A Killing Season (8 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Lady Margaret stood at the window and cursed herself with more vehemence than God ever could.

No woman had acted more the fool. Cats in heat offered themselves with more dignity than she had done tonight with Sir Hugh. Resting her forehead against the unyielding stone, she wept. The transgression she might have committed was a sin she had not even truly desired. “My most beloved husband, why have you forsaken me?” she murmured. “How did I offend?”

Lifting her head, she looked out on the black night and let the darkness slide into her empty heart. She grasped her breasts. “When these were still sweet to suck and my flesh bore the blush of roses, men begged to lie with me. I rejected their pleas, not even allowing a single kiss. Why? When you rode through the gate, you turned your back on me, refusing to grant even one kind glance. Shall I pay for cleaving to my vows as God required? Was my constancy so great a sin that I must writhe alone in my bed like the Devil’s whore?”

A squall of hard rain hit the open window, stinging her face.

She laughed.

A servant, passing through the corridor, abruptly halted in alarm. The tray in her hands tilted. Struggling, she righted it before the vessels tumbled to the floor. “My lady, are you ill?”

Spinning around, Margaret pressed her back to the wall and screamed maledictions at the woman.

The maid gripped the tray and ran down the corridor, not stopping until she had reached the safety of a door. Only then did she dare look back, her eyes wide with terror.

Margaret slid to the floor and bent forward, fists pressed into her womb. “I can bear this no longer,” she whispered. “My sons are dying. My husband refuses to lend me the comfort of his arms. My loneliness eats into my soul where it rots like a rat’s corpse. What grave transgression have I committed to deserve these curses?”

The wind howled in reply.

“When I was young,” she whispered to whatever spirit might care to listen, “our union was blessed. I was as fruitful as my lord was virile. Then he left to take the cross. Should I have abandoned my children and taken holy vows myself? Is that my sin?”

She waited for a response but could feel no warmth of God’s love in the icy air.

“Am I to be condemned for lust because my womb begins to wither?” She looked up at the unrelenting darkness outside the window, then screamed: “Is it just, my lord, that I must suffer because we grew old apart?”

***

At the end of the corridor, two servants peeked around the corner. The wizened maid drew the sign of the cross; the young one shook her head in dismay.

“I see the Devil himself hovering over there. See? Just behind the mistress,” the former whispered and pointed toward Lady Margaret. “He’ll be riding the mistress tonight in her bed for cert, leaving our master to walk the ramparts alone again.”

The young one shuddered.

Hastily, they both scurried away.

Chapter Fifteen

Hugh nodded to the soldier on watch.

The man was eager to talk, but Hugh’s spirit begged for silence. With a terse reply, he passed the man by, then grieved that he had not been kinder. Sentry duty on windswept nights was a lonely task, one he understood well. How many nights had he stared into the blackness, fearing a muffled sound was the enemy and wishing it so in equal measure?

Turning around, he shouted encouragement and a jest to the motionless shadow behind him.

The soldier raised his hand and resumed his slow walk along the wall.

The coming storm confirmed Hugh’s troubled mood. The wind was wild, the air so cold it nipped painfully at his face. He knew he should not be here on these exposed ramparts; neither could he bear any longer the softer company he had escaped. As the untamed elements lashed him, he doubted that any effort to retain his reason would last. He surrendered to failure. His warm, fur-lined cloak might protect his body from those elements, but his maimed spirit trembled.

He had been foolish to leave Lucas behind, the only person who could pull him out of the whirlpool that often threatened to drown him in memories of blood. But the baron hated the very sight of the man, and, when Hugh received Herbert’s message and discerned the man’s evident suffering, he had chosen to honor the baron’s prejudice over his own need. Tonight, he feared the consequences of that decision and begged God to hold back the madness clawing at his soul.

The brutish wind’s high shriek against the stone wall echoed a dying soldier’s scream. The waves crashed on the shore below like a trebuchet-flung rock smashing a fortress wall. The world was at war again. He could never quite escape it, even in sleep when the memories of battle rushed back in dreams.

Herbert was right. No one could comprehend this mix of terror, excitement, madness, and triumph except a man who had sliced another in half, then seen the expression as the dying man realized what had been done to him. No one else could understand how it felt, at the end of the battle, to be the one who remained alive, surrounded by the mutilated bodies of other sons of Adam. He was not the only one who had raised his sword and roared, the orgasm of feeling never quite matched by the bedding of any woman.

But with peace came the ghostly horsemen: skeletal, pale, and dotted with clots of gore. They drove away the bloodlust and burned into his soul the images of what he had done to mortals like himself. Now the dead men came to him in dreams or, like tonight, slipped out of shadows on lonely walls. That was one reason he had spoken so abruptly to the soldier: he had briefly mistaken him for a ghost.

He paused and walked over to the crenel in the wall. Staring out into the darkness, he forced himself to remember, as Lucas taught him, that it was the sea crashing against the shore, not some giant engine of destruction, and it was the wind howling, not men dying too slowly of unimaginable wounds. Tonight the effort failed. The fear remained and his stomach knotted. Breaking out in clammy sweat, he bent forward and vomited away from the wind.

As usual, God failed to bring him peace.

Hugh sought a sheltered spot under the watchtower and shivered. Soldiers never spoke of these things. When a man’s dreams bled into daylight visions, driving him mad, his comrades called him
possessed
. He remembered when one had been slain by friends as he swung his sword at phantoms. Afterward, the men claimed they had killed the demon, but Hugh suspected their act had been a kindness. He had never seen any soldier recover his reason when he ceased to distinguish between shimmering bright images and the paler world.

Clutching his body to still his shivering, he cursed and willed himself to other thoughts.

He would not become one of the mad.

This was a fine castle, named
Doux et Dur
by those who built it. As he knew from years past, the island on which it stood could be sweet in the summer season. Seabirds inhabited the cliffs, some singing like an angel’s choir, while others, the puffins in particular, laughed with the merriment of a king’s fool. The earth bedecked itself with flowers, their colors flashing in the sunlight as they swayed in gentle breezes. On Hugh’s earliest visit here, a spindly-legged boy with spotted cheeks, he had lain with a servant girl in a bed of tender grass and soft petals. She had been his first.

Although he could not recall her name, and he had not seen her on this visit, he held that memory of their coupling in his heart, a tender corner that he kept protectively enclosed, sometimes even from himself. Perhaps she had died of some fever, but he hoped she had married a youth with a sweet smile, one who loved her more than himself.

He backed up to the stones of the watchtower and pressed his head against the rough wet rock.

Yet this place was still a fortress, its stones hard and unyielding, and cast a long shadow on the mainland that only dared touch this island with one bony finger of earth. The man who was now his king argued that it was not unassailable, although Hugh said otherwise. In the end, Hugh had conceded the debate to Lord Edward.

Hugh’s lips turned into a thin smile. Had Edward known that Hugh deliberately lost the argument by twisting his logic into an untenable position? With this king, few ever knew what passed through his mind, including his friends.

“Have the night demons shattered your sleep, Hugh?”

Reaching for his knife, the knight spun around but quickly realized that the shadow bore the hooded shape of Baron Herbert.

He released his weapon back into the sheath.

The baron chuckled, wandered a short distance away, and leaned against the tower wall.

Hugh remained silent.

“Or was sleep banished in favor of time spent swinking my wife?”

“You have no cause to so foully besmirch your wife’s honor, my lord.” Hugh knew he hesitated an instant too long.

“Do I not?” The man rubbed his hand against the stones, then stared at his palm.

“If any man claims she is aught but virtuous, he lies.”

Herbert sighed. “You have never shown skill in the art of deception, Hugh. I learned what happened at supper. Dare you deny your sin when God sees everything we do?”

Hugh’s mouth became too dry for swift response.

The baron waited, then laughed with brittle merriment. “There were once five vigorous sons to prove how hard I rode her before I took the cross. Ah, but she was a fine lass to handle in those days, spirited and eager.” The last words were almost lost in the rising gale.

“No honest man will claim that the Lady Margaret has done other than honor her vows to you at the church door and in God’s hearing.”

The baron spun around, the hood hiding both his face and expression. “She laid her hand in your crotch. Is that what you call honoring vows? If so, then you speak of the Devil’s virtue.”

Hugh grasped his knife, lifting it slowly from the sheath until the hilt was clearly visible. “On this, as it stands for the cross we bore in Outremer, and on the sacred vows we took, I swear that I did not touch the Lady Margaret, nor did she touch me, in any sinful way.”

“Leonel came to me from the supper, and, when I asked how our guests fared, he let slip a hint of my wife’s behavior. I pressed him for details.” Blunted by the wind, the baron’s voice was hoarse.

Hugh’s heart pounded. Although the lady had not fondled him as the baron claimed, nor had he himself attempted any hidden pleasuring, they had excited each other with imagined joys by looks and smiles. Closing his eyes, he recalled how her nipples had pressed against the cloth of her gown. He felt himself stiffen with remembered lust. “He could not have seen what he claimed from where he sat,” Hugh replied, willing his body to a softer virtue.

“You call Leonel a liar?”

“Never, but I believe that he misinterpreted some innocent gesture. As you have lost a son, your lady has also suffered from that death. I sought to amuse her with stories of my travels home and did succeed, for a moment, in lightening her spirit. Once, she tapped my arm and smiled when I told of an especially merry adventure. There was no wickedness in that.”

Herbert said nothing and turned again to look out across the wall and into the darkness.

“Leonel has always been your most loyal liegeman, my lord. He was right to tell you of his concern even if he mistook the intent.”

“I should know you too well to fear that you would put horns on my head, Hugh, and grieve that I have even grown distrustful of my proven friends. As for my wife…” His voice broke. “I pity her. In the name of God’s mercy, she has not deserved…” With that, he fell silent.

Shame enveloped Hugh like fire. Leonel may have been wrong in what he reported, but he had not erred in other respects. Hugh had been Herbert’s comrade in arms, his friend, and yet tonight he had shamelessly wooed his wife. He may not have made the baron a cuckold, but he had reached for the horns.

As for his treatment of the Lady Margaret, he had committed sin enough, walking away from her without speaking as if she had been a whore he had paid to give him a frisson of pleasure. Now he saw the depth of his self-deception and dishonor. He had lusted after the baron’s wife, beguiling her until her frail woman’s nature might have weakened enough to join him in bed. His sole virtue in this disgraceful evening? He had not actually coupled with her.

“Hugh?” Herbert’s rough voice spoke of tears and grief.

“My lord?”

“Ready the priest and physician you brought as I begged you to do. Before the next Office, I shall send Leonel to bring the three of you to my chambers.”

Chapter Sixteen

The light vanished.

Curious, Thomas turned to the soldier beside him. “Did you just see anything in the cove?”

“Demons,” the man said. “I’ve seen them down there before tonight.” He made the sign of the cross, hesitated, then quickly repeated the gesture.

As Thomas left the narrow watchtower window, he was unsure himself about the exact nature of what he had seen. He reached for the pitcher of wine he had brought as a gift and looked back to ask if the soldier wanted more as well.

The man, grinning sheepishly, was right by his elbow.

The monk filled their cups.

“So you saw the fires too. At least you believe me, Brother?” Keeping an eye on Thomas, the man raised his cup with two hands and gulped a mouthful.

Nodding, the monk took time to drink before he asked, “When did you first see the lights?”

The soldier scowled with such concentration that he might have been trying to decipher the mystery of Latin script. “Not long after the baron came back from Outremer. I’m sure of that, but as to day or time I cannot say. I’m on watch most nights, usually after supper. At first, I thought the Devil had created some phantasm to jest with me, so I stopped the next time to shake a fist at him for his mockery. The fires didn’t disappear, and I began to think they were no imagining. I watched, like you did just now, and had no doubt about what I saw. You think they’re demons with hellfire torches, dancing on the beach?”

Walking back to the window, Thomas looked out toward the cove. No more lights relieved the darkness, but he was sure he had seen something. “Did you tell anyone?”

“Oh, aye! My sergeant. What if he had awakened to find some soldier in the service of…” He waved his hand. “…the French king, Phillip the Bold, grinning over him, and I had said nothing about lights in the cove? He’d have had my guts for sausage.”

Although he knew the seriousness of such a danger, the monk was also amused by the soldier’s image. “The invader would have cut your sergeant’s throat before he had time to punish you.”

The man pointed his cup toward the stairwell. “You don’t know my sergeant. A minor inconvenience, a slit throat. He’d have tucked his head under one arm and used the other to lash my butt with the flat of his sword.”

“Now that’s a dutiful servant any liege lord would wish!” Thomas laughed. “What did he do when he heard your report?”

“Took several of us down to the cove to search for the cause.”

The wind lulled momentarily. Voices rose from below the tower window. Curious about who might also be on the wall tonight, Thomas leaned into the window to peer down into the night.

There must be at least two men just below him, but the thickness of the wall around his window prevented Thomas from seeing any just beneath him. From his voice, the monk suspected the hidden man was his prioress’ brother. The other he did not know. Had they seen anything in the cove?

Sliding back from the window, he turned again to the soldier. “What did you find?”

“Nothing. It must be as I said: Satan’s imps.”

“If you found no torches, footprints, horse dung…” Thomas touched each finger as he pretended to consider the possibilities aloud. He did not want to insult the man, but he feared the investigation might not have been thorough. Just how seriously would this unknown sergeant have taken the word of a man, cold and lonely, who might be prone to imaginings as he paced a deserted wall?

“There had been a high tide, but the Devil is too clever to leave any evidence if he wishes to keep his antics secret. He doesn’t need a tide to wash it all away.”

Thomas grinned in concurrence as he nodded at the soldier. The man was not as naïf as he had feared. “So your sergeant decided there was nothing amiss?”

“Aye and told me plain enough that I shouldn’t drink all the ale between watches.” He snorted. “Like any man, I’ll not turn away a warming cup, but anyone can speak to my lass about how much I drink. Never take too much that I can’t please her in bed.” He flushed.

“Well, we both saw the lights tonight,” Thomas replied and lifted his cup. “We’d only drunk this one to fend off the chill.” He finished the drink. “Did any of the others on watch see these fires?”

A disgusted look crossed the man’s face. “One might have done, or else he feigned it. He said a thing or two on the way down to the beach, suggesting he expected to share in any praise. After I was rebuked, he changed his mind and mocked me like the rest.”

Thomas shook his head in sympathy.

“Might this man admit to seeing anything if I talked with him?”

The soldier spat his contempt. “I cannot be sure he was a witness to anything. He’s fast enough with an open palm if coin’s offered, but I won’t vouch for his honest telling once paid.”

That conclusion Thomas had already reached, but now he wondered about those two men on the wall tonight. If one of them was Sir Hugh, the monk knew he could not approach him and ask questions about what he might have witnessed in the cove. Not only was the knight’s animosity a factor, there was another reason the monk hesitated.

A castle wall on any winter night was a cold place for both a casual meeting and companionable talk. Thomas himself had paced the walls, meeting only this soldier on watch, and they had retreated to the tower for conversation. What if Hugh had reason not to want any witness to his meeting with this unknown man?

He decided to avoid his prioress’ brother entirely. Somehow he must find a way to acquire any information through her. Surely there was a way to phrase his request and avoid revealing that he had witnessed any meeting between Hugh and another man.

Nothing was coming to mind. He turned around to ask the soldier a question.

The man was very quietly pouring more wine into his cup.

“Is that where Roger, the baron’s son, drowned?” Thomas asked, looking back at the window and gesturing toward the cove as if he had not seen the act.

“Aye.”

When Thomas looked over his shoulder, the soldier gestured politely at the pitcher. The monk courteously refused, suggesting the man drink instead. “If those lights were demons, they might have killed him,” the monk said, not believing that such had been the case but hoping to elicit an interesting response.

The man’s face grew noticeably pale.

And that was an intriguing reaction, Thomas thought, and decided to pursue this line of questioning to see where it might lead. “You have nothing to fear from me. I am only a guest here and not known to the baron. Whatever you tell me will never be traced back to you. I swear it.”

This time the soldier did not wait for an invitation and poured himself more wine. “I confess I did not like the son much.” He shrugged. “He followed after my lass and once pushed her against the wall.”

Thomas saw the remembered hot anger surging through the man’s cheeks.

“She jabbed him with her knee though.” Then he grinned. “Said he didn’t have much between the legs, yet he did howl as if he did and never troubled her again.”

“He was the baron’s third son?”

“Aye. Gervase, the one just buried, was the second. He became heir after the first died of a fever.”

The man did love a story, but, on the hope he might learn something pertinent that he did not know enough to ask, Thomas opted for the wiser course of letting the soldier talk for a while.

“He’d been promised to the Church, and had professed a liking for the religious life. Still he seemed to have taken to the change in vocation well enough, or at least he didn’t speak ill of it. He drank a lot though. Would have made a merry enough priest, like our old one. That seemed his only vice and probably why he and our priest got along so well.”

“Celibacy was not his problem unlike the one who drowned?”

“Gervase liked to keep the wine close and women at a distance. But that third-born? He was the opposite in his vices. Women were his drink of choice, not that he didn’t like a cup or two. When he inherited the religious vocation, no one thought he’d be easy with celibacy. There were so many of his by-blows around that several prayed that God would geld him. None here grieved when he died, except his parents.”

“Then he had many enemies who might have killed him.”

“He did have enough of them amongst fathers, brothers, and at least one husband.” The soldier thought for a moment. “But I doubt any would have murdered him.” He straightened and tucked in his chin. “Had he managed to swink my lass, I’d have thought about it, for cert. Never would have done anything though, and not because I’d be afraid of hanging either. My soul would have flown straight to God’s hands on the grateful prayers of everyone here. Still, I’d not want to bring pain to the baron’s wife, nor would anyone else. She’s earned our love with her kindness during her husband’s absence.”

Thomas thought for a moment. “Not a single man? Some stranger, perhaps, or an infrequent merchant?”

“For all the man’s failings, he was strong, built like his father. He’d have squashed most men’s heads like a handful of sand.”

“A difficult man to drown then?”

“I’d say! It would have taken more than one plus careful planning. Besides, he hated the sea. When he was a wee lad, he fell out of a boat. Would have died if his cousin hadn’t saved him. So he believed the sea was the Devil’s creation and never would go too near it again. Nay, Brother, you’d best look for demons in this death.”

“Where was he found?”

“In the cove. He went missing one night, although that was common practice if he had some woman. The next day someone saw a body on the beach. When we went down to investigate, we recognized him. No one could discern what had happened. There was no boat, although he’d never have set foot in one.”

This was a strange story indeed, Thomas thought. “No evidence that he might have been killed by a blow, for example, and not by drowning?”

“Sir Leonel was with us. He asked the same question and examined the body but found no strange wound. The corpse was battered. He thought that was from the rocks. We all assumed drowning.”

“Had any woman gone with him that night?”

“None of ours. As for the servants of any guests, the baron has welcomed no one until Sir Hugh and his party arrived.”

The monk grunted. He was at a loss for any more questions.

“Maybe he saw the lights too and was lured down by the Devil. That’s what I believe. Then the riptide might have caught him, pulled him out to the island rocks, and Satan spat him back on the beach.” He looked longingly at the pitcher.

Thomas walked over to the table and poured what remained into the man’s cup. Although it was clear that something villainous was happening, his logic could not discover the root of it. If only they had come here sooner, the bodies of at least one of the two sons might have been examined by Master Gamel or Sister Anne. Now all evidence was lost to them, buried in the earth blessed by God.

“Imps,” he muttered, watching the man swallow the last of the wine. That was as good an explanation as any for the moment and might even be true. He shuddered.

“I had best be back on watch, Brother.” He looked up at Thomas, his eyes just unfocused enough to suggest the wine might keep him quite warm on this next round of the wall. “Your gift of wine was charitable.” His smile was lopsided, but honest gratitude shone through.

Thomas promised to return soon with another pitcher, then let the soldier descend the stairs ahead of him. Before following, he looked out the window one more time but saw nothing of note.

Now he felt obliged to tell his prioress what he had learned, but, before he did, Thomas had one more thing he wished to do.

***

Hunched down in the shadows near the next watchtower, a hooded man wrapped his thick cloak tighter around him and waited. When Baron Herbert and Sir Hugh left the windbreak of the other tower for the bailey stairs, he stood, looked around, and scuttled along the wall, taking care to remain in deep shadow.

Just as he reached the place near where the two men had met, he heard a sound above and drew back against the wall. Looking up at the watchtower, he saw someone lean out of the window. Although he could not identify the man in the darkness, he concluded it was the usual sentry, taking more time than usual with his ale on a cold night. He waited until the man retreated, then walked to the fortress wall and slipped far enough into the crenel to look down with safety into the cove.

Raoul wondered if either his father or Sir Hugh had seen the lights, but, from what he had overheard, he doubted it. They were too concerned over the state of his mother’s virtue. He snorted with contempt.

Perhaps that was just as well, he thought. He knew the incident had been investigated once. The cause was determined to be a drunken soldier’s imagination, although he was surprised that his father had thought no more on it.

As for tonight, Raoul decided that his father and the knight would have dismissed the sight if they had noticed it. The lights had been only briefly visible and had not reappeared. Even he could have concluded they were nothing more than the moon shimmering on the water before a storm cloud quickly cast a veil over it.

He hesitated long enough to make sure the men could not look back and see that he was following them down the same stairway into the bailey. Still amused at their foolishness over his mother, he grinned. His father must soon acknowledge that he, the despised youngest son, was a man worthy of respect.

Then he disappeared once again into the shadows and down the bailey stairs.