Love Thine Enemy (32 page)

Panic rose like the bile in Rochelle’s throat over
Griselda’s sudden changes.  "What happened to your rhymes?  Your shuffled
steps?  Who are you?" 

"We have no time for this.  Hurry."

She jerked free of Griselda’s hold, then stumbled,
gasping in pain as her hip and elbow struck cold stone.  The torch clattered to
the ground, then went out!  All went grave-black.

A hand clamped Rochelle’s scream to a stifled cry. 
"If you yell she’ll hear you and be warned."  Griselda’s voice, not
Gaston’s.

Trust no one
.  Sire Becket’s axiom
burst into her mind as a belated warning.

Rochelle slapped the hand away and clambered backward
like an awkward crab.

"Then I’ll go without you, Rochelle.  I would
never have believed you a coward."

The odd challenge brought Rochelle scrambling to her
feet.  Determined for answers, she leapt toward the sound of the receding
footsteps, grabbing fabric and muscle.

"If you want me to go with you, Griselda, then
tell me.  Why should I trust you?"

"I am your mother."

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

"
R
ochelle!"

Becket pounded on the end wall in search of something
moveable, but nothing happened.  Frantic, he grabbed the molding on the side
wall to use for balance so as to kick with his foot.  The molding shifted.  A
grating sounded.  The wall moved! 

With a torch held in front of him, Becket squeezed
through the ever-widening opening, colliding with dank mustiness and
bone-chilling cold.  He heard clanks as several knights hurried in behind him,
swords drawn.

Griselda clutched at Lady Rochelle, who appeared
stunned, shaken.  What had that old woman done to her?

With a roar, Becket leapt at Griselda, his weapon in a downward
slash.

Rochelle screamed, then threw herself in front of the
old woman as if to protect her!

"Sacre bleu!"
 
Becket twisted to divert the fatal blow, the sword’s vibration jarring along
his arm from the ringing jolt against the floor.  "Are you insane, Lady
Rochelle?  I could have killed you."

The old woman hurriedly limped beyond the light and
into the tunnel.

"Oh, addelty paddelty, time grows
nigh.

I fear the boy will surely die."

Becket glanced at the still-pale Rochelle.  He shook
inside from how close he had come to slicing her in two.  Then skepticism
wormed into his consternation.  Why had Rochelle risked her life for Griselda?  
For certain, something untoward had transpired between the two women.

"What goes on here, Lady Rochelle?  The men said
Griselda frightened you with some wild tale and that you sent for me."

"’Tis your..."  She glanced at the knights as
if uncertain whether to continue, then flitted her gaze to him.  "Your
mother lured Pierre into the tunnels.  Griselda overheard their voices."

"My mother?  In here with Pierre?"  He shook
his head.  "Griselda knew just what trick to use to entice you into
danger.  She most likely knows we suspect her of poison." 

Lady Rochelle stilled, her brow furrowed as if she ran
arguments through her mind.  Then she touched his hand with her cold, shaking
fingers and he fought the urge to enfold them within his palms. 

"Sire, I know you say to trust no one.  But I
believe Griselda speaks true.  I believe Pierre is in danger.  I beg you,
husband.  Trust me in this.  If not, I will go without you."

Becket stared at Rochelle, the woman who feared the
caves and tunnels with an obsessive dread, the woman who risked getting lost
again in order to save Pierre, Becket’s brother.  Admiration for Rochelle
swelled in his heart.

And yet, what if Griselda lied?  What if Rochelle
plotted with Griselda because he had doubted Rochelle’s innocence about Lady
Anne's murder?  Becket might have seen, not a threatening hold from Griselda,
but a conspiratorial embrace.

And yet, what if Griselda told the truth? 

Becket snatched the torch and waved the knights back to
the once-secret entrance.  "I’ll take care of this."

He grabbed Rochelle’s cold hand and pulled her into a
run, catching up with Griselda, who lifted her hem and ran with startling
swiftness--minus a limp. The sight spiraled his suspicion into alarm.  Later. 
Later he would discover the truth.

Becket felt as if they flew without moving forward,
much like moths trapped forever within a ball of light, for the darkness
remained before and behind them severing them from the world.

Griselda darted first one way, then another, further
and further into the death-maze, as if following an innate animal sense. 
Apprehension grew in Becket’s mind with as much speed as poisonous toadstools
in rank earth.  Apprehension that Griselda had lied to Rochelle, that the woman
led them so deeply into the tunnels that he and Rochelle could never find their
way out.  Graver still, that Rochelle conspired with Griselda.  

As their footsteps echoed in disembodied syncopation to
their labored breaths, another fear emerged.  That Pierre already lay dead.

Griselda halted a short distance from a corner.

Rochelle pressed one hand over her heaving chest and
clamped the other over her side as if to ease a stitch.

Becket strained to hear beyond his rasping breaths. 

Screams of pain shafted through the darkness.

Becket’s heart cramped.  He rushed around the corner,
then halted, shocked. 

A dropped torch flickered a dim light on the outrageous
scene.  Too engrossed to realize they had been discovered, Pierre held onto
Becket’s mother’s skirts preventing her from leaving him behind.  And as he
held on, he kicked and hit with ferocious intensity, his blows punctuated with
Becket’s mother’s protests.

"Let go of me, you scoundrel!  Ow!" 

"You lied to me!  You said my cat was lost in
here."

"Cease that kicking.  Ouch!  How dare you strike
me, you...you--"

Becket burst into laughter, relieved that Pierre still
lived, loving that the small human windmill had thwarted someone twice his
size.  Pride for Pierre’s spunk warmed the iciness in his chest, a pride soon
overwhelmed by his rage.  How dare she.

"Rochelle!"  Pierre’s shout mingled with the
fading echoes of Becket’s brief burst of laughter, then the boy collided with
Rochelle in a love-embrace.

Isabelle gasped in surprise and clutched her hands
against her bosom, a tactic Becket had seen her use countless times. 

"Thank heaven you found us, son.  I followed him
in here, trying to persuade him of his dangerous folly in exploring the tunnels
in search of some worthless cat, doing my best to--"

"
Murder
Pierre?"

"
Murder
? 
You
doubt my word?"  She snatched her torch from the floor, then stiffened in
her imperious fashion. 

"Your word is as false as my parentage.  Why did
you seek his death?  He is but a child and of no threat."

"Murder is as murder does.

Ask about the babes that was."

His mother jerked to face Griselda who lurked in the
shadowed edge of the torchlight, shoulders hunched, hair pulled over her face,
swaying from foot-to-foot like a mad beast.  And yet, he had seen otherwise.

"Griselda is but an insane creature."  His
mother swiped the torch toward Griselda as if for better light—or, as if in
warning.  Becket tensed, ready to protect the peculiar old woman.

Griselda spun out of the way like a spirit of the
Netherworld, twisting and turning in and out of the shadows in a crazed type of
dance.

"Bastard’s all.  I tried.  I
cried.

"But once a year the children
died."

Becket’s heart forgot to beat.  "Once a
year?"

"She killed children?"  Isabelle rushed at
Griselda swinging the flared taper as if to catch the old servant afire. 

"Cease!"  Becket grasped his mother’s arm. 

Griselda leapt into the spilled torchlight, crouched,
hair wild, finger pointed at Isabelle.

"In spring they fell, by ones and
twos.

Poisoned by a witch’s brew."

His mother wrenched within his hold.  "Slay her! 
Kill her now!  She deserves to die!" 

Cold clamminess skimmed over his flesh along with the
truth.

"Your sacred pilgrimages to Compostela,
ma
mère.
  Every spring.  To help rid the world of evil, you said.  Pilgrimages
of death, you meant.  On children."

"The insult!"  She spun to face him,
shocked.  But he knew.

"Why?"  The question that shouted within his
mind slipped out as an enraged-trembled whisper. 

"You speak to me thus
after all I have sacrificed for you so that you could reclaim DuBois and
Moreau?"  She jerked from his hold and backed away.

"You sacrificed your soul!"

"You, who reject any Divine Authority, dare
belittle me over the sacrifice of my soul?  I suffered worse than loss of
soul.  I suffered loss of status.  Everything I have done, I have done for
you."

"You murdered--for you."

"In war you commit the same.  ‘Tis your
profession, knight.  You murder any who step in your way.  For me, this is
war."

"On children?"

"Every bastard that lives is possible proof that
you, too, are a bastard."  She pointed at Pierre.  "Look at him.  He
screams to the world you are sired by the same father.  He threatens
everything!  Everything! I did what any woman would do to survive."

Becket drew in his breath, struck frigid by the
similarities between his mother’s tirade and Rochelle’s when he first met her. 
What other traits might they share?  Did Rochelle murder Lady Anne?  Becket
glanced at Rochelle who clutched Pierre to her with a ferocity that warned if anyone
dare harm him they risked their life.

His mother’s declaration echoed Rochelle’s demeanor so
perfectly that the sight froze him.  Shaking his head to interrupt the
unwelcome thought, he returned his attention to his mother as she recounted her
pride-filled accomplishments.  

"I played the man’s game in a man’s world.  I
selected the proper strengths for your bloodline.  I plotted.  I planned.  When
Gaston deceived me, I never gave up.  When he burned you, he believed me
defeated, but I swallowed my disgust and raised you despite your ugly scars.  I
beat them all.  We have DuBois!"  Her eyes glowed with a desperate
madness.  "Now, ‘tis up to you to make certain we keep it.  Kill
them."

"I will keep DuBois without murdering the
blameless."

"You were willing to do the same when you first
arrived.  And your wife is not blameless.  She poisoned--"

"Eeeeeeeeeee."

Becket flinched when Griselda screeched.  The servant
moaned and rolled on the cave floor, then jumped to her knees, clutching at her
throat with one hand while pointing at his mother with the other.

"Lady Anne, she gasped, she
cried.

She writhed in pain before she
died."

"Lady Anne?"  The name escaped along with
Becket’s shaky sigh of relief over proof his wife hadn’t performed the deed. 
"
You
accused
Rochelle,
ma mère
. 
But
why kill Lady Anne, an innocent in all this treachery?"

"To make you do your duty."  The madness in
her glower radiated to a dangerous intensity.  She waved the torch to indicate
the others, the light flickering riotously on the cave walls.  "The only
way you are assured of DuBois and Moreau is if you kill these three witnesses
to the truth.  Look at them.  Prisoners of the tunnels.  Even if they escaped
into the labyrinth they wouldn’t survive.  So easy.  You exist because of my daring. 
You owe me."

Becket’s torment twisted within him like a white-hot
dagger.  "How does a knight imprison his own mother?  How does he sentence
her to death?"

She stared at him in disbelief.  "Sentence me to
death?"  The torch-light wavered over her shocked expression.  She stepped
back, fidgeting with the buttons on the front of her bodice in frenetic
movements.  "Is this how you repay me?  I give
you
life and you
threaten my
mine
?"

Becket swallowed to ease
the cramp in his throat but to no avail.  "I will lock you in the lord’s
chamber until I decide your fate."

Her eyes widened in horror.  She clutched at his
jupon.  "’Tis because I am a woman!  Men in the guise of Kings and knights
burn and kill, children included, then call themselves great for their
desecration.  You judge me for what you yourself have done.  You
hypocrite!" 

Becket remained rooted in place, uncertain how to
respond.

His mother’s gaze flitted about the tunnel.  Then like
a nightmare, he saw in her eyes what she intended. 

Becket lunged.  She twisted beyond his reach, flinging
the flare at Rochelle and Pierre.

Rochelle’s gown erupted in flames.  Screams
reverberated within the tunnel.  Crazed with fear and horrid memories, Becket
tore at the burning fabric, searing his hands, fighting to save Rochelle from
the same fate as the man he would always consider as his father.  Griselda’s
hands moved with as much haste as his, slapping at flames, ripping the silk
until, finally, only smoke drifted within the smoke.

"Weep not, my brave knight."  Rochelle
brushed her fingers over his face and wiped away tears he hadn’t realized he
had shed.  "I am unharmed, for you pulled the melting fabric away from my
flesh."  As if grateful, she leaned against his chest.

His heart turned over, enfolding her within the scarred
depths.  Becket gathered her and a sobbing Pierre against his body with a
silent vow to, somehow, protect them from the coming holocaust, for war
threatened like another plague, except more profane.  He strained his blurred
gaze past the light.  His mother hid in one of the tunnels, mayhap lost
forever.  He must search for her.  But later.  He stood, Rochelle safe in his
arms, at least for the moment.