Love Thine Enemy (51 page)

"The falcon has trained the knight, my love, for
you draw me to you on a tether of love and make me trill with pleasure."

Becket stood, pulling her into an embrace that
quickened her pulse and heated her frozen body she once feared would never
thaw. 

 Becket lifted his face toward heaven, eyes closed. 
"
Merci, Mon Dieu.  Merci.
  God, you have gifted me with blessings
far beyond my deserving. Allow me to serve you. Use me to help bring wholeness
to broken lives." 

Becket prayed
!

He glanced down at her, and the desire in his eyes near
brought her again to her knees.  “Speaking of bringing wholeness to broken
lives, Rochelle.  About our babe…”

 “Your wounds, Sire Becket!” Lady Giselle’s verbalized
concern drifted closer with each leaf-crunched sound.  “Let me tend your wounds
ere they fester.  I’ve brought ointments and herbs from DuBois.”

“Finally, I can claim you as my son again!” Panting as
with the strain of the uphill climb from Moreau, Sire Alberre hurried up to
them, a joy in his step that matched the leap in Becket’s heart in almost
unbelievable comprehension that his father still lived.

“We’re a family!  We’re a family!” Becket nearly
stumbled as Pierre threw himself against him and Rochelle. Sire Spitz leapt
from Pierre’s shoulder to atop Becket’s head.  

“
Sacre
Dieu
! That blasted
cat!”
  Becket’s laughter rolled out across the gorge.  He
wrapped one arm around Pierre and pulled him close.  “You speak true, sprite. 
We’re a family!” The shouted ‘
family’
echoed across the chasm in
reverberating elation.

Pierre whirled from Becket’s hold, jumping up and down
on the piles of crunchy dried leaves in excited abandonment. 

With his freed hand, Becket plucked Sire Spitz from his
head and pressed him against his bare chest, rubbing his cheek against the fur
as he lowered his face to Rochelle’s.  Becket brushed his lips across hers,
branding her as forever his.  Nuzzling her ear, his hot breath wafted a molten
trail into the core of her being as he crooned the ballad the troubadour sang
the night she and Becket first surrendered to their passion.

“I’m so hungry for your
love.

O, you’re whiter than any
ivory statue . . . “

Becket’s hand skimmed his other hand up beneath the
weight of her tresses, then teased the downy hairs at her nape, and she melted
against him in surrender, knowing that no matter what life brought them, no
matter which king won the crown, she assured herself of one constant - she
would love him always.   

“. . . to come where you
undress alone

So that I can wait at your
bidding

beside the bed, along the
edge,

Where I can pull off your
close-fitting shoes

Down on my knees, my head
bent down:

If only you’ll offer me
your…”
  He nudged her foot with his toe.

“Let’s go home, love.  Let’s go home, to DuBois.”

<<
Finis
>>

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THE
WAGER

By

Carolyne Cathey

C
hapter
O
ne

England, 1284

Wiltshire

“
A
bandoned?”  Pain throbbed
in Eleanor’s bloodied feet as she scanned the fog of the mysteriously empty
village green.  To have struggled all this distance on burned and blistered
soles, only to find the place deserted.  Mist curled around the vacant pillory
and stock. Too-quiet wattle and daub cottages lined the village green, fading
in and out of the shifting fog like hesitant spirits. Not even a dog barked. 
Where had everyone gone?  And why? Clammy fear shivered into her bones. How
would she survive when even one more step seemed beyond her strength?

The ground vibrated. 

Hoof-beats!  Plundering knights?
Was that why everyone had fled?

With her heart beating as rapidly as
the approaching hooves, Eleanor frantically searched the fog to see from where
the riders approached, for the sound reverberated as if from more than one
direction.

Phantom figures of three men racing their mounts
emerged from the murkiness, growing larger, more distinct as they pounded
toward her.  Cloaks flapped behind the riders like wings of black vultures in
search of prey.  Hooves sliced earth; mud flew.  Dim light licked along a drawn
sword.  Terror struck along with the truth: They meant to kill her!

Run!
 
She
lifted a foot.  Pain seared up her leg. 
Heaven help her.
  The nuns must
have sent the men to capture her after her escape from the nunnery, but being a
mere servant, she expected only severe punishment for running away, not death.

The mounted horses surrounded her, their hooves
stamping dangerously near her unprotected feet as the three men leapt to the
ground.  Two of the men grasped her arms.  The third seized her wrist, his
fingernails cutting into her flesh like slivers of glass.

"Who are you, woman?"  The grandly garbed
nobleman peered beneath her hood, then bellowed a sinister laugh.  "The
last scum I thought I'd find standing out here as brazen as brass.  I expected
to beat the undergrowth afore we found your thieving frame.  Because you stole
my grain…" He jerked her arm straight and raised his sword.  "…I’ll
take your hand."  The weapon slashed downward!

Eleanor screamed.  Metal clanged as
cold steel slammed against her wrist.  She tensed for excruciating pain--that
never came!  Forcing her eyes open, she stared, stunned.  Her captor’s blade
had caught on the flat side of another sword that pressed, frigid, against her
flesh.

"What goes on here?"  A man’s voice thundered
like the impending storm, a voice practiced in the issue of command.

Eleanor heard an answering rumble in the distance as if
the heavens responded.  The air grew heavy, almost too thick to breathe.

With her pulse at a frantic pace, she tore her gaze
from the crossed swords and toward the shadowy figure who had prevented the
sever of her hand.

In the rolling fog, astride a destrier black as sin,
sat a knight, tall, broad of shoulder, a masterful power that demanded homage,
a power that obliterated all else from her world.  Even though his stallion
stamped, restless, the knight handled the beast as if with no effort.  His
forceful concentration burned deep into her core, potent, hypnotic.  The knight
moved his arm to steady his destrier.

Eleanor gasped.  The white cross of
the knight's heraldry fairly glowed against his black surcote. 

A white cross against
black.  Her prophetic dream.

A tingle shivered along her spine. 

Mist swirled around his vague image,
dipped and curled, obscured the color of his eyes, the details of his face. 
Yet, she knew.

He is the man foretold.

The vision flashed into her thoughts like lightning,
brief and bright
. 

Again she saw the midnight sky where hung the cross
that glowed and pulsed, white-hot.  A mounted knight streaked across the
blackish void.  Dim stars scattered like firesparks in his wake.  With
gauntlet-covered hand, he snatched the cross from the firmament, raised it high
in victory, then faced her.  He held out his other hand for her to grasp.  The
dim stars became peasants who wiped away tears of despair, their faces
brightening with joy.
 

The vision faded, but not the message.  Somehow, and in
some way, she and Lord Kyle were to save the villagers from an evil presence.

Her divulgence of the prophecy to the nuns at the
convent had brought her only fear and pain. They had burned the soles of her
feet to purify her soul and to remind her of the torture for witches should she
persist in her Satanic revelations.  They had then thrown her into an
underground pit without light and food until she felt certain she would die,
forgotten.  She had promised never to speak again of the dream since the nuns
claimed such messages didn't exist except with the Devil's touch.

Yet, there he sat.  As if he had risen on the mist from
the bowels of the earth to rescue her. 

"What goes on here is none of your affair,
knight."  Her captor’s enraged tone roused her from her trance. 
"Now, move your blade."

"Injustice is always my affair.  As to moving my
blade..." The knight flicked his wrist and her abductor’s weapon thudded
into a puddle a good five paces distant.  At her rescuer’s nod, a ghostly
figure moved from out of the vapor and picked up the contraband.

"The insolence!"  Her accuser whirled to
confront the knight, then his eyes narrowed and his sneer curved into the
whiskered edges of his ebon goatee.

"I should have known.  Welcome home,
Lord
Kyle."  The man’s tone oozed contempt.  He seemed to force his knees to
bend as he knelt on the sodden ground, drawing his cloak to protect himself
from the dampness, or perhaps to hide his flamboyant jewelry and lordly raiment. 
Eleanor wondered why one nobleman would show such deference to another.  And
surely the nuns wouldn’t send a man of such rank to deal with her, a laborer. 
Even more confusing, he accused her of stealing his grain. 

"Lord Kyle?"  Alarm in their tones, the two
accomplices dropped to their knees, heads bowed.

With her unexpected release, pain bolted through her
feet and up her legs.  She locked her knees and ordered herself not to
collapse.

"Satan’s curse, Brigham, you’re more than my
steward.  Rise and tell me what hails here."  The knight’s demand boomed
into the dankness.  The coming storm grumbled as if echoing his irritation. 

She trembled, suddenly fearful of this mounted knight
whom even the heavens seemed to champion.  In truth, the approaching storm
sounded abnormally menacing.  The thunder rolled deeper, longer, than she had
ever heard before.  And the air hung heavy midst the fog, another oddity, for
certain. 

The beginning of the vision?

She shuddered along with the rumbling.
Then her breath caught with remembrance from the name Lord Kyle had called her
accuser.

Brigham?
 
Villagers and travelers she had passed on the road whispered about a fiend
called Brigham, one whose reputation for cruelty stank like the tortured and
rotting flesh of his victims.

Brigham pushed to his feet much faster than he had
knelt.  "I but protect your interests during your absence, as is my duty,
Lord Kyle.  Verily, you were away for so long I began to doubt your
return."  He shrugged.  "As to this disturbance, 'tis only a small
matter, of no consequence."

Eleanor felt her mouth drop open.  "Of no
consequence?  I consider the matter of a lost hand of much consequence,
Sirrah
.  
Especially when the hand in question is mine." 

"You’re a thief."

"I only just arrived."

"You lie!" 

She flinched as Brigham lifted his fist as if to
strike.

"Halt!"  Kyle’s shout froze Brigham,
mid-swing.  "Brigham, lift your arm to strike a woman again and ‘twill be
you who loses a hand."  Lord Kyle turned his indistinct visage toward
her.  "The laws of England are severe for thievery."

"I tell you true, my lord.  I stole naught."

"I saw her pilfer the sack of grain from the
wagon!  Cutting off a hand is traditional for such a crime.  Do you not see,
Kyle, I must set an example for the peasants, else they’ll steal us into
poverty."

"She ain't the one!"  A shriek sounded from
behind Eleanor.  A woman flung herself to her knees in front of Lord Kyle’s
steed.  All Eleanor could see from her shaky position was the dark, wet hair,
the same color as her own, streaming over the woman's shoulders.

"Please, milord!  She ain't the one you're
after."  A sob broke her speech.  "I be the guilty one."

"Be ye related?"  Brigham stared as if stunned,
first at Eleanor, then at the groveling female.   "Do you pile your sins
upon your own head, woman?  Do you defy me by seeking your kin’s presence here
without my permission?  As penalty, you’ll lose more than your hand."

The woman jerked her gaze upward. 

Eleanor’s heart cramped as she
glimpsed at what seemed like her own reflection in a wind-rippled pond, except
the woman had some broken teeth, her face lined from what must have been a
difficult life.

"Lucinda?"  Eleanor fought for composure as
she watched her sister’s eyes widen with a mixture of shock, elation, alarm.
Eleanor cursed her injured feet that prevented her from kneeling to embrace the
sister she hadn’t seen or held for a lifetime.

"Lucinda, ’tis I, your sister Eleanor.”  The years
of forced separation rushed through her veins like bitter tears on a raw
wound.  Ten and four years ago their mother had sold the then five year-old
Eleanor to the convent as a laborer.  Then she had dragged away the crying
Lucinda and sold her to the ale-master at Trystonwood.  Eleanor never saw her
again, till now.  She chilled to ice.  Lucinda had admitted theft. To Brigham.

Panic filled Lucinda’s expression.  She shifted her
attention to Lord Kyle.  "Please, milord!"  Lucinda reached out that
tentative hand Brigham craved for a trophy.  "I need me sister to help
with me young 'uns.  I'm right fearful of what will happen now that me husband
is dead."

"Cease your babbling!” 

With Becket’s dictate, Lucinda ducked her head.

"Silence, Brigham."  Saddle-leather creaked
when Lord Kyle leaned toward Lucinda as if to better hear her soft-spoken
voice.  "Tell me, Lucinda.  What happened to Robert?"

Lucinda’s gaze flew to Brigham, her face the hue of the
grayish fog eddying around them, her brown eyes glazed with fright. 

"Life is harsh, Becket, as well you know." 
Brigham pinned Lucinda with a glare as if in warning while he stroked his
well-trimmed goatee.  "The grim reaper calls a-many afore their
time."  Then he shifted his attention to the mounted knight.  "‘Tis
not the past that is of import here, Kyle, but our future."  He grasped
Lucinda’s wrist.  "’Tis better that a wench lose her hand than we lose
control." 

Desperate to protect her sister, Eleanor flung out the
first argument that came to mind.  "Sirrah, you aren’t allowed to sentence
her without a hearing.  English law declares she has a right to a trial in a
manor court." 

"Someone must pay, else we’ll have anarchy!"

"So be it."  Eleanor faced the mounted
knight.  "Lord Kyle, I wish to suffer my sister's punishment in her
stead." 

Lucinda emitted a soft cry.  "Nay!  I won't permit
ye!"

"Please, Lucinda, allow me to finish." 
Although Eleanor couldn't see Lord Kyle's eyes, she felt the intensity of his
stare.  She clasped her fingers to hide their trembling.  "However, Lord
Kyle, I will be of much better use to you if I work out the penalty with
both
of my hands. I swear you my solemn vow; I will repay the debt in whatever
way you see fit and for as long as you deem fair."

Eleanor paused.  Should she speak of the fortuitous
dream?  Nay.  Not until she stood in a position to inform him of his role, as
well as hers, in the prophecy.  Dread scraped along her nerves.  The telling
would be most dangerous, for she knew not how he would react with her
revelation.  With scorn?  With laughter?  Or, with an order to burn her as a
witch?

A falcon screamed from on high as if to verbalize her
fear.  Her stomach tightened and became like one of the hard stones that
littered the road.

She sensed Brigham staring at her as if mentally
scrambling how to crush her proposal so that he could then punish her for her
audacity. 

"Put back your hood, wench."

The strength of Lord Kyle’s command, although spoken
low, demanded she comply.  She trembled as she grasped the edge of the wet
hood, pushing it back until the wool crumpled onto her shoulders.  Moisture
dampened her flesh, cold on cold.  Surely he heard the pounding of her heart as
she focused for an eternity on his mist-veiled face.