Lady de Witt was confident. “We will tell them that we have not seen you,” she said. “It is a simple thing, truly. Your bodies will be long gone by then. There will be no trace.”
So she had it all planned out. Outrage seemed to be outweighing Elizaveta’s fear in the face of such utter madness. “How could you think to kill people who have nothing to do with your imagined grudges and insane fantasies?” she demanded. “How do you know that it is not your husband who is dead right now? My husband is a de Winter, a much-decorated knight who serves directly under Edward. Your husband is nothing against him!”
Lady de Witt’s lip flickered with a snarl and her pale face went ashen. “We shall see, East Anglia,” she said. “After I kill you, I shall send your body back to my father and he shall rejoice in your death. With you dead, East Anglia will become his. The House of de Mandeville will be prestigious once again!”
Elizaveta’s fury had the best of her; fury and a strong sense of self-preservation. She knew that Lady de Witt meant everything she said; therefore, Elizaveta knew she had to defend herself. Shoving Daniella aside, she ran for the hearth where a heavy, sharp poker and a shovel were leaning against the wall. Picking up the poker with both hands, she rushed at Lady de Witt, swinging the poker wildly.
The fight for her life began.
Lady de Witt was caught off guard by the weapon that was longer, stronger, and heavier than the knife she carried. Within the first few swings, Elizaveta managed to knock the knife out of the woman’s hand and Daniella, spurred by the battle for their very lives, rushed forward to pick it up. She managed to grab it and toss it away as Elizaveta began to beat Lady de Witt on the head and shoulders with her fire poker.
The tables had turned. As Lady de Witt screamed and tried to protect herself, Daniella ran for the heavy iron shovel near the hearth and, together with Elizaveta, beat Lady de Witt furiously until the woman was unconscious. Even then, Elizaveta pummeled her, terrified the woman would rise up again, but Daniella finally put out a hand to stop her frenzied attack.
“Elizaveta!” she gasped. “She cannot get up! She cannot hurt you now!”
Elizaveta heard Daniella’s words but she was still in a world of panic. She crowned Lady de Witt on the head twice more with the iron poker before coming to a halt. Even then, she wielded the poker like a club as if daring Lady de Witt to rise again.
“Where is the knife?” she asked breathlessly.
Daniella looked around the room in a panic, finally spying the knife over near the stairs that led to the lower floor. She rushed to grab the weapon.
“I have it,” she told Elizaveta, holding the knife up like a trophy. “But what about the servant girl in the kitchen below? What if she tries to kill us, too?”
Elizaveta was trembling with fear. She didn’t trust anyone at this point and especially a servant who had closely served Lady de Witt. Wielding the poker defensively, she waved Daniella with her.
“Let us find that woman,” she said. “I’ll not worry about someone else charging me with a knife.”
Daniella was fearful, and timid somewhat, but she complied. With her shovel in one hand and the knife in the other, she followed Elizaveta down into the kitchen where the servant woman, not surprisingly, was cowering in a corner of the kitchen, having heard the screaming from the floor above her head. It didn’t appear as if the servant had any intention of picking up where her mistress had failed, but Elizaveta would take no chances.
The young girl with brown teeth was terrified as Elizaveta forced her to sit and had Daniella tie the girl up with big strips of hemp that was used to rack up meat and hang it from the ceiling. By the time Daniella was finished, the servant girl had no chance of escaping, wound up in hemp that had been tightly tied behind her back.
With the servant neutralized, Elizaveta and Daniella made their way back up to the floor above where Lady de Witt was still laying in an unconscious heap. For a moment, Elizaveta and Daniella paused to look at the woman, determining what to do next.
“We must get out of here,” Elizaveta finally said, turning the poker on Lady de Witt and poking around in her apron. “Find the key to the gate, Daniella. She said she had the only key and it must be on her somewhere. We must make haste from this room.”
Handing the knife over to Elizaveta, Daniella set the shovel aside, dropped to her knees next to Lady de Witt’s unconscious form, and rummaged through her apron pockets, finally coming up with several old, iron keys strung upon a small rope. As Elizaveta stood guard over Lady de Witt, Daniella rushed to the locked iron door and tried several keys before coming to the one that would open it.
“The gate is open!” Daniella said with relief. “But what of Lady de Witt? Do we simply leave her here?”
Elizaveta nodded. “We will lock her and her servant in,” she said. “They can stay here and rot for all I care.”
Leaving Lady de Witt in a pile on the floor, Elizaveta took the poker, the knife, the iron shovel, and the keys and quickly left the room, locking it behind her. Then, and only then, did Elizaveta and Daniella breathe some sighs of relief. Their attacker was caged, the threat against their lives were over for the moment, and there was a great deal of comfort in that. In fact, Elizaveta nearly collapsed with it.
“God’s Bones,” she gasped, looking at Daniella as the woman was slumped against the wall. “I cannot believe what just happened. Did that woman really just try to kill me?”
Daniella nodded, her face pale and her lips quivering. “She did,” she said. “Sweet Jesus, she did! What did she mean about the de Mandevilles and East Anglia and why she would send your body back to her father? It was pure madness!”
Elizaveta nodded, handing Daniella the iron shovel so the woman could keep it as a weapon if needed. “Many years ago, my ancestor killed a de Mandeville ancestor and inherited the Earldom of East Anglia because of it,” she said, still breathless. “The de Mandevilles have been trying to kill us ever since. But who knew that there was a de Mandeville here at Spexhall? They live in Suffolk, of course, but they have been known to keep to themselves. I simply cannot believe one was here at Spexhall, waiting for me to fall into her trap. I must find Drake immediately! We must leave!”
Daniella didn’t argue with her; she didn’t much like this place, either. Elizaveta ran though the stairwell room and out into the entry where the big, iron door was cracked open. She yanked at it with Daniella’s help, pulling the door open enough to slip through it only to come face to face with a major battle in the bailey.
Swords and fists were flying as Drake’s men did battle against de Witt’s significantly smaller forces. Blood was already being spilled and there were dead and dying men littering the ground. Shocked and terrified, Elizaveta and Daniella shoved the door closed and Daniella fumbled with the keys until she found the one that locked the heavy entry door. Together, they moved back through the entry room and into the room beyond that had the table, the big hearth, and the spiral stairwell. They peered through the locked grate that sealed up the room where Lady de Witt still lay on the floor. The woman hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Hurry,” Daniella urged. “Let us lock this door and head upstairs where we can lock ourselves in until this madness is over.”
She started to run up the stairs but realized that Elizaveta wasn’t following. She was still staring at Lady de Witt.
“Elizaveta?” Daniella called to her, softly and urgently. “Hurry and lock the other gate. Let us go to safety.”
Elizaveta heard her, but still, she didn’t move. Her focus remained on Lady de Witt.
“What safety is there?” she asked Daniella. “We will lock ourselves in a room with no food and no water. We could easily starve to death should de Witt somehow emerge victorious. Nay, we must stop this battle, Daniella. We must stop it and we must be the victors. I think I know how.”
Daniella came off the stairs, her expression torn between fear and curiosity. “How?”
Elizaveta turned to look at her. She didn’t
say anything for a moment and that lack of an instant response terrified Daniella. Having led a rather protected life as a de la Rosa female, Daniella had never been exposed to any manner of conflict and she’d certainly never been exposed to someone trying to kill her. But she had the innate de la Rosa instinct for survival, something that was bred into the very fabric of their family, so she was more than willing to listen to Elizaveta’s plan once the woman started talking.
Soon enough, she knew what they were in for.
*
Even though they were a larger force, the surprise attack against Drake’s forces had initially put them at a disadvantage. Because de Witt’s men were heavily armed, Drake lost six men right away to axes and swords, but very quickly, Drake’s men gained their weapons when they realized that their hosts were, in fact, trying to kill them. When that awareness dawned, the real fight began.
Drake, Cortez, Devon, and James plunged into the battle with daggers and small weapons only at the onset. Their broadswords and bigger weapons were in their personal possessions, which were with the provisions wagons for safe keeping as Drake’s men set up the shelters. At the point of them entering the fray, it was hand-to-hand combat in the worst way, men trying to stab or kick or punch each other, each man trying to assert dominance over the other.
Drake plowed into the group, grabbing de Witt’s men by the hair, pulling heads back to slit throats with the only weapon he had, a small dagger, until he could get to Lespada, buried in its scabbard and wrapped up in his rain cloak. Even so, his big fists and razor-sharp dagger did a great deal of damage as he pushed his way through the group, and he wasn’t halfway to his destination against the south wall when he realized that he literally had blood all over him. It covered his hands, splashed on his mail, and smeared up onto his neck where the ends of his hair had been wetted with blood and then it had brushed upon his skin like some macabre painting.
But the blood, the death, didn’t matter because Drake wasn’t one to overanalyze an event. He didn’t particularly worry about what was happening, or why; he only thought about what needed to be done in order that he should emerge alive and victorious. That was his mindset in battle. After retrieving Lespada, his usual concern would have been to find de Witt and kill the man for his treachery, but this battle was different – he had Elizaveta to worry over now and it was a struggle not to allow that panic for her safety to overwhelm him. He couldn’t be sure that the fight was only outside the castle; for all he knew, his wife was in danger on the inside of the castle and that was where his thoughts were focused. He had to get into the keep, and to Elizaveta, as if nothing else in the world mattered to him. He feared for her safety above his own.
But it wasn’t such an easy task to retrieve Lespada. There was a good deal of nasty fighting going on even though Drake’s men clearly outnumbered de Witt’s men. It seemed that they simply didn’t want to be subdued, so it was a bit of a struggle. At one point, Drake saw Cortez engaged in a vicious swordfight with de Witt but he couldn’t pause to watch it. He finally reached his possessions, tucked into the back of a provisions wagon, and he unsheathed the mighty de Winter weapon that had been in his family for at least one hundred and fifty years, and probably more. The steel had been worked and reworked many times to repair it by the same family of smithies that had served the House of de Winter since the family had first come to England during The Conquest. Therefore, steel that had been worked and re-worked, forged more solidly every time, was so sharp and so strong that it could cut through a human body as easily as knife through butter. Lespada was a weapon to be reckoned with.
Drake took a moment to get a good grip on the hilt of his family’s sword. The hilt was big and heavy, originally a rather simple hilt, but over the decades, the eldest sons who had inherited it had added their own marks to the hilt, making it heavier, and a bit more elaborate, with more layers of steel. Drake’s grandfather, Grayson de Winter, had been the first to add a jewel to it and there was a massive sapphire at the very end of the pommel. Drake’s father, Davyss, had then added a massive ruby to one side of the grip and then Drake had added an emerald the size of a quail’s egg to the other side of the grip. Now, Lespada bore jewels, making it quite a masterpiece of sword crafting. But no matter how bejeweled it became, it was still a deadly piece of equipment which Drake was about to prove.
Lespada arched into the morning light, slicing through men and dominating any sword it happened to come into contact with. Being that it was over three feet long, it was hard to miss as Drake used it to remove anyone who stood between him and the keep. He was nearly through the writhing mass of men, which was starting to die down somewhat as his men began to restore order, when one of de Witt’s men undercut him with a dagger and sliced his chin and jaw near his left ear.
Furious, Drake dispatched the man, bleeding all over himself as he did so. He put his hand to the gash, feeling that it wasn’t too terribly deep, but he knew from experience that anything on the face or head would bleed profusely. As he held his hand against the gash in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding and headed for the iron door of the keep, a cry from above caught his attention. In fact, it caught everyone’s attention and when Drake looked up, he could see why.
A woman he didn’t recognize was hanging out of lancet windows overlooking the bailey. He could see her head and most of her torso and as he watched, Elizaveta stuck her head out of the window as well. He was gravely concerned to see his wife but that concern was swept with shock when Elizaveta put a very large knife to the woman’s neck. The woman howled and began weeping hysterically.
“Do you hear me?” Elizaveta bellowed in a tone Drake had never heard from a woman before. It was like a battle command. “De Witt, you will call your men off or I will kill your wife just as she tried to kill me and throw her dead body into the bailey. Do you understand me? Do it now!”
Drake, and nearly everyone else in the bailey, came to a halt out of sheer disbelief. But for Drake, there was something more to it. He was utterly terrified by what he was seeing but, at the same time, he was utterly awed. He simply couldn’t believe it. He heard a groan behind him, perhaps one of fear, and suddenly Devon was running past him.
“Dannie,” he moaned. “I must get to Dannie!”
Drake reached out and grasped his panicked brother. “Nay!” he commanded softly, putting an arm around Devon before the man could get away. “Wait, Dev… wait. Something is happening. Just… wait….”
Devon was looking up into the window that the women were hanging out of and he could catch a glimpse of his blond wife. It took him a moment to realize that she had the weeping woman by the hair, yanking on it firmly. Then he, too, was struck with disbelief at what was transpiring with the ladies. His sweet and lovely Daniella was being quite aggressive with the screaming woman. Devon’s mouth fell open in surprise.
Behind the brothers, de Witt emerged from the mass of men who were no longer fighting very much. Most of them seemed to be very confused with de Witt’s men looking to him for guidance. When Drake and Devon heard the movement behind them, of de Witt emerging from the fray, they turned to see the man walking up to them with Cortez following him, a broadsword to de Witt’s back.
De Witt was weaponless, bloodied, as his gaze was riveted to the window above where his wife was sobbing buckets of tears. He held up his hands.
“Do not hurt her,” he commanded weakly, as a man often does when grabbing for the last tatters of control in a situation. “I beg you not to hurt her.”
Elizaveta didn’t back down. “Then order your men to stop fighting,” she repeated. Then, her gaze moved to Drake as he stood there with blood all over the left side of his face and down his neck. Something in her face changed then; her jaw tightened and she poked the tip of the knife into Lady de Witt’s flesh, drawing blood. As Lady de Witt screamed in pain, Elizaveta roared with as much anger as she was capable of. “Look at my husband! Look what you have done to him, you brutal fools! I should cut this woman to p
ieces for what you have done to my husband!”
De Witt threw up his arms in a vain attempt to stop her. “Nay!” he bellowed, his voice cracking. “I beg you not to hurt her! She is unarmed!”
“That makes no difference to me!”
De Witt was trying to run at the keep but Cortez had him by the back of the tunic, preventing him from moving forward. “Please, lady, please,” he begged. “Tell me what you want of me. Tell me what you want and I shall do it. But do not kill my wife!”
Those were the words Elizaveta had been waiting for. We must stop this battle and I think I know how. She had known, indeed. She had planned on the fact that de Witt would do anything if his wife was in danger. Fortunately, her plan had worked, and Elizaveta considered his words a moment before backing off. Victory, for them, was in sight.
“Then ask my husband how he wishes for you to surrender,” she said. “Ask him now before I lose my patience.”
De Witt was trembling; Drake could see it when he looked at the man, standing several feet away. “Do what she says,” he told de Witt in a low tone. “Tell your men to drop their weapons.”
Shaken, de Witt turned to what was left of his fighting force and gave a curt command to disarm. Hesitantly, and still feeling the surge of battle in their veins, some resisted dropping their weapons while others let them immediately clatter to the ground. When Drake saw that his men were picking up discarded weapons and beginning to corral de Witt’s defeated men, he turned his attention up to Elizaveta.
“His men are surrendering, my lady,” he told her in a steady tone. “Bring your prisoner down here and release her to her husband.”
Elizaveta gazed down on him, her expression flickering with sorrow. “Are you badly injured?” she asked. “What have they done to you?”
He could see how concerned she was and it touched him deeply. He’d had women show concern for him before, but it had never mattered to him. But Elizaveta’s concern greatly mattered. He smiled faintly.