Chapter 34

34

SOMEWHERE ON THE SEINE, 1291

R ennwick de Beauvoir heard Bethy say pigeons but he only had eyes for Ellyn and the wickedly sharp dagger the girl held at her breast. There was a smear of blood across Ellyn's tunic where the point of the knife was pressing in.

All four knights had drawn their swords, but it was Roger whose blade sank slowly down until the tip touched the deck. His face had turned gray, even in the lanternlight, and his expression was one of utter shock.

"Bethy? What is the meaning of this? What have you done?"

Bethy blinked rapidly, her gaze flicking from one knight to the next trying to keep track of their movements, wary of any attempt to rush against her. "What I have done is what I have had to do to keep my brother alive."

"Your brother ? What does he have to do with this?"

"The lord High Sheriff has him in a prison cell, along with a son or father or brother from other families throughout Lincoln to ensure that their mothers, wives, or sisters will spy on the barons and nobles. The king is desperate to know if another rebellion is fomenting, especially in the North where no love is lost on the crown. To please the king and stay high in his favor, the Earl of Nottingham has spies everywhere. He takes hostages from every castle, manor, and grange and forces their families to be his eyes and ears."

"And so you sent a pigeon bearing a note, to tell him we were at Bloodmoor?"

"Yes." Her chin trembled and her eyes were dark as ink. "I had to do it. Do you not see that I had to do it? My little brother is only ten years old, and he is being kept in a stinking, cold gaol cell. Moreover, there is never only one spy in place. If I had not sent the message, another surely would have done so and my brother would have paid the price for my omission with his life."

One of the boatmen lying on the deck groaned to indicate he was not quite dead and Roger happily vented some of his frustration by kicking him in the head with his wooden foot, correcting the mistake.

Renn thought to use the distraction to sidle closer but Ellyn waved him away.

"I promised Bethy you would not hurt her," she said.

"Did you make that promise before or after she pierced your breast?"

"After she pierced her own," Ellyn said quietly. She raised her hand and gently pushed the dagger aside. Bethy had already released the fistful of Ellyn's hair she had been clutching and now did nothing to stop her from stepping to one side. When she did, the men could see the large bloom of dark blood staining the front of Bethy's shirt and spreading downward to her waist.

When Ellyn moved, the dagger slipped out of Bethy's hand and fell to the deck; she would have fallen alongside it had Ellyn not caught her.

Renn sheathed his sword and stepped forward to help support the girl. Roger was still too stunned to move; Terrowin and Baldor just stood scratching their heads while Raoul was happy to see the focus move away from him.

"Help me get her inside before she bleeds to death," Ellyn implored.

"I ought to throw her into the damned river," Renn said angrily.

"Then you would have to throw me in after her," Ellyn countered. "She heard you talking about a trap. The walls are thin, as you pointed out. She came to me, terrified, to confess what she had done and then she attempted to drive the dagger into her heart. I was able to stop her before the blade went too deep and I promised you would listen to what she had to say and that you would help her."

"Help her!"

"Yes, help her. Her brother is being held at Nottingham Castle and you know the ways in and out so well."

"You want me to go back to England? After we have just risked our lives to get out? There is not one chance in hell I would do such a thing!"

Ellyn cast her gaze around the other three knights, all of whom either looked down at their feet or looked away.

"Such chivalrous louts," she said.

"Do not blame him," Bethy gasped and buried her head on Ellyn's shoulder. "Do not blame any of them. I betrayed their trust… yours above all, my lady."

With each deep, shuddered sob, Ellyn could feel a fresh surge of warm blood against the hand she kept pressed over Bethy's wound. The sight of it squeezing through her fingers brought Roger striding forward. Wordlessly he scooped Bethy up in his arms and carried her into the cabins. Ellyn stared at Renn disdainfully enough for a muscle to twitch in his cheek then she turned and followed Roger.

"I would say you handled that well," Terrowin remarked after a moment.

Renn ignored him and glared at Raoul. "Help us strip the clothing off your companions. If we are to pretend to be boatmen, we should dress the part. Help Baldor put the chains around their ankles. We will lift them over the side when we reach a deep part of the river. As soon as you have done that, we will cast off." He looked up at the night sky. "I vow the moon is bright enough for you to find your way?"

Raoul blinked rapidly and nodded. "Oui, this I can do."

"Then do it as fast as possible. I am going to assume you know the ports and landings along the river fairly well?"

The boatman took a wary moment before he answered. "Oui, I know them."

"Then you must also know of places where men can set traps for unwary boatmen? You mentioned a treacherous bend in the river on the far side of Troyes?"

Raoul nodded. "The river turns back on itself."

"Then we shall disembark before then. I assume you know somewhere you can obtain horses for us? For a price, of course."

"For a very generous price, m'sieur, assuming you wish them to have saddles and bridles."

Roger laid Bethy gently on the bed of straw ticking and stood back to give Ellyn room. Bethy's eyes were open and locked on Roger's face, but his jaw was set in a hard ridge and she soon turned away to stare at the wall .

Ellyn arched an eyebrow at the stern-faced knight, but he only pushed past her and exited the cabin.

"You should not have stopped my hand. You should have let me end it," Bethy whispered. "Sir Roger hates me now. They surely all hate me."

"They do not hate you. They were just caught off guard and will soon realize you did them a favor by warning them of a possible trap ahead."

"There would not be a trap at all if not for me."

"You said yourself there was likely another spy under Sabinius's roof passing information, so it is equally likely there would have been a trap set for us anyway. Now Lord Rennwick and the others will know to be on their guard."

Bethy looked up, her dark eyes brimming with tears. "Lord Sabinius has always been so kind to me, kind to others. He has never involved himself with any of the troubles between the king and the barons, thus I have never had to betray him or his trust. I felt so useless, in fact, I began to worry the Sheriff would simply kill my brother and use him as an example to others. But then you came to the castle…" Her voice trailed away, ending on a gasp as Ellyn helped her out of the bloodied chemise. The wound was wiped clean of any fresh leakage then Ellyn pressed a poultice of cobwebs, honey and sage over the cut.

"If the bleeding does not stop, I will have to take a needle and thread to it."

Bethy bit her lower lip and nodded.

The strips of linen that had been used to bind her breasts were wound around her chest as bandages to hold the poultice in place. Ellyn gave her a large cup of wine and told her to rest, then went back out on deck.

The leather braes, tunics, and coarse woolen shirts worn by the boatmen were heaped in a pile on the deck .

Rennwick was seated on a crate, his brow furrowed in thought, his hand absently pressed over the wound on his arm.

"You have not hurt yourself again, have you?" she asked. "I have seen quite enough blood for one night."

When he did not answer, she plucked his fingers away from the sleeve, relieved to see there was no dark stain showing through the cloth.

"How is the girl's wound?"

" Bethy is weak and frightened, but she will recover."

He looked up at her. "How did she manage to overpower you?"

"She didn't. I thought you might be more willing to listen to her if you thought my life was at risk."

"You were sure of that, were you?"

Ellyn sighed and slipped down onto her knees beside him. "For all of your bluster and knightly scowls, Rennwick de Beauvoir, you are a good man." When he said nothing, she added, "If you were not, I would have turned you into a toad long before now."

His eyes narrowed. "I thought you said you were not that kind of witch."

"I did not think I was. But I am beginning to wonder."

His face softened but the frown stayed in place.

"I made a promise to someone a long time ago, a promise that I would not misuse whatever gifts I had or, indeed, explore those gifts fully to know if, like my mother, I could do things, see things, feel things that others could not. I have broken that promise twice now. Once when you asked me to heal Sabinius any way I knew how, and the second time when I closed my eyes and willed my aim to be true when I shot those two guards off the cliffs. I did not think, at over three hundred yards in the dark, I could rely on my bow arm alone."

"If those were the only two times, how did you find the dungeons at Bloodmoor?"

She shook her head. "That, I do not know. It was not by any deliberate effort on my part. It just… happened. The vision, or whatever it was, just happened. I saw the dungeon behind the wall as if there was a fire burning and the man being plied with a hot iron was screaming. It frightened me because I did not do anything to conjure such a terrible scene."

She lowered her head and rested her cheek on his knee. "It was not the first time I have seen glimpses of things I could not explain. Most have been trivial and merely involve a reflection or a dream. This time it was so real, I could see, smell, and hear what was going on behind that sealed wall. And later, when we were going down the stairs, it was as if the ghosts of all those tortured souls were there waiting for me."

Renn laid a hand gently on her hair and stroked the silky crown. His touch prompted her to lift her head again, to look up at him with eyes that were huge and as eerily blue as the moonlight.

"I have begun to fear that once the promise was broken the first time, once that door was opened, there would be no closing it again. So to answer your question, I do not know what kind of powers I possess, only that my name is Enndolynn Ware and I am a witch."