Afton of Margate Castle (58 page)

“How can you give this assurance?” Josson turned angry eyes upon her. “He will take my bride for himself tonight, and even if he returns, can I wipe his memory from her mind?”

“Your bride will return here tomorrow, undefiled,” Endeline said, moving to a bench. “Calhoun may not care for our family honor, but his own honor runs deep.” She glanced at Perceval and emphasized her next words: “He will not take a woman who is not his wife.”

“What is to stop them from being married, then?” Perceval asked, opening his hands. “Any village priest could marry them.”

“You forget one thing,” Endeline said, smiling smugly. She reached for Ambrose’s hand and cradled it tenderly. “Calhoun has his honor to draw him back, and Afton has Ambrose. Afton will do nothing that might endanger her son’s life. They will both return here in the morning, unmarried and untouched.”

“Call the council together,” Perceval announced, slamming his glass upon the table. “They will face the council of judgment as soon as they return.”

Perceval turned to Endeline. “If you are right, my wife, we shall be ready. And if you are wrong--”

“I will not be proved wrong,” Endeline said. She kissed the tip of her finger and laid it upon Ambrose’s cheek. “They will be back in the morning, then you shall all have opportunity for justice.”

***

Oblivious to the cold, Afton clung to Calhoun as though she would never let him go. Once again he had returned to her from the dead, and this time he knew what she demanded of him. Still he had come, and willingly.

They rode for miles on a road outside Margate and as the sun began to set Calhoun allowed the horse to slow to a walk. “We shall have to find a place to rest,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Then we must talk.”

She nodded her consent, her cheek against his shoulder, and when he dismounted in a forest clearing she slid easily from the horse’s back. She pulled her wedding cloak tightly around her as he built a small fire and led the horse to a nearby stream to drink. When he had finished tending the horse, he sank onto the ground beside her.

They did not touch, and Afton feared to break the silence between them. “Speak, Calhoun,” she finally urged him. “I will answer anything you ask.”

“Why were you about to marry my father’s steward?” he asked, his eyes on the flames in front of them. “The letter from my father implied that you had agreed to marry me. For one moment at the church, I was afraid you would not come with me. If you had not--” he paused, and Afton knew what he was thinking. Public humiliation was more than Calhoun could bear.

She hoped he would turn to her and see the honesty on her face. “A letter from your father? Calhoun, I knew nothing of any letter, nor did your father approach me. Josson asked me to marry him, and I agreed because as his wife I could move to the castle.”

“To be near my mother.” Bitterness edged his voice. Afton knew he understood her completely.

“And to be near the son she took from me.” She kicked a fallen pine cone into their small fire and watched it sizzle and glow in the heat of the flame.

“We have been tricked, then,” Calhoun said, turning to her at last. Resignation was evident in his features. “I thought I came home to claim my love at last, and I thought you had given up your desire to avenge yourself upon my mother.”

“I shall never give that up!” she cried, curling her hands into fists. “You do not understand at all, Calhoun!”

He stared sadly past her into the darkness around them, and Afton drew her knees up and buried her head in her arms. “I thought you had accepted me at last, and understood my position,” she sobbed. “By marrying Josson, I was prepared to sacrifice joy for mere happiness, but when I looked up, there you were, an avenging angel in armor. I was certain God sent you to help me in my cause.”

He shook his head slowly. “I cannot aid you in the cause that would destroy my mother,” he said, each word an effort. “Even though your cause may be righteous.”

“She stole my son!” Her voice ripped through the silence of the night. “I want him back!”

“No, you don’t,” Calhoun answered. “He is not the boy you sent to her. He is a man now, after Hubert’s own heart, ambitious and cunning. He is the son of his father.”

Afton’s eyes went wide in horror and her hand rose reflexively to rake her nails across Calhoun’s face. He did not resist until she began beating his chest, then he held her arms and let her cry. “It cannot be,” she cried, twisting in his grip. “You are lying, Calhoun! Please, tell me you are lying!”

He did not answer, but continued to hold her, and she knew his words were true. She had long suspected that Hubert’s qualities resided in her son. As a boy, Ambrose had been charming, but devilish, and often he had unnerved her with his cunning. On the day she was arrested and taken from the mill, had he not been an accomplice in injustice? And for what? A pony?

She relaxed in Calhoun’s grip, and was surprised when he gently lay her head in his lap and stroked her hair. As she lay there, her eyes wide, she watched the cluster of flames in front of her, greedy flames that devoured every tender twig within reach and insistently lapped at the log Calhoun had placed on the fire. Endeline was such a flame; devouring and lapping her way into every part of Afton’s life to destroy beauty and goodness.

She did not know how long she lay in his arms, but after a while she stirred and sat up. “I love you, Calhoun,” she said, turning her face into the firelight so he could see her clearly if he turned her way. “I have always loved you and you alone.”

“I loved a beautiful maiden called Afton,” Calhoun answered softly. “Whose heart was as pure as her face.”

“That girl is a woman now, with a woman’s scars,” Afton sighed, loosening the cloak tied around her neck. “Accept her love or leave it, the choice is yours.”

Calhoun stood to his feet without even glancing in her direction. “I will keep watch while you sleep,” he said, his voice flat. “We will ride back in the morning.”

He stepped away from her in the darkness, and Afton spread her cloak on the ground and pillowed her head in her arms. Like a child, she cried herself to sleep.

***

He watched her as she slept, covering his feelings with the habitual detachment he found useful on the battlefield. He would never have dreamed it possible, but the older he grew, the more often he found himself imitating Fulk. If he needed to slit a man’s throat, he did it as Fulk would have, quietly and quickly without a second thought. If he was required to whip a disobedient soldier, he wielded the lash himself, considering that Fulk had borne more blows than these without a whimper of pain or fear.

And now his mind taunted him:
Do you need to renounce your love? Do it as Fulk would have, resolutely and calmly. Take her back to the church and leave her with a man who would never be threatened by her ferocity.

“Josson would faint if he knew the true tenor of your nature,” Calhoun as Afton lay sleeping, “but he will never see it, for he does not know you. While I, who adore you and would fight for you, am bound to renounce you for my mother’s sake.”

He looked upon her with admiration, knowing some of what she had endured. She had survived marriage to Hubert, who, by all accounts, had been as brutal a master as Zengi. She had been falsely accused and unjustly treated, and stripped of her dignity and worth in the eyes of the entire village, her entire world. Still, she stood strong and unbowed. “Perhaps the thing I cannot overlook is the thing that keeps you alive,” Calhoun whispered again in his solitary discourse. “But I am tired of strife and bloodshed. I cannot marry a woman whose desire for vengeance outstrips my need for honor.”

A
trumpet blew as they drew near the castle, and Calhoun knew Perceval and Endeline had been alerted to their approach. “It is time to face our actions,” Calhoun told Afton who sat silently behind him. “Are you ready?”

“She can but kill me,” Afton answered. “Though I suppose it is Josson’s choice as to what shall be done with me.”

“They may not believe we shared a chaste night together,” Calhoun said, slowing the horse to a walk. “It may even be that you will be tried for adultery.”

“It would not be the first false charge I have withstood,” Afton said, raising her chin. “Do not worry about me, Calhoun. I have lost every battle of my life, but I have survived.”

The gate creaked open for them without the welcoming herald of trumpets, and no man called out a greeting. The silence was ominous and oppressive. Through the gate they rode, and a stable boy took Calhoun’s horse at the entrance to the castle. Afton slid easily off the back of the animal, then waited for Calhoun. Side by side, but without touching, they walked into the great hall.

Perceval and Endeline waited on the dais, and Afton’s heart leapt at the sight of Ambrose sitting at Endeline’s side. How handsome and tall he had grown! He was breathtakingly beautiful, a stunning boy with dusty gold hair, yet he cast impartial eyes upon Afton as if she were just another villager. Afton felt a sob rising from her heart, and forced herself to look away lest she dissolve into tears.

Two rows of Perceval’s nobles sat as motionless as a row of statues, called into special council for the hearing. Josson, the injured party, stood alone on a carpet before Perceval.

“Calhoun of Margate and Afton, widow of Hubert,” Perceval called as they entered. “You are ordered to stand and hear the accusations against you.”

“What are these accusations?” Calhoun demanded, placing his hand on his sword. “I would hear them, and refute them.”

“You stole my bride at the church door,” Josson cried, taking an eager step toward Calhoun. He stopped abruptly. “She gave me her promise to wed, and yet she left with you in fear for her life.”

“I felt no fear,” Afton answered clearly. “I went with Calhoun willingly.”

The council members stirred, and Perceval rapped his knuckles on the table for quiet. “Josson speaks the truth,” Perceval told the counselors. “I gave this woman to my honored steward as a bride.” He looked steadily at his son. “She agreed to be married. Then you, Calhoun, abducted the bride, and now my name has been dishonored among the people. What say you to this charge?”

“I have in my possession a letter from you stating that this woman was free to marry,” Calhoun answered, pulling the letter from his tunic. “And your injunction that I should return home. I assumed, of course, that the woman was promised to me.”

“You assumed incorrectly,” Ambrose sneered. He turned his gaze toward Afton. “Hello, mother.”

Afton felt her throat tighten. Calhoun was right, this snide boy was not the son she surrendered eight years ago! He might have sprung from her womb, but he sat next to Endeline as Hubert reincarnated, taunting her one last time. But was he completely lost? He was only sixteen. Surely she had time to redirect him, if given the opportunity!

“Ambrose,” she whispered, her heart breaking.

Perceval was blind to the drama between Afton and her son. He fastened his dark eyes upon Calhoun. “I would like to know your intentions regarding this woman.”

“As God is my witness, my love for her is honorable,” Calhoun replied, his voice steady and strong. “No dishonor has been brought to any member of this house, nor to the woman herself.” He glanced briefly at Josson. “I did not touch her.”

“So say you,” Josson declared, his face flushing. “Who is to believe it? Lord Perceval, I demand justice!”

“God will reveal His justice,” Perceval pronounced, rising to his feet. The counselors stood in unison for his judgment: “Calhoun, as of this day, you are no longer my son,” Perceval announced. “This boy, Ambrose, whom we have reared in your absence, is a finer son to me than ever you were. And to your validate the truthfulness of your statements, when the sun is at its highest point in the sky this day, you shall duel for this woman. If your love is honorable, God will grant you victory. If your words and spirit are false, may God grant you a mercifully quick death.”