Through a Dark Mist (17 page)

Servanne’s face, throat, and breasts were now burning. The Wolf, seeing her discomfort, stood up and walked slowly toward her, stopping close enough for her to detect the scent of leather and greenwood that was a part of his overwhelming maleness. He had shaved earlier in the morning, and the reason for sharpening the edge of his knife was evidenced by the two clotted cuts beneath his chin.

At that precise moment, Servanne would have rejoiced in seeing ribbons of blood flowing from ear to ear; a greater ecstasy would be to carve them there herself.

At the same time, she felt a sudden shifting in the weight of her emotions. If this verbal jousting was the best he could do—and would he not have done his worst last night if it
had
been his intent?—surely she had little to fear for all his arrogant boasting. A man who had kissed a woman the way he had kissed her, yet had done nothing to carry the threat further, was likely to be no threat at all! If any of a dozen knights of her past aquaintance had found her in their arms and won half the liberties this rogue had stolen, neither pleas nor beating fists, nor gouging knives would have deterred them from taking what they wanted then and there. And not one in a score of knights of her aquaintance had a tenth of the motive for revenge this Black Wolf declared himself to have.

Perhaps he should have raped her. She might have begun to believe his claim to be Lucien Wardieu.

Expressing her newfound indifference to his petty vulgarities, Servanne sighed and turned to Biddy. “Now I understand what you mean when you say all men judge all things in life by the size of the brain they carry between their thighs. The smaller the brain, the dimmer their judgment, the larger the voice they use to convince the world they are giants among men. How true. And how sad.”

She tucked her arm through Biddy’s and, without a further acknowledgment of the Wolf’s presence in the sunlit courtyard, strolled sedately past him and entered the shadowy sanctuary of the pilgrims’ hall.

Biddy, light-headed from the amount of gasping and spluttering she had done to maintain her silence out-of-doors, barely managed to keep from swooning until they were in the privacy of their chamber.

“Lost, I tell you!” she wailed. “We are lost! He plans to ravish you and kill me, and leave our bones to rot upon the road for some unlucky traveler to stumble over.”

“Oh, Biddy—” Servanne was feeling none too steady herself. “Not now. I can hardly keep my head up.”

“From shame, I should not wonder!” came the instantly revitalized retort. “What did the rogue mean: rebuffed
again?
Did something happen last night you did not tell me about?”

Servanne was grateful for the need to touch the flame of one candle to the wick of another before there was enough light to see clearly through the gloom. To buy another few moments, she tipped the second candle and dripped the hot wax onto the stone, making a secure seat for the base.

“Nothing happened. We walked. We talked. He tried to convince me he was in England on an honourable mission for Queen Eleanor—no doubt to gain my support for whatever other heinous crimes they intend to commit before they are all caught and hung. Aside from that …”

Biddy’s eyes were as bright as polished steel and twice as keen when it came to parting half-truths from outright lies. Servanne was hiding something and she had a fairly good idea what it might be. The girl had not blushed so much since her wedding to Sir Hubert, and then only for as long as it took her to realize a bride’s bed was not made of rose petals, nor a man’s attentions necessarily as rewarding as all their grunting and sweating might promise.

“Curiosity is a curious thing in itself,” Biddy said, deflated by the knowledge her lamb might somehow be suffering a malaise not able to be leeched out or cured. “It tempts us all to do the things we know can only harm us the most. Rarely does anything good come of knowing what lies beyond the bend in the road. Rarely do we like what we find when we dare to take it, but by then, it is already too late to turn around and retrace our steps.”

“Must it always be so, Biddy?” Servanne asked softly. “Is there no risk worth the taking?”

Biddy came quietly up behind her. “I would be the first to agree he is a handsome beast, my lady, but a beast nonetheless. He will have no use for you once the deed is done—the challenge for his kind is in the pursuit, not the surrender.”

Servanne stared at the heart of the candle flame, her eyes stinging, her breath dry in her throat. Biddy was right. No good would come of knowing … well … of
knowing.
It was odd and unfair that a man who was a beast should be so much more of a man than she had ever encountered before … but there again, what good would come of knowing?

   What good would come of knowing, Friar wondered as he stood near the edge of the embankment and waited for Gil to belt the last of his washed, sodden garments into place. Dusk was well on its way to becoming night and there was little to distinguish between shadow and tree. Gil had finished the filthy task he and Sparrow had been set to and nearly ran all the way to the Silent Pool to strip and scour away the stench and slime of the privies. Judging by the haste with which he dressed, Friar suspected Gil had marked the glowing approach of the horn lantern as it shifted and throbbed through the trees. Friar had brought it as a precaution, not against a twisted ankle or misjudged footfall, but out of deference to Gil’s sharp eyes and quick bowhand. It was not wise to be a shadow moving among shadows, not in these woods, and more particularly not when Gil Golden was out of sorts with all mankind.

Friar stepped out into plain view and raised the lantern above his head. “I thought I might find you here. Sparrow …?”

Gil shrugged. “He will probably stew in his own juices a day or two longer to punish us all.”

Friar spared half a smile and set the smoking lantern down on the rock. The light it emitted was minimal, and not so dramatic out in the open as it had been in the heart of the forest darkness. The thin sheets of pressed horn that guarded the weak flame from draft produced a glow the colour and pattern of cobwebs where it was flung across the stone. Everything it touched took on the pale colour of ash—everything save the bright, coppery sheen of Gil’s hair.

“You will catch your death of a cold in those wet clothes,” Friar remarked, noting how the linsey-woolsey and the deer-hide shed fat droplets with each move Gil made.

“I have survived worse.”

“So you have. Moreover, I can see this newest escapade will only bolster your already considerable estimation of your abilities.”

The golden eyes flickered up angrily. “I am not a child needing a lecture from you, good Friar.”

“Your behavior last night would argue the point.”

“My behavior,” Gil spat, starting to push past the other man, “is none of your concern.”

“It is when you take unnecessary risks to threaten not only your own life, but the lives of every man in camp. Gil!” He reached out and grasped an arm as the master archer strode past, but the leaner and lither Golden whipped around with a curse and yanked his arm free.

“Would you be here having this motherly conversation were it anyone else but me?”

Friar absorbed the curse and the anger without batting an eye. “You are not any other man,
Gillian.
And if you were, I would hasten to suggest our vaunted leader would not have been so lenient on you as he was. It was a damned stupid thing you did to go off on your own, and you know it!”

“I can take care of myself,” Gil seethed, cinching the belt so tightly around her waist that Friar could not help himself from glancing down at the small, firm breasts where they jumped into prominence. “Do you not forget: I joined this troop and lived as one of you—fought as one of you …
killed
as one of you when it was necessary, for several weeks before any of you were the wiser.”

How could Friar forget? Gillian had concealed her secret well, coming among them as a man, sharing the rugged duties in camp as well as on raids, her skill with the longbow winning unreserved respect and admiration from the rest of the men. It was Sparrow who had uncovered the ruse, and Sparrow who, oddly enough, had been her staunchest defender when the vote was placed before the others whether to allow her to stay or to send her away. The daughter of a local bowmaker, her knowledge of the area had been a strong point in her favour. Her unabashed and single-minded hatred for Nicolaa de la Haye had not hurt her cause either.

Friar had simply been relieved to know he had not been affected by his early years cloistered with monks who slipped back and forth between each other’s chambers in the dead of night. He had been fighting an attraction for “Gil” since the outset; discovering she was a woman made it a good deal easier to accept, although at times, relief aside, Gillian’s bold bravado made him want to take hold of her and shake her until her teeth rattled.

“I am well aware of your abilities to protect yourself,” he said, taking a firm grip on his patience. “But because you prefer to dress like a man and can wield a bow and arrow better than any soul alive—it does not make you any less inviolate to the cut of a swordblade. For Christ’s sake, woman, you could have been caught by Wardieu’s men. You and Sparrow both could have been dragged before the Dragon and used as fodder for his rage. Think you he would have spared you D’Aeth’s skill with iron tongs and hot coals? Think you Nicolaa de la Haye would not have recognized her own handiwork?”

Gil lifted a hand self-consciously to the scar that ran the length of her left cheek.

“It has been more than five years,” she said in a hushed voice. “The Bawd cannot possibly remember every face she has had plied with brands … there have been too many.”

For several long moments Gil wrestled with the spectre of her memories while Friar wrestled with the desire to take her in his arms and demand to know what had caused so much hatred to build inside her. It was not just the branding—a hideous enough reason in itself, for with her flame-coloured hair and her smile (when she dared show it) as wide and bright as a summer day, she would have been a rare, exquisite beauty. To Friar, all the physical perfection in the world could not have rivaled her courage, her pride, her strength of spirit. If he could just convince her of this, draw her out of her anger long enough to see she need not be alone in her suffering …

What then, he wondered. What good would come of it? What manner of promises could they make to one another when the probability of surviving another sennight was not even guaranteed?

“We all walk about with ghosts and demons on our shoulders,” he said finally, breaking the silence with a sigh. “At times I confess to a pressing need myself to throw back my head and bay at the moon. But then I think: What good would it do to turn as savage and bloodless as those who would only rejoice to see the work they have done in bringing us so low?”

“It would feel good,” Gil said flatly, coldly. “It would feel as good for me to see my arrow pierce the iron tankard of De la Haye’s heart, as it must have felt for you when you plunged your knife into the breast of the Bishop Mercier.”

“The situation was different,” Friar said slowly.

“Why? Because it was done in the heat of the moment while the girl he was raping and mutilating was still bleeding on the altar before him? Or because you, Alaric FitzAthelstan, were born of noble blood and it was the
noble
thing to do, to avenge the girl’s death?”

“I did not feel noble doing it,” he said quietly.

“But would you have felt human
not
doing it? Could you have lived with yourself? Could you have lived with the guilt of doing nothing to avenge her death?”

Alaric knew the answer even as he saw the hard glitter of satisfaction in Gil’s eyes. He reached out and grasped her by the shoulders, squeezing hard enough to cause the water trapped in her shirt to seep through his fingers.

“At least I did not keep the burden of pain to myself. I shared the guilt and the horror, and by doing so, was able to find peace within myself again.”

“There will be no peace for me until Nicolaa de la Haye is dead,” Gil insisted. “Just as there will be no peace for the Wolf until he sees the Dragon lying dead at his feet. Yet I do not see you cautioning him to make peace with himself. Nay! I see you doing everything in your power, risking everything you say you so solemnly hold to value … to help him in his quest!”

His grip tightened further. “I would help you too, if you would but let me.”

“I … do … not … want … your … help!” she fumed. “I do not want anyone’s help, only God’s—and then only to keep the aim of my arrow straight and true.”

Friar held the resolute stare for another full minute before he thrust her away with an explosive “Bah!” of frustration. It was no use. She was as stubborn as a mule and twice as thick-headed.

“Sparrow is not the only one who spites himself by thinking to punish the rest of the world. The stench of your self-pity would rival his any day, and I leave it to you gladly!”

Gil watched him stride out of the dull halo of light. He was almost to the edge of the fern-covered slope before she cried out and took a step after him.

“Alaric … please! You do not understand.”

“No,” he said, halting, his back still to the lantern light. “I do not understand. I have tried, Gil. God knows. But a man can only slam his head against a stone wall so many times before he realizes the one will give long before the other, and he should waste his efforts elsewhere.”

“I have never encouraged your … efforts,” she stammered.

“No. But they have always been yours for the asking.” He climbed up the slope and was swallowed in the darkness, leaving Gil Golden a black silhouette by the inky waters of the Silent Pool. He did not hear the tortured gasp that was his name, nor did he see the shining wetness of the tears that began to flow down her cheeks.

12

Servanne spent the next two days diligently avoiding all unnecessary contact with the Black Wolf. It was not a difficult goal to achieve since he had elected to stand guard throughout most of the first day, and had led a small party of men out to determine where the sheriff’s men were searching the forest. On the second day, he took Gil and two others out hunting and returned with a large buck, which was more than enough to replenish their food supplies. In the evenings she was forced to sit through the repeated mockery of a formal meal, but there again, she found him so preoccupied with other matters as to be generally uninterested in sparring with her.

Mutter and Stutter, the twin minstrels, were assigned as her personal guards and she went nowhere without the pair of them bickering good-naturedly a discreet few paces in her shadow. Not that there was anywhere to go outside of the ruined gardens and the Silent Pool—neither of which held any appeal for Servanne with their associated memories. And not that there was any pressing need to visit either place, for the weather had turned sullen and miserable, the sky an oppressive mass of unbroken cloud, which periodically spit torrents of water down upon the mouldy buildings in an earnest effort to make the unpleasantness of their surroundings even worse.

The walls dripped constantly. The birds who had made the refectory arches their homes for generations, screamed and quarreled incessantly, and made walking from one end of the hall to the other a hazardous roulette of bird droppings. The fires smoked blackly and could not hold a proper flame long enough to generate any real heat or relief from the damp. The chambers were cold and musty, and stank of animal excrement and decay.

On the fifth day of Servanne’s captivity, the sky was once again blue, albeit seen through the hazy, misty vapours of the forest steaming dry. She ventured gladly out into the courtyard after her morning prayers, thankful to feel the heat of the sun again on flesh that had grown wrinkled and clammy from dampness. The other members of the Wolf’s camp greeted the sunlight with the same enthusiasm and immediately went about setting up targets to practice their archery, quintains to sharpen the aim of lance and sword, and cordoned squares where men stripped to the waist and wrestled one another to stretch the lethargy out of cramped muscles. Even the huge war-horses were taken through their paces. The constant thunder of hooves and the trembling of the ground underfoot made one wonder if the crumbling masonry could withstand the abuse. But it held, apart from the odd startled stone, which was more than could be said for the field outside the main gates. It was left churned and pitted and trampled as if there had been a great battle fought on the common.

“It is just like being part of a tourney or a fair,” Biddy remarked with grudging admiration. “These scoundrels certainly do know what they are about.”

She was making a specific reference to Gil Golden, who had taken up a position at the far side of the courtyard, her back straight as a rod, her long legs braced apart, her bow prepared with such loving precision it could have been an extension of her own limbs.

“Now, my lady, you will see …” Mutter began.

“… a fine entertainment,” Stutter finished.

“For Gil Golden has no equal with a bow …” “… although Sparrow tries daily to prove the claim false.”

“Think you, brother, one day he might succeed?” Mutter asked, his frown suggesting the question was of the utmost importance.

Stutter’s brows mirrored the concern. “Oh, nay, brother. As clever as our Sparrow might be in some ways, his faerie powers hold no sway on Gil’s bow arm. Watch.”

In the courtyard, Gil nocked an arrow and let it fly, sending it straight to the heart of the target—a small canvas sack filled with kernels of corn. The sack hung from a branch that grew over the wall at the opposite end of the monastery grounds, a distance of perhaps two hundred yards.

“Paugh!
Where’s the challenge?” Sparrow demanded, sighting the skewered target from under the visor of his hand. “I could hit it myself, blindfolded.”

Gil lowered the bow and glared at the little man. “Your best is not my worst, and well you know it, Puck.”

“We will see about that,” Sparrow snorted and scampered across the courtyard to chase down the target. He loosened the string at the neck of the sack, spilling all but a spoonful of dry corn out onto the grass. Reduced in size to a boll no bigger than a child’s fist, Sparrow rehung it and, for an added test of skill, gave it a heave so that it careened back and forth like a drunken pendulum.

“Now, Master Boaster,” he shouted through cupped hands. “Earn your keep the hard way.”

Gil tracked the erratic pattern of the swinging sack for as long as it took to draw an arrow from her quiver and notch it to the bowstring—all of two seconds. She drew and snapped her fingers to release the arrow, then without waiting to see if it struck home, drew, nocked, and fired another.

Sparrow, standing alongside the swinging target, let off a startled squawk when the arrow struck at the widest point of the arc, impaling the sack to the wall a mere two inches from his pugged nose. The second arrow,
hissssing
so close upon the fletching of the first as to make the sound of their flights unbroken, was a stomach-lurching inch closer and carried away a lock of tightly curled brown hair in passing.

Gil’s grin was shared by every member of the band but one. With his eyes as round as his gaping mouth, Sparrow hastily retrieved his bow and quiver and scurried off into the tangle of the gardens, leaving gales of laughter following in his wake.

“Serves him right,” Biddy chuckled. She had not forgiven him his many sins of mischief-making—sins which had grown increasingly inventive in the close confines caused by the poor weather—and seeing Sparrow run in a circle, his ear tingling with wood-burn did her bosom a good turn.

Servanne was only partly attentive to Biddy’s gloating. Two new combatants were taking their place in the courtyard, drawing eyes and ears away from other activities as if the world had suddenly shrunken to a circle twelve feet round.

Friar and the Wolf were testing the weight and balance of their swords, the naked steel glinting in the sunlight as both men shrugged aside the precaution of using leather guards for the blades.

“Now, this should be worthy of a stopped heart or two,” Mutter confided to Biddy.

“Indeed,” Stutter added earnestly, “they have come close on occasion to stopping their own.”

“In the beginning, of course …”

“… Friar was no match for milord, not in strength or skill. But now …”

“… they are so evenly matched, the blades must cut close to the veriest edge of peril in order to declare the winner.”

“Peril in a pig’s bladder,” Biddy declared, glaring at the twins. “Surely the blades are dulled and the intents feigned.”

“Oh no,” Mutter assured her. “They draw blood quite regularly.”

“Tis how the men exchange their money back and forth, wagering on who has the meanest look in the eye that particular morning.”

“Today, methinks it is Friar,” Stutter added confidently. “He looks better rested.”

“He does look sleepy,” Mutter agreed, fishing in his tunic for a copper coin. “Too sleepy to oust milord.”

Stutter produced a copper of his own and the two sat happily clutching their wagers as the opening feints of the match began.

Servanne was compelled to glance up from the bits of straw she was absently plaiting in her hands. She had not formed any preferences, one way or the other, for any of these so-called outlaws, but of the lot of them, the Friar seemed the most considerate, the most genteel and levelheaded. If not for the way he flaunted his disdain for the church, and for the lingering humiliation of having believed him to be a real monk, Servanne might almost have admitted a fondness for his wit, his charm, and most notably, his ability to hold his own against the Wolf’s arrogance and broodiness.

So it was, she watched and cheered secretly to see the Friar’s blade draw some of that blood from the Wolf’s bravado.

At first, he looked to be entirely outmatched against the Wolf’s brutish power and prowess, but with the opening cuts and slashes, it became quickly evident that what Friar lacked in muscle, he made up for in speed. The two men struck and lunged, thrust and feinted. Steel clanged and shrilled, the metallic clash of swords echoed within the walled confines of the courtyard. Beside her, Mutter clutched at Stutter’s arm when the Wolf’s blade came streaking down in a silvery arc, the light flaring along the polished surface as it met the Friar’s blade in a jarring impact. They both gasped and added their cheers to the others as the Friar pivoted on the heels of his feet, avoiding a slicing sweep across his flanks with barely the width of a prayer to spare.

Cords of muscle bulged and rippled in the Wolf’s arms. Beads of moisture slicked his brow and temples, darkening the unruly locks of chestnut hair where they whipped and lashed against cheek and throat. He wore only a loose-fitting shirt of lincoln green over his deerhide leggings; heat and concentration had already caused the cloth to cling in damp patches to the vast slabs of granite that bunched across his shoulders and chest. His hands gripped the sword as if they were born to it, wielding its power smoothly, effortlessly, never once breaking tension in the wrist or upper arm.

Servanne’s hands fell motionless on her lap, her throat was suddenly as dry as parchment—an oddly disturbing contrast to the rest of her body, which seemed to be drowning under a deluge of liquid warmth.

She had indeed tried hiding away in her chamber, pleading illness and fatigue to avoid his company, but not seeing him at all was somehow worse than having only the company of her memories to contend with. Memories could not be refuted, only embellished. His hands, his lips, the tempered hardness of his body … If he was there, in the flesh, she could always find things about him that annoyed her and thus enabled her to use her anger and contempt to defend against the frequent lapses in vigilance.

Mon Dieu
, how she burned with shame each and every time she found the Wolf’s smouldering gaze upon her. How she ached with the knowledge of where his hands had been and what they had done. What did he think? What did he remember? Could it be one tenth … one hundredth part as devastating as what she agonized over each time she drew a breath or released it?

A resounding shriek of metal slicing along metal startled Servanne’s thoughts back to the sun-drenched courtyard. The two antagonists were crouched and stalking in a slow circle, their swords gripped double fisted, their faces tensed into murderous grins. There was blood dotting the Wolf’s sleeve and a row of cleanly severed thongs hanging where the front seam of his shirt had once been bound together. Sweat sleeked his hair; it streamed down his face and neck, and glistened from the breastplate of dark hair that clouded his chest. His flesh was undoubtedly hot. Steaming. Salty.

Servanne cleared her throat and sat a little straighter on the wooden stool. She was aware—acutely aware—of a heart that beat too fast, of blood racing too quickly and too warmly through veins that ran alternately hot as fever, cold as ice. A knot of tension sat in her belly like a fist, growing and twisting upon itself until it seemed to be sapping the strength from her limbs as well as draining it from her chest.

Out in the courtyard, the two men rose up like rampant lions, their bodies clashing together, their blades crossing one over the other, locked in a tremendous outpouring of raw energy. The Wolf snarled an oath questioning Friar’s ancestry, and lunged mightily to throw his adversary off balance. Friar feinted to the left, his sword arcing off the Wolf’s with enough force to create a shower of sparks. Two clean, blunt strikes later and the blades crossed again, grinding in a screaming weal of flashing silver to lock again at the hilt guards.

“A draw?” Friar suggested through his clamped teeth.

“The third this month?”

“Fourth. But one I fear may be too violent for the more faint-hearted in the bower.”

The gray eyes flicked to the shade of the ancient yew. Servanne’s pale face registered first as a blur, then as a glaring, fundamental mistake any bowed-legged page should have been able to see through. But before he could correct the error, Friar had already taken advantage of the distraction to hook a foot around the Wolf’s ankle and thrust forward with his full weight. The two crashed heavily onto the ground in a churning cloud of dust and cartwheeling swords, and, when the curse-laden air cleared, the Wolf was flat on his back, his neck forced to an impossible arch by the biting tip of Friar’s dagger.

“Declare it, my lord!” he gasped triumphantly.

“An unfair win,” protested the Wolf.

“A win nonetheless. And by the same tack you used to best me but a month ago. Declare it, by God, or forfeit the need to shave for a week.”

The Wolf laughed. “A fair win, you black-robed bastard! Now heave off me, and give a shout for ale, else we both die of thirst before we have a chance to celebrate properly.”

Coughing with laughter and the effects of their strenuous bout, Friar collapsed beside him on the scuffed earth. The Wolf was grinning with genuine pleasure, for he was not one to grudge a man his due, and Friar had indeed come a long way from being the soft-eyed, soft-voiced acolyte he had rescued from a death cell seven years ago.