*
Tevin stood just outside the doors of the noble cathedral, waiting for Lady Penden to come out. Val and John waited with him, though they stood several feet away and huddled in quiet conversation. Since Myles had charge of the Steward and the young boy, Tevin appointed himself the lady’s escort. The entire Penden family needed tending this night and it was their duty, as knights and vassals, to see to it.
In hindsight, it probably hadn’t been the best idea to leave her alone with her husband in the cavernous cathedral, so cold and devoid of hope. It wasn’t long before he could hear weeping. He glanced over at Val, who merely shrugged her shoulders. Val felt more emotion than she let on at times, and he knew that she was intuitively sympathetic to Lady Penden. It was difficult not to be.
“You should not let her weep overlong,” Val said. “She has had three days of constant grieving. At some point, she must come to terms with it.”
“Three days for a lifetime of marriage hardly seems an outrageous price,” Tevin replied. “We have all known Brac Penden for many years, though we were not particularly close to him. He was a good man. Allow him his due, especially from his wife.”
“She will make herself ill,” Val said, more strongly. “You must remove her from the cathedral without further delay.”
The weeping was not easing. He thought it was getting worse. His sister had a point in not allowing Lady Penden to make herself ill. He didn’t need that on his conscience, too. In the distance, the funeral party was moving back down the road to the castle, anticipating the feast that was sure to follow. It would last all night. With some regret at having to force Lady Penden back to the event that would, in essence, be a celebration her husband’s death, Tevin pushed himself off the wall he was leaning against and turned for the cathedral entrance. He was surprised to see Lady Penden already standing there waiting for him, completely composed.
“My lady,” he greeted. “My knights and I have waited to escort you home.”
“My thanks,” she said, her tone slightly stuffed from all of the crying. “Where is my son?”
“De Lohr took him back to Rochester.”
She took a deep breath, looking up into the new night sky. A million stars winked back at her.
“Such a lovely night,” she murmured. “’Tis hard to believe the night could be so lovely during a time like this.”
Tevin motioned to his men, one of whom brought around the lady’s small gray palfrey. Cantia continued to stare up into the night as if oblivious to all else. She was struggling to put the tears aside, struggling to conduct herself as the wife of Brac Penden would. She finally glanced down, noticing the horse.
“If you do not mind, my lord, I would rather walk,” she said.
His eyebrows lifted. “Walk?” he repeated. “If it would not be too taxing on you.”
“Not at all. I love to walk.”
“My lord,” came a stern voice from one of the knights. “’Tis not safe to walk these roads. We must make haste back to…”
Another flick of the wrist from Tevin not only silenced the knight, but had the horse disappear. It was blatantly clear who was in command. Without another word, his knights spread out around them, staying to the edges of the road, in front and behind, well out of earshot of the viscount and Lady Penden. They were silent protection for the apprehensive walk back to the castle. During uncertain times like this, the night could harbor all manner of threats and there wasn’t one man who did not take this lightly. To walk out in the open, with enemy conflicts all around them, bordered on the foolhardy.
But Tevin said nothing to that effect. The lady had been through enough and if walking brought her comfort, so be it. One of his men brought up his charger, a red beast with flaming eyes, but he waved the horse away. He would walk, too.
“Thank you for your kindness in arranging my husband’s funeral,” she said as their steps fell in unison along the dirt road. “I am most grateful.”
“It was the very least I could do, my lady,” he said. “Warring times are hard on us all, but not too hard that we should forget our civility and manners.”
She was silent as they continued to walk. The three-quarters moon overhead cast an eerie glow over the landscape, ghostly beams shimmering off the River Medway in the distance. It was, in fact, a lovely night.
“May I ask a question, my lord?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She started to speak but caught herself. He looked down at her to see what was causing her such difficulty.
“What is it?”
She shrugged. “I want to phrase this correctly so that you will not take offense.”
“My lady, nothing you can say would offend me. What is it?”
She looked at him, then, her lavender eyes haunting in the moonlight. “If I ask you this question, will you promise me a completely truthful answer, my lord?”
“I am always truthful.”
She cocked her head slightly as if debating the validity of that statement. “Very well,” she said. “This is something I must ask, for my own sake. I fear that I have been lied to in order to spare my feelings.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I want to know of my husband’s last moments. And I do not want to be spared any detail. Were you with him when he died?”
Tevin hadn’t expected that question, but he wasn’t surprised by it. “I was, my lady.”
Her lovely features tightened. “Then you spoke to him before… before he passed on?”
“I did, my lady.”
Her jaw began to tick and her expression turned to one of frustration, sorrow. “Perhaps I am being foolish, my lord, but one of my biggest regrets is the fact that I did not have a chance to say farewell to my husband before he died. Certainly, I saw him off from the castle the day of the engagement, but I was not at his side when he died and….” Her lower lip began to tremble and she wrestled for her composure yet again. “You were there when he died. Perhaps you can tell me how he looked, what he said. To hear it from you would be to have been there.”
Tevin didn’t dare look at her. He could feel himself folding like an idiot, succumbing to both her tears and her wishes. Usually he was far more resolute, a paragon of strength when all else around him crumbled. But there was something inanely pathetic and touching about Lady Penden and he could not help himself.
“My lady,” he said after a moment. “This has been a trying day. Perhaps this is something we should discuss at a later time.”
She shook her head, firmly. “Nay, my lord. I would discuss it now. I… I cannot explain why I must know this, but I believe I must hear it in order to overcome my sorrow. Or at least deal with it. As it is, everything feels open and hanging and… meaningless. Will you not tell me?”
He thought a moment, looking off into the night, mulling over the intelligence of such a move on his part. He tried to phrase it as delicately as he could, as honestly as he could.
“As we were riding up on the Dartford Crossing, we were ambushed,” he said quietly. “I do not believe there were many men, just enough to do damage. They stayed to the trees and fled once their arrows had been fired. Brac took two arrows right away, both to the chest. But he stayed mounted, giving orders and following his men into the woods. By the time he reached the perimeter of the trees, the enemy unleashed another barrage of arrows and he was struck in the belly. That one was enough to topple him from his horse, and that was where we caught up to him.”
Cantia remained silent, staring at the ground as they walked. When she did not reply, he continued.
“It was clear that his wounds were mortal,” his voice grew softer. “Myles was the first one to him, with the rest of us close behind. He tried to remove the arrows, but Brac would not let him. He knew it was hopeless and did not want to waste the energy fighting the inevitable. When it was evident that his time was short, Myles collected him into his arms and called him brother. We reaffirmed our love and respect for him. Brac s
poke of the greatness of England he would never live to see, and of the beautiful wife and son he would leave behind.”
She emitted a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob, but she held her ground. “I know all of that,” she said hoarsely. “Were the wounds painful?”
“He was shot in the chest and in the belly. I would imagine so.”
“Was it really hopeless? Had he allowed Myles to remove the arrows, do you think he would have lived?”
Tevin came to a halt, facing her in the moonlight. She was an exquisite creature, even in the dark. “Nay, my lady, I do not,” he said quietly. “The wounds were mortal the minute the arrows pierced him. There was never any chance.”
She gazed at him, steadily, her lavender eyes filled with tears. “Tell me the truth,” she whispered. “Was it horrible? Did he suffer greatly?”
Tevin stared at her. He should have stopped himself from telling her, but he didn’t. Until the day he died, he did not know why he simply didn’t shut his mouth. “It was horrible.”
She sobbed and the tears fell. Filled with remorse at his lack of control, he reached out to grasp her arm in a comforting gesture. But she shook her head sharply and pulled away before he could touch her.
“Nay,” she whispered. “I… I am all right. I will be fine. Thank you for telling me the truth. It means a great deal.”
He watched her resume her walk down the road. With a heavy heart, he followed.
CHAPTER FOUR
The viscount’s army rode out before sunrise. Cantia knew this because she had been awake all night, staring into the hearth of her bower and wondering how she was going to survive the rest of her life. It wasn’t simply grief she felt. It was loneliness for her husband’s presence. His clothes were still strewn around the room where he had last left them. An old pair of boots lay haphazardly at the side of the bed. She missed his teasing, his joy of life, and his tenderness when he touched her. She missed everything.
Hunt had slept in her bed, placed there by Myles an hour or two before dawn. The boy had fallen asleep in the knight’s arms, sitting in the great hall with him and the other warriors and listening to them tell great stories of battle. It had been the perfect diversion for him and a chance for Cantia to collect her thoughts. But instead of bringing comfort, her thoughts turned dark and miserable. Life was an ugly thing now. If only for Hunt, she would have to do her best to struggle through it.
It was still dark outside when she watched the army depart from the bailey. There were a few soldiers left behind to man the gates and the watchtowers, but for the most part, the castle was empty. It was less than ten miles to the Dartford Crossing, an area once controlled by her father before his passing two years prior. Now the fiefdoms of Dartford and Gravesham had passed to the baronetcy of Gillingham and, consequently, Charles Penden. Someday they would belong to Hunt. She hoped he would be as fine a baron as his father would have been.
She remained in her chamber as the day progressed. Hunt ran in and out with George on his heels, hurting with his father’s passing but displaying the resilience only children are capable of. Brac’s death would not set in for a long time yet, when the days and months passed and Hunt realized his father was never coming home. That was the finality of death. Right now, it was a concept and nothing more.
Time seemed to have little meaning as the sun moved across the sky. Cantia’s gaze was fixed outside of the lancet window, her thoughts lingering on the past where Brac was the center of her world. She was not yet ready to accept that her world was forever changed. Perhaps it was still too soon. Perhaps she was not a good, sensible wife in not accepting that change immediately. She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was living in limbo, dulled by grief and uninterested in what went on around her.
Hunt’s chamber was across the hall. The doors to both bowers were open, allowing the child to flow between the two. He was hungry at some point and Cantia left her chair to take him down to the hall to request food. The servants moved around her quietly, whispering in the shadows of their sorrowful lady. She knew that they were speaking of her in hushed tones and it inflamed her, but there was naught she could do about it. Most of the servants had been at Rochester since before she had arrived and they had watched her and Brac’s life together. They knew how badly this was affecting her.
One of the older serving women finally took pity on her and took Hunt outside in the yard to play. Between Hunt’s shouts and the dog barking, the hall was abruptly silent as soon as the child left the keep. It was, in fact, dissonantly quiet. Cantia sat at the table she had shared with Brac so many times, feeling his ghost all around her. Instead of comforting her, it brought anxiety. She fled the hall for the safety of her bower.
She had sought peace. Instead, she found even greater ghosts. In the large chamber she had once shared with her husband, the sensations were heady and cloying. The room smelled of him and she couldn’t shake the sensation of desolation. She had tried so hard to keep the agony at bay, but it was stronger than she was. It began to overtake her. Small sobs turned into body wracking sobs, which transformed into physical pain. Eventually there was so much pain that she couldn’t stand it. Gasping for air, she caught sight of the small, lady-like dagger that Brac had purchased for her when he had visited York. It sat with some of her other valuables on her dressing table. She stumbled over to it, picking it up to examine the delicately bejeweled handle, remembering how Brac had taught her how to wield it.
Sobbing, she dragged the razor-sharp tip across her wrist lightly. It was enough to create a small red line across her flesh. She had hardly felt it. She wondered if a deeper cut would hurt more. She wondered if Brac would be angry with her for being so weak.
She pointed the tip at her wrist again. At the precise moment she planned to thrust it deep, a herald sounded from the parapet of Rochester’s walls and the small crew of soldiers began to run about in a frenzy. The noise distracted her. Cantia forgot about the dagger and went to the window, watching the returning army approach from the west. The sight should have brought her joy, but it did not. The last time the army returned, it was with Brac’s body.
She went back and found the dagger.
*
The contingent holding the bridge at Dartford had been considerably larger this time around. Consequently, there were quite a few injured, some of them severely. The battle had been brutal and close-quartered, hand-to-hand combat that had exhausted everyone.
The returning army made haste to get inside the ward of Rochester so that the gates could be closed and fortified. A few hundred exhausted men functioning as archers were sent to the walls. Rochester was under lockdown with the opposing army on the approach. A battle was in the air, though the men in charge of Rochester’s defenses were confident in her abilities to hold fast. No one had ever breached her.
Myles had command of the walls, while Simon Horley had charge of the ward and men on the ground. Charles wandered between the two locales creating more trouble than helping. The man still wasn’t right in the head and most everyone ignored him. But the command of Rochester had to be divided because Tevin was else occupied. Val had been knocked from her charger and had taken a serious blow to the ribs. Tevin had carried his sister, literally, the entire way back to Rochester. He was, at the moment, only concerned for her and little else. He had to trust the defense of the castle to his dependable men.
The great hall was quickly transformed into a surgeon’s ward, though they had no surgeon. Cantia had always performed most of the healing duties with the exception of when she gave birth to Hunt and Brac had summoned a physic from Canterbury. Even then, she thought to tell the man how to do his job because healing was a skill she had worked to acquire. When Tevin burst into the hall supporting an injured knight, the servants moved into action. It took some coaxing, but they managed to take the wounded comrade from the viscount and lay him upon the ground. The next step was to find Lady Penden.
When the servants vacated in search of water,
medicaments and the lady of the keep, Tevin was left crouched next to his sister. He tried to remove her mail but didn’t get very far. He had to lift it over her head but couldn’t manage to do so without causing her excruciating pain. So he gave up for the moment, waiting for Lady Penden to appear. Several long minutes passed until his anxiety was at a splitting level. He could no longer wait. He turned to go and find the lady himself but ran straight into Hunt.
The boy had been standing silently next to him, a wooden cart in one hand and something that looked like a toy ballista in the other. His blue eyes were wide on the knight lying on the floor.
“Ith he hurt?” he asked.
Tevin nodded. “Aye,” he didn’t want to have a conversation with the boy. He wanted action. “Where is your mother?”
“In her room,” the lad replied. “How bad ith he hurt?”
“Bad enough,” Tevin snapped before thinking. He saw Hunt’s expression at his tone but he could not manage to calm himself. “I must go find your mother.”
“She hath locked the door,” Hunt said, almost casually. Then his voice picked up. “Do not worry. We shall give the knight a grand funeral if he dies.”
More wounded were being brought in all around them. The more serious were placed near the hearth, while those who were still conscious were moved to the walls to be out of the way. Tevin left the boy standing there and made his way to the narrow stairs that led to the third floor. Just as he mounted the bottom step, a frail-looking servant came barreling down as if to knock him down. The old woman’s face was taut.
“My lord,” she said. “The lady… she does not answer. Her door is locked and I cannot get in.”
Tevin did not understand why that was so urgent, but he moved around the woman and took the stairs to the next level. There was a small landing and two doors. One was open, with a small bed inside and toys strewn about. A big yellow dog lay sleeping on the bed. Tevin tried to lift the latch of the second door, which was indeed locked.