Part 5 (1/2)

The rain continued to pound on the roof of the hall, and large puddles formed below the steps. John de Chandos leaned against the doorjamb, staring out at the dark and dismal night.

It was late, well past vespers. He'd been to confession, for all the good it might have done his soul. The quiet hour had come and as he could not sleep, he paced the great hall listening to the sounds of a stormy night.

Chandos was deeply troubled. For three days he'd scoured the land between Bramber and the coast, searching the gullies and crevices for his missing wife, certain that she had long since fled England. He'd ordered the search to appease his sons. The minute Bella had turned up missing, Sir John had believed she had fled to her father in Calais.

When her horse had been found wandering in a wheat field adjacent to Cissbury Ring, her sons had raised an alarm.

Robin had reasoned their mother would have gone straight to Winchelsea where grandfather Saint Pierre attended market regularly. Geoffrey argued his Maman would never have left her Arabian mare in England. It went without saying that Isabella cared more for her palfrey than her sons.

Since he knew his sons reasoning was true, John had ordered the search. Until the moment he'd looked down into that blasphemous pit, Chandos had not dreamed his wife would be found in England. What he'd felt then and moments later when he discovered the scandalous manner of her dress was righteous anger, blind rage and indignant fury.

He had ordered Robin out of the pit so that he alone would be there to strip away the gold and jewels some unnamed lover had gifted upon her. Her bare arms and legs had been an affront to his morality he'd not ever believed possible in a Christian country.

In those moments when he was alone in that pit with her, removing her heathen garments from her body, had he allowed even the slightest fragment of his temper lose from his iron-willed control, he would have crushed his wife's slender throat between his own bare hands. Had she dared to defy him at the well, that single thread holding his temper at bay would have snapped.

That was the reason he'd sought confession this eve. For twice this same day, he had envisioned his hands circling her throat. In the scriptures that he tried to live his life by, St. Matthew had written ”he who so much as looks with l.u.s.t at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” John acknowledged that he had contemplated the mortal sin of murder, but it shamed him to envision such a cowardly means out of his troubles.

When the bloodl.u.s.t had raged the strongest in his veins, his wife had submitted to the dousing of four buckets of well water. s.h.i.+vering, cold and humbled, she had said not one word against him. Not until he had wrapped her in the rough blanket had she lifted her eyes to his.

Those beautiful orbs had been so full of fear, hurt and confusion, that they had cut him to the bone. Dear G.o.d, he prayed, I once loved this woman.

Her beauty continued to stir his deepest l.u.s.t. It astounded him that she had the power to wound him after all these years.

When she had leaned against his naked chest in her tub, he had burned to possess her with a desire more consuming than any he had felt since becoming a man. The war of his own emotions regarding his wife was a hard and bitter cross for a man such as he to bear.

Few souls remained in the hall, dicing and drinking. Sir James and loyal old Neville, Chandos himself, and Owain, the Welsh bard. A motley crew at best. Abruptly, Chandos spun in the doorway and strode across the hall. At the high board Chandos reached for his horn. Owain picked up his harp and inquired pleasantly, ”A song, my lord, to while away the time?”

”Nay.” John dismissed the bard with a wave of his hand. Neville stood as the bard did, excusing himself to post his watch. The old French knight and the Welsh bard departed together, leaving Chandos alone with James Graham.

Sir John dropped to a vacant seat, reached for the pitcher of ale and filled his empty horn. Graham refused more ale, asking, ”Do you wish to be alone?”

”Nay.” Chandos shook his head. ”G.o.d must have some purpose in mind by giving me this cross to bear though I cannot fathom it.”

”You speak of Isabel?” Graham pushed his tankard broodingly back and forth across a puddle on the table.

”Aye.”

James cleared his throat. ”I thought her dead.

I mean, when I looked in that pit, she seemed to have no life left inside her. I did not realize she was alive until I saw her standing before you at the well.”

”You think it would be better if she had died?” John de Chandos asked grimly.

”Oh, aye, I suppose I thought that. She's managed to make life a h.e.l.l on earth for most of us here,” Graham said without charity. ”The little respect I do grant Isabel is beholden to my friends.h.i.+p to you, Chandos.”

”She is still my wife.”

”Oh, aye, and she is a danger to your sons. What kind of woman vows to slay her own child?” James Graham lifted his large Nordic head and met Chandos' dark gaze head on. ”Only a mad one, my friend.”

”Aye.” Chandos nodded. ”And therein G.o.d asks us to forgive madness and treat those so afflicted with pity and kindness.” He tossed his ale down his throat and cast the empty horn onto the trestle. ”Sleep well, my friend.”

Chandos stood, tall, straight and powerful as if by force of his will he could remove from his frame the strain that threatened to cripple him.

Graham rose to his own feet. He tasted the bitterness permeating this house and felt his friend's hurt so deeply, that his hands clenched impotently at his sides. What could any man do when saddled by a mad wife?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR.

-6.

The door burst open suddenly. Bella jumped to her feet with the quill in hand, swallowing a jolt of fear only to feel absolutely foolish when only the cat sauntered in.

Too relieved for words, she sank back onto the seat and realized she'd splattered ink all over the floor. Horrified that the beautiful oak planks would be stained, Bella looked about for something to clean with and couldn't think of what to use. There wasn't any tissue or paper toweling or handy bottle of 409 to spray at the blotches. She had no idea where any rags were kept. All she could think to use was a piece of parchment.

She knelt and scrubbed at the splatters with a leaf of vellum. The ink had a strong viscosity, the parchment, an absorbancy factor in the minus fifty range. The stain only smeared.

Resourcefully, she thought of using the inside hem of her dark overdress to remove the ink from the floor before the stain set. As she concentrated on that task, her nose twitched, catching the scent of something different--woodsy and potent. She lifted her head to look at the door, then nearly jumped out of her skin.

Sir John stood in the wide open doorway.

”What are you doing, Bella?” he demanded.

”Cleaning ink that I spilled,” Bella offered lamely, feeling the fool to be caught on her knees, scrubbing up a mess in so shameful a manner as to use the inside hem of a dress she had been given to wear. Someone else's dress at that.

Lord Chandos' dark head c.o.c.ked to one side as if puzzled. ”Why didn't you call for a servant?”

”Ah, the door was locked.” Bella staggered awkwardly to her feet, embarra.s.sed.

”Nay, 'twas not locked.”

”Yes, it was so,” Bella insisted. ”There's some guy out there opening the door every time somebody wants in.”

”They are footmen, that's their job, to open doors. Did I order a lock put on the door, no one would come in and you certainly would not go out.”

Now, it was Bella's turn to c.o.c.k her head to one side in puzzlement over Sir John's reply. She approached him with some caution, saying, ”But I definitely heard a lock click.”

”Clique?” he echoed. ”What do your friends have to do with the door being locked or not?”

”No, the sound, click, like...” Bella made the sound with her tongue imitating the sound of a lock closing. He gave her a strange look, as though she babbled nonsense. Bella stepped past him and peered out the door.

The two footmen stood there as blank-faced as store mannequins. While she had head and shoulders out the door, she took a second look at the well-lighted solar. It was as spa.r.s.ely furnished as the king's bedchamber.

Stepping back, she focused all of her attention on the tall knight. Again, she found him strikingly handsome in a troubling way with strongly contrasted features, black hair and blue eyes that a woman like her could melt under the intensity of. He was much too tall, muscular and powerful to suit her. He certainly had not shrunk any since their last encounter.

If anything, in the gloom of the king's bedroom, he looked more sinister than he had when she'd opened her eyes in his arms that morning. It certainly didn't help her opinion of him that he came armed with both a broadsword and dirk strapped to his hips to visit her.

The dark mustache snaking around his mouth reaffirmed her first impression of him as a dangerous man. That thought was compounded by the fact that she knew only clean-shaven men--in the Twentieth Century. It was clearly up to her to elicit from him any sort of good will that he might be willing to extend to her.

”All right, I was wrong. The door wasn't locked. Don't those men have something else to do? Don't they have wives who would like to have them home for the night? I think I'm capable of answering the door myself.”