Ronan's Bride (14 page)

It was a peaceful morning, birds singing and the grasses green. They rode to the gravesite, crosses marking them, and knelt by each, praying and laying wildflowers they had picked on the smallest ones.

More solemn, they mounted, each in their own thoughts, and thus were not attending when Fulco’s mount suddenly reared and seemed to be beyond his control.

Isola and the guards all tried to assist the knight, who was struggling but laughing, so they did not grow overly alarmed by the animal’s strange behavior. Sefare too, having a way with horses, tried to help, and when they were just nearing the woods, the mount, galloping between herself and Isola, seemed calmer, if spooked.

“Perhaps it was the graves…” Isola yelled.

Sefare opened her mouth to call for the Knight to rein in, so that the saddle could be checked, or something prodding the animal, but the stallion suddenly turned across, causing her own mount to turn, and before she realized that the knight had grabbed the reins from her hands, they were thundering away from the castle.

“What are you doing? Turn back! Fulco!”

He snarled, suddenly raising his cross bow across his thighs so that the bolt was aimed at her, “Struggle and I will kill you. Just hold on and perhaps you will live through the day.”

She could hear Iola’s yell, the other knights screaming and yelling, But Fulco had the horse’s full speed, jumping stiles and plunging over the hills toward the village. Sefare tamped down her fear, remembering that she was still armed and waiting for an opportune moment to draw her sword.

“Is this Guardi’s work or—”

“‘Tis delivery for a reward, My Lady. And dead or alive, ye are worth the same in gold to me.”

She wanted to scream at him, to call him betrayer, but staying on the mount was foremost. Trying to jump would break her neck as they swerved and passed obstacles through the charred village. The thunder of hooves behind them did provoke her to say, “They will seize and kill you.”

He laughed and yanked the reins, suddenly steering them around the old chapel and up through a copse, leaving the road far behind. He led her down another hill. “Never think I am alone, My Lady. We will meet a party soon enough that outnumber them, and will drive them back. All has been planned for months.”

“Months…” She swallowed, grasping the pommel as the horse stumbled on a steep decline. “You… ”

“Cease your prattle!” He suddenly growled and yanked her mount closer, using the end of the bow to bruise her thigh. “Your Crimson Knight played right into my hands. “

She did not know what he meant. Sefare thought that Ronan trusted Fitzwilliam and thus would not imagine that he had been lured falsely away. However, her captor was making speed over dangerous terrain, and staying on the horse, staying alive, was her first concern.

She chanced a look over her shoulder before they plunged through a stream and toward a thick forest. Suddenly Fulco’s arm shot out and knocked her off her horse.

Grunting, she rolled, pain searing in her lungs and shoulder. However, just as swiftly several masked men emerged from the trees. One grabbed her up, and flung her onto his horse.

Sefare struggled. She drew her sword as he slammed her across his thighs. He smashed his fist against her wrist, knocking it from her hands. Her last sight before a sack was shoved over her head—were the other riders circling—coming behind Isola and the guards, effectively capturing them too.

From then onward, it was a hard and rough ride, with her body chaffed against the studded leather garb of her captor, and his carelessness if passing briers and limbs that smacked at her body. She had to hold on, but Sefare kept hope—because she was as yet not tied.

That ended as soon as the party stopped abruptly and she was thrown again to the ground. Grunting, setting her teeth against the pain, rolling to get her feet under her, a male grabbed her from behind and drew her wrists back before lashing her hands together. He whipped off the sack and she saw that the other riders, still masked with crude cloth coverings, were all around her.

“Who are you?”

He refused to answer, and picked her up by the arm and forced her astride a horse before lashing her legs to the stirrup straps. For all her fear, Sefare used the time to look around and study them, to peer behind and see when Fulco entered with Isola and her guards, disarmed and having their legs lashed to the mounts.

The male slapped the steed’s flank causing it to shoot forward, and the men closed in on both sides and before, putting her in the center.

She said, “If you are Guardi’s men, you will not go unpunished by King Henry for this. I am now wed to his Knight and under the protection and laws of this land.”

“You are an assassin and a murderer!” The knight to her left barked.

“I am not. Neither was my brother. I—”

“Quiet.” The other knight reached out and slapped her hard on the lips.

Sefare’s eyes watered and she tasted blood. Licking it off, her lips instantly swelled, the sting distracting her from her aching arms for a bit. For hours afterwards, she stared ahead and rode, hearing Isola also cursing and threatening. Apparently, giving her captors a hard time of it, until there was a grunt, and silence, save for the chink of spur and creak of leather, the sounds of the riders. She could guess her friend had likewise been muffled.

Sometime during the evening, and just before night, a rain began. She asked that her hood be put up and the knight did so, if roughly. From then onward the fog and mud, the wetness and her aches preoccupied her mind.

When the horses were rested, she heard two arguing that they could ransom her instead of delivering her….At some point, she and Isola, her guards taken separate, were allowed to get down and take shelter under a tree from the worst rain.

Hunched in her cloak, breath misting in the humid rain, Sefare murmured past her bruised lips, “Are you all right.”

“Aye. A bit battered, but these swine had best kill me if they intend. I am going to gut that Fulco when this is done.”

“I think ‘tis Guardi who ordered this. Fulco has obviously been a spy from the time we fled.”

“Aye. Like as not all the attacks, the village too, was to draw Ronan out. Or for Fulco to get you out.”

Sefare winced, seeing the captive guards rise to kick a passing male and get his head bashed into a tree for his troubles. She knew Ronan’s men were quick and skilled, but there were at least thirty here in masks. Fulco, she could not find.

“Know you where we are?”

Isola grunted. “I would guess they are headed for the sea and a waiting ship.”

“We can’t let that happen.”

“No. Attend the forests. See that fork in the road there? Just past where those men are gathered. Cart tracks, and there is—”

“Quiet!” A guard kicked out at Isola, and then Sefare.

She pressed against the tree. Quieting until all that was heard was a beat of rain in the forests and the low voices of the men.

It was scarcely light, no rain, but thick misted and foggy, when she was roused with Isola and put back on her horse. Sefare saw the yawning valley ahead and chanced a look back at the Smith. Her leather cloak soaked and dirty, body hurting and mouth now a constant sting, Sefare still managed a subtle message.

Isola nodded slowly under the guise of shaking her hood back and off, those green eyes looking left. Sefare knew they were both going to make a break for it in the valley. If she leaned down on the mount, she could guide it with her knees and come back to the woods. Here she stood a chance of escaping. Either way, she was not going back to Italy. They would have to take her dead body.

The valley opened before them, more a field with a hill at the far end. Sefare thanked God as the sky lit brighter. She twisted her body suddenly, digging her heels hard into the mount and grabbing its mane. It rammed the startled rider beside her, and even while she heard some chaos, some other yelling, she assumed was men after Isola—she kept her eyes on the woods, and her heels beating on the sides of the steed who carried her there.

Curses and yells, screams too sounded, but her heart was in her throat and the heat of the lathered mount, its breathing as she lay nearly on its neck, was all she heard.

They crashed into the woods. She leaned again, heading off the road to that fork before seeing Isola beside her, riding much the same and both horses going at such speeds that all was a blur. They flew down the cart road, side by side, until Isola sat up and looked behind them.

“Sefare!”

Rising too, just seeing the end of the woods and some overgrown and forgotten cottages, Sefare called to the horse, struggling for calm to slow it until it stood under her, quivering and steaming, breathing as hard winded as she.

She glanced over her shoulder seeing nothing in the woods, but hearing the distant ring of battle and shouts. Isola was looking too and turned to her.

“We must get ourselves unbound. I know not what ‘tis but we are bound and unarmed as yet.” She rode close and they studied only a moment before Sefare said, “Let’s make it to the cottage. Mayhap we can free our hands if we get close enough to chaff the bands.”

They rode down, through a thicket that had briers grabbing their clothing. Swiftly, Sefare got the mount close to the half-fallen structure. She twisted her hands to the side and began chafing the rope against the sharp edged support pole.”

“It won’t break but ‘tis stretching enough,” Isola grunted working her own against something at the side. She was the first free, and swiftly untied the rope at her legs, before hurrying to free Sefare.

They rubbed their bruised and chaffed wrists and looked at each other.

“Dare we ride back?”

“Aye.”

Sefare gathered the reins and they rode back toward the valley. Just exiting the woods, they both stopped, seeing all the masked men off their horses, hands behind them, knights standing over them with swords. However, it was those still mounted, behind the knights, that Sefare stared at.

They both heard the unmarked knight say to them, “Dare you kidnap the King’s subject and pass judgment on a matter that is his right to settle!”

“We were ordered to bring her, My Lord. She is an assassin. She killed a noble and—”

“By whom were you ordered?”

“By the offended family, My Lord,” one of the masked replied.

“The name!”

“As you know, My Lord. The same. The di Matteo. In addition, her brother is an outlaw. It would do well, My Lord, that you not let her esc—”

“Kill him.”

The man’s head was cleanly severed.

Sefare was too taken with the scene, too focused on the knight, to notice that riders had broken from the line and were coming toward their left.

The knight said, “One of you shall live and shall return to your liege, whom I know to be Guardi di Matteo. You are to tell him this: either his brother the Count Baiardo di Matteo, died in battle, a hero as celebrated—or he and his family, insistent upon charging two of the king’s subjects of murder—will answer this counter charge,”

A scroll was held up, which Sefare recognized all too well. “And they will answer for the slaying of villagers and for every beast and child who died in the recent fires. They will answer for the plot to kill one Lady Sefare, wife of Lord Ronan of Duhamel.”

One of the masked said gruffly, “The bastard coward won’t like that, My Lord.”

“You. You shall take the message.” The knight had the guard bring him forward and then put him on a horse. Even as he lowered his hand and the others were killed—decapitated—he said, “Tell your noble liege that he, who sends this message, speaks as the King.”

The man nodded and rode off.

Sefare saw the knight ride his horse between the slain and then he turned toward herself and Isola, just as she noticed a cowl'd rider and—Dear God…Ronan come from her left. The Celt was just behind him.

Swallowing, Sefare did not turn, even as thoughts raced through her mind, conclusions and yes anger. She fought tears and grit her teeth, making herself sit straighter in the saddle.

“Your escape caught us by surprise, My Lady.”

“I was not going to go willingly.”

She heard a chuckle echo in the visor helm. “Do not be too vexed with your husband. I gave him little choice in this plan.” He nodded and turned the destrier, raising his hand. The company turned, waiting for him to catch up and then vanished over the rise.

She whirled and stared right at Ronan—who sat his horse facing her side. “You planned this! You let me be kidnapped, dragged through rain and mud and—” She yanked the horse around and began riding toward the woods. She did not gallop but was too upset, too emotional, to even care if she was headed to the castle—or to France.

“I did not plan it,” he said tightly. “Nor did he who formed it, count on the captors taking you this route. We were prepared for rescue as soon as you were taken, but Fulco either knew something or spotted our scouts.”

“Where is that bastard?” She spat.

“I killed him.”

She reined in, hearing others behind but glared at him. He was looking at her bruised face with fury.

“Well, are you going to tell me the whole of it, or just assume as a stupid and weak woman, I’m not to be trusted in—”