Daughters of the Dagger 04 - Amethyst (13 page)

Chapter 13

“Damn it,” cursed Marcus, donning his tunic and hurriedly pulling on his boots once again. All he wanted to do was sleep, as his wounds were smarting and his head was throbbing as well. He stood and picked up the wedding ring from the table and held it up with two fingers.

This cut him to the bone that she’d removed it and given it back. And she’d told him she didn’t know if she wanted to be married to him any longer. Obviously, this ring meant nothing to her, though it meant the world to him when he gave it to her, as it was the last surviving memory he had of his departed mother.

He slipped the ring back into the pouch at his side and hurried to the door. He opened it to find his father just approaching.

“Marcus, good, you’re here. I’ve called a meeting anon in my solar, as we need to discuss our defenses should the Scots
decide not to pay the ransom and attack instead.”

Since Marcus was now married, his f
ather had given him back his solar. He liked the idea that he would be having privacy with his new wife, but now he wasn’t sure if she’d ever lay with him again.

“I need to find Amethyst,” he told him. “She’s run off in a fit of anger.”

“What could she possibly be angry about now?”

“She doesn’t like the fact we’ve taken female prisoners as well as a child
to the dungeon. And I have to say that I agree with her. We never should have done it.”

“It gives us leverage and bargaining power with the bloody Scots,” growled the earl. “And since when
do you let a woman control your actions? Why can’t you be the hardened warrior that your brothers once were? You have become a milksop again since you married the girl, now get your head on straight and start acting like the warlord you truly are. Her opinion means nothing. She is just a woman!”

Marcus bit his bottom lip and just shook his head, trying to hold back from lashing out at his father.
His father hadn’t called him a milksop in years, but the name still angered him to no end. At one time, he would have agreed to everything his father was saying. But now – since he’d met Amethyst – he was starting to have doubts about everything. He no longer knew what was right and wrong, but he did know that he couldn’t just let Amethyst walk away from him before he had the chance to try to explain his actions.

“She’s not just a woman, Father,” he said raising his eyes to meet his father’s dark glare. “Amethyst is my wife.” And with that, he headed down the hall, ignoring the call of his father, planning on finding Amethyst and setting things straight between them
once and for all.

*

Amethyst ran through the maze of bushes and walls of climbing roses, the sky having clouded over quickly, bringing nightfall upon them. In the dark it was hard to see, and she was scratched and poked as she made her way toward the center of the labyrinth. Tears filled her eyes and she used the back of her hand to wipe them away as she finally got to the center with the shrine and threw herself atop the hard ground.

With her head in her hands
, she cried. She let out all the emotions that were pent up within her. She released all the worrying she’d done for Marcus and his safety when he was out retrieving his father, and all the frustration at his pig-headed ways as well.

“Please, dear God, help me to understand my husband,” she prayed aloud. “I don’t know how to feel around him, nor do I understand why he acts the way he does. I think I know him, but then he changes his moods as fast as day turns to night. Send me a sign,” she pleaded. “Tell me what my husband has been through to make him act so hardened and disrespect women the way he does.”

Just then, the clouds moved in the sky and moonbeams poked through, illuminating a rock on the ground in front of her. She hadn’t noticed this flat rock the last time she was here. Letters were carved into the stone and she reached out her hand and traced them with her finger. “Mother,” she read aloud, realizing that she was sitting atop a grave. Marcus’s mother’s grave. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Because it doesn’t matter,” came a voice from behind her. She jumped up and turned around quickly to see Marcus entering the center of the labyrinth. The moonlight spilled down upon hi
m, bathing his midnight black hair in hues of blue and a glowing white. He stood rigid, and she could see his hand on his side where the deepest of his wounds had been. She could also see a sullen look on his face, but couldn’t tell what he was feeling.

He could be very angry, or he could have come to make amends. His face and body gave nothing away of whatever lay trapped inside.

“This is your mother,” she said. “How can you say it doesn’t matter?”

“Amethyst, I didn’t follow you here to discuss those who have passed on. Now come back with me to the solar and we can talk.”

He reached out his hand to take her by the arm, but she just stepped away from him. “I don’t feel like there’s anything to talk about.”

“Then come back with me and we can lay in each others arms the way we did before I left.”

“Nay,” she said, stepping away from him once again as he tried to take her by the hand. “I need time to think. I can’t lay with you right now.”

He let out an ex
asperated breath and settled himself on the bench, still holding his side. “Damn it, woman, what is it you want from me?”

The moonlight lit up his face from this angle, and she could now see exhaustion on his brow. His eyes held despair instead of the strong fierceness she’d seen when she first met him. And his jaw was clenched as he slowly shook his head.

“To start with,” she said, “you can stop calling me woman.”

He looked up to her
with sadness in his eyes. “Come here, Amethyst. Sit next to me. Please.”

She hesitated at first, but realized he said please. A word she didn’t think he even knew. So she slowly moved forward and sat on the stone bench next to him, but was careful that their bodies did not touch.

“’Tis my fault she’s dead,” he said.

“Pardon me?” She looked up, but his eyes were focused on the ground and the carved stone with the word mother atop it.

“You want to know about my mother?” he asked.

“Yes. I’d like that
.”

“My mother meant the world to me,” he admitted, already making her feel like his gentle side was once again returning. “We had a bond between us that didn’t exist between her and any of my other siblings.”

“Matilda told me about the loss of your six siblings,” she said softly. “I am so sorry.”

“Don’t feel
pity for me,” he told her. “’Tis a part of life that we will all someday die.”

“How can you be so callus
ed?” she asked. “They were your siblings.”

“I wasn’t always this
way,” he admitted. “But once I lost Mother … I changed.”

“How did s
he die?” Amethyst asked, curious but at the same time cautious as she knew she was treading upon a volatile subject. Sir Gawain had warned her not to even mention Marcus’s mother around him, but she had to know why.

“She died because of my own ig
norance,” he said. “I was about the same age as Benjamin when it happened. My father was in the middle of a feud with a neighboring baron. They were in the midst of a battle, and he had left the castle with my older two brothers at his side.”

“And you stayed behind?” she asked.

“I was left behind,” he told her. “I was young, but still knew how to handle a weapon as well as either of my brothers. But my father and my brothers thought of me as worthless in a battle because … because …”

“Because you were more of a gentle soul?” she asked.

“I was teased my entire life because of my closeness to my mother. My father didn’t even foster me out because he was ashamed of me and said I was naught more than a milksop and would never be a warrior like him or my brothers.”

“Were your other siblings alive at this time?”

“Not the two youngest, as they’d died in childbirth or shortly afterwards. But my two sisters were alive at the time, but unfortunately they both died from the plague just two years after I lost my mother.”

“Were you close with your sisters?” she asked.

“I was,” he said with a slight nod of his head. “At one time, believe it or not, I was closer to the women in my life than the men.”

“So what happened?”

“While my father was away fighting with my brothers at his side, I was left behind with mother. My father told me to prove myself to him and act like a man. By right, the lady of the castle rules while the lord is away, but my father never showed a bit of respect for any woman in his life, not even my mother.

So, I tried to do what my father wanted, and prove to him that I could be just as good of a warrior as either of my brothers. But something happened that night, and it affects me so much … ”
He stopped, as he was too choked by his memories to continue.

In the moonlight, Amethyst noticed
a tear glistening in Marcus’s eye. She reached out slowly and put her hand atop his. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “Please, continue.”

He swallowed
deeply, and then let out a sigh before he was even able to finish telling his sad story. “I was only trying to do as my father ordered so I could be looked upon by him the same way as he saw my brothers. But my mother didn’t like the fact I was trying to act like my father, and we fought that night. During the meal I was angry and told her I didn’t want her to sit with me at the dais. So … so she moved to the tables with the serfs at the low end of the hall to eat instead.”

“Marcus, I am so sorry. When I said you’d probably make your mother sit below the salt, I had no idea she really had.”

“She died because of that,” he continued. “A woman in a hooded robe came into the great hall, saying she was a traveler. My mother, having a good heart, went to her and asked her to join in the meal.”

“Well, that was nice,” she said.

“Nay, it wasn’t! I had a bad feeling about the woman, and should have stopped her from joining us. I just knew in my gut that she couldn’t be trusted. I heard deceit in her voice, and saw malice on her face. I stood, meaning to stop her, but before I could make it from the dais and to the floor, she’d pulled out a dagger and killed my mother.”

“Oh, that’s horrible! Why would she do that?”

“It seems she was the wife of the baron my father was fighting. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had killed the man, and his wife was coming for her revenge.”

“So what happened to the woman?” she asked.

Marcus just hung his head and looked to the ground but didn’t answer.

“You killed her, didn’t you?”

“She killed my mother. I had no choice.”

“I understand.” She reached up and put her arm around his shoulders. “So what did you
r father say when he returned?”

“My father was furious that I let my mother be killed. But he was also pleased that I’d kille
d her attacker. After that night, he saw me differently. And from that day on, I found the darkness in my heart and started to act just like my father.”

“S
o that’s why you disrespect women. You don’t trust them since one took your mother’s life.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said, looking up to the moon. She could see the despair on his face and knew she needed to change the subject.

“Would you like to hear about my family, then?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said with a slight nod of his head.
“I would.”

She p
icked up his hand in hers and relayed her story.

“My mother
was barren.”

“Sweetheart, you were born
, and you mentioned sisters, so that cannot be true.”

“Well, I should have said she was barren at one time. Actu
ally, I also have three sisters. Ruby, Sapphire, and Amber.”

“I see. So, tell me. How was your mother able to have children if she was barren?”

“Well, my mother wanted children desperately, but it just wasn’t happening. So when she heard of a superstition that could make one conceive, she knew she had no other choice but to try it.”

“I don’t be
lieve in superstitions,” he told her with a shake of his head.

“Well, you might
, by the time I am done telling you my story. You see, in order to conceive, one was supposed to buy jeweled daggers from a blind hag. And for every dagger bought, a child would be born.”

“So
your mother bought four daggers?”

“She did. And
she also tried to steal one last one. But she bumped into a beggar boy and dropped it. The dagger had an onyx stone in the hilt with an orange line running through it. When she dropped it, the stone cracked. The blind hag realized what she had done and said my mother would pay for her deceit.”

“So did something happen
because of it?”

“Well, you see, she also pushed away a beggar boy four times. Therefore, the old hag told her she had pushed away any sons in her life and would have four daughters
instead.”