The Unveiling (3 page)

Henry’s, but—

“Whose, Annyn?”

Henry's, but Stephen—

“Speak it!”

She looked to her quaking hands. “Henry’s.”

He sighed, bent a finger beneath her chin, and urged her face up. “Stephen may not be the king England deserves, but until a worthier one appears, he is all there is. I beseech you, put aside Jonas's foolish allegiance to Maude's son. Henry is but a boy—barely six and ten—and unworthy to rule.”

Unworthy when he led armies? Unworthy when—

She nodded.

Uncle stepped back. “I must needs pray.”

As she ought to herself, for Father Cornelius told it was a long way to heaven. The sooner Jonas was prayed there, the sooner he might find his rest. “I shall join you shortly.”

As her uncle turned away, Annyn saw the captain of the guard step out of a shadowed alcove. Had he been there when she entered the hall? Not that any of what had been said should be withheld from him, for he also had been like a father to Jonas. Did Uncle know of Rowan’s presence?

She looked to her uncle as he traversed the hall and saw him lift a hand to his chest as if troubled by the infirm heart that beat there.

Panged by the suffering of the man who had been good to her and Jonas—far better than his brother who had sown them—Annyn silently beseeched,
Please, Lord, hold him hale
.

A moment later, she startled at the realization that she called on the one who had done nothing to protect her brother. Thus, it was not likely He would answer her prayers for her uncle.

When the old man disappeared up the stairs, Annyn drew nearer the table and reached to pull Jonas’s tunic down. However, the V-shaped birthmark on his left ribs captured her gaze. Since it was years since the boy he had been had tossed off his tunic in the heat of swordplay, she had forgotten about the mark.

She closed her eyes and cursed the man whose charge of Jonas had stolen her brother from her. Wulfrith had failed Jonas. Had failed her.

When Rowan ascended the dais, she looked around.

The captain of the guard stared at the young man to whom he had given so many of his years, then a mournful sound rumbled up from his depths and he yanked down Jonas’s tunic.

For fear she would cry if she continued to look upon Rowan’s sorrow, Annyn lowered her face and reached to straighten the neck of her brother’s tunic. If not for that, she would not have seen it. Would never have known.

She looked closer at the abraded skin deep beneath his chin. What had caused it? She pushed the material aside. The raw skin circled his upper neck and, when she traced it around, it nearly met at the back.

Understanding landed like a slap to the face. Wulfrith had lied. An arrow had not killed Jonas. Hanging had been the end of him. Why? Had her brother revealed his allegiance to Henry? More, who had fit the noose? Wulfrith who stood for Stephen? It had to be. And if not him, then surely he had ordered it.

Annyn whipped her chin around and saw that Rowan stared at what she had uncovered.

Bile rising, she stumbled past him and dropped to her knees. When the heaving was done, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “What will Uncle say of Wulfrith and Stephen now ’tis proven Jonas was murdered?”

Rowan sank deeper into silence, and she realized that, though Uncle’s heart might abide the honorable death of one he had loved, Jonas’s murder would likely ruin it, especially as he had sent her brother to Wulfrith in spite of Jonas’s protests.

If not that she loved her uncle, she would have hated him. “Nay, he must not be told.” Feeling as if she had aged years in these last moments, she stepped past Rowan and pulled the misericorde from her brother’s belt.

Frowning over the pommel that was set with jewels to form the cross of crucifixion, she wondered whence the dagger came. She would have noticed such a splendid weapon had Jonas possessed one. Was it of Wulfen? It mattered not. All that mattered was revenge.

Vengeance is not yours, Annyn.
Jonas’s voice drifted to her from six months past when he had come home for three days.
Vengeance belongs to God. You must defer to Him
.

Her anger at the visiting nobleman’s son who had set one of her braids afire had faltered when she heard Jonas speak so. He, who had so often shrugged off God, had found Him at Wulfen. Considering Baron Wulfrith’s reputation, it had surprised her. And more so now, having met the man and discovered his lie about Jonas’s death.

False teachings, then. A man like Wulfrith could not possibly know God. At that moment, she hardly knew Him herself. For days, she had prayed He would deliver Jonas home. And this was His answer.

She squeezed her fists so tight that her knuckles popped.

How she ached to make Wulfrith suffer for the bloodguilt of her brother’s death. She knew vengeance was God’s privilege, but she also knew it had once been the privilege of surviving family members.

Would God truly strike her down if she turned to the ways of the Old Testament? Revenge
was
the way of the world—certainly the way of men. Revenge begat revenge, as evidenced by the struggle for England’s throne.

She nodded. How could God possibly deny her, especially as He was surely too busy to bother with such things himself? Were He not, He would not have allowed what had been done to Jonas.

Splaying her fingers on her thighs, she glared at the ceiling. “Vengeance is
mine
, and You shall just have to understand.” A terrible, blasphemous thought crept to her tongue, and she did not bite it back. “If You are even there.”

“Annyn?”

She looked to Rowan whose talk had turned her and Jonas to Henry’s side—Rowan who would surely aid her. If it took a lifetime, Wulfrith would know the pain her brother had borne. Only his death would satisfy.

It had been necessary. Still, Garr Wulfrith felt the stain of young Jonas's death.

He reached for the hilt of his misericorde and too late realized he no longer possessed it.
That
had
not
been necessary.

Berating himself for the foolish gesture, he lifted a hand to his cheek where Jonas’s shrew of a sister had scored his flesh. So the girl who looked and behaved like a boy had also turned. Though Artur Bretanne remained loyal to Stephen, somehow his brother's children had found Henry. For that, Jonas was dead. And hardly an honorable death as told.

Remembering what he had done the morning he found his squire strung from a tree, he told himself it was better that the truth of the betrayal die with the betrayer. No family ought to suffer such dishonor, not even a family that boasted one such as Annyn Bretanne. Thus, he had falsified—and now felt the brunt of God’s displeasure.

Save me, O Lord, from lying lips and deceitful tongues,
his mother would quote if she knew what her firstborn had done.

For this, Garr would spend hours in repentance and pray that this one lie did not breed, as lies often did—that after this day, he would know no more regret for having told it.

He looked over his shoulder. Though it was the receding Castle Lillia he sought, Squire Merrick captured his gaze. A promising young warrior, if not a bit peculiar, he and Jonas had served together in squiring Garr. At first there had been strain between the young men who both aspired to the standing of First Squire, but it had eased once Jonas was chosen. In fact, the two had become as near friends as was possible in the competitive ranks of the forty who sought knighthood at Wulfen Castle. But, as Merrick now knew, friendships often had false bottoms.

Garr shifted his gaze to Castle Lillia. He pitied Artur Bretanne. The man would be a long time in ridding himself of his niece, if ever, for who would take to wife that filthy little termagant who had but good, strong teeth to recommend her?

Of course, what man took any woman to wife other than to get an heir? Women were difficult, ever endeavoring to turn men from their purpose. However, as with all Wulfrith men who preferred warring over women, especially Garr's father, Drogo, Garr would eventually wed. Forsooth, he would have done so three years past had his betrothed not died of the pox.

He turned back to the land before him. Once Stephen secured his hold on England, Garr would find a wife of sturdy build whom he could visit a half dozen times a year until she bore him sons to raise up as warriors—men who stood far apart from ones like Jonas.

An image of the young man's death once more rising, he gripped the pommel of his saddle. How could he have been so wrong? Though he had sensed Jonas's allegiance to Henry, he had used it to put heart into the young man's training. After all, how better to make a man than to give him a powerful reason for becoming one? The aim was not to turn one’s allegiance, though sometimes it happened. The aim was for the squire to give his utmost to his lord, which was of greatest importance in battle.

But the strategy had failed with Jonas—fatally. A mistake Garr would not make again.

Telling himself Jonas Bretanne was in the past, dead and soon buried, he released the pommel. As for Annyn Bretanne, she would put her loss behind her. All she needed was time.

CHAPTER THREE

Castle Lillia, Spring 1153

Castle Lillia was taken, blessedly without loss of lives. From his bed, Uncle Artur had ordered the drawbridge lowered to admit Duke Henry's army. Now they were within, wafting their stench upon the hall and sounding their voices to the rafters.

Holding the high seat on the dais was Henry himself. However, it was not the vibrant man who carried Annyn's gaze time and again. It was the squire who sat at a lower table.

The talk of the hall was that, though destined for the monastery, the deaths of his brothers in the wars between Stephen and Henry had made the boy heir. Of a family strongly opposed to Henry’s claim on England, he had been captured by the duke’s army a sennight past while en route to Wulfen Castle. Such hopes his father must have that Wulfrith could turn him from a sickly pup into a wolf, but it would not come without much effort and pain. And now that he was to be held at Lillia, it might not come at all.

Annyn peered closer. He was slightly taller than she, who had risen to five feet three inches in the four years following Jonas's death, and his hair was nearly as dark as hers. There was not much to his build, as there was not much to hers.

“My lady,” a warmly familiar voice spoke at her elbow.

She met Rowan's gaze. Regardless of the years that aged his eyes, there was something more to them than she had ever seen. The man he would have sit on England’s throne had been let into Lillia. “Rowan?”

“The Duke requests your attendance.”

Henry would see her? During his three hours at Lillia, he had not acknowledged her though she directed the servants and had done her best to look the lady of the castle.

Bitter humor tugged at her. Lady of the Castle, and yet beneath her mother's chainse and bliaut—dragged on as Henry came into Lillia—she wore tunic and hose. And for it she perspired.

She tugged the bodice off her moist skin. “I am presentable?” she asked in a voice that was more husk than the scratch it had been four years earlier.

“As presentable as a boy turned lady can be.”

Wishing there was time to work her mess of hair into braids, she blew breath down her small-breasted chest. “Then to Henry I must go.” She started past Rowan but halted. “Pray, hasten abovestairs and tell my uncle I shall attend him shortly.”

Hoping Uncle Artur, who had been abed these past months, did not fret his failing heart over the happenings belowstairs, she traversed the hall. As with an increasing number of those who had long sided with Stephen, the intervening years were wrought with disenchantment for her uncle, though more for fear of the king that Stephen’s son, Eustace, would one day make.

She settled her gaze on Henry.
Poise befitting a lady
, she reminded herself,
small steps, small smile, small gestures, small voice, small talk.
While inside, her heart beat large.

She ought to have been born a man. No matter how she tried for Uncle, it was not in her to be a lady. Would it ever be? If Jonas had lived, perhaps, but his murder left little for the woman's body into which she had been given.

Lifting her skirts, she sidestepped the sots whose bellies sloshed with Uncle's wine and ale. As she ascended the dais, Henry paused over the rim of his goblet and regarded her with large grey eyes.

She curtsied. “My lord.” When she straightened, a faint smile lifted his freckled cheeks above his beard. He was handsome, though on other men such a square face and feverish red hair would be less pleasing.

“The lady Annyn.” He gestured to the bench beside him. “Sit.”

Realizing her skirts were still hitched to her ankles, Annyn dropped them and came around the table. As she lowered to the bench, Henry studied her with such intensity she feared he saw beneath her bliaut and chainse to the tunic, hose, and—

She gasped.

Wafting the scent of wine, Henry sat forward. “Something is amiss?”

Feigning a cough, she wiggled her toes beneath her skirts. She had forgotten to exchange her worn boots for slippers. Had anyone seen?

She tucked her feet beneath the bench, summoned an apologetic smile, and patted her neck. “A tickle, ’tis all.”

He eased back into the high seat. “You are not uncomely, Lady Annyn.”

Though his words were unexpected, she maintained an impassive expression. What response did he seek? She could agree she was not uncomely, but neither was she comely. Plain was the better word for one whose face was unremarkable beneath pale freckles, whose breasts were not much larger than apple halves, and the span between waist and hips was nearly unchanged.

“Why are you not wed?”

She flinched and immediately berated herself for failing to conceal her feelings. Jonas would have been disappointed.

“Be assured, Lady Annyn, though you are of an age, I shall find a fitting husband for you when I am king. One who will lord Aillil as it ought to be lorded.”