delayed a split second, and no one attended that he switched lances—one with something silver at the base.

“Oh God…Oh God!” Illara was on her feet as he came close to Pagan and the lance impacted against Pagan’s helm. As if in slow motion, she saw him rock in the saddle, and how he made it to the end of the field and turned the destrier—she did not know. However, she was already running to exit the Gallery, because her eye caught the glint in Ryngild’s hand, behind the lance.

She jumped the wall, fell, and picked herself up, her eyes on the Baron. Again, as if in slow motion, she observed the violent hit that unseated Pagan—the blow left a splinter sticking out of Pagan’s bashed helm.

Illara screamed his name, running as the crowd was yelling, stomping, and hailing Ryngild.

“Pa….gan!” Her mind and body were separate, blood pumping through her at a painful rate. The baron was off his horse, and though somewhere in her peripheral vision, she was aware Randulf and Beroun were heading for her bleeding and unconscious husband, her heart crashed like hammer blows into her ribs. Her eyes honed in on the Baron, who was lifting a blade to the crowds as if for that unmasking—

What Illara saw was its aim, for after tearing off Pagan’s helm, heedless of the high spurts of blood from ripping the splinter out with it—Ryngild tossed it in the air to the excitement of the crowd, and after making a show of lifting Pagan’s head in the mask, he had drawn that blade to cut it. However a subtle twist of his body put his back to the throng, and she made for the dividing bales, leapt up and over, just as his blade was about to strike Pagan’s heart.

Illara heard the words, “You should have died at Dunnewicke!”

But she had landed crouched, slid her hands into each boot, and then drawing up each dagger, she rammed them with such force into the vulnerable space at Ryngild’s neck—that it lifted him and threw him back with her atop.

She could hear the cries and screams, hear someone shouting for men to grab her, but breathing inflexible, she pulled the blades free and stood weaving—The sound of running feet, men in her vision swirling as her head did, only thinking one thought, how close the baron came to killing Pagan.

Rough hands grabbed her arms; a fistful of her hair arched her head back when the Baron’s men reached her. Pain shot through Illara’s body…. The din, the feel of the daggers being torn from her hands. They turned her. Someone was lifting the Baron. Her eyes rolled to Pagan, whom Randulf and Beroun had reached.

Chaos, knights and guards, screams, and shouts all around. She heard the captain growl, “Take her to the dungeons!” It hardly registered what that meant until they were dragging her brutally away.

Randulf half stood from having been lifting his brother along with Beroun.

Illara managed to scream, “No! Get him from here, hurry! Save him! Protect him! Get him away!” Then she gasped as a fist struck her temple, having sensed Randulf’s indecision and shock, his agony and instinct to do just that. His brother lay bleeding from his head, unmasking him could end his life just as swift—aside the fact, his wife was now a murderer.

The knights did not do much to protect Illara from the masses, the blows, and spittle when they tried to make it through the crowd to get her to the castle. She felt it all in some distant way, knew they would tear her to shreds if they could reach her. No one saw what she had, and perhaps only his guard was in on it. However, it mattered little. She realized that she had killed a noble on his own lands—

Illara had a last chance to see the field, when the guards started up the rise, her brow trickling blood, dirt, and dung having spattered her, amid the dust thrown. She had a final blurry glimpse of the empty place Pagan had landed. Only the blood darkened the ground.

She closed her eyes chanting, protect your brother, save him Randulf…please, please let him live. What you two have suffered, you know what awaits him. Let him live…let him live…

So many voices and shouts, so many curses and cries, blunted against her ears on her way to the main keep. The guards took her through great oak doors, down a hall, through another and she felt the cold air from below. They descended a dozen stairs and turned. The passage was narrow and dark. Half running, half dragging her, they did not stop until she was low in the warren. Subsequently she was thrown through an open barred door.

It slammed shut.

Landing on dank stone, Illara groaned when her cheekbone struck it. She lay panting and still, her palms burning whilst some part of her brain registered they had cut them taking her weapons away.

Footfalls were fading, the guards leaving, and dark, silence, chilly air. …

After some time, she got herself to her knees, crawling and feeling her way to the far wall. She laid there, with her back against it, her hurting hands between her bent knees. She prayed. Illara prayed and moaned—with her fear and her love for Pagan mingling. She could not feel the tears running down her dusty and scraped cheeks, her thoughts were inward. If that blow did not kill him—and God let it not be mortal despite the force and blood—the captain and mayhap more knew whom he was, both he and his brother could be thrown back in prison or hung.

She moaned again. It echoed in the subterranean chamber. Bringing her clasped hands to her lips she cried in her mind, do not take him now, not after all he has survived, all he has endured. Do not take him. He had so little left to build his life. What was done to him, an innocent, ever remained and consigned him to shadows and shrouds. Do not take him. Let him live.

Chapter Eight

Two months of the darkest, coldest winter progressed. Snow would have been welcomed in place of the sleet, howling winds and rain. Bleak was a word oft running through minds, because fires could not blaze high enough to warm the bones and keep a chamber heated.

Inside an old square keep which sat on a rise with a frozen river below, a vigil begun so many nights ago the number was insignificant, continued, with the three figures around one prone, before the warm hearth.

Wind moaned through the upper chambers and rattled the shutters so that they were a constant source of tapping. Lylie pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders, her eyes on the blaze and her mind too fearful of thinking, that one was likely enduring the frigid winter without heat. Having grown used to the sounds in the keep, it took some time for her to hear the banging of the knocker. She jerked her gaze to Randulf. “The entry...”

He gathered his feet under him, having both mask and hood of his cloak in place, he hurried to it, lifting the bolt, it nearly jerked from his strong arms with the force of rain and wind that Ivo brought with him.

Lips blue and teeth chattering, the young man tried to deliver his news but couldn’t stop shivering. His cape and boots were bogged with water and his face raw from the terrible cold.

“To the fire, quickly.” Randulf herded him over and began stripping off the wet robes.

Lylie rushed for blankets and held them to the flames, and Beroun lifted the man’s feet, pulling off his boots. Stripped down and wrapped in the blanket, then handing him warm mead, Ivo was on his knees by the flames, Randulf rubbing his arms and back trying to get his blood flowing.

Though each was tense, waiting, ready to pull the words out of him, they knew the young man had ridden days and nights, more than a week in the cold to get here that quickly.

When he could speak, Ivo relayed, “They had her first trial in the Baron’s Hall. They called it a Court of Chivalry, with the judges being the marshal and the town Burgesses along with the chosen impartial judge who would record all for the king. Lady Illara told the same tale—of what she had seen before Ryngild’s last pass, the change of the lance and where the dagger was aimed. There were no other witness to her claims. Only three who bore some proof that Ryngild had violated the rules, and that his lance and his aim was deliberately chosen to do harm.

The captain interrupted and made claims that Pagan was the same Thorel who was long supposed to have died in the tower. Moreover, that it was possible the brother lived also, under the mask of Ronan. It was shouted that Pagan put his wife up to the mischief, to kill the Baron, and there were many tales and much arguing so that the Sheriff called a halt. She was taken away again.

The second day was for any proof to the claim that traitors had escaped the tower and was indeed these two knights—this was because of the serious charge of treason. If it 'twas so, then there was an order that both Thresford and Dunnewicke, all of the lands owned by them would be held until they were caught. Again, some argument came, because the Barons and knights heard that documents and proof from the original claims would have to be examined—and it seemed no one wished that. But it would be word against word if they did not.”

Randulf growled low, “No. They would not want it looked at too closely.”

“In any event, each time she was summoned, the Lady Illara gave the same account, and gave witness that none of Eadwyn’s family lived. She spoke and put on record that it was a betrayal, not treason, and gave names of every child and servant, all who was perished, and told of the fire in the forest that took the young ones.

When asked where she heard these tales, she said that an elder in Dunnewicke had survived long enough to tell it. Moreover, she said she would only speak officially that Pagan was some kin on Lady Anne’s side and that he had perhaps suffered some accident whist training for knighthood that left him scarred. She said that Ronan had suffered like wise.

After telling the story of the feast and betrayal, the murder at Dunnewicke, she ignored the outrage and ire it raised among the Barons, and others who were named or knew. She recited the legacy of Pagan and Ronan, their bravery in the Holy land—and their place in battles since—she spoke of the victories at Tourneys, their renown in the sport. Again, of her father, Lord John and her fate, which was dark under Starling’s over lordship, until Pagan championed her. I believe she avoided the truth of whom Pagan was without out right lying. But when speaking of Eadwyn, the truth was there.”

The young man took a drink to soothe his throat and went on, “Time and again they tried to quiet her. They cursed, and near fighting broke out. The guards had to restrain several who would do her harm. However, she looked at no one save those who would judge and deliver sentence. It was as if no one was in the room but them.”

Lylie cut in long enough to ask worriedly, “How was she? How did she look?”

“She was brave, strong, and unshakable. She appeared…pale and bruised, not well kept. Her clothing was but a woolsack and rope for a belt, her shoes some wooden sandals. Nevertheless, I could not look from her face. I do not think I was the only one spellbound by it, and her eyes, her voice…No matter what occurred she never wavered nor stopped speaking so long as they allowed.

She said to them: Take the castles and lands, take what my father endowed me, and what he was rewarded as a faithful vassal to the king for—Take every stone of Dunnewicke and the remains of a family who did nothing but serve God, King, and country—and be trusting, hospitable to their friends and brothers—Repay your champions and your brave knights of renown, with destruction and death, and send them to the grave as the righteous judges you are!