Faerie (17 page)

Screams punctuated the disturbed night, laced with the sounds of a predator ripping its prey apart. Wide-eyed, she looked to Philippe, who returned her astonishment.

“She leaped the wall!” Leonie said.

“I saw.” Philippe squinted toward the forest as if somehow that would help him see the melee beyond. “Doesn’t seem possible.”

The battle, if one could call it that, began to subside. The screams became distant, and then were gone. Still, Leonie and Philippe watched.

Just as moonlight broke through the dense clouds, the dog loped into the clearing, carrying a long bone in her mouth. She stopped at the fence, sat, dropped the bone, and barked.

“What? You want us to open the gate?” Philippe said. “Didn’t I just see you leap over the wall to get out?”

The dog barked again, then lolled its tongue as it grinned.

“Why don’t you just leap back in?”

The shaggy beast picked up her bone, pranced around to the gate, and again sat and barked. Philippe folded his arms and frowned, to which the hound responded by dropping the bone, sitting and barking again, repeatedly.

“I do not think we will be sleeping more tonight if we don’t open the gate,” Leonie said.

Philippe shook his head, but it was clear he knew his cause was lost. He barely had the gate unlatched before the dog pushed her way in. He quickly barred the gate again, as the dog dropped the bone at his feet and sat back grinning.

“All right. Good dog,” he said. He picked up the offered bone, frowning. “Human. Leg bone. But it’s old, probably lain out in the weather for years. Sorry, girl, but you’re not going to convince me this is a fresh kill.”

The dog growled.

Suddenly remembering the skeleton she had dug up in the forest, Leonie shuddered. But it made no sense. Besides, she had to have imagined all that. Skeletons did not have bloodred eyes. Swords left buried rusted away, if such a valuable thing would have ever been left in the forest in the first place. Still, her heart raced faster. The brave mask she was trying to wear seemed to be turning to dust.

The dog took the bone back. She plopped down in her spot by the fire, her paws crossed over the bone.

“Do you think they are gone?” Leonie asked.

“The dog thinks it, and she knows more than we do. We have another problem now. We must leave in the morning, but if we do, they might set upon us. Haps if we dash for it early, before dawn, they may not be prepared. You sleep for a while, and I’ll wake you as soon as I have everything ready.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’ll watch. And the dog,” he replied.

But all Leonie could do was wrap her cloak around herself and sit. Never in her life had she felt so vulnerable.

The night remained silent. Somehow she slipped away into sleep, waking every time the dog moved or made a sound, every time a harness or rope creaked. By the time the sky began to pale, she had begun to sleep more soundly. She awoke to Philippe’s
finger laid across her mouth to warn her to be silent. All three horses stood packed and ready. Within a minute, her bow was strung and she was in the palfrey’s saddle.

The shaggy hound brought her bone and dropped it at Philippe’s feet, then looked up at him expectantly. Philippe shrugged and crammed the desiccated bone into the packhorse’s panniers.

Philippe swung open the fence gate and jumped into his saddle. With a hiss to the mounts, the horses burst through the gate into a full gallop down the road, splashed across the beck, and up the next hill. The dog kept pace, her floppy ears flying, tongue lolling. They rode with the wind blowing in their faces over several more hills to a long valley, and seeing no pursuers, they slowed to a walk to give their mounts a rest.

From a pouch, Philippe removed chunks of cheese and passed them to her, taking none for himself. Leonie accepted them with no acknowledgment, for they were, after all, hers. Occasionally she glanced warily at him, but he paid her little regard and instead kept his eyes searching all around them. She had to admit she was probably safer in his company than being alone, but that made her want to trust him. That icy shiver went down her spine again. She liked it better when they quarreled.

“I have figured it,” she announced. For good measure, she lifted her chin and concentrated on the road ahead.

“What have you figured, lady?”

“Why you set upon me in the forest.”

“I did not set upon you. I did not attack you, nor mean to kill you,” he replied curtly.

“So you say.”

“Aye, so do I say.”

“There is the problem of certain bruises, and that no other man was about. As I said, I have figured it. You thought I would
be given as a bride to some other man, and along with me, Bosewood, which you covet.”

“I do not covet it.”

She ignored that. “But if I were dead, the king would have to award Bosewood to someone, likely his favorite, that being you. Simple.”

“Not so simple. If I had meant to kill you, you would be dead.”

“Perhaps you thought you had and brought the murdered maiden back to Brodin and showed your own grief mingled with theirs. You cannot deny I seemed dead.”

“By God’s breath, woman, I did all I could to save you. If I so coveted your inheritance, and I am so much the king’s favorite, why would I not simply ask him for your hand?”

“Mayhap you have a secret love tucked away somewhere.”

“My love is dead.” His jaw jutted in fury. “I’ll have no other.”

For a moment, she thought he meant it. ’Twas said the Peregrine clung to his dead love the way a wet glove clung to a hand. But that fit even more with her thoughts. “And so, with your dead love still ensconced so firmly in your heart and the lady of Bosewood dead, you have no need to marry her to gain her demesne.”

“God’s blood, you are the most vexing woman I have ever met. I am almost sorry what you say is not true.”

“So you do mean me ill.”

“I do not and never have.”

But in her mind, his smiles and tenderness were for everyone else, even the shaggy dog, and he had only scowls for her. He might protect her simply because Rufus had demanded it. “The outpost cannot be much farther,” Philippe said, his jaw clenched. “A good thing, for the horses are weary.”

“A good thing indeed,” she said. “But haps a bit too late.”

She pointed ahead. Armed riders. Black silhouettes against a brightening sky.

“Behind me,” he said, moving his horse between her and the warriors, or robbers, or whatever they were.

The dog yelped and barked and bounded away toward the oncoming riders, abandoning them. Leonie nocked an arrow in her bowstring, with three more ready. Philippe, bow in hand, had also shifted his sword for a quick draw if he needed it.

The warriors rode toward them, and the dog reached them just as they came close enough for recognition. The riders reined in and the dog joined in a frolic with a pack of similar dun-colored shaggy dogs.

“Robert de Mowbray,” said Philippe. “The Black Earl of Northumbria.” Yet she noticed he kept his arrow nocked.

The man was the biggest, darkest, hairiest man she had ever seen, both tall and brawny, and he had a beard as shaggy as the dog that sought his attention.

“Peregrine,” said the huge man, and he reached down to scratch the dog behind her ears. “I see Ilse found you.”

“You sent the dog after us?”

“More like she sent herself. Ilse has a way about her, like she has the second sight. And this one riding with you?”

Leonie threw back the hood of her cloak.

“Saints in Hades,” de Mowbray said. “’Tis Herzeloyde returned.”

P
HILIPPE EDGED
T
ONERRE
ahead of the palfrey, his wary eye following every move the huge Earl of Northumbria made. Rufus might have forgiven the man publicly, but neither the king nor Philippe trusted him as far as they could throw a mountain. He was probably the only man of the North who had not petitioned the king for Leonie’s hand, and that by itself made him suspicious. She would be a very good prize for a man who planned to change camps. Haps de Mowbray planned simply to steal her.

“I am Herzeloyde’s daughter,” Leonie said.

“Aye, lass, I see that,” de Mowbray answered, even as his harsh voice softened with wonder. “You are her image entirely, save your hair is darker. Herzeloyde wears a mantle of hair like spun moonlight.”

Suspicion stiffened Philippe even more, if he had not already been ready enough to do battle. A man would not make such a statement idly. Odd, too, that he spoke almost as if the woman were still alive.

“You knew my mother?” Leonie’s bow hand lowered and she leaned forward almost imperceptibly.

“Aye, every northerner knew of her. Has this blackguard stolen you, lass?”

“Stolen? Nay, I—”

The man must have heard, unless the dowry train had not made it to his outpost. “We are betrothed, by the king’s command,” Philippe replied. “Though ’tis not by our wills, we obey.”

“So I have heard. I’ve heard more than that. ’Tis said the lady fled from the Peregrine, who would do her evil, yet now I find her accompanying him to Castle Bosewood. I ask again, lass, are you this man’s captive?”

Leonie cast her glance sideways but did not allow it to meet Philippe’s. “Nay.”

Philippe studied them both, glancing also at the earl’s men, whose horses sidled about, as restless as their riders. Someone in the dowry train must have told him Philippe was suspect in the attack on Lady Leonie. So, had the Black Earl of Northumbria set out to find her? Did he mean to protect her? Help her in her flight over the border into Scotland? Or snatch her for himself before a wedding could take place?

“So, lass, daughter of Herzeloyde,” said de Mowbray, “do you mean to say you are agreeing to marry this lackey that slavers after the Red King’s dole?”

Leonie’s chin went up. “Bosewood belongs to me, but if I do not wed him, I will lose it.”

“You do not wish it? Are you afraid of him?”

“I fear no man.”

“But you should, lass. Even a man should fear his enemies.”

Philippe frowned. “She’s loyal to Rufus, as am I. We will do as he commands.”

The black mustache that was as shaggy as the man’s dogs lifted in a sneer. “So I have also heard.”

“And you will not?”

“I willna, unless I wish. And he knows it.”

Oh, that Rufus did know. “Then are his borders safe in your hands?”

“I’ve sworn to defend the border, and that I’ll do. But naught else. That, also, the Red King knows.”

Philippe searched the black eyes, which seemed lit by some mysterious inner fire. The man no longer even talked like a Norman, but sounded more like the rough northern folk whose dialect was so similar to the Scots’. There was something unearthly about de Mowbray, something that went far beyond mere danger and treachery. Rufus was right in not trusting his back to this man. Philippe alone protected Leonie from this black demon’s schemes. There was little Philippe could do at the moment if something should go awry, and one word from her would set it off. Yet she seemed to know it and kept her own counsel.

Warily, Philippe urged his mount forward, placing Leonie between him and the packhorse. De Mowbray reined his huge black warhorse to ride along Philippe’s right, though it was clear he did not like it. Around them, de Mowbray’s knights in their trappings of black and silver formed a shield with their mounts as they rode down the road.

Or a prison. Escape was as impossible as any attack from marauders. He had to remind himself that the outpost could not have been avoided in any case.

The day brightened to brilliant blue as the thick clouds left over from the night passed on. White puffs like tufts of wool already warned of thunderstorms later in the day. An open expanse of gorse-covered slopes spread out over the gentle hills and valleys all the way to the distant fells that rose abruptly like black tombstones. Ahead, Philippe spotted portions of the track as it wound up, down, and around toward the east. In the distance, perched on an isolated hill within a loop of the Wyfel River, sat the lonely outpost that marked the farthest reach of de Mowbray’s demesne. The thought of it made Philippe’s skin crawl beneath his mail.

“The dowry train arrived safely at your outpost?” Philippe asked as if he had no concern about the black giant who rode beside him.

“Aye, it arrived toward nightfall yesterday and was to be sent on its way to Bosewood this very morn. I’m thinking it’s more than adequate for one such as you.”

Philippe brushed off the needling. He’d never liked the man and wouldn’t have minded a fair fight to slit his throat, but his goal was to protect his charge, and he would not allow himself to be distracted.

“I have not seen Bosewood in many a year,” Philippe replied. “But I have been told its defenses and quarters are much neglected. I will not provide my lady with an unsafe place to live.”

“Then you’ll not like what you find,” said the man. His voice had lost its sharpest edge, but still was a guttural growl. “If it were mine, I’d knock it down and start all over again.”

“If we must. What word of Malcolm?”