Dragonblade Trilogy - 03 - The Savage Curtain (4 page)

“Perhaps shallow English wenches
tell stories that are meant to bleed the heart of sympathy, but I do not lie
and I do not weave elaborate fabrications,” she seethed. “What I told you was
the truth. I should have expected no sympathy from a dishonorable English hound
that would hang a young boy and call it justice.”

Stephen merely lifted an eyebrow.
“I did not hang a young boy. And he would not have been hanged had your father
possessed any honor and stuck to his bargain.”

“He tried to keep his promise but
his men would not listen,” she fired back passionately. “Do you not understand
this? He wanted to honor the deal struck with the English, to surrender the
city on the appointed date, but his men refused to do his bidding.  So my
father watched as you hanged my little brother, a sweet young lad who had never
caused harm to anyone. He watched, weeping, as Thomas was hanged beyond the
city walls.  He cried his name as my brother breathed his last. Don’t you dare
accuse my father of a lack of honor; you are hardly worthy to speak the man’s
name much less judge him.”

Stephen still sat perched on the
edge of the table, his arms crossed as she fired her speech at him with all the
subtlety of an exploding trebuchet.  He was, in fact, mildly impressed with her
courage.  And the more he watched her, the more intrigued he was with her
unearthly beauty and inherent strength.

“Then your father is a poor
commander,” his manner was cool. “Had he been a capable leader, his men would
have done his bidding without question.  It simply proves my point that the
Scots are savages without honor, your father included. He is a weakling to have
allowed his son to be hanged because he was unable to control his men.”

She stared at him, so much rage
and disbelief in her mind that she could no longer verbalize it.  Unable to
stomach the sight of him any longer, she turned away from him.

“You contemptible bastard,” she
hissed.

Stephen didn’t take offense one
way or the other; he had no regard for what she thought of him.  She was
intelligent and well spoken, and she was undeniably beautiful. But the fact of
the matter was that she was a stranger, and an enemy at that, now destined to
be his wife. He was more displeased with the prospect than he had been when he
had first entered the room.

There was no more point in
conversation; they had said all that needed saying and anything more might see
them start a physical battle.  There was bitterness between them and a good
deal of animosity, and with nothing more to do but wait, Stephen remained
perched on the end of the table, watching the weak fire in the hearth and
wondering what his future held for him with an enemy wife. He suspected he was
going to have to be on his guard every hour of every day so she would not slit
his throat while he slept. He suspected separate bowers would be in order, his
with a big fat lock.

The night dragged on as the
acrimonious mood settled. By his estimate, Stephen had been staring into the
flames for almost an hour when there was a soft knock at the door. Rising, he
went to the panel and unbolted it.  De Lara was on the other side.

“The priest has arrived,” he told
him. “Are you ready?”

Stephen didn’t say a word; he
moved to grab his betrothed from her seat against the wall only to realize that
she had fallen asleep sitting up.  He paused, his hand on her arm, refraining
from yanking her awake.  For some reason, he didn’t feel like being overly
cruel to the woman in spite of the harsh words between them; he watched her as
she slept, the gentle curve of her face and the way her perfect little nose
twitched now and again.  It was rather fascinating. The longer he watched her,
the more entranced he became. 

“Stephen,” de Lara had come in to
the room and was standing behind him. “Hurry up; there is no time to waste.”

Snapping out of his trance,
Stephen grasped her arm and shook it gently. “My lady?” he said quietly. “’Tis
time to awaken. We have an appointment to make.”

Startled, Joselyn awoke to two
strange knights gazing down at her. Half asleep and forgetting where she was,
she suddenly threw her fists up and caught Stephen in the mouth. His head
snapped back but he maintained his grip on her as she screamed and fought. Tate
came up beside him and, between the two of them, managed to get her on her
feet.  But she was still fighting.

“Lady Joselyn,” Stephen wiped the
trickle of blood from his split lip, understanding she was not fully awake yet.
“Calm yourself. You are not in danger and you will not come to harm. You are at
Berwick Castle; remember?”

Hair askew, Joselyn blinked
unsteadily at the two enormous knights as they tried to lead her out of the
solar.  She brushed the hair from her face as her wits returned, the familiar
bailey of Berwick coming into view. 

The moon had risen fully in the
time that she and Stephen had been sequestered in the solar, giving the
landscape an eerie white glow.  Being that it was July, she could smell the
night blossoms upon the air, mingling with the smoke and stench of death. It
was an odd smell.  Taking a couple of deep breaths to clear her sleepy mind,
she removed herself indelicately from Stephen and Tate’s grasp. 

“I am quite capable of walking
unassisted,” she informed them.

They allowed her to yank herself
free. Neither man said a word as they continued to escort her across the bailey
and into the great hall.  It was still a crowded place, filled with English
knights and lords, and somewhere near the hearth her family still hovered.  The
moment she entered the hall with a massive English knight on either side, however,
her mother began to wail.

It was a chaotic sound that the
husband tried to quiet and Edward tried to ignore.  The priest was a fat man in
dirty robes that smelled strongly of alcohol.  The mother’s wailing grew louder
as Stephen took Joselyn by the elbow and guided her in the direction of the
priest.  Edward barked at the priest to begin the wedding mass and Stephen
firmly pushed Joselyn to her knees.  He knelt beside her, seemingly unaffected
by the entire thing.  There was strength and dignity to his posture while
Joselyn seemed dazed. 

Lady Seton’s wailing grew to
titanic proportions and she began lamenting her daughter’s future loudly,
almost drowning out the droning of the priest.  Edward kept shooting the woman
baleful looks, hoping Sir Alexander would take the hint and shove a fist into
the woman’s mouth to shut her up.  But Seton was actually paying attention to
the wedding ceremony, murmuring prayers in response to the priest’s
intonations. Infuriated with a new round of cries from Lady Seton, Edward
picked up the nearest cup and threw it at her.

The woman screamed as it sailed
past her head and into the wall behind her.  Jolted, Joselyn almost bolted to
her feet but Stephen held her firm as the priest made the sign of the cross in
holy oil on their foreheads. But the woman’s screaming continued and the priest
was forced to speak louder and louder until he was almost shouting to be heard
above the wailing.   Edward would have thrown more cups had he been able to
find one, cursing and muttering even as the priest prayed.  Through the chaos,
de Lara was the only one, other than Stephen, who kept his composure.  Truth be
told, however, had he possessed any less control, Tate would have been laughing
his head off.

The priest finished with the
final blessing and Stephen abruptly pulled Joselyn to her feet.  Before she
could draw another breath, he grabbed her upper arms and kissed her chastely on
the cheek.   As she opened her mouth to speak, her mother suddenly broke free
and, with a piercing scream, hurled herself into the massively blazing fire. 

Hysteria erupted as Joselyn and
the other Seton woman, a grandmother, screamed in horror.  Without hesitation,
Stephen grabbed his new wife and swept her swiftly from the hall.  She was
hysterical, beating on him and crying for her mother.  But Stephen was resolute
that she be removed from the bedlam; there was nothing either of them could do
for the crazed mother and he had little doubt that it would have done Joselyn
more harm than good to watch her mother burn to death. 

As they crossed the bailey, they
could hear the screams and shouts coming from the hall.  Stephen was focused on
the keep in front of him, thinking of the night ahead and the duty he must
perform.  It would undoubtedly be made more difficult by the events of the
night.  But his instincts to remove her from the hall had been correct; what
they did not see was Edward preventing Seton from pulling his wife from the
blaze as de Lara took his broadsword and gored the burning woman through the chest
to end her agony. 

Death was almost instantaneous
and only then did de Lara pull the body from the hearth and extinguish it; the
woman was barely recognizable.  As Seton threw himself across his wife’s
scorched corpse, de Lara and Edward fell away to regroup, watching the Seton
clan deal with their catastrophic loss.  It had been a harrowing end to a
harrowing day.   They hoped, just between the two of them, that Stephen fared
better.

***

Stephen had taken Joselyn into
the keep, kicking down doors until he came to a room on the third level that
had a small bed in it.  It was a dirty room with an odd smell, but it didn’t
matter. It was private for his needs. He entered the room, slamming the door
and bolting it.

He put Joselyn on her feet,
watching as she tried to push past him and open the door.  He grasped her
around the waist and easily pulled her away from the panel.  She struggled
against him, trying to smack his hands away.  He directed her over towards the
bed but she was struggling so much that he ended up tripping over his own feet
just so he would not step on her.  Together, they tumbled onto the stiff, dirty
pile of straw that constituted the crude mattress.

Joselyn was buried underneath
him, sobbing her heart out.  Stephen shifted so he would not smash her but he
didn’t get up entirely; she was still quite volatile.

“Relax, lady,” he murmured, his
mouth against the back of her head.

She twisted and heaved underneath
him. “Let me go,” she wept. “I must see to my mother.”

Stephen thought on his last
vision of Joselyn’s mother as they had left the hall; the woman had been
completely engulfed in flame and he knew there was no point to try and save
her.  Being a healer, and a very good one at that, he should have gone back
into the hall to see if something could be done. But he also knew that, in his
experience, serious burns were almost always fatal. And the woman had been
consumed by the blaze, leaving little doubt that if she was not dead already,
she very soon would be.  He sighed faintly.

“There is no need,” he rumbled
softly. “If she is not yet with God, she very shortly will be.”

Joselyn’s weeping came to an
abrupt halt as if shocked by his words. When she resumed her tears a few
moments later, it was with great anguish.   Stephen pushed himself off of the
bed, pulling her up with him.  As he knelt beside the frame, he grasped her by
the arms and forced her to look at him.

“You have my sympathies on what
has happened to your mother,” he said with more emotion than he had exhibited
since they had met. “But I can tell you with certainty that the moment she
entered the flame, there was nothing anyone could do for her. It is a tragic
thing to have witnessed and for that, I am deeply sorry. But you and I have a
duty to fulfill and we must move forward with it.”

Joselyn stared at him, her tears
rapidly fading and a look of complete disbelief on her face. “Are you truly so
unfeeling?” she half-demanded, half-pleaded. “You speak of my mother, not some
unknown, unloved woman.”

His cornflower blue eyes were
intense. “I realize that,” he said. “But I also know that there is nothing to
be done for her. You must not dwell on it.”

She tried to yank free of his
grasp. “You are the coldest, most heartless man I have ever had the misfortune
to come across,” she hissed, managing to pull an arm free.  She began climbing
across the bed, away from him, leaving her tartan in his grip. “How can you
show such callousness? If you are a Hospitaller as you said you were, then
surely there is some compassion buried deep within your warring soul.”

He stood up, watching her cower
against the wall.  The tartan in his hand was tossed against the wall.  It
landed in the cobwebs.

“The compassion I have is
carefully reserved, not to be given lightly,” he told her. “It does not belong
with the dead.”

Joselyn remained pressed against
the wall as he turned away from her and began unlatching his plate armor.  His
reaction to her mother’s situation only reinforced that he was an aloof,
heartless man.  God had never been particularly kind to her throughout her life
and now she was saddled with an unemotional block of ice.  Though her mind was
still in the chaotic hall, her attention was focused on the enormous knight who
was now her husband. He pulled off his wrist protection and moved to his
breastplate, pulling it free and neatly piling the protection near the door. 
The more he removed, the more her attention was drawn away from the hall and to
the situation at hand.