Chapter 12

12

T hey broke their fast with glutinous porridge made from plain water liberally flavored with salt and a sprig of wild onion. Ellyn declined the unappetizing gray slop and chewed on a hard crust of stale bread instead. While the others saddled the horses and packed up their supplies, Renn smothered the remnant of the fire.

The four knights were dressed in full mail armor as would befit an escort for a lady of some means. The lady in question emerged from the cave and stood in the weak morning light. She was wrapped head to toe in the hooded gray cloak, revealing little of what lay beneath aside from a slight froth of gold silk peeking out from below the hem of the cloak.

Considering how many laws they had already broken, her earlier fears of hanging for pretending to be a fine lady, were shaken off and replaced with the same calm poise her mother had possessed. No doubt Cecily Ware had approached the witch's pyre with her head held high and her shoulders squared. Similarly, Ellyn walked straight to the palfrey, grasped a fistful of coarse mane and swung herself up onto the saddle, adjusting her cloak so that it protected her skirts from the swirling fingers of mist.

All four men were staring.

"What?" She looked from one face to the next. "What have I done wrong now?"

"A lady would never heave herself up into a saddle like a sack of grain," Terrowin said, trying not to smile too broadly.

She offered up a sweet smile. "The last time someone told me how I should or should not behave, he had his ears pulled and an arrow shot into his buttocks. And then—" she glanced pointedly at Baldor— "I turned him into a weevil. What is more, if you all wish me to play the role of a noblewoman, you must surely know she would never deign to converse with a lowly guardsman or even acknowledge his existence."

So saying, she turned her head and gazed frostily off into the forest. Roger exchanged a glance with Rennwick and murmured, "Beware of ice blue daggers in the back. They appear to be honed particularly sharp this fine morning."

Throughout the day, the weather remained clear and warm, and they traversed the forest without seeing another soul. Ellyn avoided entering into any conversation with the others, stubbornly keeping to her own company. Roger tried to engage with her but she answered any of his entreaties with a clipped word or two and he soon gave up.

Late in the afternoon they crossed an open field marked at one end by the ruins of an old, long-abandoned abbey. The outer wall was smashed through in places; weeds and vines had grown up the rest and spilled over the top into a dilapidated courtyard. A moss-covered stone trough once used to catch rainwater was in the middle, cracked open on one side and filled now with several decades of decayed leaves.

There was a small chapel to the left, the doors and roof gone. To the right was another roofless structure with stone archways running along the length, marking the tiny cells where the monks had slept.

"As good a place as any to stop for the night," Rennwick decided aloud.

"The stream we crossed a while back likely passes somewhere nearby," Terrowin said. "I will search it out and fill the skins with water."

Ellyn dismounted and left the men in the courtyard to organize the horses and unpack supplies for the night. Her back ached and the muscles in her legs were knotted from riding all the blessed day long. Knights might be well conditioned to ride for days on end, but fletchers and bowyers were not.

To stretch out her cramped muscles, she wandered along the stone corridor and peeked into the small cells. Windowless and barely large enough to hold a wooden cot, they were littered with animal droppings. Since her mother's death, Ellyn had little use for God and His cruel ways. Her contempt did not extend to completely disavowing His power or existence and she discreetly made the sign of the cross at each cell she passed.

"A pity the monks did not leave a few casks of wine behind," said Roger, coming up behind her. "I did find the remnants of a garden, but there was nothing edible amongst the weeds."

"May I look? "

"Of course. Baldor found some ripe boar droppings, so he and Renn have gone on the hunt for fresh meat."

He led her out through the ruined gates and followed the wall around to the back of the abbey.

"You are limping."

He looked down and smacked his thigh with a gloved hand. "Sometimes the knee thinks there should be flesh and blood attached below. It passes." He stopped and pointed. "Look you over there: a low wall in a broad square shape, cobbled together with loose stones. Most likely built to keep animals out of the cabbage patch."

Ellyn picked her way carefully through the tangle of weeds. In short order she spotted wild onions and garlic as well as tansy, catmint, and mallow. Foot long beans were woven in with the ivy vines on the wall, while above it hung branches of a walnut tree heavily laden with fruit. By the time they returned to the courtyard of the abbey, they had filled a canvas sack with a veritable cornucopia of victuals.

By contrast, the vaunted boar-hunters returned with two squirrels and a plover, all of which went into a stew pot with the roots and herbs from Ellyn's scavenging. The last of Hugo's rock-hard biscuits went into the pot to give the meal some substance, and while bellies were not completely full at meal's end, they were not rumbling.

Because it was a clear night, the men chose to sleep out of doors by the fire. Ellyn elected to make her bed in one of the monk's cells, but it was cold and damp and stank of animal dung. She took up her blankets again and went in search of a less fragrant place to spend the night. Curiosity led her into the ruined chapel, roofless but for the skeletal beams criss-crossing overhead. Three rows of stone benches were set in front of a tiny, broken altar, the top of which might have been marble at one time—too valuable for scavengers to have left behind.

The arched wall behind the alter was crumbled down one side and where there had once been a vaulted window, there was now a large gaping wound. Ellyn set her cloak and blankets on one of the benches then picked her way around the rubble, using the moonlight to guide her steps. She stopped where the shaft of light was strongest and watched the tiny, dancing motes of dust sparkle in a cloud around her. Her hair, combed out of the tight braid she had worn all day and unfettered by the wimple, rippled down her back almost to her waist. The green of her gown shimmered from the threads of gold woven into the cloth and when Ellyn stretched her arms out to either side, the elongated cuffs of the sleeves glittering all the way to the ground.

Smiling at the effect of the moonlight, she moved her arms this way and that, watching the threads spark and twinkle. She thought to twirl around but had barely taken the first twisting step when she stopped so suddenly, the hem of her skirt caught on a jagged bit of rock and tore a small strip off the gold trim.

Rennwick was standing half a dozen paces away, shapeless, featureless but for the untucked linen of his shirt which glowed a blurred, ghostly white out of the shadows.

"You seem to enjoy creeping up on people unawares, good knight," she said, the words having trouble leaving her throat.

"Whereas you seem to enjoy giving me reasons to search you out. My apologies if I startled you, it was not my intention to creep up on you unawares."

"Or to spy?"

"Or to spy. "

"Or to ensure I have not clambered over the wall and made good my escape?"

He came forward slowly, joining her in the shaft of moonlight. "I suspect, Ellyn the Fletcher, if you were intent upon escaping, you would have done so in the forest earlier today when you had us at the mercy of your bow."

"I did consider it," she admitted.

"Yet here you are."

She tilted her head slightly. "As you so bluntly put it to me, it was a choice, sirrah, of the enemy hunting me, or the enemy ahead who may or may not be less dangerous."

"We are not your enemies."

"Stealing me away in the middle of the night? Forcing me to dress like a dung collector and ride to God knows where for God knows what purpose at the behest of God knows who? Would you call yourself a rescuer? For surely such a rescuer would, at the very least, tell me where he is taking me and why."

He moved a step closer which made the moonlight filter through the locks of his black hair, tinting threads of it blue. "If I could answer all of your questions, demoiselle, I would."

"Surely you know some of the answers?"

His face was no longer in shadow. His eyes were dark and the brows were creased, seeming to betray some inner struggle he was having with himself.

"I can promise you," he said at length, "that no harm will befall you at the end of this journey. You have my word on that."

He was close enough now that she could smell the scent of the forest on him. The hot and cold feeling she had experienced in the cavern, naked in his arms, returned and shivered through her body, quickening her pulsebeats so that the sound of her own blood thrummed in her ears. She drew a breath, hoping it would ease the tightness in her throat and let her words sound laced with more indifference than she was feeling.

"I do not know you well enough, sirrah, to know the value of your word."

"Do you not? Have I done you harm in any way? Have I—" he stopped and rephrased his thought. "Last night, in the cave. If I was a lesser man with no cares, no scruples, do you know how easy it would have been to lay you on the ground and take you?"

She caught at her breath and blinked. "I would have scratched your eyes out."

"You might have tried."

He raised a hand and brushed his finger across her cheek, as surprised as she to see the diamond glitter of a teardrop on the tip. She had not been aware of shedding a tear, had not felt the wetness gather on her lashes or spill over onto her cheeks. God's truth, apart from her mother's death, she could not recall the last time she had wept or for what reason.

Rennwick stared at the moisture on his fingertip for a long, dragging moment and when he looked at her, she thought she saw a subtle shift in the dark depths of his eyes, as if his guard dropped long enough for her see past the hard edge of the man circumstances forced him to be, letting her catch a glimpse of the lonely solitude he had imposed, for whatever reason, on his heart. Ellyn saw it. She recognized it because it was the same solitude, she had forced on herself.

Renn closed his eyes a moment, then took a step back, putting the bright swath of moonlight between them again .

"You should go back to the fire before you catch a chill," he said. "Rest well, we leave at first light."

If I move, I will shatter like glass , she thought.

Renn looked startled and for one awful moment Ellyn feared she had voiced the words out loud. Color flooded warmly into her cheeks and she took a small step back and hesitated, uncertain what to do next, but then her gaze fell on her cloak and blankets where they lay draped over the stone bench. She brushed quickly past him and snatched up the garments then ran quickly out of the chapel, leaving him standing alone at the edge of the moonlight.

Renn did not move for a full minute. His stare remained fixed on the spot where she had been standing as if he could still see her there, her gown shimmering, her hair as luminous as the moonlight itself, making him wonder, if only for that one suspended moment, if she was, indeed, a magical creature. A sorceress. An enchantress capable of casting spells over lesser beings.

Had he imagined that whisper of sound? The voice that seemed to echo the same isolation and loneliness he had borne for most of his life?

There was a tightness in his chest that he usually only felt in the moments before entering the tournament lists, and he shook the feeling away then chided himself for his own foolishness. If he allowed the thought to creep between his ears that she was, indeed, some manner of enchantress, he was no less gullible than Baldor, and that would not bode well under any circumstance.

She was a woman. Mortal flesh and blood. He had been sworn to a blood oath to find Enndolynn Ware and to keep her out of the king's hands at any cost, even at the forfeit of his own life if necessary.

Half that task was complete: He had found her; he was taking her north and from thence to safety, fulfilling his obligation. He must not think of her as anything other than a task that must be completed.

She might not be a witch, but neither was she like any woman he had encountered before and perhaps that was what made her seem more intriguing. Ellyn the Fletcher was no timid rosebud with downcast eyes and a shy tongue. She had spirit and fire and made his body react in ways that made him feel like an aroused youthling. Last night she had accused him of standing naked before her, hard as a bull and he had not been able to find the words to deny it, not then and… looking down… not now.

A sparkle of gold caught his eye and he saw where a strip of silk had been torn off the bottom of her skirt and was snagged on a broken shard of stone. He leaned over and plucked it up, rubbing it softly through the same fingertips that had felt her tears.

He started to toss the scrap away again, but on a second thought, tucked it into the leather pouch that hung on his belt.

She was not the first beauty to cause his blood to run hot and she most likely would not be the last. He only had to keep his distance for the next two days until they reached their destination.

In the morning, upon leaving the abbey, it was Roger who was delegated to help Ellyn on or off the palfrey if she needed it, and Roger who escorted her off the path when they rested the horses or if she required a moment of privacy. Rennwick de Beauvoir could not have avoided her more completely if she'd had the plague. He rode several hundred yards behind them through the daylight hours to guard their backs, and when he joined them to make camp at night, he was careful not to be caught alone with her again or to even make eye contact.

It was not until noon on the fourth day of travel that he joined them on the road. It had been overcast and windy all morning and despite being bundled in the warm woolen cocoon of her cloak, the air was cool and damp, and Ellyn was chilled to the bone.

They had been following a rutted dirt road through a section of forest that grew thinner and less hospitable the closer they came to the sea coast. There were no farms or settlements and whatever meadows they crossed were sparsely grassed and littered with rock. It was nearing noon when the road took a steep upward turn and when they reached the top of the knoll, the four knights reigned their horses to a stop and waited for Ellyn's palfrey to draw abreast.

If she was cold before, she now felt the blood all but freeze in her veins.

Ahead of them stretched a wide, windswept moor cut in half by a narrow, raised roadway that snaked this way and that through the weeds and morass. On the other side, sprawled along the headland, its back against the sea, was a great Norman stronghold, one of many that had been built along England's borders to defend against invasion by the Scots from the north, the Irish and Welsh from the west. Sixty-foot-high crenelated walls rose dark and menacing against the metallic gray of the sky, the stone blocks scarred black by the wind and salt air. As if the moor was not enough of a deterrent, the outer battlements were fortified by a moat and the only way across was by a drawbridge suspended between two enormous square barbican towers. Between the towers was the dark maw of an entrance flanked by thick oak gates that could be closed and sealed behind the drawbridge.

Unlike most fortifications of this size, there was no solid ground on which to build a village on the outside of the walls, no plowed fields between the moor and the forest. There was nothing to impede a clear, defensive view of every approach. The outer wall was thick enough and high enough to buffer the coldest and sharpest of winds. With its many towers and tourelles jutting above the line of jagged stone teeth of the wall, the castle had absolute command of the land and sea for miles in all directions.

Proving the point, six mounted knights rode out from between the gates and started across the moor.

"It would appear our arrival has been marked," Terrowin said quietly. To Baldor he added, "Finally and thankfully we might have enough victuals and ale to ease the rumblings of your gut."

Baldor growled. "And you might find a comely wench to relieve you of your virginity."

While their banter progressed, Rennwick drew up alongside Ellyn.

"Come now, the ordeal of having to endure our company is almost at end. Surely that should lighten the heart and win a smile."

Ellyn shook her head slowly. "I sense death inside these walls. Death… and a great deal of pain."

"There is death and pain everywhere if you are looking for it. Although, I will grant you this place does nothing to warm the cockles."

"Now that we are here, can you not, at the least, tell me who resides here? Surely his name can be no more fearful than Lu—" she remembered her promise to Roger and caught herself before she said Luther de Vos, then tried to cover the near blunder with some stammered foolishness— "than all of the tribulations we have gone through thus far?"

Renn's brow arched slightly but he only clucked his tongue softly and nudged his horse forward. "When the time is right you will know everything."

The horse's hooves made a clop-clopping sound as they rode across the drawbridge. On either side, below the surface of the murky water of the moat, rows of sharpened spikes were set in a lethal pattern of Xs. A misstep on the bridge would send horse and rider plunging to certain death. The barbican towers that guarded the entrance were enormous square structures, built of solid block and mortar with cross-shaped arrow slits chiselled between random joins. Between the stone teeth along the top of the wall were machicolations where burning oil or hot coals could be poured on the heads of attackers. The two towers were joined by an arched walkway. Carved into the capstone at the centre of the arch was a shield and crest depicting a wolf and dragon locked in mortal combat.

As they passed beneath the arch, escorted by the castle guards, the iron spikes of the portcullis gate hummed from the tension in the ropes holding it suspended overhead. Each spike was as thick as Ellyn's wrist, the iron hammered to a deadly point at the end.

The guards stayed with them across the vast open meadow of the outer bailey. The party of knights drew curious glances from the scattering of men on the training fields as well as the workmen who stopped what they were doing to stand in doorways and stare at the passing riders. A young boy rattled past, his cart filled with clods of horse dung from the stables, wheeling it to the gate to dump in the moat. He too stopped to stare, as did the pair of hounds following the cart.

Ellyn's hood was up and her cloak covered everything but her hands where they gripped the reins. The feeling of dread was stronger inside the massive walls and she wished she could have ridden with bow and arrow at hand.

They rode up a long, gradual slope toward the mortared fieldstone of a second, inner curtain wall where they were again subject to intense stares from the guards positioned on the wall-walk above. The gatehouse was not as impressive or formidable as the outer gates, but there was a second iron portcullis that looked just as sturdy. The inner bailey was less than half the size of the outer, but here, the timber buildings and booths were arranged in crowded, narrow lanes that catered to the specific needs of such a huge castle. Bakers, tailors, vintners had their workshops here as did the cookhouses and laundry.

The main keep was an imposing monstrosity, the jagged teeth of its ramparts etched against the ceiling of gray cloud. It was an enormous square structure soaring eighty feet above them, with two fat towers seated one to the east, one to the west. Several smaller roundels had obviously been added over the decades, connected by cobbled laneways and constructed to form a large square around a central courtyard paved with flat stones. Overlooking the yard were long ranges of rooms and apartments buttressed to the walls so that the square of open sky inside the court was reduced by half.

Ellyn looked up at the lichen-covered walls of the keep and shuddered. It was bleak and unfriendly… and so quiet as to be unsettling. There should have been a thousand villagers and workmen inside the walls. There should have been a score of maid servants gathered around the central well gossiping and flirting with those workmen. Ellyn was no master of numbers, but she doubted she had seen more than a hundred men and women all told so far.

"What is this hellish place?" she asked in a whisper.

Roger nudged his horse a little closer before answering. "The castle is known as Bloodmoor Keep, but the local villagers still call it the Dragon's Lair."