[The deBurghs 07] - Reynold De Burgh: The Dark Knight (13 page)

If local legends had put a fortune here, someone would have looked for it long ago, Reynold reasoned. And, if anything had been found, that, too, would have passed into legend. Instead, the residents viewed the spot as the dragon’s resting place, nothing else. And who would imperil himself by poking around the beast’s tomb?

Reynold frowned. And yet, such a warning would do much to keep the villagers at bay. And perhaps the Sextons not only watched the church, but the mound,
as well, to prevent any exploration of the area. Mistress Sexton certainly seemed outraged at the idea of plundering the ground. But she had not forbade him, either. Reynold shook his head. Now he was arguing with himself and imagining enough to fill a tale.

Tired and hungry, Reynold threw the shovel over his shoulder and limped back to the manor. The small building, tucked among some trees, was a welcome sight as he approached. He realised, with some dismay, that it had come to represent home for him.
Only for now
, he told himself.
Perhaps only for a small while longer
, he thought, then stifled a pang. Perversely, despite the door that had been slammed in his face, he yearned to remain.

Frowning at the thought, Reynold flung open the doors and dragged the dirty shovel with him, lest it disappear from his sight. He would have to send Peregrine to see what other tools could be found in the stables and outbuildings, for he had no desire to travel to another village for such an implement.

At his entrance, Mistress Sexton rose, a look of concern upon her beautiful face. Was it for what he had done or what she feared he might find? Reynold wondered.

‘Let me get you a willow-bark tisane,’ she said, as she hurried towards him. ‘Adele, heat some water for Lord de Burgh.’

Something inside Reynold eased at the knowledge that her concern was for him. Even though he knew it sprang from his service, not himself, he yearned for her nurturing, like a plant craved the sun. Yet he told himself it was the offer of a bath that was most welcome, and he
grunted at the thought of a long soak. He would haul the buckets himself, rather than go without, just this once.

While Reynold ate, a metal tub, too small for his tall frame, but big enough to sit in, was found and dragged to the kitchens, where it would be easier to fill. And when the water was heated, he and the residents of Grim’s End, well trained in handling buckets, made short work of the chore.

Soon Reynold stood before a full tub, eager to remove his filthy clothes, especially the hard mail that he had been wearing every day since he left Campion. The others drifted from the kitchens until, finally, he was alone with Mistress Sexton. The sun was sinking low outside, and she stood in the gathering gloom, more beautiful than ever when lit by the soft glow of the fire.

‘Do you want me to…’ Her words trailed off, and she looked away, only to draw a breath and return her gaze to his. ‘Shall I help?’

Reynold felt as though he had been struck by a lance, hard in his chest and belly and below. As so often before when facing Mistress Sexton’s charms, his wits seemed to flee, for he did not bother to wonder why she would make such an offer. He only yearned to agree, to let her strip the garments from his body and wash his aching flesh with her gentle hands.

For a long moment, they stood a few feet apart, the steaming water on one side, the fire on the other, and the very air cracked with the tension between them. Desire rose up so fierce as to nearly overcome Reynold, and he could have sworn it was reflected in Mistress
Sexton’s pale face. He had only to nod to set something in motion that he had only imagined, something far beyond his wildest dreams.

‘My lord!’

The sound of Peregrine’s anguished shout broke the spell. Mistress Sexton’s expression turned to one of alarm, and Reynold put his hand upon the hilt of his sword, the long moment of temptation forgotten in the face of some new threat.

‘I—I think he’s gone,’ Peregrine said, appearing at the top of the stairs that led below.

‘What? Who?’ Mistress Sexton asked, but Reynold knew immediately. He waited, scowling, as his squire hurried to explain.

‘Urban,’ Peregrine said. ‘I—He went to the cellars earlier, and since there is no other way out of them except the stairs, I did not…’ Peregrine paused to draw a deep breath. ‘I did not keep good watch.’

‘How long?’ Reynold asked, his fingers tightening on the hilt.

‘I don’t know, my lord,’ Peregrine answered. ‘When we finished filling the tub, I remembered he was down there. And I didn’t want him to interrupt—er, come upon you in your bath, so I sought him out, but he is not there.’

Ignoring the weariness that weighed heavily upon him, Reynold drew a deep breath. ‘Saddle Sirius, and I will see if I can find him. He can’t have gone too far on foot.’ But even as he spoke, a sudden, sharp fear spurred his anger. ‘
Unless he stole the horses
.’

Peregrine ran for the doors, but Reynold was halted
by a hand upon his arm. ‘He did not join us for dinner,’ Mistress Sexton said. ‘But I thought he was still sulking.’

She looked more sad than alarmed, and Reynold reached out to close his fingers around her wrist, his temper barely leashed as he asked that which was uppermost in his mind. ‘Was this bath designed to distract me while he fled?’ he demanded in a low voice. ‘What else would you have done to keep me here?’

Mistress Sexton’s gaze flew to his, and Reynold saw only dismay and confusion in the blue depths. ‘I don’t understand. I have offered you baths often enough and was glad, for your sake, that you finally accepted. ’Twill grow cold soon, so you had best make use of it.’

‘And let your man go?’

‘Of course! I told him he could leave, as I often had before, though I did not believe he would do so.’

Reynold shook his head, his anger still simmering far too close to the surface. ‘Did it ever occur to you that Urban might be up to more than digging for coins?’

‘What do you mean?’ Mistress Sexton asked, her expression clouded.

‘He didn’t take the horses, my lord,’ Peregrine said, appearing at the doors. ‘But it is nigh on full dark, and since I don’t know how long he’s been gone…’

Reynold loosed Mistress Sexton’s wrist and swore under his breath. ‘So he is gone for good and whatever secrets he might have are gone with him.’

‘Secrets? What secrets?’ Mistress Sexton asked.

Still cursing, Reynold turned towards her. ‘Perhaps Urban was not digging for himself, but on someone else’s instructions,’ he muttered. Perhaps whoever was
attacking the village grew impatient for the treasure…Reynold drew a deep breath. ‘Perhaps Urban has been in league with the dragon all along.’

‘What?’ Mistress Sexton gasped. ‘How can you say that?’

Easily enough
, Reynold thought. Though the suspicion had just come to him, it made sense. ‘Who bid you hide in the cellars? Who fostered your fears in the guise of protecting you?’

Mistress Sexton blanched. ‘But he kept us safe! He kept us together! Without Urban, we could never have survived. Why would he help us remain here, if he really wanted us to leave?’

‘I don’t know,’ Reynold said. ‘But who better to inform upon your activities, your whereabouts, your plans, your very state of mind?’

Shaking her head, Mistress Sexton backed away as though to run from Reynold’s claims. ‘I don’t believe he’s a traitor. I don’t believe you.’

‘Then you won’t mind if we search the manor, will you?’ Reynold asked.

Peregrine made a sound, as if of protest, but Reynold held up his hand to stop the boy from further speech. Tired and angry and frustrated at every turn, he glared at Mistress Sexton, daring her to refuse him.

But she only shuddered and turned from him. ‘Do what you will.’

If only I could
, Reynold thought bitterly as he watched her retreating figure. His hands flexed at his sides, as if to reach for her, but he held himself in check.

Beside him, Peregrine stood silent, and the tub they
had worked so hard to fill waited, its water cooling as surely as Reynold’s blood. Mistress Sexton’s offer to bathe him seemed but a dream now, a figment of his fevered imaginings, destroyed, as always, by the harsh realities that lay between them.

If only I could.

S
abina sat alone in her chair in the hall, blinking in the near darkness. Ursula had sought her bed after Lord de Burgh had finished searching their room, but Sabina refused to join her. She was fearful of the conversation that might ensue, fearful of the way everything seemed to be falling apart.

Despite Lord de Burgh’s accusations, Sabina refused to believe that Urban had done anything wrong except give in to his temper. As Ursula had predicted, the faithful steward grew resentful of Lord de Burgh and fled rather than cede his power. Although Sabina understood, she felt his loss as the latest, most disheartening, in a long line of abandonments.

Nearly everyone was gone now. There were only four residents left in Grim’s End, three women and a boy, all of them at the mercy of a knight who was held here only by obligation. But wasn’t that what held the others here, as well? Sabina didn’t want to acknowledge the truth, but after Urban’s defection, how could she deny it?

She watched blankly as Peregrine took his pallet to the cellar, no doubt to keep an eye upon Adele and Alec. Then a tall shadow fell over her as Lord de Burgh approached the trestle table where she was seated.

‘You can go to your chamber now,’ he said.

Yes, Sabina supposed she could, for Ursula would be asleep. There was no danger of her attendant saying things that Sabina didn’t want to hear or posing questions that she did not want to answer.

‘You were right about me,’ she said softly.

‘What makes you say that?’ Lord de Burgh asked in a rough voice, as though impatient to seek his rest.

‘I am selfish,’ Sabina admitted. ‘I wanted to keep my home and my heritage and gave no thought to anyone else, endangering the lives of those closest to me, rewarding loyalty with fear and peril.’

Sabina heard Lord de Burgh snort, but she did not look at him. ‘I am a coward, too. I told myself that I was keeping my vow to my father, but I was afraid to go, afraid to leave behind everything that I loved, every place, every memory, every person to be lost for good.’

‘You are not a coward.’

‘You don’t know,’ Sabina muttered, clasping her hands together tightly. ‘You don’t know.’

‘Then tell me,’ he said. His voice was deeper and held a new urgency, but Sabina simply shook her head, unable even to glance his way.

She heard him swear under his breath and turn aside, only to swing back towards her. ‘I think you are grieving over a man who was no friend to you.’

Sabina shook her head. ‘I am grieving over my life because there is nothing left of what I knew. I might as well leave and have done with it.’

‘I won’t let you go.’ The words, spoken in his low, raspy drawl, made Sabina’s head jerk up, and she finally gazed at the dark man looming over her. Perhaps she had hoped to see something in his face, but, as usual, his expression told her nothing.

‘I am not handing over Grim’s End to whoever is behind these attacks, and I won’t let you do it, either,’ he said.

Sabina swallowed her disappointment at his explanation, for he was only doing what she had begged him to do. And she was a fool for wanting anything more. But just how long could this continue?
What was to become of them?
Sabina knew better than to let such thoughts cross her mind, but they did, and her breath caught.

She felt hot and dizzy, and her heart began pounding with familiar dread. Even as she tried to will it away, Sabina knew she could not wait. She had to act quickly, yet without undue haste that would draw Lord de Burgh’s attention. The thought of his presence only increased her panic, and it took all of her strength simply to rise to her feet and nod to him, as though in goodnight.

Sabina dared not look at him or try to speak, lest she give herself away, but concentrated only upon reaching the stairs and the privacy of her room. He would not leave the candles burning, so she might be able to get away without him following close behind.

So she hurried upwards, escaping before he discovered that she was not the woman he thought her.

The next morning Reynold headed back to the mound, for want of other options. The search of the manor had revealed nothing, no hidden stash of jewels among Urban’s things or directives secreted about the place. He had not even found any cherished love notes among Mistress Sexton’s things or personal records that might reveal more about her.

Yet Reynold couldn’t shake the suspicion that the beautiful damsel was hiding something, especially after the events of yesterday. Perhaps the bath was just as it seemed, an offer made many times that he finally accepted. But there was the odd conversation that followed, in which she appeared eager to abandon Grim’s End after weeks of insisting otherwise, then left the hall without another word.

And, like Urban, Mistress Sexton sometimes disappeared, not for great lengths of time, but long enough for Reynold to notice. There were slammed doors and extended visits to the garderobe, when she refused to speak. Initially, Reynold had been too smitten by her charms to mistrust her, or, indeed, any of the villagers. But now, after Urban’s flight, he began to wonder about each and every one of them.

Especially Mistress Sexton.

After all, it was her entreaty that had halted his journey, her presence that kept him here, and her company that he could not go without…With a grunt, Reynold pushed aside such thoughts to focus on the
hole he had dug yesterday. The sight was discouraging, but what else was he to do? He could rove further and further from Grim’s End, searching for some signs of a camp while leaving the others unprotected. Or he could continue where Urban had left off.

But just how deep should he go? Sticking the shovel to stand upright in the dirt, Reynold walked around the mound, surveying it more closely. He had no idea why Urban had chosen this spot in which to dig, but it was on the very edge of the hill’s slope. If he had not come across Urban’s work and was intent upon exploring the site, Reynold would have chosen a more direct route. Either he would go straight down from the top or make a trench across, so as not to miss anything that might be found on the periphery.

Without knowing what he was searching for, Reynold decided on the trench, and after selecting a new location, he began to dig with more interest, cutting across the surface of the hill. Still, his shovel struck nothing but earth and stones, and finally, he set it aside to lean on it. A fresh breeze came in off the sea, with a hint of a chill, which served his heated body well now, but was a harbinger of worse to come.

Veering away from that train of thought, Reynold scanned the area for signs of movement. But he saw nothing except stray birds until his gaze swept the mound and lit upon the glint of metal.

Reynold was surprised to notice something shiny in the newly excavated dirt. Since his shovel had struck nothing, he had continued on, but now he leaned over to pluck the thing from the pile of soil. It looked like a
metal bolt, worn and discoloured. Reynold supposed that such things were often to be found in the ground, tossed aside long ago or part of some forgotten ruin that had decayed into nothing.

Still, Reynold blamed himself for not paying more attention as he worked. He had been expecting to hit a purse or a chest of coins, rather than loose objects scattered among the stones. But now he would dig more carefully, lest he miss something. The bolt had been uncovered recently, so Reynold set to work in the same general area, keeping an eye out for small objects.

Reynold took his time, yet it wasn’t long before he spied another piece of metal, this one in the ground below, rather than the excavated soil. Reaching down, he brushed the dirt from the surface and saw that it was again a bolt, but the way it was lodged in the earth at an angle made it seem as though it were holding something together. He shook his head, for it touched nothing, and yet, he hesitated to remove it.

Leaving the find where it was, Reynold continued on until he located another, evenly spaced from the earlier one, and in the same sort of odd position. This was not random, Reynold thought, but what did it mean? Leaving the two bolts in the ground, he took the loose one with him as he headed back to the manor for a meal, and, hopefully, some answers.

The few remaining residents of Grim’s End were in the hall, and Reynold propped his shovel by the doors and stalked across the tiles to join them.

‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, laying his dis
covery upon the trestle table. The group gathered round, but Reynold saw no signs of recognition on their faces.

‘What is it?’ Alec asked, leaning forwards.

‘’Tis obviously man-made,’ Peregrine said, picking up the bolt and turning it in his fingers. ‘It looks like something used in building, but what? And how did it get there?’

‘Perhaps it is part of something the dragon ate, remnants from its belly,’ Alec suggested.

‘Is this all you found?’ Mistress Sexton asked, frowning. ‘You did not disturb the dragon’s remains?’

‘No,’ Reynold said. ‘I found no bones, grim or otherwise, only bolts. But they are lying in the ground in a pattern, as though part of some larger whole.’

‘There’s more than this one?’ Peregrine asked.

‘I left the others where I found them,’ Reynold explained. Although the piece of iron did not constitute a treasure by any means, it aroused the curiosity of the boys, at least.

‘Can I help you dig?’ Alec asked.

‘Yes, me, too,’ Peregrine said. ‘The more hands there are to do the work, the more quickly we will find the treasure.’

‘
There is no treasure
,’ Mistress Sexton said, looking exasperated. But Ursula, standing behind her, did not appear as certain.

‘I could use some help with the earth that I’m removing,’ Reynold said. ‘The piles are becoming too big.’

‘We could all help, passing buckets,’ Alec offered. ‘It would be like putting out the fires.’

‘I would not leave the ladies unprotected,’ Reynold said, which caused Peregrine to look an entreaty at Mistress Sexton. She frowned in disapproval, but did not gainsay them as they made plans to return to the very heart of Grim’s End.

Whatever misgivings the villagers had about excavating their mound seemed forgotten once they shared in the search itself. Peregrine rigged up a tent to protect the hole from the worst of the squalls that sometimes blew through Grim’s End, yet the weather favoured them. And they followed the line of bolts until they came across something else, wider and longer. It curved downwards, buried deep.

‘Is that part of the dragon’s spine?’ Mistress Sexton called from above.

Reynold shook his head. ‘Not unless its spine was made of wood,’ he said as he pointed out the decaying matter. It was not the first wood they had found, but the most intact. They had also come across bits of old pottery and pieces of iron, but no cache of treasure.

Still, Reynold continued digging, as though the ground would yield up answers to all that plagued him. And keeping at the task made him feel as though he was accomplishing something, while staving off the future. Indeed, if there was a certain desperation to their efforts as the days grew cooler, the small band were all aware that their lives at Grim’s End were coming to a close.

And so they dug until they could predict a bolt’s position by the colour of the sand, and the so-called spine of the dragon began to take on a monstrous shape.
But it wasn’t until Peregrine began digging on the other side of the mound, deeper in the original trench, that they began to realise the bolts and wood probably encircled the mound.

‘It’s like stepping into a giant bowl,’ Alec said, obviously awed by the discovery. ‘Perhaps the people of Grim’s End built a coffin big enough to house the worm.’

As a village resident, the boy was reluctant to dismiss the legend of its founding, but Peregrine was not so biased. ‘If so, wouldn’t we have found its bones, huge ones that would be impossible to overlook?’ the squire asked.

‘It’s not a coffin,’ Reynold said from his stance within the wide hole. Turning around, he looked at the half that was uncovered and what appeared to be its mirror image, though mostly buried. ‘Nor is it a bowl,’ he said, as recognition dawned. ‘It’s a ship.’

‘But how would such a thing be buried here? We are too far from the coast,’ Mistress Sexton said, coming to stand at the edge of the site to see for herself.

‘Perhaps a big storm blew it ashore,’ Alec said.

Reynold was thinking the same thing, but surely such a tempest would have destroyed the craft, not interred it so perfectly. Perhaps they would find a missing portion which would give evidence of its foundering, yet how had the earth risen up around it?

‘It must be more than forty feet long, too big to have been tossed over the cliffs to reach this place,’ Peregrine said. ‘But why would anyone bury a boat?’

The question, like so much to do with Grim’s End, simply hung in the air, unanswerable.

‘A ship,’ Mistress Sexton said, shaking her head.
‘Well, at least now I hope you are all convinced that there is no hoard of coins hidden here.’

And yet they did find coins when they dug deeper, a shiny one that Ursula spotted from the top of the slope, and another that Reynold discovered later on. Both were old, with odd markings, and made of gold.

‘Perhaps an ancestor of yours found one of these in the soil, and thence the legend grew,’ Reynold said, holding the piece up for Mistress Sexton to see.

On this day, he was deep in the belly of the ship, the cut earth towering over him on one side, the skeleton of wood and bolts spread before him on the other. Although Reynold knew little of ships except what he had read in Geoffrey’s books, he guessed they must be nearing the bottom.

Perhaps, in his eagerness, he moved too quickly or grew careless. Or perhaps the sandy soil they had carved so relentlessly could take no more. But one minute Reynold was holding the coin high, and the next he was knocked to the ground, swallowed up by the earth.

Standing at the opposite edge of the pit, Sabina screamed a warning, but it was too late. The ground, seemingly sturdy, suddenly gave way, sliding on to Lord de Burgh. At the sight of his body twisting beneath the onslaught, Sabina’s breath caught, and she choked back another cry, unable to speak or move. But she would not stand by and watch him die, and struggling against a paralysing fear, she lurched forwards, only to fall to the ground.