Part 2 (1/2)
He looked up at his father's most trusted friend and saw that his face was as hard as Sir John's when a squire tarried overlong fulfilling an order. Neither knight was known to repeat an order a second time. Robin dropped the coin.
It plopped into the water and a Kennedy half-dollar disappeared into the silt of time.
”...le plus ill.u.s.tre chevalier du monde...”
BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN.
-3.
England, 1346 A damp, chilly wind struck her face. Bella kept her eyes shut tight against it, burrowing back inside the coc.o.o.n of soothing, comforting white light. She wanted no part of the vivid colors swirling round the softening edges of her haven. Inside the halo of white she was safe and unafraid. Beyond the white, there was mayhem, turmoil and pain.
Her shoulder sc.r.a.ped against something solid. She sensed many strange and unpleasant things--the smell of wet wool, the feel of slippery mud, the sour aroma of sewage, the absence of clothes and shoes, and the familiar-from-childhood motion of a galloping horse.
There was more, a man's strong, sure arm supporting her as she slumped against his chest, her head nodding with the steady gait of the horse, rubbing against the man's chin.
Bella opened her eyes cautiously, scared and unsure of what she was going to see. A rainbow flashed into her eyes. Reds, indigos, s.h.i.+mmering yellows, sparkling greens all danced before her unfocosed eyes. Her vision lacked clarity, depth and precision. Her eyes registered only blurred, shapeless colors. Weakly, she lifted her lids more and began the painstaking task of focusing upon the world beyond the void surrounding her.
Directly before her loomed a pair of black pointed ears and a flying mane. She had no trouble processing that. Lifting her chin, turning her head slightly, both eyes confronted thick leather reins gripped by black gloves. No, she blinked twice. Those were not gloves, they were iron studded gauntlets!
Bella swallowed. Was that chain mail sheathing the arms rising from the gauntlets? For some irrational reason she needed an immediate answer to that question. But the effort it took to move any part of her body was phenomenal.
She ached as if her bones had been crushed. Sore fingers tangled in the wool and merely turning her head sent agonizing pains rippling across her neck and shoulders. She had to settle for what judgments her eyes could make.
A chainmail hood encircled the rider's face and shoulders. The first glimpse Bella had of his dark, hard, and ruthless face caused her to cry out, ”Good G.o.d Almighty, who the h.e.l.l are you?”
His left hand clamped onto her twisting shoulders, crus.h.i.+ng her against his iron-clad chest. ”Be still,” he growled.
”Put me down this instant,” Bella demanded.
”Madame.” One corner of a black mustache that draped his mouth, lifted in a disdainful curl scant inches above her eyes. ”Do you value your precious white hide, keep your tongue behind your teeth. Think you I care who witnesses my justice? Force my hand if you dare. Tu pense votre fils.”
Think of her son. Bella jerked, instinctively looking for Iain beyond the knight's ma.s.sive shoulder.
Riders followed closely on a mud-bogged road battered by rain. The huge drops that pelted the linkage covering his shoulder splashed into her eyes, making her flinch. She remembered...Iain was dead.
What macabre joke was this rider playing? Where was Ari? Where were Lewes and the ruins? Why did she feel as if she had been beaten to death?
Sinking into the scarlet wool, Bella closed her eyes. She acutely felt the cold and chilly wet and her throbbing head couldn't fix on any solid, tangible thought.
The blast of a horn forced her to half raise her eyelids, looking for the car that tooted. There were no cars, only a continuation of a muddy trail leading to a gatehouse fronting a castle. Amazingly, a drawbridge was lowering before Bella's very eyes.
What is going on here? she thought numbly. Had she stumbled across a troop of actors filming a movie? How could she have done that if the last thing she remembered was a black hole in the ground at Lewes? If these people were actors, what was she doing with them?
That did not explain what had happened to her clothes or what she was doing in this man's arms. Nor what had him so p.i.s.sed off she could see muscles knotting in his jaw as he gnashed his teeth.
Thunder and lightning rolled across the forested hills beyond the castle. Bella thought, is this man crazy or what? Didn't he realize he could be struck by lightning riding about in a storm clad in so much metal? She wiggled in high discomfort against the harsh linkage of his chain mail. It poked and pinched her in places too numerous and personal to mention.
Bella swept the high walls for cameras and didn't see a one. The actor-knight slowed the horse to a jarring trot crossing the lowered drawbridge.
There was another wall of stone inside the first, higher, boasting towers at each corner. It all looked very real, not some Hollywood-created fantasy of painted plywood and scaffolding. Bella gulped and brought up one hand to tug a muddy clump of hair away from her cheek, but that hand stank worse than anything she'd ever smelled in her life.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Saints, what has happened to me?
Bella looked fearfully past the wool and the knight's linkage encased arm at the crowd milling inside the gate. Not one of them so much as blinked at her.
What was going on here? Why did everyone look so grim? Why did not one single person look her in the eyes? They had enough people about to play the battle scenes of El Cid. If they were making a film, where were the cameras? The lights? The director and a.s.sistants? Make up and wardrobe people?
The knight set his horse to walking at a very measured pace through a second gatehouse. Bella swallowed and said, faintly, ”This is not a movie set, is it?”
She watched as the whisker-shadowed hardness of his jaw set harder than concrete. There was a very ominous and dangerous feel to him. Bella clutched the edges of the wool tighter about her, intimidated by him more than by the sheer size and utilitarian scope of the inner castle ward.
Four cupola towers lorded over a bustling, busy estate where coopers, carters, blacksmiths, weavers, reevers, all went about their trades with concentrated industry. To the left, was a stone manor. Cathedral-like windows graced the manor's facade. It had all the appearances of a madrigal fair. The English, Bella had concluded thus far from her tour of the country, had a thing for period costumes and fairs. But this was carrying play acting to an infinite degree of realism.
Agog, Bella straightened considerably. Men and a number of women looked out every door and window, watching the knight make slow, stately progress through the ward. He halted the horse at an open, functioning well.
Men from the stables at the rear came running to meet him. But any man who happened to be outdoors or fully in sight of this forward rider, dropped whatever they were doing and put one knee firmly on the ground and their right hand across their breast in a salute as he had pa.s.sed--like the man was a king.
Bella didn't see a single tourist with a camera.
It was still raining, now just a steady continuous patter. The knight drew up the horse's reins. Two men in uniform black and tan livery took the horse's bridle and steadied it. A younger lad dressed in linen and knitted hose caught hold of the knight's stirrup so he could dismount, saying, ”G.o.d be praised, Sir John, you found milady alive.”
Sir John, not Your Majesty, Bella thought, watching the rest of the riders continued to the stable. A boy peeked out from underneath the drape of the second knight's cloak and stared at Bella with huge brown eyes, just like Iain's.
Bella jerked, startled enough by that child's face that she almost called out Iain's name before she remembered. Iain was dead. She sank weakly back against Sir John, hardly conscious of his arms supporting her. He pressed her forward, s.h.i.+fting his weight, dismounting.
Left seated on the horse, Bella forced herself to look toward the grinding noise made by the closing portcullis. She stared dumbly at it until the spiked iron teeth imbedded in the sand lining the floor of the gatehouse.
Her mind sluggishly grappled with a technicality--was she now a prisoner of this place? She gripped two things very tightly--the high pommel of the saddle and the wool that covered her body.
In time, she returned her focus to the black knight. The youth that had held his stirrup, now helped to divest him of his armor. While Bella had been completely caught up in the gatehouse, he had peeled away a mounting pile of chainmail, well used, sweat-stained leather, and quilted padding.
Stripped to a pair of tightly fitted black trousers and boots, Sir John turned to her. His hair was plastered to his head, black and shoulder length. He was tall, long boned, and solidly muscled, devoid of any softening layer of fat. Even shed of the armor, he retained a sense of absolute authority. A big man, yes, but more important was his aura of raw, unbridled power.
As Sir John reached up to take her down from the saddle, Bella finally looked at his face. His eyes were dark blue, unrelieved of any warming hints of green or gold flecks. Just blue, that betrayed no hint of emotion inside him.
Bella flinched as his hands tightened on her waist. She wasn't comfortable on the horse, but she knew she did not want to get down either. He wasn't giving her any choice, nor wasting words to explain what this was all about. His arms flexed, pulling her forward.
She clutched both hands into the wool, gasping as the pressure on her waist intensified. The slender column of his neck widened perceptively as he lifted her off the saddle. Set on her feet, Bella stared dumbly at his flat nipples, brown puckered islands in a light blanket of black hair.
Foggily, Bella tried to rectify earlier misconceptions. This man was not an actor playing at a part. He was living it. That made him dangerous. Very, very, very dangerous.
She had no curiosity about the fortress or the other people it contained or what purpose it served in this part of England. She was incapable of focussing her thoughts on anyone other than the knight.
Sir John dropped his hands from her waist as soon as her bare feet touched the ground. He looked at his own palms and fingers which were now coated with the same thick, stinking slime that Bella knew adhered to her body. The sensuous fullness of his mouth thinned. He returned his eyes to her and as they swept downward, the sneering curl of his lip intensified. That, only frightened her more.
He turned to the men gathering his armor onto a handcart and told them in French to fill buckets of water for him. Another he told to fetch a clean horse blanket.
Bella had no trouble following what he said as he accepted the first bucket and washed his hands. Her Alsatian grandparents back home in Texas still spoke the dialect indigenous to Alsac-Lorraine.