In the Shadow of Midnight (35 page)

“You have not won the argument to keep me away from Corfe, however,” she added. “You
will
need me, FitzRandwulf, and you will not find me so easy to slough aside.”

Having nothing more to say, and naught but a few threads of courage holding herself together, Ariel dropped a faintly mocking curtsy and bid him a polite good night. Eduard stood and watched her climb the stairs to the chambers above. When she was gone, he moved stiffly around to the side of the table and reached for his tankard, but at the last instant, swept it and the flagon onto the floor in a spray of flying ale and clattering pewter. Ariel’s cup would have followed if his eye and then his hand had not strayed to something lying on the floor by his foot. It was the scrap of linen he had torn from her hair, and, as he bent to retrieve it, the firelight glinted off several long, shiny strands trapped in the cloth.

He ran the fiery filaments through his fingers and glanced again at the top of the stairs.

She was stubborn, proud, haughty, courageous … and she had called him on his own bluff. Was a vow made to one person worth more than a vow made to another? Was a promise made against the spell of a supple pair of lips worth less than a promise given in youthful fervor?

Were his obligations to Eleanor worth more than the responsibility he felt for Ariel de Clare?

Ariel had asked him if he loved Eleanor … how could any man not? She was sweet, gentle, kind, loving. She was pure and noble, innocent and compassionate, loyal to her last drop of blood. He had watched her grow from a pretty unspoiled child to a ravishingly beautiful woman possessing none of the traits or pretensions of someone who could put their own reflection to shame.

Had Ariel asked him if he
lusted
after Eleanor of Brittany, his answer might have surprised her, for Eleanor was like a sister to him and their love was a result of the purest kind of friendship. When the Wolf had rescued them both from Blood-moor Keep all those years ago, Eleanor had been the one to sit by Eduard’s side and hold his hand through the feverish days and nights spent recovering from the wounds he had earned at the Dragon’s hands. Physically, his thigh had been slashed open from hip to knee and crudely cauterized on a torturer’s rack; mentally, he had endured thirteen years of hell at the beck and call of a man who hated him and a dam—Nicolaa de la Haye—whose tongue could be sharper and more painful than any knife or lash. Eleanor had heard his worst nightmares and had wept with him while he shuddered and sweated through the aftermath. She had not betrayed him by word or deed to anyone, not even his father or his stepmother, who were so proud of the boldness and courage he displayed in the daylight, but who had remained ignorant to this day of the weeping, terrified coward he became at night.

Eleanor’s childhood had been only slightly less of an ordeal. Her father had died when she was two and her mother had regarded her as a nuisance getting in the way of her succession of lovers and her royal ambitions for Arthur. Constantly passed between her grandmother’s castle at Mirebeau and the French court in Paris, Eleanor had been raised in two worlds but belonged in neither. When she came of age to be of interest to her mother’s lust for power, she was put out on display like a sad little doll, pawed and bid upon by potentates, princelings, and fat Flemish dukes. Three times she had been betrothed and three times discarded for a better political prospect. Each time she had wept her fears and frustrations out in Eduard’s arms … along with her relief.

There were only two people in Eleanor’s world who knew her first and only love had always been for the Church. Eduard was one, her brother Arthur had been the other. Her mother, even her beloved grandmother, would have scoffed at the mere idea of an Angevin princess becoming a Bride of Christ;
they became brides of political alliances and profitable unions instead.

Arthur had promised when he became king he would free Eleanor to follow her heart’s desire. With her brother’s death, Eduard was alone in knowing Eleanor of Brittany was no threat to the throne of England. She would not seek it, nor would she ever accept it if the crown and sceptre were handed to her at Westminster. Certainly not at the cost of a bloody civil war.

Eduard had held his silence at Amboise because he saw no point in giving William the Marshal any reason
not
to free her. He had agreed to using the marshal’s niece as a shield because at the time, he could have cared less whom he had to use or whose life he had to place at risk in order to win Eleanor’s freedom.

Now, suddenly, it was not so easy. Now he found himself caring very much what happened to Ariel de Clare. It did not change anything between them. It could not, for she was still betrothed to a prince of Wales and he was still bound by his honour to deliver her to her groom. But it did mean he could not afford to make any more mistakes. He had made a large one here tonight, allowing his lust to override his logic.

It was a mistake that could not be repeated.

It could not … for all their sakes.

I
f there was a bleaker, more sinister castle in all of King John’s realm, a mortal man could not have envisioned it. Viewed from outside the sheer escarpment walls, the castle seemed always to be in darkness, for there were no windows, no lights in any chambers of any towers that rose above the height of the battlements. It sat in a solid, dark mass on the skyline above the village of Corfe—itself a small and sulky compilation of cottages that clung to either side of the single roadway as if they were poised for a hasty retreat.

There was a church in the village, and an inn. There was no fairground, however, and naught but a brief widening in the road to call the main square. Fierce winds constantly buffeted the steep hill on which the castle stood and the resultant low howl, which grew louder at nightfall, sent most of the village inhabitants scurrying off the street before dusk and kept them huddled by their fires until dawn.

Nighttime at Corfe was a time for whispers and clanking chains. It was the time for bloodied, shuffling feet and wagon wheels stumbling over cobbles, creaking for lack of grease and nerve. Few brave souls crept to their windows to see who the king’s ire had put into chains. It was healthier not to know, or to see the faces and perhaps be haunted by the lingering images of wide, vacant eyes.

One such foolhardy lout had been wakened out of a fitful sleep on an early autumn night, and had counted on the stubs of his fingers three rattling cartloads of prisoners. The fourth had won enough of his curiosity to send him crabbing to the door and to open it a crack for spying. He had been in time to see the fifth loaded cart teeter past with its cargo of half-starved, filthy knights, bound in chains, garbed in the rags and shredded remnants of their former Breton finery.

Whispers the next day told him the poor sullens he had seen were the twenty-four knights captured at Mirebeau with the brave, if misguided, Prince Arthur. They had been sent to
Corfe Castle wearing the same chains that had been bolted onto them at their capture, there to await the king’s pleasure. Over the course of the next fortnight it became obvious, by the shrouded, emaciated bodies carried down to the churchyard for burial, it had been his pleasure to starve them to death. Not one bite of food had they been given. Not one drop of water. The eve the last one perished, the winds swept up from hell, moaning and swirling around the towers the whole night long, the evil spirits so loud and so gorged on rotted flesh, a guard was driven mad by the sound and flung himself off the castle ramparts.

Madness was no strange occurrence to the residents of Corfe. The garrison was stocked with the dregs of the king’s army—misfits and brutes who sucked suet and ale all day long, who kept whores naked and crouched between their thighs from dusk till dawn, who thought nothing of heaving their filthy, sweaty bodies over the screams of the women prisoners —and there were many—whenever the mood or the itch took them. Men and women alike screamed from the confines of their small, dank cells.

It was Bedlam and it was hell.

It was where King John had sent his niece, Eleanor, the Pearl of Brittany, to await his pleasure.

   Marienne FitzWilliam crept on silent feet into the tower room, wary of disturbing the solemn figure who knelt over her evening prayers, her golden head bowed, her fingers smoothing comfortingly over the worn beads of a rosary. The candle burning in the prayer niche added its soot to the tall black stains already marking the stones from the countless candles that had burned there before. Marienne glanced at the tray of food she had brought into the room over an hour ago, knowing she would see only a crumb or two missing. Her poor princess barely ate enough to keep a bird alive. In the long months of her captivity, she had become thin and fragile, seeming to waste away before Marienne’s eyes. Her skin had lost its pearl-like lustre, even her hair—a gossamer cascade of silvery blonde sunlight—was dulled to a flat yellow. So much of it came away
each morning in the bristles of the horsehair brush, it was a wonder there was enough to braid and twine at Eleanor’s nape.

Crossing the Channel had nearly accomplished what months of deprivation, heartbreak, and fear could not. The sea had been rough and the weather brutally cold. Marienne had suffered her own stomach to visit her throat several times during the voyage, and between bouts, had cradled Eleanor’s fevered head in her lap.

In Corfe, Eleanor had recovered some of her strength, but she was still so thin! Tears welled in Marienne’s eyes each time she saw her lovely mistress, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer, lips moving silently over pleas for forgiveness and understanding for those who would do their utmost to harm her.

Marienne would gladly have taken a dagger and plunged it into King John’s heart with a dearth of forgiveness and understanding. She would have plunged and plunged and plunged and taken the greatest pleasure in seeing the blood spurt from the gaping holes she would make in his chest! He had laughed. He had laughed, shrilly and maniacally when he had told Eleanor of her exile to Corfe, and Marienne had been the one to hold her and weep with her and comfort her as best she could. She was only fourteen, but felt one hundred and fourteen, forced too young to witness so much pain, deceit, and treachery. Forced to hurt so badly each time she saw a tremulous, brave smile cross her dear mistress’s face.

Eleanor offered one now as she detected Marienne’s presence behind her. She did not interrupt her prayers or stop her fingers from smoothing over the ebony beads. She was in the last prayer of the last station and Marienne waited patiently until the small gold cross was raised and pressed reverently to her lips to seal the final amen.

She hastened over and offered her assistance as the princess rose stiffly from her knees and moved to the bed.

“If you are going to scold me again, do not trouble yourself,” Eleanor said with a sigh. “I ate one whole round of bread and most of the poached fish. Any more and I would be belching like a wag.”

Marienne could have pointed out the bread was the size of
a coin and the fish barely dented, but she held her tongue. It was more than her mistress had eaten the previous evening … and tomorrow was Wednesday. Wednesdays the cook mixed up a special treat of quenelles, one of the few things that seemed to tempt Eleanor’s appetite.

When Marienne told her this, hoping to rouse a little interest, the princess looked surprised. “Another sennight has passed already? It feels as though only yesterday we feasted on capons and dumplings.”

“Captain Brevant has promised to try to send us a flagon of real wine as well, not the soured vinegar they serve to the other … guests.”

Eleanor’s smile faltered somewhat and she reached out to stroke pale, slender fingers down Marienne’s unruly mop of crisp brown curls. “My poor Mouse. How dreadful this must all be for you. Forced to serve me in this … this dark and gloomy pesthole.”

“I am not forced, my lady,” Marienne protested, clutching the princess’s hand and holding it to her lips. “I am come willingly, of my own choice, and I stay willingly, knowing that one day soon we will both be able to walk out in the sunlight again.”

“Sunlight,” Eleanor whispered ruefully. “I have almost forgotten what it feels like on my face.”

There were no windows in the tower room, only candles to provide light. The air was close and smelled so strongly of damp mortar not even a blazing fire could relieve the stench. Not that they ever had enough wood to build a fire that did more than smoke and hiss and spit off the odd red cinder.

The bedding was always musty, the curtains that hung from the bed were rotted through in places and rarely failed to offer up the droppings of some small inhabitant when they were let down for the night. The king had promised to keep her in comfort. He had promised their stay at Corfe would be a short one, but they had heard nothing from Normandy since their departure and Marienne could only wonder if by “short” he meant “not long of this world.” He had evidently not instructed any special favours be accorded his niece. Day and
night were the same, marked only by the arrival of fresh tallow candles each morning—two per day, to be used sparingly—and the emptying of the cracked slops jar each night. She was given a basin of water three times a week for washing, and once each week, for an hour, she was permitted to walk the ramparts between her tower and the next.