Torn (The Handfasting) (16 page)

The
roar that filled his lungs, threatened to escape. He swallowed against it,
punched at the solid wood poster of his bed. The wood cracked, Roland's hand
throbbed, but the shout was squelched. He drew in deep draughts of air,
released each one to slow measured counts. A trick he had learned on his
travels.

The
herbs crunched under his feet. He thought about his step-mother Hannah. She
would have used them, but not properly. Only Veri truly understood the use of
such things.

Veri.

Did
she know of the damage she had wreaked?  Dori would never be the same. His
sister Dori, so jolly and loveable,  now sullen and angry. Excusable.  It was
her husband Derek, Roland's closet friend, who Veri seduced to her bed. Once in
her bed, Veri lured Derek to murder.

Derek
died for his sins.

Veri
had not.

Locked
in this room with its thirty foot drop to the rocks below, a twenty-four hour
guard outside the door, she escaped.

Stories
were flung at him, asides and whispers, throughout the celebrations of his
return. Did he know of her powers?  Shape-shifting into a bird and flying away.
She bewitched the household guard, had them under her spell. She could make men
do anything . . . escape . . . murder . . . anything.

Roland
doubted both. His eyes shifted, glanced at the wall where the tapestry of a
boar's hunt, hung. He knew of the door hidden there. No one else knew of it,
not even his family. Only the lord and his heir would know of that route out of
the castle, to ensure against a family turned traitorous.

The
pacing stopped. He stood amid the jumble of herbs, his anger contained.

"Ulric!"
He shouted for his page.  Immediately, the boy popped his head around the door.
"Clean-up this mess. Then you can go to sleep."

"Yes,
milord." Ulric hurried with his task, as Roland prepared for bed.

He
would need his sleep before he set out on his quest. To hunt down his wife, see
she meet a fitting death, as gruesome as Derek's had been.

The
mess removed, Ulric gone, Roland slid under the sheets of his father's bed, and
slept as he slept the past ten years while on crusade, a dagger beneath his
pillow, a sword along his side.

How
long he slept, he was not certain but, he was awake, abruptly. To the silver
light of a near full moon and a fire burned down to coals and ash. He offered
no sign of wakefulness, one slight hitch of breath the only clue.

He
knew better.

Eyes
closed, he waited, to see if the creak of a door proved dream or reality. The
well oiled hinges of the chamber door would not make a  noise.

A
soft swoosh of stale air brushed his face.

Reality.

Rage
rode on his blood, hot and viscious.  

No
living soul, no person he cared to see, knew of the hidden entrance to this
chamber. Yet, it had just been breached from the far side of the moat, through
a tunnel both steep and slick.

Ten
years he'd been gone, not even back long enough to witness a sunrise, and the
treachery against his family reignited. This time it would be different. This
time his skills had been honed by years of the unholy, holy wars called
crusades.

He
almost smiled. Almost. But that would have alerted his intruders, told them he
was awake. Instead he mimicked the deep, easy rhythm of sleep, his lashes
lowered to hide the gleam of his eyes, as he studied the deep shadows of the
chamber.

There
was no shift in darkness, just a heavy, ominous silence. If not for the damp,
musty smell he could have argued the earlier noise imagined. But he knew
better, knew to wait and quell his thirst for immediate action. He counted
breaths, focused on them, aware that time had expanded to a place where moments
became hours.

When
it finally came, the carelessness of the move surprised him. The door pushed
open in one rash movement, rather than slight, silent increments. Footsteps
brushed the gravely dirt of the threshold, distinct enough that he counted nine
pairs of soft boots cross into his room.

Did
they truly believe he had survived a decade of perilous travel to fall prey
now?  Did they imagine that upon his return, he would fall back into the naïve
and gullible soul he had once been?  And he had been, to believe he could leave
his child bride behind and return to find an innocent virgin untouched by an
insatiably greedy and cunning world. He had allowed that small spark of hope to
linger in his heart until this evening.

When
the truth was put before him, he must have seemed a fool to think it could have
been different.

He
snorted, a sleepy sound, shifted, stretched, eased back as though in slumber.
The dagger and sword he had gone to bed with, now in hand.

The
merest hint of light allowed assessment of the room without notice. They had
filed in, one at a time, so the door would not have to be opened more than the
width of a body. As though the first rasp of hinges would not have woken him.

The
nine of them huddled within the entrance, shrouded from head to toe in black
capes. Their whispers reached him, low indistinct murmurs, as they divided with
the soft shuffle of feet. Three crossed to the door, four toward the raised
alcove on the far side of the room. Two stood near the tunnel entrance, until
one of them separated, moved, without cloak or weapon, to the bed where Roland
lay.

An
innocent approach. Roland knew too well the deception of innocence.

Still,
he waited.

One
step, two steps, the intruder drew near, almost aligned with Roland when he
stilled, looked over his shoulder. One misguided movement and the dupe handed
over any chance of control.

Roland
leapt naked from bed, his attack so swift all was accomplished before the echo
of his mighty war cry could fade. With one arm he pinned his victim against his
chest, a dagger to his throat. His other arm stretched out, sword at the ready,
to defend against approach. 

Short
of leg, the captive stumbled as Roland forced him to step backward until they
stood with the stone wall at their back. A well-orchestrated move, it gave the
knight both hostage and freedom to attack. From this vantage he could judge the
room and the people within it.

A
battle waged at the door to his chamber. Ulric outside, alerted by Talorc's
shout, fought to force his way in. Three caped figures struggled against
Ulric’s strength as they wrestled to bar the door with a wooden beam. If they
managed to slide it into the iron slot, they would effectively lock Ulric out
and Roland within. With great effort, they gained the advantage.

Roland
watched it all, and assessed the danger that confronted him.

The
three by the door were too weak and fumbling to be a concern. Their capes
quivered with their fear. The figure before the fire stood tense and erect,
perhaps on the brink of escape. Certainly close enough to the tunnel to get out
unnoticed, if Roland allowed it.

He
would not.

There
was a second three-some, much like those who had battled Ulric for the door,
huddled fearfully within the windowed alcove. Separate from them, yet within
the same alcove, stood another, deep within the night's shadow. This one stood
observant, with no quivering sign of any emotion beyond curiosity. This one
drew his caution. The greatest adversaries were those whose sense over-road
emotion.

The
strangled croak of his name from the man in his hold, pulled Roland back to his
captive.   His knife had cut far enough into a fleshy neck to bring a fine line
of blood to the surface. Easing the pressure, Roland looked to the man’s face.

God’s
teeth!

Galvanized
by horror, Roland thrust the man away. As he did so, a collective wail filled
the room. The other intruders spun away, their capes billowing like kites full
of wind. One moment he had been surrounded by assailants, the next they turn
their backs?  He stood armed for attack and they offer him their most
vulnerable side? 

What
fools!  What bloody useless fools! 

Nothing
made sense, nor did it offer the release Roland so desperately craved. He
needed the revenge, to exorcise the demons within him.

He
wanted to avenge his father's death.  Retaliate against the turn of a winsome,
eerily intelligent child to the snares of the devil.  He wanted to thrust his
sword, slice with his knife, draw blood and prove that he was not a weak
gullible fool.

 “Friar
Kenneth!” He roared at the one familiar element in this bizarre scene. “What
the devil is happening here?”

Trembling
badly, the friar dabbed his throat. Roland’s scowl deepened.

He
wanted to tear apart any and everyone who had brought him to this pit of
hatred. He wanted it now, though he hadn’t known how brutal his fury was, until
he faced the one man who would not allow such vengeance; the one man who could
force Roland to face the anger, to soften the hatred.

It
was the ugliest irony of fate.

“Your
timing is pitiful,” he accused.

“Yours
is much better, had I been your enemy.”

“Perhaps
you are,” Roland suggested. The portly friar eyed him sharply, before shaking
his head with a weary sigh.

“It
is true then. You have been much hardened by your ordeal.”

For
a mere moment, Roland’s eyes widened in disbelief. It was a flash of reaction
before he shuttered his expression and leaned against the stone wall behind
him.

“I
am no harder than the experiences your God has thrown to me.”

“My
God?” The friar questioned, but didn’t expound. Instead, he looked toward the
other intruders, noticed their backs. Even in the meager light Roland could see
the man flush.

“Perhaps,”
Kenneth suggested, as he now dabbed at beads of sweat upon his forehead leaving
little smears of blood from the cloth that had staunched the bleeding of his
throat, “if you would dress, we could discuss our reasons for descending upon
you in this manner.”

Roland
looked down at his naked state and frowned. Were the clergy so modest?  Those
he met on crusade had not been, but it mattered not to him. He reached for a
robe, shrugged into it as he looked toward the others, then back at Father
Kenneth.

There
was something in the friar’s discomfort, the decided embarrassment, that sent
Roland’s mind scrambling back to moments before; collective gasps, turning of
backs, the struggle with the door beam, the small stature of his captives.

As
awareness dawned his mind slung it back as absurd, until he could no longer
deny the evidence.

“You’ve
come to my room with an army of women?” He asked in disbelief.

Father
Kenneth reached for the heavy cross that hung from his neck. “Aye, the sisters
of Our Lady’s Convent.”

“You
bring nuns to my room?” Still Roland could make no sense of the matter as his
gaze raked over the scene before him, “and in secret?  Using a passage that my
family knows nothing of?  As though women such as this could not be met within
the hall, and with respect?”

With
an explosive shudder, the wooden door to Roland’s room was rammed from without.
Barred from the room, Ulric tried to break through. “Hold free!” Roland barked.
“Hold free Ulric, I am in no danger!"

The
hall would have filled with the first of his warriors cry. The whole of the
castle would be on the other side of that portal.

"They
have locked you in, m'lord." His page argued.

"Aye,"
Roland rolled his eyes, "it took three of them against one of you, and you
are no more than a tyke. I am safe, so desist. It is naught but the friar and
nuns.”

Silence
hung ominously in the air. Roland glared at Kenneth. The friar hesitated
patting softly at his cross, before he offered, “we’ve come to speak of your
lady wife.”

Like
a storm, the stillness shattered into roiling shards of life, arrows of ice
propelled by Roland’s voice. “Lady wife?” He tilted his head in question, “I
have no lady wife. No,” he leaned back against the poster of the bed. “The only
woman in my life is a murdering whore who hides behind a worthless marriage
document. Though she is no virgin, our bodies never ‘joined.’  The union was
not secured.”

“Roland!”
Kenneth warned but the knight refused to listen.

“What
is it you have to say about this woman?  Has she stolen from the convent?  Has
she murdered any children?  Turned to sorcery?” Fueled fury carried him away
from the friar, three great strides before he spun back. “What could she have
to do with you?”

He
stopped, stood, sucked in deep draughts of air. He tried, unsuccessfully, to
calm himself.

“Speak!”
His bristled command burned with the sting of anger. But Father Kenneth said
nothing, as if waiting for the fury to burn itself out.

A
man of small stature, round at the center, Kenneth’s brown hair encircled his
bald crown much like a halo, in keeping with his benign countenance. With no
fear for his own safety, he reached up to rest a hand on Roland’s shoulder. A
touch to calm, to ease tensions, much as he had done when Roland was a boy.