The Forgiven Duke (A Forgotten Castles Novel) (16 page)

“I am deaf,” he told them for the first time. “I will not be able to answer your questions unless you write them down.” He wasn’t going to let them torture him because he couldn’t hear what they said, but shame filled him at the desperation he felt to be free of the irons. What might they want to know that he wouldn’t willingly say?

The tall Spaniard eyed him curiously as if trying to judge the truth of his words. He spoke orders for paper and ink to be brought. Gabriel hung there, sweating and panting, stretching to the tops of his toes to lessen the pressure on his wrists, arms, and shoulders. The muscles of his upper back quivered, his arms numb and prickly at the same time. Finally, a page was thrust toward him.

Tell us what you know of the manuscript of the Hans Sloane collection sought by your king.

One of the soldiers stood ready by the chains, hand lightly pulling and increasing the tension on the lines. Gabriel swallowed the bile in his throat. “There is a partial copy of a manuscript missing from the collection. The prince regent has one of the copies.”

The chains tightened a little more. Excruciating pain made him groan, his back bowing in an arch as nerve endings screamed from Gabriel’s wrists. The Spaniard took the paper back and wrote another question, seeming to take his time while Gabriel tried not to cry out again.

Does your sovereign know what the plans are for? Has he tried to build them?

Gabriel groaned as the chains tightened so he dangled from the manacles, his toes barely touching the floor. “Yes, he built what he could, but no one knows what it is. It . . .” he took small breaths and sputtered out, “doesn’t make sense.”

With a nod from the man, the soldier pulled again. Gabriel cried out as his feet left the floor. He dangled in abject misery, sweat pouring from his head and dripping onto his bare chest.

The paper was thrust at him again.
Where is Alexandria Featherstone?

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Again the chains tightened. The Spaniard shook the paper at him. His lips asked the question in a shouting, enraged face. “Where is your ward, Lady Alexandria Featherstone?”

“I lost her in Ireland. Just . . . as you must have. I don’t know.”

He screamed as the chains tightened yet again, then blessed blackness overwhelmed him and he slumped into unconsciousness.

He jerked awake to freezing water being thrown into his face. In slow measure, he began to notice his whole body’s pulsing pain—from the barely healed wound on his head to his shoulders and arms, wrists and hands, his back. God help him, his back felt stretched too taut, like a rope unraveling. With a grunt he turned over and tried to sit up. They had released him from the chains and he lay like a puddle of flesh on the stone floor. The Spaniard came toward him.

God, they will kill me now and what good will I be to Alexandria then? Give her a good life, Lord. With or without her parents, keep her safe within Your love . . . like she claims You have for us. Give her a joyous, happy life, I pray Thee.

The dark man leaned over him and peered into Gabriel’s eyes, an evil smile curving his lips. “You will tell the king . . . tomorrow . . . where she is.”

Gabriel nodded, willing to promise anything to buy more time.

He was hauled back to his cell, given another flask of water and broth with a few floating chunks of meat in it and a lone carrot, which he slurped down too fast, making his stomach churn in rebellion. He drank the water slower. Savoring it, saving it in case it was the last they ever gave him. After his meal he knelt on the cold stone and cradled his head in his hands.

Silent sobs racked his shoulders, increasing the agony with each movement, but he couldn’t help it. He thought of his sisters,
Jane
, his mother,
Meade
, his friend Albert. How would their lives be if he never came home?

Alexandria.

He saw her face, saw it break into a glorious smile, the sun lighting her dark hair and the life within her lighting her blue eyes. If he told them she was in Iceland, they would go after her. The thought of them bringing her here and doing this to her was more than he could stand to dwell on. He turned his thoughts back toward King Ferdinand and the meeting on the morrow. If he didn’t tell them where Alexandria was, they would kill him. He saw it clearly in the Spaniard’s eyes today. Only the meeting with the king was staying his hand.

What Gabriel needed was to convince the king that they needed him. That even in knowing Iceland as the place she was last headed for, that she was extremely difficult to track, as his men could attest to. His mind spun with the thoughts, grasping any plan he could come up with. Yes, if he could convince Ferdinand that the only way to find Alexandria was through him, then he just might have a chance.

He felt for her last letter, took a shaking breath to find it still in the inner pocket of his waistcoat. It was the only thing he still had after he’d been ambushed and taken. They’d taken everything else down to his boots, but somehow they hadn’t found this.

It was still there.

It was his only chance.

Chapter Seventeen

A
lex took shallow puffs of the damp air as they followed a narrow path down, down into the mine, deep into the earth’s depths. The single light from Valdi’s lantern swung back and forth in a reckless way. What if it should go out? She shivered at the thought of complete darkness in this place. They could be lost forever and no one would ever know what had happened to them.

She paused, clinging to the rough rock wall with one hand. What if her parents were down here, decaying in some hidden crack or hole? What if Valdi had killed them and was leading her and John to that same demise? She looked over her shoulder at Valdi. He scowled at her and motioned her to keep moving. Oh, dear. What had she gotten them into?

A little farther and she heard the dripping of water.

“Here now,” Valdi stayed her with his arm, “watch your step. We’ve come to the veins of crystal, but there’s a pool of water under them and mud so thick you would never get out if you had the misfortune to step in it.”

Alex shrank back against the cave wall, points of jagged rock piercing into her back and shoulders. She suppressed a small squeak, pressing her lips together in stubborn determination instead. “If only it weren’t so dark. I fear I can’t see well enough to see the crystal veins.”

She pressed harder against the cave wall as Valdi passed her on the narrow path. He fumbled around with something and then a flash of light came from his hand. He held it up and lit a rush that had been bored into the wall. He circled the pool, lighting three more. Light flooded the area as it caught fire, a thin trail of smoke drifting toward the cave’s tall ceiling.

Alex looked around and gasped.

A muffled word of exclamation came from John.

All around them the walls sparkled and flashed as the flickering light made the crystal veins come to life. Against the dark, wet cave walls, veins of crystal weaved like roots of a plant, some thick and some thin, twisting and twining together and running the length and breadth of the space around them and up and over their heads. In the middle of the cave lie a dark pool, silent, still and deadly with its thick muddy bottom. They clung to the narrow path that hugged the wall, looking up and around, avoiding that pool with every step.

“It’s so beautiful.”

“Many have thought so,” Valdi said to Alex with a note of pride in his voice. “It is mined with small pickaxes and chisels that take much concentration and time. This crystal comes off in cleavages, lines so straight and pure that when you find them, it is easy to separate. We take the crystal out in blocks, like ice, that way.”

“I wonder what Augusto wanted it for?” Alex asked aloud, not thinking what she was saying.

John gave her a sharp look, but Valdi flashed a glance over at her, eyebrows drawn down over his eyes. “The legend speaks of a machine. A very great invention he was building.”

“What sort of machine? Do you know anything else?” All fear fell away in her curiosity.

“No.” His tone was harsh. “We should return now.”

Alex took a deep breath, knowing she wasn’t going to get any more answers from him. She turned rather quickly, too quickly. The rock beneath her foot slipped out from under her. “Ahhh!” She reached for the wall but it was too late. Her arms windmilled as she teetered on the edge of the pool.

“Help!” She reached out into thin air as her other foot slipped. Moments later her back hit the pool with a great splash. Her heart pounded with the flailing of her arms.

“Alex!” John screamed, going down on his stomach on the path and reaching out his hand toward her.

He was too far. Alex’s head went under the dark water.

“Don’t touch the bottom!” She heard Valdi roar.

All thought left her except the command not to let her feet touch the bottom, not to do everything her instincts wanted her to do—use the bottom of the pool to push herself to the surface.

She kept her knees tucked up and pushed her arms up and down until her head popped up from the surface, treading water with hand circles and the small movements of peddling legs.

Taking a giant breath, she paddled in the smallest space she could make, her skirts heavy and working against her.

“Grasp this!” Valdi held a long, gnarled stick out to her. She swam toward it, keeping her feet high, and grasped hold with one hand. John joined Valdi as they pulled her toward them. As soon as she was close enough, John reached down for her, clasped her wrist, and dragged her up onto the rock floor.

He held her there, both of them breathing heavy, his arms around her dripping form, his head pressed against her wet head. “Thank God,” he kept saying, over and over. “You silly fool, thank God.”

“I warned you,” Valdi barked in a rough voice. “You’re as foolish as your parents. Let’s go.”

With slow and careful movements, Alex stood. She was soaked, cold and dripping . . . afraid, shaking from head to toe, her teeth chattering. “I–I–I’m s–s–sorry.” So her parents had been here and had asked to see the mine too. But now didn’t seem a good time to question Valdi about that.

“Keep hold of her until we get out of this area,” Valdi ordered John and gestured with an angry sweep of his arm that they go before him.

John clung to her hand as they crept by Valdi, leading her out of the inner circle where the pool lay and up the steep incline toward the top and outside. Once outside the cold, stiff winds hit Alex like a bucket of icy water thrown into her face.

“Hurry to the house.” John took her hand again and ran with her toward Valdi’s house.

They burst through the door together. Johannes jerked awake, sat up, and rubbed his eyes. He took one look at them and grumbled, “Now what? What has happened?”

“Alexandria fell into the pool. We have to get her out of these wet clothes and warm and dry.”

Valdi came up from behind them. His voice shook as he called out, “Ashanti, take her to your room and help her find something to change into that is warm. One of your mother’s robes perhaps.”

The girl paled, eyes widening, but nodded at her father and waved Alex to follow her.

Her room was small and crowded with furniture. Alex took off her sodden coat and let it drop to the floor where it lay in a wrinkled heap, the fur collar looking like a wet dog. With shaking hands she worked the buttons of her dress free and pushed it down to the floor also.

The girl held out a blanket, eyes wide. “You can dry off with this. I will go and fetch my mother’s robe.”

“My thanks.” Alex tilted her head. “Is your mother here?”

The girl shook her head, a gaunt look of grief filling her deep brown eyes. “She died in the mine many months ago . . . Father hasn’t moved her things yet.”

She died in the mine? No wonder he hadn’t wanted to take them there. And the fact that Valdi would allow her to touch her clothing, something they held so sacred, made Alex’s eyes prick with tears. He wasn’t a monster; he was a complicated man plagued by the grief of his wife’s passing. She mustn’t let her imagination run away with her so and misjudge people.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Alex said to Ashanti.

When the girl left, Alex stripped off the rest of her clothing and rubbed life back into her cold skin with the woolen blanket. She was drying her hair and turned away as Ashanti entered with the robe. She felt the soft folds on her shoulders and grasped it, wrapping it around her and tying it with the long ribboned belt. It was a lovely robe of dark blue with a high collar and reaching almost to her ankles. Her hair hung long and wavy down her back as she turned a gentle smile on the girl. “Thank you. I’m feeling better already.”

“You look pretty in it.”

Alex smiled. “Shall we go in by the fire? I find myself in dire need of something warm to drink.”

“I’ll bring you a mug of warm goat’s milk.”

“That sounds perfect.”

Alex took her hand and followed the thin frame of the girl back to the sitting room.

“Thank God. How do you feel?” John rushed to her side as if she were on the brink of death and guided her to a chair by the fire.

“I’ll be fine, thank you, John.” She looked over at Valdi, who was staring at her in the robe with an ashen face. Sorrow and sympathy filled her chest until it ached
. Lord, help me say something gracious and kind, something with Your love in it for him.

“You saved my life. I thank you.”

He looked down and frowned at his feet. “I shouldn’t have taken you there. I knew better. My wife . . . when your parents were here . . . she took them to the mine and fell into that pool. She didn’t know how to swim and they were not able to save her as I saved you today.”

Alex inhaled with shock. “You must hate them, my parents. Why would you let me see the mine?”

He shook his head, his eyes full of pain. “It was an accident, a terrible accident, and they were devastated to be the cause. But their mission must have been important and that’s why I showed it to you. After the funeral, they purchased some crystal to take with them, paid a great deal for it, but I don’t know where they were going. They didn’t answer questions, just asked them.”