Hearts Across Time (The Knights of Berwyck: A Quest Through Time Novel ~ Books 1 & 2) (38 page)

R
iorden was
in
a state of panic and knew not where next to turn. For nigh unto a se’nnight he had scouts searching for his wife, and yet still there was no word of her whereabouts. That Katherine had disappeared was all his fault, along with that evil wench Marguerite. He knew not what she did that he had ended up in her bed, but there was no doubt in his heart, he had not consciously done so of his own accord. Katherine meant all to him. He would not risk what they had found on a dalliance with his father’s widow.

He had refused to believe that anything untoward would have become of his beloved Katherine, and yet his faith had faltered momentarily when her riderless horse had been found far upstream from the grounds of Warkworth and its village. Still, he ordered the search to continue. He refused to believe what everyone was beginning to whisper...that his wife had drowned in the fast moving current and lay at the bottom of the river, or, worse yet, her body had washed out to sea, never to be found. If such was the case, he would never forgive himself.

He shivered at the thought crossing his mind and continued his vigil in the chapel. He had done this once afore when God had granted him his deepest heart’s desire by bringing Katherine back into the past so they could be together. How could he be so foolish as to allow any form of doubt enter her thoughts that he did not love her completely.

Arms outstretched, his body aching from the hours he had lain on the cold chapel floor, he continued his vigilant pose. For only in the form of complete submission did he feel that a higher being would hear his prayers offered on his wife’s behalf. He begged for the forgiveness of his sins and continued his penitence with a humble heart. He would not beg God with false lies to save himself from eternal hell, but he would do all in his power to do so for the souls of his wife and unborn child.

As his lips moved in a continual, silent prayer, he took slight notice of someone quietly entering the chapel. ’Twas not ’til he heard his brother’s voice that he raised his forehead from the floor.

“Come, Riorden. You have done enough this day, brother,” Gavin urged gently.

“Nay,” he gasped as he felt the horrendous pain in every inch of his body. “’Tis not enough, for she has not returned to me.”

Riorden felt the soothing, cool touch of Gavin’s lady as she laid her hand upon his cheek. His gaze faltered momentarily when he saw her red rimmed eyes. Her woeful expression caused his own eyes to mist up with grief-stricken emotion. “Yes, my lord, you have done enough praying for Katherine today,” Brianna whispered, even as her voice caught with her own misery. “Let’s get you into your solar and have some food sent up for you to eat.”

“I cannot eat, nor drink.”

Gavin pulled on his arm ’til he was at last sitting on the floor. He saw anger fill his brother’s eyes. “You can do nothing more for her, Riorden, and we will not lose you both! Now, get off the floor and come with us!”

They helped him rise with unstable legs, and if not for their support, he would have stumbled back onto the stones beneath his feet as the blood rushed to his legs. From the shadows cast upon the chapel walls, he had been here longer than he had thought. They began to make their way through the outer courtyard. He barely noticed John and his workers as they continued the duties of building the church his father had started. He walked as if he were in truth dead himself, and, in reality, he felt as if he had died inside. There was nothing to look forward to without Katherine at his side.

As if in a daze, he made his way through the tunnel and up the stairs to the keep. His only thought was of somehow managing to put one foot in front of the other so he could at last go to his chamber to be left in solitude, ’til he saw Caldwell passing through the portal in front of him. That the knight looked grief stricken did not faze Riorden, as his anger he had been holding in check at last erupted in a terrifying display of agony.

“I left her in your care!” he bellowed. “You were supposed to guard her and keep her safe in my absence!”

“My lord, I−” Caldwell began but got no further.

Riorden lunged for his knight’s throat.

Gavin held him back, but ’twas Brianna stepping in front of him, placing her hands on his chest, that halted his tirade. “It’s hardly Caldwell’s fault, Riorden, so don’t take this out on him. You won’t do Katie any good by falling to pieces, so get your head together and get inside so we can take care of you!”

He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. Brianna was right. If there was anyone to blame for Katherine’s disappearance, ’twas him and certainly not one of his guards. He nodded to Caldwell, as if to excuse his outburst, and entered the vestibule, feeling lost. The Great Hall was mostly empty, and he waved off Mabel as she attempted to bring him something to eat. Nothing mattered to him any longer, for without Katherine in his life, he was just a meaningless shell of a man.

A high pitched wail filled the hall, and Marguerite came running down the stairs. Her frightened features only caused him further irritation. She hurled herself into his arms. Despite his efforts to disengage her, she held on tight. How dare she even begin to think he would want anything to do with her, knowing the part she played in Katherine’s disappearance?

“Please, Riorden, I must beg of you again! Take me away from here. I cannot stand him troubling my thoughts, day and night with his constant badgering.” Her tears began soaking his tunic, but he had nothing to offer her as he roughly pulled himself away from her clinging ways.

“Get thee from my sight and do not come near me again, Marguerite, or so help me God, I will end your miserable life for what you have cost me!” Riorden yelled.

“But, Riorden−” she pleaded.

He came to her with all the pent up frustration that had been building in him. His hands encircled her neck and he began to squeeze. “What part of I do not want you within my sight do you not comprehend, Marguerite? If you value your life, you will stay in your chamber ’til arrangements can be made to get you to Dunhaven Manor. I will not be responsible for my actions if you defy my orders,” he whispered harshly in her ear.

Pushing her away, he listened whilst she gasped and coughed for air. His gaze swept her in a silent show of contempt, and she quickly fled the hall to return from whence she came. Her shrieks continued to echo within the keep, grating on his already tense nerves, and he was not sure how much more he could take.

Apparently, he could take more than he thought as he pushed opened his chamber door. He had refused to enter their room ’til her return, but now felt a desperate need to be near something of hers. Closing the wooden door, he put the bolt in place, ensuring his privacy. He wanted no interruptions.

As he closed his eyes, he could almost feel her presence surround him as if she were taking him into her comforting embrace. It calmed him for an instant ’til his eyes flew open to ascertain she was not once more in her ghostly form. But there was no one in the room save himself, and he was thankful for the solitude. Walking to a nearby table, he lingered over her hairbrush and noticed the long strands of her tawny colored hair still captured in the bristles. Her boots still remained where he had last espied them, and he assumed she had fled in a gown instead of hose and tunic. Had she even thought to bring a cloak afore she fled from him in her despair?

He went to a trunk they shared and lifted the lid. His answer was afore his misting eyes, as he saw her tan cloak with its furred hood neatly folded on top of her remaining garments. He could smell the floral scent she wore waft up to his nostrils and fill him with a sudden nostalgia he would not soon forget. He pondered how long such a smell, which would always remind him of the one woman he had truly loved with all his heart, would remain. Digging frantically down to the bottom of the trunk, he reached for the silken night rail he had kept when they shared their first night together at Berwyck.

Memories assaulted his senses whilst he remembered how he had torn the garment from her lush body, and how they had made love all eve long. How would he ever forget the look in her blue-green eyes as she came to him on their wedding day with all the love she felt for him shining in her eyes? Or how she gazed at him so sweetly when she presented him the poem she had scripted, just for him? Their brief memories together swept through his mind like a tempest upon the sea ’til he cried out in agony.

He clutched the torn fabric to his chest, as if willing Katherine back to his side, ’til he slumped to the floor in complete wretchedness for what Marguerite’s wickedness had cost him. Tears spilled from his grieving eyes, and, in the privacy of his own chamber, he shed them with no shame. The one person, who he held most dear, he had lost. She had fled from him when she had found him in the arms of another. How could he blame her when he himself would have done the same? She was gone, and he feared, never to return.

He lovingly folded the remains of the garment and put it back in place in the trunk, slamming the lid tightly shut. Going towards the wall, he inspected it with a practiced eye ’til he pulled out one of the larger stones. Reaching inside, he removed his father’s metal box and set it aside. He would not inspect the contents this day. He knew he would find gold, among other objects of worth, to see him through rough times if the estate was ever in need of extra monies. Only he and Gavin knew of the whereabouts of his father’s wealth, as he had shown both his sons the secret hiding places in their youth. The box inside this chamber was only one of many scattered within the stones of Warkworth. Reaching inside the hole in the wall once more, he took out a pouch of his own, strode to the bed, and let everything fall onto the coverings for him to see.

’Twas not much, but it had been hers, and he had taken special care of her items, since Katherine had asked him to put them somewhere safe. He opened something she had called a notebook and scanned the pages of her writing of a story of some kind. He could almost hear her laughter, as when she had told him ’twas a proper historical romance with a happily-ever-after ending. Pens, a wrapper from that sweet she called candy and did not have the heart to throw away, and something she said was a plastic container waited his inspection. He twisted the thing she called a cap and smiled in bliss as her flowery fragrance rose pleasantly to his nose. He closed it quickly, not wishing for the creamy lotion to spill from the strange bottle.

He thought on her machine, called a phone, she had given to Juliana, and how they had made their moving image appear on such a marvelous device. Katherine had shown him such incredible modern devices she had stashed inside that object named a purse, although, for her sake, they had destroyed the majority of its contents. Riorden hoped that at least the return of the phone had given her mother some sense of peace, knowing her daughter had been happy...at least for a while. He surmised, as far as those in the future were concerned, he along with everyone else he knew were already long since dead.

He supposed that in the greater structure of life, Time had once again played a cruel joke on them all. He wiped at his desolate eyes, put everything back in place, and went to stretch himself out on her side of their bed. He could still smell her scent on her pillow and, again, could not help but wonder how long ’twould remain. He felt something above his head and clutched at the fabric, wondering what she had been hiding. ’Twas a tiny garment for the babe she carried, and obviously she had been attempting to knit the item herself. ’Twas not perfect, but she had done a fine job, considering she was not one to take needle and thread in hand.

He closed his eyes, and in his grief he could see her, as if ’twere but yester eve that they were happy lying here in this room, side by side. Heads together, they had whispered their deepest secrets and prayers for their child. They had laughed, thinking on all the years they would spend together. If he only knew then what he knew now, including how brief their time truly would be, he could have changed events so this torment he now felt would not come to pass.

He at last began to drift off to sleep, thinking of his sweet Katherine. But ’twas the voice of his father, whispering to him to take his ease, that was his last conscious thought. With the rise of the new day, his agony and torment would begin all over again.

“
I
’
m so sorry
,
Ella, but do you suppose we could stop again, please?” Katherine asked while she plopped herself down on a log. Her borrowed shoes came off, and she began rubbing her sore, tired feet. Blisters were raw on the back of her heels, and she had the ungodly feeling she wouldn’t be able to walk much farther tonight. Not that they were making much progress, traveling under the evening sky. How long had they been gone?

Ella came to her, took one look at her oozing sores, and promptly set to work pulling this and that out of the bag she carried. She began mixing dried herbs together and then began looking around on the ground until she picked something up.

Katherine was appalled at what the woman was handling, as if it wasn’t anything unusual to pick up off the ground. “Is that animal poop?”

Ella looked at her as if she had lost her senses. “The scat is a known cure for healing wounds and holding a poultice together. ’Twill not harm you,” Ella answered and began smearing the concoction on Katherine’s feet.

“I don’t know about its healing effects, but that’s just so disgusting, Ella,” Katherine replied, but she had to admit, it did take the sting out. She was sure it had more to do with the herbs than the dung she was trying not to think about. Looking down at her feet, Katherine didn’t have a clue how she would ever get those shoes of torture back on again.

Ella wiped her hands and then came to sit next to Katherine. “’Tis clear we will not travel farther this night. I am sorry the shoes did not fit better, and they are causing you pain.”

“It’s not your fault, Ella, and it was better than going barefoot all the way to Berwyck. I wonder how far we still need to travel.” Katherine pondered with a yawn.

Ella scooted down so the log was to her back and she appeared as comfortable as one could get, given the situation. Katherine came to join her. “Several days at the least, mayhap more,” Ella answered while she stared into the darkened forest.

Katherine let out a heavy sigh. She was so tired, but she refused to close her eyes, knowing what she would see if she did so.

“You cannot go without sleep forever, Katherine,” Ella said, as if reading her thoughts. “You do neither yourself, nor the babe any good without a proper rest.”

“I’ll manage.”

“I told you we should have stayed in the cave longer than two days’ time,” Ella muttered.

Katherine gazed at her new friend. She could still envision herself standing on the bank of the river, looking with such longing at the castle off in the distance. All she had wanted was for one last glimpse of what would never be before she turned her back on it forever. “I just couldn’t stay that close in the shadow of Warkworth, knowing they were together,” Katherine finally managed to say. “It was best for my peace of mind that we left when we did.”

“I did not agree with you then, nor do I agree with your decision now. It certainly was not for the best, at least for your health,” grumbled Ella. “You are most stubborn! Someone surely must have told you that a time or two in your young life, I suspect.”

Katherine gave a small smile. “Yes...once or twice.”

Ella peered at her, or so it seemed in the moonlight, since they wouldn’t light a fire this night. “There is much more to your story, I think, than you are telling me, Katherine,” Ella surmised.

Katherine lowered her eyes. “Oh? Why do you think so?”

“Well, your speech for one. I have never heard anyone have speech as you do,” Ella said, tilting her head as if she was determining the truth to the pretense that she lived abroad. “Why do I have the feeling that when I gaze upon you, that I am looking at an old soul?”

“A what?”

“An old soul...one who is older than one gives the impression of being from one’s outward appearance.”

“That’s ridiculous, Ella. I’m only twenty-six, for goodness sake.”

Ella shrugged when she spoke of her age. “If you say so, dear.”

Katherine became lost in her own thoughts, knowing she was so easily read by some. She turned to Ella and looked her in the eye but could only see someone who had been completely honest with her. Coming to the conclusion she could trust this woman with her life, she decided her story would be safe with Ella. “What if I were to tell you that I come from a very long distance from here?”

“That would still not account for how I see you. Many travel abroad and make their home far from where they were raised. Alliances are made through marriage, girls marry young and travel great distances to live as chattel to their husbands. ’Tis nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Yes, but I’m not talking about the distance of how one travels by foot, horse, or ship. I’m from a place farther than that, and I came here for a purpose.”

“You confuse me. How can you be from a place not accessible by horse or ship?” Ella asked with her brows furrowed together as though she was trying to figure it out.

Katherine took a deep breath. “I’m from the future, the twenty-first century to be exact.”

Ella only stared at her as though she had lost her mind, and Katherine couldn’t blame her in the least. She supposed it was a lot for anyone, including a twelfth century woman, to comprehend.

Ella suddenly began to laugh. “You but jest with me, Katherine.” Her laughter quickly faded when Katherine did not join in on the fun. Ella began to peer at her strangely with tight-knit brows. “Could it be possible?” she whispered, so softly Katherine strained to hear her words.

Katherine reached out and took Ella by the hand, hoping she wouldn’t scare the hell out of this medieval woman who had been so kind to her. “Let me tell you a story of unbelievable proportions. It’s a tale that stretches the imagination, and makes you wonder if all things are possible.”

“Mayhap, ’tis good I am sitting,” Ella replied carefully as she continued her strange assessment of Katherine.

Katherine wondered if Ella was about to start making the sign of the cross or if the woman was trying to figure out if her new friend was insane. Instead, Ella just sat there, patiently waiting for Katherine to tell her and Riorden’s story.

“It all begins with a young woman who dreams every night of a knight in shining armor coming to her on the battlements of Bamburgh Castle. He is tall and handsome, his dark blue cape billows in the breeze with a lion head imprinted on his tabard. And his eyes,” Katherine sighed in remembrance of how much she loved the man, “are the eyes of the bluest blue. Everything about him is the stuff that dreams are made of to fulfill a woman’s deepest romantic desire.”

Into the night, Katherine weaved her tale that, to some, would be so farfetched, she would either be burned at the stake, or welcomed into a hall as its newest bard. But with its telling, Katherine relived every glorious moment with her husband; how their dreams were interwoven while the centuries kept them apart; seeing him in the portrait and learning his name and the emotions that had come over her when she did; running down the tower stairs with Juliana, Emily, and Brianna, and being hurtled back through time; his touch...that magical first time when he took hold of her, despite the fact she had sliced her fingers on his sword; their anger at one another that only brought them closer; and the first time they had made love.

Their romance and how they fell in love spilled out, even to the last dream that had broken them apart, leaving her more bereft than she had thought was humanly possible.

“So you see, his betrayal was far worse than just taking a mistress as some men do. It’s as if he killed the part of our love that had withstood the test of time itself...what had brought us together in the first place, and he threw it all away. And for what?” Katherine voiced, and for the first time her anger was the driving force behind her heartache as fresh tears fell from her eyes. “Meaningless sex with a woman he said he didn’t even care for. Men! They are all such liars.”

“You are most bitter.” Ella noticed, shaking her head, almost as if in understanding. “I suppose, if this phenomenon were to happen to me, I would be the same.”

“Do you blame me for feeling this way?”

“Nay, Katherine, I do not. And yet, I have this feeling all is not as it may appear.”

Katherine folded her arms on her knees and rested her cheek upon them. “It really doesn’t matter at this point how it appears, Ella. He betrayed the love we had between us by taking a lover. No matter the circumstances, or how such a travesty came about, that fact will never change. How would I ever even begin to forgive something like that, no matter how much I still love him?”

“Then you do still care for him?”

“Was there any doubt? I’ve loved him all my life, even when I thought he was only a figment of my imagination. Every man I ever met could never measure up to what I found while I was sleeping.”

“’Tis fairly obvious, Katherine, you still love him. How could you not when you carry his child?”

“But, how in the world would I ever learn to trust him again if I were to go back?”

Ella patted Katherine’s back with what comfort she could offer. “Only you can answer that mystery, Katherine, for that would have to come from within your heart.”

“My heart is devastated beyond repair, I’m afraid,” Katherine mumbled to herself so quietly that her words became lost in the breeze that softly floated by.

Far into the night, Katherine tried to stay awake, but, in the end, sleep finally took her gently into a restful slumber, and she had the sweetest dreams of Riorden. For in her dreams, Riorden still loved her with all his heart. She could be embraced in the comforting spell they wove together, and she could again become mesmerized by the bluest eyes she would ever find. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to dream, after all.