Chapter Twenty-One

Someone was calling her name.

In a deep sleep, someone was calling her name in a dream. Caledonia. She could hear them but couldn’t see them. It was a male voice that she thought might be her husband, so she began to hunt for him in her dream. She was eager to see him, looking for him in the mist.

Caledonia!

It was louder this time. It felt as if it was right in her ear. In fact, it was so loud that it jolted her out of her sleep. She opened her eyes to a dark room except for the fire in the hearth that gave off some illumination—enough for her to see that there was someone else in the chamber with her. For a moment, she thought it was Thor and sat up with a gasp of delight, the cobwebs quickly clearing away. She was halfway out of bed before she realized that it wasn’t Thor.

It was someone else.

Her eyes fixed on a living nightmare.

“Good,” Rotri said. “You are awake. You and I must speak, Callie.”

It took Caledonia a fraction of a moment to realize that her uncle was very real and standing in her bedchamber. When the awareness settled, she pealed a scream and threw herself to the opposite side of the bed, hysterical in her panic. She screamed again when she saw him move toward her, and she jumped over the bed in the opposite direction, rushing for a small alcove where she knew Thor kept some weapons. He had them in the keep, in the armory, in the hall, and a half-dozen other places around the castle because that was simply his way. He was always prepared for a fight. But Rotri caught her as she dashed for the alcove, and in her panic, she grabbed the nearest item—not even knowing what it was but seeing something in her periphery on a table—and smashed it right over his head.

Rotri was rocked by a blow from a broken pitcher as Caledonia darted into the alcove and made a grab for a dagger.

Shaking off the bells in his ears, Rotri was right on top of her.

“Stop!” he commanded, trying to force her to release the dagger. “Let go before you hurt someone!”

Caledonia was almost incoherent with terror. She tried to slash at him and managed to clip his right wrist, but he nearly broke her fingers forcing her to drop the dagger. As it clattered to the floor near the hearth, she screamed again and pulled away from him, running to the far end of the chamber, on the other side of a big table, and contemplated her next move.

Rotri stood near the alcove, inspecting the cut on his wrist.

“Now,” he said decisively. “That will be enough of that. I did not come here to fight you.”

Caledonia’s breathing was coming in sharp gasps. “How did you get in here?” she demanded. Then she started smacking her hand on the table in a loud and commanding gesture. “Get out before I kill you!”

Rotri shook his head. He stood there, looking at her with both contempt and impatience, before sighing heavily and looking away. He appeared strangely weary as he sat down in the nearest chair, which was next to the hearth.

For a brief moment, the chaos in the room stilled.

It was quiet.

For now.

“Nay,” Rotri said after a moment. “No more killing. There has been enough killing this night. Your cousin is dead, Callie. God help me, my son is dead.”

She hadn’t expected to hear that, so it threw her off guard a little. “Dead?” she repeated. “Domnall?”

Rotri nodded. “Domnall,” he confirmed. “So is your husband. That is why I am here.”

Caledonia sucked in her breath, her eyes widening. “Thor?” she gasped. “It’s not true!”

“It is, I’m afraid. Killed in an ambush.”

Those words hit Caledonia as heavily as a blow from a battering ram. She actually stumbled back, slamming into the wall, her hands flying to her mouth to hold back the hysterical screams.

“Nay,” she breathed. “Nay, it cannot be. It is not true!”

She went from whispering the words to screaming them all in a split second, shouting at him as Rotri put up a hand to quiet her.

“I told you that it is,” he said. “Your husband rode out to defend Millford, but my knights killed him. Now we must speak about your future, Lady Stafford.”

Something happened to Caledonia at that moment. Thor is dead? She knew she shouldn’t believe her uncle, but on the other hand, the only way he would be here, in a chamber with her, was if Thor was unable to prevent it.

Dead.

My husband is dead.

And with that, Caledonia started to scream. Her hands flew over her ears and she sank to the floor, screaming loudly enough for the entire castle to hear. Knowing this, Rotri ran out to the landing and locked the door at the top of the stairs to prevent anyone from entering to see what was amiss. It cut the floor off from the stairs. He didn’t need any do-good soldiers trying to rescue Lady Stafford or, worse, the woman named Nica, as Janet had described her, interfering. He needed Caledonia’s attention and was going to get it, because he had plans for the woman.

Finally, he had her where he wanted her.

“Callie, stop,” he commanded as she huddled on the floor and screamed. “Do you hear me? Stop!”

She heard him, but she couldn’t. She was in a quagmire of grief, deeper than anything she’d ever known, and her screams were meant for her husband to hear, wherever he was. Thor had to hear how badly she was taking the news because, in the short time that they had known one another, a love had been built that could not be broken. Not even by death. Perhaps her screams were meant to bridge the veil of death, to reach out to him to convey the depth and strength of the love between them.

He had to hear her.

But… oh, God… the pain.

Eventually, Caledonia fell over onto her left side and the screams faded to gut-wrenching sobs. Rotri had made his way over to her by this point, frowning as he gazed down upon her. He wasn’t very tolerant of emotions or weakness. Infuriated, he pulled up a stool and planted himself on it as he yanked her into a sitting position.

“What is the matter with you?” he demanded. “Why do you weep for a man you were hardly married to? A man who was forced upon you?”

Caledonia couldn’t answer him. She was leaning against the stone wall, her face turned away from him as she wallowed in grief.

“Answer me,” he said. “Why do you carry on so for a man who simply married you out of greed?”

Caledonia suddenly lashed out a foot and caught him in the face, sending him toppling off the stool. “It was not out of greed!” she cried. “You are the only greedy bastard I know, and that is exactly why you are here! Greed has driven you to persecute me for the past two years, you vile son of a whore. Get out of here and leave me alone!”

Rotri wasn’t bleeding, but it had been a good kick. Rubbing his sore nose, he reclaimed his stool and slapped her in the face when she tried to kick him again.

“Do not kick me,” he warned. “The next time, my response will be more painful, so stop behaving like an animal and listen to me.”

“Nay!” she shouted as she managed to squirm away from him and get to her feet. Sick, exhausted, and overwrought, she staggered away. “Get out of here, Rotri. I do not want to hear you.”

Rotri stood up, tracking her as she stumbled out of his reach. “You have no choice,” he said steadily. “You are going to listen to me because I have come to claim my due, something you have denied me since birth.”

“I haven’t done anything!”

Rotri cocked his head. “Untrue,” he said. “Constantine was the first. He is the one who truly stole my inheritance, but then you came along. You were a worthless female until your brother and father died, and then you became the heiress of everything that should have been mine.”

She was over by the hearth now, glaring at him with tears and mucus streaming down her face. “I did not ask for it,” she said. “I did not want it. If you want to blame someone, blame the king. Blame the laws. But do not blame me, because I never wanted it.”

Rotri rubbed his sore nose again. “Be that as it may, it is yours,” he said. “But I have waited long enough. You will marry Cristano so he can assume the earldom of Stafford, and he will give me Tamworth. I shall have what blood right should have given me long ago.”

“Cristano?” Caledonia said with horror when she realized that was whom he intended to marry her to. “De Lucera?”

“Do you know another Cristano?”

“I will not marry that bastard and you cannot make me!”

“You will do as I tell you.”

As the tears fading, a sense of self-preservation took hold. If what he said was true and Thor was dead, there was no way out for her. She was to be pushed from marriage to marriage because of her value as an heiress and nothing more. She was, once again, a commodity. Déchet, Robert had called her. She was back to being rubbish. From the days of heaven with Thor, it was back to the endless hell she had always endured.

But she wasn’t going to endure it any longer.

“Nay,” she said after a moment. “I will not do as you tell me. You are not my lord. You are nothing to me but a greedy, conniving fool who has lived in the shadow of my father his entire life. You are worthless, Rotri. You will never have Tamworth because I am not going to let you have it. Once and for all, you will not have it.”

With that, she bolted for the nearest lancet window, scrambling into it. The walls were thick, so every window had a wide ledge or even a stone seat. In this case it was a wide ledge, and before Rotri could stop her, she was clinging to the frame of a window that was high above the side of the motte. The plunge below, by the time she hit the ground, would be thirty feet or more. If the fall alone didn’t break her neck, then the roll down the steep motte would surely finish her off.

Rotri could see that quite plainly.

“Nay!” he shouted. “Wait! Callie, wait!”

But Caledonia was pushing herself out of the window, barely holding on to the stone frame. “You will not have anything,” she repeated, the tears returning. “The earldom of Stafford and Tamworth belongs to a de Reyne. It no longer belongs to the House of de Wylde. Therefore, if I die, Tamworth will revert to the Crown and you will be unable to get your filthy hands on it. Stafford belongs to my eldest daughter, but that isn’t something you care about, thank God. You only want Tamworth, and I am going to put it out of your reach for good.”

Rotri knew better than to try to grab her. All she had to do was loosen her grip and she would fall from the window. She would do that rather than let him get a grip on her, he was certain.

The tables were turning.

Now, he was the one panicking.

“Please do not jump,” he pleaded. “Let us speak calmly. If you do not want to marry Cristano, then… then you do not have to. Please, Callie. Let us be reasonable about this.”

The tears were coursing down Caledonia’s face. “There is nothing to discuss,” she said. “My husband is dead. You have told me this. Is it true?”

Reluctantly, Rotri nodded. “I ordered him killed.”

She winced when she heard the words, feeling the shock and pain all over again. “Then you have murdered a good man,” she murmured. “It is true that the king forced us to marry. He did not want to do it, nor did I, and I went through great lengths to prevent it. But once I came to know him a little, I realized that he was a fine man. He was kind and considerate. He was attentive. He was everything I had been missing in my life, making me feel more loved and honored in just the short time we were married than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I cannot face the prospect of life without him. I do not want to try.”

“Callie, please—”

“Nay, Uncle,” she said, cutting him off. “When you ordered him killed, then you murdered me, too. I will not let you taint his memory with your greed and deceit. Why men like you continue to live and men like Thor are allowed to die is something I must ask God when I see him, for I do not understand any of it. I do not understand why He allows such terrible things to happen. He sent me an angel only to take him away? He will have to explain that to me.”

Rotri had his hands up in a supplicating gesture. “If you jump from the window and kill yourself, you will not be allowed to see God,” he said, trying to use doctrine to get her out of the window. “You will not even be allowed to see Thor. You will suffer in the sulfur lakes for eternity. Think about what you are doing and understand the consequences.”

That brought Caledonia pause. She, too, knew that church doctrine preached against suicide. But this wasn’t suicide, was it? It was vengeance for Thor’s death, punishment for Rotri’s greed. Surely God would understand that.

But then there were her children.

She would be leaving Jane, Janet, and Joan without a mother. Again. And this time, there was no Madam Madonna to look after them, as poorly as the woman did it. She would be leaving her daughters to fend for themselves in a world that would just as soon eat them up like wolves upon lambs. They would end up in a foundling home, treated like rubbish for the rest of their lives.

Déchet, just like their mother.

As Caledonia crouched in the window, debating whether to live or die, she didn’t see her chamber door open. She didn’t see Jane stand in the doorway, observing her mother in the window ledge as a strange man tried to convince her to come away. When Rotri had bolted the door at the top of the stairs to prevent anyone from helping Caledonia, he had completely neglected the bedchamber with the young girls inside.

Eight-year-old Jane had heard everything.

Something had awoken her. It wasn’t the screaming. It had been more of a whisper in her ear, telling her to rise. Rise, child, the voice had said. Perhaps it had been a dream, but it had been enough to get her up and hear almost all of the conversation in the next chamber.

Her mother was in trouble.

For a young lass who had been conditioned by a bitter old woman into believing that she had to constantly spread the word of God in order to get to heaven and that the woman who gave birth to her was the embodiment of the devil, the past two weeks had shown her something quite different.

Tenderness…

Understanding…

Love.

Jane had seen all of these things, things she had resisted, but she was resisting no more. Thor had spoken to her about the situation, and so had Darius. They insisted that Madam Madonna had lied about her mother, and the more time passed, the more Jane was coming to understand that. Earlier that day, she’d had the first lesson with her mother as Darius had sat next to her, helping her with her letters. It had been a glimpse into a world where people cared for her and nurtured her. For a child who had only known fear and neglect, it had been a pivotal moment.

But tonight, something bad was happening. Jane had heard the man in her mother’s room speak of Thor being dead, which upset her. He had been so very kind, explaining things in a way she could understand even if she didn’t believe it. One of the things he had told her, repeatedly, was how much her mother loved her. A woman that Jane had never given a chance until that afternoon. She didn’t regret it. In fact, she wanted to do it again, but there would be no opportunity if her mother jumped from the window.

That frightened Jane.

She had to help.

Silently, Jane entered the bedchamber as the man and her mother were arguing. Over to her left, she could see a dagger on the floor where her mother had dropped it. It was long and sharp. After a moment of indecision, she collected the dagger and came up behind the man, who still hadn’t see her. He was pleading with her mother to come out of the window, but Jane knew that the man had said some bad things. She knew there had been a fight and her mother had a bloody cut on her lip. The man was bad.

Honor thy mother and thy father.

God wouldn’t forgive her if she let something happen to her mother.

She lifted the dagger.

Oblivious to Jane’s presence, Caledonia was pondering the future of her daughters without her when Rotri suddenly jerked and let out a gasp of anguish. He jerked two or three more times, bellowing in agony, before collapsing on the floor, facedown. As he fell, he revealed that Jane had been standing behind him, and Caledonia looked to see that the very dagger Rotri had forced from her hand was now protruding out of the small of his back. There were at least three other stab wounds, all quickly bleeding out. Something vital had been cut because the blood began to flow in rivers down to the floor.

When Caledonia looked at Jane, it was clear what had happened.

The child had blood on her hands.

Shocked, Caledonia came out of the window and ran to Jane, who suddenly threw her arms around her mother and began to cry. Overcome and distraught, Caledonia fell back onto her bum, taking Jane with her. She pulled the lass onto her lap, holding her so tightly that she was squeezing the life from her.

But Jane was squeezing just as tightly back.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m sorry, but he was wicked. He was going to hurt you and I… I heard what he said. I heard everything!”

Caledonia had her face in the side of the girl’s head, smelling her firstborn’s hair for the very first time. Her heart was beating so swiftly that she felt faint.

“You did not do wrong, my little angel,” she said. “I swear, you did not do wrong. You saved me and I am so very grateful.”

Jane loosened her grip enough to look her mother in the eye. “You… you are not angry?”

Caledonia smiled, kissing the child on the cheek. “Nay, sweetheart,” she said. “You were very brave. You saved me.”

“I had to.”

“You did well, my angel.”

Jane, perhaps a little overwhelmed by all of the affection and by the circumstances in general, simply nodded her head and held her mother tightly again. As tight as her little arms would hold her. It seemed that had finally come to terms with the woman who had given birth to her.

Her mother.

As Caledonia and Jane sat on the floor in a tight embrace, Nicola burst into the chamber followed by Janet and Joan. Nicola had had been awakened by the screaming, but with the stair door locked, she’d had to locate the key in order to get through. She found a chamber in shambles, a bloodied dead man on the floor, and Caledonia huddled with Jane. Nicola was so horrified that she stood there with her hand over her mouth as Janet and Joan crept over to their mother and sister. When Caledonia saw her younger daughters, she opened one arm to them, too, pulling them into her embrace.

And that was when Caledonia realized Janet was still holding her chicken.

That damn chicken.

Sitting on the floor, with her daughters crowding into her arms, Caledonia laughed until she cried, and when Thor barreled into the keep less than a half-hour later, that was how he found them.

Holding one another.

A family at last.